There is an old hymn entitled "Bless Be The Ties That Bind." The hymn talks about those things that Christians have in common. What is written in the hymn is important. But unfortunately, Christians can come away from singing that hymn with some wrong ideas.
The wrong ideas that many Christians have after singing "Bless Be The Ties That Bind" revolve around thinking that there are no significant ties between Christians and non-Christians--that is no ties outside of citizenship for patriotic Christians.
The result of this kind of thinking is that we have an Amish movement amongst some of my fine fellow flaming fundamentalists friends and family with the English of the world. To the Amish, the English are what the nations were to the Jews in Biblical times; that is you are in or your are out. You are either a part of the in group or you don't get it. And what we have is a sincere attempt, by many Christians, to be separate from the non-believers and even non-Christian fundamentalists of the world.
This separation though is not a physical separation simply because that would be impossible; rather, the separation is personal. In a very real sense, many Christian fundamentalists are refusing to be engaged with the world around them. Not that these Christians have grown tired of telling the world what to do, they haven't. But they have had it with reading, listening to and caring about those in the world, especially those who suffer in war zones. They have concluded that the world has nothing good to offer and so they have insulated themselves from the world with "Christian" topics and/or Christian sources. Some of these sources tell Christians that the solution is to take America back. But that back is a place that America never was in the first place.
Such Christians have little difficulty in finding scriptural justification for shunning the world's advice. For example, Paul tells us in II Corinthians 6:14, 17 that we should not bound together with unbelievers and that we should separate ourselves from them just as the OT Jews were called to come out from the Gentiles. These verses are tough to interpret because, at face value, they seem to imply that Christians should cut off all relationships with non-Christians. Thus it seems that a Christian would be obligated to leave a spouse if the spouse remained an unbeliever. And yet, Paul says the opposite in I Corinthians 7: 12-13. In addition, it is difficult for Christians to live amongst unbelievers without being connected.
And yet, these issues have not stopped many conservative Christians from trying to obey the II Corinthians passage by engaging in one-way relationships with non-Christians. These relationships consist of Christians feeling free to share their faith and expecting the non-Christian to listen while boldly asserting that the unbeliever has nothing worthwhile to say until they repent. The result is that the lives of some believers become islands as these Christians become more and more preoccupied with their own world. You can imagine how this could affect the carrying out of the Great Commission as more and more Christians tell the world that part of believing is to let the world crash and burn.
Is it true that the only ties a Christian has is with other Christians? Should Christians should separate themselves from the world as the Amish do from the English? Is there no common ground that the Christian and the unbeliever can share with each other that should move the Christian to listen to those outside of the faith and care about what is happening to others besides fellow Christians?
A variety of sources, both Biblical and others, says no! We could start with the liberal branch of Christianity which claims that all of us are the children of God and thus we are all brothers and sisters. The latter sentiment was expressed in a journal entry by Rachel Corrie when talking about the homeless. She said:
These are our brothers and sisters.
And that is what terrifies us.
They are us. And we could as easily be them.[1]
The Christian fundamentalist balks at regarding everyone as a brother or sister and thus sometimes ignores the non-Christian who is in need. The titles of brother and sister, according to many conservative Christians, belong to fellow children of God only and with good reason. Nowhere in the New Testament do we read of anyone outside of the faith being called a brother or a sister. At best, non-Christians are called neighbors. We are told to love them as we would love those outside of the family. Thus there is a hierarchy in terms of whom the Christian should help. The Christian must help fellow believers first and then non-believers second. But with Christians turning their personal lives into islands and their churches into gated communities, the help that conservative Christians are giving non-Christians is shrinking fast except through the proxies called the missionaries.
Martin Luther King went beyond calling everyone his brother and sister as how he regarded the Vietnamese. [2] He called them God's children. That is what King called every person because each person is made in the image of God. He then concluded that what touches one touches all. [3] But is King justified in calling all people children of God? After all, not all people are fellow believers. In addition, Jesus called the religious leaders who rejected him children of the devil.
Adam is called a son of God(Luke 3:38). Why was that? In the third chapter of Luke, each person who was called the son of someone was a descendant of that person. Thus Adam, because he was both made directly by God and was made in God's image, was called a son of God. But note that the others were not called sons of God. They were merely called sons of their ancestors. Does that mean that Christians do not have to regard non-Christians as brothers and sisters? Is the closest tie that we Christians have with non-Christians is that of being a neighbor?
The answers to the last two questions are clearly NO! Since all people are said to be made in God's image, we can correctly regard everyone as a brother or sister regardless of their faith. These titles of brother and sister show a closer relationship that carries more grave results if we were to neglect those in need than if we just call people our neighbors. For to neglect someone in need who is made in the image of God shows an apathy or even hatred for God.
Having said this, Christians still need to distinguish between their brothers and sister by way of being made in God's image and their brothers and sisters by way of redemption. Much weight is put on Christians helping fellow Christians because Christ died for them. But our responsibilities to help fellow believers for whom Christ died do not eliminate the ties we have with nonbelievers. They are important too because they are made in the image of God.
Finally, we should also note that this tie of being made in the image of God allows us to share common values and to be helped and instructed by nonbelievers. J. Gresham Machen, one of the most fundamentalist Christian teachers in 20th century America said the following:
Many ties -- ties of blood, of citizenship, of ethical aims, of humanitarian endeavor-- unite us to those who have abandoned the Gospel. [4]
We have these ties because we are made in the image of God. The current Christian trend of insulating oneself from the world and making one's church into a gated community to keep the world out goes against the Scriptures. The let the world crash and burn if it does not repent mentality goes against valuing people because they are made in the image of God. Listening only to Christians goes against recognizing that all are made in the image of God and against the explicit words of some honorable fundamentalist Christians. If we Christians are going to make a difference in the world, then we cannot afford to treat nonbelievers as if they are from another planet.
