Henk Ruyssenaars - Fwd. Franklin's Focus 12/15/09
Franklin's Focus 12/15/09 - When Obama stated to the world in a speech before
the Nobel Committee that 'evil exists', and by implication he is waging a war
against 'evil', he received abundant praise for his lofty speech. Now at long
last, we know why three bloody, enormously costly occupations in the
Middle East have been undertaken. We are over there to stamp out 'evil'.
I felt compelled to dig into my files and exhume a piece I wrote
regarding the word 'evil'. The original piece was meant to attack the
nonsense imbedded in Bush's declaration that America was facing 'an
axis of evil'. Now we have a president declaring the 'evil exists',
and he is being praised for his oratorical chutzpah.
I quickly amended my previous piece to include Obama's declaration
that he and America are engaged in a war against 'evil'. He has
pompously declared 'evil exists', and these words have been praised as
brilliant and eloquent, when they are pure bullshit. He is spewing
complete nonsense, and our fourth estate has enthusiastically blessed
him for peddling his utter crap to the whole western world.
I attach the appended rewritten piece for your consideration. If you
know of a website that might post it, please feel free to submit it.
Obama has gone way too far in his demagoguery. Somebody has to refute
his utter, contemptible bullshit.
Warmest regards, Richard
THE SO CALLED "WAR AGAINST EVIL"
"Demagogue" is often applied to one who spouts spurious oratory that
nonetheless is emotionally stirring. We think of people such as
Hitler, Mussolini, or the American neofascist Father Coughlin when we
use words such as 'demagogue' or 'demagoguery'. These three men had an
oratorical gift, which is why I never feel totally comfortable
referring to the inarticulate Bush as a 'demagogue', most notably when
he speaks off the cuff. In any case, his language has often been
marked by some of the classic devices of demagoguery. Obama, on the
other hand, is superbly qualified to be labeled a "demagogue" in the
tradition of a Father Coughlin or other American silver-tongued
demagogues.
Such was the case when Bush informed the American people of the
existence of an "axis of evil". He subsequently took shots at those
who dared to question his so-called wars against "evil" in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Now we have a president who has pompously declared to the
world that "evil exists", and he is out to do knightly battle against
that "evil" with the blessing of the Nobel Peace Award Committee. Both
Bush and Obama have now declared that the Middle East wars are wars
against "evil".
A growing number of Americans are coming to realize that the supposed
ongoing "war against evil" is not even a real war. It's an
imperialistic occupation of three countries. A growing number of
Americans are now beginning to suspect the massive bloodshed and
destruction inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan has been done simply to
create permanent outposts for Imperial America in the Middle East. As
more Americans are becoming suspicious of what the "shadow cabinet" in
the White House is up to, Obama has been forced to fall back more
heavily on the most mundane tools of jingoistic demagoguery.
One of the most absurd examples of Obama's rhetoric recently took
place when he turned to an old and reliable obfuscatory term, namely
"evil". Obama's pompous declaration to a world audience that "evil
exists", and he is a self proclaimed warrior against that evil. That
kind of response seems to be extremely handy for putting a damper on
any follow up questions. Reporters never follow up by asking a Bush or
an Obama, what they mean by "evil". It is assumed that everybody knows
what the noun "evil" refers to.
Of all the words of the demagogic vernacular, "evil" is the most
meaningless, yet it is one of the most emotionally charged words used
by demagogues, Of course, that is why they absolutely love using it.
So what exactly is an "axis of evil", to use Bush's vernacular? And
what is Obama saying in his vernacular when he pompously declares,
"Evil exists." This thing called "evil" admittedly seems to point
toward something nasty, dangerous, and dark. We tend to feel we had
best keep a wary eye on those countries harboring the forces of "evil"
and even to engage in illegal preemptive wars if needed to protect the
world and America from that "evil".
Well, it's time we called Bush and Obama on this kind of language. A
more exact parsing of comments and defining of words has to be somehow
injected into public discourse. Rational thinking and speaking are
absolutely essential in a democracy. Democratic theory has always
embraced rational thinking as a core element of its very being. Never
forget that democratic theory emerged primarily out of the
Enlightenment, and rationality was a defining characteristic of that
age. The whole democratic ethos is directed toward rational, lucid
public discourse.
I propose a small start. Let's begin with the noun "evil". This word
does not refer to anything among the furniture of the Universe. It is
an absolutely empty term. It cannot properly refer to a single
concrete object in the world. It does not, and cannot, denote a thing.
