Enlightened America: Yesterday and today

From Facebook on Wednesday, with this commentary by Political Loudmouth:

On the other hand, if you have some little boys we can have sex with, we'd TOTALLY be down with that. Thanks to Being Liberal for this toon.

AND HERE'S the first comment:

I had this discussion recently with a very Catholic friend of mine. (I am a former Catholic) She says that it is "shooing" the baby out. I had to pull out my BASIC level anatomy book and explain how contraception works. That NO BABY IS EVER MADE. You know, I believe these people have their rights to this belief, I even believe they have they should not be forced to dispense if if they are so against it. But, I want it ENFORCED that not one of them EVER engages in pre-marital sex. ENFORCED; check those hymens, bitches!

Thomas Nast (1900)

BUT EVENTUALLY, someone objects:

Okay, I am usually really cool about the stuff you post here, and end up sharing lots of it, but I have to say the bit about "some little boys we can have sex with" is truly tasteless and outrageous.

I am Catholic - a bad Catholic. I am not blind to the faults of my religion but I know many priests and other religious (my older sister is a nun, btw) who've suffered the fallout from the criminal actions of the abusers in the Church, and the poor decisions that were made to cover up their actions by Church administration. Wonderful priests, simply because they wear clerical garb, have been ridiculed and taunted and threatened.

Also, by posting that you discredit yourself and make Political Loudmouth appear just as guilty of ignorance as, say, Fox News.

Pro-Ku Klux Klan cartoon from Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (1926)

WHICH LEADS to more "tolerance" of the "diversity" that progressives so self-consciously espouse. Except when they don't.

I was raised by Christian Scienteists. They took "no medical treament" really seriously, which should be an illegal thing to do to kids. My parents were not comepetant to make decsions for themselves, let alone me.

Religion: always evil.

********, we're all sorry you're a mind slave of a gigantic coven of child molesters and their enablers, aka The Catholic Church, but that you are enslved by them doesn't erase the Truth. And sqauwking at people for daring to state a Truth you are hiding from just makes you into part of the problem. Everytime you defend a priest, you are enabling a child molester, which makes you as bad as they are.

I SWEAR, if this country gets any more "enlightened," "liberated" and "progressive," Catholics -- and other inconvenient Christians as well -- will have to emigrate to communist China for a little comparative religious liberty.

Not to mention literacy.

No dogs or Catholics allowed

On the edge of living memory, the United States had a president who told the nation "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Today, the only thing we can't tolerate is tolerance of those we deem insufficiently tolerant. At its heart, I think that's because we never listened to Franklin Roosevelt in the first place.

We fear. Mainly, we fear the truth when we hear it, no matter from whom we hear it.

We fear those who aren't like us. We fear . . . and we hate. Hate is something that feels better inside one's gut than fear does. So we transform our fear into something easier to stomach.

We know how scared lots of tea-party types have been these last few years. The forces of "tolerance" are quick -- and often correct -- to point that out.

Now, however, we see what Enlightened America fears -- and hates. No. 1 on the list is God. No. 2 are people who take God seriously -- or, rather, those who take seriously the God, as opposed whatever more convenient one we concoct out of the depths of our fear.

Quickie Mart God don't tolerate no Catholics . . . or their inconvenient scruples. That's true in Washington. It's even true in Green Bay, Wis., where the local brownskirts of Planned Parenthood are giving a local Catholic food bank the Susan G. Komen treatment.

AND IT'S TRUE in Denver, as revealed in this Catholic News Agency report:

The Archdiocese of Denver's Theology on Tap program was compelled to seek a new venue after a lecture on religious liberty by Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley reportedly caused controversy among some patrons and staff.

“This was a misunderstanding and we hope to be able to work with the group again in the future,” Stoney’s Bar and Grill owner Stoney Jesseph told CNA on Feb. 10.

On Jan. 26 Bishop Conley spoke to hundreds of young adults at the bar, which is less than five blocks from Denver’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. His topic was “Atheocracy and the Battle for Religious Liberty in America.”

Shortly after the talk, however, organizers were told to find a different location for the program because of its “controversial” content and the fact that that some of the bar staff said they would refuse to work the event again.

