Obama's Peaceable (and Sensible) Ground Zero Mosque Rhetoric

A bunch of folks, including the sometime/part-time governor of Alaska, have accused President Obama of being either A) wrong in his remarks about the “Ground Zero” mosque, or B) unclear or contradictory in his remarks. Neither of these accusations is true. In fact, Obama’s statements on this issue have been entirely correct morally and factually and also entirely consistent. I’d add that I think they are a great example of what “peaceful” rhetoric can be.



Obama said on Friday that Muslims, like anybody else in America, are completely free to practice religion in any way they see fit, as long as they do so within the context of the law. On Saturday, he pointed out that he had *not* said anything one way or the other about the “wisdom” of building this particular mosque, but simply that it was absolutely within the law to do so.


Would we want a president to say anything other than this? The entire purpose of having freedom of religion enshrined in the Bill of Rights is precisely to point out that it doesn’t make a bit of difference what anyone-- you, I, or even the president—thinks about someone else’s right to practice their religion. It’s not a matter of opinion or majority rule. You get to worship God (or not) the way you want to, particularly on your own property. No one, and I mean no one, can possibly offer an argument that says the government could or should interfere with the building of this mosque. At least, no one can offer an argument that would be consistent with well over two centuries of Constitutional law as well as the most basic tenets of the American form of government.

Nonviolence: Lesson #3

Have you heard about the Centennial Park church?

You might remember that in 1996, a terrorist bomb exploded in Centennial Park during the Olympics, killing two people and injuring more than a hundred. Eventually, authorities arrested Eric Robert Rudolph, a sometime-follower of a right-wing Christian identity movement, after he had been found to have bombed several other buildings.

Now, the city of Atlanta is actually allowing a Christian church to be built two blocks away from the site of this terrorist attack by a religious zealot.

Why can't the builders of this church recognize the pain they are causing? Building a church so close to the site of a terrorist attack done in the name of Christianity disrespects the families of those who were killed and injured in that attack. The city government needs to do something to stop this, even if the church is being built on private property.

Greenspan Warns Against Continuing Bush Tax Policy

Economic violence is violence, and the massive redistribution of tax burden onto the shoulders of the middle class via the Bush tax "cuts" was a punch to the gut of the majority of Americans.  Of all people, Alan Greenspan (often in the past a proponent of similar sorts of economic violence) recently warned against continuing the Bush tax policy (as the GOP would like to do, despite their caterwauling about deficits). 

Another good article on the issue by Fareed Zakaria can be found here.

And here's a graphic representation of what happens to the debt if the tax cuts for the wealthy are extended without offsetting cuts.

Peace.

The Overuse of "Hero"

A brief, fantastic column by a soldier on the dangers of using the term "hero" as a synonym with "soldier."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-j-astore/why-its-wrong-to-equate-m_b_655611.html

Peace,

Ted

Nonviolence: Lesson 2

After beginning my exploration of Mark Kurlansky's 25 lessons about nonviolence laid out in his "Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea," I've gotten off track and, well, lazy about continuing my posts. It always seems there's something that "needs" or "should" be done rather than blathering away on the blog, but I'm trying to make this a priority now.

Anyhow, last time, we looked at the first lesson: there is no positive word for "nonviolence." Today, we look at the second lesson.

Kurlansky's second lesson about nonviolence is this: nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them. The idea of having a "robust" military merely to dissuade others from attacking is not nonviolence at all. Such a military will always end up being used actively (even if, as was the case in the invasion of Iraq, its use was disingenuously couched in the rhetoric of "deterrence" and "prevention").

The Russian dramatist, Anton Chekov, famously said that if you have a gun hanging on the wall of the set of a play in the first act, it must necessarily be used in the second. It would seem ludicrous to have such an attention-grabbing prop be there and remain unused.

The gun hanging on the set of the set of the ongoing production that is "The United States of America (Now More than Ever)" is our military.

There have only been a handful of years in its history when the United States didn't have its military in the field somewhere in the world participating in a conflict of some sort. It is a tragic example of the maxim, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." We've spent so much money on our military and made it so central to our national ethos that we find reasons to use it even when it is the last tool that should be used. The current "wars" (which, it hardly needs saying, haven't been wars for years, but long ago morphed into clumsy and violent occupations) in response to the actions of 19 men with boxcutters is only the latest example of this attitude. 

Nonviolence: Lesson 1

I’m rereading Mark Kurlansky’s Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea. If Kurlansky sounds familiar, it’s probably because he was the guy who taught us about the role of cod and salt in history.

In an appendix to the book, Kurlansky lists what he feels are 25 lessons about non-violence that emerge from his overview of its history. As a sort of mental exercise, I thought I’d write a brief post about each of the 25 lessons, on a more or less daily basis for the next month.


The first of Kurlansky’s lessons is this: There is no proactive word for nonviolence.


If you pick up just about any book about nonviolence, this topic comes up. Nonviolence, as the word itself suggests, is defined negatively as an absence of violence. But this isn’t true. Nonviolence in the way practiced by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others is an active act, a positive one. Satyagraha, a word coined by Gandhi for his actions, translates to “truth force.” Unfortunately, it has never caught on (although I’m pleasantly surprised that, as I type this, Microsoft Word apparently acknowledges this word's existence, since no yucky red squiggly line shows up below it when I type it).


What we do and don’t have words for reveals something about our culture. Like the semi-mythical assertion that the Inuit peoples have a gazillion words for “snow” because its so much a part of their lives, perhaps we have so many words for various kinds of violence (and none for nonviolence) precisely because violence is such a part of our culture, while active, peaceful confrontation is so rare.

At the risk of verging into the esoteric, though, I’d suggest there is a word for nonviolence.

Consider the following actions:

Synecdoche Gaza

We’ve now learned that an American citizen was killed on the Turkish ship boarded by Israeli commandos.  Furkan Dogan was shot four times in the head and once in the chest at close range.

Everyone from the Pope to the Secretary General of the UN has criticized the forcible boarding of a humanitarian aid ship in international waters. But many, particularly in the United States (even those critical of Israel’s actions) wonder why the criticism is so one-sided. After all, although those on all but one of the ships used non-violent, passive resistance, the commandos did face physical resistance on the ship where the shootings happened.

There are a lot of reasons for this. First, all of the dead were members of the flotilla. While some commandos were wounded, none were killed. Then there’s the obvious David/Goliath issue, with the well-trained and well-armed Israeli commandos playing Goliath (ironically enough) to the David of a crew of unarmed men and women trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. And then there was the fact that the boarding took place in international waters. While it would have been ideal for all members of the flotilla to practice nonviolence, it isn’t surprising that some would have tried to defend their ship when armed men dropped from the sky to take it over.

If any of these variables weren’t in place, I suspect the reaction would be a bit more nuanced and conflicted.

But there’s also a symbolic—even rhetorical—part of the answer as well. The vision of armed Israelis seizing control of a ship and shooting civilians serves as a synecdoche of the situation in Gaza.