It can only vaguely connote a vague darkness or diabolism. It also
admittedly suggests a powerful dislike or fear on the part of the
speaker, but tells us little more. In practice, it's main purpose is
to stir up negative emotions about persons or events, thereby gaining
popular support for killing or imprisoning people or making radical
societal changes that serve a ruling class..
Once strong, negative emotions are stirred up, demagogues use those
feelings to generate popular support for such niceties as foreign
wars, empire building, concentration camps, torture, and the
elimination of civil liberties at home.
Philosophers refer to "evil" as a reification. Put more simply, the
word "evil" has no referent whatsoever. It refers to no more than
empty air, or perhaps some kind of amorphous, veiled, supposedly
pernicious phantasm. We never know, even murkily, what that something
is. We only know it is very, very bad, and we must destroy it before
it destroys us.
The pure relativity of the word "evil" becomes evident when we note
that Hitler was adored as a savior by millions, while still more
millions came to see him as a dangerous menace to civilization. Those
who adored him saw him as a good man, a veritable savior of the German
people, while his detractors labeled him as an "evil" maniac, In the
meantime, those who described him as mentally ill and being an
extreme danger to the Jewish people and to civilization itself were
actually saying something.
Those who label certain criminals of the world as little Hitlers in
order to suggest those people are "evil", really are not saying
anything more than something like, "I hate those people". The term
"evil" places targeted individuals into groups that require some
attention, but does little to rationally understand or intelligently
deal with such people.
This brings me back to Bush's and Obama's "war against evil". What has
been spent in the way of treasure, human life, and the prestige of
America is incalculable. It therefore would be prudent to be precise
about exactly what it is that we have bought for ourselves with these
enormous costs. Saying we are being called upon to fight "a war
against evil" is pure, unadulterated, manipulative propaganda,
calculated to stir up emotions of fear and hatred. Popular attention
is thusly turned from such horrors as America's genocidal policies and
its role in global poisoning.
Amorphous, elastic, non-denotative words are worthless noises. When
Bush tells us the current, so-called "war against evil" will protect
us from mushroom clouds, he has drained a blatant lie of any meaning
whatsoever by framing it within a "war against EVIL". We have no idea
what he has said. Is such meaningless speech worth spending lives and
treasure upon? Is it worth the devastation of our economy for decades
to come? Is it worth massive destruction of environments for millions
of years to come?
As my final look at the word "evil" (or its close relative the word
"bad"), permit me to offer this prosaic example of what such words
really mean, assuming they mean anything at all. Suppose you decide to
make a lemon pie. To do so, you buy lemons and sugar. If the lemons
turn out to be saccharin sweet, you would probably label them as "bad"
because they failed to answer your interest in having tartness in your
pie. If the sugar turned out to be tart, you would probably label it
as "bad" because it failed to answer your interest in having sweetness
in your pie.
So what does this suggest about these appellations? It simply tells us
that the adjectives "good" and "bad" have no core meaning other than
being an indication that X does or does not answer to certain wishes
or interests a person has. It's really that simple.
Beware of the "fog of war", and try to avoid contributing to that fog
with this kind of metaphysical nonsense or to allow semantic folderol
to confuse your own thinking about what your government is doing or
not doing. Those who use empty terms such as "evil" should be called
upon to give us real, tangible reasons for their acts. We must
challenge the penchant of the White House illusionists to make
meaningless noises with their mealy mouths.
Richard L. Franklin
Mr. Franklin is author of “The Myth of Self-Worth”
Franklin's Focus 12/13/09
My apologies for a gross mistake made in yesterday's piece. Following
the retirement of Stevens, there will be two Jews and six Catholics
left on the court. In other words, there will be eight justices who
are admittedly and functionally in the grip of gross irrationality. Of
course, number nine will unquestionably be of the same lunatic ilk.
I hope I've got it right this time.
Imagine having a court with eight superstitious, right leaning
justices determining the constitutional legality of the domestic and
foreign actions of our government, a nation which has been headed by
superstitious presidents ever since FDR's death. It is clear that all
three branches of our government have been managed by irrational and
superstitious nut cases. Congress is loaded with greedy, perverted,
shallow believers when it comes to such things as reason and justice.
Megalomania and mammon are highest in their Pantheon. Which mental
deformity is the ugliest depends on your point of view.
Consider that the most popular GOP leader today is Sarah Palin. I
watched a video of her with an African voodoo doctor laying hands on
her while he chanted a spell to drive out evil spirits and create a
shield protecting her from future invasions by evil spirits. Following
this bizarre ceremony, she expressed great gratitude and relief
knowing she was now protected.