[1] Let Me Stand Alone by Rachel Corrie, pg 15
[2] http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
[3] http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/12/276406.shtml
[4] Christianity and Liberalism by J Gresham Machen, pg 44
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Are All Wars Gang Wars?
The contrast could not be more stark. When we think of gang wars, we think of senseless killings, cruelty, innocent children getting killed, drugs, and turf battles. When we think of the wars our own troops fight, we think of sacrifice, freedom, honor, and loyalty. So to compare gang wars to the wars our country's troops fight seems to show the height of ingratitude, ignorance, contempt, idiocy, and lunacy. To compare gang wars and our nation's wars would indicate the worst of a person until we read Augustine and former Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler.
Who was Augustine? Augustine lived in the fourth and fifth centuries and was a Bishop in the Christian Church. He was a prolific writer who was respected and followed by theologians from both the Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions.
What did Augustine say that would make our nation's war comparable with gang wars? Consider the following from the 4th chapter of the fourth book of Augustine's "City Of God." Augustine said that when a kingdom is without justice, it is merely a gang of robbers, or, in our language, a street gang. He continued in comparing the two by saying that both had authority figures, pacts and rules. The latter determined how their bounty was divided. When a gang grows large enough, it becomes a nation. [1]
This is what people of every nation must consider before embracing nationalism. Is one's nation merely a gang? The answer to that question lies in the presence or absence of justice. However determining whether a nation is just can be difficult because every country's résumé consists of claims of nobility, righteousness and justice. Even in the worst of nations, such as Nazi Germany, each nation sees itself as source of nobility and defender of freedom. Hence, we should go beyond the self-description of any country, especially one's own, and examine the actions of each nation using the same standards.
Now who was Smedley Butler? Smedley Butler was a Marine Corp Major General who lived from 1881 until 1940. He served in the Marine Corp for 34 years. He was awarded the Medal of Honor twice, which is a rare accomplishment.
What did Major General Butler say? He introduced us to a great divide between why the troops fight and why they are sent. He stated that for many years, he suspected that he was fighting for business interests, later he became sure of it. To make his point, Major General Butler pointed out some financial results of war. Results include the creation of 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires by the end of WWI. Results also include a ballooning national debt that consisted of $1,000,000,000 in 1898 when we had no outside territories $25,000,000,000 sometime after WWI and after acquiring outside territories that contained private investments as well as a future conflict with Japan over territories in the Pacific.[2] What is interesting about Major General Butler's points is that he made many of the same points made by Helen Keller in a 1916 speech warning President Wilson not to enter WWI. In particular, Keller foresaw a war with Japan as a result of US acquisitions in the Pacific.[3] We should note that the Japanese called WWII the Great East Asian War and that it was fought to liberate East Asia from Western colonialism.
We should then note Howard Zinn, a historian and WWII veteran, and his observations about why we fought WWII. He stated that despite all that was happening in Europe and the Pacific, we were doing business with and helped fascism emerge in Europe and we did not fight until one of our territories was attacked. [4]
And though we might think that we were fighting against racism in Europe by trying to save the Jews, Zinn shows how we were slow in responding to their plight. In addition, when our Black soldiers returned home, they faced the same hateful racism here as they faced before the war. [5]
And while we were told that we were that we were fighting for the freedom of the world and self-determination, our Secretary of State assured the French that we were sympathetic toward their desire to keep their territories, such as Vietnam. Other assurances were given and it wasn't long after the war, that we started to assist France in trying to maintain their hold on Vietnam. [6]
The point here is that there is a divide between the aspirations of the troops who fight and the reasons why our presidents send them into harm's way. Though our most of our troops see themselves as liberating the oppressed overseas and defending freedom at home, the reasons why they are sent to fight are often quite different. The reasons why our leaders send our troops off to war, according to Zinn, is for sake of profits for the wealthy and power for the government. That is not to deny that some good came from fighting; but it is to say that our ideals were not the main reason for sending our troops. [7]
We only need to examine our methods then to see how concerned we have been with justice. Here again, we find failure. For whether it was in Vietnam, in the Middle East, in Latin America, or even in Europe, we find that our methods either targeted civilians or made their deaths inevitable. In addition, we supported dictators and suppressed many democracies.
We now come back to Augustine. Without justice, our nation is nothing more than a gang and our wars become gang wars. It isn't a coincidence that often turf battles between gangs are fought for business reasons. One gang wants to expand its operations, such as drug dealing, and thus increase its profits. In addition, it is not odd to hear gang members talk like soldiers as they speak about honor, sacrifice, and fighting for one's brothers. Though we see on military ads the slogan of belonging to something greater than oneself, that same kind of belonging exists whenever we join a group. Often, the only difference between a gang leader and the leaders of a nation is that the injustice of a gang leader is plain for all to see; the injustice of our governmental leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, is subtle and is covered by an attractive veneer of idealism and good intentions. So even though our troops believe they are fighting an honorable fight, it is the motives of our leaders that determine whether the colors of our flag are being relegated to gang colors and their battles to gang warfare.
There is a solution to all of this. That solution is to broaden our vision. That solution includes a deemphasizing our nationalism so that our commonality as people trumps our differences by nationality. Of course, we know who propagates these anti-patriotic and hate America ideas. These notions are preached by the Jeremiah Wrights of America who can find nothing good to say about the country that has blessed them so. And though what I just wrote sounds like something Jeremiah Wright would say, he is not the one I am footnoting. Martin Luther King said:
"Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective." [8]
It is when our loyalty to principle, love, and to all who have been made in God's image, as King reminded us in his writings, supersedes our sense of patriotism and being proud Americans that we can start to stop gang wars in the world.