“It’s ironic that the talk itself pertains so well to what happened,” said Chris Stefanick, director of the archdiocese’s office for youth, young adults and campus ministry who helps run the event.

Stefanick said he was surprised to hear Jesseph's desire to work with Theology on Tap in the future given that the archdiocese was told by the restaurant that the gathering was “too controversial.”

“Those were the words they used,” he said.

But he suggested that Jesseph’s business partners may have had a role in the decision. “I don’t think it was all on Stoney’s shoulders. Frankly, if it was just up to Stoney, this never would have happened.”

However, for “whatever reason,” he added, “I think the establishment has made it clear that they’d rather not have a public, Catholic event there.”

Theology on Tap is an ongoing outreach program of the archdiocese. It meets in a bar, Stefanick explained, because it intends to provide “a non-threatening place to gather with friends” for Catholics to “draw people into the faith.”

“It’s also a great social connecting point for people to realize they’re not alone.”

The January event was in a section of the bar where other patrons wouldn’t be able to hear what the bishop was saying, added Stefanick, who thought it was only the appearance of a man in a Roman collar that provoked a reaction.

One bar patron, who Stefanick believes was not in a position to hear the talk, shouted obscenities at the bishop.

“The people at the talk couldn’t hear, because the way the amplifiers were set, but the bishop heard him and I heard him.”

A PISS-ANT sports bar in Denver is perfectly free to refuse to play host to Catholics talking about theology because people’s feelings get hurt. Yes, that’s the bar owners’ right.

On the other hand, those who object to Catholics merely talking about religious freedom and contraception hold that the Catholic Church and its affiliates do not have the right to refuse to pay to supply non-chancery employees with something church doctrine holds as profoundly morally objectionable. In other words, "the First Amendment, my ass!"

In what manner does this dichotomy not demonstrate that such anti-Catholic attitudes (and such a willingness to deny certain religious believers basic freedoms) possess all the nobility of those held by the Nazis toward, say, the Jews? Or Custer toward the Sioux? Or Bull Conner toward African-Americans in Birmingham, Ala.?

This is where we stand today: “Unenlightened” Catholics and evangelicals must be legally compelled to affirm and enable all manner of things which offend their beliefs, yet their “betters” in our postmodern society can’t be bothered even to merely tolerate Catholics and evangelicals — or that such actually might possess constitutional rights.

That must be a powerful lot of fear that brings on such a powerful outbreak of bigotry.

HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Death: Love it. Live it. Cheer it.

The prospect of President Rick Perry scares me. The prospect of President Ron Paul, however faint, scares me more.

And the fact that, presumably, universal suffrage applies to a loud -- and monstrous -- contingent at Monday night's CNN/Tea Party Republican debate scares me most of all.

Let me be clear: If crowd reactions are any clue to what the tea-party movement really stands for (and I think they do, given the weirdness of America's present "tea" totalism), then this present darkness, this "constitutionalist" mass insanity not only threatens the American republic but also, if left unchecked, mortally threatens civilization itself.

It represents, in the ironic name of God and country, a mass restating of Cain's guilty query of the Lord: "Am I my brother's keeper?" For Cain had just slain his brother, Abel.

Or let him die because he didn't buy health insurance. One or the other.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

YOU KNOW your political base is a bunch of hateful lunatics when the man who had been pandering to them so effectively admits to NBC News that he was horrified by the tea-bag rabble's heartless reaction.

The morning after a sometimes-rocky appearance in front of a Tea Party debate audience, Gov. Rick Perry said he was "taken aback" by cheers from some crowd members on a hypothetical question of whether a young man who decides not to buy health insurance should be refused care if he develops a life-threatening illness and be left to die.

"I was a bit taken aback by that myself," Perry told NBC News and the Miami Herald after appearing at a breakfast fundraiser in Tampa.

"We're the party of life. We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives."

Perry distinguished from that the issue of "justice," reiterating his strong support and "respect" for the death penalty on a state-by-state basis. "But the Republican party ought to be about life and protecting, particularly, innocent life," he added.