His job resumé indicates that driving witches out of villages is his
specialty. Following this rite, Palin expressed relief over knowing
she had now been made safe from evil spirits. With him as Palin's
preferred witch doctor, we get a hint of the kind of cabinet she might
choose as president. Imagine a dancing witch doctor presiding over the
White House daily prayer sessions.
I sometimes wonder whether or not this nation has finally slid over a
cliff in its political culture.
Warmest regards,
Richard
Franklin's Focus 12/14/09
Franklin Takes a Quasi-sabbatical
I'm in the middle of efforts to self publish a second edition of 'The
Myth of Self Worth', so I won't have much time left for Focus. The
first edition sold out, and like-new used editions are selling for as
much as $200. This is an absurd situation, and I am now working to
publish a slightly revised edition that will be marketed at a
reasonable price if I can negotiate a decent arrangement with the
monumentally greedy Amazon. (I actually lost money on every sale of
the first edition, which became an Amazon bestseller.) I wrote the
book to help people who are mired in irrationally based neuroses. The
selling of my book for $200 is antithetical to the purpose of the
book, which was to wage a battle against the dominant and
pernicious self-worth psychology that has infested our schools.
I'll still be reading a few articles and intermittently passing along
any I judge to be worth reading. I chose today's selection because it
underlines the role Obama has played in protecting and enhancing the
banking and financial system that so badly failed this nation through
mismanagement and outright fraud. With Obama energetically supporting
a new bill to protect exactly the same kind of corruption in banking
and finance that all but sunk the nation, enough Dems have joined
hands with the GOP to once again insulate banking and finance from
proper supervision or legal restraints that would block the kind of
corruption that nearly sunk the nation, and whose effects are still
felt in growing unemployment, foreclosures, and escalating inflation.
I must repeat that President elect Obama even illegally bribed the
black caucus to garner enough votes for Congress to dish out a vast
sum to the people responsible for the chicanery that caused the near
collapse of the financial system. The giveaway would have been blocked
had it not been for the secret actions of a sleazy president elect.
Today's Quotation
'The business of lending blood-money is one of the most thoroughly
sordid, cold-blooded, and criminal that was ever carried on to any
considerable extent among human beings. It is like lending money to
slave traders, or to common robbers and pirates, to be repaid out of
their plunder. And the men who lend money to governments, so called,
for the purpose of the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their
people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen.
And they deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be
got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived.'
Lysander Spooner, 1808-87, 'No Treason'.
One of his niftiest books was 'Vices Are Not Crimes'. It's easy to
imagine what he would have said about the huge sums turned over to
Wall Street, sums that were milked to dish out mind boggling bonuses
to the bankers and financiers who defrauded huge numbers of working
class Americans with home loans whose implications were not fully
understood by the home buyers. Were Spooner alive today, he would be
writing withering attacks on Obama and his shadow cabinet. Back in
Spooner's era, the media were willing to investigate and gleefully
expose financial and commercial predators.
The concentration of the media under the direction and support of the
Clinton administration has eliminated the writing and publication of
critical exposés. While 9/11 was one of the most obvious false flag
ops in history, reporters who report obvious truths are fired, and
professors who reveal the scientific impossibility of the official
story are also fired. Bill Clinton may have done more harm to this
country than any president yet. Without a decent fourth estate, there
is little chance of any real reforming of an increasingly corrupt
government, despicable laws, and a plethora of sleazy representatives
in Congress and on the Supreme Court.
Warmest regards,
Richard
===============================================
14 December 2009 list@wsws.org
US House passes pro-Wall Street banking bill
by Barry Grey
The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill, backed by the
Obama administration, to revise government regulations covering banks
and financial firms. The bill has been widely reported in the media as
the most sweeping reform of bank regulations since the New Deal
measures passed in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929. It is
being cast as a rebuke to Wall Street for its role in precipitating
the financial crash and recession, and a major tightening of
government oversight of the banks.
In his weekly address on Saturday, President Barack Obama hailed
passage of the House measure as a major step in restoring “free and
fair markets in which recklessness and greed are thwarted.” He used
the bill’s passage to strike a populist pose, decrying the
“irresponsibility of large financial institutions on Wall Street that
gambled on risky loans and complex financial products, seeking short-
term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term
consequences.”
At the same time, he made a point of allocating blame for the economic
crisis on the American people as a whole, chastising “millions of
Americans” who “borrowed beyond their means, bought homes they
couldn’t afford, and assumed that housing prices would always rise and
the day of reckoning would never come.”
