Wednesday, December 21, 2011 American Values in the Christmas Season: "Amahl and the Night Visitors"
The second in a series of pieces on imaginative works that have become deeply woven into how Christmas is celebrated in American culture. These pieces connect with Christmas, and they connect with the moral heart of America. And moreover, the issues they raise are central to the crisis that we Americans now face in the political realm, and that are at the heart of my campaign for Congress.
Monday, December 19, 2011 American Values and the Christmas Season: Intro & "A Christmas Carol"
The holiday of Christmas has become deeply woven into American culture, expressing both the nature of our country and its ideals. In this series, I will be discussing four of the main imaginative works that Americans have made into important parts of the Christmas season in America. I'll explore here how these stories connect both with Christmas and with the political crisis we now face, and with my run for Congress.
Friday, November 18, 2011 Goodlatte's Balanced Budget Amendment: A Bad Idea Offered in Bad Faith (2 comments)
This is the week that Congress is considering a balanced budget amendment, which is the pet idea of my presumed opponent in next fall's race for the congressional seat from Virginia's 6th District. It is a bad idea offered in bad faith. Here's why.
Friday, September 16, 2011 The Spike in Poverty Tests America's Spirit (12 comments)
This week we learn that the poverty rate in America has gone over 15 percent. It's not been this high for almost two decades. The numbers in Virginia are not as bad, but they're plenty bad enough and getting worse.
Sunday, September 11, 2011 9/11 Ten Years Later (8 comments)
For many people, 9/11 "changed everything." They discovered that the world was a lot more dangerous place than they'd believed.
It didn't change everything for me.
Monday, April 25, 2011 "Let's Talk About THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!" (34 comments)
Here is a fuller explication of my message for my two-track campaign, which is an effort to change the present destructive political dynamic in the country. Here's why I believe the "Elephant in the Room" image captures the heart of our national crisis, and why I think TALKING about it --exposing the destructive force on the right for what it is-- can be the key to turning things around.
Thursday, April 21, 2011 I Am Running for Congress (11 comments)
I am running for Congress with the slogan, "Let's Talk About THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!"
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 Interpreting the Beck Card in the Republican Deck
Beck is one instrument in the overall Right-wing band. He brings in the crazy, primitive fears to prime the audience for the more sane fear-mongering propagandists. He primes people for fear and hate the way a Halloween teller of frightful tales makes people afraid of shadows, afraid to look under their beds.
Monday, November 15, 2010 * A Constitutional Argument Against the Filibuster as Used by the Republicans (14 comments)
A Senate rule ought not be allowed to subvert the clear intent of the Constitution-- in this case, the intent that a majority should be able to pass legislation in the Senate. When the Republicans use the filibuster not, as intended, for special circumstances but rather across the board, they render the filibuster unconstitutional.
Sunday, November 14, 2010 Revenge on the Wall Street Bull
This begins with an image, something witnessed by my brother while being a tourist last week on Wall Street. Then there are some comments inspired in me by my brother's write-up of that vignette. The topic is Americans' righteous anger at the forces symbolized by that famous sculpture of the Wall Street bull, forces that drove us into the ditch with their greed and irresponsibility.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 Woe to the Nation Whose Destiny is Shaped by Those with an Insatiable Lust for Wealth and Power: Part II (2 comments)
In this second installment: how the "few" who become dominant (when a system is ruled by the winners in a power struggle) tend to represent among the worst of human possibilities. The Koch brothers --with their insatiable lust for wealth and power-- are a perfect illustration of that terrible fact.
Thursday, October 14, 2010 What Liberalism Needs (19 comments)
Liberalism was originally built upon a deep vision of the good in human life. American liberalism needs to regain the capacity to articulate that vision of the good --one that resonates and inspires-- and to tie that vision together with its political program.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 The Plight of the Hummingbird (1 comments)
Not a speck of politics in this piece, folks. It's just a little story about a hummingbird, and me.
