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What is the relationship between Advaita Vedānta and bhakti spiritual praxis?

Dakṣiṇāmūrti

 

E-mail correspondence with Elisa Freschi became the subject of a guest blog post at The Indian Philosophy Blog. If you’re not familiar with Advaita Vedānta (an important school within the Vedānta tradition generally*), please see here. For a basic introduction to bhakti-yoga (or -mārga), see here.

* This school, in turn, is one of six philosophical schools of Hinduism or ṣaḍ-darśanas: the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Indic philosophy, namely, Navya-Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta.

The Advice of the Ruling Class in Ferguson: Calm Down

Here is a great post by the Reverend Jeff Hood on the rhetoric attempting to control the demonstrators in Ferguson. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-jeff-hood/the-violence-of-demanding-peaceful-protest_b_5703569.html  A sample:  "I don't think you can have an honest conversation about race in our nation when you are always telling people to calm down." And: "I felt like many of the clergy I encountered functioned as appendages of the ruling class."

Is Violent Protest Justified in Ferguson?

Shortly after the Ferguson grand jury announced its decision Monday night, President Obama said: “We need to accept that this decision was the grand jury's to make. There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply upset, even angry. It's an understandable reaction. But I join Michael's parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully.” See here.

I am bothered by the statement that we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. I read that as an appeal to the rule of law. But the rule of law is not merely procedural; the rule of law should not be construed to include blatant miscarriages of justice rooted in racism. It should not be construed to include denials of probable cause when probable cause so clearly exists. It should not be construed to include executions in the street. It should not be construed to include the legitimation of a police state.

I think it is important to be clear about why protests should be peaceful. One of the main arguments against revolutionary activity is that people are not entitled to “take the law into their own hands.” That argument assumes a legitimate state. If the rule of law existed we would need to accept that “this decision was the grand jury’s to make.” But the rule of law was abandoned in Ferguson Monday night – in fact well before. In these circumstances, we do not need to accept that this was the grand jury’s decision to make, and we should not. People are morally entitled to fight against this decision.

No part of the argument against violence should properly rest on an appeal to the rule of law. The arguments against violence either should rest on a general or narrower pacifist claim from a moral perspective or from a claim that violence will not help to bring us closer to a less illegitimate state or both. The effectiveness claim is empirical. It is also often wrong. Violence has led to better states in the past. Nonetheless, the claim seems right in this circumstance. Violence plays into the hands of those who would seek to change the subject from the injustice of Ferguson and it promotes the kind of racist appeals that turn human beings into demons.

Certainly from a moral perspective, violence directed against innocent victims who happen to own property is misplaced. Moreover, at a minimum, violence is not a moral good and should be resisted when more effective non-violent alternatives exist. Indeed, pacifist resistance draws its effectiveness in large part because of its moral thrust.

Nonetheless, we should remember that few Americans are pacifists. I am not surprised that some of those who live in an unjust community would react with violence. Nor is anyone else. The National Guard was called out even before the Grand Jury had announced its indefensible decision.

I am not surprised that authorities would call for black citizens to go quietly into the night. Nor am I surprised that many citizens are more outraged by the pockets of violence than by the injustice that prompted it.

I am not surprised (though I am bewildered) that many citizens honestly believe (including members of the Grand Jury) that there was no basis to indict Officer Wilson.  That to me is the saddest aspect of this entire affair. Motivated cognition is a social fact. Conservatives and liberals – whites and blacks - often believe what they want to believe. The facts do not matter.  Whether it is climate change or not, whether the poor are lazy or not, or whether the killing of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in St. Louis was a criminal action or not, the sides line up.

Don’t get me wrong: facts matter as a part of a political campaign for social change. But so does power. And civil resistance including disobedience is appropriate here even if it is not effective. Dissent against injustice is not just morally permissible; it is a moral imperative.

 

  

 

 

What's Wrong with the Constitution?

A recent Princeton study by Martin Gillens and Benjamin I. Page concludes that the U.S. no longer has a democracy. “Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.” See here. Citizens, they say, have little independent influence.

