ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Toward a Succinct Articulation of the Ruling Ideology

The regnant ideological doctrine in theory if not praxis of this nation’s particular incarnation of post-welfare capitalist democracy can be described as a neo-liberal technocratic plutocracy suffused with a Constitution-transcending or constitutionally defiant legal ethos defined by an institutionally entrenched insecurity and paranoia that generates panoptical surveillance ambitions and totalizing information-gathering practices by both public agencies and private firms within the terms and constraints of a feverishly financialized turbo-capitalism on the one hand, and a colossal Orwellian National Security State on the other hand.

We might begin to fill out the “bread and circuses” component of the society ruled by this ideology as implicated in a network of “looping effects” of “human kinds” (Ian Hacking) with Werner Sombart’s notion of cultural immaturity (discussed as the peculiarly  modern values intrinsic to mature capitalism): “The child possesses four elementary ‘values;’ four ideals dominate its existence. They are (a) physical bigness, as seen in grown-ups and imagined in giants; (b) quick movement—in running, bowling a hoop, riding on a roundabout; (c) novelty—it changes its toys very quickly, it begins something and never completes it because another occupation attracts it; and (d) sense of power—that is why it pulls out the legs of a fly, makes Towzer stand on his hind legs and beg nicely, and flies a kite has high as it can.” As my former teacher, the late Raghavan Iyer explains,

“[Sombart] referred to the tendency to mistake bigness for greatness; the influence on the inner workings of the mind of the quantitative valuation of things [Americans everywhere and always exhibiting the ability to ‘prefix to every commodity its monetary values’]; the connection between success, competition, and sheer size; the tendency to regard the speediest achievements as the most valuable ones; the connection between megalomania, mad hurry, and record-breaking; the attraction of novelty; the habit of hyperbole; the love of sensationalism and its effect on journalism; the concern with fashions in ideas as well as clothes; and the consciousness of superiority through a sense of power that is merely an expression of weakness.”

Image: Grace Lee Boggs (b. 1915) by Robert Shetterly

People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.

Would You Push the Button? A Question About Free Speech

Suppose you could push a button and, if you did, any section of the political left or right would autonomously make the decision not to speak in public for the next thirty years. Would you push the button?

I have asked students and members of my faculty this question for many years. Most say that they would not push the button. Some are moderates and believe the polity benefits from the contributions of the left and right. Others might be on the left or right, but believe the marketplace is best served by a vigorous debate. Others think to press the button is to interfere with autonomy despite the proviso that the left or right would make an autonomous decision. Others do not want to play God. Others just find the question creepy.

If you do push the button, does it mean that you do not believe in freedom of speech? It would not entail that you think that the polity never benefits from contributions of the left or right, or that the marketplace is never served by vigorous debate from both ends of the spectrum. It would mean that you think that the positive benefits of that debate are outweighed by the harm that is occasioned by the presence of options in political life that are better off foreclosed. You could be a Kantian and push the button though most would not. For those of us who would push the button, but are committed to freedom of speech for the left and right in modern life, it could be that our commitment owes more to Thomas Hobbes than we ordinarily have thought.

 

Boxing: The Brutal Agon

   “Boxing is only possible if there is an endless supply of young men hungry to leave their ghetto neighborhoods, more than willing to substitute the putative dangers of the ring for the more evident dangers of the street; yet it is rarely advanced as a means of eradicating boxing, that poverty itself be abolished; that it is the social conditions feeding boxing that are obscene.”—Joyce Carol Oates

“In the name of that ethic of strength and domination –and in order to escape that common fate of the oppressed, in whom he discovers and detests his own wretchedness as a victim—he sells his strength, his agility and his courage. He sells even that rage which makes him so combative. At once, it is no longer his, it is taken from him. The assertion of his sovereignty becomes his livelihood. Obedience replaces anarchistic pride, lordly will shrivels before harsh discipline. The exercise of violence—directed, channeled, orientated [sic] in the direction of maximum profit for the promoters—is no longer the easy demonstration of a brutal superiority. It is instead a painful and dangerous labour that is faced in anguish and often pits the boxer against a better-armed opponent: he learns the limits of his power through the sufferings inflicted on him. [….] As long as he remained in the working class, it was a lonely individual’s blind, explosive reaction to exploitation. Once he is a servant of the bourgeois class, his fight in the ring incarnates his fight for life in the bourgeois system of competition. [….] His violence being, in and of itself, an ever fruitless spasm to struggle free from poverty and his milieu, he accepts that it should precisely be the instrument for his promotion into the other class. In fact, the promotion does not really take place (except for a tiny minority). He sells his violence, remains one of the exploited, and on the boxing market finds the same competitive antagonisms that pit workers against one another on the labour market.”—Jean-Paul Sartre 

