A Link to the Blogger I Wish I Was

This blogger is the best I've come across in terms of both his command of reason, and his fiery populist sensibility. Check him out.

The most concise explanation of the Democrats' Problem

From The New Republic Online: (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050425&s=trb042505)

"This is the same essential mistake Democrats have made over and over again since the early '70s in relying upon courts to secure rights (like unfettered access to abortion) and promote reforms (like affirmative action) for which they hadn't yet built solid popular support. These court decisions eventually provoked political backlashes that have hobbled Democrats since and, in cases like gay marriage, probably set back the liberal cause by many years. If Democrats hadn't been so successful in pushing the courts so far ahead of public opinion, it's possible they might have worked harder at actually convincing voters that they were right on these issues, bringing the political consensus closer to them rather than pushing it away."

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Interesting Post on One Man's Journey from Republican to Democrat

JCECIL3 has an interesting post up about the way the two political parties' positions have shifted in the last thirty years, and the implications for someone wanting to vote on "values" issues. Hint: the answer may surprise you.

Bay Area Weather Looking "Ominous"

I'm a weather geek, so I read the technical discussions from the NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atomospheric Administration) pretty regularly. These discussions are usually pretty dry, and talk about troughs, ridges, low and high pressure areas, etc., in a rather objective scientific tone.

Today's discussion put out by the weather office in Monterey, California, used the words "very ominous" to describe the developing situation in the eastern Pacific Ocean. We've been getting hammered by storms the last 3 days, which have brought as much as 8 inches of rain to the San Francisco Bay Area, but these may be only the beginning. The weather service is predicting that this series of cold storms will bring snow down to lower elevations for the next five days, followed by a "pineapple connection" connection storm with origins in hawaii. This would dump enormous amounts of rain on the deep snowpack, causing nearly apocalyptic flooding as the rain melts the snow, and then all that water surges into the rivers in the lowlands.

Pray for those without shelter, and add prayers for the people affected by the recent tsunamis in the Indian Ocean basin.

Some thoughts on Catholic Liturgy

While I agree that there are problems with the Liturgy as it is currently celebrated, I hesitate to throw the baby out with the bathwater. "I am the Bread of Life" is a beautiful hymn, guitars and all, and I think it serves the same purpose, in its folky way, that the music of, say, Palestrina did in his day -- listening to the "Agnus Dei" in Palestrina's "Missa Brevis", it is clear that his purpose is to lift the congregation's mind and heart to God, and to plaintivly ask for mercy in a way that makes it clear that God in His goodness stands a good chance of granting it. "I am the Bread of Life" attempts to do the same thing, in the sense that it is a reflection on the promises of Christ (though I grant there is quite a distance between the artistic merits of Toomey and Palestrina).

I think there ought to be a pluralism of music in the Mass, and in fact my home parish does this fairly well. In one of the morning masses, there is more traditional music and the Sanctus and Agnus Dei in latin (and often sung in chant). The youth Mass is the one where you're more likely to hear guitars and Marty Haugen. This seems to work well, and there have been few complaints.

There are certainly limits to this that have to do with taste -- I for one will avoid the "hip hop Mass" if it ever comes -- but it is worth remembering that Christ wasn't too concerned about form in worship, and in fact the Institution of the Eucharist happened in an intimate and informal (though solemn) setting.

Draft Howard Dean to lead the DNC

Recipe for Change

"I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many white sheriffs, too many white citizens' councillors, and too many Klansmen of the south to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-co-operation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is co-operation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the Stations of the Cross

"These Fourteen Steps
That you are now about to walk
You do not take alone.

I walk with you.

Though you are you
And I am I
Yet we are truly one:
One Christ.

Therefore, my Way of the Cross,
Two thousand years ago
And your "way" now
Are also One.

But note this difference:

My Life was incomplete
Until I crowned it by my death;

Your Fourteen steps will only be complete
When you have crowned them
By your life.

-Clarence Enzler, "Everyone's Way of the Cross"

There are great possibilities for nobility and redemption in un-earned suffering. The only requirement is that the suffering is elevated by Love -- "Agape" love, love that is freely given and expects nothing in return. Am I saying, "Be a doormat"? No. I'm saying that standing in loving opposition, refusing to cooperate with evil but also refusing to hate the evil-doer, can be an occasion of reconciliation, which is better than some narrow definition of victory.

The Democrats' Future

There are several factions in the Democratic Party pushing different solutions to our evident electoral problems.