If Alexander Hamilton were here, he would tell us that this is the way it should be. The Constitution is designed to prevent the people from having their way. It is a fundamentally undemocratic document designed to prevent change. Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist Papers, No. 73 that making change difficult restrained the “excess of lawmaking” and “kept things in the same state in which they happen to be at any given period.” He argued that “the injury which possibly may be done by defeating a few good laws will be amply compensated by preventing a number of bad ones.” Underlying this sentiment is a fear of popular democratic movements which, if not, checked could sweep in a number of “bad laws.” Thus, as every school child knows (or should know), a measure in most cases cannot become law without passing the House and the Senate and not being vetoed by the President (in the absence of an override), or struck down by the courts. The House was initially designed to be the voice of the people, but gerrymandering has made it possible (as was the case in 2013) for a majority of the representatives to be elected by a minority of the electorate.

This anti-populist feature is compounded by what has come to be called the “winner take all” system combined with the districting system.  So, if a party candidate wins a congressional district by 51% to 49%, the candidate wins the seat. If the same party carried every seat by the same margin, the party would have 100% of the representation with only 51% of the vote. Of course, that does not happen. But even without gerrymandering, representation in the House can fail to reflect the interests of voters.

Even more obviously, the Senate is deliberately structured not to reflect the voice of popular movements. States with small populations like Mississippi and Alabama each get two representatives in the Senate; so do heavily populated New York and California. To get an idea of the impact of this structure on popular representation, consider that according to the 2000 Census, Senators from the twenty-six smallest states, who represented only 17.8% of the nation's population, nonetheless constituted a majority of the Senate. This one state – two votes – feature of the Constitution cannot even be amended. In addition, only one third of the body is up for election at any time making it difficult for a popular majority to transform the body in a single election. Moreover, the blocking feature of the Senate is compounded by the existence of the filibuster in which a small minority of a body that already represents a minority of the population can in many circumstances prevent a measure from becoming law.

All this even before the Supreme Court determined that the unlimited expenditures of billionaires in election campaigns do not trigger a realistic fear of corruption. Call it what you will – a plutocracy, an oligarchy, or a corpocracy. The Princeton scholars have it right. We do not live in a democracy. The next time we celebrate our Constitution, we should recognize that there is too much bitter accompanying the sweet.

From behavior to belief...or the possible virtues of novel political participation

Analogous to the Pascalian prescription for acting as if one believes and has faith (‘Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.’), and akin to Confucian insight (at least with regard to the concept of li), a contemporary social science description speaks to a (proven?*) strategy for indirectly prompting political actors to eschew a reliance on violent methods to achieve their aims:

“[T]he sustained participation of political actors in new institutional settings can trigger a reflexive and unconscious process of socialization variously described in the literature as ‘role playing,’ ‘mimicking,’ ‘copying,’ and ‘emulating’ prescribed norms of behavior. When political actors enter a new institutional environment, they are under pressure to conform with its established rules of speech and conduct. And once they adapt to such expectations, they must justify this adaptation to themselves and others. As a result, ‘they may later adapt their preferences to these justifications, in this way reducing cognitive dissonance.’ Changes in the behavior of political actors iterated over time, may thus produce changes in their beliefs. As  Zürn and Checkel have argued, ‘Acting in accordance with role expectations may lead to an internalization of these expectations,’ a situation in which, to borrow an elegant phrase from Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph, ‘the mask becomes the face.’ As Islamist actors have assumed new roles and responsibilities, it can be theorized that they have developed new competencies and skills and adapted their behavior to the norms and institutions of which they are a part.” –Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement (Princeton University Press, 2013): 11-12.

This in one reason why, for instance, it was absolute folly to deny Hamas a realistic chance to govern in Gaza after its (democratic) electoral success, and it is sheer madness to repress the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, particularly given its earlier historic avowal of violence and more recent willingness to abide by the democratic rules of the game (such as they were or are in Egypt).

* See, for example, Omar Ashour, The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming armed Islamist movements (Routledge, 2009).

Post Card From the Fringe: Right-Wing Dissidents Against Pope Francis

The Catholic Church at this moment in history is faced with a rising chorus of right-wing dissent.  This movement poses a threat to Pope Francis's reforms, but the threat should not be overblown.  The self-proclaimed leader of the resistance movement has become Cardinal Raymond Burke.  To understand both the nature of the threat, and its limits, a closer look at Cardinal Burke is warranted.

