To think we were once in awe of that tyrannical infant
Even thought he was beautiful, said his long hair was amber grain
Yet we can’t deny we admired his daring
That his royal cloak of purple mountains thrilled us in parade
But now we see his hideous face and turn away to survey The chaos that is our inheritance.
Heavy silence weaves its shroud, accompanied by liberty’s faint dirge Drifting on the wind from the east
I left the bristling circle of wunderkind
Ominous councilors of the age
Harbingers of the end of things
But you continued
Now there are .40 Caliber holes in my wall, deputies and cameras and evidence
I have watched you choose your path
I see you on your road well traveled
Infamy paves it
Sorrow’s the way of it
Representative Peter King, is talking about the radicalization of American Muslims. Apparently he plans hearings in the Homeland Security Committee. I would argue that the radicalization of ordinary Muslims, or Arabs of any persuasion, shouldn’t be so easily assumed; the affinity between Arab culture and al Qaeda is not a natural one.
The barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire and its influence on the Christian tradition didn’t culminate with the Emperor Constantine. Islam was brought to the Arab people in a later period, but by the same means. However, it’s missionaries held beliefs condemned as heretical by the Catholic Church. The end result for the Arab people was the imposition of a culture that differed in fundamental ways from Arab culture. It seems that originally, slavery was part of the culture of the Islamic ruling class. Slavery has always been part of Anglo-Saxon culture. In America, the Union was established with slavery in mind, and Thomas Jefferson was not the only influential American who owned slaves. Muslim slave-traders provided many of America’s slaves. It seems likely that the leaders of radical Islam have more in common with America’s ruling class than with the Arab culture. Their hostility is simply a result of rivalry for the sympathies of the people.
The failure to understand these relationships may be responsible for a comment made on a network news program, illustrating that racism against blacks thrives on a similar misunderstanding. In a discussion between a conservative woman and a black man, the conservative said she would never understand a culture who sells its own people as slaves, obviously assuming that every black person represents the same culture. In other words, he has no one to blame but his own people. In this way, she dismissed whatever point he was trying to make. This has to be the most viciously racist thing I have ever observed. It was probably all the more damaging because it was so insidious.
When American Muslims condemn the violence of radical Islam, there are good reasons to believe them. They should be taken at their word.
Libya, Gas Prices, and the Big Payday at Your Expense
Submitted by Michael Collins, for “The Economic Populist” on Mon, 03/07/2011 – 00:23
Another Triumph for The Money Party
The average price for a gallon of gas rose 30% from $2.69 in July 2010 to $3.49 as of March 6. Most of that 30% has come in just the last few days.
We’re about to embark on another period of let the markets take care of it. The Money Party manipulators are again jerking citizens around in the old bottom-up wealth redistribution program. Their imagineers are writing the storyline right now.
The conflict in Libya is causing the spike in oil prices over the past ten days or so according to the media script. Take a look at the chart to the right. Can you find Libya among the top fifteen nations supplying the United States with crude oil?
Why the Current Panic Over Gas Prices?
The general explanation points to the crisis in Libya as the proximate cause. The anti Gaddafi regime revolution began in earnest on February 17. But if the Libyan revolution were the cause, we’d have to attribute a 50% drop in a 2% share of the world’s oil supply as the cause of the panic. We would also have to attribute the increase in US gas prices to a nation that doesn’t impact the US crude oil supply and, as a result, should not impact the price of gas here.
The speculators have an answer. The Libyan situation entails fears of broader unrest in oil and non-oil producing nations in North Africa and the Middle East. There is unrest, without any doubt. Citizens are insisting that their kleptocratic rulers cease and desist from looting their nation’s treasuries and resources. The demonstrations across the region, revolution in Egypt, and war in Libya are all being fought under the banner of broader participation in government, greater access to essentials like food, jobs, and hope for future improvements. Notably lacking is anti-US rhetoric or religious fanaticism. (Image)
Somehow, the opportunity for secular, democratic regimes equals a crisis for US energy prices. The embedded assumption is that the conflicts leading to new regimes will cause a disruption in the flow of oil. With the exception of Libya, none of these countries have reduced their oil production, including oil producing Egypt. In fact, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates increased oil production to compensate for the short fall due to the military conflict in Libya.
If we don’t believe that Libya is the cause, then we get the excuse of emerging democracies. If emerging democracies fail to catch on as the scapegoat, there will be other excuses.
