KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

Kerri,

Congratuations on Flyover – great program. One fact, which I have yet to hear mentioned in the discussion of the tomorrow’s question, is the medieval restriction of arms to the upper classes. Like wearing fur, riding horses, and hunting, carrying a sword was forbidden to the peasants. Only the King, his Knights and later the gentry were permitted to bear arms. This is not commonly remembered now, but it surely was in the 18^th Century. I propose that is how the importance of an individual right to bear arms got into our national DNA: it was the sign of a free and equal citizen, not necessarily of an insurrectionist mentality.

As Mr. Justice Breyer has pointed out, the historical context of the Second Amendment is a widespread fear that the new Federal government would suppress the state militias. Mr. Justice Stevens (in his dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller) argued that the phrase “to keep and bear arms” referred to these militias and to the legal requirement of 1792 that men keep a rifle for that purpose. As the nation expanded to places where the rule of law was unreliable, the private bearing of arms became a matter of self defense. This frontier mythology, much celebrated in the movies, is now also in our nation DNA, unfortunately.

In Defense of Our Revolution

“Go out and make me do it.”

-          FDR

As a socialist, a proud constituent of Keith Ellison, a Sanders supporter in the primary, and a contributor to Our Revolution, I have been challenged by recent articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post, recently included in Clippings from N. Boulder indivisible. They have caused me to think about the principles and practicalities of threatening with primary challenges Democratic incumbents who will not say they support single-payer health care now. I have also heard the views of close friends, who have dedicated their lives to public service, who share the perspective of these articles. I have the deepest respect for their views and I want to say that I think they may be right, and that I may be mistaken in what follows.

The disagreement is over strategy not principle. We all share the goal of universal, government-sponsored health care. Frankly, I like the idea of Medicaid for everybody, as advanced by Prof. Sparer [what a delightful aptonym!]. The question is how to get there.

Pressuring sitting senators and representatives sounds reckless, but is it? It wouldn’t be that hard for such people to “take the pledge” and then to negotiate a compromise. Their position would be all the stronger for their ability to point to the significant proportion of their constituents demanding real advancement toward universal health care. Negotiations could also take place with the Our Revolution wing in terms of tactics (timing, alternative proposals, practical realities).  Congressional members who took the pledge but did not perform to Our Revolution’s standards would then be primaried  two years later – or not – depending on how persuasive they could be about the practicalities.

In terms of practical realities, one remembers FDR’s famous request of A. Randolph Philips: “I agree with you completely: now go out and make me do it!“ I offer the attached article by Peter Dreier on the importance of this kind of pressure and “taking it to the streets.” [Although dated – about Obama in 2009 – it can be translated easily by reading “Democratic incumbent” for “Obama.”] The historical section about FDR in the middle of the piece is especially interesting in our moment. Here’s the conclusion.

Like any successful politician, Obama is constantly evaluating the political climate and testing the nation’s appetite for change. Like FDR, he will be bold when he thinks the political climate is ready for bold action. The unions, community organizing groups, netroots groups, environmental and gay rights groups need to create a climate that will make it easier for Obama and Congress to be bold. As FDR said, their job is to “go out and make me do it.”

Could that be precisely what Our Revolution is trying to do?

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As a postscript, I would express slight neuralgia about the tone of the Post op-ed. [I recommend to everyone an essay by Thomas Frank, which appeared just before last November’s disastrous election: “Swat Team – the media’s extermination of Bernie Sanders – and real reform”, Harpers, November 2016. The criticism is mostly based on Post coverage of the primary campaign.] That exasperated tone communicates the view that we on the left  should just shut up and go play in our sandbox while the adults figure out what to do. The prospect of our “going out and making (Congress) do it” is impertinent and wrongheaded.

But what is our alternative? I have suggested one above, but I have the feeling (and it is mostly a feeling) the centrist wing of the Party seems to want us to become back-bench centrists, and to forget about the amazing hope and sense of possibility the Sanders campaign engendered among the young. It is not at all clear to me that this is the best way forward form progressives. [In fairness to the Post it also reported that “In the 2016 campaign, Sanders won more votes among those under age 30 than the two presumptive major-party presidential nominees combined. And it wasn't close.” - “The Fix,” June, 2016.]

