Current Affairs: December 2005 Archives

I have been politically unaffiliated  for a long time. It isn't that I don't believe in combining my efforts with others, but my political thinking means that I am critical of the Democratic Party, and I find most left organizations to be irrelevant to the current struggles.  Right now, the Democratic political organization is in disarray in state after state, and the congressional leadership has little relationship to the grass roots of the party.  But I came across the Progressive Democrats on the web, and it looks a good effort, with good leadership and a rational strategy.

The Progressive Democrats say this about themselves: "We believe that the greatest need of our nation is to redirect the resources of our government from destruction to creation, from war to peace, from military spending to social spending, from sickness to health, from selfish desires to universal needs. The future of humanity and our planet are at stake.

The question is, "What is the most effective strategy for wresting control of the government of the United States of America from the moneyed interests, the corporations, and the military industrial complex that now effectively control it?"

The answer is NOT leaving the country.
The answer is NOT the Republican Party.
And the answer is NOT the Democratic Party as it is now organized and controlled.
The answer is PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS of AMERICA.

Check them out.

The Constitution of the United States begins with the words "We the people of the United States in order to create a more perfect union.  This is not a document for lawyers and for those who presume to govern us, the people form this union, and the politicians are accountable to the people and to the laws.  This fundamental republican understanding is foundational to maintaining our democracy.  In our time democracy is endanger, not from the tiny networks of Islamic extremists, but rather as a result of a corrosion of values.  For the people of the United States to maintain their democracy the people must hold those they elect accountable to the laws.  This is especially necessary in face of the growing lawlessness of the executive  branch.

The Imperial Presidency was created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Presidential powers have been expanded by every administration since then, to the determent of democratic freedoms and the checks and balances envisioned by the founders of the federal republic.  But the practice of the late twentieth century Presidents has been to break the law covertly, cover up and maintain deniability.  Bush is openly asserting that he is above the law.

G. Pascal Zachary writes:  "The need for a balance between executive action and democratic accountability was crucial to the creators of the American republic in the late 18th century. Until then, the democratic movements in Europe had succeeded only in subjecting monarchs to certain limits, such as "the power of the purse" in England. In the U.S., the president would be circumscribed by law. This was the great invention of American political practice, even more so than the idea of federalism, which enabled different states of the union to manage their affairs differently.

Because rule of law is fundamental to the moral basis of the presidency, presidents must even uphold laws they don't agree with. Indeed, the willingness of presidents to do so is their defining trait. In this regard, presidents are unlike other citizens. They do not have the option to perform acts of civil disobedience. They cannot argue, in essence, that their conscience does not allow them to abide by the law."

Why then is President Bush insisting on his duty, and even his right, to disregard the laws covering domestic spying, laws that demand the government seek a judge's authority before spying on Americans on American soil?

Zachary argues this is not the work of a bungler, rather his lawlessness results from a calculated assault on the Constitution and American republican tradition.

The Constitution reads. Article I; Section 8. The Congress shall have power. . .

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

The President is not given those powers. He commands the armed forces under the laws established by Congress

Tim Harper writes: "Vice-President Dick Cheney has upped the ante in a burgeoning scandal over the use of unauthorized wiretaps in the United States, touting the Bush administration's success in restoring presidential powers that were stripped during the Richard Nixon era.

Cheney said the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War wrongly eroded the executive power of the White House, something he and U.S. President George W. Bush have remedied during their war on terror.

The U.S. vice-president spoke on a day when some moderate Republicans joined Democratic calls for a congressional inquiry into whether Bush broke the law by authorizing wiretaps without court permission.
At least two Democrats suggested Bush could be impeached for his alleged crimes and the White House scrambled late in the day to try to counter the perception that Bush had deliberately misled the nation when he spoke about wiretaps in April 2004.

"Watergate and a lot of things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the '70s served, I think, to erode the authority ... the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," Cheney told reporters aboard the Air Force Two aircraft after a visit to Pakistan.