Born in 1948 in small-town Wisconsin, Burke is a man of obvious intelligence.  Up to now, he has enjoyed a meteoric rise through the Church's hierarchy.  He was made bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1994, at the youthful age of forty-six and eight years later was promoted to Archbishop of St. Louis.  And in 2008, he was named Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, essentially the Chief Justice of the most important of the Vatican courts.

Burke built his career on highly public confrontations.  In 2004, he declared that he would not give Holy Communion to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.  Four years later, he called on St. Louis University, a Jesuit college, to dismiss its basketball coach, Rick Majerus, for endorsing Hillary Clinton and announcing that he was "personally pro-choice."  (The college refused to follow Burke's advice).  And in 2009, he attacked Catholics who voted for Barack Obama.  No Catholic, he said, who knew of the President's positions on the family or on same-sex marriage "could have voted for him with a clear conscience."

And if in public Burke climbed the ladder of ecclesial success through increasingly hysterical attacks not just on politicians but on ordinary Catholics who did not share his political priorities, away from the limelight he was busy helping to construct a dense network of "traditionalists."

The traditionalist movement is not widely known.  It is centered around devotion to the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass and a restoration of the elaborate liturgical rituals of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.  During his time in La Crosse, Burke's most direct contribution to this movement was to found a traditionalist men's religious order, the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem.

The Order is entirely pre-Vatican II.  Now headquartered in West Virginia, the Canons celebrate the old pre-Vatican II Latin Mass and follow the pre-Vatican liturgical calendar.  To take one small example:  Even though the rest of the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King in mid-November, Cardinal Burke's Order prefers to do it in late October, the way it was done before 1965.

Nor is this the only traditionalist movement Burke has supported.  In St. Louis, according to one priest, he brought in "hermits . . . or consecrated virgins" who were "just not psychologically equipped" for the lives they vowed to lead, but who shared Burke's hostility and suspicions about the larger world.

Almost from the beginning of Pope Francis's pontificate, Cardinal Burke has used his position as Prefect of the Signatura to issue ever more incendiary, if not openly insubordinate attacks on the Pope and the whole modern Church.  In July, 2013, he argued for a return to the old Latin liturgy, while denouncing contemporary liturgy as "strictly correlated with a lot of moral corruption."  In December, 2013, he attacked Pope Francis for advocating the wrong agenda:  "He thinks we're talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman."  "But we can never talk enough about that."

In that same interview, he attacked the Pope for a second reason, suggesting that it was constitutionally impossible for the Pope to reform the Roman Curia, a sixteenth-century bureaucratic invention:  "The service of the Roman Curia is part of the very nature of the Church, and so that has to be respected."  In March, 2014, he denounced the Pope for wishing to simply the annulment process.  The Pope, he cautioned, was falling prey to "false mercy."

This crescendo of insubordination peaked at the Synod on the Family this past October.  Making himself the public "face of the opposition to Pope Francis's reformist agenda," Cardinal Burke assailed the Pope's leadership as "like a ship without a rudder." One is legitimately entitled to ask:  Just how loyal is Cardinal Burke to the Church of the last fifty years?

Pope Francis responded in the only way he could, by dismissing Burke from his position as Prefect.  This was absolutely the correct decision, even though it was met with the predictable screams of discontent from right-wing websites like Rorate Caeli.  On November 12, 2014, Rorate Caeli gave prominent place to an essay by the former Italian academic Roberto de Mattei. Five years ago, de Mattei became the center of controversy in Italy when he helped to obtain governmental funding for the publication of a book that denounced the theory of evolution.  It was a flawed project that even drew the condemnation of Pope Benedict's Vatican.

This same de Mattei was now leading the charge for Cardinal Burke.  The Pope, de Mattei alleged in histrionic language, has severed Burke's head like John the Baptist and served it on a platter to reform-minded cardinals.  The implication is clear:  Burke is the martyred prophet, the Pope is King Herod, and the reformers collectively are Salome.  Nor is de Mattei alone.  The right-wing American Catholic writer James Schall speculated just the other day about the best ways to deal with a heretical pope.

The circle gathered around Burke is a fringe movement.  They are dissidents in the truest sense of that word.  Cardinal Burke blames the modern liturgy for "moral corruption?"  Really.  Such allegations are best treated as a kind of bad joke.  He has waged an eighteenth-month long campaign of vilification directed at the sitting Pope.  It is unthinkable that a Cardinal should attempt to sow such discord in the Church.