My problem with the “adults in the room” is that not only can their experience provide practical insight, but it can also make it difficult to imagine a fundamentally new situation. As James Russell Lowell wrote in 1845, “time makes ancient good uncouth.” On the other hand, those with political experience know that the center is not fixed: it has moved to the right significantly in our own time. It may be big mistake to imagine that the point triangulated by the New Democrat neo-liberalism 25 years ago is still the center. There is no reason to expect even sympathetic elected leaders to move left without our willingness to “go out and make them do it.”

God commends David for considering building a house for Him, but tells him to leave it to his son. So Solomon builds the Temple, the House for the Glory of God to dwell in. But God's words to David, though literally and historically fulfilled by his son, Solomon, were also a type — a pattern — for something later to be revealed.

The son of David, who would build a new house was Joachim, the father of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For Mary's body — the Temple not made with hands — became the dwelling place for the Glory of God, Jesus Christ, God With Us.

The Son of David is also  Jesus Christ, Himself, Who, in His turn, would build yet another house: the universal church, the New Israel, welcoming all humanity and all creation into the Covenant. In this extended typology, Mary is the Ark of the Covenant, hidden out of sight in the Holy of Holkies, and herself the Throne of the Presence of God.

HAMLET, INCEST, AND ELIZABETH I

[Notes on a conversation with sharif Graham]

I thought you would like this,, remembering our conversation about Hamlet. BTW, I meant to mention that it occurred to me that Hamlet's harping on "incest" was an exercise in political-correctness, since Elizabeth I's legitimacy rested on the incestuous nature of her father's first marriage. (Catherine of Aragon had previously been married to prince Arthur, who died shortly thereafter. Henry VII quickly married her off to his second son, who became Henry VIII. This would have been incestuous, according to the same ecclesiastical norm that concerned Hamlet. Catherine, however claimed that her first marriage had never been consummated, and hence was itself a nullity, so her marriage to Prince Henry was NOT invalid.) There was, of course, no way to prove her claim, but - as my professor Edward Rochie Hardy observed - "She ought to have known!" So an important part of subsequent English history is entailed in this strange canon law. I think Hamlet's insistence on the "one flesh" business (Claudius as his "mother") maybe the clue to the Church's thinking: the dominical pronouncement on marriage ("...the two become one flesh, therefore what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder") would seem to imply that your sister-in-law becomes your own sister, for purposes of consanguinity.

When centrism beconess "alternative reality"

A response to one of Rick Moody's valuable digests on resisting Trump.

I want to reiterate how much I appreciate this service. Also, to respond to a particular article about losing our mind on the left. I think it is particularly important for two reasons, tending somewhat in opposite directions:

1) it seems to me that spreading "alternative realities" serves only the adversary. It may feel good at the moment, but it helps to prepare one of the fundamental preconditions of totalitarianism, that reality is a matter of the will.

2) Another way of denying basic reality is simply to line up all the perspectives and allegations - from left to right and select only the "center" as trustworthy. In other words if an assertion is far enough out of the mainstream consensus, it must be crackpot.   Although this may usually be true, it is not always true, and it is another way of saying that reality — like faith — is a matter of the will. However rarely, it is nevertheless true that "sometimes the tin hat fits."

I am afraid that most of us who  [unlike Michael Moore] were surprised at the Trump victory fell into this trap to some extent. Habitual centrists tend to view Moore as a crackpot, don't they?  In my opinion, the arbiters of fact, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles times can be trusted in the facts that they report  [most of the time - see below about Gary Webb]. They are not quite so trustworthy and the facts they decide are not "fit to print."

My own deeper experience of this, from 30 years ago, has to do with CIA cooperation with international drug trafficking. [I am afraid this is still going on: the price of heroin continues to decline and right now it is never been cheaper. Meanwhile, truckloads of manufactured heroin roll from Afghanistan across the big, new, four-lane bridge I saw being built by the USA from Afghanistan to Tajikistan in 2006].

