A Religion of Second-Class Boys

Review: The Islamist
Why I joined radical Islam in Britain,
what I saw inside and why I left
Ed Husain

Beware of extremism in religion; for it was extremism in religion that destroyed those who went before you. — The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

In contrast to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Ed Husain was born into Islam, and raised by his parents (first generation immigrants from India and Bangladesh to the UK) with a good foundation in traditional Islamic spirituality. They followed a well-established spiritual teacher, who had followed a teacher before him, and so on, ostensibly back to the Prophet and his Companions. His earliest secular educational experiences also seem to have been pleasant, thanks to liberal "colour-blind" British schoolmarms. But to many "native" Brits, including some of his schoolmates, he was still a bespectacled "Paki." He did not "fit in." Neither did he fit in with the Bollywood enamored Bangladeshi boys at his next school. Fitting in with one's peers is the externalization of the inward quest for identity. When one is young "Who am I?" and "Who will have me?" are two faces of the same coin. The coin which with you can be seduced to sell your soul.

Ed decided to strike out in his own direction. He asked his school if he could study Religious Education after hours to learn more about Islam. Eventually a sympathetic Church of England British teacher took on the project using as a text Islam: Beliefs and Teachings by Gulam Sawar. It contained a remarkable passage, which Ed quotes

Religion and politics are one and the same in Islam. They are intertwined. We already know that Islam is a complete system of life ... Just as Islam teaches us how to pray, fast, py charity and perform the Haj, it also teaches us how to form a state, run a government, elect councillors and members of parliament, make treaties, and conduct business and commerce.

This text was still being widely used in the UK as a "moderate" textbook, and the opinion voiced in the above paragraph is taken as obvious truth by the UK and Western press generally. But Ed, a born Muslim, was surprised by this paragraph when he first read it, and would later be able to de-bunk it. It turns out that Sawar was not a religious scholar, but a business management lecturer, and a sympathizer with if not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamat-e-Islami, two radical Islamist organizations dedicated to the establishment of a world-wide "Islamic State." Such a concept is touted as being straight from the Prophet and his Companions, but it is really a graft from Marxism onto Islamic Fundamentalism, which is itself bida, a modern innovation in reaction against modernity.

Under the influence of Brother Falik, the first real friend he ever had, Ed joins a mosque that has been taken over, "colonized" as it were, by Jamat-e-Islami, to the horror of his traditionalist Muslim parents. The method of colonization relied on the innocent sounding Young Muslim Organization. No pious bearded old men to interfere here - just cadres of activist youth organizing events to proselytize for the radical Islamism of the Jamat-e-Islami. JI's intellectual founder is Abdul Ala Mawdudi, a Pakistani journalist, who "translated the Koran according to his own whims, without reference to or within the paradigm of classical Muslim scholarship." Mawdudi "rebranded" Islam as an ideology instead of a religion, and founded the JI to market his concept. It has since sold well to Muslim youth, who in their adolescent rebellion against their parents and their societies, are received into radical Islam.

In college, Ed left Falik and Jamat-e-Islami to join the even more militant Hisb-ut-Tahrir, which is organized into small cells, like the European Red Brigades of the 1970s and 1980s. Ed describes how the Hizb use Marxist agitation-propaganda techniques to colonize other Muslim organizations, all the while using innocent sounding names and never their own. Banned in Pakistan and the Middle East for its violence-inciting rhetoric, Hisb ut Tahrir and organizations like it flourish in the free societies they condemn. (They see the Western concept of indifidual freedom as sin, an exaltation of self-will over God's will.) The Hisb, it turns out draws its inspiration from works by Hasan al-Banna, Syed Qutb and others who elaborated on Mawdudi. None of these men is a recognized Islamic scholar, and all of them knowingly or unknowingly grafted onto Islam categories of nihlist and anti-rationalist thought they absorbed from the West that they hated so much.

Ed's journey out of radical Islam bgan with a murder committed by one of his radical friends. His internal moral sense (which radical Islamists denigrate - how dare you judge God!) caused him to be repelled by the actuality of the violence his own rhetoric extolled. Gradually, he comes under the influence of real Islamic scholars and historians, and returns to the traditional Islam of his parents. Sojourns in Syria and Saudi Arabia confirm to him the misery of existence in societies that approximate the "Islamic State." He also discovers his Britishness: all his life he had taken basic human rights and basic fairness for granted, out of habit. British habit, it turns out.

Ed ends up discovering his own identity as simultaneously authentically Muslim and authentically British. He thus embodies Islam augmented not by the worst ideas of the West, but by the best. Like liberal democracy and freedom of religion, including the freedom of Muslims to be Muslim as inspired by God rather than as dictated by some self-aggrandizing "authority."
Ultimately, identity is the central theme of Ed's journey into and out of radical Islam. He had formed a youthful identity as a second-class Brit, and was drawn to radical Islam's promise to make him instantly a first-class citizen of the nascent Islamic State. Thus he exposes radical Islamism as a religion of second-class boys.

No on 8: Let Gays Marry

There is a ballot proposition in California that, if passed, will attempt to nullify California's state Supreme Court decision to recognize same-gender marriages. First, even if it passes, it will probably be ruled unconstitutional by the same court. But more importantly, extending the legal protections and obligations of marriage to same-gender unions is a way of protecting the children these people have adopted. Or did you not know that adoption by same-gender couples is legal?

So, until someone can convince me that someone else's same-gender marriage in any way diminishes or demeans my thirty-plus year different-gender marriage, I will vote NO on Proposition 8 and anything like it. And I don't want some theoretical argument - I want a step-by-step demonstration of the mechanism by which my marriage will be so diminished or demeaned.

It Takes a Tribe to Raise a Teen

I remember Hillary Rodham Clinton asserting that, "It takes a village to raise a child." And various right-wing commentators saying "No, it takes a family."

I have a alternate aphorism. It takes a tribe.

From infancy to adolescence the formative unit in the child's experience is indeed the family. But modern society progressively dis-empowers the family with regard to controlling the child's reality. First there are public and private schools, which teach in loco parentis, in the place of the parents. Unless you home-school, the state begins driving a wedge between your experience and your child's in Kindergarten.

This was not much of a problem in small, insular communities where everyone knew everyone else, and mothers stayed home. The gossip network was all it took to keep tabs on your kids. And your informal network of acquaintances, from neighbors to the police, could give a lot of support when it came to discipline. But, in parallel with the feminist movement's successful integration of women into the workplace came the economic necessity for families to do so. The result was that in the 1980's an anti-drug slogan circulated asking, "It's five o'clock - do you know where your children are?" Families began losing their grip on their kids at earlier and earlier ages.

As this was going on, technology made possible a mass media-culture, which promptly mutated into the world's first mass youth-culture. Youth-culture provided an identity-group, a tribe, in which adolescents could do what adolescents must always do - develop an identity that is their own instead of their parents'. Their first way-station to becoming their own persons is the tribe. The tribe used to be local, civil society, which exerted a powerful influence toward adopting the values that would sustain civil society, which were more or less the values of the parents.

But the youth-culture offered a tribe that had more tenuous connections to society-sustaining values. And then, another technological revolution brought the fragmentation of mass-media and mass-culture. Now you can see a group of ten kids with ten iPods listening to ten different genres of music at the same time. As there are now a plethora of music genres, there are a plethora of youth cultures, sub-tribes waiting to receive the adolescent, to be consumed by the adolescent, to reward the adolescent for consumption, and eventually to consume the adolescent. The result is the relative (to past history) dis-enfranchisement of parents when it comes to shaping the development of their adolescent children.

Some of these sub-tribes are beneficial or at least benign. Some are not, like criminal gangs, extremist groups, and radical-religious terrorist cells. In their combination of false confidence that they know what they are doing and their fear of being rejected by their chosen tribe, adolescents are primed by nature to fall prey to seductive yet superficial ideologies. Ideologies that offer a quick fix to the problems of identity and maturity: help kill the Zionist occupiers and be a man, kill them yourself and be a hero, get killed killing them and be a martyr.

What civil society lacks is a deliberate and lengthy "tribal" initiation into adulthood. To the extent that we fail to provide it, our kids will find tribes of their own. And some of them are profoundly uncivil.

I write these thoughts in the abstract, but I have a concrete example in mind. It is the autobiography of Ed Husain, a British-born Muslim of Indian/Pakistani descent, entitled The Islamist, reviewed here.