[1] http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120104.htm
[2] http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
[3] http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=193&SubTopicID=21&DocumentID=1154
[4] http://co.quaker.org/Writings/JustAndUnjustWar.htm
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/12/a_christmas_sermon_on_peace.html
Who was Augustine? Augustine lived in the fourth and fifth centuries and was a Bishop in the Christian Church. He was a prolific writer who was respected and followed by theologians from both the Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions.
What did Augustine say that would make our nation's war comparable with gang wars? Consider the following from the 4th chapter of the fourth book of Augustine's "City Of God." Augustine said that when a kingdom is without justice, it is merely a gang of robbers, or, in our language, a street gang. He continued in comparing the two by saying that both had authority figures, pacts and rules. The latter determined how their bounty was divided. When a gang grows large enough, it becomes a nation. [1]
This is what people of every nation must consider before embracing nationalism. Is one's nation merely a gang? The answer to that question lies in the presence or absence of justice. However determining whether a nation is just can be difficult because every country's résumé consists of claims of nobility, righteousness and justice. Even in the worst of nations, such as Nazi Germany, each nation sees itself as source of nobility and defender of freedom. Hence, we should go beyond the self-description of any country, especially one's own, and examine the actions of each nation using the same standards.
Now who was Smedley Butler? Smedley Butler was a Marine Corp Major General who lived from 1881 until 1940. He served in the Marine Corp for 34 years. He was awarded the Medal of Honor twice, which is a rare accomplishment.
What did Major General Butler say? He introduced us to a great divide between why the troops fight and why they are sent. He stated that for many years, he suspected that he was fighting for business interests, later he became sure of it. To make his point, Major General Butler pointed out some financial results of war. Results include the creation of 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires by the end of WWI. Results also include a ballooning national debt that consisted of $1,000,000,000 in 1898 when we had no outside territories $25,000,000,000 sometime after WWI and after acquiring outside territories that contained private investments as well as a future conflict with Japan over territories in the Pacific.[2] What is interesting about Major General Butler's points is that he made many of the same points made by Helen Keller in a 1916 speech warning President Wilson not to enter WWI. In particular, Keller foresaw a war with Japan as a result of US acquisitions in the Pacific.[3] We should note that the Japanese called WWII the Great East Asian War and that it was fought to liberate East Asia from Western colonialism.
We should then note Howard Zinn, a historian and WWII veteran, and his observations about why we fought WWII. He stated that despite all that was happening in Europe and the Pacific, we were doing business with and helped fascism emerge in Europe and we did not fight until one of our territories was attacked. [4]
And though we might think that we were fighting against racism in Europe by trying to save the Jews, Zinn shows how we were slow in responding to their plight. In addition, when our Black soldiers returned home, they faced the same hateful racism here as they faced before the war. [5]
And while we were told that we were that we were fighting for the freedom of the world and self-determination, our Secretary of State assured the French that we were sympathetic toward their desire to keep their territories, such as Vietnam. Other assurances were given and it wasn't long after the war, that we started to assist France in trying to maintain their hold on Vietnam. [6]
The point here is that there is a divide between the aspirations of the troops who fight and the reasons why our presidents send them into harm's way. Though our most of our troops see themselves as liberating the oppressed overseas and defending freedom at home, the reasons why they are sent to fight are often quite different. The reasons why our leaders send our troops off to war, according to Zinn, is for sake of profits for the wealthy and power for the government. That is not to deny that some good came from fighting; but it is to say that our ideals were not the main reason for sending our troops. [7]
We only need to examine our methods then to see how concerned we have been with justice. Here again, we find failure. For whether it was in Vietnam, in the Middle East, in Latin America, or even in Europe, we find that our methods either targeted civilians or made their deaths inevitable. In addition, we supported dictators and suppressed many democracies.
We now come back to Augustine. Without justice, our nation is nothing more than a gang and our wars become gang wars. It isn't a coincidence that often turf battles between gangs are fought for business reasons. One gang wants to expand its operations, such as drug dealing, and thus increase its profits. In addition, it is not odd to hear gang members talk like soldiers as they speak about honor, sacrifice, and fighting for one's brothers. Though we see on military ads the slogan of belonging to something greater than oneself, that same kind of belonging exists whenever we join a group. Often, the only difference between a gang leader and the leaders of a nation is that the injustice of a gang leader is plain for all to see; the injustice of our governmental leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, is subtle and is covered by an attractive veneer of idealism and good intentions. So even though our troops believe they are fighting an honorable fight, it is the motives of our leaders that determine whether the colors of our flag are being relegated to gang colors and their battles to gang warfare.
There is a solution to all of this. That solution is to broaden our vision. That solution includes a deemphasizing our nationalism so that our commonality as people trumps our differences by nationality. Of course, we know who propagates these anti-patriotic and hate America ideas. These notions are preached by the Jeremiah Wrights of America who can find nothing good to say about the country that has blessed them so. And though what I just wrote sounds like something Jeremiah Wright would say, he is not the one I am footnoting. Martin Luther King said:
"Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective." [8]
It is when our loyalty to principle, love, and to all who have been made in God's image, as King reminded us in his writings, supersedes our sense of patriotism and being proud Americans that we can start to stop gang wars in the world.