In a misguided column in late October, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat warned Pope Francis against "reassign[ing] potential critics in the hierarchy."  This was clearly a veiled reference to Burke's impending dismissal from the Signatura.  Douthat's concern was that the Pope might thereby prompt a schism.

A schism is not going to happen.  Raymond Burke and his tiny band of followers are not about to march into that wilderness.  What is happening, however, is that Pope Francis is not indulging the traditionalists in the way Pope Benedict once did.  The Pope knows well how few the traditionalists are in numbers and how self-referential is their focus.  There are not many Catholics who are moved to tears at the sight of Renaissance vestments; or who long for a return to liturgies in a foreign tongue; or who wish to repudiate fifty years of development since Vatican II.  Not many Catholic women want to return to the days of wearing scarves or head coverings at Mass.  I can appreciate nostalgia within limits, but the Burkean project is nostalgia for a golden age, a romanticized past that never was and that cannot be recreated now.

Pope Francis, in contrast, wishes to have a Catholic Church that looks more like Jesus's earthly ministry.  He wants the Church to reach out to the poor and the marginalized, a Church that shows love and solidarity with those whom society despises or discards.  Pope Francis knows that Jesus did not retreat from the world behind a cloud of incense and lace, but engaged with it, in all its messiness.

This is the trumpet sound that Catholics should follow.  For in the end, Burke's way is a dead end, a retreat into a clericalized grandeur, Catholicism transformed into grand opera, perhaps, or a museum exhibit.  It is, in the end, spectacle, not a living faith.

Cross-posted: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/cardinal-raymond-burke_b_6154122.html

Did the Last Election Endorse Conservative Ideas?

Did the last election endorse conservative ideas? James Drader thinks so, and although he is a mere County Republican leader in my area, he echoes a sentiment shared by Republican politicians across the country. It is odd that they think so. After all, Peggy Noonan a couple of weeks before the election criticized the Republicans for telling us what they were against, but projected no vision and had given the electorate no clue as to what they were for. Ironically, in her column she herself offered no suggestions as to the vision or programs the Republicans might recommend. And, of course, she was right. The Republicans made Barack Obama the issue in the 2014 election. And the Democrats ran away from him as well. Were there some conservative arguments made against him? Of course, but it is fantasy to suppose that the last election endorsed a conservative agenda. Despite the results of the election, Congressional Representatives, like the Mafia, are less popular than the President.

On the other hand, it may be a good thing for Democrats and not bad for the country that conservatives feel empowered. Reports of their plans indicate that they hope to cut back on environmental regulation, Wall Street oversight, and otherwise plan to advance the interests of businesses that have supported them. The Supreme Court said in Citizens United that it is an important part of democracy for Representatives to be responsive to their contributors. This, of course, is nonsense. Corruption and bribery are not democracy; they are corruption and bribery.  And if the Republicans push the agenda of their wealthy contributors (which they will), they will be seen as corrupt (they already are). Fortunately, the Republicans cannot pass legislation that would overcome a veto, so their ability to help their contributors will be limited.

Alternatively, the Republican have suggested that if the President moves ahead on immigration without their participation, they will not play nice (as if they otherwise would). If the Republicans opt for gridlock when they control both Houses, they will have no record to run on, and in the next election with a broader electorate and a different map, they could have an unpleasant night.

Of course, they will try to run against Obama once more. George Will already has written a column suggesting that Hilary Clinton is really the same as four more years of Obama. But I think the opposition to Obama has been more about his personal qualities and his failures as a politician than it has been about issues. Hilary Clinton, of course, has qualities that are not universally endearing. But the electorate is not so stupid as to think that Hilary is Barack. And, by the way, the last time I looked Hilary Clinton lead all likely Republican candidates by a comfortable margin.   