But the vice-president said he thought the Bush administration has been able to restore some of "the legitimate authority of the presidency."

He also said he believes that the U.S. War Powers Act, which gives the U.S. Congress the power to be fully engaged in a president's decision to go to war is unconstitutional.

"I am one of those who believe that was an infringement on the authority of the president," he said."

The constitution gives the President no authority except the authority provided by law. Congress needs to investigate the executive branch to see if the President and Vice President are faithfully executing the laws of the United States.

On December 23rd Senator Tom Daschle is quoted in the Washington Post:

"As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance."

Edmund Hamilton Sears, Unitarian minister and anti war activist helped define the meaning of the Christmas holiday with his carol "It came upon a Midnight Clear." The last verse has shaped generations of religious liberals understanding: "for lo! the days are hastening on by prophets long foretold, when the ever circling years comes round the age of gold: when peace shall over all the earth its ancient spendors fling, and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing."

Sears wrote his carol as an anti war song. The United States had invaded Mexico as part of a premeditated plan to seize resources and extend the system of slavery. The United States had been engaged in a war of genocide against the indigenous peoples of this land, and its racist contempt for the people of Mexico was a logical extension of the exclusive covenant upon which the nation had been founded. Sears wrote his carol to protest the violence and imperial arrogance of his government. Sears was a Unitarian, and a real patriot.

This carol was his Christmas gift to his faith community and to other real patriots of his time. (Abraham Lincoln resigned from the Illinois legislature to protest the vote to call up the militia for the invasion of Mexico. Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay his taxes to support this war. Sears had lost his pulpit due to the vicious criticism from jingoists within the Lancaster, Massachusetts congregation, but had been welcomed by the Wayland, Massachusetts congregation

My anti war commitment began in Unitarian Sunday School, and I have no problem asserting that while Unitarian Universalism may not be a pacifist church, we are a faith community that has a long, and consistent tradition of opposition to unjust war. Our present stance of opposition to the racist and murderous war on the Iraqi people is not because we have strayed from religion into politics as some who don't know our history would assert, on the contrary we are continuing a long tradition.

How do we discern a just war, from an unjust war? First, we need to understand that the political elite who runs our government has a long history of lying, rationalizing, and spinning their policies. What do I mean by long? I would go back to well before Independence was declared. My Cherokee ancestors had experience with the lies.

But what about now? How do we put an end to the "two thousand years of wrong" [Sears was referencing the betrayal of Jesus teaching by his followers.]

Let me suggest one resource that exposes the lies and spin of the modern war making elite. War Made Easy by Normon Solomon analyzes the deceptions of the government and media to mobilize the people of this nation into war after war.

Once upon a time the idea of the surveillance state seemed like science fiction, an exaggerated idea that one read in scary novels about the future.

Steve Connor writes: "Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyze any journey a driver has made over several years.

The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motor ways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-stations."

Well they tell us driving is a privilege not a right, so how can one have a right to privacy when accessing the state's roads. Do away with that quaint notion that the state is a republic, which if I remember my Latin meant "the people's thing." Read the full article.

George Bush is not a Texan. Jim Hightower is a Texan, and he tells it like it is. Here he exposes the lie that Americans are conservative: Look at how the majority feels about some of the issues that you'd think would be gospel to a real Democratic party:

65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.
86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of selfdescribed "social conservatives").
60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.
66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.
77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.
87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.
69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."
69 percent believe America is on the wrong track, with only 26 percent saying it's headed in the right direction.
Americans might not call themselves progressive -- but there they are. On the populist, pocketbook issues that are rooted in our nation's core values of fairness and justice, there's a progressive super-majority. It flourishes in red states as well as blue, cutting through the establishment's false dichotomy of liberal/ conservative.

Read a real Texan.