[1] http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120104.htm
[2] http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
[3] http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=193&SubTopicID=21&DocumentID=1154
[4] http://co.quaker.org/Writings/JustAndUnjustWar.htm
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/12/a_christmas_sermon_on_peace.html
Monday, July 13, 2009
A Few Good Problems With Conservative Values
Conservatives pride themselves on being the vanguard for what is great about America: its values and liberties. Problems, however, arise when one examines both conservative values and the methods they use to defend them. Perhaps a closer inspection of both their values and methods is in order to verify the Conservatives' self-proclamation.
First, what is a conservative? How do we distinguish a conservative from a liberal? A quick summary that I have seen conservatives use before can be found at http://conservative-resources.com where conservatives and liberals are defined by 6 pairs of opposing characteristics. The list can be found below:
Conservative Beliefs vs Liberal Beliefs
Of course the above list can be misinterpreted and false views of both Conservatives and Liberals can be easily arrived at by the reader unless one delves more deeply into the characteristics with which conservatives love to adorn themselves.
Natural Law
Belief in Natural Law, according to the above conservative website, is belief in both the existence of good and evil and that the source of all laws and liberties are from God or are Platonic, as opposed to originating with man. Man might recognize these laws, such as in a just government, but the Conservative believes that these laws exist regardless of man's recognition.
Here conservatives distinguish themselves from liberals by describing liberals as believing in progressive law. The difference between the two can be seen in the absence/presence of the term from the Declaration of Independence: "self-evident." The liberal, according to the conservative website, believes that rights originate when they are recognized by the government. Thus, according to many conservatives, liberals believe that man is the source of rights vs a higher authority. This jeopardizes our rights because just as rights can easily come through man, they can easily be taken away by man.
However, there might be a fly in the ointment for conservatives here. That fly consists of the possible differences between the set of laws and values recognized as coming from a higher authority vs the ones that conservatives recognize. Here, size matters for the Conservative claim to fame regarding values. The smaller the difference between conservative values and rights that are self-evident, the more the conservative can say he/she is walking the talk. However, the bigger the difference between these two sets of values, then the more the conservative can be seen as accepting a self-aggrandizing delusion. One can discover the size of this difference as we continue to examine conservative values.
Established Institutions
The next comparison consists of the Conservative trust in Established Institutions vs the Liberal pursuit of progress. For conservatives, these Established Institutions already have name tags. These institutions are the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Anglo-Saxon view of law and government, church and family. Here, Established Institutions are, without explanation and justification, identified. Do American conservatives wish to say that conservatives world wide hold to these institutions or just American conservatives. And if the latter, are American conservatives the only ones who cling to the correct institutions while conservatives from other parts of the world and liberals are wrong? If so, the implications are both obvious and ominous. The American conservative must not only be distinguished from all other conservatives, American conservatives must now unite for they are now engaged in a us vs the world battle for justice.
Here, liberals become an anathema to Conservatives because liberals see mankind's hope in how well they can tinker with, tweak and even replace the institutions that have been given from on high.
Here, of course, the Conservative must show how secular institutions, like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, can be considered as coming from on high. The problem for the Conservative though is that the only sources for acceptable institutions are culturally and even racially defined: the American Christian religion, documents from the American founding fathers, and Anglo-Saxon tradition. What is presupposed here is a cultural and even racial superiority. Pointing out the latter will no doubt produce a defensive reaction. But when established institutions are identified with an ethnicity, what other conclusions can be drawn? The Conservative belief in Established Institutions is a self-proclamation of cultural and ethnic superiority.
Of course, American Christian conservatives will use the Bible as their defense of Established Institutions. They assume that their recognized Established secular Institutions are Biblical ones as well. It is at this point that American Christian Conservatives feel pressured to draw close ties between the Bible and the work of our nation's founding fathers. The pressure becomes so great that obvious discrepancies between the two are denied. This pressure also moves some conservatives to defend unconscionable institutions from the past such as slavery because such was seemingly endorsed by the Bible.
Liberty
The next Conservative vs Liberal value sound off comes on what to put the most precedence, liberty or equality. Conservatives believe that, with the exception of equal rights and opportunity, one must choose between liberty and equality. To choose equality is to limit freedom.
The problem here is that the forms of equality that the Conservative sees as threatening are vague. It is acknowledged that equal standing before the law, regardless of wealth and nobility, are consistent with what the Founding Fathers promoted and thus a part of the Established Institutions. So what equality do conservatives find so troublesome?
Though not stated, equality with regards to earned wealth and personal values cannot be tolerated. Thus to the Conservative, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor should be cause to celebrate the unfettered accomplishments of the rich. Any attempt to relieve the plight of the poor through mandatory sacrifice of the rich is an attack on freedom! For the conservative, it is better that the rich have the opportunity to soar higher and higher than the poor receive the slightest minutia of help. In fact, the conservative calls mandatory help for the poor enslavement for both groups. Though it is obvious but disturbing how mandating the rich to help the poor might be called "slavery" for the rich, such conservatives see it as slavery for the poor because such help makes the poor dependent rather than self-sufficient.
At this point, the American Christian Conservative's choice to wed American Conservative values with the Bible goes well beyond syncretistic to schizoid. Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, both the individual (signifying voluntary help) and the corporate (signifying mandatory help) have a grave responsibility to help the poor. In the Old Testament, farmers were required to leave the corners of their field unharvested to feed the alien. Part of the tithe was used to relieve the hunger of the poor. In the New Testament, Jesus warned us in his parable of the sheep and the goats that how each person treated the least of these, is how they treated him-- a teaching that should strike fear of Hell in all of us. And both the Roman government, to which Jesus commanded people to pay taxes, and the Church helped the poor.
