The Godblog: Live from the Berkeley Bubble

There were protests at The Greek Theatre in my neighborhood Saturday as graduates of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law received their diplomas. The proud graduates marched past signs held by protesters hooded a la Abu Ghraib calling for the firing of Berkeley Law professor and torture memo author John Yoo.  

To find out more about Yoo, read this excellent article, "The Torture Professor," by Robert Gammon, from the local alternative paper, The East Bay Express. (The Oakland-based EBE is by far the best alternative paper of any of the cities I've lived in, including New York.)

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/the_torture_professor/Content?oid=727134

For the life of me, I have not been able to figure out why this has not been a bigger issue in Berkeley. One of the most important legal enablers of the Bush administration's imperial presidency is right here in Berkeley, and is a tenured professor at one of the country's most prestigious (and liberal) law schools, and there has been little public outcry over Yoo's extracurricular memo writing. Hopefully the protest and the article, as well as Yoo's pending subpoena before Congress, will be the beginning of a serious debate on issues of torture, human rights, and the future of Yoo's academic career.

(As an aside, one wonders how the Congressional hearing will play out, since Yoo seems to have a fairly dim view of their authority. I guess they'll really have to put the screws to him. Yes sir, he'll be in quite a stress position. But I digress.)

The point of the EBE article is that UC Berkeley should attempt to find ways to revoke Yoo's tenure, or at least censure him. On the surface this would seem inimical to the concept of academic freedom. But, as the article suggests, academic freedom does not mean the professor has the freedom to use his position to do real violence and harm to innocent people. In short, tenure does not give one the right to commit war crimes.

Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley's response to calls for Yoo's firing from the New York Times and the National Lawyer's Guild is a lovely piece of fluffy leftist legalese that avoids any real struggle with the issues at hand:

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/2008/edley041008.html.

He essentially says he is disturbed by Yoo's horrific legal reading of the separation of powers, but that UC Berkeley policies, academic freedom, and "The First Amendment" protect Yoo's tenure.

I do not wish to cast aspersions at Edley, since I don’t know him or his work, but there has to be at least some appearance of conflict of interest in him being a veteran of the Carter and Clinton administrations, and a senior adviser to Barack Obama's campaign, and having to rule on possible investigations of "Berkeley's one conservative," as Yoo is known. Just last Friday, Edley and his wife, UC Berkeley law professor Maria Ecaveste were on Bill Moyers' Journal doing their Marlee Matlin/James Carville act. (He's a senior advisor to Barack, She's a senior advisor to Hillary. Watch them play out a politicized battle of the sexes!) Am I alone in thinking Edley has political reasons not to pursue the Yoo issue? It seems clear that if Barack wins the presidency, Edley will be a central part of his administration, and may one day be standing before the Senate having to win votes from Democrats and Republicans for his nomination to the Federal bench. It would certainly look bad for him politically if he attacked the "academic freedom" of this "conservative." (He's really a fascist, but we'll leave that off the table for now.) 

What I find most poorly argued is Edley's assertion that Yoo is protected under the "First Amendment." I'm not a lawyer, much less a law school dean, but evoking the First Amendment on any issue of writing or expression, regardless of context, is flabby rhetoric. My citizen's understanding of the First Amendment is that it protects me from government infringement of the right to free speech. This freedom does not apply to all aspects of my life including institutional affiliation and employment. In other words, it doesn’t mean I can publish a flyer saying my boss is an ass and not expect to get fired. Nor could I work for the top law school in the country on human rights issues and expect a legal opinion I wrote that not only condones but may have resulted in acts of torture not to have any bearing on my job.  

Again, I point to the difference between a liberal and a leftist. A leftist, as Dean Edley is in this situation, bases decisions on a pre-determined, leftist ideology. Any issue of "free speech" is to be decided by some vague ideological protection from the First Amendment. It does not matter what the actual context of the events are or what the First Amendment actually says. A liberal, on the other hand, takes difficult issues and struggles with them as a moral and intellectual dilemma, knowing the facts may cause him or her to come to a conclusion that is different from initial assumptions about the case.  

In the end, what bothers me is not Edley's conclusion, but his appearance of lack of struggle, and his assertion that to investigate Yoo would "render academic freedom meaningless." Reasonable people may come to different conclusions on the limits of academic freedom in this case without declaring such freedoms moot. The concerns raised about Yoo by the protesters outside the graduation ceremony, the New York Times or the East Bay Express, or the various human rights organizations that have called for Yoo's removal should not be dismissed as out of bounds based on previously assumed ideology. (Edley suggests in his statement that those who disagree with his position are either partisan or "lazy"). 

A good liberal (as opposed to a politically correct leftist) would at least play a little Hamlet on this issue, trying to weigh the imperatives of academic freedom with the possibility that the country's leading human rights law school is harboring a war criminal. But Edley has no time to weigh these concerns. He has an ideology to protect – and possibly a Supreme Court nomination.  

Barack Obama has been skewered in the press over the last week for comments he made at a fundraiser about working class voters being "bitter," and clinging to their guns and religion. This has led the right-wing attack machine to fire up the swift boats, dust off the Dukakis tank helmets, and accuse the presumptive Democratic nominee of elitism. It is particularly galling when George Will and David Brooks, guardians of the aristocratic right and solid beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts, proclaim themselves the Voice of the Common Man and denounce the Democrats on this elitism charge. These are people who think they're slumming if they eat domestic Brie.

I say give me an elite president.

I am tired of the notion that someone who seeks office must flatter and fete the common voter as though he or she possesses some great knowledge unknown to the petty bureaucrats of Washington. "The problem isn’t the voters. It's the politicians."

The fact is American voters have made some pretty terrible decisions in the last eight years. In 2000, there were enough of them who thought it didn’t matter who was president that they didn’t show up on Election Day. Some of those that did voted for a protest candidate who didn't have a chance in hell of being president and wouldn't know what to do with the office if he won. Well elections have consequences, and history has shown us the wrong man won.