PERRY'S GOT it all wrong. His is not the party of life -- it is the Party of Greed. The Party of Self-Righteousness. The Party of Endless War. The Party of American Hubris. The Party of Demagoguery. The Party of Willful Ignorance. (How 'bout them drought- and heatwave-fueled Tejas wildfires, Governor? No climate change to see here . . . move along.)

And the Democrats are just as bad. Just different -- right-wing extremists cheer for letting the uninsured die of dread diseases, left-wing ones cheer for killing babies in the womb.

Our age has become one where shell-shocked Jeremiahs spend much time invoking, and desperately defending, moral propositions once so obvious they required little discussion and almost no debate. What are tea-party Republicans going to rethink next? The 13th Amendment?

What are "progressive" Democrats going to try to enshrine as a "right" next? Incest?

Don't answer that. Just allow me the small comfort of feeling vaguely foolish for having felt the need to write this flippin' post at all . . . for all the good it'll do.

Such is the state of the nation in this land far, far right (and left) of Eden.

Mayor takes up cross, fights for Them

Repeat after me: Justice without mercy is no justice at all.

During this sad season of empty wallets and cold hearts in America, one small-town Georgia mayor understands this. It probably will end up costing him dearly.

Acting like a true Christian usually does. It was for no small reason that Jesus told His disciples, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."

Today, in state after state across this country, the cross we take up will look something like what Cable News Network illuminates here:

Paul Bridges leans toward his desk, picks up the phone and punches in a number with the fast, laser focus of a man on a mission. The mayor of this tiny town in South Georgia is ready for battle -- and looking for a new weapon.

"I need some help getting a website," he said, spelling out the words of the domain name he wants for a site promoting immigration reform.

The man on the other end says he'll try to help. But that isn't enough for Bridges.

"I really don't know what your beliefs are on this issue," he said, "but I'm going to persuade you."

Bridges wants the federal government to come up with a solution that gives the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States a chance to work here legally.

"You get me an invite to that Tea Party meeting and I'm going ... I'd like to give the contrary viewpoints. Surely one person in the audience is going to be sympathetic."

(snip)

Bridges is one of more than a dozen plaintiffs suing Georgia and its governor, trying to stop the state's new immigration law. They won a reprieve Monday when a federal judge temporarily blocked parts of the law scheduled to go into effect July 1.

One of those sections would criminalize exactly what the mayor of Uvalda does almost every day: knowingly driving a car with illegal immigrants as passengers. The judge also put on hold parts of the law that allow police to ask about immigration status during investigations of criminal violations.

But the legal fight is far from over. It could drag on for months and reach the chambers of the nation's highest court. It's a struggle that pits Bridges against many members of his own party and could hurt his political future. But that doesn't stop the mayor.

THE HEART of Georgia's law -- like so many others that have been, or will be, passed across the United States in these times -- is a basic indifference to the humanity of its targets. Justice is one thing, as is upholding the law. Intentional cruelty and a one-size-fits-all approach to a vast array of humanity and motivations is entirely another.

It is here that American "respect for the law" begins to ape that championed by monstrous regimes we once fought to the death.

Bridges sits on a wood bench in the front row of a courtroom in Atlanta, clutching a notebook. The atmosphere is tense, quiet. He is nauseous and alone.

Friends are waiting in a van in a nearby parking deck. The family has lived in Georgia for more than a decade, but now they are afraid to walk outside.

Bridges is fighting for them, and for countless other friends and former students. His decision to be "the mayor for everybody" led him here.

The family is willing to sit for hours in the heat so he can drive them to a shopping mall after the hearing. Uncertain how the law will affect them, they have canceled plans for the 14-year-old's coming-of-age quinceañera party in case they have to leave the country. They hope to get their deposit back on a dress.

"All rise. Court is now in session," the bailiff said.

Omar Jadwat, an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, mentions Bridges in his opening argument, describing him as "Mayor Bridges, who on occasion helps undocumented friends come from Florida to Georgia."

U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. grills the attorney representing the state.

He asks what would happen if police pulled over an 18-year-old citizen for speeding while he was on the way to the grocery store with his illegal immigrant mother.

As the judge speaks, Bridges nods so intensely that his whole body rocks back and forth. He is encouraged by the questioning. The judge seems to see what he does: a law that makes criminals out of good citizens and tears families apart.