“‘Each time we moved, the conditions got worse—from being poor to being serious poor to being fucked-up poor.’ Tyson’s mother’s friends were now mainly prostitutes and her lovers inclined to violence—though Tyson recounts how his mother once poured boiling water over one of her male friends: ‘That is the kind of life I grew up in. People in love cracking their heads and bleeding like dogs. They love each other but they’re stabbing each other. Holy shit, I was scared to death of my family….’” Mike Tyson, quoted in Joyce Carol Oates' review of Tyson’s book, Undisputed Truth (New York: Blue Rider Press/Penguin, 2013)

Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1958 draft of the second volume of his posthumously published Critique of Dialectical Reason put forth the intriguing proposition that “Every boxing match incarnates the whole of boxing as an incarnation of all fundamental violence.” More interestingly, perhaps, he also argued that the “so-called witness” to the match is in fact a “participant: he intervenes to stop a brawl or else lets it run its course—out of cowardice, sadism, or respect for tradition. [....] The brawl is a common event.” Sartre then proceeds to demonstrate how “bourgeois capitalism itself is expressed through boxing.” The “boxing” section of the Critique was likely in part inspired by (as Ronald Aronson has noted), although it is rather different from, Roland Barthes’ well-known 1957 essay on wrestling.

In any case, I think Sartre’s piece might be systematically and fruitfully compared to Joyce Carol Oates’ writings on boxing, which are phenomenologically perceptive if not brilliant, albeit at times contradictory in execution. For example, she states unequivocally that “Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.” This claim is reiterated in her assertion that “boxing is not a metaphor for life but a unique, closed, self-referential world….” This approach to the “sport” (Oates does not in fact believe boxing is a sport, especially insofar as a sport is understood within the conceptual parameters of a ‘game’) is salutary in that it encourages acute perception to detail, a focused attention on the subject at hand, unaltered or disturbed by some underlying agenda or ideological goal that tends to constrict what one will perceive, allowing only that which one expects, wants, or hopes to see. Oates is explicit if not emphatic about not viewing boxing as a metaphor for something else, that “something else” which might serve to diminish or distort our understanding of what takes place both inside and outside the ring. There is at once a singularity to each boxing match and a sense in which “each fight is all of boxing” (in Sartrean terms, its ‘totalization would remain schematic and formal…if it were not incarnated in the singularity of an “uncertain contest’”).

And yet I sense that Oates perforce is compelled to draw upon a number of analogies and metaphors that belie the notion of boxing as “a unique, closed, self-referential world,” hence her statement in the preface (1994) to the latest edition of On Boxing (2006) that “to write about boxing is to be forced to contemplate not only boxing, but the perimeters of civilization—what it is, or should be, to be ‘human.’” Indeed, for Oates the boxing match speaks to an undeniable feature of human nature, for it “is the very image, the more terrifying for being so stylized, of mankind’s collective aggression; its ongoing historical madness.” These comments are closer in spirit to the philosophical explorations initiated in Sartre’s Critique and account for her treatment of the boxing match as an event which, to slightly paraphrase and quote, risks and sometimes realizes “the agony of which agon (Greek, ‘contest’) is the root.” Oates once again begins to break out of this “closed, self-referential world” when she refers to boxing as “the most pitiless of sports, as it can be the most dazzling, theatrical and emblematic” (e.g.: ‘a mimicry of a fight to the death, a theatrical sort of mortal combat’), or when boxing is described both as “a wordless spectacle” accorded “narrative unity” by the ringside announcer, and as a “performance…clearly akin to dance or music [rather] than narrative.” This dovetails nicely with her invocation of Nietzsche’s reflections on the Hellenistic “contest—athletic and otherwise [e.g., chariot racing]—by which Greek youths were educated into Greek citizenry.”

Still, while the gymnasium  loomed large in the lives of both upper class young Athenians as well as young Spartans, it seems the athletic contest proper (with training in training in wrestling, boxing, running, throwing the discus and javelin, for example) was perhaps more important to some Greek city-states (e.g., Sparta) and less so for others (e.g., Athens): Plato’s Athenian pedagogical ideal, for example, revolves around dance and music (or ‘ritual play’) as fundamental to paideia (moral socialization or education) generally, although Dorian Sparta, at least according to Plato, remained an exemplar of choral excellence. Whatever the significance of the athletic contest, music or dance among ancient Greek city-states, the contemporary boxing match is a uniquely literal and analogical incarnation of “agony” (with substitutionary atonement as one function of this brutal, stylized spectacle?). And while homoeroticism (in general, intimate, and masochistic forms) may suffuse the world of boxing, as it did the world of ancient Greece, Oates assures us that the violence of its “ritual combat” (or ‘the Sweet Science of Bruising’) is not to be confused with love (‘Love, if there is to be love, comes second.’). Nor is the “play” of ritual as expressed through music and dance, fundamentally or typically agonistic (that is, even if it is, it should not be), let alone violent (to be sure, music and dance, as Plato himself appreciated, can assume inhumane or improper if not ‘violent’ forms contrary to human reason and virtues, hence our need for humane normative psychological, moral, and aesthetic evaluative criteria for these arts). Ritual combat may partake of music or dance, but it is the violent substance of the match itself which defines essence of this cruel spectacle, in other words, it “is an event that necessarily subsumes both boxers, as any ceremony subsumes its participants” (Oates), for its violence is no longer the individual property or under the sovereign control—as Sartre informs us—of the boxers themselves. Finally, and rightly, Oates cannot but fail to appreciate that the individual life history of exceptional boxers is conspicuously “emblematic of much more than their individual lives,” she remains fascinated by “their relationship with the politics and culture of their eras, their role in the ongoing ‘racial drama’ of America,’” a reminder, with Sartre, that boxing is much more than “a unique, closed, self-referential world.”

