Isebrand.com

The Plank in Michael Gerson's Eye

Jim Naughton is the communications director of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC. In "The Plank in Michael Gerson's Eye," Naughton reveals that Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, the man who coined the term "axis of evil," is a member of a schismatic Episcopal churches in Virginia that has placed itself under the authority of Anglican prelate Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.

No wonder Naughton disingenuously assaults Barack Obama over Rev. Wright's comments but writes nothing about Akinola's persecution of gay people in Nigeria and support for a  massacre of Nigerian Muslims by members of Akinola's Christian Association of Nigeria.

IT'S SCOTLAND WEEK! March 30th to April 6th.

It's that time of year again in NYC, D.C., Toronto, Boston, and other cities around the US and Canada -- It's Scotland Week!

From March 30th to April 6th.

You gotta love opportunities like free haggis at Broadway and West 52nd Street in Manhattan! (April 5) I mean, forget the other events like the Red Hot Chili Peppers in concert and whiskey tastings. We're talkin' an opportunity for haggis!

Oh, and let the count down to St. Andrew's Day begin!

If you're heading to Scotland for holiday, I recommend Potteryhouse B&B near Inverness. This recommendation has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I know the owners, honest. (Congrats, guys, on the first daffodil of spring.)

Tonite: Frontline reveals and makes history

Tonight the investigative news program Frontline features the first of the two-part examination, "Bush's War." It draws on the more than 40 reports that Frontline has done on the "war on terror."

Frontline is also making history with online technology related to their programs. From the website:

Across the entire four-hour Bush's War series that will be streamed online, FRONTLINE will integrate and embed in its video player an array of related interviews, background material and video that can be viewed with just a click. In addition, more than 100 video clips of key moments and events in the Iraq war will be the centerpiece of an annotated master chronology which FRONTLINE will publish on the Bush's War site.

Frontline also continues to offer "Watch Online," a fantastic service providing past programs viewable online. I highly recommend "Secret History of the Credit Card," "The Dark Side," and "News Wars."

Pharyngula on OK State Rep and homophobe . . . Call to action

Pharyngula spoke out about Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern. (More here.)

Kerns is the sponsor of Oklahoma House Bill 2211, the "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act". You can tell from the title what it is: a bill that would privilege religious opinions over scientific information in public school classrooms.

My letter to Jacqui Smith MP concerning Mehdi Kazemi

As reported in The Independent:

Mehdi Kazemi is a gay teenager from Iran. He sought sanctuary in Britain after his boyfriend was hanged for homosexuality. So why is Britain so determined to send him back to Tehran – to almost certain execution?

I believe no British Government should aid even indirectly the homophobia of a theocratic state.

I sent the below as an e-mail to the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. You can do the same. Click here to e-mail her.

Dear Madam Secretary,

I am writing to urge the Home Office not to deport Mehdi Kazemi. Iran is a theocratic state that treats gay men and lesbians inhumanly, subjecting them even to execution. Mehdi Kazemi’s boyfriend was executed in Iran. I believe it would be horrible for the Labour Government to force Mr Kazemi to return. Once in Iran, Mr Kazemi’s life—should he be allowed to keep it—would be a living hell given the Iranian authorities’ primitive attitudes towards homosexuality. What is more, it would send a signal to the world that the United Kingdom is not the welcoming place that I know it to be, and that the Government is not a beacon for pragmatic progressivism that I know it aims to be.

Thank you for considering this matter.

Please consider echoing my sentiments by e-mailing the Home Secretary.

House Resolution 888 gains supporters

(Hat-tip to Troutfishing.) Unfortunately, House Resolution 888, which promotes a Christian Nationalist historical revisionism about the United States, has gained new sponsors, surely to the delight of the religious right.

Contact your U.S. Representative today and urge him or her to oppose H. Res. 888.

The Christian nationalist narrative about the United States is gaining traction even in the U.S. Army's ROTC program. Broadly speaking, the narrative, as summarized by an opponent of it, the conservative Baptist scholar David P. Gushee, who calls it a narrative of cultural despair, goes as follows:

[It] begins with the rise of secularism in the 1960s, the abandonment of prayer in schools, and the Roe decision, all leading to an apocalyptic decline of American culture that must be arrested soon, before it is too late and "God withdraws his blessing" from America. While very few conservative evangelicals come into the vicinity of Hitler in hatefulness, elements similar to that kind of conservative-reactionary-nationalist narrative can be found in some Christian right-rhetoric: anger at those who are causing American moral decline, fear about the future, hatred of the "secularists" now preeminent in American life, and the search for scapegoats. The solution on offer [is] a return to a strong Christian America through determined political action....