But he grimaces at the attorney's answer.

"It would be no different than if his mother had pockets full of cocaine, and he was knowingly transporting her to go sell it," said Devon Orland, senior assistant attorney general for the state.

THINK about that for a minute.

Repite conmigo: La justicia sin la misericordia no es justicia en absoluto.

It is a finer line than we think between "truth, justice and the American Way" and "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer." That line usually is crossed when scared people blame THEM! -- and then do evil, calling it good.

'Tolerance' is a one-way street

When certain activists and "progressives" prattle on and on about how "compassionate" they are, and how committed to "justice" they are, and how ever-so-tolerant they are . . . you know bigotry and hatred lie just around the corner.

A few years ago, a guy from Miami decided to volunteer in India for the Missionaries of Charity -- the order founded by the late Mother Teresa, now Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and just a step away from sainthood in the Catholic Church. Apparently, Cuban emigré Hemley Gonzalez didn't like what he saw of the sisters' operations there; he founded a group he calls "STOP The Missionaries of Charity."

From what I can gather at the group's Facebook page, Gonzalez thinks the Missionaries don't do enough for the poor and sick. He thinks destitute Indians who could be saved are, instead, dying in the sisters' care.

He and like-minded advocates of "tolerance" think the poor of India must be saved from "proselytizing fanatics" who believe in redemptive suffering.

IT'S FAIR ENOUGH to raise questions about the dealings and practices of the Missionaries of Charity after Mother Teresa's death almost 14 years ago. But that's not what this bunch of bigots is about.

When you're posting pictures of a beloved Catholic nun -- one who may yet become a recognized saint in the church -- with a Hitler mustache drawn on her face, that's not "compassion." That's not "concern for the poor." That's not "tolerance."

And that certainly is not about love of anyone.

What it is . . . is hate. Bigotry. Defamation.

Hemley Gonzalez and his fellow travelers aren't about love of the poor. They're about hatred of the Catholic Church, religious charities in general and perhaps God Himself.

It's not like he's shy about it:

The idea that religious charities are doing amazing work is a fallacy. They often care for others to convert them to their dogma first and their compassion comes second if ever at all.

YOU CERTAINLY can't say that Gonzalez isn't all about unencumbered tenderness (unless, of course, you happen to have a dogma he and his find offensive -- then you get done up as Hitler or get nasty slogans thrown at you). And you certainly can't say he and his aren't all about talking about alleviating suffering.

According to his Facebook profile, Gonzalez' "personal interests" involve "Achieving the end of suffering for all sentient beings." With a smiley emoticon for good measure.

Well, there's one sure way to end suffering -- one secular, utopian fanatics have been seizing upon for ages. Walker Percy nailed it in his final novel, The Thanatos Syndrome. Speaking is an old Catholic priest -- and a recovering drunk and part-time firewatcher -- Father Simon Rinaldo Smith:

"But they, the doctors, were good fellows and they had their reasons.

"The reasons were quite plausible.

"I observed some of you.

"But do you know what you are doing?

"I observe a benevolent feeling here.

"There is also tenderness.

"At the bedside of some children this morning I observed you shed tears. On television.

"Do you know where tenderness leads?"

Pause.

"Tenderness leads to the gas chamber." . . .

"Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century.

"Never in the history of the world have so many people been killed.

"More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together."

Pause.

"My brothers, let me tell you where tenderness leads."

A longer pause.

"To the gas chambers! On with the jets!"

Happy now, Rush?

I'm sure Lara Logan of CBS News is bearing up stoically in her hospital room knowing that she damn well deserved her fate at the hands of an Egyptian mob.

What would we do without Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to give us clarity on these things?

FROM the CBS News website:

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

I couldn't have said it better myself

Do you think the National Organization for Marriage just might have been reading this blog?

Reading this MSNBC story and watching the above video, I would have thought that I couldn't have said it better myself . . . if I hadn't remembered that I already did.

I don't care what you think on the gay-marriage issue (obviously, as an observant Catholic, I'm against it), and I don't care what you think about "big government." But I do think that before people get all paranoid about the power of big government and its potential to sow tyranny, they need to realize that big business is just as capable of reducing us to serfdom . . . and perhaps far more likely to try.