In 2004, the voters had the opportunity to right the course. As the current occupant of the Oval Office liked to say, this was the "accountability moment." It was clear before the election in 2004 that he had taken our country into war on false pretenses; the mission was not "accomplished;" the disgusting spectacle of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo had come to light and we knew the United States had committed war crimes in the name of "freedom."  And yet, enough of these all-knowing, rugged-wisdom-of-the-fields voters allowed their fears to get the best of them and re-elected the wrong man. These Jeffersonian Jethros looked an evil government in the face and let it stand in the name of some vague and dissolving promise of security. As George W. Bush once eloquently put it, "Fool me one, shame on you, fool me twice…can't fool me again."

The world is waiting on this great democratic experiment that is America to see if it is going to kick into gear and start working again. It is not up to Barack Obama to prove to the voters that he can be as xenophobic, superstitious, and violent as this country has proven itself to be in the last eight years. Instead, the voters must prove there are consequences for incompetence. They must re-affirm that freedom is meaningless without a modicum of economic equality. The voters must live up to a heritage of Americans that elected an aristocratic planter from Virginia as the first president; that chose a brilliant, though inexperienced, man from the prairies to lead them through America's greatest crisis as a country; that elected a New Yorker who was the height of liberal elite to save it from the Depression and World War II. The American people must buck up and admit they need a president who is smarter than they are. We need an elite president -- someone with a superior education and intellect, someone who can eloquently interpret the American self-image of decency and freedom to an increasingly skeptical world.

It is time for the American people to demonstrate they are capable of looking beyond the "symbol" politics of flag lapel pins, windsurfing, and hairstyles. The American electorate showed a severe lack of judgment in re-electing George W. Bush. They were duped into believing the scion of one of America's wealthiest families, who went to Andover, Harvard, and Yale, and made his fortune placing his family name on failed oil ventures was a "man of the people." For their lack of judgment they got the president they deserved. Let's hope the voters can elect the truly elite candidate this time and re-earn the right to deserve better.  

Recently, Barack Obama has been under fire for comments his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, made, including suggestions that 9/11 happened in part because of American foreign policy, imperialism, and racism. The words from his sermon that have been played over and over again on YouTube and on the news networks were "Not 'God Bless America,' but 'God damn America.'"

From a purely political perspective, as a someone running for president, Barack Obama had to denounce these statements. He also distanced himself from his pastor, firing him from his advisory position in the campaign. (It's been a bloody week for loose-lipped Democratic presidential advisors.)

A recent NY Times article on the issue drew the line from Jeremiah Wright to his mentor at Union Theological Seminary, James Cone (who is quoted in the article). I have studied James Cone's landmark book, Black Theology and Black Power. The basis of black liberation theology can be off-putting to some whites, because it says that Christ is to be found in the struggles of blackness, and whites who don't get that are opposing Christ. The theology grew out of a Christian response to the Black Power movement and is meant to shake people up and get them thinking about the violence slavery and poverty have done to black people in America. That being said, I think black theology has moved on from there, to the point that even many young black people who have grown up in a more tolerant society don't identify with the stark rhetoric of Wright and Cone.

I would have chosen a different way to express the sentiment, but I don't disagree with the core of Wright's statements about 9/11. Although the violence of 9/11 was immoral and unacceptable, it would be an act of Bushian denial to say it had nothing to do with American foreign policy, that the terroists attacked us simply "because they hate freedom." Imperialism has its price. 

And the difference between Wright and his clergy bretheren on the religious right (or even Geraldine Ferraro for that matter) is that he was probably not 100% serious in saying 'God damn America.' This is a man who is susceptible to rhetorical flourishes, especially at the height of a sermon. I don't think he really wants God to 'damn' America as a whole, but to damn the warlike, racist excesses of America. On the other hand, when Tony Perkins of the American Family Association says efforts to stop global warming will lead to gay marriage; when Pat Robertson says Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment against New Orleans; when Bob Jones says different races shouldn't marry each other; in their heart if hearts, they really believe what they are saying. This has not stopped Republican candidates, especially Geroge W. Bush, from seeking their advice, influence, and endorsement.

Let us remember that John McCain has wholeheartedly embraced the endorsement of Texas fundamentalist Pastor John Hagee. Hagee is a radical Christian Zionist who formed Christians United For Israel (CUFI), an organization focused on defending Israel in light of what he reads as biblical prophecy. Far from distancing himself as Obama has done with his pastor, McCain has one of Hagee's support-Israel-at-any-cost, anti-Islam rants featured on his Web site:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/Player.aspx?guid=5ca47a36-c7d8-4cf4-8451-0390c4581916

On the September 18, 2006 edition of National Public Radio's Fresh Air, Hagee, like Pat Robertson, stated that Hurricane Katrina was sent to punish New Orleans for "a level of sin that was offensive to God". He specifically referred to a "homosexual parade" that was to be held a few days after the hurricane struck. (The neighborhoods where the parade was to be held were not flooded during Katrina, so evidently God missed his target and killed a bunch of poor black people instead.) Hagee also said the hurricane was "proof of the judgment of God against Bush administration's pressure on Israel to abandon settlements and the land associated with them."

Hagee also referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "The Great Whore" and the "Anti-Christ" (although admittedly he could have been quoting Martin Luther there.) He refers to the RC's theology as "A Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years, (which) produced a harvest of hate."

McCain's statement about this: "I will say that he said that his words were taken out of context, he defends his position. I hope that maybe you’d give him a chance to respond. He says he has never been anti-Catholic, but I repudiate the words that create that impression."

Sounds like a non-denial denial.