Despite having pointed to pervasive fraud and corruption on Wall
Street, Obama made clear that his “reforms” would not bar financial
speculation, but only ensure that “the kind of risky dealings that
sparked the crisis would be fully disclosed and properly regulated.”
As part of the Democrats’ public relations effort to placate popular
anger against Wall Street, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “We
are sending a clear message to Wall Street. The party is over. Never
again.”
Pelosi to the contrary, Wall Street’s “party” continues unabated,
notwithstanding the social devastation its profiteering has inflicted
on the American and international working class. There can be little
doubt that Obama and the House Democrats were determined to pass a
bank regulation bill in advance of the announcement of year-end
bonuses on Wall Street, which are likely to surpass $28 billion and,
at least for some of the biggest banks, set new records.
The Democrats’ claims for the administration’s financial regulatory
overhaul are fraudulent. The measure passed by the House does nothing
to reverse the deregulation of banking carried out over the past three
decades—which has dismantled the restrictions imposed in the 1930s—or
introduce serious structural reforms to limit, let alone ban, the
speculative practices that have become increasingly critical to the
accumulation of profit and personal wealth by the American ruling class.
Obama and the congressional Democrats have rejected capping executive
pay or reining in credit default swaps, collateralized debt
obligations, structured investment vehicles and other exotic forms of
speculation that played a major role in the financial crash.
Far from limiting the size and power of the big banks, they have used
the crisis to encourage a further consolidation of the banking system.
As a result of the disappearance of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers,
Merrill Lynch, Wachovia and Washington Mutual—to name just the biggest
bank failures—the four largest US banks today account for 70 percent
of the country’s bank assets, as compared to less than 50 percent at
the end of 2000. The process of consolidation will accelerate under
Obama’s regulatory scheme.
Its most important innovation is the establishment of a “resolution”
process giving the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board unilateral
authority, without congressional approval, to seize large bank and non-
bank financial institutions before they fail. The cost of such rescue
operations is to be borne in the first instance by taxpayers, with
major banks subsequently to be charged fees totaling $150 billion.
Even if the banks were forced to pay these fees, the payments could be
stretched out over years.
The “resolution” provision amounts to the institutionalization of
government bailouts of the banking system, as opposed to the ad hoc
methods that were employed after the financial meltdown of 2008.
One provision of the bill, which has garnered little comment either by
its official proponents or the media, would give the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC), with the consent of the treasury
secretary and the Federal Reserve Board, the power to “extend credit
or guarantee obligations … to prevent financial instability during
times of severe economic distress.”
The House bill passed by a vote of 223 to 202, with 37 Democrats
joining all of the Republicans in voting “no.” For the measure to
become law, it must also be passed by the Senate. That chamber is
currently considering its own version of a regulatory overhaul, and is
not expected to vote on a bill until some time next year.
Indicative of the social interests that determined the substance of
the House bill was the body’s vote to reject an amendment which would
have allowed bankruptcy judges to reduce the mortgage principals of
homeowners facing foreclosure. More than 70 Democrats joined with the
Republicans to kill the amendment, which has been fiercely opposed by
the banking and mortgage lobbies. Obama has tacitly dropped his
previous support for this revision of the bankruptcy laws, in
deference to the banks.
In another open sop to the banks, the House bill significantly weakens
the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the
Enron and WorldCom scandals. Sarbanes-Oxley empowers the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC) to conduct audits of the internal
controls of publicly traded companies in order to detect the type of
accounting and business fraud that contributed to the collapse of
Enron, WorldCom and other corporations at the beginning of the decade.
The House bill contains a provision exempting companies with less than
$75 million in publicly traded shares from such audits, a step that is
seen on Wall Street as the precursor to similar exemptions for large
corporations. The Wall Street Journal on Saturday hailed this
provision in an editorial entitled “Sarbox Routed in House,” in which
it urged the SEC to “consider relief for larger firms.”
Aside from the “resolution” authority provision, the House bill
establishes a council of regulators, led by the Federal Reserve, to
oversee major financial institutions. It requires so-called “too big
to fail” institutions to increase their capital reserves as a hedge
against future crises.
The much touted Consumer Financial Protection Agency to be established
under the bill has been watered down to the point of near irrelevance.
At the behest of the banks, the author of the bill, House Financial
Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Democrat of Massachusetts),
incorporated provisions exempting 98 percent of US banks from the
agency’s oversight, as well as auto dealerships and retailers. He also
included a provision giving the federal government the power to
override more stringent state consumer protection laws.