Update on Clergy Sexual Abuse

"It's not uncommon for pedophiles to gravitate toward jobs and professions that give them access to children," said a psychologist friend of mine. "We see them become, or try to become teachers, priests, that sort of thing."

I can imagine a pedophile, in denial about his tendency, being drawn to the priesthood. Once a priest, he abuses a child and is found out by another priest, who protects him. But why is he protected? Perhaps the other priest is a pedophile who has thus far successfully resisted temptation, and feels that "there but for the grace of God go I." Perhaps the other priest is just trying to protect the institution on which he has come to depend for his livelihood. Even worse, perhaps neither priest is in denial, and they both sought the priesthood with malice aforethought. I do not know.

Nowadays I imagine that the Church seeks professional help in evaluating and eliminating candidates for such tendencies, but again I don't know.

I do know that the abuse of parishoners, especially young ones, by clergy can be devastating. Kay Goodnow has contributed the text of her deposition to a mediator concerning her experience of clergy abuse.

Have a read. The church settled out of court, meeting the monetary settlement, but reneging on the non-monetary provisions. Much like what one would expect of a business, rather than what one would expect of a church that professes to care about the well-being, the souls of its members.

Obama on Redistribution of Wealth

Before you vote, listen to this radio interview given by Barack Obama in 2001.



Obama sounds like my college professor talking about "redistributive justice" in a Modern Political Theory seminar. Theoretical discussions in an academic setting are meant open our minds. But in politics, ideas have real consequences.

What we need to redistribute fairly in our society is the opportunity to create or amass wealth, not wealth itself. Congress already taxes our income and redistributes our money as it sees fit. But there comes a point where redistribution blunts the initiative of those who would otherwise create wealth. The more driven of them simply leave for better opportunities in other societies. That's how we got so many talented immigrants to come to America. Too much redistribution of wealth would reverse that flow by diminishing opportunity.

Does Barack Obama know this?

President Obama, the Second Coming of FDR

Before you get too excited, take a look at this minority opinion of what happened back then, Great Myths of the Great Depression, by Lawrence W. Reed, Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He can't be entirely right, of course, but then he may not be entirely wrong, either.

You might also want to plot your salary, deflated by the Consumer Price Index over your entire career. That will let you know how hard it is to get ahead by working for a wage. If you really want a stark view, do the same plot with your after-tax income.

Now, financially speaking, do you need more help, or less hindrance?

Obama may be about to win

I tuned into NPR during the evening commute and wow! They carried two pieces in a row that were complimentary to John McCain. Maybe they have an interest in making the election more of a nail-biter for both sides. But I suspect that they are belatedly thinking about burnishing their reputation for even-handedness, and are pretty sure that it's too late in the campaign for any nice words about McCain to do any serious damage to Obama's chances.

Real Estate may be about to go up

An acquaintance told me that her friend can't buy a foreclosed property in Antioch, CA for cash. The friend made an offer that met the bank's price, but now the bank doesn't seem to be able to get around to processing the transaction. My acquaintance thinks the bank may have let its experienced people go and hired younger, cheaper people to replace them. The young folks don't know what they're doing, so the bank slows down and the paperwork piles up.

I'm not so sure. It's more likely that the bank thinks the local real estate market is about to go up in the next couple of months, and is delaying the sales of foreclosed properties in hope of getting higher prices. It's playing dirty against the friend with the cash, but for the rest of us, it's a hopeful sign.

Too Many Laws

I was wondering how many federal laws are on the books, so I Googled the topic, and find that nobody seems to know. The official site for the United States Code doesn't even let you ask that question. Ditto for the Code of Federal Regulations. The former contains the body of permanent US Federal laws, and the latter contains the body of permanent US Federal regulations issued by various agencies of the Executive branch of government. There must be a lot, and I doubt that it would make interesting reading.

I wondered about this because I was riding BART recently and noticed a sign over a bench stating that "FEDERAL LAW REQUIRES THIS SEAT TO BE GIVEN TO HANDICAPPED PERSONS." It's a perfectly reasonable and humane piece of legislation. But BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, which does not extend beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. The entire system is contained within a few counties of the State of California. Couldn't it have been a State law that requires handicapped persons be given access to that bench? Or better yet, couldn't people simply observe common civility if simply reminded, as in "Please give this seat to handicapped persons?"

My point is that we have too many laws, and too many of them are federal laws. And then there is federal spending. The quantity of it is not as important as its coming in an awful lot of very small chunks, the so-called "earmarks" that make the annual body of Federal appropriations bills exceed the length of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What we have is a federal government that is trying to do too much, to rule and spend at too fine a level of detail. Our government must pay attention to ten million things, and so can't pay attention to anything for long, even if it is important. And since the most important things can be painful to deal with, some of them don't get any attention at all.

Now if you're a business executive and find yourself similarly overwhelmed, you fix it by hiring good subordinates and delegating responsibility to them. To some extent the President and Congress have done that by creating Federal Agencies to make regulations for them, and Congress has built a large Congressional staff to do its real business. But those have only enabled the retention of too much detail at the Federal level: the Agencies have grown and proliferated and gotten into everybody's knickers, and Congress has become a clearinghouse for influence peddling.

Fortunately, there exists another level of government that can lift this burden from them - the States. And States can be relieved of the need to manage excess detail by the Counties and Cities.

At least that was what I was taught in Civics class, back the previous century. Maybe they don't teach Civics anymore.

The Face of Pain

A decidedly Democratic friend of mine gave me his reaction to the last televised encounter between the two presidential candidates. "Did you get a load of John McCain's face during those debates?" he asked. "Those quirky expressions? That grin that looks like a grimace? You'd think the guy was in some kind of pain or something."

"He is in pain," I said. "Chronic pain. He probably hasn't had a pain-free minute since he got shot down over Vietnam. A few broken bones, some torture, some scarring that leads to nerve damage, and the man has a certain level of constant, chronic pain. He probably doesn't take the cocktail of drugs that John Kennedy took. But like Kennedy, some amount of pain and physical disability are part of his life."

My friend wasn't taken aback in the slightest. Maybe you aren't either.

But it strikes me that when you see a candidate on television, you also see a lot of what you bring to the picture. My friend saw quirky facial expressions that he found a little scary. I barely noticed them. Maybe because I see them in the mirror every now and then.

Right and Wrong on Energy

Yes, we are in a short-term (a few years) financial crisis. The slowdown in the housing market created a shockwave in the credit markets due to the securitization of too many bad loans, which had been pushed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Clinton Administration, which wanted to extend the opportunity of home ownership to classes of Americans who were previously underrepresented among homeowners, in itself a laudable goal, even if the approach is proving to be self-defeating. The following Bush Administration was distracted by need to pump up the economy with cheap money (low interest rates) after the slump following the 9/11 attacks. This accelerated the run-up in housing prices, which was stopped only when the average American family could no longer afford to buy the average American home. In other words, both parties get the blame on this one.

But we face a long-term financial crisis caused by our inability to produce our own energy. Again, we turn to the Clinton Administration, which cancelled the Integral Fast Reactor. The IFR is able to take almost any fissionable material as its initial fuel, including natural (unenriched) uranium, spent nuclear fuel, and weapons grade uranium or plutonium. Whatever the fuel, it burns it up leaving only short-lived "fission fragments" that decay within days to a few decades. The long-lived radioisotopes like plutonium are simply burned up to create energy. And the IFR is passively safe (meaning without the intervention of electronics or active systems). In the case of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) the IFR simply shuts down and uses natural conduction and convection to reject its waste heat. In hindsight, it's hard to believe that the Clinton Administration cancelled the IFR and that the Bush Administration did not revive it.

To be fair, the IFR is not a panacea for the world. Given non-plutonium fuel, it first breeds plutonium, which it then burns up. IFR proponents claim that since the bred fuel contains really hot (radioactively and thermally) fission fragments, the bred fuel would be "self-protecting." However, I think a nation-state sufficiently determined to extract the plutonium before it gets consumed could build robots that could handle that fuel.

Now there is another concept that could generate similar amounts of clean, safe energy - LIFE, or Laser Ignition Fusion Fission Energy. The idea is to use lasers to implode a pellet of deuterium/tritium (isotopes of hydrogen) fuel, causing it to undergo fusion, which yields helium and neutrons. The neutrons irradiate a blanket of fissionable fuel (the same fuels as IFR) which breed up to plutonium, which then burns up to provide energy.