The Money Party bottom line is apparent. It’s time to take some more money from citizens. Any plausible reason will do. When you own the media, you have no worries. Who’s going to bust you?
The Big Payday at Your Expense
The gas price shock and awe is not evenly distributed. The Western states, New York, Illinois, and Nebraska are taking the biggest hits. There’s some explanation for this but not a very good one. All that matters is taking as much in extra profits as possible while the extraordinary events in Libya and the rest of the region allow a plausible storyline. This time, democracy is the villain.
These gas prices will have a direct impact on those least able to afford it. It will cost more to go to work or look for jobs. Commodities will go up even more than they are now. Transportation for the distribution of all products will have an impact on prices. Tourism will fall off. The feeble increases in hiring may be at risk and there will be more gloomy news about how this all impacts the prospects for any sort of economic recovery.
What’s Really Driving Gas Prices?
In a recent Business Insider column, David Moenning noted:
“At least part of the reason behind crude’s rude rise is the price action itself. Hedge funds and other fast-money types have begun to pile into what appears to be a burgeoning uptrend in the oil charts (take a peek at a weekly chart of USO and you’ll see what we mean). Then when you couple the price action with the news backdrop, this appears to be the new place to be for the ‘hot money.’” David Moenning, Business Insider Mar 6
We have the usual suspects looking for hot money. The fast-money types, as Moenning calls them, smell another victory in the air. Their market activity is driving prices in a self-reinforcing cycle of increases that are highly profitable when you get in and out at the right time (and if you pull the strings for the market, that’s easy). (Image: Fuel Gauge Report)
Who is looking out for our interests?
No one. Have you heard of any congressional investigation? The oversight committees for the Departments of Energy and Commerce are two likely starting points. Nothing. President Obama is threatening to tap the US strategic oil reserve to use market forces to push crude oil and gas prices down. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sees commodity price increases, including crude oil, as a temporary phenomenon. They may create a problem, however.
“Rises in the prices of oil or other commodities would represent a threat both to economic growth and to overall price stability, particularly if they were to cause inflation expectations to become less well anchored,” Bernanke said before Congress last week. Ben Bernanke, March 1
Doing nothing, like Congress, and trying to manipulate market forces, as the president says he might, are not the heavy-hitters needed to stop this latest rip off. They both buy into the belief that there is some sort of occult mystery to why prices are going up. Everyone who benefits will raise prices because they can. They have no concept of enough and there is nobody standing in their way.
What would JFK do?
There was a time when the president of the United States stood up to big business. President John F. Kennedy put his prestige and word on the line when he helped the steel industry and labor unions negotiate a contract that the president thought was fair to all, a deal he hailed as “non inflationary.” Just days after the settlement, US Steel turned around and issued a major price increase. This would have hurt the economy due to the central role of steel at the time.
Kennedy felt betrayed by US Steel and the others that raised prices. He wasted no time in his response. The Department of defense said it would buy steel from the lowest bidder. This would have excluded US Steel and their fellow price gougers. The Justice Department began investigations and issued antitrust indictments by the big steel producers. Kennedy also went to the public to gain support for his efforts.
Big steel backed down. The broader business community complained. The Kennedy administration and others reminded everyone that the government acts in the public interest when business threatens the interests of the people. What a novel concept.
Collins, Michael. “Libya, gas prices and the Big Payday at Your Expense.” The Economic Populist. Available:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/libya-gas-prices-and-big-payday-your-expense
The fear that America’s founders were really only interested in empire is not new. What is not clear is whether Americans believe the rise of empire is merely something that might happen in the future. I think this must be the case. There are a lot of Americans who still believe their vote counts, or they did before the last couple of elections. There are countless people on television and the Internet acting as though political candidates matter, elections matter, betrayals of the people’s trust matter. It seems that these two concepts, American Empire and political insanity, are interchangeable.
But then issues of trust would be important in an empire as well. There have been benevolent emperors with prosperous, peaceful reigns. The Emperorn Franz Josef of Austria was that kind of emperor. There is nothing in the definition of Empire that dictates injustice, economic collapse, and cynical profiteering.
The question of whether we have a viable democracy is only important in this context. Once an empire sinks so low, who can keep it from pillaging the countryside? Yet, democracy must still be a viable concept. It is the only tool we have.