One of my most memorable courses in college was the Bible as Literature. I found my knowledge of the Bible to be a foundation of my liberal education long before I choose to return to theological studies. I believe teaching the Bible as Literature and History would help to advance a culture of intelligent discussion about religious questions. Discussions about religious questions must advance beyond sectarianism and dogmatism, phenomena which are nurtured by the present policy of having no discussion about religion in the public arena. As I see it if we continue to pursue the present lets pretend to be secularists policy we will see our nation increasingly divided by sectarianism. We could move toward creating a common culture if we taught religion as part of the liberal arts.

Today in the New York Times Bruce Feiler writes that public schools should Teach, Don't Preach, the Bible: YESTERDAY'S ruling by a federal judge that "intelligent design" cannot be taught in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district has the potential to put the teaching of the Bible back where it belongs in our schools: not in the science laboratory, but in its proper historical and literary context. An elective, nonsectarian high school Bible class would allow students to explore one of the most influential books of all time and would do so in a manner that clearly falls within Supreme Court rulings.

For you who may not be on the Spiritual Progressives email list, I post this letter.


Rabbi Michael Lerner writes: Some leaders of the Christian Right have decided to make an issue of the secularization of Christmas. Objecting to the move by Macy's and some other retailers to wish their shoppers "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" instead of the traditional Merry Christmas, they have begun to accuse secularists in general, and, on some of the right-wing talk shows, Jews in particular, of undermining Christmas.

Kari Lydersen writes: Last spring, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) won an unprecedented victory when their boycott and protests convinced Taco Bell and parent company, Yum Brands, to ensure companies from which it buys tomatoes will pay their field hands one cent more per pound and adhere to a relatively progressive workers' rights code. This fall, the CIW launched a campaign demanding McDonald's sign a comparable agreement, hoping that McDonald's, even more so than Taco Bell, could help raise wages and improve working conditions across the board.

Many Florida Unitarian Universalists had followed the struggles of the Immokalee Workers, and were elated with the agreement with Taco Bell.  But the tactics of MacDonald's is cause of great concern.

Read Kari Lydersen's article to appreciate this new tactic of corporations in their public relations war to appear to be "good citizens" while they seek to degrade the people who harvest the tomatoes, and other crops that make their business possible.

The  present occupant of the Oval Office has committed impeachable offenses, and moral lapses.  He has shown himself to be incompetent as a chief executive.  He is clueless as a commander in chief.  But as an long time teacher I find this unforgivable, he misquoted a hymn!  He distorted the clear intent of the text he was quoting, giving the impression that the hymn gave authority for his rationalizations.

Thanks to Tom Degan for coming to the defense of I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day

Tom writes:  The other night, as George W. Bush concluded his address from the oval office, he ended it by quoting the old civil war era Christmas carol, I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day:

The wrong will fail
And right prevail
With peace on earth
Good will toward men....

Yeah, beautiful. Leave it to these guys to take something as beautiful as that tune out of context. He wouldn't have dared to quote that song in its entirety. Had he done that he would have had to recite these timely words:

And in despair I bowed my head,
"There is no peace on earth", I said
For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth
Good will towards men.

The source is a comment in a much longer article detailing Bush's Impeachable offense of wiretapping.

Does one need to be a decorated veteran to criticize the war?

Congressman John Murtha spoke out saying "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME." He was attacked as unpatriotic by the usual suspects, but the slime slinging didn't stick. President Bush was forced to distance himself from the attacks that had been launced from the White House, the Vice President, and the House Speaker. Bush said "a good man who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States congressman. And I know the decision to call for immediate withdrawal of our troops by Congressman Murtha was done in a careful and thoughtful way. . . . I disagree with his position."

But J. Douglas Allen-Taylor worries about what this means for the peace movement, arguing that it creates a dangerous precedent for what kind of person can take the lead in criticizing the war policies of the administration: "It concedes that the only moral voice who can oppose a war is someone who supported and/or participated in a past war. The flaw in the argument is that the Bush Administration and much of the national Republican leadership couldn't care less about distinguished past service; their strategy is to kneecap the opposition, using whatever methods, fair or foul, that come to mind."

It is throughful article and there are many comments, many of whom disagree.