Friday, October 1, 2010 The "Enthusiasm Gap" Reflects a Spiritual Reality (22 comments)
"Enthusiasm" means, at its root, "possessed by a god." Today's "conservatives" are plugged into a spiritual power. It is the power of darkness, or evil, but it is a spiritual power nonetheless. Today's liberal leadership, by contrast, has lost contact with the spiritual level. They therefore cannot "in-spire" their followers. We are compelled therefore to find our enthusiasm in the repudiation of evil.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 * Had Lincoln Not Been Shot, I Might Not Have Become a Blogger (2 comments)
Sometimes small things, like an assassin's bullet, can reverberate powerfully through major dimensions of subsequent history. Had Lincoln survived to help "bind up the nation's wounds," perhaps that dark force that has blighted our times would never have been able to achieve such power over this nation.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 Mel Gibson's Rant as Profound Clue (39 comments)
In two steps, I argue that the Mel Gibson's recently revealed ugly rant is a most telling clue to a big earlier controversy in America's culture/political war, and beyond that a glimpse into the heart of darkness in a major component of America's political landscape.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 The Mystery of Obama's Relationship with Power (62 comments)
Anyone who gets to be president can be assumed to have a strong desire for power. Yet as soon as Obama achieved power, he began to give it away. He gave it to his allies, he gave it to his enemies, and he ceased to connect with his main source of power. What explains this strange pattern?
Monday, May 24, 2010 Constructive Criticism for Keith Olbermann, A Hero of Mine (12 comments)
I will always be grateful to Keith Olbermann for being the only voice in America at his level prominence to denounce the Bushite regime in the plain language we needed to hear. But I also think he could make some improvements in what he does on his show.
Monday, May 17, 2010 To Anti-Obamite Lefties: It Doesn't Matter If You're Right (125 comments)
Even if Obama is the moral bankrupt you think he is, it doesn't matter. In the America of today, this is inescapable: it is HIS victories that can move things in the right direction, and it is HIS defeats that allow the dark forces of the right wing to advance their destructive agenda.
Monday, May 10, 2010 Patriotism and Every Man for Himself: Conservatives' Inconsistency (4 comments)
If we're supposed to love our country and rally round the flag when it comes to external enemies, why should we not equally think of an "Us" in which we use the government to express our values about what kind of society we believe in?
Monday, April 26, 2010 How Goes the Battle Under Obama (15 comments)
I pay tribute to the growing list of Obama's political accomplishments. But besides the political war, there's the deeper war, which is a spiritual one against the forces of darkness that have arisen on the political right. Why does Obama remain reluctant to wage this most essential conflict? Two aspects of his character help answer it: 1) Obama is averse to conflict, and 2) he seems to lack the capacity for moral outrage.
Saturday, April 17, 2010 Illustrating the Costs of Obama's Failure to Confront the Right-Wing Lying (5 comments)
A couple of recent news reports --regarding public opinion and belief-- show the price being paid by the president, and his party, for not making the pernicious dishonesty of the disloyal opposition the main issue of our national discourse, as it so profoundly deserves to be. This reluctance to confront the dark forces has been Obama's most costly strategic error throughout his one-plus year in office.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 Is It Me, or Has the Spirit in America Been on Hold Lately (18 comments)
For more than two weeks, the spiritual battle that is America's most important business these years --the war between good and evil-- has been on hold, awaiting the next battle in the war: tomorrow's nationally televised "bi-partisan" meeting on health care. Let us hope that Obama has done a good job preparing a good trap for the Republicans.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 Fat Years and Lean: Keynsian Fiscal Policy Explained for Religious Conservatives (22 comments)
Most conservatives-- who reflexively think that government should just stay out of the economy-- reject Keynesian economics, with its use of fiscal policy to pull a prostrate economy out of the ditch. But, in my experience, they reject it without really understanding it. Here's a vivid way of explaining, drawing upon a Biblical image that at least religious conservatives might resonate with.
Thursday, January 7, 2010 A Religious Dimension to Environmentalism? Nothing Ridiculous About It (10 comments)
People speak dismissively about the spiritual aspect of environmentalism --"environmentalism is a religion" they say, as if the ridiculousness of the notion were patently obvious. A closer and more honest look shows that an environmentalist sense of the sacred, and its corresponding spiritual ethic for human conduct, far from being ridiculous are legitimate and important.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 What I'd Say to Obama (in 800 Words) (3 comments)
This piece appears in this morning's edition of THE BALTIMORE SUN. Dear President Obama: You were elected not to avoid the confrontation with the evil powers still ruling the right wing, but to fight that battle and win it.