One faction is advocating that the party basically write off the deeply red states -- the South and Great Plains -- in favor of an exclusively urban strategy. I think this grows out of the bitterness many feel at our defeat; I think it is an over-reaction, and ultimately a betrayal of people that should be the solid core of the democratic party.

Put morer plainly, I think this is exactly the wrong approach.

I think the democrats have had their asses handed to them in most of the last 30 years because they (we) have forgotten just what it is that makes us Democrats.

What has the party traditionally stood for? The little guy. Small farmers. The working class. Minority rights. People who don't have enough power or money to have any influence.

The Democrats could, TOMORROW, put together a winning coalition based on these people. Take, say, the bottom sixty percent of the income scale, and talk to all of them. Better yet, LISTEN to them. What are their priorities? What are their values? Who are they? We won't learn by proposing solutions to them. We will learn by listening to them.

Here's an idea that may seem strange -- give up on the BLUE states! They've been costing the democrats elections for years, and more than elections, their souls. The Blue states are the richer states (mostly); STOP listening to rich people.

Only people who are very, very economically comfortable would make abortion or gay marriage their number one, big-deal, no-compromise issues. Those of us who are well down the income ladder look at the democrats' priorities and say "What the @#$% are you people thinking?? We're hurting, the pain is getting worse, and you're all bunched up about gay marriage?! What is wrong with you?"

Things that weigh on me

There is a sense I have that this country has been going down a wicked path for some time now, under both Democratic and Republican presidencies and Democratic and Republican congresses.

There was a time not too long ago (within the lifetime of my septuagenarian mother, for example) when people in this country didn't lock their doors on a regular basis. Not just in small towns or rural areas, but in places like Oakland, California and Brooklyn, New York.

I think it is worth asking why.

There was a time not that long ago when people in villages, towns and cities had no problem with "developement" per se; when most people were happy to see a new building go up on the main street of their town; when a new house being built meant someone new to greet and get to know.

What has happened to this country?

Questions of Life

The Democrats and Republicans both have real problems with their positions on matters of life, considered in a moral framework.

Melinda Henneberger has a great column in which she discusses exactly the dilemma that lefty pro-lifers (and that is emphatically NOT a contradiction in terms) face.

I am for much more stringent regulation of the environment, against the Iraq war (in fact, almost any war) against the death penalty, for a massive effort to alleviate poverty through government activism, for the rights of indigenous peoples, very pro-union...

And against abortion. More explicitly, I do not believe that a woman should have a right to choose to get an abortion any time she wants one. I believe that abortion should only be a possibility where the loss of the fetus is an unintended but unavoidable effect of saving the mother's life (as in the case of ectopic pregnancy). I believe this because I consider a fetus to be a human being, worthy of protection by the law.

This position is all but forbidden in the institutional Democratic party. So, even though I agree with them on practically *everything* else, I hesitate to vote for them because of this ONE issue. And I am unable to be pursuaded by the argument that goes, "Hey, you agree with us on everything else, so why let this issue get in the way?"

Because this issue outweighs "everything else" for me, and does so because "everything else" does not kill as many people as abortion does. There are thousands of abortions per day; the iraq war has killed perhaps 16,000 since the beginning (US and Allied deaths plus Iraqi civilian and military deaths). Appalling as this is, that's less than a week's worth of abortions.

Considered merely as a matter of political strategy, the fact that the Democrats will not allow a range of opinion on abortion is losing them large parts of the country (the plains states, the south).

The Democrats have a natural constituency in the more socially conservative (and economically depressed) parts of the country, if they make issues of ECONOMIC justice their no-compromise issues, and allow for a range of opinions on the social issues. Thomas Frank touched on this in his recent book, "What's the Matter with Kansas," but I'm taking it a step further; while Frank argues that the Republicans have used the social issues to divide the working class in order to push an economic regime that is almost uniformly bad for those same socially conservative voters (a charge with a lot of merit, in my view), he probably wouldn't agree (because he is liberal on the abortion issue) with the obvious way to counter this: run democrats in the plains and south who are more conservative on the abortion issue, and who push hard for economic justice with the rest of the democrats. The national Democratic leadership won't let this happen, and their inflexibilty on this is against their practical interests (getting a majority in the house), and also makes it harder (becasue they are usually swept in the midwest) to push for the rest of their program.

Flame me if you want, but understand that I consider liberals my friends on every single issue but abortion.