Images (from top to bottom): Jack Johnson, Rocky Marciano, and Muhammad Ali.

Live from Bethlehem: The Goldman Sachs 2013 Christmas Story

Live from Bethlehem: The Goldman Sachs 2013 Christmas Story

By Bill Quigley quigley77@gmail.com

Swaddled in Baby Gap, little Jesus appears to be crying.  Mary tries to gently rock him in her hands, certainly a great moment to remind viewers that you are in good hands with Allstate.    The carpenter Joseph is trying to protect Mary and Jesus, he could certainly use the system he just won from our sponsor ADT.  The cow you see behind them is brought to you by ConAgra, the donkey by Halliburton.  The angels on high in the sky, magnificent 3D computer generated imagery, are from Pixar.  Walt Disney has remixed the angel songs so they sing praise to the shopping opportunities this event has created.  

Earlier, there were reports of shepherds in the area but ICE agents stopped and frisked them and are now herding them on your right into the Fox News freedom of expression fenced off area.  Some appear to be singing a protest song about peace on earth.  Over on the left, a panel of MSNBC experts are talking about the shepherds and talking about the shepherds and talking about the shepherds.

In front of us you can see the Republicans, decked out in Brooks Brothers, who have brought gifts of big cutbacks in food stamps to make this couple and others like them more independent and self-reliant.  Democrats, clad in casual elegance from Ralph Lauren, are doing their part tonight by firing drones all over the Middle East and Africa and snooping on the private communications of the family all the while assuring the family this is for their own protection.

Oh look, here come representatives of the rich and powerful!  Both Republicans and Democrats are bowing down to them.  They promise the next time Jesus is born they will provide a better site in Davos, Switzerland so he can get his message out to those who really matter.  

Finally, the church people arrive, clerics from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam decked out in fine clothing.   They quickly start arguing among themselves over the importance of the event and who is more closely related to the family.  UN Peacekeepers pry them apart and send them to separate parts of the country so they can pray in their own separate peace.

All the while, representatives from Apple are pushing Iphones on the lovely parents.  Microsoft assures Jesus he can be happy with his own Xbox.   Amazon mini-drones hover with books, groceries, clothing, and jewelry.  While Walmart and Costco assure everyone they have all the same stuff at guaranteed lower prices.

Wait.  Mary and Joseph have picked up baby Jesus and are stepping over the piles of presents.  They are leaving the spotlights and the microphones and the piles of presents.  Where on earth are they going?  What is wrong with them?

Well, that is all for Christmas 2013.  Tonight’s good cheer brought to you by Budweiser.  

 

 

 

 

 

Shadow Over Springfield: The Failures of a Warrior Bishop

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., has recently been much in the news for his staging of a public exorcism on Nov. 20, 2013, the day Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a bill recognizing marriage equality in Illinois.  Bishop Paprocki's actions raise a few questions: What is the state of his diocese?  Is it in good health, or is it in decline?  And if it is in decline, then why?

There are few happier moments in the faith life of a typical Catholic girl or boy than the reception of First Holy Communion or Confirmation.  I still recall my own First Communion, 50 years ago.  I approached the altar solemnly, seriously, wearing an immaculate white shirt and necktie.  I was awestruck by the doctrine of the real presence, and I remain awestruck to this day.  But then afterwards, at the party my parents hosted, I proceeded to run with my cousins through a muddy backyard, ruining the fine set of clothes my mother had so sweetly dressed me in.  Even so, my parents were pleased, since this is the great intergenerational transmission of the faith that Catholic families have practiced from time immemorial.

But there is a shadow hanging over the Diocese of Springfield.  Ever fewer children are enjoying the Catholic rites of initiation that were such a wondrous part of my own youth.  And this precipitous decline has been hastened by the arrival in Springfield of Thomas Paprocki, one of America's fiercest culture-warrior bishops.

First, let's consider some numbers.  Paprocki was installed as bishop in June 2010.  The number of infant baptisms in 2009, the last year before Paprocki's installation, was 1,899; in 2012, the last year for which numbers are available, that total fell to 1,658, a decline of 12.7 percent.  The number of children who received First Holy Communion in 2009 was 2,056; for 2012 it was 1,859, a decline of 9.6 percent.  In 2009, 2,290 young people were confirmed.  In 2012 it was 2,101.  The number of children and adolescents being catechized in the faith is also in decline.  In 2009 there were 1,915 high-school students and 8,087 elementary-school students in catechetical instruction.  In 2012 the numbers were 1,472 and 7,524, respectively. (The numbers I utilize here are drawn from the Official Catholic Directory, known informally as the Kenedy Directory, for the relevant years.)