Both concepts drastically reduce the need for burial of waste in a facility like Yucca Mountain. Both offer the possibility of completely destroying excess nuclear weapons material. Both could produce huge amounts of energy without the possibility of nuclear meltdowns. It's time to pursue them, together with the technologies that will enable ground transportation to operate on either the electric power these reactors could produce, or the hydrogen that the electricity could be used to make.

We need to stop sending $7B to countries hostile to our interests to buy petroleum, only to burn it up and dump the excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And new reactor technologies like IFR and LIFE are the way to do it.

The difference between Obama and McCain is that nuclear power is a minor component of Obama's plan. It is a centerpiece of McCain's plan. In that Obama is wrong and McCain is right. There is just no way to concentrate the energy of non-nuclear sources enough to provide the power that America and the world will need in the long term. (Not because we haven't invented the ways to concentrate them - it is thermodynamically impossible to do so, for reasons similar to why it is impossible to build a perpetual motion machine.)

The world knows this. The rest of the developed countries in the world have built or will build safe, clean nuclear power plants, whether we do or not. If we do not, we will fall behind economically, making future generations of Americans ever poorer with respect to the rest of the world. We will no longer be able to champion the advance of liberal democracy, and will have to rely on the good will of others. As you look at the others around the world, this prospect should not inspire your confidence.

Why is Bin Laden still alive?

The most frustrating things about Usama Bin Laden are that he is still alive (most likely), and still at large. I use the transliteration "Usama" because it renders his initials as UBL, which can be pronounced "übel," the German word for "evil." As is usual for fugitive cases, his continued liberty depends on who is hiding him and who is hunting him.

If indeed he is somewhere in the mountainous part of Pakistan that borders on Afghanistan, he is protected by the local population, who probably regard him like we regard a popular celebrity. This is in stark contrast to the situation of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. By the time we caught Saddam, he had no friends, and one of his enemies turned him in. We had military "boots on the ground," in Iraq, indeed, all over the ground for a time, and we still needed a tip to get Saddam. By mutual agreement, we do not have military boots on the ground in Pakistan. But even if we did, finding UBL would still be extremely difficult. So much for who is hiding him.

If you think about it, there are probably two US organizations hunting him: the CIA and the US Military. The US Military has a custom that may impede their effort to "find, fix, and finish" UBL - soldiers change duty stations every couple of years. To get UBL or any other fugitive, you either need a lucky break, or you need a team of the best dedicated, talented professionals available, and you need to keep them on the assignment until the job is done. They need to spend years getting to know their quarry, the terrain both geographic and social, and on, and on, and on. There is a lot to know, if you don't get lucky. If you want to get a feel for the problem, just watch HBO's "The Wire." The hunters keep getting taken off the trail by political, economic, and social forces. They are frustrated because every time they get close to making a difference, they are disbanded. By the time they regroup, the game has changed.

The CIA may do better, but one wonders how they reward people who do the same job year after year and still come up empty-handed. Their top guy published a book summarizing what can be known from open sources, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America, shortly before he retired. It may be that those who want a successful career just move on after a while.

But if Bin Laden is in Pakistan, how did he get there? Recall that the Bush Administration tried to court world opinion (including that of the Islamic world) by using minimal force to invade Afghanistan. The US used its troops to tip the balance of power between the Taliban and the other local militias. That was all it took to crumble the Taliban regime. But in a region where warfare is a way of life, one seldom seeks to destroy one's enemy. After all, the shoe may be on the other foot on another day. And thus, according to local custom, top al-Qaeda leaders were allowed to escape. It was not a deliberate choice of the US, but simply due to our relying on local fighters without our knowing the local way of war. Had we unleashed the Rumsfeldian blitzkrieg on Afghanistan instead of Iraq, we might have gotten Usama instead of Saddam.

Now, getting UBL will require us to implement and maintain a slow, careful, painstaking, patient counter-insurgency strategy. From their rhetoric, it seems to me that Mr. McCain understands what that is, while Mr. Obama hasn't a clue (although he will probably be a quick enough study, one hopes). If you're curious, see John Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, or better yet, his new U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual that he wrote with Generals David H. Petraeus and John F. Amos.

Make no mistake about it, the Bush Administration has been trying to get Usama Bin Laden for a long time. But along the way, "mistakes were made." Let's hope the next administration will learn from them before changing course. Again.

Chaos and Control

Maybe it's appropriate to remember the two opposed espionage organizations in the old TV series, "Get Smart," when one thinks of the financial markets. But what we have here is an attempt by regulatory organizations around the world to control the the global financial chaos. Many of the measures the regulators take will be helpful. But none of them will "work" in the strict sense of that word, because the event loop of the markets moves faster than the control loop of the regulators. That's what control theory says.

To make that more concrete, let me give you an example: Suppose I give you a Maserati, but I have rigged it so that its brakes, accelerator, and steering won't react to anything you do for fifteen seconds after you do it. You wouldn't last fifteen seconds trying to drive a car that powerful before wrecking it. Unless you were suicidal, there is no chance you would get into that car.

But many of us got into the stock, real estate, or financial markets. (Because over the long run all other investments fail to keep up with inflation. See the Motley Fool for details.)

The stock and credit markets move on a time scale of minutes (due to programmed trading among other things) while the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the Treasury and other regulatory agencies move on a time scale of weeks. In the strict control theory sense, the markets are out of control and have been out of control for about two decades. The only hope for the regulators to get on top of things is to slow down the event loop of the markets to a human pace - to place an indefinite moratorium on both naked short selling and programmed trading.

But that itself might have unforeseen consequences. As I said here and there, nobody really knows how the markets really work, because nobody has really tried to do a rigorous stability analysis of the markets, backed up by, say a detailed and large agent-based simulation.

So buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Nightmares of God: Theodicy, Miracle, and Analysis

Previously I wrote that Universe resembles a vast web of self-consistent thought, a kind of cosmic dream. But that raises the question of theodicy : if the dream is dreamed by the Abrahamic (Jewish/Christian/Islamic) God who supposedly loves His creation and His creatures, why is so much of the dream a nightmare?

The short answer is that you wouldn't take life seriously if it never hurt, or if those hurts could be fixed.

The universe imposes on us the discipline that actions have consequences, yours and everyone else's. And for actions to have consequences, there must be an arrow of time so that what is done cannot be undone. And for us to be unconstrained in our actions with respect to God - for us to have free will to experience those consequences - there must be cause and effect. The cosmic dream must be mathematically consistent. Miracles must be so rare as to be almost non-existent (a set of measure zero) compared to the set of all other events in the universe.

At least, that's my explanation for accidents and disasters - the kinds of thing philosophers used to call Natural Evil - and for the scarcity of miracles to provide relief and rescue from them.

Human evil - the ways in which we make each other miserable - is another story. Specifically, it is our story, the part of the cosmic dream that we make up. Couldn't we just dream something else?

Have you ever had a nightmare, and while you were having it, tried to just dream something else? Sometimes you can do it, and sometimes not. When you can't, the nightmare has you in its terrifying power. But that power is your power, because you are the dreamer. Maybe nightmares are your attempt to practice/process how to deal with your real fear in an unreal setting - safe fear. But the point is that the dream both is and is not under your control. You both make up what's coming next and are surprised by it. And most often you are stuck with it.

Does God, in whose Image we are made, also separate Himself into the Dreamer and the Experiencer of the Cosmic Dream? Does the Father know, while the Son must guess?

And then there is the question of how much we participate in dreaming the cosmic dream. Tom Ogden writes of the "psychoanalytic third," that part of the interaction that belongs neither to the analyst/therapist nor to the patient/client but to both when they are together, and leaves vestiges of itself in each when they are apart. The "third" is the field of interaction, where the real work of therapy is sparked, where the therapist and client lower their barriers to each other and risk being absorbed. Is the Holy Spirit a kind of psychoanalytic third that is arises between us and God when we experience God's presence? Is this how God enables us to re-dream ourselves, to experience conversion?

Is the Son how God experiences with us the nightmare side of the Father's Cosmic Dream, and the Spirit how God heals us of its evil?

And what about you know who?

Campaign Comparison

Obama vs McCain, or Star Power vs Leadership as Serving those who follow? You decide.

Mormonism is Christian and then some

Just as I wade into Doctrine and Covenants, I pick up this month's issue of First Things and find a point-counterpoint article by Bruce D. Porter and Gerald R. McDermott entitled, "Is Mormonism Christian?" And tonight on PBS they are broadcasting, The Mormons, a four-part series. Guess I'll have to watch.