The 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Immediately following is material from a post by the folks at the National Security Archive at George Washington University on the proximate cause (used here in its non-legal sense) of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a concrete symbol of the breakdown of Communist Party-State regimes that first began in Poland and Hungary in 1989, quickly followed by the demise of similar governments in the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. For understanding the proverbial big picture, in other words, the historical and political causes of—and thus the sound reasons that account for—the end of the East-Central European Party-State regimes, we need to examine Mikhail Gorbachev’s implementation “from above” (in the first instance) of perestroika (‘restructuring’) and glasnost (public openness or ‘publicity’) in the former Soviet Union, as well as the vigorous underground political activity (e.g., the vast underground publishing networks and self-education societies in Poland) and more conventional political resistance (e.g., Charter 77) that lead eventually to the region’s remarkable “velvet,” “self-limiting,” and “looking-glass” nonviolent political revolutions (see the list of ‘recommended reading’ at the end of the post). See too these posts from the archives (cross-posted at Ratio Juris): A Revolutionary Spiritual Praxis; Existentialism, Phenomenology, and Intellectual Responsibility: The Playwright & The Philosopher; Socio-Political Conflict Resolution & Nonviolence: A Select Bibliography and Historical Exemplum; and Václav Havel & The Existential Revolution.

“The iconic fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago today shocked international leaders from Washington to Moscow, London to Warsaw, as East German crowds took advantage of Communist Party fumbles to break down the Cold War’s most symbolic barrier, according to formerly secret documents from Soviet, German, U.S., Czechoslovak and Hungarian files posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

The historic events of the night of November 9, 1989 came about from accident and contingency, rather than conspiracy or strategy, according to the documents. Crowds of East Berliners, already conditioned by months of refugee flights to the West and weeks of peaceful mass protests in cities like Leipzig, seized on media reports of immediate changes in travel restrictions—based on a bumbled briefing by a Politburo member, Gunter Schabowski—and inundated the Wall’s checkpoints demanding passage. Television coverage of the first crossing that yielded to the self-fulfilling media prophecy then created a multiplier effect and more crowds came, ultimately to dance on the Wall.

The documents show that the actual collapse of the Wall began with Hungarian Communist reformers who proposed in early 1989 to open their borders to the West, while seeking particularly West German foreign investment to solve Hungary's economic crisis. Hungarian Communist leaders checked in with Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in March 1989, letting him know they planned to take down the barbed wire; and Gorbachev—true to his ‘common European home’ rhetoric—responded only that ’we have a strict regime on our borders, but we are also becoming more open.’ The Hungarian decision sparked a stream and then a flood of East German refugees.

Gorbachev himself unintentionally gave a signal that the Wall could fall in his press conference on June 15, 1989 after a successful visit to West Germany, where in response to a question about the Wall, he said that ‘nothing [was] permanent under the Moon’ and connected German rapprochement to the building of the common European home. In fact, his conversations with Kohl and other members of the West German government created a real breakthrough in Soviet-FRG relations, which would stand Kohl in good stead in the difficult reunification talks during the next year. Gorbachev especially reinforced the theme of European unity in his speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg where he presented his vision of the common European home on July 7, 1989. After speaking about an essentially united Europe based on universal human values, it would be hard to argue in favor of its continued division.

By August 1989, the Hungarian-initiated refugee crisis had become so acute that the West German embassy in Budapest had to shut down, unable to handle the hundreds of East Germans camped out there for visas. On August 19, Hungarian reformers even hosted a ‘Pan-European picnic’ near the Austrian border, after which some 300 East Germans high-tailed across the former Iron Curtain. The subsequent negotiations on August 25, 1989 between Hungarian Communist leaders with West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher show the Hungarian calculation that only the deutschmark could save them, and by mid-September the Hungarians lifted all East-West controls.

Other world leaders were not at all eager for the Wall to fall, notably the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who told Gorbachev on September 23 to ignore those NATO communiqués about German unification, that even her buddy, U.S. president George H. W. Bush opposed that kind of change (she would be wrong, when the time came. As Gorbachev later commented to his Politburo on November 3, the West did not want German unification, but it wanted to prevent it ‘with our hands, to push us against the FRG’ so as to head off any future Soviet-German cooperation — but Gorbachev believed European integration was the ultimate solution to Soviet economic problems.” [….]