On Talk To Action there has been very worthwhile examination of Christian nationalist historical revisionism by researcher and Chris Rodda, author of Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternative Version of American History (Vol.1).

"They said this day would never come" for Huckabee or Obama

On the Iowa caucuses and the two winners: Democrats (and a lot of Independents liked Obama. Republicans and especially conservative evangelicals among them liked Huckabee.

I tried to write a post summarizing that despite Huckabee's relative ignorance about foreign policy (or science), disdain for gay Americans, and sometimes happy anti-intellectualism, Huckabee is an insurgent* within the GOP and is honest about helping the poor; but, I couldn't do the subject justice given time constraints. So, I recommend Mike Madden's take on Salon.

I also tried to imagine a General Election match-up between Huckabee and Obama, noting the extreme contrasts it would represent, even at the level of basic facts that might give Civil War historians a chuckle: a Baptist white preacher and governor from the South or a maybe-black-but-not-white legislator and senator from Illinois. There's also their contrasting styles of public commenting. Media personalities last night on the cable news channels drew comparisons between Huckabee and Jimmy Stewart and Obama and RFK. When I re-read my draft of the Huckabee and Obama match-up, it read mostly like a Huckabee hit-piece that it wasn't intended to be. (I'm seriously ready for him to fade though.... I am so tired of Americans picking candidates based on theology and of candidates exhibiting over-the-top folksiness.)

Another contrast I wanted to explore is simply that Huckabee thinks Bush should have used more soldiers when invading Iraq (true from a strictly military point of view), and Obama thinks Bush should not have invaded Iraq at all (true from many points of view). Both candidates are of course fond of biblical allusions, but Huckabee prefers verses about the individual, war, champions, and righteousness, Obama--almost certainly inspired by the Civil Rights movement--verses about liberation.

I clearly prefer Obama by orders of magnitude over Huckabee. But I'm not being entirely unfair in my analysis. I think it would be hard to argue against the simple proposition that Huckabee would be more of a flawed choice for the GOP and the republic than would be Obama for the Democrats or the republic.

But that's not to suggest that Obama is anything like perfect. I'll defer to Walter Shapiro on Salon for more. Would Obama be any more experienced and ready than Huckabee for the world stage? Was JFK at this point in his campaign? Certainly G. W. Bush wasn't sufficiently experienced or ready, yet he won anyway, and in the case of his presidency certainly, the republic's paid a steep price morally, militarily, and financially for this deference to the neocon crowd.

But as a friend said last night after Obama's speech, "The writing is close to the wall." Obama has made a massive difference to this election cycle even if he doesn't win another single state. For me, that prompted this quote:

Let's see if Obama will be allowed to have at least a chance to carry a new light into the halls of the White House. JFK was asked to do the same, and--as most Americans tend to forget--he largely failed to live up to expectations, at least at first, finding that one can be placed on a pedestal from which governance becomes additionally complicated. Obama's not perfect. Neither is he the most liberal, most conservative, most experienced, or most accomplished candidate.

But he may well be the most emotionally satisfying one, the most likely to energize record numbers of first-time voters and inspire as a candidate.

*Updated with a link to a frontpage post on dKos regarding Huckabee's campaign as a people-powered movement against the GOP establishment.

The cross and the lynching tree

If you've not see the Bill Moyers Journal program with theologian James Cone, please view it here. It's a must-see and offers an important and challenging way to view the American experience.

Dr. Cone was a challenging, forceful advocate for what to many Americans will be a new way forward in thinking about race--our republic's self-inflicted wound. After hearing Dr. Cone's sometimes wonderfully almost-inverted or paradoxical perspectives, I came to see even the original Constitutional 3/5's "compromise" differently. It wasn't a compromise between North and South; it was really a compromise between humanism and inhumanity, separate from issues of region or states rights. It was only the humanity of Americans who happened to have dark skin pigmentation that was "compromised." How sick, sad, barbaric, and limiting. (And yes, they were Americans: they--we Americans of a different color--were here and they (we) had to be addressed, even in our founding document! Is that not itself an acknowledgment of something too many white Americans forget: black Americans were here from the start?) So, I think that one way, a probably challenging way, to look at the 3/5's compromise is as a horrific, false beginning, but a beginning nonetheless, and least the one history has stuck us with. The full embrace of the whole personhood of the black American--up from a mere fraction of a person--is what we all must strive for as Americans if we care to see the situation completed and redeemed. That completion will involve many aspects: legal, political, cultural...perhaps even along the way the election in 2008 of a black man for President. But it is a work that needs to be finished soon, for it is so terribly past time for it to be completed.