To be sure, Springfield was experiencing decline in its sacramental life even before Paprocki became bishop.  Under the rule of George J. Lucas, Paprocki's immediate predecessor and another of America's prominent culture-warrior bishops, infant baptisms declined from 2,384 in 2000 (Lucas' first full year as bishop) to 1,899 in 2009, while first communicants fell from 2,763 to 2,056 in the same period.

These declines are not attributable to a general decline in population, since the area covered by the Springfield Diocese has actually added some 50,000 people in the relevant period.  Clearly, the transmission belt by which the faith is conveyed from one generation to the next is broken.

The Catholic Church of Springfield is in clear need of revitalization.  And that revitalization must begin with the sacraments.  For some time now, the Catholic Church has spoken of the "new evangelization."    You would expect and hope, given this institutional commitment to outreach, to see the numbers improve.

If we were grading Paprocki on this scale, we might generously give him a D.  And we might ask whether his methods have served to attract or repel the Catholic faithful.

Let's look at his homily for midnight mass at Christmas 2010, Paprocki's first Christmas in Springfield.  How did he open his homily for midnight mass?  With talk of shepherds in the field, a great light shining, Baby Jesus asleep in the manger?  No.  Nothing so mundane.  Did he begin with the mystery of the Incarnation or the miracle of salvation?  No, nothing so obvious or predictable.

Paprocki commenced his homily by telling the story of the Battle of Vienna and the defeat of the Turkish armies invading Europe in 1683.  He vividly recounted the martial exploits of the Polish King Jan Sobieski and recalled the execution of the Ottoman commander, Kara Mustafa Pasha.  Only then did he welcome church-goers by wishing them a merry Christmas.  Only on page 6 of the published text, long after Paprocki discussed Sept. 11 and airport security, did he finally mention the Incarnation, in a single paragraph.  When he was accused in the local press of "Islamophobia [and] xenophobia," Paprocki did not back off.

It was also around this time that Paprocki came to national attention when he convened a two-day long conference on exorcism.  There are only a handful of exorcists in the United States; thus Paprocki explained his motivation for organizing the conference.  But with so much evil loose in the world, he suggested, every diocese should have its own resources on exorcism.

And what counts as evil, exactly, for Bishop Paprocki?  He made clear in 2012 that one grave intrinsic evil he intended to confront was the Democratic Party platform.  Voting for politicians who promote actions or behaviors that are "intrinsically evil," Paprocki declared, imperiled Catholics' salvation, and the Democratic platform endorsed positions that were "intrinsically evil."

The Republican Party, on the other hand, did not endorse intrinsic evil, so he indicated that Catholics were morally free to vote for the GOP.  Assuring his audience that he did not mean to tell them how to vote, he warned them that a vote for evil made one complicit in evil.  This got the attention of the Los Angeles Times, which editorially encouraged the IRS to investigate the diocese's tax-exempt status in light of Paprocki's politicking.

Undaunted by seeing the Republicans go down in defeat, Paprocki immediately launched into a new political campaign -- he would urge the Catholics of his diocese to oppose same-sex marriage.  On Jan. 3, 2013, he directed all the priests of his diocese to read a letter to their congregations in which marriage equality was described as "fraudulent."  Same-sex marriage, he insisted, was nothing less than a "grave assault upon ... marriage."  Society must be protected from the "harmful idea" that "what essentially makes a marriage is romantic-emotional union."

The struggle to enact marriage equality in Illinois lasted into the summer and fall.  Then quickly, unexpectedly, the votes fell into place, the legislature passed the marriage equality bill, and Illinois, in November 2013, became the 16th state to ratify same-sex marriage.  Several legislators cited Pope Francis' evident open-mindedness on gays -- "Who am I to judge?" the pope famously asked -- in announcing their decision to support the bill.

This was too much for Bishop Paprocki.  He now decided to put his background and interest in exorcism to work.  And so he staged his now-infamous exorcism.  He announced that his intention was one of confronting the "diabolical influences of the devil" that gave rise to same-sex marriage.  If you look closely, Paprocki assured his audience, you can find abundant signs of the devil's handiwork in the campaign for marriage equality.  Those who enter "civil same-sex marriage," he went on, are "culpable of serious sin," and the politicians who vote for marriage equality are "complicit as co-operators in facilitating this grave sin."

Assuredly, this performance, which would have been worthy of 19th-century grand opera, does not conform to the new evangelization. I have argued before that the scientific understanding of human sexuality provides firm support for marriage equality.  I won't reiterate those arguments here.