Again it seems important to mention the confusion in analyses of the problem. Who and what are we? Sociologist Wayne Baker observed that Americans hold traditional views similar to third world countries, although America is considered a developed nation similar to western European nations. But then he adds that these views are to be expected in third world countries because of their economic and political turmoil—the traditional, conservative outlook is a natural outcome of the overriding importance of survival in such conditions.
Sadly, this comparison only makes sense on the surface. I suppose it brings to mind dictators who have been in the news, wars and revolutions in South America, etc. But America is nothing like that, is it? To be clear, America has had economic turmoil and war, even though lately the wars have been overseas.
In American history, industrial interests have been guilty of third world tactics, shamelessly oppressing workers. In addition, big business interests have always had close associations with government. Americans have endured cycles where the loss of family farms was rampant. Recently, wealthy farmers who benefited from the loss of these family farms have dictated the country’s estate tax policy.
Today, the current cycle of crisis is merely continuing the destruction of the economic prospects of American families, and is accompanied by political disappointment and disillusionment. Yet Baker associates Americans with Europeans rather than with the people of any of the third world countries. He says the United States’ social and political values make her an ‘outlier’.
Another example of confusion is Mike Stathis’ analysis in his book “America’s Healthcare Solution.” Stathis mentions the waste, fraud and bribery in the nation’s healthcare system, and then offers solutions. But one wonders how the same people who could create such problems, and even perpetuate them, would be willing or able to fix them. Profit has eroded even issues of life and death, finally corrupting the caregivers who have sworn an oath to protect life.
If political power is to be measured by the degree of injustice rulers can inflict with impunity, then we are talking about something else entirely than the difference between democracy and empire. We are talking about criminal behavior. But I’ve just stated the obvious again. Everyone knows people should have gone to jail as a result of this recession, and that they never will. However, the fact that we judge these people by an American ideal proves that the ideal still lives among us.
Stefan Zweig called the fascists of early twentieth century Europe politically insane 1. Writers and activists of today who try to address these problems may wonder if they are politically schizophrenic. Political schizophrenia seems to be as hereditary as the other kind—apparently we got it from our Judeo-Christian forefathers, who deliberately associated Astraea, pagan goddess of the Roman Empire, with the Virgin Mary.
This brings to mind the fact that many British officers in the Revolutionary War were Freemasons who actually failed to carry out their orders during decisive battles. I’m also reminded that only a third of the Colonists were in favor of the War. A third were undecided, and the final third were loyalists. You could say it was the war of, by and for the new ruling class. Judging from their secret dreams of empire, they certainly had the most to gain.
I wanted to talk about a new model for the future, but the time isn’t right for that yet. It seems it is important to first examine the old models and try to put American history in clearer perspective. The idea that America was the first new nation founded from scratch with ideas about liberty, etc. seems to have disguised the identifying characteristics of the new elite and the government they made. The elite weren’t born under Plymouth Rock. They have a history.
I suppose there are a lot of Tea Partiers who would be up in arms about this—if they ever read it. I’m pretty sure there are liberals who would be just as peeved. The Tea Partiers need rescue. There they are on the conservative bandwagon and they don’t know who’s pulling it. A bunch of old groups who have been hovering around for decades saw their opportunity and swooped in. The aim is to keep everything the same, to protect the status quo and their own place in it.
The liberals should know better than to cling to their dogma, but they don’t. Many of them disagree with union busting but defend the healthcare bill, for example. This makes no sense. The healthcare bill threatens the same people who are protected by unions.
I deleted the last post about cultural differences. I sometimes think I’ve written something readable, only to realize later, it isn’t. Part of the problem is that this story has so many side plots. The antagonists would have to include politicians discussing the healthcare debate, for example. Has anyone noticed that when they get to the part where they say “America has the best healthcare system in the world,” they slow down and lower their voice an octave? They all do it exactly the same way! It is as though they think words can create reality. (Hmmm…didn’t Plato say thoughts create reality, or something like that?) Unfortunately, there is just no sensible way to discuss healthcare when the debate starts with nonsense, although one tries to put arguments in order, group related events, and phrase everything as clearly as possible, to put nonsense in a neat package.