Another major provision ostensibly brings the derivatives market under
federal regulation. This currently unregulated market in credit
default swaps and similar murky deals between banks, hedge funds and
other corporations—estimated to total nearly $600 trillion—played a
major role in the collapse of the insurance giant American
International Group (AIG), which, in turn, nearly toppled the global
financial system.
However, the House bill contains exemptions and caveats that, in
practice, allow the major players in the derivatives market to
continue to function without serious government oversight. The bill
exempts so-called “customized” derivatives—among the most lucrative of
such contracts—from oversight by federal regulators. Virtually all non-
financial firms that employ derivatives are exempted. So-called
“standard” derivatives are to be traded on privately owned and
controlled clearing houses with close ties to Wall Street banks. The
actual powers of federal agencies over the clearinghouses are tightly
circumscribed.
The bill does not change the basic functioning of credit rating firms,
which played a key role in the financial meltdown by awarding top
ratings to mortgage-backed securities that were based on unviable sub-
prime loans. These companies will continue to be paid, as before, by
the very banks and financial firms whose securities they rate.
On executive pay, the bill includes a toothless provision for bank
shareholders to cast an advisory vote on the compensation packages
awarded to bank officials.
The legislative process that produced the House bill is a mockery of
democracy. The banking industry has spent over $330 million to lobby
House and Senate members on the regulatory scheme. Lobbyists have been
hard at work for months wining and dining key legislators, whose
elections were funded by millions in campaign contributions from the
banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, etc.
Wall Street lawyers have helped draft the details of the House bill in
closed-door meetings, while Obama and his top economic advisers have
conferred repeatedly with the CEOs of the most powerful firms.
The character of the bill can be gleaned from the fact that both
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the director
of the White House’s National Economic Council, were intimately
involved in the deregulation of the banks that preceded the financial
crash. Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
before being picked by Obama to become his treasury secretary. In his
former post, he played a key role in orchestrating the bailout of the
banks during the Bush administration.
Summers was treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and was instrumental
in the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which
separated commercial banking from investment banking, as well as the
passage of a law deregulating the derivatives markets.
The guiding premise of the banking bills in the House and Senate is
that the capitalist “free market” must at all costs be safeguarded,
along with the personal fortunes of the financial oligarchy. The
informing notion behind the proposed changes is to allow the banks to
return to business as usual, recouping their gambling losses at the
expense of this and future generations of working people, while
setting in place mechanisms for the government to more effectively
manage the next financial debacle.
End
Franklin's Focus 12/12/09
Re the Religiosity of the Supremes
Six of the Supreme Court justices are practicing Catholics. Justice
Stevens, who will soon be celebrating his 90th birthday, is one of the
three Protestants on the court. He will almost certainly be replaced
by an Obama selection. His last selection was a Catholic, as if we
didn't have enough of them already. Six of the Supreme Court justices
currently are Catholics.
Will Obama appoint still another Catholic? His recent appointment of a
Catholic to make a total of six Catholic judges was obscene. Yet nary
a single voice of dissent over choosing still another Catholic was
heard up on the Hill. Not even a murmur was heard. Obama almost
certainly likes the conservative bent of Catholic judges. He certainly
will not be looking for a true liberal when he makes his next
appointment. Another Catholic would suit his closet conservatism quite
well. That would make for a body of seven Catholics and two non-
Catholics! On top of winning a Nobel Peace Award, Obama might be
sainted by the Pope.
Religion has been intruding more and more aggressively in civil
matters. It intrudes on textbook publications, classroom curriculum,
hiring and firing of teachers, health care, and so on. It also
intrudes on the teaching of history, philosophy, logic, and so on.
American high school graduates are becoming dumber and dumber as a
result of religious interference with the teaching of information and
reasoning. The educational system in America is a form of medieval
scholasticism due to religious oversight.
And religion is now increasingly intruding on our judicial system.
I predict Obama will look for a Supreme Court justice who has made two
or three low profile liberal rulings, but who is otherwise
consistently conservative in his or her rulings. This will hold true
especially with regard to constitutional issues. Obama is far to the
right in his reading of the Constitution. The fact he has refused to
undo a list of unconstitutional actions by Bush suggests his disdain
for the Constitution. Obama also seeks to create a so called 'unitary
presidency', a code name for a more dictatorial presidency. Will he
therefore nominate still another Catholic to the Supreme Court? Quite
possibly. Is he set on transforming the executive into a still more
authoritarian branch than what Bush managed to achieve? He obviously
is headed down that road. So the more Catholics on the Supreme bench,
the better for Obama's purposes.