It is obvious and troublesome that the American Conservative believes in a Social Darwinism--what should be an apparent contradiction for the Christian Conservative. After all, what becomes of the poor who do not make it in society when the government is prohibited from using tax revenues to help? The only kind of help that the Conservative approves of is education. That is the only help the poor need is to learn how to be successful. The apologetic employed here by the Conservative is that you best feed a person by teaching them how to fish rather than giving them a fish. This is an inept analogy because the Conservative seems to deliberately close their eyes to the full application of this analogy. For what good is it to teach the poor man to fish when there is no catch limit and there are too many poles in the fishing pond. How can we feed the poor man when the only fishing pond he can get to has been fished out? We cannot. The rich won't suffer a fished out pond because they have mobility and can travel to a another pond; the poor cannot. That is what happens when there are no limits placed on the rich and when we do not realistically assess the capabilities of our fishing ponds of wealth.
What the rich can escape by their mobility but the rest of us must live with, are the consequences of not taking care of the poor. Consequences include a nonproductive society that is filled with crime. Is it any wonder that America has the highest incarceration rate in the world--even beating totalitarian countries like China. The Conservative has a ready answer for this problem. The Conservative says that our incarceration rate is due to the abandonment of traditional values. That might be partially true. But here is another possible partial explanation. We might have the highest incarceration rate because those who suffer the most see no reason for showing respect to a system that coldheartedly refrains from respecting their right to live.
The battle of liberty vs equality also hits changing values that are the natural result of freedom. Here, the suppression of treating new emerging personal values, such as same sex marriage, as being equal does not rub liberty the wrong way; rather, it rubs Established Institutions the wrong way. This is why the Conservative, though giving lip service to liberty, viciously opposes tolerating the practice of treating new values as being equal to traditional ones despite the implication that liberty can cause values to change. Therefore, as paper covers rock, so Established Institutions trump liberty.
Suspicion Of (Only Government) Power
The next battle line shows how selective the Conservative can be. Conservatives show a suspicion of power while chiding the liberal for believing that government can help. Well, part of that should be a no brainer. We all should show a suspicion of accumulated power. But here is where the Conservative is selective. The only power that the Conservative is suspicious of is government power. From the last pair of dueling values, it is clear that the accumulation of power by anyone in the private sector must be celebrated as a triumph of freedom rather than a cause for concern. Here the Conservative's ability to show selectivity knows no bounds. It is as if the Conservative Bible said we in the private sector are not sinners like those in the government.
Our country's history is replete with examples of the rich oppressing the poor starting with slavery, extending to child labor, extending to the abuse of laborers, and also including endangering the general public by abusing the environment. And yet, the Conservative principle of suspicion of power applies only to those who work in the government.
Anyone who assumes that one's government will be naturally disposed to show benevolence has been smoking too much stuff to operate a motor vehicle. Getting government to protect its people from domestic threats when those who issue the threats bankroll our elected officials is the challenge of any people who wish to establish and maintain a democracy. It takes a perpetual education and activism to get government to represent its people rather than the rich. We know it can be done because it has been done. But this is the challenge to the people of any democracy. How hard are we willing to work to keep our government honest. A problem with American society is that too many people are still in too much comfort to exert adequate energy to maintain our democracy. Formally, we think of our system as being democratic because we can vote. But when our elected officials only represent the elite because because they have been bought, voting no longer implies a democracy.
There is a contradiction for the Conservative here. One of the benchmarks of our freedom is our free elections. But what are we really saying when the elected government, which proves our freedom, must be handcuffed because we cannot trust them with any signficant power? The Conservative mistakenly thinks that size matters to the government of a free people. It doesn't. What matters is who does the government choose to represent? It is the job of the people to work to ensure that the government represents all of the people, not just the financial elite.
Exceptionalism
The next Conservative vs Liberal battle is between exceptionalism vs human perfectability. The Conservative believes in the hero for salvation. The hero could either be the mighty warrior who fights on the battlefield or the brilliant and hardworking financial wizard who creates wealth for themselves while allowing others to ride on their coattails. This belief in exceptionalism, and thus the hero, is the sun that the Conservative solar system revolves around. The hero that exceptionalism produces is also carrot that most conseratives chase. The dream of someday being that hero is very seductive. It is experienced vicariously through patriotism as we see America being that "city on the hill." Such ego messaging is very enticing.
But if an individual conservative cannot be the financial hero, what the Conservative fears most is a government that prevents others from being heroes. This is why government should be restricted and why those who could be excpetional must be totally unfettered by responsibilities to equals who are in need. For if there are not enough heroes because of government peccadilloes, then we are all doomed. This is why the Conservative wants to eliminate all obligations and responsibilities that the government would place on emerging heroes.
This conserative dependence on exceptionalism is tragically ironic and antidemocratic. What is ironic here is that such conservatives show just as much dependence on the financial heroes of our country that they say the poor show when taking handouts from the government. The only difference is the Conservative assumption that only sinners work for the government while saints work in the private sector. And such an assumption causes the Conservative to advocate preferential treatment for the hero under the law. This advocacy for preferential treatment is subtle because in most cases, this preferential treatment is accomplished by having the government write laws that favor actual and would be heroes over the general public. At this point, the last vestiges of equality, even those parts seen as necessary by conservatives, have been destroyed. Our financial heroes are to be judged by the benefits they share with society rather than their keeping the law.
In addition, the Conservative's emphasis on the hero is antidemocratic. That is because power is accumulated and centralized on those who are not responsible to the voter. And since the Conservative works to prevent the government from regulating the work of the financial hero, the hero escapes the last chance at being accountable to the public.