Anything approaching fair and objective reporting would require an airing of Hagee's bizarre rhetoric and McCain's refusal to cut ties with this nut job. I have yet to see that fairness and objectivity emerge from the networks and cable stations that have played Jeremiah Wright's statements on a continual loop for the last few days.

And of course this is all just another attempt to disqualify Obama. And whether it's Wright, Tony Rezco, or Michelle Obama's statements about being proud of America for the first time in her life, no one has yet succesfully been able to implicate Obama by association. The insidious trope that keeps turning up here is that "Obama is too black to be president." If his pastor said these inflammatory things, based on such a 'marginal' ideology as black liberation theology, then maybe Obama really is the second coming of Jesse Jackson, or even Bobby Seale.

Obama can distance himself from the rherotic of Wright, but not the man. He has been Obama's pastor for more than 20 years, and Obama credits Wright with leading him to Christian faith. His book title, The Audacity of Hope, is based on one of Wright's sermons. If someone can prove Obama was present in church during one of Wright's more colorful tirades and didn't walk out with his center-left sensibilities offended, it might hurt Obama in the general election. Then again, at least it proves he was in church and not a madrassa. I have the audacity to hope the American people are smart enough to realize that not every believer believes everything their pastor says.

The afternoon of Wednesday, February 12, was pretty loud around here, as news helicopters zoomed around the city of Berkeley covering one of the biggest anti-war protests to take place here since the 60's. The Berkeley city council was voting on rescinding its letter to the Marines saying they were "unwelcome intruders" in the city, and the Code Pink brigade had rustled up a few hundred Berkeley High School students to protest the change. Several dozen counter-protesters, many wearing t-shirts advertising their branch of the armed forces, had lined up against them. And there were – cue the news cameras – riot police keeping the two groups apart. (I would guess donning riot gear is something like a right of passage for members of the Berkeley police force. Much like losing one's virginity, you probably never forget the first time.)

Since the world is dying for my opinion on this issue, let me just spell out the pragmatic progressive's view of the military. Military forces are a necessary evil of living in an imperfect world. Following a slightly modified Augustinian rationale for just war, they should only be dispatched:
 

1.)    When all other diplomatic options have been exhausted.

2.)    When liberty and democracy are imminently threatened at home, and in some cases, abroad. (A caveat to this rule is that liberty and democracy are not to be equated with the global hegemony or economic dominance of the United States of America.)   

3.)    When authorized by the correct authorities – that is, through a vote for a declaration of war by Congress. 

The Iraq war of course meets none of these criteria. And, as with all theories of "just war," there must always be a recognition that war represents the most profound failure of humanity. There is no such thing as a "good war." All war is evil.

I recognize that the necessity of the armed forces means the necessity of recruiting for the armed forces. I also recognize that if not for economic hardship and/or youthful idealism, the armed forces would be severely short on recruits. It is a proven fact that the 18 year-old mind is more malleable, more susceptible to formation by authority figures than the 25 year-old mind. But there is something sick about recruiters coming into urban high schools with key chains and trinkets (not to mention college scholarships) to entice kids that have few other options to make a major, life-altering commitment before they know anything about the world. 

I respect the kids from Berkeley High who came out to protest the recruitment tactics of the armed forces. These kids are fierce. If anyone has a right to resist the militarization of America, it's the young people who are asked to die in the trenches. Many parents and students from this school have been at the forefront of resisting federal requirements that high schools supply the military with names and addresses of high school juniors and seniors. (Under current rules, parents must explicitly tell the school they do not want their kid recruited. Otherwise, every eligible high school student gets into the Defense Department's database.)  

I see the Berkeley High kids out and about downtown during lunchtime and after school. This is the kind of school where celebrating "spirit week" means dying your mohawk the school colors. Jimi Hendrix played this school's auditorium. This is the first high school to start an African American studies department. The kids seem to be encouraged to no end in their individuality, and their social conscience. And the proof of the approach is in the results. Notable grads of Berkeley High have included actors Andy Samberg, Robert Gant, Rebecca Romijn, and Robert Culp, musician graduates range from Joshua Redman to members of the Grateful Dead and The Mars Volta, writers Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Thornton Wilder, activist Bobby Seale, and technological innovators, filmmakers, professors, and professional athletes too numerous to name. To put it another way, in light of the national coverage the anti-war protests received, when was the last time you heard of a high school that got on the national news for an event that didn't involve a school shooting?    

Many of the voices that want to give the military unfettered access to our young people are the same voices that support "ignorance only" sex education. So if you're keeping score at home, teenagers learning about condoms and birth control will have their fragile psyches horribly scarred for life, but teenagers hearing recruiting officers goad them into joining the military, where they will be trained in how to kill people, will be perfectly fine.

When it comes down to it, the Berkeley city council could have chosen their words more carefully in protesting the Marines' presence in town. Later reports surfaced that the whole fracas stemmed from a misreading of the actual proposal, which included the term "unwanted intruders," despite the fact that several council members, including the mayor, had asked the peace and justice committee to strike that language. This legislative "mistake" cost the City of Berkeley several hundred thousand dollars in police overtime. (I have been doing my part to pay for this city crisis by running up several hundred dollars in unpaid parking tickets.)

But ultimately, someone must stand up to this administration's destructive use of the priceless resources of this country – the most precious of them being human lives – for the prosecution of its unjust war. If the City of Berkeley wants to tell a maverick and imperious government, one that has refused to listen to its people and end this failed military misadventure, not to come into their community looking for cannon fodder among their young people, they are well within their rights.

David Horsey, the editorial cartoonist of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer penned a brilliant cartoon this week, showing Hillary Clinton, dressed as a Sunday school teacher and clutching a Bible, standing in a doorway talking to a child. "Are your parents in? I want to tell them about my Methodist upbringing," she says. The boy turns and shouts into the house, "Mom, the antichrist is here to see you!"

