Milo's Janus Outlook

“You may be sad, but don’t give up.”

2012-01-16T20:47:00.000-08:00

Tsai Ing-wen's concession speech

[Note: Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, presidential candidate for the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan lost the election to the Nationalist Party's (KMT) incumbent president Ma Ying-jeou. As I wrote two days before the election, I thought that that KMT's unparalleled wealth would be the decisive factor. I think it was, but that is for a later rehash if at all.

My dear friend, Dr. Peng Ming-min, eighty-eight years old working at the pace of a young person, created an International Committee for a Fair Election in Taiwan He sent this note today about the election:

"One may try to find some consolation in the fact that in thepast decade at every election, the number of the KMT supporters has beendeclining, and those of the DPP’s increasing ; if this trend continues, one dayin the future the latter may take over eventually. But we cannot forgetour terrible neighbor who holds so many cards to play and manipulate (military,economy commerce, international and Taiwan’s internal politics in collusionwith KMT). When Ma wants recklessly push Taiwan into the same status asHong Kong, can the opposition mobilize sufficient strength to apply brakeagainst it? We do not know. I hope Tsai will continue to lead the DPP for the next four years."

I suggest you click on this link to Dr. Tsai's concession speech on Saturday night, even if you don't speak Chinese. As you watch her speak and the massive crowd that gathered in the rain. read the translation of her speech below.

January 14, 2012

Thank you everyone for being here, especially in this rain. I wouldlike to say thank you! Thank you everyone!

For our friends who are present here today, for those watching on theirtelevision sets and the Internet, good evening!

We concede and accept the decision made by the Taiwanese people. I knowthat many of our supporters feel heartbroken as they listen to me saythis. However I would like to congratulate PresidentMa. I hope that over the next four years, he listens to the voicesof the people, governs with diligence, caring equally for every citizen, andabsolutely not disappoint the people’s expectations.

I understand what people are thinking at the moment. I believe thatmany people expected a victory today, but, although the reality was not to oursatisfaction, I would like to encourage our supporters to be strong. We willcontinue to be strong and we will even be stronger than anyone else. We are theDPP, and when we faced our darkest times, we didn’t falter. We did not falterin the past, and we won't now.

I ask you to recall the despair of four years ago. When we wanted toclimb the highest mountain, but we feared that it would be unattainable.However, we clenched our teeth and forged ahead with party unity. In these fouryears, step-by-step, we moved forward. This time, we just came up short ofreaching the peak.

Even though these results are regrettable, we counted on the faithplaced by the people in the little piggies fundraising campaign, whichestablished the roots of a new political model, and also counted on our policyproposals for the future development of Taiwan, our key strength in thiscampaign.

What is most important is our power of unity, a force that cannot be ignored,one that will neither collapse nor disappear.

Please do not worry or feel despair. Taiwan cannot afford to be withoutan opposition voice or be without checks and balances. Even though we will notbe able to achieve our ideals from a governing role in the next four years,this does not mean that the opposition will have no power.

I believe that as long as you continue to stand behind us, giving usyour support and encouragement, we will have a future and will climb at last tothe top of the mountain.

As party chair, I would like to offer my sincere appreciation for yoursupport of our legislative candidates allowing us to increase the number of DPPseats in the legislature. In the future, they will speak for the people in theLegislative Yuan, placing the people’s hardships in their hearts, exerting alltheir efforts to raise the quality of public policy and striving to provideadequate care for the people.

The reform and transformation of the DPP will not cease. We willcontinue to stand by the people, especially those that are disadvantaged in oursociety. We will continue to stand by our policy ideals, and we will continueto insist on disassociating ourselves from corporate money and rely onsmall-sum donations. We will continue to forge ahead, believing that one day wewill gain the trust of the majority.

Even though we gave our all in attempting to achieve our ideals, thisroad will take longer than expected. We can do better in the future. Facing theresults of this election, the DPP will consciously carry out self-examinationand continue to remain alert.

For this election result, I take full responsibility. Just a fewmoments ago, I announced that I will resign my position as chair of theDemocratic Progressive Party. I have faith that the next chair will continueleading the DPP towards reform and transformation, will continue our forwardmomentum.