In the meantime, the First Things article supplies an answer to my earlier question about whether Mormons believe God is omnipotent. The word "omnipotent" is used as a title of Jesus Christ by the prophet-king Benjamin in Mosiah 3:17, The Book of Mormon.

Who is the Dreamer who Dreams the Dream?

Everywhere I turn, I seem to hear or read about how science has caused the "disenchantment" of the world, an opinion usually held by those who think this is a good thing. Yet underneath their confidence, they seem a little angry and disappointed, as if someone had stolen the magic of their childhood - and if they can't have the magic, then by golly, neither can anyone else.

They think the real world, the ordinary world, is simply a web of causes and effects that, if we ever learn enough, we will be able to untangle. The universe (or multiverse) is self-existent, and everything that happens in it is inevitable, at least in a statistical sense.

Western (and increasingly world) culture has come to this conclusion based two ideas. The first is an understanding of physics that has its origin in the mechanics of Isaac Newton (1643-1727), in which time and space were regarded as a fixed background in which the motion of anything was perfectly predictable (and retrodictable) provided one knew its position and velocity at some instant.

Physicists and laymen alike, now hear this: We've known for a century now that this idea of the world is only a gross approximation to how it actually works. Basing your epistemology (way of knowing) on it is like building a house of sand just as the hurricane arrives.

The other idea is that anything that cannot be measured (subjected to repeated, precise observation at our will) is not real. As I have discussed elsewhere, this is pure hubris and almost certainly false. And yet, it took hold of academic culture deeply and pervasively. At the height of our cultural infatuation with this idea, experimental psychologists declared that personality did not exist, which everyone now knows is false on its face. Personality is a non-quantifiable, immeasurable phenomenon that we encounter constantly.

The actual relationship between measurability and reality is this: If I can measure it, it is real. If I can't measure it, all I can say is that either I don't know how to measure it (yet), or it may be immeasurable in principle. I can't legitimately claim it doesn't exist, unless I can prove that it doesn't exist, and immeasurability alone is not proof. But since I can't offer a scientific explanation of anything I can't measure, my own hubris tempts me to sweep it out of my mental image of the universe.

So if the popular idea of the scientific world view is outdated and wrong, then what is the modern scientific world view as of today? For that we turn to theories of Quantum Information. What emerges from them is a consensus that every physical interaction is an exchange of so many bits of information. Indeed the emerging connection between fundamental physics and information theory makes the universe resemble not a machine, but an enormous, detailed, and mathematically self-consistent web of thought.

A dream.

"From desire start the skandhas, which resemble a dream," goes an old Hindu/Buddhist saying. Which leads us to ask, abusing the title of Grotstein's tome on psychology, who is the dreamer who dreams the dream? Hindus believe the dream dreams itself. Buddhists believe that you are the dreamer. Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe the dreamer is God.

In the great dream of things, these ideas are not necessarily incompatible.

The Sound of the Answers

Listen to the next McCain-Obama so-called debate. (I can't call it a debate, because I was on my high school debate team, and the format we went through was a lot tougher than what these two do.)

It seems to me that when Barack Obama answers questions, he sounds not like a president, but like a presidential advisor. On the other hand, John McCain sounds like a president very much in need of an advisor. However the election goes, I hope they can find some way to work together.

About that Debate

If I hear one more Republican talk about cutting government spending I might just lose it. Republicans have had eight years to do just that they gave us the fastest growth of government spending in history. Likewise if I hear one more rich, over-privileged Democrat engage in the rhetoric of class warfare.

There, that's better. Now about that debate. Palin and Biden both did well. But it is the overall themes in the candidates' performances rather than their specific answers that gives some indication as to what the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden administrations would be like.

McCain and Palin bill themselves as mavericks. The upside is that they are willing to depart from the culture of vicious and oblivious partisanship that has taken over the Republican and Democratic parties. The risk is that their administration may be an administration without a party, a lame duck from the beginning. Maybe they will be able to hold to and increase the gains (both political and military) in Iraq, and not much else. If the economy really collapses, I don't know that they will be able to do anything about it other than to refrain from vetoing the initiatives of a Democratic Congress.

Obama and Biden enjoy vigorous support from their party (because they are partisan) and will be energetic and effective in pursuing their agenda. The risk is that they will overreach early in their administration, as both Clinton and the younger Bush did in the early years of their administrations. Maybe they will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq, and then blunder into Pakistan, destabilizing the Pakistani government even more, causing chaos in which some of the Pakistani nuclear weapons or weapons components go missing, and still fail to capture Bin Laden. Maybe they will lurch too far toward socialism in an attempt to imitate Roosevelt's New Deal as a way of getting out of the worsening recession.

I don't care who won or lost tonight's debate. I care about what we seem to be getting ourselves into. One of these teams will be our next President and Vice President. And that worries me.

House full of Amateurs

Given the seeming inability of the US House of Representatives to act to stem the current panic in the US and world financial markets, I think it fair to make two observations.

There are no term limits on the House. Because of this and unconscionable gerrymandering, many members of the House have been in office for a long time. You would think that this would lead them to act more like professionals than like amateurs. But clearly, when it comes to understanding financial panics, their history, and doing what it takes to mitigate them, we are looking at a House full of amateurs. If the House fails to act, I will vote against my Congressperson, whether he voted for the so-called "Bailout" or not. Because his duty is not just to vote for it, it is to persuade enough others for it to pass. Those of us watching our retirement nest eggs evaporate as the stock market falls and facing layoffs as the credit markets dry up are not amused.

Congress currently enjoys a 10% approval rating, some 20 points lower than even the President. The members of Congress need to realize that they did not get elected because we liked them. They got elected because we felt that we had no other viable choice. They need to quit working so hard to prove to us that we were wrong about that.

Mine, all Mine

Nessa, our 160 pound Great Dane, is sleeping on the chair (and ottoman) formerly owned by Pongo. "Mine," she seems to be thinking, "it's mine now. All mine. This chair. This house. This yard. These people. Mine."

She seems a bit subdued, it's true. But also self-satisfied.

Nobody Believes in Rationalism

The fact is that if you are a thoroughgoing rationalist there is no way anyone can prove to you that it is worth getting up in the morning. The purely rational conclusion is that life is not worth living, so why go on? And yet, the rationalist does get up, driven by non-rational urges to get dressed, to get breakfast, and to start another day. Because, deep down, the rationalist does not entirely believe in rationalism.

Let us therefore admit that rationalism speaks to the "how" and "what" of existence, but not the "why" of it. The why of it is the crisis of our age - the crisis of meaning.

In order to live, we must satisfy our non-rational urge to live meaningful lives. To find meaning, we must (and do) ultimately turn to faith. So, the question is not whether we can have faith. We all of us already have faith to some extent, because we simply must. The question is how can we live simultaneously with the faith we need, and with the scientific rationalism we have fought so hard to achieve?

The necessary synthesis begins by realizing that faith and rationalism begin helping each other by placing limitations on each other. I cannot believe things I can prove false, but I know some things to be true that I cannot prove.

Remembering Pongo

On this Michaelmas and Eve of Rosh Hashanah, we sent our German Shorthaired Pointer Pongo's little soul to walk with our Master. He was almost fifteen. He had had a long struggle with nasal disease, kidney disease, and bowel disease. In his time he overcame epilepsy and two cancers. What we know of his lifetime trophies include two squirrels, two birds, and a vole. It is impossible to tell of his victories over gophers, because we never saw evidence of any in our backyard during his lifetime. He also successfully hunted and destroyed two sprinkler systems (until we learned not to use impact heads), two screen doors (one wood, one metal), two sets of interior wooden shutters, and part of a wooden deck. In his prime, he was known for his speed, his daring, and his obliviousness to the numerous athletic injuries he incurred by doing things like running through barbed wire fences, and pawing at the neighbor's Rottweiler.

He was originally brought in to our pack to take the pressure that our first Great Dane Maya, then a puppy, was putting on our first dog, the then aging Samwise. This he did admirably. When we would come home from work, Maya would stagger in, look at us as if to say, "Take the child," and collapse with exhaustion. Maya could outrun him on the straight stretches, but Pongo could out maneuver her in the corners. The would run back and forth in our yard until Maya had raspberries on both sides of her butt from colliding with the fences. Then they would cuddle together as if they were mother and son.