Christianity gets Jobs-ed

Forget Julian Assange.

The most dangerous man in the world just might be Steve Jobs.

Why? Because knowledge is power, communications is the conduit, and Jobs is trying to position Apple -- via the iPhone, iPad and ITunes marketplace -- to be the premier gatekeeper in what he envisions as a "walled garden" of information technology, one micromanaged by himself (Himself?) and his techno-nerd corporate minions.

AND APPARENTLY, Apple just has declared mainstream, orthodox Christianity offensive and banished it from the iTunes app store. From the Catholic News Agency:

After Apple Inc. removed the Manhattan Declaration application from iTunes over complaints that it had offensive material, signers are urging the corporation to make it available again.

The Manhattan Declaration application for iPhones and iPads was dropped last month when the activist group Change.org gathered 7,000 signatures for a petition claiming that the application promoted “bigotry” and “homophobia.”

The Declaration – a Christian statement drafted in 2009 that supports religious liberty, traditional marriage and right to life issues – has nearly 500,000 supporters.

The iPhone application, which was previously available for purchase on iTunes, was removed around Thanksgiving.

CNA contacted Apple Dec. 2 for the reason behind the pull. Spokesperson Trudy Muller said via phone that the company “removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

When asked if Apple plans to release additional statements on the matter, Muller said she had no further comment.

CHRISTIANITY has its truth. Apple, and all the mau-mauers yelling "Hate!" in a crowded app store have theirs. And in a world where truth is relative, and often mutually exclusive, the only currency we have left is power and the ability to subjugate the competition.

It seems I was talking about that just yesterday.

In this kind of an environment, that makes Jobs a really cool Big Brother. It pains me to say this, but "Give me Windows, or give me death!"

Cleanse your brain here

Politics is awful.

It's often hateful. The bullshit is so deep that you'll contract something nasty if you don't wear hip waders and occasionally spray yourself down with disinfectant.

And then there's Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Nancy Pelosi, talk-radio screamers . . . and Steve King. The tea party is outraged -- and largely victorious.

People are still talking big about "watering the tree of liberty" with the blood of tyrants. I am reminded, however, of Gov. Earl Long's question of the arch-segregationist boss of Plaquemines Parish, Leander Perez: "What are you going to do now, Leander? The Feds have got the atom bomb."

THAT'S WHY, today of all days, we need a palate cleanser. That would be this video, I Met the Walrus, based on an interview then 14-year-old Jerry Levitan recorded with John Lennon in a Toronto hotel room as he and Yoko Ono prepared to head to Montréal for their second 1969 "bed-in for peace."



THEN, in Montréal. . . .

Sick bastards = the new normal

See this billboard in Grand Junction, Colo.?

From what I can remember of my college American-history coursework, this would be at least as nasty as any cartoon ever drawn of an American president by an opponent who absolutely, positively hated his guts. Maybe a little more nasty.

It's as nasty as anything the Federalists aimed at the Democratic-Republicans. As over the top as anything the Know-Nothings threw at . . .well, anybody. As nasty as anything a South Carolina Democrat threw at Abraham Lincoln before South Carolinians unilaterally declared him Not Our President and shot up Fort Sumter.

By the time people hate their government -- and its leader -- so much that they're depicting the president of the United States as an Islamic suicide bomber, a stereotypical gay man, a gangster and a Pancho Villa-knockoff Mexican bandit, I think it's safe to say the country is sitting on a powder keg. And here comes a bunch of tea-party crazies knocking flint and steel together.

ACCORDING TO The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, the billboard came from the “constitutionalist libertarian” mind of "artist" Paul Snover. He told the newspaper he wasn't "allowed to say" who bankrolled it.

The billboard, erected along the I-70 Business Loop between 28 1/2 and 29 roads sometime Monday, depicts the four “Obamas” sitting around a table with playing cards showing only sixes bunched in groups of three.

Also on the table is a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a liberty bell, a toy soldier and a statue of Justice holding a balance.