Monday, December 14, 2009 Expose Joe Lieberman's Amoral Primitivity (4 comments)
Joe Lieberman is a Republican mole. He's a spy, a saboteur, a traitor. Out of primitive vengeful feelings, he's sacrificing the values he used to say he cared about. Possessed by vengance, to the point where he's aligned with the dark side in order to get it, and because destructive vengefulness is right at home under the Republican tent.
Monday, October 19, 2009 Maybe It's a Blessing: Facing Evil Till We Get It Right (5 comments)
I hate having to see this right-wing ugliness every day. But maybe it's an opportunity for America --especially liberal America-- to learn what it needs to know about what evil looks like and how it must be defeated.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Challenging the Conservatives: Let's Go Viral (4 comments)
It's time to move beyond just talking amongst ourselves about the darkness on the right and find constructive ways of challenging those of our fellow countrymen who have followed that dark and manifestly dishonest leadership of the Republicans and their media allies.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Slaves to Ideology? Challenge to the Conservatives on Health Care (1 comments)
When I was growing up a half century ago, my Dad taught me that Americans were not governed by ideology in their politics but by the question, "What works?" That's not true of conservatives in today's health care debate.
Thursday, September 24, 2009 Good Family Man: The Conservatives Can't Have It Both Ways (6 comments)
The right always claims that how good a man is in his family is a sign of how trustworthy he'd be with political party. So how can they make a monster out of Barack Obama?
Monday, September 21, 2009 Jerry Brown, Hero, Wields Law to Protect Public (7 comments)
As Attorney General of the state of California, Jerry Brown has launched a couple of welcome attacks on corporate malfeasance.
Monday, September 14, 2009 THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES After a Quarter Century: A Revision (3 comments)
In one area, because of new knowledge that's become available in the past 25 years, I would feel compelled to speak differently than I did when I wrote my theory of social evolution back in the 1970s and early 1980s. This has to do with the question of how violent or peaceful were the societies in which our species evolved, prior to civilization.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 The Conning of the Average White Southerner: A Venerable Tradition (10 comments)
With the health care scare tactics of the right, we see an old pattern re-enacted: the conning of the average white Southerner by their supposed allies at the top of their power structure.
Thursday, September 3, 2009 We're About to Learn Something Important about Obama (4 comments)
His usual M.O. worked for a while, but it has failed him lately. We're about to see whether he has the perceptiveness, the creativity, and the adaptiveness to come up with a new way of fighting his enemies, suited to the new realities.
Sunday, August 30, 2009 Will Teddy Speak One More Time from the Grave? (3 comments)
It's clear that Teddy Kennedy did some serious planning about how best to advance his political goals even after his death. Might there be one more statement from him, soon to be announced, composed to use this posthumous moment, when he looms most large, to help achieve "the cause of his life"?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 Fight Back, Mr. President (Fifth Piece) (3 comments)
Your enemies are coming at you with lies. You address their lies but you do not attack their lying. Re-Connecting with the Force that brought you to the presidency requires that you fight back against the dark forces trying to bring you down.
Thursday, August 27, 2009 About Changing the Law to Fill Kennedy's Seat Right Away
Here's a way to get the seat filled without its being the majority jamming down the throat of the minority a change in the rules in the middle of the game.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Fourth Piece: Are You Being Guided, Mr. President, by the Wrong Advisor? (10 comments)
Since Inauguration Day, President Obama has largely stopped tapping into that moral and spiritual Force that lifted him to the presidency. Is it just a coincidence that it is after winning his election that Obama brought on Rahm Emmanuel as his right hand man?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 How Obama Can Put the Force Behind Health-Care Reform
I've argued that Obama has dissipated his power by abandoning his pre-Inauguration approach to getting moral and spiritual forces behind him. Here I lay out how he can turn the health-care-reform struggle around by re-connecting with that Force in specific ways I describe.