Rather, I would like to encourage Catholics to persevere, keep the faith, and introduce the next generation to joyful message of the Gospel.  The church is larger than any single individual, and finally what matters is the soul's relationship to God.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/bishop-thomas-paprocki_b_4442069.html

A Blegging Blog about Blood in Bologna

This post concerns an old and much-cited legal chestnut that I have come to think might be more profound (and more tied to "law and religion") than first appears.  It is also a bleg -- a request for help from anyone out there with some expertise in medieval law or medieval Latin, or both. William Blackstone, in his discussion of statutory interpretation in his Commentaries (first published in 1766), refers to

the Bolognian law, mentioned by Puffendorf, which enacted "that whoever drew blood in the streets should be punished with the utmost severity," [and] was held after long debate not to extend to the surgeon, who opened the vein of a person that fell down in the street with a fit.

The point here, of course, is that words should not be read literally if that would give them "a very absurd signification." Blackstone's source, Samuel von Puffendorf, discusses this "case" in his "Law of Nature and Nations," first published in 1672, and Puffendorf in turn cites a 1516 digest of legal arguments by Nicholas Everhard (aka Everardi, Everts, and several other names).   Puffendorf, for example, adds that the defendant "was in no little peril because it was added in the statute that the words should be taken exactly and without any interpretation."  Everhard leaves out that tidbit, but does spin out the legal argument at greater length, and emphasizes that punishing the healer would be "absurd and inhuman," not merely "absurd." Now, my intuition tells me that there's more to this odd tale than meets the modern eye.

A Tale of Two Roll Outs

A national television audience tuned in eagerly anticipating the moment. The air crackled with excitement. The countdown solemnly proceeded. And then it happened. It blew up on the launch pad. It exploded. In an expanding, billowing fireball, the Vanguard rocket intended to carry the American response to Sputnik sprayed burning fuel and debris across the south Florida landscape. December 6, 1957, was not a good day for the American space program.

The Affordable Care Act's roll out has not gone smoothly. No one should sugar coat its debut. The Healthcare.gov website could not sustain the volume that swamped it in the days after it opened for business on October 1, 2013. Some eight million people attempted to log onto either the federal healthcare.gov website or state-sponsored health-care websites in the first two weeks of operation and nearly all of them emerged from the process frustrated and defeated. It seems that even though the Congressional Budget Office had predicted large numbers of visitors -- estimating that some seven million people might try to enroll in the first three months -- the website was not equipped to handle this level of traffic.

Knowing that not only his presidency but the health and well-being of millions of Americans were at stake, President Obama prioritized the need to fix the website and it seems that the repairs are now working. News about the Affordable Care Act now accentuates its successes. On Monday, December 2, it was reported that perhaps as many as a million people visited the new and improved website. In a three-day span in early December, nearly 60,000 of these visitors actually logged off after obtaining insurance coverage.

Consumer Reports, which very publicly refused to endorse the healthcare.gov website when it opened for business in October, now extended its blessing. Nancy Metcalf, "Consumer Reports health care expert," strongly recommended the website: "It's terrific. I've tried it, it was working yesterday [December 3], through the busiest times."

Obstacles remain to be overcome, chief among them the continuing efforts to subvert and discredit the new system by right-wing politicians (more on that below). But for now, the Affordable Care Act is achieving at least its most important preliminary goal -- enrolling America's uninsured.

In comparison, the early space program did not go nearly so smoothly. The year 1958 was bumpy and uncertain. On January 31, the United States succeeded in launching Explorer One into earth orbit. But by this time, the Soviets had already launched Sputnik 2, placing a living creature -- the dog Laika -- into space. And on February 5, 1958, a second Vanguard rocket exploded, this time 57 seconds into the mission. In its eagerness to outdo the Soviets, the American space program then overreached. In August and again in October, the United States attempted to launch lunar probes. Neither launch succeeded in escaping earth's gravity, let alone come close to the moon. Pioneer 0, launched in August, exploded after only 73 seconds of flight.

What was the political reaction to these evident disasters? Dwight Eisenhower, the incumbent President, was a Republican. In late 1957, he had suffered a minor stroke. Both Houses of Congress were in the hands of the opposition Democratic Party. Clearly, if ever an administration was vulnerable, if ever a presidency stood at the mercy of its opponents, this was it.

Remarkably, after some initial public skepticism and doubt ("Adverse Publicity Harmful Abroad, Democrats Say", Robert C. Albright, The Washington Post and Times Herald Dec 7, 1957), focused principally on the decision to televise the Vanguard launch ("Butler Raps Satellite Publicity", Daily Defender Dec 9, 1957), the Democratic leadership resolved to be supportive. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson -- who could be fiercely partisan -- was responsible for rallying his Party to the President's side.

Johnson understood that national security was at stake. "By dissension and narrow partisanship," Johnson warned ominously, the Congress could create an "insurmountable barrier" to success ("Johnson's Talk to Democratic Senators", The Washington Post and Times Herald Jan 8, 1958). If Congress did not adopt a stance of "non-partisan" cooperation on outer space, Johnson continued, it could set the nation up for a replay of Pearl Harbor ("Johnson's Now a Democrat Second", Robert C. Albright, The Washington Post and Times Herald Dec 22, 1957).

Success in space exploration was deemed to be above politics, a cause vital to American well-being. It was the Cold War, after all, and fear of the Soviets lurked always in the background.