Beneath the Obama caricatures are numerous rats, some of which are labeled as the IRS, trial lawyers, the EPA and the Fed. Sitting above all that is a line, “Vote DemocRAT. Join the game,” which is positioned between two vultures, one of which is labeled the U.N. and the other with the name Soros, a reference to George Soros, a major national Democratic financial supporter.

THE ARTICLE in The Daily Sentinel also gives us some idea of the contempt Snover -- who has described himself as a supporter of tea-party organizations and Glenn Beck's "9/12" movement -- has for the country's duly-elected government:

“The Constitution has been thrown in the trash and burned by our very own government and we the people watched TV while America burned! The enemy is not at the gate, it is a cancer within our own borders,” Snover wrote on the Mesa County Second Amendment Task Force website. “From what I have learned of history and what I see going on in all levels of government, I can but conclude that there is no constitutional republic any more, only a sick tyrannical twisted dictatorship."

IS THIS what tea partiers see as "American values," as opposed to "Marxist" ones?

That Grand Junction billboard and its creator's paranoid screeds are what "patriots" think is appropriate public discourse today? Goodness, what would tea-party favorite John Adams say about this kind of thing?

I think I have the answer to that.

He'd call it sedition, and they'd all be in jail right now.

Be careful what you ask for when you "take back America," people. You just might get it.

We hate us! We really hate us!

Well, this is discouraging.

Not surprising, not by a long shot, but discouraging nevertheless.

Last night, this account of the Delaware U.S. Senate debate went up on The New York Times website. It describes the knives-and-bludgeons gutter fight between tea-party pin-up Christine O'Donnell and her Democratic foe, Chris Coons, where we see the candidates defined, on one hand, as the Red Menace and, on the other, as a papist puppet ready to impose the will of the Vatican upon an oppressed American public.

I can't wait for Nov. 2, can you? From The Caucus blog on the Times' site:

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican Delaware Senate candidate, and her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, hurled personal attacks at each other in a nationally televised debate Wednesday night.

A feisty, aggressive Ms. O’Donnell called Mr. Coons a Marxist whose beliefs came from a socialist professor and said he would “rubber stamp” the policies of the Democrats in Washington. Mr. Coons raised questions about whether Ms. O’Donnell’s faith would drive her positions on social issues like abortion, prayer and evolution.

Pressed by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, Ms. O’Donnell refused to say whether she believed evolution was a myth, saying that “what I believe is irrelevant.” As she did throughout the first half of the debate, Ms. O’Donnell quickly tried to return the focus to Mr. Coons, saying, “I would argue there are more people who support my Catholic faith than his Marxist belief.”

THE DESPAIRING thing about this account isn't that politicians play fast and loose with facts. The despairing thing about this account is that it's, I believe, a pretty fair illustration of exactly how divided, embittered, hateful and raring for a fight we are in America.

Back in September, I thought Jimmy Carter probably was engaging in some slight hyperbole when he said the country is Civil War polarized.

"This country has become so polarized that it's almost astonishing," he told NBC anchorman Brian Williams. "Not only with the red and blue states, President Obama suffers from the most polarized situation in Washington that we have ever seen -– even maybe than the time of Abraham Lincoln and the initiation of the war between the states."


THE MORE I think about it, though, the less I think the former president was engaging in hyperbole.

We've gone through bad times in this nation since 1865. We've fought over communism and Vietnam and civil rights. We muddled through 1968. The constitution survived Watergate.

Back then, however, we had a center -- both socially and politically. We had some degree of bipartisanship, a working across party lines, in the nation's capital.

NOW, we have two extremes. The center did not hold, and there's no Abraham Lincoln in sight.

The economy is as bad as it has been since World War II, people are hurting, people are scared, we're post-9/11, we're at war, we're all going broke, and the sexual revolution has laid waste to the American family. And on top of all that, we're at loggerheads over mutually exclusive notions of "how shall we live, then."

And we hate one another. We really, really hate one another.

Hang on. It's going to get ugly before whatever happens, happens.

All we need is a spark. God only knows what that will be.

The Red Scare: It's baaaaaack!

I was born into a world in the process of losing its . . . stuff.