The real problems arise when the nonsense is not out in the open. A clarification of America’s founding ideas, as opposed to popular myths, should probably be the starting point but the attempt to search the distant past seems too complicated, not to mention boring, and the story line goes astray with every plot twist. Even if you could get it straight more eloquent essays abound and they are not really getting the attention they deserve. Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, in his narrative about events surrounding the two World Wars, remembered a time when the written word was quite valuable and people eagerly read everything that was published. That changed during his lifetime to the point where nothing had much of an effect. Through improved communication, societies transitioned suddenly from living isolated, peaceful lives to a state of constant awareness of war and atrocity taking place around the world. What would he have said about the Internet?
I’ll try again to find the beginning. The constellation Virgo was important to America’s founders. The cornerstone ceremonies of the Freemasons were apparently timed with this in mind. There is a paraphrase of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue’s new age, “novus ordo saeclorum,” inscribed in the Great Seal of the United States. This refers to “Astraea, the virgin goddess of justice, (who) was the last of the immortals to quit the earth at the end of the constellation Virgo. Throughout the Renaissance…she was associated, on the one hand, with the revival of the Roman Empire and…through Virgil, (she) came to be linked with both letters and empire.” Virgil “identified the new age with the Augustan peace, (but) Christian readers, beginning…with the emperor Constantine himself, saw in the Fourth Eclogue a prophecy of Christ’s birth, made the more convincing by the Virgo easily (related) to the Virgin Mary. In the Renaissance, these Christian meanings buttressed a renewed emphasis on Astraea’s imperial associations, as the French and English monarchies annexed her as a symbol of their claims to inherit the mantle of Rome.” (To be continued…)
Sources:
1. Ovason, David. The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital: the Masons and the building of Washington D.C. Century Books, Ltd. London. 1999
2. Zweig, Stefan. The World of Yesterday. Cassell and Co. Ltd. London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney. 1947
3. Wine, Kathleen. Forgotten Virgo: humanism and absolutism in Honore’ d’Urfe’s ‘L’Astre’e’. Librairie Droz S.A. Geneve. 2000
The views in the previous post represent an attempt to show the connection of Enlightenment ideas to civil religion. Enlightenment criticism and analyses of the Reformation usually convey a sense of loss. This is understandable because the Reformation ended the universal influence of the Catholic Church and its institutions, which had been completely integrated into society. These were traumatic events and represent a painful, confusing period of history. Subsequent analyses tend to be extreme, alternating between fearful regret and maniacal positivism. Bellah’s theory of American Civil Religion seems to represent a complete acceptance of Enlightenment principles. These posts have been an attempt to put American civil religion in a larger context.
In his theory of American Civil Religion, Robert Bellah attempted to attribute America’s sense of community to a common religious factor independent of the church. He said that a specifically American ideology has worked to form a homogenous and unified culture from unrelated immigrants. Because of the United States’ unique beginning, Civil Religion is uniquely crucial to Americans’ sense of unity 2. However, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who first argued that every society needs a purely civil profession of faith to integrate all members. For this reason, the idea of civil religion should be examined in the context of the Enlightenment.
Surveys have shown the concept of Civil Religion is a useful model in analyses of American attitudes 3 However, after the attack on the Twin Towers some were shocked when they observed that the concept has no brakes. Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, went willingly to war in Iraq based on questionable evidence for the presence of al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. Apparently Civil Religion provides no moral compass. In fact, since the fall of the Soviet Union, ‘civil religion’ has been a euphemism for a religion of war. The Enlightenment has been criticized in similar ways.
One goal of the Enlightenment was the end of Europe’s Absolutist political organization. Although Absolutism had been a response to the religious wars of the Reformation, it was seen by the ‘Philosophes’ as an unnecessary annoyance. Two additional Enlightenment concerns were the equality of man and the place of morality in politics.
The Enlightenment was an historical period beginning with the eighteenth century and ending with the French Revolution in 1789. The term Enlightenment also refers to a method of thought developed during this period, which remains influential in political theory. The movement has always inspired a certain degree of mistrust. In the eighteenth century, the term ‘philosophe’ was meant to distinguish Enlightenment writers from other philosophers. The Philosophes were considered ‘popularizers’ of a doctrine, working to influence public opinion in their favor. In the most violent years of the French Revolution, the ideas of the Enlightenment were further discredited because of their perceived role that revolution.
The theory of political Absolutism, which the Philosophes worked to discredit, is attributed to Thomas Hobbes, who observed during the turmoil following the Reformation that humans fear each other. Hobbes argued that an external sovereign was necessary to maintain order in society. But Enlightenment thinkers had a very different view of human nature, arguing that reason creates a virtuous public individual.