I personally wish to thank all of you for accompanying me on our commonjourney. It has been a beautiful four years as we fought side byside. In my heart, you are not only the people who voted for me, but you arealso my best companions.

Tonight, I understand that everyone must have feelings of sorrow, andif you really do feel that way, let these feelings come out. You can cry, butdo not feel discouraged. You can feel sorrow, but never give up becausetomorrow we must be brave just like we have been in the last four years, andfill our hearts with hope. Because we also must bravely, responsibly fight forour country and we must continue to positively fight for our Taiwan. No matterin position we hold, we must continue to love and cherish this country of ours.

To all the dear people of Taiwan: one day we will comeback. We will not give up. On this day of 2012, those who supportedthe DPP and me and should feel proud. Let us keep our heads up and continue towalk bravely forward with strong steps.

Thank you! My heart will always stand with the people of Taiwan.

Why We Can't Wait - Memories of Dr. King

2012-01-15T18:53:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. It is a day to remember.

I remember when I was a pastor at age 18, a lifetime ago on a circuit of twochurches west of Fort Worth. Having just completed his doctorate in theology atBoston University, Dr. King was catapulted into leadership of the MontgomeryBus Boycott. Many people in my two country churches, as well as throughout therest of the South, said that King was a communist. I didn’t believe that but Iwhispered to Dr. King, seven hundred miles away, “Dr. King, I believein what you are trying to do, but you’re going too fast. Slow down, give uswhites a chance to get on board.”

Dr. King came to speak at a voter registration rally in Dallas in 1960. Myethics professor took three of us to hear him. We were just about the onlywhites in an auditorium of two to three thousand people. He was supposed tospeak at 7:00 but didn’t actually begin until 10:00, but when he started he hadus all in the palm of his hand. I have never had another experience sopowerful. When it was over, the ethics professor said to me, “I’m glad we’re onthe same side.” The time was soon to come when Dr. King would wonder if we wereindeed on the same side.

On April 16, 1963, when he wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Iwas beginning to have a glimmer of understanding. But when he spoke atRiverside Church on April 4, 1967 announcing his opposition to the Vietnam War,"A Time to Break Silence," I whispered again to Dr. King from myvantage point in Taiwan eight thousand miles away: “You’re right about thewar, but your opposition to the war may well undermine what you’ve done oncivil rights.” I whispered the same thing a few months later when heannounced the beginning of the Poor People’s Campaign focusing on jobs andfreedom for the poor of all races.

But thank goodness he didn’t listen to my whisperings. He was right each time.And at each stage he dragged me further out of what is now called my “comfortzone.” Today, I remember his words to white clergy in his letterfrom Birmingham. Finding time to re-read the letter tomorrow is not a badobservance for the day. To me, the words still sting with the ring of truth:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's greatstumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen'sCouncilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devotedto "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is theabsence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; whoconstantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agreewith your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can setthe timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept oftime and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenientseason." Shallow understanding from people of good will is morefrustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarmacceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Think with me and imagine for a few minutes. If Dr. King were alive now, Iwonder

What would he tell us about the war in Afghanistan, and about freedomslost in the name of fighting terrorism?
What would he think about government policies from the national tolocal levels approving budget cutting measures that routinely hurt the poorestand reward the wealthiest?
What would he say about the Occupy Wall Street movement?

I think we can imagine what he might say to those who choose to sit on the sidelines uninvolved. And he would be right again.

If not the memory of Dr. King, what will it take to get us to act onwhat our consciences are surely telling us?

- Milo

Putting Lipstick on a Hog

2012-01-12T12:02:00.000-08:00

Funding Elections in Taiwan and in the U.S.

My head and heart are in two different places today, but concerned about one issue in both places: money.

Within a few hours as many as seventeen million votersin Taiwan will begin casting their ballots in that nation’s presidential,legislative elections and local elections. The Nationalist Party (KMT) MaYing-jeou is the incumbent President facing an unexpectedly strong challengefrom the Democratic Progressive Party candidate Tsai (DPP) Ing-wen. Standing on the outside isthe People’s First Party candidate James Soong who could be a spoiler for theKMT.