After Maya passed, Pongo went into emotional decline and tore off his second screen door. We then brought our second Great Dane, Nessa into the pack. Pongo brightened considerably, and did his best to move up to Top Dog, but it was not to be. When your girlfriend grows to outweigh you by a factor of three, you are going to have to learn to toe her line. Still they played together energetically, running at each other from two corners of our yard and colliding in the middle. This lasted until Pongo's back began going out, after which they switched from the equivalent of tackle to touch.

Pongo had a long prime, keeping most of his speed, enthusiasm for life, and strength until the past year. His strength of will never left him. Although he was not intellectual, he had strong opinions, which he advanced with cunning and patience. He seduced our late mother-in-law into letting him cuddle against her legs while she sat in a favorite chair. Over two months he used techniques of operant conditioning, positive reinforcement, and desensitization to move from floor to lap, and from lap to chair, conquering our prohibition concerning pets on furniture and making the chair his own.

Really his own. It smells like him, even to a human. We had fantasies of putting his corpse in the chair, and the chair on a wooden barge on a lake, and burning the lot together in a Viking style funeral. As it is, we will probably get it reupholstered and keep it in memory of him. He is pictured above, having gone from 65 to 46 pounds because of his illnesses, in the chair that he prized so much.

Farewell, little fella. May you be as blessed in the next world as you were a blessing to us in this one.

For those of you in similar need, here is a link to a canine funeral service.

Note added 9/30: And then there was the time he ate the car. For some forgotten reason we had to leave him unattended in our vehicle for a few minutes. He chewed the steering wheel, ate the ends off the gear shift and emergency brake levers, and completely severed a seat belt. Fortunately, we were thinking of trading in the car anyway. Pongo just accelerated the process by a few months.

Nancy Pelosi Proves Herself Unfit to Lead

Get a load of this. Instead of rising to lead the US House of Representatives to a historic vote to shore up the international financial system, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi abused the occasion to do partisan grandstanding. Here is a video.

Look, Ms. Speaker. You are not just the leader of the Democratic Party in the House. You are the leader of the whole House of Representatives. Even if what you said were factually correct (which is debatable), using this moment of international crisis for partisan political grandstanding is inappropriate and inexcusable. It may have resulted in the deal not going through today. Which tables action until Thursday at the earliest, because of the Jewish Holiday of Rosh HaShanah (new year). Two more days for the worldwide financial panic to worsen. You stood up and trashed the deal you yourself negotiated. As far as I'm concerned, you personally owe all of us the fraction of our wealth that is going to disappear over the next two days. And quite frankly, for this wholly inappropriate performance, you owe us your resignation as Speaker. You have proven yourself unable to rise above partisanship in a crisis. You have proven yourself unfit to lead. And by that I mean both the House and the nation as a whole, since your position as Speaker puts you third in line for the Presidency.

If this were a parliamentary system, I would vote NO CONFIDENCE in Speaker Pelosi.

More from the Book of Mormon

Tonight may be the night of the McCain-Obama so-called debate ( I prefer to call it a joint interview), but I need a break, and perhaps you do, too. So, last night I finished reading the Book of Mormon, and I'm going to write about that.

The final editors and writers, Mormon and his son Moroni, mention that the language they are writing in is "Reformed Egyptian," because it is more compact than Hebrew. It must be quite reformed indeed, since Hebrew omits all its vowels, and considerably more compact than standard Egyptian, whose sounds are represented by pictographs rather than more compact alphabetic characters. They also discuss their own ability to express themselves in writing, stating that in their culture people are inspired to speak, not to write. The Lord assures them that despite their weakness in writing compared to speaking, people will still read and believe. This reminds me of the Gospel of Mark, which reads well in translation, but was written badly in Greek.

But who is the audience for their work? Mormon and Moroni witness the complete destruction of their culture and their people. There is literally nothing and no one left when Moroni finally signs out. Yet they write in faith that God will bring out their work to a far future people.

And indeed, looking ahead to Doctrine and Covenants, that far future people consists of Joseph Smith, his companions, and the Church they found, or rather restore upon the earth. This is why Mormons do not subscribe to the Apostle's Creed or the Nicene Creed. These creeds specifically claim apostolic succession for the Christian Church - direct connection of the church leadership from Jesus, Peter and the Apostles in the Holy Land to the present day.

In contrast, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the LDS or Mormon Church) does not claim this apostolic succession. Rather, church leadership passed from fathers to sons and disciples from 600 years before the coming of Christ, through his birth, life, crucifixion, death, resurrection, his post-resurrection appearances in the New World, to the annihilation of the Nephites after they had finally fallen away from the true faith. When Jesus appeared to the Nephites, he appointed twelve Apostles to carry the Church forward among the Nephites (paralleling the twelve Apostles appointed in the Land of Israel). Hence the LDS Church is the original Christian Church of the Nephites restored after a hiatus of some 1400 years.

And not just restored, but personally handed off by Moroni, appearing as a resurrected being to Joseph Smith and giving him the engraved plates and the means to translate them. That is to say, the person-to-person connection is unbroken, even though a gap of 14 centuries has passed. The LDS church does not subscribe to the standard creeds because it participates in a parallel kind of Apostolic succession, independent of the rest of the Christian Church, and connected to it only through the person of Jesus Christ himself.

That said, there is still the question of what Mormons believe that is different from the rest of the Christian Church. For one thing, the designation "Son of God," is ambiguous in the New Testament. (And I continue to await the fourth volume of A Marginal Jew for an explication and exegesis of it.) In the Book of Mormon, however, it is quite clear. Jesus is God's Son in the same literal sense that I am the son of my human father.

There is also very specific soteriology (theology of salvation) in the Book of Mormon. The sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ opens the door of salvation, but it is up to the individual to walk through it. This is also the soteriology of much of the Christian Church, but not all of it. In Catholic soteriology, you must partake of the sacraments of the Church. In mainline Protestant soteriology, God calls you to salvation personally and specifically (God elects you) and you respond because God enables you to do so. Your own will is corrupted and unable to comply without God's help. That is to say, through Jesus Christ, God does all the work of salvation, and you do none.

Thus, the LDS ordinances (similar to sacraments) are administered only to those who have shown themselves worthy. In contrast, the individual is assumed to be unworthy in mainline Protestant soteriology, and thus the sacraments are administered because they have the power to make the recipient worthy. In the Catholic church, the sacraments must be administered by a priest, in the Protestant church the sacraments are believed effective regardless of who administers them. In the LDS church, every male adult is a member of the priesthood and can administer certain ordinances.

However, there are levels or orders of priesthood in the LDS church, such as the Aaronic priesthood, and the order of Melchizidek. These orders may have knowledge that is not published to the LDS Church as a whole, much less to the entire world. For example, I note that in the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ designates that three of the Nephite Apostles he appoints should "tarry," as the "Apostle whom Jesus loved," in the New Testament Gospel of John (presumably John, himself) should tarry. Again, the word "tarry" is an ambiguous concept in the New Testament. In the Book of Mormon it is quite specific - these three and John will remain alive on this earth until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in power and glory to end the world and judge the living and the dead.Perhaps there is some order of LDS priesthood that knows who they are.

Likewise the unnamed brother of Jared. The Jaredites were a separate people from the Nephites, whose records came into possession of the line of Nephite prophets and were translated by them and abridged by Mormon. The brother of Jared received great prophecies that are alluded to but not revealed in the Book of Mormon. Perhaps some order of LDS priesthood knows the name of the brother of Jared and something of his prophecies.

Finally, I note that according to the Book of Mormon, there is some kind of post-death conscious existence until the day of the Resurrection, when all, saved and sinner alike, are miraculously reunited with their bodies to stand before the judgement seat of Christ. The rest of the Church has varied opinions on what the post-death experience is like, because the description of it in the Bible is so sketchy.

Well, that's it for now. If I have erred it is because I am being lazy and am writing from memory, rather than doing the diligent thing and looking everything up, chapter and verse, in the Book of Mormon. Neither do I see it as my place to opine here on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. As the Book of Mormon implies, that is between the reader and God. I merely wanted to mention a few things that jumped out at me as theological differences between the LDS Church and the rest of the Christian Church. The differences are not so great, but differences there are.

Now, on to Doctrine and Covenants...

More on Market Instability

Wall Street as we knew it vanished over the weekend. All the investment banks have been bought by banks, or have become banks. The difference? Banks are more strictly regulated than investments banks. But more importantly, banks can value assets based on expected discounted cash flow. By law, Investment banks must use the fair market price of the asset.

Fair market price sounds reasonable, but it makes for instability. In a rising market, your asset will be over-valued, and you can borrow against that asset to buy more over-valued assets, creating a bubble, which could burst. Then, in a falling market, your assets will be undervalued, forcing you to write them off and possibly go into bankruptcy.