Monday, August 24, 2009 2nd Piece: Re-Connect with the Force from Whence Came Your Power, Mr. President (2 comments)
Mr. President, the path you took in your campaign, by inspiring millions of Americans, brought a moral and spiritual force behind you that brought you to the presidency. But as president, you've taken a different path that's disconnected you from that Force. That's why you're on the defensive in a fight you should have dominated. But it's not too late to change paths and empower your presidency with the force that gained it.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 Never Trust Those Liars Again (3 comments)
This is another in a series of approaches to my right-wing radio audience in Virginia. Before we can have meaningful dialogue, "as if we might actually learn from each other," you've got to stop putting your trust in people who just make up lies to feed your fear and outrage.
Sunday, August 9, 2009 The "What a Planet!" Experience (7 comments)
Occasionally the world reveals itself to me as the amazing planet this place is. These experiences are among the most moving --and spiritual-- in my life. Here, I tell of a few of these "What a Planet!" moments, and I invite others to share any they have had.
Friday, August 7, 2009 The Spirit of the Christians? Another Possible Radio Show (13 comments)
What does it mean that the political force that most loudly declares itself to be Christian manifests a spirit that's so diametrically opposed to what the biblical movies in the 1950s taught me to regard as the spirit of Christianity? Another possible way in to constructively challenging my right-wing radio audience.
Monday, August 3, 2009 The Toxic Stench of Hateful Lies (14 comments)
Another in the series of pieces I venture in my effort to find the most constructive ways to engage and challenge the conservative audience for my radio shows in Virginia.
Thursday, July 30, 2009 What I Hope Will Happen with the Peace Beer at the White House Today (17 comments)
Obama should convey to Gates and Crowley: "The three of us can do something good for the nation today. We can help show that our racial divisions can be overcome by goodwill." They should work their way toward brotherhood over that beer, with repentance and forgiveness and good fellowship. ANd then they should go out and manifest the spirit of that movement, modeling for America the blessings of brotherhood over enmity.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Suffering in the Culture of the Shenandoah Valley (8 comments)
The audience of the radio show I've long been doing in the Shenandoah Valley expresses, when it discusses politics, what I presume to be its own cultural form of suffering. The signs of this suffering are the lack of a sense of positive possibilities, and the anger. But what is the source and nature of that underlying suffering?
Monday, July 20, 2009 Obama Starts Fighting Back: Is It Too Late? (5 comments)
Obama's gotten his way so far by being Mr. Nice Guy, but now it looks like Mr. Nice Guy is losing ground on his primary agendum, health care reform. Now he's fighting back. We'll soon know more about this guy, like how he is in the ring.
Monday, July 13, 2009 Should a News Organization Be "Partisan" When One Party Represents Falsehood? (17 comments)
National Public Radio speaks of "enhanced interrogation techniques" instead of torture because the Republican position on the issue makes the matter "controversial." Should NPR "take sides" in such a situation, when one of our major parties is promoting a falsehood and the "issue" is bogus?
Monday, July 6, 2009 Sex and the Sacred (3rd in My Sanford Series) (3 comments)
The spiritual culture in which Mark Sanford is embedded won't be able to give Sanford good guidance because its concept of the sacred is top-down and calls for conquering the body in the name of the spirit rather than integrating the spiritual and animal dimensions of our humanity. The sacred is about Wholeness, not domination.
Friday, July 3, 2009 Mark Sanford's Dilemma and the Quest for the Good: II (5 comments)
The topic of this installment is the apparent inadequacy of how Mark Sanford's conservative Christian spiritual advisors see his situation. (The previous, first installment was about the importance of what Mark Sanford seems to have discovered in his extra-marital love relationship.)
Thursday, July 2, 2009 Mark Sanford's Dilemma and the Quest for the Good: I (1 comments)
Setting aside what we think of Mark Sanford as a politician, there's something in the story of his (apparently) finding a soul-mate --albeit outside his marriage-- that's worth discussing. Indeed, the question of what from here would constitute the Good for Mark Sanford can take us into understanding both the sacred and the limitations of the Conservative Christian worldview in which Sanford is embedded.
Saturday, June 20, 2009 What Does it Mean Not to be Hoping for these Iranian Protestors? (9 comments)
A couple of comments I've lately read lead me to declare: is this not as likely an opportunity for the Iranian people to shake off their dark regime as they're likely to get? Should people in the situation of the Iranians simply acquiesce in the unfortunate theocratic nature of the power system that constrains their lives?