If Ma wins, this could be the point of no return as he would move Taiwanmore into the orbit of Beijing’s control. If Tsai succeeds in becoming the firstwoman President she faces the extraordinarily difficult task of undoing damageMa has done in undermining the country’s independence.

In view of his performance over the past three and ahalf years, how could the people of Taiwan, the majority of whom repeated pollsmake clear have no interest in being absorbed by China, vote Ma back into office?

The answer is not too difficult to find: money! The KMTis one of the world’s (not just Taiwan’s) wealthiest political parties. According to the KMT-run Ministry of theInterior in July, KMT income for the year stood at $121 million (U.S.) while theDPP had a relatively paltry $20 million (U.S.). Most of the KMT funds come frominvestments, not political contributions. Michael Turton, a friend in Taiwan, has done a little math on these “official”figures in “KMTwealth management” and has calculated that the KMT’s income is based oninvestment assets of over $2 billion (U.S.).

These, of course, are only assets the KMT has chosen tomake public. One may be forgiven for concluding there is much much more that isunreported. Where did the wealth come from? First, when Mao and the ChineseCommunists defeated Chiang’s Nationalists and retreated to Taiwan they broughteverything of monetary value that could be transported across the Straits.Second, they came from the appropriation of Japanese colonial era assets aswell as seizing Taiwanese land and businesses. During the period of WhiteTerror (1947-1987) confiscations of Taiwanese resources continued and there wasalmost no difference between the ruling party KMT coffers and those of thegovernment.

And what has the KMT done with this “impossiblywealthy” golden goose?

“The political party once held to be the world'srichest was never shy about using its money to buy support. At the peak of itspower in the 1990s, Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT) rewarded its members with stockoptions, lavished expensive gifts on journalists and opinion makers, and luredtens of thousands to political rallies and election booths with the promise offree food, hats, flags, jackets, and zou-lu-kun red envelopesstuffed with petty cash. The party even dipped into its own coffers to bolsterflagging stock markets or to buy diplomatic support from impoverished nations.”

A recentpoll shows that Taiwanese are aware of the disparity of the wealth of theKMT and everybody else and believe it to be unfair:

“More than 77 percent of respondents in a surveyconducted by a polling company on behalf of the Zero Party Assets Alliance feltthat the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) huge assets create unequalcompetition between political parties, the alliance told a press conferenceyesterday.”

National Taipei University department of public financeprofessor Huang Shih-hsin (黃世鑫)said the obvious:

“…as long as the KMT asset issue exists, normaldemocratic development in Taiwan is be impossible.”

If Dr. Tsai wins tomorrow it will be nothing short of amiracle, just as it was when Chen Shui-bien won in 2000 and 2004.

I said at the outset that my head and heart were in two different places but concerned about one issue. Yesterday, I received a letter from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont, expressing concern about how democracy in this country has been undermined by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on December 10, 2010 overturning a bi-partisan election reform bill allowing corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited sums of money, without disclosure, in political campaigns.

Sanders asked what I ask:

Will the United Statessurvive, in any significant way, as a democracy in which ordinary people cancontrol their future? Or, will "democracy" simply become anothercommodity owned and controlled by billionaires and corporations in order toserve their own purposes? Today, as a result of the absurd CitizensUnited Supreme Court decision, thatis exactly what they’re doing:

“Karl Rove’s American Crossroads has already pledged to spend at least $240million in the elections of 2012. The extreme right-wing billionaire Kochbrothers may be spending even more. And then there is Wall Street, the oil andcoal corporations, the insurance and drug companies and themilitary-industrial-complex with all of their money.”

“The goal of the top 1 percent is simple. They will spend as much as it takesto elect candidates who support a right-wing corporate agenda. They will spendas much as it takes to defeat those candidates who are fighting for workingfamilies. And that’s about it!”