All the while, the real value of your asset remains unchanged. The real value is the discounted cash flow you can expect from the asset. To make it concrete, supposed you owned a rental property. It's real value to you is the value of the rent you are receiving discounted by the inflation rate over the years you plan to own it, minus the money you can expect to pay for maintenance, etc.

The discounted cash flow valuation encourages buy-and-hold market behavior - and the market stability that goes with it.

In the meantime, our regulators (including Congress and the Bush administration, now that they are jumping into the act) are proceeding without a coherent theory of market stability. Let's hope they are not proceeding without a clue.

But what will really be intolerable is if any of these clowns hits the campaign trail without doing anything at all.

Blame and Fixin's for the Financial Meltdown

An old Soviet joke goes like this.

Upon becoming Premier of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev finds two envelopes on top of his new desk. The handwriting on them is from his immediate predecessor, Krushchev. On the outside, one envelope says, "Open me during your first crisis." The other says, "OPen me during your second crisis."

In due time, Brezhnev faces his first crisis, opens the first envelope, and unfolds the paper inside. It reads simply, "Blame me." Naturally, Brezhnev takes the advice and weathers the crisis.

When his second crisis occurs, Brezhnev consults the second envelope. Inside it reads, "Prepare two envelopes..."

So now the world is in a deep financial crisis. There is plenty of blame to go around, and I'll let the usual pundits spread it. Here I note that quite a few physicists and mathematicians have got into analyzing the financial markets. They are the ones who invented all kinds of fancy and obscure classes of "derivative" investments, which are a big part of the current mess. They did it because they were being paid by investment houses to figure out how to make more money for them.

But there is something very big and very obvious (to a physicist) that they failed to do. I can prove it to you very simply. All you need do is go to Amazon.com and search inside the contents of Johannes Voit's The Statistical Mechanics of Financial Markets for the word, "stability."

You won't find it, because it's not there. Physicists, the people who can spend lifetimes studying the stability or instability of dynamical systems when perturbed by physical influences large and small, have largely neglected the stability or instability of financial systems.

Why? Because they were paid by investors, not regulators. All the while the investment houses were developing more intricate investments, the regulators were asleep at the wheel.

There are many things that must be done to stabilize the financial markets. Nationalizing parts of them and creating a US sovereign wealth fund may or may not be one of them. But surely, one of those things is for the regulators to hire physicists and mathematicians to understand what makes markets stable or unstable, and to help craft regulations to stabilize them.

Neurobiology of Atheism

I ran into Bernie (not his real name) this weekend. Our talk turned quickly to politics, Sarah Palin, and the evils of religion. I mentioned that politics, not religion, is the opposite of science.

Bernie wasn't convinced. He brought up Creationism as an example of religion directly opposed to science, and of science being obviously right and religion being obviously wrong. I pointed out that the Creation story in Genesis is what a loving God would tell to a wandering semi-civilized people who began to ask 2800 years ago, "Where did we come from?" It is true at the level of explanation that a loving parent would give to a five-year-old child who asks where babies come from. It would be pointless and possibly cruel to burden a child with the mechanical details of human sexuality. It would have been equally pointless and cruel for God to say, "Well you have forty years of wandering to do..., let's start learning calculus, differential equations, and quantum mechanics." The Creationists mistake is to demand that we accept the five-year-old level of explanation as a mature explanation. In so doing, they generate an obvious falsehood and demand that we believe it along with the Gospel, which brings discredit to themselves and also to the Gospel.

Again, Bernie was skeptical. I get the sense that Bernie harbors a permanent anger toward religion, possibly to his having suffered some cruelty in its name. Or maybe simply because Bernie is a scientist, and is simply offended by biblical Literalism.

He began bringing up some of the recent research in neurobiology. "Indeed," I said, "there seems to be a neurobiological basis for religious experience." He gleefully agreed.

"But then you realize that elevates atheism to the level of color-blindness," I added.

RIck Ratowsky

I remember to you my friend and colleague, Rick Ratowsky, who died of cancer this weekend. I remember him as a talented and thorough physicist, insightful and inspired, and a gentle soul. The world is the poorer for his having passed from it so young.

Why America?

On this day after the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, too many Americans are unclear about why America exists and why they live here. Forthwith, a short refresher:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This quote from the US Declaration of Independence serves to point out that the founders of this country believed that Human Rights are not endowed by government - any government. Human Rights are endowed by our unspecified Creator, meaning that Human Rights are an integral, inseparable part of being a Human Person. It means that people set up governments to protect their rights. It means that Human Rights precede any government, including democratic government. You still have Rights even if a majority of the people vote to deny them to you.

In other words, the power of legitimate governments over people is limited. There are certain things a legitimate government is simply not allowed to do to you. And whenever this is not the case, the government in question is not legitimate.

It is the furtherance of this idea of limited government (classic liberalism) that is the stated reason the United States exists, and the assent and commitment to this idea is the reason to live in America and to be and American.

Ah, but there is the question of implementation.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The preamble to the US Constitution is a one-sentence mission statement for a government of a whole nation, for all time. It's drafters intended to found a Republic, a form of representative democracy, in which one's Human Rights were simply assumed. Wise objections soon arose that Human Rights do not "go without saying." In order to secure them, the Founders listed the limitations on the power of the new government over individuals and groups. These are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Not only do we have Representative Democracy, we have Constitutional Liberal Representative Democracy.

At least, that's how we try to have the benefits of government, while limiting the power of government to coerce or harm us. There may be other ways. But legitimate government is limited government, maintained by consent of the people governed. Any other government is, to an American, not legitimate. At least, not for the indefinite future.

Does the rest of the world go along with us on that? Even the enemies of democracy pay lip-service to democracy by using the word in the names they give themselves, like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The liberal democratic movement has its enemies, but it has been gradually catching on since 1776, when there was only one such government. Now there are many.

America's mission in the world is to lead, foster, and foment this movement. And to defend it against all enemies.

What the debate in America should be about is how to lead, foster, foment, and defend the spread of liberal democracy. Not whether to do it.

If you put lipstick on a politician...

This is a watershed year for the Republican party and most people don't get it. So I'll lay it out for you quick and plain. Mike Huckabee is not the Republican nominee for President of the United States. I think we can all take this as evidence that the Religious Right can no longer muster a majority in the Republican party. But they are still probably the Republicans' largest minority.

The majority of Republicans chose John McCain, whom the Religious Right and other Social Conservatives consider to be practically a Democrat. By himself, he would be unelectable because the majority of Republicans are not passionate enough to put up signs, make cold calls, raise money, and drive people to the polls on election day. To get elected, he would need to get the Religious Right and other Social Conservatives fired up, because they will do all those things. So he picked Sarah Palin to get the Republican "base" to work for the ticket.

Barack Obama, of course, has the Democratic party "base" fired up all by himself. The most organized part of that base consists of trade unions, who can be quite disciplined about doing what it takes to win elections.

My prediction: it will be close. And no system of voting produces satisfactory results when it's close. Half the country will be jubilant, half the country will be appalled.

And once again we'll muddle through.

More than Just your Money's Worth

My Letter to Bishop Finn

contributed by Kay Goodnow

A company has no limbic structure predisposing it to recognize its own as intrinsically valuable. People who extend fidelity and fealty to a corporate entity - legally a person and biologically a phantom - have been duped into a perilously unilateral contract. — Lewis, Amini and Lannon, A General Theory of Love, p215, 2000

Dear Bishop Finn:

Please know that you have made my life much easier.

My education in understanding the church is complete.

• I understand that victims are business deals.
• I understand that bishops are corporate executives in an institutional church.
• I understand that the institutional church is not a church.
• I understand that the institutional church has no God other than money.
• I understand that the institutional church has policies and procedures.
• I understand that the policies and procedure are more important than people.
• As a victim (business deal) I understand that the policy and procedures used against me as a business deal means that Bishop O’Hara, the corporate executive of the institutional church in the corporate archdiocese of Kansas City / St Joseph in 1954, was doing his job when he transferred a priest who made a “mistake.”

I understand that the priest who made a mistake [that is, seduced me when I was a child] made other mistakes.

I understand that the value of the life of a child is significantly unimportant as respects the monetary values of the corporate institution known as the church.

I understand that the most important interest of the corporate institution is to ban abortion because doing so might prevent other business deals.