Horsey accompanies the cartoon with a dispatch from New Life Church in Colorado Springs. With 11,000 members, and geographically neighboring the sprawling campus of Focus on the Family, New Life is one of the flagship congregations of the religious right. The church was founded by Ted Haggard, who was president of the National Association of Evangelicals and used to have a standing weekly invitation for a conference call with George W. Bush. He was forced to resign in 2006 under allegations that he had a continuing relationship with a male prostitute. According to church officials, church attendance has dropped 20 percent since Haggard's departure, and giving has fallen 10 percent. Adding to the difficulties of the church, in December of last year, a disgruntled former Christian, Matthew Murray, came onto the church campus and shot four people, killing two, before being gunned down by a church security guard.

In addition to the struggles of New Life Church, the religious right as a whole has seen their influence waning since the 2006 election. After the much-trumpeted but highly questionable ascent of the "values voters" in 2004, the scandals of Haggard, Mark Foley, Ralph Reed, and Larry Craig have eaten away at the religious right's claim to be elevating the culture to greater morality. Likewise, their blind support for the Republican Party has left them in the lurch as the rest of the country has shifted in opposition to Iraq, environmental degradation, and economic inequality. One would think with the year this church in particular and the religious right in general had, they would be in a place of profound self-examination. The kind of self-examination that leads to humility, and perhaps even silence on some of the more controversial issues of society and politics.

Think again.

Horsey writes about an exchange he had with Associate Pastor Bob Brendle after services at New Life Church last Sunday. (On the New Life Web site, Brendle is listed as being on the all-male "executive staff," suggesting he is a member of the inner circle of the church's leadership.) After praying for a churchgoer in the hallway that she will "lead in Colorado against the onslaught of secularism and humanism," Brendle makes it clear that he believes evangelicals will be Party regulars, voting Republican even if they are not thrilled with their choices in candidates.

Horsey then asks if the efforts of Democratic candidates to talk about their faith will have a positive effect. At this point, Brendle takes a mocking tone and says he was at a meeting once where John Kerry pulled a New Testament out of his pocket to try to prove his sense of piety, and that, in Horsey's paraphrase of Brendle, "Nobody bought it then…and it wouldn't sell this year either."

Brendle then says, "If Hillary has suddenly started reading the Scriptures, then I'm glad she's reading the Scriptures."    

The New Testament move sounds like the kind of clumsy gesture John Kerry was known for. Brendle tries to portray Kerry holding a bible as the religious equivalent of his ridiculous turn at dressing up in hunting gear and holding a shotgun just a few days before the election. Except there's one difference, it's a well-known fact that Kerry is a life-long Catholic.  

The current Democratic frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have also been forthcoming about their Christian faith. Clinton, a lifelong Methodist, has spoken of her relationship with her youth pastor and spiritual mentor, Rev. Don Jones, and the help he provided during the Clinton's marital troubles. Obama has described in his memoirs the path to redemption from his troubled youth, and has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ outside Chicago for more than two decades. Considering these two candidates' longtime dedication to their faith, I can only speculate what Pastor Brendle meant when he referred to nobody buying their statements of belief, and Hillary Clinton "starting" to read scripture:
 

1.)    Clinton and Obama's claim of long-term affiliation with the Church is clever ruse, meant to trick voters into electing them.

2.)    Clinton and Obama are members of liberal Protestant churches, not "bible-believing" megachurches, and therefore their professed Christianity doesn’t count.  

3.)    Since New Life Church has in all ways interpreted scripture correctly, the fact that Clinton and Obama hold different positions on abortion or gay rights means they must be ignorant of scripture. 

This statement sums up exactly the kind of arrogance the religious right is known for – the kind of smug self-righteousness that says 'We are the arbiters of what is Christian and what is not. We will decide who is in the Kingdom and who is out.' It mistakes political positions for the gospel, and in this sense, it is quite simply idolatry.

This is why the core of the political movement of the religious right is built on bad faith. If lifelong churchgoers like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not Christian enough because of their political positions, then who's to say you or I may not be Christian enough should we differ on the issues from the self-righteous orthodoxy? And, sadly, members of New Life Church must constantly live with the fear that they are not Christian enough. The dark heart of fundamentalism is the soul-devouring fear that no matter what I do, no matter how much money I give, no matter how many pro-life candidates I support, no matter how many heretics I burn, I am just not good enough to be loved by my Creator. It's the combination of bad theology and bad politics that leads people to destructive judgments and behavior.   

Put another way, if you were subject to a God as unyielding and hateful as the one preached by Al Qaida, as unlikely to forgive any sin you might commit or doubts you may have, would you not fly a plane into a building to guarantee your ticket to Paradise?  

I'll add a note from my personal religious experience. In Irma Bales' fifth grade Sunday school class in the little Presbyterian church in Covington, Kentucky where I was raised in the faith, I was taught it was a sin – a sin – to question the dedication of another Christian. Our church may not have had 11,000 members, a coffee shop, a bookstore, and a 24-hour "Worldwide Prayer Center," but we believed that who was in the Kingdom and who was out was up to the judgment of God, not the judgment of human beings.

New Life Church could be a template for the struggles of the religious right. Spiritual struggle and personal hardship can have a purifying quality. There are signs that the evangelical movement may be maturing, leaving behind some of the divisive culture war politics and becoming a potent force for justice on issues from genocide to environmental conservation. It could be that losing a pastor, or an election, could force well-meaning evangelical Christians to refine some of their positions and purify their faith. But if these hardships only lead to more blind support of destructive theologies and politics, and greater certainty of their own self-righteousness, their trials will be for naught.

National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg has a new book out: "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning," in which he likens current liberal causes to the rise of fascism. Here is a good and challenging interview with the author from Salon.com.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/11/goldberg/index.html?source=rss&aim=/news/feature

I was skeptical of Goldberg's book on "liberal fascism" at first, but found this interview interesting. It brings up some of the problems I have with the ultra-leftist approach in Berkeley. Make sure you read the final few questions, where he says, "an unwanted hug is still oppressive if you can't escape from it." Although I am sick to death of re-litigating the 60's, I agree there was a strong leftist and maybe even fascist tinge to some of the more radical elements of that era.