But the United States today is confronted with a crisis that endangers perhaps even more immediately the welfare of the American polity. And that is the lamentable state of health care in the United States. How healthy you will be, how soon you will die, is determined chiefly by how affluent or how poor you are.

Consider: In a moving story in the Washington Post, reporter Michael Fletcher documents life in two adjacent Florida counties. In affluent St. John County, men live to 78 and women live to 83. In nearby Putnam County, men live to 71 and women live to 78. The difference-maker? Income and the access to the good health care that goes with it. Consider also: Nationwide, poorly-educated white men have seen their life expectancy decline -- yes, decline -- by three years, while their female counterparts have their life expectancy collapse by five years.

Demographic collapses like this just should not happen, certainly not in affluent nations. It happened in Russia in the 1990s, when the social breakdown that followed the collapse of the Soviet led to the massive demoralization of the people and the disappearance of basic social services. But life expectancy just should not collapse among broad segments of the population in a nation like ours.

The right wing has had nothing to offer on this crisis beyond some blame-the-victim rhetoric. Indeed, they have demonstrated that they are the principal obstacles to improvement and reform. To say this is not to be partisan or inflammatory. It is truth, as reported by no less an authority than Bill Moyers, on his website, billmoyers.com. There we encounter the story of a cancer patient who was refused cancer screenings because of his uninsured status and inability to pay. Finally, when his cancer fatally metastasized, he was able to seek the treatment of acute symptoms through an emergency room.

The right wing refuses even to acknowledge the class-based nature of health care and life expectancy. Instead, their message is a disconnected one about repeal. To log onto a right-wing news aggregator like Realclearpolitics.com proves the point. There we find Charles Hugh Smith gloating: "Obamacare is a Catastrophe That Cannot Be Fixed." We find Jack Kelly engaging in some alternate reality messaging when he writes: "Messaging Isn't the Problem, Obamacare Is. Carl Cannon boasts about how united the Republican Party has become on the issue of repeal. Philip Klein crows: "Obama Has Shown How a Future GOP President Can Gut ObamaCare." And, as Brian Beutler has shown, opportunities for mayhem and mischief abound in early 2014, when people begin to make use of their new health-insurance coverage.

Not one of this merry band of nihilists grasps the enormity of the health-care crisis confronting America. The life expectancy of the poor is plummeting -- for the simple reason that they are poor. Unlike Lyndon Johnson, unlike the Democrats of the 1950s, today's right wing is incapable of putting aside a narrow, self-interested partisanship in order to serve the nation's common needs. And that is to their lasting shame.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/a-tale-of-two-roll-outs_b_4420371.html

Appoint Jennifer Haselberger

          Michael Sean Winters said it first:  Pope Francis should appoint Jennifer Haselberger to the new commission he is organizing to address the on-going crisis of priestly pedophilia.

          The formation of a Commission to address sex abuse was announced on Thursday, December 5, 2013.  It remains unclear what the Commission's powers will be or its precise jurisdiction.  It even remains uncertain where precisely in the Vatican bureaucracy the Commission will be placed.

          Still, we know some of the details of what Pope Francis has planned, thanks to Sean Cardinal O'Malley's announcement.  He indicated that the Commission will address the pastoral dimension of the child-abuse crisis.  Presumably, he means that the Commission might help facilitate the healing process which the entire Church, lay and clerical alike, must undergo to put this crisis of confidence behind it.

          Cardinal O'Malley indicated that the Commission will also look to reforming the ways in which the Church safeguards children.  Finally, the Cardinal stated that the Commission will consist of a cross-section of the Church that will "include priests, men and women religious, and laypeople."

          Critics have already expressed fears that the Commission will lack sufficient independence to be credible.  To that end, the Commission's members must not only enjoy complete liberty of action, but must have every appearance of freedom to inquire and to make recommendations.

          And this is where Jennifer Haselberger comes in.  She is the St. Paul-Minneapolis canon lawyer whose advice to Archdiocesan authorities to practice openness and transparency in their handling of pedophilia cases went unheeded and who has now become a prominent whistle-blower.

          She is highly trained.  She is a graduate of St. Catherine University in St. Paul and has a degree in canon law from the University of Leuven in Belgium.  She took decisive action, she has said, because of the need to protect children from harm.  Her actions were selfless -- she felt an imperative need to respond to perceived continuing threats to the welfare of the vulnerable to exposing wrong-doing to public scrutiny.

          The Commission's members must be independent.  They must be fearless.  And they must be credible.  A good place to achieve these goals is to nominate Jennifer Haselberger to the new papal commission on child abuse.

Are the Republicans the Religious Party?

Quick, which is the religious party the Republicans or the Democrats? I think most people would say the Republicans and there is some truth in that response. Churchgoers are more likely to vote for a Republican than a Democrat. Moreover, Republicans openly and unashamedly discuss religion in primaries and politics generally. The Democrats generally are silent on religion. Indeed, when Kerry ran for President, he refused all invitations to speak in white churches. Obama spoke more in a religious vein, but the Democrats have an enormous uphill battle if they want to avoid the perception that they are the godless party.