In the Absolutist pursuit of peace, Hobbes had declared that personal beliefs must remain private. Publicly, people were expected to agree with the religion of the monarch. But the Philosophes had no memory of the religious conflicts that Absolutism had tried to address. This ‘forgetfulness’ has been an enduring characteristic of modern political rhetoric, one result being that Enlightenment assumptions were in conflict with the experience of the past 4.
The Enlightenment’s religion was deism, which holds that although God created the world, he is no longer directly concerned with the trials and tribulations of humanity. According to critic Reinhart Koselleck, Enlightenment thinkers put reason and the will of society in the place of God (p. 56). In retrospect, it seems clear that one of the unforeseen functions of the Absolutist state was to transition from the Christian focus on the heart of man to the Enlightenment’s obsession with society as a whole. Along the way, the foundation of western thought became a philosophy of materialism. Now all causes are economic or social. In this view, and in my opinion, Capitalist ideology and Marxist ideology can be seen as two sides of the same materialist coin.
Critics have argued that if the Enlightenment was not successful it is because the system had no transcendent values. Such a system degenerates to physical, biological, and economic considerations, and causes more problems than it solves.
Strangely, although Enlightenment thought has become inseparable from Christianity their former differences are no longer discussed. In an older critique from the Catholic point of view, Hilaire Belloc argued that both Absolutism and Enlightenment were solutions for society in lieu of former religious solutions and interpretations. More specifically, he argued that unrestricted capitalism was not a Christian concept. True to his religious point of view, he also argued that capitalism was only made possible by changing social circumstances and by Calvin, who divorced good works from the possibility of human salvation. The only motivation left for industry was personal economic gain 5.
Of course, the guilds and city-states of the middle Ages were another restraining influence on unbridled capitalism. The guilds saw capitalism as different from the economy of the free cities only in its requirement for large amounts of capital. Guild rules guarded against this type of competition making it possible for the common man to become a master of his craft and establish his own shop. The cities of the middle Ages had become free by petitioning the king for a charter. In this way they had cut out the middlemen in the collection of rents and taxes, including Catholic bishops who were an integral part of the feudal system and who collected rents in their own behalf.
The theory of civil religion assumes that other countries differ from America because they share a cultural and religious background Americans never had. However, Europe and America were involved in many of the same philosophical and political debates. And both countries have struggled to find a basis for community in lieu of the church’s influence.
See Also:
Nomads and City Dwellers: Institutions, Worldview
The Current Political Discourse: America’s future
From Thomas Hobbes to John Locke: Putting Ayn Rand Through Her Paces
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe concept of civil religion has been defined, studied, critiqued. Civil religion is a theory that posits a specific set of political ideas shared by all Americans. The ideas have nothing to do with God, but they are sacred because they work to forge a nation out of people who have nothing else in common. Surveys have shown it to be a valid concept. However, after 9/11 some people were shocked to learn that the concept has no brakes. Americans, both Republican and Democrat, went willingly to war in Iraq based on questionable evidence for al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. This was a revelation for many observers who thought civil religion provided people with a moral compass.
I read Robert Bellah’s “Broken Covenant” and I thought he made a lot of valuable observations, but I missed the part about how civil religion makes people wise. Was that really what he was saying? At most, I thought he was presenting a sort of sociological model. I guess I didn’t see how seriously it was being taken. It would follow that civil religion is a replacement for…religion. In a way, it lets American religion off the hook, although it seems that if anything can be blamed for what happened with the Iraq war it would be actual religion, the most vocal one being Christianity.
But I also remember how Wayne Baker compared American Civil Religion to the civil religion of Communist Russia, meaning the Soviet Union’s national identity and sense of community were based on ideology—in their case Marxist ideology. So, apparently all the other religions are not even in the running—civil religion replaced American religion just like Marxist doctrine replaced the church in the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, I really don’t get why a simple article about virgin births and comparative mythology on Wikipedia seemed so offensive to a certain Christian editor that he wouldn’t rest until he’d run me off of Wikipedia. I really have no idea who I’m talking to any more. I am through trying to preface my posts based on what some ‘religious’ people might think. All the evidence seems to suggest we are on ground zero in the realm of ideas. It’s time to start building.