The article is worth reading, keeping these three indispensible critiques in mind:

1.) When he talks about a smothering kind of "liberal" policies what he is really talking about are leftist policies. Just as fascism may inhabit ground on the right and left, liberalism is a quality in which presumably conservatives and progressives find meaning: i.e. "liberal democracy." The political question should not be how left or right is a particular policy or proposal, but how well does it preserve our tradition of classical liberalism?

2.) He tries to make subtle distinctions in fascist ideologies, suggesting "fascist" does not equal "all things evil." But the pitchfork-wielding progeny of the National Review on Fox News, et.al., have done more to make this equation than anyone, with their inane "islamo-fascist" rhetoric.

3.) As stultifying as the so-called nanny state may be to the daily lives of Americans, there is no comparison to the fascism that has been unleashed by the right in the name of "national security," since 9/11. From black sites, to torture, to Guantanomo, to domestic spying, to politicizing of the justice department, to invasion and colonization of another country, no right-wing pundit has the right to accuse liberals of fascism simply becase they advocate for seat belt laws or national health care. A more interesting book would have been if Goldberg had judiciously and in the best traditions of ideological conservatism taken on the fascist tendencies in his own party. To quote some guy I heard once, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"         

And now I must halve my audience by commenting on some of the really gay stuff that’s been going on in the news lately. Straight people, as non-minority sexual practitioners, you may now yawn with boredom and see if there are any new Paris Hilton tapes on YouTube, or whatever it is you do.

First, Larry Craig. Ah, our dear senator from Idaho. When has fate laid such a beautifully wrapped package into the lap of a gay commentator? (Pardon the innuendo.)  I would feel bad for him if he weren’t so INCREDIBLY guilty. The sound bite I saw was of him saying, “I made a mistake.” “I shouldn’t have pled guilty.” “I have never been gay.” Well then why did you make this particular mistake of signaling to someone in a public restroom in an airport that you wanted to have sex with him?

According to the police complaint, Senator Craig entered a bathroom stall and tapped his right foot on the floor, which, according to books like The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White, was in the mid-20^th Century a sexual signal. Then he ran his hand under the bathroom stall, and the cop flashed him (there I go again) his badge, and the senator shouted “no!” Apparently, Craig was so incredibly guilty about his closeted homosexuality that couldn’t even come up with a lame excuse for his behavior like “I was looking for toilet paper.”

Police and gay men have been meeting in public restrooms for years. Don’t believe for a second that either the senator or the cop were in this particular restroom for ordinary reasons. Craig was there because the restroom had a reputation as a place to pick up a quickie. The cop was there to bust queers. This cat and mouse game is as old as the public washroom. I am always happy to see a family values Republican go down (when will the innuendo ever stop?) for gay peccadilloes. But I must say, as a civil libertarian, I’m not sure what he did wrong. This kind of police entrapment should have gone the way of shag carpeting and leisure suits. But then, so should the need for pathetically closeted gay men to pick up tricks in public restrooms. Seriously, senator, ever heard of the Internet?    

In other news, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (which, despite its name, is the largest and most liberal Lutheran body in the U.S.) voted recently at their bi-annual Churchwide Assembly to allow their bishops the leeway not to remove or punish gay clergy in committed relationships. It was a major step forward, as it basically allows liberal bishops in the church to ordain openly gay clergy as they see fit.

Here was Cal Thomas' reaction, as published in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section:

“The Evangelical Lutheran Church bishops have embraced trendiness and abandoned the very scriptures that are their basis for evangelizing. If these bishops choose to violate God's instruction book, church members have two choices, should they wish to continue to honor the authority of scripture and its Author: They can remove the bishops from office or they can leave the denomination. To remain in the denomination and do nothing makes members co-conspirators in the bishops' apostasy." 

We’ll leave aside for the moment that his theology of the bible is indistinguishable from that of a seven year-old—or Christopher Hitchens. What I’d like to comment on is his denunciation of the denomination’s “trendiness.”

As an evangelical and a former spokesperson for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Thomas is not expected to have attended a national meeting of a liberal protestant denomination like the one where the Lutherans made their decision. These conferences happen during the summers on annual or bi-annual or tri-annual schedules. Thousands of Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists get together in massive convention halls in a protestant-palooza of worship, meetings, and committees. The proceedings usually resemble Congress more than church, with measures and counter-measures being voted on, reports being issued, and bishops and moderators elected. For the last 15 to 20 years, the pressing issue at these national mainline meetings has frequently been gays.

What Thomas doesn’t know (or chooses to ignore) is that these mainline denominational meetings are full of good, mainline people. Red state and blue state people. The kind of people that, as Bill Clinton used to say, “work hard, pay their taxes, and play by the rules.” And these good people agonize over the place of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in their churches. Should they be ordained? Should they be married? What does this say about the state of the family in our church and in society? And good people disagree—often speaking on the floor and voting with tears in their eyes—then hugging members of the side that has “lost” the vote. These are not trendy people. They’re not hippies smoking pot and handing out condoms to teenagers. They’re mostly white, middle class, increasingly aging, and rending their Polo shirts trying to make a decision that is just, compassionate, and Christian.

The reason they struggle is you can’t go to one of these national meetings without getting to know the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members of the church. Gay rights affinity groups in the denominations have made a distinct effort for the last 20 years to make themselves known in their churches. What these gay Christians are doing is telling their churches who their ministers, organists, Sunday school teachers, and deacons really are. And how they live their lives. And who they really love.