Keep in mind that a Catholic justice is always under a papal club that
can exile him or her from the Catholic Church. For that reason, it is
not likely a practicing Catholic Supreme Court judge would ever vote
to retain Roe v. Wade if its constitutionality were to be put before
the Court during the coming years. Also consider this issue. Would a
Catholic Supreme Court stamp its approval on the forced teaching of
creationism in biology classes across the nation? I can see no reason
to believe they would not do so.
Also: keep in mind that the papacy has always seen Muslims as being
nothing short of emissaries of Satan. Catholic Supreme Court justices
will most likely readily support wars directed against Satan's
domains, which would secretly please the Holy See.
Professor Cass Sunstein, one of America's notable Constitutional
authorities, is currently on leave from his teaching position at
Harvard while serving as a quasi-secret member of Obama's shadow
cabinet in the White House. IMHO Sunstein is a borderline neofascist.
He and Obama were close colleagues for years at the notably rightwing
Chicago School of Law. Sunstein was, and still is, the person Obama
relies on exclusively for advice on constitutional matters. Obama
would love to place him on the Supreme bench. Sunstein is so far to
the right, however, I don't think Obama would dare to nominate him to
replace Stevens. It's one thing to appoint right wing religious
fanatics to run Obama's wars in the Middle East. Nominating closet
neofascists to the Supreme Court just might be a little sticky.
Jonathan Turley, a superb professor of constitutional law, has been a
regular opponent of Sunstein's antidemocratic interpretations of the
Constitution. His attacks on Sunstein's view of the Constitution are
often posted at Turley's website. (One of my fantasies is an election
of Turley to the U.S. presidency. Wow!)
Keep in mind that the perfectly competent top military person in the
Middle East was demoted, and US Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal
formally assumed command of American and North Atlantic Treaty
Organization troops in Afghanistan. McChrystal is a religious fanatic
who has openly declared that the war in the Middle East is 'a holy war
against Islam'. Similar fanatics were appointed elsewhere following a
little noticed purging of 'overly' secular generals and admirals. On
this and other Obama doings, the media seem to wear blinders. (If I
were president, I'd appoint Andrew Bacevich as the top general in the
Middle East. He is ten times smarter than the mentally disturbed
McChrystal.)
I must insert here the fact that Obama, speaking before a Nobel Peace
Award audience, declared with great solemnity that he was strongly
against holy wars. Ye gods. That the chosen, number one guy running
the war in the Middle East has labeled the Middle East war a 'holy
war' was totally lost on our subservient media. It used to be an oil
war. Now it's a holy crusade according to the top general, while it
tacitly remains an oil war for the president. Let's hope the idiots
who gave him a Nobel peace award now understand the paradox they have
mired themselves in. Oh well, that award has always been political,
and this latest horror is not uncommon. I'm sure you remember the time
the fascist hawk Henry Kissinger was so honored.
Slate, which is a website dedicated to jurisprudence, has taken the
bull by its horns and waded into the taboo subject of religious
affiliation among Supreme Court justices. This is an important
breakthrough article, and I hasten to reprint it for my dwindling pool
of readers. Now all we need is a prominent article dissecting the
Obama purge of secular generals and admirals and the appointment of
religious lunatics to wage a holy oil war in the Middle East.
I've appended the Slate article for those who are interested.
Religion remains as perhaps the greatest curse of human history along
with wars over territories and resources. The more secular a country
is, the more civilized and just it is. Denmark, a notably secular
country, has the happiest population in the world. An international
scientific survey year after year finds that the Danes are the
happiest people in the world. They also are among the least religious.
You may recall that Denmark was the first country in the Western world
to legalize pornography. As I recall, a cascade of articles, speeches,
and so forth followed on the heels of this ungodly, mind boggling
horror. Americans were passionately convinced Denmark would break
loose from the continent and sink into the lowest depths of Hell. An
epidemic of sex crimes were sure to follow. Our media were unanimous
in that prediction. Fair maidens across Denmark were suddenly in grave
danger.
Instead, Denmark kept plodding along as one of the most civilized,
rational countries in the world with the world's happiest population.
What was deliberately overlooked by the media avalanche condemning
Denmark for legalizing porn was the fact that sex crimes were cut in
half overnight in Denmark! I never saw a single American press report
of this amazing phenomenon. The vast majority of Americans to this day
do not know what happened in Denmark. The fact is that if porn were
once again banned in America, sex crimes would probably climb! They
might even double! Try telling that to a mindless Christian. I can't
even convince Christians of what Jesus actually said in the Book of
Mark. They invariably refuse to even look!
As a final thought, I am absolutely convinced that a requirement for
being a justice on the Supreme Court should be that the candidates do
not have a set of superstitious beliefs. That strikes me as minimal.
