Amen! For the Athiest Who Performs the Reality of Faith

Franklin Graham’s recent comments as to Pres. Obama’s faith are a perfect example of what’s wrong with allowing foolishness to hang around unchecked. Time lends credibility to foolishness, and eventually people feel they must justify the foolishness. That’s what Franklin Graham has tried to do. But foolishness is foolishness, no matter where it comes from.

How ‘Bout dem 1st Amendment Rights!

Obama the Muslim!

This foolishness of Obama being a secret Muslim, like the hoopla over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” only serves to take perfectly innocuous (yea even noble) ideals of faith and defaming them to the point that the mere mention of the words “Islam,” “Muslim” or “mosque” conjure up anxiety. The real issue is not whether Pres. Obama is a Muslim (which if he were would be perfectly okay) or what the prayer facilities of Park 51 are called, but rather that by making so much of either, anything having to do with Islam becomes disqualified and despised in the public square. This is perilous.

What’s It Like to Be This Brilliant?

Patricia Harris-Lacewell, on the Muslim community center being built at 51 Park Place, multiple blocks from Ground Zero…

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The Fraudulently Named “Ground Zero Mosque”

I agree with Keith Olbermann too, who articulates what I tried to say–only eloquently.

“‘They came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up’ [quoted from German Theologian and Lutheran Pastor Marcus Niemoller]…. Niemoller was not warning of the Holocaust; he was warning of the willingness of a seemingly rational society to condone the gradual stoking of enmity towards an ethnic or religious group or more than one; warning of the building up of a collective pool of national fear and hate; warning of the moment when the need to purge outstrips even the parameters of the original scapegoating, when new victims are needed because a country has begun to run on a horrible fuel of hatred magnified, amplified, multiplied by politicians and zealots within government and without. Niemoller was not warning of a holocaust: he was warning of the thousand steps before a Holocaust became inevitable.”

~Keith Olbermann

On Religious Liberty and the American Experiment…

I agree with almost everything Joan Walsh says on Hardball today, and almost only the last thing proffered by the other two.

Islam did not attack America on 9-11; terrorists did. Peace-loving, law-abiding Muslim Americans suffered losses as great on 9-11 and in the months that followed as any honored with the moniker “9-11 families.” Not only did Muslims lose loved-ones in the towers and as passengers on the planes that crashed that day, they also suffered the psychic trauma of all Americans. Furthermore, their losses were compounded by the demonization of persons perceived to be Muslim, which resulted in a dramatic rise in random hate crimes, racial profiling, unjust arrests and extraordinary rendition.

This is yet another example of conservatives’ ability to name so effectively. A mosque isn’t being proposed for Ground Zero; it’s a community center, to be built at 45 Park Place (multiple blocks away from Ground Zero) by an organization that has been serving that community for years. The underlying nativist renegotiation of our nation’s fundamental ideals as articulated in this debate and the one over the 14th Amendment is troubling. If Americans allow ourselves to be led any further down this road, we may find ourselves in such an emotive and irrational place that good sense and common decency can’t redeem us.

We pray often, “God bless America,” but if we spurn those blessings–the blessings of our best intuitions, the blessings of each other–with what are we left?

Immoral Impediments to Immigration Reform

Thanks to Jeannie over at Sojo for posting my most recent article. She had to edit it somewhat. The original included this cartoon and the meat of it read as follows:

…Progressives can’t win an argument about “illegal immigration.” But the fact is they shouldn’t try. It’s a PR distraction that has served conservatives (and occasionally liberals) well. What Progressives can take exception to—and should—are immoral impediments to the pursuits of human dignity—the basic human dignities of providing food, shelter, education, healthcare and opportunities for one’s self and one’s family. A lopsided debate over “illegal immigration” that only targets one demographic and barely half the problem is an “immoral impediment.” Refusal to take up legislation that creates an economic disincentive for hiring (and, for practical purposes, enslaving) undocumented workers is an “immoral impediment.” This constant round and round about the evils of amnesty, as if we haven’t all been recipients of it (none of us have some grand “legal” right to be here, except we got together and wrote a law saying we could be), without taking the time to critique the reasons for our objections to amnesty, is nothing more than an “immoral impediment.” And we shouldn’t act like this is too hard a concept to grasp. If the First Nations people on Plymouth’s shores had left our predecessors adrift, as beneficiaries of the good fortune those refugees found here, we would consider that a definite “immoral impediment” to our current lives, liberties and pursuits of happiness.

While it is highly unlikely that a mere shift in language would accomplish the deep shift in conversation that needs to take place in order to do justly, love equity, walk honesty, it is a necessary start. Jesus made a very similarly politically consequential linguistic shift when he said, “‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…. [For] if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?”

Not everybody gets it, but if we take off the table meaningless language of “illegal immigration” that obscures the fact that we are a nation of illegal immigrants by someone else’s perspective, a generation from now there will be few for whom that name even resonates.

Kudos to Ratigan!

Not only is Dylan Ratigan honestly, courageously wrestling with the most historically intractable issue in America, but he even gave up the lead chair!

“My Kingdom for a Sound Bite!”

It’s good to see more journalists and even adversarial pundits publicly acknowledge Obama’s pole numbers as a weakness in perception not in accomplishment–albeit a year late! Hopefully his top brass will hear and hire a better PR consultant. (Might I suggest my PR writing professor, Rodger LeGrand.)  Still, until Democrats can articulate their agenda and accomplishments in terms that resonate and stay with would-be supporters, they will never win the war of words in the media.

“…I don’t wanna be the one who can’t let go.”

This is where Les & I are as we prepare to leave Pine Forge…

I just found Lizz. I found her in The Secret Life of Bees (“Song for Mia”), which my sophomores were watching this past week as the culmination to our spring novel. The great news is that she lives in Atlanta, which hopefully means we’ll be able to catch her live in the near future. I want to collaborate with her one day. Here are two amazing live arrangements…