My last book (The Religious Left and Church-State Relations) argued that it is an enormous political mistake in a religious country for the Democratic Party to maintain a silence on religion. What accounts for the silence? First, there are many non-religious humanists in the Democratic Party, but the overwhelming majority of Democrats are religious. Yes, the number of those who belong to no institutional religion is fast rising, but only a small percentage of that group is agnostic or atheist. Second, the Democratic Party is afflicted with public reason disease.  The idea is that the best political discourse proceeds for shared premises among reasonable comprehensive views and that it violates respect for others to use politics to impose conclusions drawn from a contested comprehensive view. Adherence to this idea yields the conclusion that it is wrong to introduce religious arguments in religious life. I argue in the book that this idea works with a mistaken view of respect and of politics. Leaving that for the most part aside, my main point here is that this conception of public reason has never been the norm in American politics. Religion has always been a part of American political discourse. Leaving the Republicans free to place their religious spin on American politics while refraining from contesting it on the ground that to do so would not show proper respect for others (as if it were political bad manners) is a handicap the Democratic Party cannot afford. Finally, many Democrats think that to inject religion into politics is to violate the principle of church state separation. Democrats rightly think that government cannot adopt laws without adequate secular justifications and cannot use religious premises to support laws. But that is a far cry from what citizens are permitted to think in a democratic society. I can support anti-poverty legislation and support politicians who will do so – each on religious grounds – without violating principles of church and state. The latter principles (unlike the overly precious philosophical, but not legal principle of public reason) apply to governments, not to citizens.

What inspires this little rift this morning is the front page story in the New York Times in which President Obama has launched a political initiative to combat income inequality. The Republicans have quickly and predictably responded that they oppose an increase in the minimum wage and want to cut off the period of time currently permitted for the unemployed to get unemployment benefits just as they have cut the food stamp program and are working to cut it even more. They deride Obama’s initiative as an attempt to distract those from the frustrations of people with the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile the Republicans appear not to care for the frustrations of the 50 million Americans without health insurance.

What is wrong with this picture? The so-called godless party wants to help the poor and the so-called Christian party demeans the poor.

In fairness, the record of Christian evangelicals who are largely Republicans (but not exclusively, 10% of white evangelicals are relatively liberal and the overwhelming majority of African-Americans are evangelical and Democrats) have a strong record of helping the poor. But the Republican Party has typically denigrated the poor and used racist appeals in doing so.

Too often neglected, as I argued in my book, is that there is a religious left in this country, and the religious left, albeit disorganized, is almost as large as the religious right. Criticism of those who denigrate the poor for political advantage is much needed and that criticism is best advanced by those on the religious left. There is nothing Christian about denigrating the poor. Denigrating the poor runs headlong against the message of Jewish or Christian scripture. It is folly not to make this an important theme in our political dialogue. The Pope, a member of the religious left on this issue, has done an important service in reminding us that the poor and vulnerable at a minimum are not to be treated with condescension let alone with racism, that we have affirmative responsibilities to treat our wealth as trustees for the public interest, and that unregulated capitalism rules without respect for human dignity. Other religious leaders need to step up on this issue. And Democratic political leaders need to recognize that the centrality of the poor to Christian and Judaism should not be ignored.

The Republican Party claims to be the party of God. Maybe so, but with respect to poverty, the God they purport to serve (a selfish, materialistic, and hateful god) is a constructed concoction – a false God.

Annelise Riles

I am pleased to announce that Annelise Riles has agreed to join us as a contributor to religiousleftlaw.

Nathan Schneider's new book on Occupy Wall Street: Thank You, Anarchy

William Stringfellow is a gift who keeps on giving. Through my contacts with folks who knew and loved Stringfellow, I have come to know the remarkable journalist, activist, and Stringfellowian fellow traveller Nathan Schneider. A few years back Nathan wrote a wonderful piece on Stringfellow called The Biblical Circus of WIlliam Stringfellow. A deeply sensitive reading of the weird and inspiring combination of biblical faithfulness, social and ethical passion, and riotous sense of humor that was Bill Stringfellow and his life partner Anthony Towne, I was quite impressed. Then to my delight, I was led to another remarkable piece Nathan wrote,  "Why the World Needs Religious Studies" on the importance of religious studies as an academic discipline.  Those of us who dig in the mines of the humanities  are often on the defensive these days and Nathan's piece is now one of most widely cited and influential short works on why it is so crucial these days that we not allow budget constraints and the principalities and powers to have their way in de-humanizing higher education. 

To top it off, Nathan has published not only one, but two books this year. The first is God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet, in which Nathan interweaves the various proofs for God that have arisen over the centuries with his own religious quest, blurring the hard and fast distinction between doubt and faith. 