The conservative dependence on exceptionalism is also tragic. It is tragic because the government that protects the financial hero from their responsibilities to society becomes a government for the rich, by the rich, and of the rich. The welfare of the middle class depends on how well they can ride coattails and the poor end up with no representation at all.
The Conservative does recognize one hero in government. That person is the President but only when he is acting as the Commander and Chief of the military.
Individualism
The final battle line is between the Conservative belief in individualism vs the Liberal reliance on community. We must hasten to add that the Conservative notion of individualism must be carefully defined. The Conservative notion of individualism cannot in any way challenge the values of Established Institutions. Here, Establish Institutions trump values arrived at by the independent individual.
What the Conservative is referring to when emphasizing individualism is that each individual is solely responsible for their success and failure. It is the Conservative's use of the word "solely" that shows a major thinking error. Since the Conservative see the individual as being solely responsible despite the fact that we live in an interdependent society, Conservatives employ what Psychologists call "all or nothing thinking." What Psychologists notice about all or nothing thinking is that 1) it usually produces a distorted picture of reality; 2) it produces conclusions based on incomplete evidence because much evidence has been tossed out; 3) it results in overly concrete thinking; and 4), it is linked to mood disorders.
Despite the disturbed thinking that conservatives who reduce success and failure to individual responsibility only, the emphasis on the individual holds out a couple of carrots. One carrot is the significance one feels when one succeeds. The other carrot is being freed from any moral responsibility for helping those in need. If each person is solely responsible for one’s success or failure, the successful person is free to keep more of their wealth to themselves.
The above consists of a list of key conservative values and some of the problems that accompany those values. The American Christian Conservative is asked to suffer an additional problem. That problem is that the core conservative beliefs sometimes oppose Biblical values. Thus, the Conservative's 6 values of belief in natural law, unquestioned reliance on Established Institutions, preferring liberty over equality, being suspicious of governmental power, aspirations to exceptionalism, and giving credit to the individual only often compete with Biblical values. But at the same time, American Christian Conservatives are told that these 6 values define Conservatism. The result is that the American Christian Conservative becomes more of an American Conservative than a Christian.
At the beginning, I described Conservatives as priding themselves for being a vanguard for the values they associate with America's greatness. I used the word vanguard deliberately because it is translated into another word that does not carry pleasant associations. Jason Burke, in his book "Al-Qaeda: Casting A Shadow Of Terror," states that the concept of the word vanguard could be translated into the word "Al-Qaeda." Here, the word "Al-Qaeda" is being used to denote a function, not a group. But we might note that there are varying degrees of similarities between the group Al-Qaeda and the American Conservative. These similarities include adherence to culturally respective conservative values, radical thinking, oversimplistic view of the world, the belief that they are participating in the battle between good and evil, limited thinking, and a lack of concern for the collateral damage that adherence to their values cause.
This comparison is not to equate Al-Qaeda with the American Conservative. But where there are similarities between the two, it could not hurt the American Conservative to reflect on those similarities and ponder possible changes.
First, what is a conservative? How do we distinguish a conservative from a liberal? A quick summary that I have seen conservatives use before can be found at http://conservative-resources.com where conservatives and liberals are defined by 6 pairs of opposing characteristics. The list can be found below:
Conservative Beliefs vs Liberal Beliefs
Natural Law Positive Law
Established Institutions Progress
Liberty Over Equality Equality Over Liberty
Suspicion of Power Benevolent Government
Exceptionalism Human Perfectability
Individualism Community.
Of course the above list can be misinterpreted and false views of both Conservatives and Liberals can be easily arrived at by the reader unless one delves more deeply into the characteristics with which conservatives love to adorn themselves.
Natural Law
Belief in Natural Law, according to the above conservative website, is belief in both the existence of good and evil and that the source of all laws and liberties are from God or are Platonic, as opposed to originating with man. Man might recognize these laws, such as in a just government, but the Conservative believes that these laws exist regardless of man's recognition.
Here conservatives distinguish themselves from liberals by describing liberals as believing in progressive law. The difference between the two can be seen in the absence/presence of the term from the Declaration of Independence: "self-evident." The liberal, according to the conservative website, believes that rights originate when they are recognized by the government. Thus, according to many conservatives, liberals believe that man is the source of rights vs a higher authority. This jeopardizes our rights because just as rights can easily come through man, they can easily be taken away by man.
However, there might be a fly in the ointment for conservatives here. That fly consists of the possible differences between the set of laws and values recognized as coming from a higher authority vs the ones that conservatives recognize. Here, size matters for the Conservative claim to fame regarding values. The smaller the difference between conservative values and rights that are self-evident, the more the conservative can say he/she is walking the talk. However, the bigger the difference between these two sets of values, then the more the conservative can be seen as accepting a self-aggrandizing delusion. One can discover the size of this difference as we continue to examine conservative values.
Established Institutions
The next comparison consists of the Conservative trust in Established Institutions vs the Liberal pursuit of progress. For conservatives, these Established Institutions already have name tags. These institutions are the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Anglo-Saxon view of law and government, church and family. Here, Established Institutions are, without explanation and justification, identified. Do American conservatives wish to say that conservatives world wide hold to these institutions or just American conservatives. And if the latter, are American conservatives the only ones who cling to the correct institutions while conservatives from other parts of the world and liberals are wrong? If so, the implications are both obvious and ominous. The American conservative must not only be distinguished from all other conservatives, American conservatives must now unite for they are now engaged in a us vs the world battle for justice.
Here, liberals become an anathema to Conservatives because liberals see mankind's hope in how well they can tinker with, tweak and even replace the institutions that have been given from on high.