America must face up that we are one community. We-- you know, if anybody in this society-- if anybody is brother and sister to the other, it's black people and white people because there is a-- there is a tussle there that you cannot get out of. It is a-- it is deeply engrained in our relationship to each other in a way that's not with anybody else--
.....
246 years of slavery.... We have built this country. White people know that. Then, after slavery, segregation and lynching, we still helped build this country. So, it's a history of violence, a history of black people fighting in every American war-- even the Civil War.

- James Cone

It's with the words of Dr. Cone that I will leave you with for now, as Isebrand.com takes a short break for the Christmas holiday. The next post is expected to be on December 26.

Rightwing Christians take over college's Student Association

Hat-tip to Pharyngula. Here's the story, on the blog Halfway There, of a group of rightwing Christian students who have swept the Student Association elections at American River College in California.

As reported in the American River College student newspaper, the Current:

It's not completely official yet, but early results indicate nine out of the 10 candidates elected in the recent Student Association election are members of the former Christian Civilization Club.

The near-sweep is historical in that representatives generally are elected as individuals, rather than as a bloc.

Members of the former club, known for hosting a booth in the Library Quad denouncing Islam, organized an electoral campaign promoting club members, candidates who were on the CCC mailing list, or candidates who ascribed [sic] to the principles of the Christian Civilization Club.

Pharyngula and the Halfway There see a connection between this election and the rise of a virulently homophobic Christianist movement in California that appears to be fueled largely by rightwing conservatism within the Slavic community there.

The tale of the election of these students shows the importance of political organizing. As Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates once remarked to me at a conference concerning the religious right, the key to promoting and defending human rights is simple and not secret, and it's the lesson of the civil rights movement: "Organize, organize, organize." The CCC students organized, and benefited. Students who value human rights must now do the same on ARC's campus.

Strategy of vultures

Devilstower on Daily Kos contrasts Mitt Romney's awkward kowtowing to religion-based Republican leaders with John F. Kennedy's braver stand against those of an earlier time (only just) who would subject politicians and government policies to religious tests. In so doing, Devilstower also calls on Democrats to abandon a "strategy of vultures" relative to progressive goals, such as fighting poverty.

[T]here is a war over the place of religion in American life.... And if you believe in the separation of church and state, you won't be surprised to find that you're losing.
.....
If you listen to the media, it was forty-seven years ago that John Kennedy gave a speech to reassure majority Protestants about his Catholic faith. That's completely untrue  Kennedy never made such a speech. 

Instead, John Kennedy stepped in front of a suspicious, openly hostile audience of protestant religious leaders and delivered a speech in which he adamantly maintained that faith of any sort should not be in an issue. His speech was not an apology for being Catholic. It was a bold demand to hold fast to an "absolute separation of church and state."
.....
We've reached the sorry state where the Republican Party officially and vocally support everything that John Kennedy stood up against in his 1960 speech. The Democratic Party has adopted a strategy on this and many other issues, in which they either stand aside or lend half-hearted support to Republicans. They do this in the hopes that when Republicans push too far, Democrats can pick up the pieces without having offended anyone. That's the strategy of hyenas. The strategy of vultures.
.....
Forgotten in all this are the issues that Kennedy wanted to address in that long ago speech.  The issues that Kennedy called the "real issues" of the campaign. Issues like poverty.

"the hungry children I saw in West Virginia"

Health care.

"the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills"

Inequality and education.

"an America with too many slums, with too few schools"

And the loss of respect the nation was suffering in international affairs.

"the humiliating treatment of our president and vice president by those who no longer respect our power"

What the Democrats needs is a strategy of lions, not vultures: the work of the hunting pride on behalf of those who need to be fed. Instead, it has those who bury their heads into long-dead meat. That's not leadership on anyone's behalf. It's simple weakness and opportunism. Alas, for the "Party of the People."