Saturday, June 20, 2009 A Father's Mortification at Growing Old (10 comments)
A poignant part of my feelings about growing old has to do with my children (who aren't exactly "kids" anymore). And it connects with my own experience of having and then losing, too soon, my own father.
A Father's Day piece.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 What's Going to Become of the Republican Party? A Discussion Question (15 comments)
Here are a cluster of inter-related questions that delineate some of the possible future scenarios of what today's troubled, and seemingly self-destructive Republican Party might become in the years to come.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 Revisiting "Revisiting the 'Muddle Through Scenario'"
Since 2007, I've been wrestling, at periodic intervals, with the necessity of America's having to "muddle through" this time of national crisis. That necessity, as I saw and see it, is the result of the failure of the American body politic to deal with the Bushite evil --the lawless and usurpatious presidency-- as our Founders had in mind. Now we have a different kind of president, but with the battle still to be won.
Monday, June 1, 2009 A Possible Logjam-Breaking Move for Obama to Make on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict (5 comments)
Obama speaks in Egypt this week. Millions will be listening for some promise of substantive movement in the American brokering of the long-stalled "peace process." Here's a move Obama could make that might break the log-jam, raise American credibility, put worthwhile pressure on both parties, and conceivably create some momentum for real progress toward the two-state solution the world in general sees as the best future.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Questioning Obama's Strategy Against Evil: Letting His Foes Be the Focus of Ugliness (11 comments)
Here's one way of looking at Obama's strategy: it creates a learning process for the American people. It's at a basic, almost Pavlovian level: on one side they see balance and reason and goodwill, on the other side it is fear and irrationality and ugliness. Over time, repetitions of this experience impart visceral knowledge that will condition political trust and preference.
Monday, May 18, 2009 Questioning Obama's Strategy Against Evil: Correlation of Forces (2 comments)
Obama is acting as if he thinks the Bushite forces continue to be very powerful, capable of inflicting considerable damage on his capacity to lead the country. (That belief substantially equates to the belief that not enough of the American people cannot be trusted to side with him against the Bushites in a battle for their hearts and minds.) Is he right?
Friday, May 15, 2009 Questioning Obama's Strategy Against Evil: A Missed Opportunity? (13 comments)
In this, the third installment of the series, I offer my critique of Obama: in making his compromises, he has diminished himself and forfeited the "power of purity." Whether these costs outweigh the advantages of his more cautious strategy, I don't know: the terrain is too complex, the correlation of forces too uncertain, for certainty. But this sense of the clarity Obama might have represented is the root of this series.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Questioning Obama's Strategy Against Evil: Premise (7 comments)
It is my premise --a conviction I make explicit but don't seek here to make a case for-- that Obama is committed to advancing the Good as best as he can. (The issue, then, is whether he's chosen the best strategy for accomplishing it.) Here I name just one place where the character of the man can be seen.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Obama, The Torture Pictures, and this Dick Cheney Moment: A Speculation (11 comments)
Here's what I think just happened: Obama took a look at the current political moment, with Dick Cheney trying to set Obama up for a "Who Lost America?" attack, and he decided, "Better to give a bit of ground for now than to play into Dick Cheney's hands."
Monday, May 11, 2009 Questioning Obama's Strategy Against Evil: Overview (11 comments)
Obama is on the right side of the battle between good and evil, but he's choosing to avoid sword-on-sword combat. There are costs to that choice, and it may be a strategic blunder. But it also might be what's necessary for long-term victory. I urge Obama to do a little more testing of how much strength the dark forces can bring against a morally more pure approach from his side.
Friday, May 1, 2009 Same Dark Spirit at Work (6 comments)
This is the second installment of my series, "Craziness in America." Here I try to do two things. First, to illuminate the destructive forces at work in the American political system. Second, to illustrate a concept that's I've regarded as the most fundamental to understanding this dark period in America: that in human affairs there are patterns and forces that act AS IF they were "spirits" working for good or evil.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Crawling Out from Under the Rocks (6 comments)
Some thoughts on the ongoing exposure of Bushite crimes: a couple of lines of exploration that may expose as a lie the idea that the crimes of warrantless wiretapping and torture had anything to do with "protecting the American people."