The justices are supposedly wedded to the employment of logic and
evidence when making decisions. Evidence that a candidate holds
beliefs based on logical fallacies and false evidence should be
conclusive as to the lack of fitness for being a judge. Instead, it
ironically is an unspoken requirement in America for judges to be
superstitious.
Today's Quotation
'Atheism can be understood not simply as a denial of religion, but as
a self-contained belief system... a commitment to the view that there
is only one world and this is the world of nature.
'Goblins, hobbits ... truly everlasting gobstoppers... God is just one
of those things that atheists don't believe in, it just happens to be
the one thing that for historical reasons, gave them their name.'
('Gobstoppers': a British term for a large chunk of very hard candy.)
Julian Baggini, British philosopher, editor of 'Philosophers'
Magazine', and author of 'Atheism: a Very Short Introduction' (2003)
Warmest regards,
Richard
==============================================
Dec. 10, 2009 Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2238088/
Why Americans can't talk about religion and the Supreme Court.
by Dahlia Lithwick
When Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 89, retires—and he's expected
to in the next year or so—there will be no Protestant left on the
highest court in the land. Will President Obama be pressured to
appoint one? Popular opinion once held that even one Catholic was too
many on the court. Today there are six. But would anyone even notice
if Obama appointed a seventh to replace Stevens? Once upon a time,
there was an outright religious litmus test for Supreme Court
appointees. Today religion is almost irrelevant in appointing new
justices.
All of which raises a question: Are the days of caring about religious
diversity on the high court behind us? Or is it merely that the days
of talking about it openly are behind us?
We generally don't talk much about religion and the Supreme Court. We
talk about the need for race and gender diversity on the court in
brave, sweeping pronouncements: The court needs more women, we say, or
more Asians, or more gay and disabled people. Because all those things
will impact the law. But when it comes to talking about religious
diversity, it happens in whispers, if at all. Because it might impact
the law. For a small handful of Americans, the fact that six of the
nine justices on the current court are Catholics is an underreported
national scandal. But for most, it's just quirky news.
Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor surprised folks in October when she
was asked about the lack of geographic diversity on the court. Her
candid response? "I don't think they should all be of one faith, and I
don't think they should all be from one state." But O'Connor has long
been one of the bravest women in America. Most of the time, the
suggestion that there should be greater religious balance at the court
is met with cries of religious intolerance and persecution.
Those who do talk about religion and the court—generally on the left
and right extremes of the political spectrum—think it matters. They
are people like Pat Buchanan, who noticed last summer that the court
is now comprised of "six Catholics, two Jews and one Protestant,"
whereas:
…the least represented minority in America on the U.S. Supreme Court?
Not Catholics, who have two-thirds of the seats. Not Jewish-Americans,
who though 2 percent of the population, have 22 percent of the seats.
Not African-Americans, who at 13 percent of the population have 11
percent of the seats. And not Hispanics, who at 15 percent of the
population will have 11 percent of the seats. No, the most
underrepresented group of Americans—nay, the most unrepresented
minority, the largest group of our fellow citizens never to have had
one of its own sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in the modern era is—
Evangelical Christians.
Buchanan's not wrong to say that if the public can lobby like crazy
for racial and ethnic diversity on the court, the need for religious
diversity and proportionality must matter as well. Yet the mere
suggestion that there are a lot of Catholics at the court is still
seen as, well, constitutional loutishness. Talking about a judge's
religion is about as tasteful as talking about her gynecologist. Just
ask Chicago Law School professor Geoffrey Stone, who argued two years
ago that Catholicism was the principal reason the court had changed
its position on the constitutionality of partial birth abortion
between 2000 and 2007. As Stone put it at the time:
Here is a painfully awkward observation: All five justices in the
majority in Gonzales are Catholic. The four justices who are either
Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent. It is
mortifying to have to point this out. But it is too obvious, and too
telling, to ignore. Ultimately, the five justices in the majority all
fell back on a common argument to justify their position. There is,
they say, a compelling moral reason for the result in Gonzales.
In her terrific new biography of Antonin Scalia, USA Today's Joan
Biskupic shows why Stone's observations were so painful for him to
make. Scalia, in an interview, pounds the guy: "Now he knows that
that's a damn lie," Scalia tells Biskupic, of Stone's Five Catholics
hypothesis. Scalia goes on to say that Stone's charge "got me so mad I
will not appear at the University of Chicago until he is no longer on
the faculty." Indeed Scalia is most annoyed with Stone because, as he
says, "I had been very pleased and sort of proud that Americans didn't
pay any attention to that. It isn't religion that divides us anymore."