We refer to this period of American history as the Red Scare. We were scared of Stalin -- and then Khrushchev -- over in the Soviet Union. We were scared of Castro in Cuba. We were scared of "infiltrator" Alger Hiss in the State Department.

The beatniks? Commies. Civil-rights "agitators?" Commies. Martin Luther King Jr.? Dangerous commie troublemaker. Race riots? Instigated by . . . commies.

The media were commies, college professors were commies, folk singers were commies, and the labor unions were commie through and through.

We were obsessed by The Bomb -- which we invented and first used -- because the commies had obtained it, too. In their nefarious, murderous Red hands, it was a weapon of mass terror.

In our hands, it was how God kept the world in line . . . and capitalism safe.

In the world of the Red Scare, rock 'n' roll was a communist plot -- the pinko sons of bitches invented the teenager, after all -- and Mick Jagger was the devil. (No, look at the man!)

HERE'S where we stood somewhere around 1963:




TODAY, the Soviet Union is no more. The Iron Curtain has fallen, and capitalism has seized the day. Even in "Red China." Markets are global, and the bankers really do have more money than God.

And the Red Scare is back.

Who is the Red Menace today? Well, I can tell you we seem to be quite concerned -- to put it mildly -- about the president of the United States. Who is a Kenyan Muslim communist tribesman (or something like that).

We likewise worry about the secretary of state, who's a fellow traveler. And the Justice Department. And, of course, we still get lower GI disturbances at the mention of those venerable pinko warhorses of modern history -- Castro, the media and the labor unions.

The Red Menace has been enshrined. It has ascended.

THEY TRIED to tell us in 1947. And 1957. And even 1967.

I guess we didn't listen.

Now it's up to tea-party members and other apoplexy victims like Glenn Beck -- he of the only non-commie TV channel out there, the Fox News Channel -- to lead the resistance. Lead the resistance against the government the commies and their fellow travelers TRICKED us into ELECTING in 2008.




ARE YOU STARTING to think you're seeing déja vu all over again?

Glenn Beck is to the Red Scare what the new Hawaii Five-O is to the old Hawaii Five-O, only with angry conspiracy theorists.

I withdraw that statement. The new Hawaii Five-O, I am told, has new scripts. The producers of the show aren't planning on a word-for-word rehash.

And nobody's trying to elect Dano to the U.S. Senate.

The frightening thing about this new Red Scare is the same frightening thing about the last one. The panicked, angry masses and their cynical zealots-in-chief are ready, willing and able to burn down this entire village in order to "save" it.

In their minds -- or at least in their tea-party rhetoric -- "socialism" is so God-awful that we ought to be willing to burn down the framework of constitutional rule and the civilizing influences of commonweal in order to protect a notion of "God-given" liberty that, in the fever swamp of the angry-mob mindset, comes out more like "Do what thou wilt . . . except what we don't like." And your mileage may vary.

"Communism" is so godless and evil that any extreme action to oppose it is not only justified, but perhaps mandatory. Ask J. Edgar Hoover.

LIKE THE paranoid times of my entry into this mortal coil, this present Red-baiting moment finds angry people making idols of what they see as the opposite of their devil. The "commie" devil.

If "socialism" is bad, doing away with all "government-run" programs and social safety nets must be good. If "welfarism" is bad, a laissez-faire dose of social Darwinism must be virtuous and right -- especially as we languish amid the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Not only that, but the Red Scare becomes cover for all our demons and prejudices. Civil-rights "agitators" were, back in the day, a bunch of America-hating Reds, after all. And kicking a man while he's down can be seen as some sort of virtuous act, because we all know that "social justice" and "social religion" are just snooty names for . . . communism!

Thus, condoning racism can be just another manner of expressing one's innate "Americanism." Ees thees gret country or vhat?

Commies bad. Saying the N-word 11 times straight on nationwide radio good, because you're just combating "political correctness."

Face it, when you're up against the Other, and the Other is a freedom-hating, pinko, commie godless Muslim, and you're fighting for your life -- literally, you've been told by that man on the television -- it's war.

And we all know what they say about love and war.

But that's OK. There are no atheists in foxholes -- especially not in this foxhole -- and the patriot surveys the carnage he has wrought upon civil society and the body politic, and he is at peace in the knowledge that God is on his side.