Here, of course, the Conservative must show how secular institutions, like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, can be considered as coming from on high. The problem for the Conservative though is that the only sources for acceptable institutions are culturally and even racially defined: the American Christian religion, documents from the American founding fathers, and Anglo-Saxon tradition. What is presupposed here is a cultural and even racial superiority. Pointing out the latter will no doubt produce a defensive reaction. But when established institutions are identified with an ethnicity, what other conclusions can be drawn? The Conservative belief in Established Institutions is a self-proclamation of cultural and ethnic superiority.
Of course, American Christian conservatives will use the Bible as their defense of Established Institutions. They assume that their recognized Established secular Institutions are Biblical ones as well. It is at this point that American Christian Conservatives feel pressured to draw close ties between the Bible and the work of our nation's founding fathers. The pressure becomes so great that obvious discrepancies between the two are denied. This pressure also moves some conservatives to defend unconscionable institutions from the past such as slavery because such was seemingly endorsed by the Bible.
Liberty
The next Conservative vs Liberal value sound off comes on what to put the most precedence, liberty or equality. Conservatives believe that, with the exception of equal rights and opportunity, one must choose between liberty and equality. To choose equality is to limit freedom.
The problem here is that the forms of equality that the Conservative sees as threatening are vague. It is acknowledged that equal standing before the law, regardless of wealth and nobility, are consistent with what the Founding Fathers promoted and thus a part of the Established Institutions. So what equality do conservatives find so troublesome?
Though not stated, equality with regards to earned wealth and personal values cannot be tolerated. Thus to the Conservative, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor should be cause to celebrate the unfettered accomplishments of the rich. Any attempt to relieve the plight of the poor through mandatory sacrifice of the rich is an attack on freedom! For the conservative, it is better that the rich have the opportunity to soar higher and higher than the poor receive the slightest minutia of help. In fact, the conservative calls mandatory help for the poor enslavement for both groups. Though it is obvious but disturbing how mandating the rich to help the poor might be called "slavery" for the rich, such conservatives see it as slavery for the poor because such help makes the poor dependent rather than self-sufficient.
At this point, the American Christian Conservative's choice to wed American Conservative values with the Bible goes well beyond syncretistic to schizoid. Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, both the individual (signifying voluntary help) and the corporate (signifying mandatory help) have a grave responsibility to help the poor. In the Old Testament, farmers were required to leave the corners of their field unharvested to feed the alien. Part of the tithe was used to relieve the hunger of the poor. In the New Testament, Jesus warned us in his parable of the sheep and the goats that how each person treated the least of these, is how they treated him-- a teaching that should strike fear of Hell in all of us. And both the Roman government, to which Jesus commanded people to pay taxes, and the Church helped the poor.
It is obvious and troublesome that the American Conservative believes in a Social Darwinism--what should be an apparent contradiction for the Christian Conservative. After all, what becomes of the poor who do not make it in society when the government is prohibited from using tax revenues to help? The only kind of help that the Conservative approves of is education. That is the only help the poor need is to learn how to be successful. The apologetic employed here by the Conservative is that you best feed a person by teaching them how to fish rather than giving them a fish. This is an inept analogy because the Conservative seems to deliberately close their eyes to the full application of this analogy. For what good is it to teach the poor man to fish when there is no catch limit and there are too many poles in the fishing pond. How can we feed the poor man when the only fishing pond he can get to has been fished out? We cannot. The rich won't suffer a fished out pond because they have mobility and can travel to a another pond; the poor cannot. That is what happens when there are no limits placed on the rich and when we do not realistically assess the capabilities of our fishing ponds of wealth.
What the rich can escape by their mobility but the rest of us must live with, are the consequences of not taking care of the poor. Consequences include a nonproductive society that is filled with crime. Is it any wonder that America has the highest incarceration rate in the world--even beating totalitarian countries like China. The Conservative has a ready answer for this problem. The Conservative says that our incarceration rate is due to the abandonment of traditional values. That might be partially true. But here is another possible partial explanation. We might have the highest incarceration rate because those who suffer the most see no reason for showing respect to a system that coldheartedly refrains from respecting their right to live.
The battle of liberty vs equality also hits changing values that are the natural result of freedom. Here, the suppression of treating new emerging personal values, such as same sex marriage, as being equal does not rub liberty the wrong way; rather, it rubs Established Institutions the wrong way. This is why the Conservative, though giving lip service to liberty, viciously opposes tolerating the practice of treating new values as being equal to traditional ones despite the implication that liberty can cause values to change. Therefore, as paper covers rock, so Established Institutions trump liberty.
Suspicion Of (Only Government) Power
The next battle line shows how selective the Conservative can be. Conservatives show a suspicion of power while chiding the liberal for believing that government can help. Well, part of that should be a no brainer. We all should show a suspicion of accumulated power. But here is where the Conservative is selective. The only power that the Conservative is suspicious of is government power. From the last pair of dueling values, it is clear that the accumulation of power by anyone in the private sector must be celebrated as a triumph of freedom rather than a cause for concern. Here the Conservative's ability to show selectivity knows no bounds. It is as if the Conservative Bible said we in the private sector are not sinners like those in the government.
Our country's history is replete with examples of the rich oppressing the poor starting with slavery, extending to child labor, extending to the abuse of laborers, and also including endangering the general public by abusing the environment. And yet, the Conservative principle of suspicion of power applies only to those who work in the government.