I understand that social justice, women’s rights, discrimination and truth are political terms that are not relevant to the corporate institution.

I understand that those Catholics who are interested in moving the corporate institution to parallel the message brought by Christ are to be silenced and or fired by the corporation.

I understand that “Freedom of Religion” does not mean “Freedom FROM Religion.”

I understand that politics are ploys utilized by the corporate institution to enhance benefits paid as “perks” to its stockholders.

I understand that the officers and shareholders have profited financially by removing a god that they have carefully crafted for centuries.

I understand that from pulpits all over the corporate institution known as the Diocese of Kansas City /St. Joseph we business deals were labeled liars in order to protect the value of the corporation.

I understand that your promise to defrock “mistakes” has been withdrawn due to the age and health of those “mistakes.”

I understand why you chose to ignore the business deals from the corporate institutional diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming, as it would not be proper policy.

I understand that your corporate promise to apologize to KC business deals in person was a promise you had no intention of keeping.

I understand that you have now said that you will write a letter of apology, on behalf of the corporate institution, to any business deal who ASKS (begs) for an apology and explain corporate mistakes. I will apologize to my entire family for considering that proposal. I am an “old business deal.”
Thank you but no, I am not interested in duplicity at this time.

I will always remember you as one of the corporate officers who could have made a difference.
You chose NOT to make the difference so needed to salvage a bleeding church.

And so, with pleasure, I ban you from my world.

In Kay Goodnow's opinion, Bishop Finn "finked out" on the non-monetary commitments of the Settlement Agreement between the Diocese of Kansas City / St. Joseph and the victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by diocesan clergy. In this letter she expresses her anger.

Apparently, she had hoped that representatives of the Church would follow up the money settlement by dealing with the victims face-to-face, soul-to-soul, even though doing so would cost them the personal sacrifice of experiencing the victims' pain and resentment.

Here she expresses her disillusionment over the Church behaving like a corporation, rather than like the earthly manifestation of the Kingdom of God. She is saying to the Church, "God calls you to be worth more than just your money."

Her deposition before the mediator of the settlement is here.

Where have I been?

Apologies to my avid reader(s). I have been engaging in a controlled experiment with my neurologist in trying to reduce what may be neuropathic pain (don't worry, it isn't bad, but I do need to deal with it) by taking medicine that turns my mind into mush in the evenings. This is why I haven't been posting much lately.

That and the prolonged feeding ritual for our 14.5 year old German Shorthaired Pointer, Pongo, who, contrary to all expectations, is still alive and doing reasonably well. In the meantime, his 9 year old girlfriend, Nessa, our Great Dane, has developed laryngeal paralysis, and has difficulty breathing whenever she gets hot, excited, or anxious. Basically, we are doing hospice care for our two geriatric dogs.

And there is so much to think about. Barack Obama and his choice of Joe Biden, a smart guy no doubt, but he can come across as an arrogant a--hole when his dander and his mouth get motored up. John McCain and his choice of Sarah Palin, perhaps a ploy to simultaneously make a bid for the farther right and the disappointed Hillaryites, but also - win, lose, or draw - a move to tee her up to run for President in 2012 or 2016 against HRC herself. The upcoming test of FEMA as hurricane Gustav nears New Orleans. Heck, the upcoming test of whether Ray Nagin has learned anything from Katrina.

But, you know, the two biggest things are money and oil. Our national debt is so huge that whoever wins the presidential election is likely to have their hands tied unless they inflate the dollar to gain some wiggle room. And we really need to develop and export the technologies necessary to get the entire world off burning petroleum products for energy. It's not just good stewardship of the planet - it's a strategic necessity for disempowering regimes that live on unearned wealth. Governments that subsist off taxes have to create and maintain the conditions that enable their citizens to make the money to be taxed. Governments propped up by petrodollars do not. Hence they can be totalitarian, and can foster uncivil societies in which many of the citizens feel the urge to take their frustrations out on the safest target available - us.

Let me give you a hint as to whom I might be referring to. Will all the happy people in Saudi Arabia please stand up?

And the Russian government... Let's see, just as soon as they got back on their economic feet using mostly petrodollars, here they come, right back in our faces. Not because they're Communist (they're not), but because they're Russian. Realistically, we have two ways to confront them - our nuclear deterrent (always a bad idea), or trying to invent the technology that makes oil and natural gas uninteresting as sources of energy (a better idea, which will ultimately make the whole world, including Russia, richer).

Oh well. I expect that the next week or two will consist largely of the press trying to decide how closely Sarah Palin can be compared to Betty Bowers. (Yawn.)

How I was Abused

My deposition to the mediation hearing

contributed by Kay Goodnow

Received in October 2008

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. — Matthew 18:6

 

I was invited here today to tell all of you how my seduction by John C. Baskett, a Roman Catholic priest has affected my life. My case dates back to 1953 when I was 14 years old and a student at Notre Dame de Sion, a private Catholic school for girls run by an order of European nuns.

As I understand it, this is a hearing that is comprised of victim Kay Goodnow, the mediator, attorneys for the victim, a priest as a representative of the institutional church.

It is my understanding that this hearing is a business deal initiated by the institutional church known as the Diocese of Kansas City / St. Joseph. As such, it follows that all human beings are fallible and in that respect, all human beings are equal.

It is also my understanding that this hearing will determine the amount of compensation that I will receive, based solely on the degree of sexual abuse. Oral and anal penetration, digital penetration, kissing, fondling, alcohol abuse by either or both parties, ritual abuse, how long the abuse took place, where and when it occurred and how often will all be considered factors as to how much financial compensation each victim will be awarded.

I am not here to describe my sexual experiences as I find doing so both degrading, demeaning and beyond contempt. I have to work within the limits of the law as it stands today, but experts believe there are no ‘degrees’ of sexual abuse because every human being is different. Our present laws reveal ignorance in respect to the damage done to all victims of sexual abuse. In time, Statutes of Limitation laws and the misrepresentation of “Freedom of Religion” will be clearly defined and implemented, with or without the consent of the institutional church and organized religion.

As requested, I completed a very long written form to confirm the extent of my abuse. That form was initiated by my attorneys when the form provided by the institutional church proved inadequate. I understand that my form has been made a part of what will occur here today.

The contents of the form include my educational, medical, sexual, social and economic background along with my employment history. Every word of it is true. That form will stand by itself.
The person you see here today was the victim of a crime. She is also a survivor. She is a wife of 45 years, a mother of three, a grandmother of eight, a sister, an aunt, and friend to many.

Yes, I am a survivor, but I was seduced, not violently raped and sodomized. I was treated to long walks in a park adjacent to where I lived, I was treated to movies and ice cream cones and long talks. I attended concerts, basketball games at other high schools with this priest, and sometimes I went to parties with him, or met him at parties. On one occasion, I was treated to eggnog, which I later learned was laced with rum. I was carefully groomed by this priest. I trusted him and eventually I loved him.

I had never even dated before this man walked into my life. I was 14 years old. He was 33. He told me that God had sent me to him as a gift because he was so alone. He told me that he did not enjoy the company of other priests. He told me that he would always love me. He told me that because he was a man of God, our love would forever have to be kept secret. He was a man of God, how could I not believe the things he told me?

Yes, I am a victim, and there are thousands of victims out there who will never have the opportunity to speak of abuse and the ruination of their lives. Yes, I am a victim but I am not a lemming, I am not a sheep, and I am not a parrot. I have feelings. The institutional church and American lawmakers are apparently unaware that human beings have feelings.

Many victims of the crime of sexual abuse have committed suicide and my heart aches for their parents, siblings and friends. The institutional church makes no comment. Those victims were seriously damaged first by being abused by someone they trusted, and then by their treatment by the institutional church. That callous treatment so demoralized them that they chose to leave this world. Weapons of choice were placed in their hands by sexually immature priest or nun predators and the institutional church that conspired to shelter and protect them. The institutional church lied when it said that “this problem has been resolved” or “Father so-and-so will never be allowed around children again.” Even victims who have had their day in court have committed suicide thanks to the mental abuse inflicted by the institutional church.

Some victims are too traumatized to speak for themselves. Some are under pressure from their families. And there are those who fear the loss of their eternal souls if they speak against the church or darken her image in any way.

I will speak for myself and for them.

Sexual abuse is an insidious cancer. It spreads out like ripples in water. It wreaks havoc, pain and fear not only on its victim, but also on the victim’s family members and friends.
Sexual abuse is a very extensive social problem, so broad in scope that people generally deny it, look the other way or cast their eyes downward. They avoid mentioning it, let alone discussing how to prevent it. They have the right to make moral choices for themselves but at the risk of the lives of their children and grandchildren.