Bomb-throwers and pyros for America

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Everybody knows the game our self-proclaimed "patriots" are playing with "Obama's a Muslim" and the self-righteous faux outrage over "the Ground Zero terror mosque."

Everybody except, of course, the willing dupes who comprise the intended target of the GOP brass, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and all those who define themselves through their rage.

It's all about hate; it's all about fear; it's all about paranoia. It also is all about politics and the upcoming midterm elections.

What it's also about is playing with fire. It's about ginning up a mob to demand that the federal government . . . New York city government . . . hell, anybody tear down the whole edifice of our constitutional rule in the name of saving the republic from The Other.

The cynical right wants us all to become a lynch mob to save ourselves from terrorism, which is related -- somehow -- to America's first black, socialist, Nazi Muslim president. Or something like that.

It's not exactly a credit to our cultural and democratic bona fides that the vast majority of Americans fail to see the deep and toxic irony of this.

INSTEAD, every time I log on to Facebook, I am confronted with the sidebar list of how many family members, friends and old classmates "like" Glenn Beck.

Like Glenn Beck, like his message. Unfortunately, Beck's message is both bats*** crazy and racially incendiary.

As you know, I grew up in the Deep South -- south Louisiana to be exact. I know what that was all about 40 and 50 years ago, and what it is still too much about now.

I can't judge anybody's heart today -- especially folks I haven't seen in years, decades even -- but I know how a lot of them were raised. I know how I was raised.

I know what was in the cultural air we breathed. How we never gave our assumptions, or those of the society around us, a second thought as we took spiritual Corexit into our hearts and minds. I know that such enculturation can be nearly inexorable, because when you're raised that way from birth, the poison gets into that space between visceral reaction and engagement of the conscience and the mind.

SCRATCH THE SURFACE of my home state, Louisiana, and you'll quickly get to a very bad place. Do the same in any part of America, and you're likely to find varying states of the same collective id.

They say the devil's greatest trick is to convince us he doesn't exist. He just hides in our crooked hearts as our overconfidence congratulates itself on what good, moral, patriotic and God-fearing works of art we have become.

Yet the lynch mob sings "Onward Christian Soldiers" as "the better angels of our nature" twist in the wind, strange fruit of a demagogue's tree.

I'm shocked that people are shocked

It's a horrible thing when you're 89 years old and the brain's equivalent of a spam filter no longer works so well.

"Captcha" by a Jewish activist and his camcorder was only a matter of time for poor Helen Thomas, who is being singled out as some sort of singular anti-Semite bigot. I can't judge her heart, so I couldn't tell you.

What I can tell you is that I'm shocked that people are shocked.

LISTEN, she was born Greek Orthodox, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants by the name of Antonious, which later was changed to Thomas. As far as I know, neither the country of Lebanon nor the Greek Orthodox Church are hotbeds of support for Zionism or the state of Israel.

And, to be fair, neither is the state of Israel exactly on hugs-and-kisses terms with Lebanon or Greek Orthodox Christians. To wit, from a 2004 article in Haaretz:

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

(snip)

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.

Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.

But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.

"When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asks.

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."

Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.

There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday."I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.

Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.

THE OTHER THING I can tell you is that Thomas has company. Here's one bouquet thrown her way by a fellow Lebanese-American:

I was going through the news and found this article...all i can say is Helen Thomas is one brave woman! of course she made a mistake by using the word "Jew" because jews arent the issue. Zionists are the issue. i think sometimes people get confused with the difference between the 2. i love Jewish people! they went through a lot because of their religion. however zionists are another story!

So Helen Thomas, your awesome! next time use the word zionist...because there is a BIG difference. there are jews who are against the zionists nation.


ps...considering her position, i'd say that shes fed up with that country using the USA!

THE TROUBLE with this country's chattering class is it doesn't understand it's not the norm. Helen Thomas is not a singular bigot and, at any rate, people have lots of reasons for their long-nursed hatreds -- some of them good ones.

That starves journalism of a certain depth to its practice. And it even denies bigotry's victims -- in this case, Israelis -- a certain opportunity for self-examination.