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-Danny

Bob Barr!

What this all the way through...

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Being the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we've all, no doubt, been seeing and hearing a lot about the man. But just as with Helen Keller and Albert Einstein, we tend to get a fairly sanitized view of Dr. King, particularly in terms of his views on economics in our society.

On one MySpace forum, a member said

"Remember that one of the 20th century's greatest men and purest human beings was spied upon illegally by the government and even sent a letter by the FBI saying he was a fraud and should commit suicide.

"These same evil politicians now commemorate him, pretending they didn't hate him."

Another responded with the following quotes. Notice the issues Dr. King addresses. Notice the language, the words. And realize that Dr. King is never denounced for saying such things, though anyone who says them today is quickly and vehemently attacked.

I know that I am personally called "naive," "ignorant," and accused of having no common sense whenever I say these same things. But they were good enough for Dr. King. And they're good enough for me.

-Danny
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"...It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-anti-revolutionaries..."

"...The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life..."

"...And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society..."

"...All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?..."

"...We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing'-oriented society to a 'person'-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable to being conquered...."

"...We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism..."

"...Middle-class values stress the importance of career and money. These were not the values which led to the civil rights movement; these are not the values which lead to positive social transformation..."

"...Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice...."

"...The dispossessed of this nation -- the poor, both white and Negro -- live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty..."

"...A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: 'This is not just.'..."

"...Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed...."

Buddhism for Beginner

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The Golden Controversy

I took my kids to see The Golden Compass this weekend and over all I thought it was a really good movie. Now that having been said, I have not read the book(s) but it is on order from the last Scholastic Book Order in my daughter’s class.

There has been some controversy around this film. Some have seen the film as anti-Christianity and pro-atheist. After having seen the film I must admit that the only anti- that I walked away with from the film was definitely an anti-authoritarian theme and some subtle anti-Catholic themes, but nothing striking or worth making a fuss over. Apparently the film toned down some of these themes from the books. I just assumed that this was an example of people being overly sensitive but according to the Wikipedia article on the His Dark Materials trilogy. In the section on Influences, the author is quoted as having some anti-CS Lewis feelings.

So maybe this book and series is an attempt to present a fantasy adventure with a different point of view, and honestly is that a bad thing. The American Family Association and Catholic League have both said extremely negative things about the book and film, but the “U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops described the movie as "an exciting adventure story with a traditional struggle between good and evil."”

I’m sure that I will have more to say on this subject once I have read the books, but this seems to be something that has been a) blown out of proportion and b) something that should have no affect on someone’s faith. If your faith is challenged by a work of fiction, then maybe your faith wasn’t that strong to begin with (or maybe it was one hell of a book…pun intended).

In the end I don’t see anything in the film that should keep Christians away since it really was a movie that focused on the struggle between good and evil. But then again, so did Harry Potter…

Also posted on OklahomaLefty.

When will they burn the Reichstag?

From Josh Marshall:

The Dead-Ender Right and the Bridge They're Building to the 1920s.
It's important to keep up on the war-supporting rump of the Republican party. Here's a post by Dean Barnett, which explains how "the left" is deeply invested in "defeat" in Iraq and for this, among other reasons, is ignoring, denying and generally trying to cover up the good news now coming out of Iraq day by day.

As Barnett writes, critics of the war "have a lot invested in this war failing and failing miserably."

At other moments, the pro-war rump seems to oscillate between heralding the untold successes in Iraq and blaming the critics of the war, who've never had any hand in its prosecution, for what they appear to believe is the inevitable failure of their enterprise.

What I'd like to focus on though is the increasingly clear and no less disturbing trend for the president's defenders to ape the tactics, rhetoric and strategy of the post-WWI German revanchist right, which laid the groundwork for and in many respects evolved into the Nazi party.

An inflammatory comparison? Yes. But the inflammatory nature of the comparison shouldn't scare us into ignoring how strong the similarities are. You see it in the explicit 'stab in the back' rhetoric and the effort to cover up their own authorship and prosecution of the role by blaming their own failures on the critics of the war.

And then perhaps the most telling sign, from an American perspective: As the dead-ender right's plans and dreams about Iraq come under greater and greater strain from the alternative universe of reality, and as the president's popularity wanes further and further, there's a growing tendency for them to think about and write about domestic American politics in terms of violence and extra-constitutional action.

A minor example of this I noticed just yesterday on the Powerline Blog, where Sen. Schumer's (D-NY) call to remove the "presumption of confirmation" from President Bush's court appointments a "coup". "Is This a coup? If not, what is it?" ran the headline to the post.

As the war for faux-democracy looks more and more like a debacle, the lure of authoritarianism at home becomes greater and greater for the war's dead-end defenders. And as redeployment looks more and more likely, they have to keep raising the stakes on the consequences of doing so. Apparently our whole future, our honor, destiny, certainly our safety from the Iraqi insurgents who will restart the insurgency in the US -- all of this is in the balance. The stakes must keep rising because that is, paradoxically, the only way for them to avoid taking responsibility for their failures. And cowardice that militant, in a faction within the body politic, is dangerous for the rest of us.

--Josh Marshall

What Josh said.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Es Gibt Reis!!