And you can’t be a member of any church, whether liberal protestant, evangelical, or Roman Catholic, without knowing about the tragedies. Like Reverend Brent Dugan, beloved pastor of 18 years at Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon, Pennsylvania, who checked into a motel room last November, took a bottle of aspirin and washed it down with alcohol. Before he died, he left a note speaking of his "profound sorrow and sadness, and sense of solemn grief and embarrassment, about what he thought would come to be known about his personal life." His former lover was threatening to expose him as a gay man to the local media. As a Presbyterian I can tell you the Presbytery of Pittsburgh is one of the most conservative in the country. No sir, they’re not trendy. They know what’s what. Thank God they never gave into the “gay agenda” long enough to let Reverend Dugan come out of the closet. He might have gayed up the whole damn church.  

Responding with compassion to the tragedy of those who have died because of their struggle with their sexuality is not licentiousness. Looking at a public servant like senator Larry Craig taking a ridiculous risk because he is so desperate for the touch of a man and wondering if maybe there’s something wrong with society, not with him, does not go against the Gospel. Listening to members of your church who are sharing a profound spiritual truth about themselves is not being trendy, that’s loving people. You know, like Jesus did.

But the Cal Thomases of the world will continue to sneer at the mainline churches for going down the path to cultural accommodation. They will insulate themselves from the very real struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their churches by calling it “trendy.” They will shake their heads ruefully as they chalk it all up to meta-theories of a hedonistic society run amok. Meanwhile, gay people will fight for their lives.

Recent news from the front of the War on Terror ™ has not been good. I'm not just talking about the continued loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the larger ideological struggle between freedom and tyranny.

Last weekend, the Democratic-controlled Congress caved on a crucial revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, giving our incompetent amnesiac Attorney General even greater powers to spy on American citizens. The same week, Jane Meyer of the New Yorker reported on a Red Cross report outlining what appears to be systematic, CIA-led torture of detainees at so-called "black sites" around the world. The report is based on testimony by the prisoners and details cavity searches, caging, nakedness, prolonged sensory deprivation, suspension from one's arms, waterboarding, and sleep deprivation.

Some of these prisoners are known Al-Qaida operatives, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who have been trained to "disassemble," in the charming parlance of George W. Bush. But the Red Cross reports remarkable coincidences in the stories of the prisoners, even though many of them were held at different sites and kept separate from each other. If the prisoners have "disassembled" about torture, this also leads to the question of how reliable any information they may have coughed up (along with their own blood) would actually be.

The importance of others besides Shiekh Mohammad at Guantanomo Bay and the black sites is not known, and will never be known, as they will never be able to face a trial considered fair by any United States court. Based on the length of their uncharged detainment and the interrogation techniques of their American captors, their cases would be thrown out of any real court of justice immediately.

These affronts to basic tenets of American democracy have been explained as necessary to "national security." It leads me to wonder what exactly security means if a government is able to spy on its citizens and "disappear" individuals without a trial to secret torture sites on the edge of the world.

Not to get all philosophical here, but I'd like to take a step back and remind everybody that "security" does not actually exist. We are all going to die of something one day. Security is an illusion of safety that we use to shield ourselves mentally from the dangers of everyday life. As something utterly indefinable yet something everyone wants, it makes a wonderful product, which is why when someone uses the word "security," you should assume they're trying to sell you something, be it an alarm, shares in a company, or a war.

Another use of the word represents an attachment to an object the owner believes will give him or her safety, as in "security blanket." The word used in this context means a flimsy defense mechanism based more on infantile psychology than actual protection. This is the kind of psychic association the government was hoping to dredge up when they named the "Department of Homeland Security." The DHS is a massive, enveloping, maternal bureaucracy -- like a child's 'blankie,' it may cover a lot of territory and make you feel warm, but won't make you any safer. 

The only strategy terrorists have is to cause enough fear and mayhem that a society abandons its principles and lashes out at the innocent and (celebrated) guilty alike, increasing sympathy for the terrorists' cause. In this sense, the destruction of the World Trade Center was a smashing success. From their positions in hell, the 9/11 terrorists must watch gleefully as George W. Bush, their perfect foil, dismantles American democracy and stokes the fires of jihad around the world, all in the name of "freedom."    

The phrase we learned in history class was, "Give me liberty or give me death." We were taught this phrase as a founding philosophy of our democracy, but let's be honest with ourselves, most modern Americans don't believe it. A better statement representing the current American psyche would be, "Give me liberty or give me security." It's a false dichotomy the Bush administration has sold with shocking effectiveness.

As Americans, we have had more than our fair share of security. Protected by oceans, we were spared the brunt of the slaughter that decimated Europe in the last century. Secure in the resources of a vast continent, we avoided the starvation, poverty, and colonialism that have kept much of Asia, Africa, and South America under heel for 400 years. September 11^th was the exception to the rule of safety in America. Frightening as that event was, it was no excuse to lose all attachment to reality. I am not going to die in a terrorist attack and neither are you. You and I are going to die of cancer, heart disease, accident, old age, or some other hazard of a wealthy and stable society.

I have benefited greatly from the security of this nation, and I'm grateful for the sacrifices of those who have secured the blessings of liberty for my generation. But let me make this clear: If my "security" is based on the torture of other human beings, regardless of violence they may have planned or done, if my safety is dependent on the destruction of laws designed guarantee liberty to all people, if my personal protection is based on the government spying on me or my fellow citizens, then I don't want it. I would rather die in a terrorist attack. 

Being an American means taking on an element of risk. It's about recognizing principles of liberty and equality beyond the mere preservation of one's being. If people lucky enough to be born in this country are not willing to tolerate the danger of democracy, there are plenty of dictatorships and monarchies that would be glad to have them as subjects.