 

His second book is his fascinating and insiders view of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse. (the Stringfellow note is struck right away!) Here's how the publisher, University of California Press describes it: 

"Thank You, Anarchy is an up-close, inside account of Occupy Wall Street’s first year in New York City, written by one of the first reporters to cover the phenomenon. Nathan Schneider chronicles the origins and explosive development of the Occupy movement through the eyes of the organizers who tried to give shape to an uprising always just beyond their control. Capturing the voices, encounters, and beliefs that powered the movement, Schneider brings to life the General Assembly meetings, the chaotic marches, the split-second decisions, and the moments of doubt as Occupy swelled from a hashtag online into a global phenomenon."

Having just finished the book over the holiday break, I can say that it is all of this and more. His is a deeply loving and sensitive reading of the hopes, fears, and spiritual sensibilities of those who gathered in Zuccotti  Park;  Nathan is not fawning, however; his book is also  critical analysis of the problems of the movement and he is clearly a brilliant young thinker in the heart of what we might call the revitalization of the religious left. As I have come to know Nathan personally in recent months, I am heartened by the strain and the dedication. His work with Occupy Catholics show him mining the tradition of Cornell's great chaplain Daniel Berrigan, and he is writing in a genre that is all his own  (is it journalism? theology? Social Criticism? Social Media?  Yes yes yes and...)

 

On days when I wonder whether these old bones can still live, I think of Nathan and the many many others like him who refuse to sacrifice their humanity before the gods of profit and false peace. 

An Exemplary Act of Belligerence in the Class War

“CEOs want you—to fix the debt”

Secure in their own wealth and retirement income, some of the nation’s chief executive officers are now calling for cuts in Social Security.

Scott Klinger for the Los Angeles Times (December 1, 2013)

“Many of the nation’ top CEOs have joined forces to ‘fix the debt.’ They want to achieve this goal, in part, by reducing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age to 70.

One of the chief executive officers, David Cote, runs Honeywell. ‘As an American, I couldn’t know about this problem and not try to do something about it,’ Cote told Wall Street Journal TV. Cote has $134 million in his Honeywell retirement account, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he has worked there only 11 years. That amount could provide him a monthly retirement check of $795,134 once he turns 65. The Social Security retirees whose checks he wants to reduce receive, on average, $1,237 a month.

Cote is not alone among those with lavish private retirement benefits to be calling for major cuts in Social Security. He is one of 200 large-company CEOs who belong to the Business Roundtable, a powerful lobbying club that represents the interests of America’s corporate leaders. Roundtable is a leading voice calling for replacing the current formula used to calculate Social Security cost-of-living increases with a less generous one. The change it suggests would steadily chip away at retiree benefits each year until, after 20 years, Social Security checks would be about $100 less than if the current formula was retained.

The Business Roundtable also advocates raising the retirement age to receive full Social Security benefits to 70, which would give the U.S. the dubious distinction of requiring workers to wait longer than any other developed nation to receive their public pensions.

Like Cote, many of the CEOs on the Business Roundtable have corporate retirement benefits that ordinary Americans would find unimaginable: an average of $14.5 million, enough to garner monthly retirement checks of $86,043, according to a new report, ‘Platinum-Plated Pensions,’ published by the Center for Effective Government and the Institute for Policy Studies.

The report examines America’s growing retirement crisis. CEOs’ decisions to cut their workers’ pensions have played a direct role in this crisis. In 1980, 89% of America’s largest corporations offered their workers a defined-benefit pension that reliably delivered monthly pension checks to retirees. Today, only 11% of these firms offer pensions. Most have switched workers to riskier 401(k) plans, which generate huge fees for Wall Street — and the prospect of an uncertain retirement for most employees.

The elimination of so many corporate pensions has left Americans more dependent on Social Security. More than a third of all Americans over age 65 receive 90% or more of their monthly income from Social Security, and that’s in an era when many retirees still draw pension benefits. Six million Americans over the age of 65 currently live beneath the poverty line, with 2 million more expected to join them by 2020. Cutting Social Security benefits would make things worse.” [….] Read the rest of the article here.

Background Reading:

• Baker, Dean and Mark Weisbrot. Social Security: The Phony Crisis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
• Buchanan, Neil H. “Social Security and Government Deficits: When Should We Worry?,” Cornell Law Review, Vol. 92: 257, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 242. Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=959933
• Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Polity Press, 1990.
• Furniss, Norman and Timothy Tilton. The Case for the Welfare State: From Social Security to Social Equality. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1977.
• Goodin, Robert E. Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
• Goodin, Robert E., Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels, and Henk-Jan Dirven. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Hiltzik, Michael. The Plot Against Social Security: How the Bush Plan is Endangering Our Financial Future. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
• Judt, Tony. Ill Fares the Land. New York: The Penguin Press, 2010.
• Katz, Michael B. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
• Katznelson, Ira. Fear Itself: The Neal Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013.
• Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Laursen, Eric. The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012.
• Michelmore, Molly C. Tax and Spend: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
• Murphy, Liam and Thomas Nagel. The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Myles, John. Old Age in the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Public Pensions. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, revised ed., 1989.
• Myles, John and Jill Quadagno, eds. States, Labor Markets and the Future of Old Age Policy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.