Recommended Reading:

• Ash, Timothy Garton. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague. New York: Vintage, 3rd ed., 1999.
• Ash, Timothy Garton. The Polish Revolution: Solidarity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 3rd ed., 2002 (Penguin Books, 1999).
• Bahro, Rudolf (David Fernbach, tr.) The Alternative in Eastern Europe. London: NLB, 1978.
• Bahro, Rudolf. From Red to Green: Interviews with New Left Review. London: Verso Editions and NLB, 1984.
• Bernard, Michael H. The Origins of Democratization in Poland. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
• Elster, Jon, ed. The Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
• Elster, Jon, Claus Offfe, and Ulrich K. Preuss (with Frank Boenker, Ulrike Goetting, and Friedbert W. Rueb) Institutional Design in Post-communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Havel, Václav (Jan Vladislav, ed.) Living in Truth. London: Faber and Faber, 1987.
• Havel, Václav (Paul Wilson, ed.) Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990.  New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
• Havel, Václav (Paul Wilson, tr.)  Letters to Olga: June 1979—September 1982. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
• Havel, Václav, et al. (John Keane, ed.) The Power of the Powerless. London: Hutchinson, 1985.
• Hockenos, Paul. “’Zero Hour:’ The First Days of New Berlin,” Boston Review, November 04, 2014.
• Konrad, George (Richard E. Allen, tr.). Antipolitics: An Essay. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
• Lipski, Jan Jósef (Olga Amsterdamska and Gene M. Moore, tr.) KOR: Workers’ Defense Committee in Poland, 1976-1981. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.
• Michnik, Adam (Maya Latynski, tr.) Letters from Prison and Other Essays. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.
• Michnik, Adam (David Ost, tr. and ed.) The Church and the Left. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Ost, David. Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990.
• Raina, Peter. Political Opposition in Poland: 1954-1977. London: Poets and Painters Press, 1977.
• Sarotte, Mary Elise. The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
• Staniszkis, Jadwiga. Poland’s Self-Limiting Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Thomas, Daniel C. The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Touraine, Alain, et al. (David Denby, tr.) Solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Williams, Kieran. “Civil Resistance in Czechoslovakia: From Soviet Invasion to ‘Velvet Revolution,’ 1968-89,” in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash, eds. Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Nonviolent Action from Gandhi to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 

Update: At Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram: ’It doesn’t seem to occur to our official voices of commemoration that there are parallels today with the thousands who die trying to escape tyranny, war or poverty and who drown in the Mediterranean, perish from thirst in the Arizona desert, or with those who the Australian government turns back at sea or interns offshore. Nor do such barriers as the “separation wall” in Palestine seem to evoke such horror in those voices as the Berlin Wall did then. These newer barriers are treated as necessary and normal and those deaths as self-inflicted by people naive enough to believe that a better life awaits in prosperous liberal democracies. Not that free movement is the only thing where official attitudes have changed.’ Corey Robins continues this theme with his post, Thoughts on Migration, Immigration, and Exile on the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Thanks to Carmi Lecker for his Facebook post on the recently released documents made available at George Washington University’s National Security Archive on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980)

As we are reminded by the Zinn Education Project, today is the birthday of Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980), co-founder, with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker Movement and newspaper. Here is a short list of titles, most of which are about Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker movement and newspaper. The FBI still includes the movement on its list of “domestic advocacy groups” that it believes necessary to keep tabs on. I’ve also added a list of “further reading” on Christian nonviolence in both the radical Catholic and Protestant justice and peace traditions.

The Catholic Worker Movement:

• Coles, Robert. A Spectacle Unto the World: The Catholic Worker Movement. New York: Viking, 1973.
• Coles, Robert. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
• Cornell, Thomas C. and James H. Forest, eds. A Penny a Copy: Readings from the Catholic Worker. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
• Coy, Patrick, ed. A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988.
• Ellis, Marc. A Year at the Catholic Worker. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.
• Ellis, Marc. Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century. New York: Paulist Press, 1981.
• Ellsberg, Robert, ed. By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
• Ellsberg, Robert, ed. The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. New York: Image Books, 2008.
• Ellsberg, Robert, ed. All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day. New York: Image Books, 2010.
• Forest, Jim. All Is Grace: A Biography of Dorothy Day. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2011.
• Piehl, Mel. Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker Movement and the Origins of Catholic Radicalism in America. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982.
• Roberts, Nancy L. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984.