At the risk of giving political opponents ammunition, I have to say I understand just how horrible it must have been for conservatives to sit through Bill Clinton's presidency. A child of the sixties and a Vietnam War protester (in another country! Dear God!) he was an ardent supporter of abortion and gay rights. For the family values crowd, it must have been their worst nightmare to have the network news regularly discussing the president's engagement in oral sex (when the moralists weren't carping about it in just as graphic terms on their own media outlets.) The whole eight years must have seemed like one long, national nightmare.

I know how they feel.

As a self-defined "pragmatic progressive," the last six years of the Bush presidency have seemed a little like being held prisoner in my own country. I despise almost everything George W. Bush has done as president, and have been tempted to offer my own bumper to the fleet of cars in Berkeley announcing the last day of Bush's presidency. What I want to know is, is my (and the entire Bay Area's) hatred of Bush's presidency any more legitimate than the right wing's hatred of Bill Clinton's presidency?

What I've never understood about Clinton hatred is what policies the right disagreed with, beyond the obvious hot-button social issues? In other words, other than his party affiliation and his representation of the Boomer, former hippy ethos the right thinks is destroying this country, why did they hate him so much? Yes, he made a moderate increase in income tax for top earners while instituting tax breaks for the middle class. This was met with predictions on the right of death, disaster, and depression to the economy. The actual result was the largest continual economic expansion in American history, a balanced budget, and projected surplus for the next ten years. What else did they hate about Clinton? Was it welfare reform? NAFTA? Was it "Don't Ask Don't Tell?" (A policy George W. Bush says is "working"-- if you define "working" as "eliminating desperately needed Arabic linguists from the military." Linguists, who are, apparently, all gay.) Was it his law enforcement program that put 100,000 cops on the street? (A program Bush has decimated, with an unproven but possibly relational increase in crime.) Was it starting a war with a country (Serbia) that didn't attack us, with the intention of bringing about regime change and starting them on the course to democracy? Well, yes, the right hated that, but they later had to eat their words. Besides, Clinton's war actually worked.        

Meanwhile, as a representative sample of the moderate left and a man with my finger on the pulse of the country, I can easily name off the top of my head at least ten real live policies of the second Bush administration I disagree with. 1.) Bush's massive redistribution of income to the wealthy that sent the national budget reeling back into staggering debt. 2.) The oil industry setting energy policy. 3.) Christian organizations that openly discriminate against LGBT people and people of other religions being given government funding. 4.) Bush's "leadership" after 9/11, which was ham-handed and more frightening than the terrorists. 5.) Understating the obvious, invading Iraq. A move that has alienated our allies, emboldened our enemies, and dangerously depleted our armed forces. 6.) Detaining individuals without charges or the right to a fair trial. (No citizen of any country should have this done to them, even if they are labeled by the government as "terrorists." I would rather die in a terrorist attack than see this sacred principle destroyed.) 7.) Government eavesdropping on American citizens. 8.) Outing a CIA agent for political gain. 9.) Cronies and political hacks holding office simply because they are loyal to the president. 10.) The bizarre, fourth-dimensional executive/non-executive vice presidency. 

But that's a liberal's list. What about the rest of the country? Bush's approval ratings continue to hover at a Nixonian 35%, where they have been roughly since the Hurricane Katrina debacle. If we make the pollster's rough assumption that a third of the country is reliably conservative, a third is reliably liberal, and a third can be persuaded either way, this means Bush has the support of his base, but no one else. He's hated by his enemies, and largely disliked and mistrusted by those in between.

Clinton's popularity as he left office represented a nearly mirror image of this situation. His approval rating was 66%. This means he was hated by his enemies (who happened to control the House with a significant enough majority to impeach) loved by his base, and either liked or at least tolerated by those in between. It is hard to imagine any scenario where George W. Bush will leave with a similar approval rating.

Despite the right's rabid hatred of Clinton, they must face the facts: he was a relatively popular president with most of the country. They must also face the reality that in their continued support of Bush, they are squarely in the minority. If nothing else, it's impossible to portray dislike of Bush as the result of some kind of rabid lefty minority of "haters."

The lack of logic doesn't stop the right wing from making the argument, as demonstrated by Rush Limbaugh on July 24, 2007: "Can you imagine…how this irritates the kook fringe base of the Democrat Party and Pelosi and Harry Reid? They are trying to disrupt George W. Bush's confidence; they're trying to shred it; they're trying to get everybody in the country isolated from him, including other Republicans.

Yes Rush, the massive failure of this incompetent administration is the fault of a few kooks who have used their liberal mumbo-jumbo to fool the country into thinking this brilliant president is actually a disaster. Those bastards.

I don't hate George W. Bush. He seems like an affable enough man in public, even with his political opponents. He's a caring father and husband, and I believe his storied conversion from a booze-loving frat boy to faith and personal responsibility was genuine. 

He also sees issues in black and white that only exist in shades of gray. He fills his administration with hacks and yes-men whose primary test is loyalty rather than competency. He doesn't know and doesn't care how people who don't agree with him think. And he interprets change in policies that aren't working as an admission of failure. In a fishing store owner or a golfing buddy, these are qualities that might range from aggravating, to mildly irritating, to endearing, depending on how the person pulls it off. But in a President, these qualities add up to a severe lack of character – worse than any tryst with an intern could possibly indicate. 

Me, I don't hate the man, I hate what he's done to our country. When Clinton was in office, the right couldn't object to what he had done with our country so they hated the man.

The word from the Bay is that Cindy Sheehan is planning to run against Nancy Pelosi if the Speaker doesn’t introduce articles of impeachment against President Bush. To say that this is merely a political move meant to keep Sheehan in the news is to misunderstand Bay Area politics. Last November, the good citizens of Berkeley, CA voted in a city-wide referendum to advise Congress to impeach the President and Vice President. (So far, Congress has yet to act on the city’s recommendation.) Every day, in Berkeley, Oakland, and that little burg across the bridge (San…Something), one is confronted with signs that say, “The world can’t wait: Impeach Now.” One creative prostheletyzer on a sidewalk recently handed me a flyer and the tantalizing offer, “Want to send Cheney back to Hell?” This spring, a group from the Impeachment Now camp undertook a daring action: they chose several beaches around the Bay Area and spelled out “Impeach Now” using footprints over wide swaths of sand. Not only did this serve the purpose of educating several thousand seagulls, but it combined two of the Bay Area’s favorite pastimes: left-wing politics and hedonistic enjoyment of the natural environment. 