The idea that religion no longer matters at the high court is an
alluring one. It suggests we are making progress: If we are past
caring about religion today, the theory goes, we might someday get
past caring about race and gender, too. It's possible. But it's also
possible that something as intimate and complicated as religion is
simply very difficult to talk about, whereas we can't stop yakking
about race and gender.
Scalia—the court's most outspoken Catholic—has also been the most
vocal proponent of the argument that his religion just doesn't affect
his judicial views. He does not, as Biskupic points out, follow
Catholic teachings on the death penalty, for example. Moreover, he
claims that his strict textualism is the best protection against
letting his religious views overwhelm his legal reasoning. As he has
said, "If I were an evolving constitutionalist, how could I keep my
religion out of it? That is precisely one of the reasons I like
textualism…you don't have to inject your own biases and prejudices."
But then Scalia's contention that his religion doesn't shape his legal
thinking at all looked at least somewhat wobbly this fall, when he
claimed at oral argument in a case about a cross on government land,
that it was "outrageous" to argue that Jewish war veterans might not
feel honored by a memorial shaped like a cross.
Still, those who have attempted to argue that one's religion does
inform a justice's constitutional thinking have encountered some rough
sledding. How to answer, for instance, Scalia's argument that William
Brennan—also a Catholic—was one of the staunchest defenders of
reproductive rights? Those who insist that a justice's religion
matters on a court that decides moral issues ranging from abortion to
capital punishment, bear the heavy burden of connecting religiously
neutral opinions to unspoken (or even subconscious) religious biases.
Geoffrey Stone took another run at the data recently, in response to
the Biskupic book, asking himself whether his earlier observation
about the abortion cases was unfair. His conclusion:
Of course, none of this necessarily 'proves' anything. The five
Catholic justices appointed by Republican presidents since Roe often
vote together on a range of issues having nothing to do with their
religion. … But Gonzales does raise interesting questions about
whether and to what extent judges are and should be influenced by
their religion, their ethnic background, their race, their life
experiences, and their personal values.
Stone's basic conclusion—that the relationship between a justice's
religion and jurisprudence raises interesting questions—is hardly
controversial. But like so many interesting questions about the
justices, that doesn't mean we're going to talk about it. And, to be
sure, even if one could prove that their religion affects judicial
thinking, what then? Is there a cure? Some critics, such as Joyce
Appleby, a UCLA historian, have claimed that Catholic justices should
recuse themselves from cases in which the Catholic Church has taken
strong stands. But that is neither practical nor fair. Others, like
Marci Hamilton, merely urge the justices to be more careful about
preserving the appearance of religious neutrality, by avoiding things
such as their annual participation in the Catholic "Red Mass."
Professor Michael Dorf at Cornell Law School has argued, I think
persuasively, that it's not so much the justices' individual religions
that matters, but whether they are, "Catholic" or "Protestant" with
regard to their respect for sources, texts, and any intervening
precedent.* Borrowing from a framework laid out by University of Texas
law professor Sanford Levinson, this approach suggests that Catholics
see the Word of God as mediated by Church teachings. Whereas
Protestantism "emerged after the printing press had come to Europe,
and it encouraged the faithful to read and make sense of the Gospels
for themselves, without the requirement of obedience to Rome." Under
this reading, Scalia is a Protestant when it comes to textual
exegesis, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is, well, a Catholic. Dorf's larger
point is that it's the justice's approach to evolving precedent that
matters more than which church he attends.
Professor Stephen Prothero of Boston University is right too. He has
written that none of this mattered, anyhow, when a sixth Catholic was
elevated to the high court this summer, "the story is in the silence."
Amid all the focus on Sotomayor's race and gender, nobody cared much
where she prayed. It can't possibly be the case that, as Scalia says,
religion no longer divides us. The country is as religiously divided
as it's ever been. But we expect, maybe we even need, the Supreme
Court to be above all that. That's our own article of faith.
Precisely because matters of faith are so intimate, personal, and so
visceral, it boggles the mind to imagine how they might shape judicial
reasoning. Speculating about the constitutional impact of a judge's
gender or race seems almost scientific compared with worrying about
how their religion may come into play. Besides—and perhaps this is the
real problem—for most of us, the Supreme Court itself is still
America's church. The Constitution is its sacred text. And so the
possibility that any one man's personal faith could override the law
is more than just frightening. It's its own kind of heresy.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
End - Franklin's Focus 12/15/09
Fwd. by HR.
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