Monday, April 27, 2009 Why Do Conservatives Like Colbert? Article Plus Critique (5 comments)
An interesting article says Colbert is ambiguous, and that it's an example of "confirmation bias," operating on both right and left. I say no on both counts, that it shows something about what's amiss in the consciousness of today's American right.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Rising Craziness in America: I. Obama Has to Address It (2 comments)
The rising craziness on the American right may not be a threat to our body politic in terms of electoral calculations, but there's more to politics than just elections and the legal framework. The time is here, or soon will be, when in order to protect the health of the American body politic, Obama will have to address this craziness.
Monday, April 20, 2009 Understanding Systems vs. How the Human Mind Seems Wired to Think (8 comments)
It may be that important truths about how our world works run against the grain of how our minds are wired to work. And it appears that traditionalist/conservative minds --in America at least-- find the understanding of systemic forces an especially difficult stretch.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 The Bushite Policies of Obama's Department of Justice: III-Justified? (1 comments)
In this last installment of a three-part series, I offer a benign interpretation of Obama's having his DOJ argue for the legality of terrible Bushite policies: here's a strategy Obama may be pursuing that is in its purposes the opposite of what on the surface it appears.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 The Bushite Policies of Obama's Department of Justice: II. Protest! (3 comments)
Second in a series. This one takes Obama's DOJ arguments at face value, and says he's put himself on the wrong side of a most important line and should be called on it with loud voices of protest. Tomorrow's installment offers a possible more benign interpretation.
Monday, April 13, 2009 The Bushite Policies of Obama's Department of Justice: I. Illustrated
This is the first of a three-part series: 1) presenting the problem of the Bushite arguments Obama's DOJ is presenting in the courts, 2) calling upon those who hated the lawlessness of the Bushites to press Obama on this (to appear here tomorrow), and finally to present a possible strategy that MIGHT explain Obama's wrong-looking choices in a more benign way. One thing for sure: these policies look very wrong.
Monday, March 23, 2009 Obama's Missing the Opportunity the Banking Crisis Presents (18 comments)
Obama treats the economic crisis as a regrettable distraction and impediment to his addressing his "real" agenda. Instead, he should recognize that this economic crisis presents him with the ideal field of battle against the same forces he'll have to overcome to achieve all the other parts of his agenda.
Sunday, March 22, 2009 If Krugman Doesn't Have the President's Ear, Here's What He Should Do (2 comments)
It's not clear whether people, like Paul Krugman, who think that Geithner/Summers are on the wrong track in addressing the vital financial crisis have been heard by the president, except filtered through those who disagree with them. It also appears that Obama may be dooming his presidency by blowing the handling of this crisis. Here's how Krugman could use his own bully pulpit to get the president's ear.
Monday, March 16, 2009 Today's Republican Party is a Central Part of our National Crisis (5 comments)
The dark spirit of the Bushites lives on. What the Republicans have been doing is what they, were the positions reversed, would call treason. Obama is pursuing a strategy to compel the Republicans either to transform or to be marginalized and weakened still further.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 Financial Glimmerings (1 comments)
There may be a couple of reasons to be more hopeful about the economy. I'd like to know how much weight to give them.
Monday, March 9, 2009 WHY LIMBAUGH MATTERS (8 comments)
Limbaugh matters because he is an especially clear manifestation of the dark spirit that's taken over the Republican Party in the past two decades, and exposing his moral ugliness offers a means of either further destroying the power of that Party or exorcising that Party's demons and helping it regain its soul. Either way, America benefits.
Saturday, March 7, 2009 The Cynicism of the Commentariat? (32 comments)
What does it mean when good solid progressive simply assume that even a president they admire and support would want to hold onto powers usurped by a criminal predecessor in violation of the Constitution? What does it mean when journalists whose approach has a moral dimension don't expect a good president to be content with the powers granted him by the Constitution, if unchecked power is available to him?