In Bishop Finn’s Letter to Priests on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 (KC Star) he said:

“Over the past five years, our Diocese and a number of our clergy or former clergy have been sued by persons claiming to be victims of sexual abuse or misconduct.”

Yes, all of that is true. The institutional church traditionally uses the phrase “persons claiming to be victims” to cast doubt on the reality that sexual abuse occurs all the way around the world. To deny this undeniable reality is both offensive and disingenuous.

Finn simply failed to mention that over at least the past five years, every effort was made by the diocese to silence, repudiate, malign and re-victimize those who did sue. Many of us reported to the Vicar General and were dismissed as having no case of merit or were merely ignored.

Since my initial contact with SNAP in 1997, the leadership in this institutional diocese has seen multiple vigils held, while countless “good Catholics” screamed at us to “get over it.” We came forward in peace with the intent of protecting children and educating adults. From pulpits all over this diocese, the institutional diocese of Kansas City explained to parishioners that we are “liars.” Had it not been for the inept handling of clergy sexual abuses cases, I would not have had to stand in front of an institutional building with a sign and a candle. I might have been enjoying the life to which I was originally born. Victims do not ask to be abused. They are chosen by skillful predators.

On Wednesday, August 20, 2008, after the TENTATIVE settlement had been announced and before the list of 17 non-monetary demands had been released on August 22, 2008, Bishop Finn said:

“…the church will remain an inviolate sanctuary for healing, for spiritual renewal, and for love.” (Kansas City Star, 08/20/08)

The key word here is REMAIN. The institutional church in this diocese has NEVER been an inviolate sanctuary. Priests, nuns and bishops have violated children and vulnerable adults. If this institution wants to be an inviolate sanctuary for healing, for spiritual renewal and for love it must first tell the truth. It must then keep telling the truth, even when it is inconvenient or costly or uncomfortable, even when it might tarnish the golden image of the roman collar or the pristine purity of a nun’s habit. The institutional church must hold itself accountable to God’s law and to the laws of this nation. Their attempt to bury the damage and recreate history is not truth. It’s so simple. All they have to do is tell the truth.

This institutional “church” is the antithesis of the message brought by Christ. It is a church divided against itself because of men who are fallible, and as leaders of the institutional church, abused their unquestioned power in order “to protect the church.” By “protect the church,” they mean both money and power. Money is power.

Fallible males have believed in the institutional church for so long that they have become the God that they have so carefully crafted for centuries. Religion by fear or by oppression, religion built on smoke and mirrors, religion that requires its’ membership to worship in the church of the almighty dollar, religion that requires total belief in all of its’ fallible dogmas, doctrines, rites, rituals and lies is not a church. It is a cult that abuses all of its members by brainwashing them from birth.
Yes, I am both proud and pleased to have been a part of crafting the original 24 non-monetary commitments. I am even pleased with most of the 17 in the final draft. Finn has chosen not to apologize to victims as individuals. To the best of my knowledge, neither he nor his predecessor has ever spoken with a victim.

Besides, we’ve only been asking for those same commitments for the past six years or so.
On April 15, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said at a press conference in the United States: "We will do everything possible to ensure that this does not happen in the future. I think we have to act on three levels: the first is the level of justice and secondly the political level. ...then there is the pastoral level.
On April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said to American Bishops: "It is your God given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation and to reach out with loving concern to those so seriously wronged."
On April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict VXI said to American Bishops” "....This scourge is found not only within your dioceses but in every sector of society. It calls for a determined, collective response."

During his recent visit to Australia, Pope Benedict XVI said:

“These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. I ask all of you to support and assist your bishops, and to work together with them in combating this evil. Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice.”

I ask all involved here today to honor the message brought by Christ along with the pope’s request. I charge all people everywhere to guard and protect their children and grandchildren. What has happened in the past, what is happening in our present, and what will happen in the future depends on our ability to speak our truth without fear of reprisal.

I believe that I have done everything that I can do to call attention to a situation that should never have existed. I will admit to having trusted the church. I admit to being very tired of the lies spoken in God’s name by the corporate, institutional church. For Catholics who continue to believe in the leaders of this travesty of church, you have been warned and the responsibility to make correct choices rests solely with you.

John C. Baskett seduced me because he could do so without fear. He knew that the institutional church would protect him. He knew he would not lose his job, his freedom, or his orders. In 1955, Bishop O’Hara, titular head of the institutional church in this diocese enabled a sexual predator to continue to abuse.

The diocese of Kansas City / St. Joseph owes me for a lifetime of shame, guilt, and fear. It owes me for alcoholism and attempted suicides. It owes me for sexual frigidity. It owes me for ADHD and PTSD. It owes me for obsessive-compulsive behavior disorders. It owes me for my enormous need for approval. It owes me for thousands of dollars spent on psychiatrists as an investment in my sanity. It owes me a personal apology for the demeaning manner in which I was treated by Vicar General Rush from the Boland regime. It owes me and every other victim a personal apology by the bishop, as requested in the original 24 non-monetary demands.

It owes me for 54 of the 72 years I have lived the lie of trying to appear ‘normal’ while knowing that something was very wrong with me.

The child known as Kay will always be Catholic. The child misses the mystical beauty of the music, the art, the stained glass windows, the Latin rituals and the French virgin-martyr tales of her early childhood. The child known as Kay was deliberately brainwashed.

I have lived long enough to know that the pain is so deep that it never goes away. Age, time and professional therapists along with the support of family and friends help. Certainly, survivor organizations have strengthened us on all levels and have helped us find our voices. Without them, I might never have understood that I am a victim and that I am not to blame for what happened to me.
My hands are shaking as I write this on August 22nd, and they will shake again when I am deposed on August 28th.

Kay Goodnow writes of her deposition: 

In March of this year (2008) the Diocese of Kansas City / St. Joseph contacted the law firm that works with victim/survivors in this area. The diocesan lawyers wanted to work out a settlement between victims who had sued the diocese; some of those cases had been wending their way through the court for eight years. The diocese stalled, wrote briefs, etc. etc. ad nauseum. By March of 2008, our law firm had deposed several "higher ups" as well as all of the victims and their families.

I got a call in March, as I have stayed active with SNAP in an attempt to prevent further harm to children and as support for victims. The attorney said that she believed I could be a part of the settlement although my case was well beyond the Statute of Limitations.

So I filed, I did press conferences and the news spread across both Kansas and Missouri, into the Chicago area and eventually to Bishop Accountability in Boston.

Then, on August 17th or so, the lawyers (ours) released the tentative settlement agreement to be shared by 47 victims of 12 area priests. One of those area priests is a retired bishop in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

This was a mediation process and not a lawsuit. I believe it was encouraged by the judge who would have to hear the individual cases as they occurred. All parties agreed to the settlement amount and every one of us 47 victims stated that the non-monetary awards were more important than the money.

Because my case was so old, I figured I would be at the bottom of the heap.

All of this will explain the enclosure, which is what I planned to say when I was deposed. Actually, I did not read it, but my attorney highlighted it and led me through it, which was great. I got everything I wanted to say said, and everyone in the room cried, including the male moderator. Only piggy priest tried to look away, but I caught him and demanded that he listen. He did. He himself had been accused, but not publicly, of soliciting sex and he knew that I had seen both the written accusation and the bishop's written response.

The reason I thought of you is that my lawyer suggested to the mediator that he Google me, and she gave him a copy of what I had written as well. Later, she told me that that evening, the mediator had called to tell her that he had spent quite a lot of time reading my stuff on the internet and he had found the Dogchurch...

The Bishop, whose name is Finn, finked out on the non monetary provisions. In so doing, he irritated me (mild understatement) so I wrote him a letter and mailed it this past Saturday.

Are we stupid or what?

Russia invades Georgia, ostensibly to "rescue" ethnic Russians living in Georgia (colonized there by the former Soviet Union) sort of like the Nazis invading the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to "rescue" ethnic Germans who had settled there, a move which began World War II. This could be the Russians beginning the re-conquest of as many of the former Soviet Republics (the "near abroad" in Russian parlance) as they can.

And what are the top headlines in our national media? How Americans are faring in the Beijing Olympics, and what John Edwards has been doing with his d--k.

Are we stupid, or what?

Or is it that our media thinks that news is meant to entertain, or to propagandize, rather than to inform?