Sheehan's “campaign” is likely a change in tactics meant to keep the discussion about ending the war in the news. There are people here, however, who will take her seriously, donate money, volunteer time and seriously think she has a chance at getting elected. 

This, of course, would be a bad idea. Nancy Pelosi is the most liberal official to hold the post of Speaker in at least 20 years. She is as Californian lefty as they get. But she got her position by making the hard, at times morally contradictory, choices she had to make to achieve power. The “compromise” on torture the Democrats hammered out prior to the November election was one. No sane person compromises on torture (John McCain!). But if the Dems had dragged their feet on this “national security bill,” it may have led to their defeat in November, and the disappeared of Guantanamo would have had no better chance of receiving a fair trial under continuing Republican rule. Likewise with the choice not to send another war funding bill for President Bush to veto. The Democrats could likely have gotten away with another round of chicken with the Chicken Hawk in Chief, but much more than two vetos and Congress gets labeled as “obstructionist” and fires up the Republican base. As it is, the GOP base is eroding faster than those “Impeach Now” sand sculptures on the beaches around San Francisco. Let us also remember that if Geroge Bush is impeached, Satan himself, Dick Cheney, (officially) becomes president. If Bush and Cheney are impeached simulataneously (as proposed by the good citizens of Berkeley),  presumably, the president would be...wait for it... Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the very person Sheehan is proposing to run against for Congress.

Despite my respect for her for firing up the anti-war movemnent, there’s something that’s always bothered me about Cindy Sheehan. I understand her role in the drama that has played out since this disastrous war began. As a mother of a lost soldier, she speaks with the authority of the bereaved. (I love the right-wing critics who say she is exploiting her son’s death; as if her “exploitation” could even approach his country’s exploitation of him.)  As a radical, she is an outlying point on the graph that shifts the average number set to the left. But she and her cohorts in the Code Pink brigade seem blind to the implications of middle age boomers doing media stunts from the 1960’s to stop an unpopular war. Their resistance has been about as fresh as the Boomer generational reruns that play out during PBS pledge season: Woodstock documentaries, new age gurus selling self-empowering spirituality, and performances from rock stars grinding guitars into their dotage. It allows their opponents to portray the war’s opposition, which has been widespread, cross-generational, and surprisingly quick to develop, as the same old hawks vs. doves, hips vs. squares, realists vs. idealists psychodrama of the Sixties. The reality is that this war has never had any real sustained support; it has not required the kind of against-the-grain idealism that it took to resist Vietnam, nor has it brought about an agonizing culture war at home. With the war in Iraq, after a brief honeymoon of going along with the President simply out of respect for his office, Americans pretty quickly and decisively concluded this was the wrong war at the wrong time. Unfortunately, as leaders tend to do when they have made a massive mistake costing the blood of thousands of innocent people, this president has proven immune to the cries to end the destruction.

Which leads us to the second part of Sheehan’s proposal: impeachment. Lest we forget, despite the 2000 Florida shennanigans that cost Al Gore the presidency, George W. Bush won reelection outright during the second term (this is of course, also disputed here in Berkeley). As Bush acheived a modest victory in 2004 and the punditocracy predicted a permanent Republican governing majority, others of us predicted the worst case of buyers’ remorse in American history -- and we were right. But I can't help but notice that since Nixon, during the sixth or seventh year of a presidency, it has become kind of an American ritual for certain organized parties to demand impeachment, whether the scandal involved has been Watergate, Iran-Contra-gate, Monica-gate, or Plame-gate. As a country, we need to pose some hard questions about this regular call for the most extreme measure that can be taken in a democracy: the removal by political means of a popularly elected president. Is the ritual call for (and, in the case of Clinton, action of) impeachment simply a reflection of our partisan political culture? Is it a case of the sours after the balloons of election year have deflated and the “sweeping mandate” of reelection runs into political reality? Or does it reflect a genuine reality that presidents tend to do morally questionable, if not illegal, things during their first terms that tend to get exposed in their second terms? Does the presidency naturally attract, even require, politicians who are willing to bend the law in pursuit of power? Is the presidency such a powerful position that the office is—and always has been—abused? I am a strict partisan who has no love for the current president. But for one moment, the partisan howling should stop long enough to ask the question why every president seems to “deserve” impeachment at this point in his administration. 

In Bush’s case, the calls for impeachment revolve around his lead-up to the Iraq War. By now we all know that the intelligence leading up to the war did not support the claims Bush made about weapons of mass destruction and the need for immediate invasion of Iraq. The intelligence was cherry-picked to reach a pre-conceived conclusion for war that materialized through a combination of hubris, incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, cronyism, and groupthink. Is this, however, reason enough for impeachment? I would say no, unless Bush had clear information demonstrating that the WMD did not exist and chose to ignore this information and take the country to war anyway. We may yet find that this was the case, although if he’s kept this secret until now, it would likely be after he leaves office. But deep in his naïve little heart, I think George W. Bush really believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. After all, many members of his administration helped develop them back in the 70’s. He was likely as surprised as most Democrats and administration officials that this was not the case. And his unconvincing scramble to come up with secondary reasons for the war seems to verify this: “Er…we invaded because of freedom, and uh…er…freedom. And one more thing, uh, freedom.” When it comes down to it, the country re-elected this man despite the evidence that the war was waged based on faulty intelligence, and the country will have to suffer the consequences.