Friday, March 6, 2009 Worrying and Puzzling Over Obama and the Banks (1 comments)
Obama's success as president seems to depend on his rescuing the country from this economic crisis; the key to this in turn seems to be dealing effectively with the banking/financial crisis. But the Obama team seems to be sticking with an approach that's manifestly not reducing the fear that's paralyzing the system. I worry, and I wonder: why are these smart guys undertaking half-measures when aggressive moves seem needed.
Sunday, March 1, 2009 The Obama-ites Are (Wisely) Using Limbaugh as a Weapon Against the GOP (8 comments)
I've heard it say that it was a mistake for Obama to take on Limbaugh, but I disagreed. And now, as this article from Huffington Post shows, through Rahm Emanuel, the Obama administration seems to agree with me: he's something to hang around the necks of the Republicans.
Friday, February 27, 2009 Problematic Southern Culture: The Lost Cause Movement (18 comments)
The second of a series on the region most deeply tied to the Bushites, this article consists of a couple of passages from an article about the "Lost Cause Movement," by which the culture of the South has worked since the end of the Civil War to create a mythology about that struggle and what it was about. I conclude by asking whether Southern culture is any more prone than others to distort history in self-serving ways.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 Applying the Theory of Obama's "Protective Coloration"
Yesterday, I posted a piece here arguing that what seems to some to be "centrism" in Obama is really a form of "protective coloration" that is part of his long-term strategy for achieving genuine and non-centrist transformation in America. Here I apply that idea to several areas of policy, especially the one I myself find most troublesome-- the ways in which, in the national security area Obama has not yet broken with Bush.
Monday, February 23, 2009 Obama's "Centrism" is Protective Coloration (2 comments)
Some see Obama as a centrist. I think he's actually quite radical. But he's also strategic and, as I interpret it, appearing as a centrist is the means by which he positions himself to transform America over the next eight years.
Thursday, February 12, 2009 Problematic Southern Culture: Venerating Disastrous Leaders (9 comments)
The darkness of the Bushite era is a problem with America, but it is especially a problem with the American South. Here's one foray, in what will likely be a series, into the culture of the American South: why, for a century and a half, has the South venerated those leaders who led them into a terrible catastrophe?
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Why I've Been Looking at the Greatness of Robert E. Lee (3 comments)
Here in Virginia, in the wake of the Bushite darkness that captivated the area I live in, it buoys my spirit to delve into the life and character of a man who perhaps best realizes the ideal of the region's conservative culture. And perhaps it would do my neighbors some good, too, to study his example and ask, "What would Robert E. Lee do?" It sure wouldn't be to follow the counsel of a scoundrel like Rush Limbaugh.
Monday, January 26, 2009 Prosecuting Bushite Crimes: It's a Genuine Dilemma (106 comments)
It's true that a failure to prosecute the Bushite crimes and usurpations would set a dangerous precedent, making it more likely that future president would make similar assaults on the rule of law. But when we look at other dimensions of the damage the Bushites inflicted on America, we see that the issue of prosecution is complex. An optimal strategy for repairing America must therefore be similarly complex.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 MLK's "Black President" Prediction-- A Very Lucky Shot (1 comments)
The election of an African-American to the presidency --though it has come when Martin Luther King said he thought it would-- is not a reliable indicator of how far the United States has progressed in fulfilling King's dream. It is, rather, the result of two extraordinary --and unforeseeable-- factors.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Frugality as Adaptation (2 comments)
For forty years, I've put pursuing my calling ahead of making a living. That's made frugality a necessary adaptation for my survival. Some of my frugality is rational, some of it feels like a spiritual practice, or a ritual to please the God of Waste-Not.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 FROM OPPOSING EVIL TO SUPPORTING THE GOOD
Four years ago, what was needed was to alert Americans to the Evil nature of the power ruling this country. Now what's needed is to help people see how Good is the Obama leadership about to take the helm.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008 How Important is the Loss of Friendship? (7 comments)
I share here a train of thoughts triggered by my noting how frequently I give thought to a couple of friendships that have failed to be the life-long bond my wife and I had expected they'd be.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 The Return of the Princess: The Mythic Dimension of the Caroline Kennedy Story
Caroline Kennedy's story, with the significant present development that she's now seeking to return to the arena into which she was born --and from which she was traumatically removed forty-five years ago-- corresponds with a deep pattern, a motif, that recurs in the world's myths and folktales.