Further Reading:

• Akers, Keith. The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity. New York: Lantern Books, 2000.
• Barbé, Dominique. Grace and Power: Base Communities and Nonviolence in Brazil. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
• Barbé, Dominique. A Theology of Conflict and Other Writings on Nonviolence. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989.
• Bardacke, Frank. Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. London: Verso, 2012.
• Berrigan, Daniel. The Steadfastness of the Saints: A Journey of Peace and War in Central and North America. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.
• Berryman, Phillip. Liberation Theology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.
• Berryman, Phillip. Our Unfinished Business: The U.S. Catholics Bishops’ Letters on Peace and the Economy. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.
• Boff, Leonardo. St. Francis: A Model for Human Liberation. New York: Crossroad, 1984.
• Dalton, Frederick John. The Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
• Day, Mark. Forty Acres: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers. New York: Praegar, 1971.
• Dombrowski, Daniel. Christian Pacifism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991. 
• Douglass, James W. The Nonviolent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
• Douglass, James W. Resistance and Contemplation: The Way of Liberation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972.
• Douglass, James W. Lightening East to West: Jesus, Gandhi and the Nuclear Age. New York: Crossroad, 1983.
• Garcia, Matt. From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012.
• Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: William Morrow, 1986.
• Gray, Francine du Plessix. Divine Disobedience: Profiles in Catholic Radicalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.
• Hauerwas, Stanley. Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2004.
• Levy, Jacques. Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: W.W. Norton, 1975.
• Long, Michael G., ed. Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011.
• Matthiessen, Peter. Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution. New York: Random House, 1970.
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• Musto, Ronald G. The Catholic Peace Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986.
• Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Orosco, José-Antonio. Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.
• O’Rourke, William. The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2nd ed., 2012.
• Pawel, Miriam. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2014.
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Race, Political Ads, the Wall Street Journal, and the 2014 Elections

For many decades, the Republican Party has campaigned with thinly disguised racial appeals. Willie Horton is the poster child for the kind of appeals that have typified the approach taken by Republicans. They have tried to frighten voters with images of black criminals; they have suggested that the poor are lazy while stereotyping the poor as black. They have opposed affirmative action and have gone a long way to turn the Fourteenth Amendment upside down to constitutionalize their opposition. They have passed measures designed to undercut the right of blacks (and others) to vote.

I would not claim that opposing President Obama and successfully making him the centerpiece of many Congessional elections was per se a racial appeal to the voters. After all, he is still the President, and most of the opposition to him has nothing to do with his race. But race has something to do with the the ferocity of the opposition among Republicans and that ferocity has energized a part of the base. 

Given this, it is amusing to read in the Wall Street Journal an editorial complaining that the Democrats have used race for political purposes. What sins have the Democrats committed according to the Journal? It objects (but only mildly) to the fact that the Democratic National Committee placed ads in black newspapers indicating that the Republican Party has tried to make President Obama fail and the citizens should vote so that the Republicans do not succeed. It has stronger objections in the Georgia election to ads in black media mentioning the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson whose police force is 97% white in a city with a majority black population.  The Democrats suggested that they are more serious about diversity than the Republicans. Imagine that. The Journal apparently can’t figure out what Ferguson has to do with Georgia. How dare the Democrats mention Ferguson in a state so far away. Yet the Journal in its news pages has stated the obvious: Ferguson has become “a national symbol of racial tensions.”

The Journal is offended by ads in the black community that highlight efforts to impeach the President, ads that underscore the racism behind the insistence on Obama producing a birth certificate, and the Journal is even offended by ads claiming that Mitch McConnell had been leading an effort to take away voting rights. Of course, these ads were not drily presented, but they were very well within the limits of political discourse. I get the impression that the Journal really was offended by the fact that the Democratic Party was calling attention to the racist appeals of the Republicans.

The Journal implies that it is racist for the Democrats to play these ads in black media without broader dissemination. The Democrats were not placing those ads more generally precisely because the white population in the aggregate cares substantially less about these issues. Focused ads tailored to the interest of specific parts of the electorate are hardly new in America politics. Thinks about the ads of Democrats and Republicans directed toward women in this election. The reality is that the black voters have particular interests not shared (or not as acutely shared) in the aggregate by the white population. Recognizing this is not racism (any more than the ads directed toward women are sexist for that reason); and, if it is, there is nothing wrong with it.

The Journal acknowledges this difference. It understands that black voters overwhelmingly vote for Democrats and not for Republicans. They suggest that Republicans should try harder. Really? The problem is not that the Republicans do not try. They try. The problem is that if the Republicans want to attract black voters they will have to change the meaning of what it means to be a Republican. They will have to appeal to a base of more than old white folks in 2016 when the full electorate shows up to the polls in 2016 with a different map.