In the '80s,  The Times &al. did not exactly suppress this kind of news, but it did minimize it, relegating it to the back pages. In my opinion that is because it's was so explosive. Powerful interests do have a say. Even the extremely circumspect report of the Kerry subcommittee on the subject, which corroborated the outlines and many of the details of this malfeasance, was reported briefly and then forgotten. There was simply no appetite to kick this hornets' nest.

Then there is the more recent case of Gary Webb ["Dark Alliance"]. The three great newspapers pilloried him as an irresponsible crackpot. Sadly, it appears that he was unstable, and he ended up taking his own life. But that does not obviate the fact that the three major newspapers all misreported the contents of his book. "Dark Alliance" gave the details of the findings behind the Kerry Report. [I considered them rather old news, because I was involved in researching the subject in the early '90s, and most of it was right in the congressional report.] The Times &al, reported that Webb had alleged that the CIA had deliberately targeted African-American communities. That was 

not true.

These communities, themselves, said so — loudly — but Webb had never alleged that. It was a conclusion from his work drawn by the people themselves. At most, Webb documented what might be called "depraved indifference" on the part of the CIA. I believe the rather hysterical reporting of the three major newspapers arose out of their own interest in defending their previous coverage of the matter. They had dropped the ball. They never exactly lied, but they prescinded from the more explosive leads. So,Webb had to be a crackpot.

All this is a long way of saying that we would be well advised to keep a skeptical eye on the arbiters of centrist consensus. As we used to say, "just because you're paranoid does not mean They are not out to get you!"

Response in NYT blog about CIA torture (6/21/17) to a comment that we critics will miss no opportunity to "take down the USA"

It is the torturers who take down the USA, not those who understand that we must never permit it. In my opinion, those who commit these crimes - and those who defend them - do our enemies' work for them by forsaking the values that we are supposed to be defending. If anything is un-American, this is it. If we let enemies scare us into it, America is finished and Al-Qaeda or ISIL don't have to lift a finger. It would be exactly what Osama bin Laden predicted would happen, and we would have become what he said we were. Decadence and moral collapse are what he expected, and he believed he could goad us into it. The torturers hand him the victory.

Gnostic sympathy

For transparently political reasons, Pagels, Meier, &co. find gnostic literature useful. Postmodern critical methodology encourages the conclusion that the Great Church omitted gnostic literature from its account of Jesus as a result of a patriarchal tendenz.  This leaves aside any conclusions about what Jesus might actually have taught, and whose tradition is closer. Such “essentialist” considerations are fruitless, since all we can know is what various groups found congenial for their own reasons.

Many find it congenial to entertain the idea that there is a certain pattern: a sapiential teacher delivers wisdom; his/her disciples eventually and inevitably get it wrong in the transmission, somewhere down the line, and correction is needed. This is the Protestant paradigm. In the name of the original purity of teaching, the tradition must be revised. The pattern resembles the gnostic creation myths: the Demiurge (or his mother, Sophia) got it wrong and the result is the flawed world as we know it. Likewise, genuine wisdom is garbled in human institutions. Periodic revision/purification is necessary. This seems also to be the Muslim paradigm. Moses and Jesus were genuine Messengers, but their followers got it wrong.

Underlying this view is the fundamental presupposition that the human predicament is ignorance. Creation is the work of a half-wit and we are stuck in the darkness of his imperfect product. We are saved by learning the Truth. The world is not to be saved, but individual spirits, imprisoned in ignorance, are to be set free by the infusion of Wisdom. Unfortunately, just as the Demiurge wrought a defective cosmos, so saving wisdom is garbled in the transmission, so it has to be sent repeatedly. Nobody wants this to happen, but we don’t know any better. The problem is located not in our will but in our intellect. Our problem is not sin, but ignorance.

Therefore, the Cross is useless, except insofar as it may be a teaching aid. The Death and Resurrection of Christ make no change in the cosmos. In fact, for some gnostics – as for the Qur’an – Jesus Christ was not even crucified: another died in His place. Pagels attests to her own aversion for the Cross. The modern scholars of gnostic texts – especially the popularizing ones – are frank enemies of the notion that salvation is through the Cross. On the contrary,  salvation is through the teaching of wisdom.