Anyone who assumes that one's government will be naturally disposed to show benevolence has been smoking too much stuff to operate a motor vehicle. Getting government to protect its people from domestic threats when those who issue the threats bankroll our elected officials is the challenge of any people who wish to establish and maintain a democracy. It takes a perpetual education and activism to get government to represent its people rather than the rich. We know it can be done because it has been done. But this is the challenge to the people of any democracy. How hard are we willing to work to keep our government honest. A problem with American society is that too many people are still in too much comfort to exert adequate energy to maintain our democracy. Formally, we think of our system as being democratic because we can vote. But when our elected officials only represent the elite because because they have been bought, voting no longer implies a democracy.
There is a contradiction for the Conservative here. One of the benchmarks of our freedom is our free elections. But what are we really saying when the elected government, which proves our freedom, must be handcuffed because we cannot trust them with any signficant power? The Conservative mistakenly thinks that size matters to the government of a free people. It doesn't. What matters is who does the government choose to represent? It is the job of the people to work to ensure that the government represents all of the people, not just the financial elite.
Exceptionalism
The next Conservative vs Liberal battle is between exceptionalism vs human perfectability. The Conservative believes in the hero for salvation. The hero could either be the mighty warrior who fights on the battlefield or the brilliant and hardworking financial wizard who creates wealth for themselves while allowing others to ride on their coattails. This belief in exceptionalism, and thus the hero, is the sun that the Conservative solar system revolves around. The hero that exceptionalism produces is also carrot that most conseratives chase. The dream of someday being that hero is very seductive. It is experienced vicariously through patriotism as we see America being that "city on the hill." Such ego messaging is very enticing.
But if an individual conservative cannot be the financial hero, what the Conservative fears most is a government that prevents others from being heroes. This is why government should be restricted and why those who could be excpetional must be totally unfettered by responsibilities to equals who are in need. For if there are not enough heroes because of government peccadilloes, then we are all doomed. This is why the Conservative wants to eliminate all obligations and responsibilities that the government would place on emerging heroes.
This conserative dependence on exceptionalism is tragically ironic and antidemocratic. What is ironic here is that such conservatives show just as much dependence on the financial heroes of our country that they say the poor show when taking handouts from the government. The only difference is the Conservative assumption that only sinners work for the government while saints work in the private sector. And such an assumption causes the Conservative to advocate preferential treatment for the hero under the law. This advocacy for preferential treatment is subtle because in most cases, this preferential treatment is accomplished by having the government write laws that favor actual and would be heroes over the general public. At this point, the last vestiges of equality, even those parts seen as necessary by conservatives, have been destroyed. Our financial heroes are to be judged by the benefits they share with society rather than their keeping the law.
In addition, the Conservative's emphasis on the hero is antidemocratic. That is because power is accumulated and centralized on those who are not responsible to the voter. And since the Conservative works to prevent the government from regulating the work of the financial hero, the hero escapes the last chance at being accountable to the public.
The conservative dependence on exceptionalism is also tragic. It is tragic because the government that protects the financial hero from their responsibilities to society becomes a government for the rich, by the rich, and of the rich. The welfare of the middle class depends on how well they can ride coattails and the poor end up with no representation at all.
The Conservative does recognize one hero in government. That person is the President but only when he is acting as the Commander and Chief of the military.
Individualism
The final battle line is between the Conservative belief in individualism vs the Liberal reliance on community. We must hasten to add that the Conservative notion of individualism must be carefully defined. The Conservative notion of individualism cannot in any way challenge the values of Established Institutions. Here, Establish Institutions trump values arrived at by the independent individual.
What the Conservative is referring to when emphasizing individualism is that each individual is solely responsible for their success and failure. It is the Conservative's use of the word "solely" that shows a major thinking error. Since the Conservative see the individual as being solely responsible despite the fact that we live in an interdependent society, Conservatives employ what Psychologists call "all or nothing thinking." What Psychologists notice about all or nothing thinking is that 1) it usually produces a distorted picture of reality; 2) it produces conclusions based on incomplete evidence because much evidence has been tossed out; 3) it results in overly concrete thinking; and 4), it is linked to mood disorders.
Despite the disturbed thinking that conservatives who reduce success and failure to individual responsibility only, the emphasis on the individual holds out a couple of carrots. One carrot is the significance one feels when one succeeds. The other carrot is being freed from any moral responsibility for helping those in need. If each person is solely responsible for one’s success or failure, the successful person is free to keep more of their wealth to themselves.
The above consists of a list of key conservative values and some of the problems that accompany those values. The American Christian Conservative is asked to suffer an additional problem. That problem is that the core conservative beliefs sometimes oppose Biblical values. Thus, the Conservative's 6 values of belief in natural law, unquestioned reliance on Established Institutions, preferring liberty over equality, being suspicious of governmental power, aspirations to exceptionalism, and giving credit to the individual only often compete with Biblical values. But at the same time, American Christian Conservatives are told that these 6 values define Conservatism. The result is that the American Christian Conservative becomes more of an American Conservative than a Christian.
At the beginning, I described Conservatives as priding themselves for being a vanguard for the values they associate with America's greatness. I used the word vanguard deliberately because it is translated into another word that does not carry pleasant associations. Jason Burke, in his book "Al-Qaeda: Casting A Shadow Of Terror," states that the concept of the word vanguard could be translated into the word "Al-Qaeda." Here, the word "Al-Qaeda" is being used to denote a function, not a group. But we might note that there are varying degrees of similarities between the group Al-Qaeda and the American Conservative. These similarities include adherence to culturally respective conservative values, radical thinking, oversimplistic view of the world, the belief that they are participating in the battle between good and evil, limited thinking, and a lack of concern for the collateral damage that adherence to their values cause.
This comparison is not to equate Al-Qaeda with the American Conservative. But where there are similarities between the two, it could not hurt the American Conservative to reflect on those similarities and ponder possible changes.
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