Sandersis proposing a Constitutional amendment, the Saving American Democracy bill, tooverturn Citizens United. This amendment states that:

Corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as human beings.
The people have the right to regulate corporations.
Corporations are prohibited from making campaign contributions.
Congress and states shall have the power to set reasonable limits on electionspending.

I don't know if this amendment has any chance of passing Congress or if the States will ratify it. But we've got to do something because our democracy is at stake. The same is true of the wealth of the KMT in Taiwan.

Instead of trying to make pretty what is inherently ugly, like putting lipstick on a hog, give Taiwan real democracy. And while we are at it, let's restore democracy here in this country.

- Milo

Life's Curiosities

2012-01-05T19:37:00.000-08:00

One of life’s greatestcuriosities is death. Some are sure of what they will find on the other side ofthe veil that separates life from death, but I’m not one of them. Others havehad “near death” experiences and believe they’ve had glimpses of the “otherside.” I’m not one of those either. Andsometimes I’m curious, but not when I am confronted with the death of a friendor loved one. My experience tells me that this person is now distant from me ina way different from miles.

The death of my oldfriend JonWalters was the reality I confronted at the moment I started to work on theJanuary 1 issue of Village Life. Thisis the monthly newsletter I edit for HighDesert Village, anon-profit group started by a group of friends three years ago to help seniorsstay in their own homes safely. I was considering the content and layout whenan email popped up in my box informing me of the death of Jon’s death.

Jon and I had beenfriends since the 1970s. After spending much of his career working on behalf ofdisenfranchised people in Indiana, I persuaded him to go to Alaska where heworked for eight years. He was working among the Choctaw people in Mississippiwhen he died suddenly the day after Christmas.

When I read themessage, I was not curious about the mystery of life and death. All I felt waspersonal loss and the loss his family and friends were experiencing. After notbeing able to reach his immediate family, I talked long with one of Jon’s bestand oldest friends.

I realized (again!)that life goes on, even without Jon and while the rest of us grieve. Thenewsletter was waiting.

“This is the New Yearissue,” I said to myself. “I’ll put some wise words about the changing of thecalendar.” The only problem was that I wasn’t feeling at all wise and didn’thave any ready words of wisdom.

I went on a Googlesearch for wise words for the changing of the year. And I found a lot of them;some of them, I confess, didn’t sound very wise to me; but then my eyes fell onthis poem:

Another fresh newyear is here . . .Another year tolive!To banish worry,doubt, and fear,To love and laughand give!

This bright new year is given meTo live each daywith zest . . .To daily grow andtry to beMy highest and mybest!

I have the opportunityOnce more to rightsome wrongs,To pray for peace,to plant a tree,And sing morejoyful songs!

William Arthur Ward(1921-1994)

I read the twelve lines several times and thenbegan to think they were written for me: “Another fresh new year ishere...Another year to live!” It’s not another year to live for Jon,and who knows when any of us might cross that line, but for whatever days wehave they are days to live! And, they are days of opportunity. What more important agenda for the year could I ask?

I knew these were thewords for the cover. But who is the author, William Arthur Ward? I didn’t thinkI had ever heard of him, so I did another search, this one to find out who hewas.

Can you imagine myshock when I found out that, in addition to learning that he was one ofAmerica’s mostquoted writers of life maxims, this was the man who helped me get throughcollege? I knew him simply as “Bill Ward.” He came to Texas Wesleyan in 1955,the year I did; but I came as a freshman and he came as Assistant to the President.He helped me find enough scholarship money and jobs to get through my first andsecond years.

On a day I lost afriend I found comfort from one I had forgotten. Life really is full ofcuriosities, isn’t it?

None of us knows thenumber of our days. My hope for all of us is that we seize each one “toright some wrongs, to pray for peace, to plant a tree, and sing more joyfulsongs!”

Happy New Year!

- Milo

How Long Until True Democracy?

2011-12-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

[After my visits to two prisons when Connie and I visited Taiwan a couple of weeks ago, I wrote the following Op-Ed for the Taipei Times. It was published Friday, December 30, 2011 and is reprinted in full here with full permission.]

Howmany generations does it take to grow a democracy? I asked this question as Iread about Russia and thought of my recent visit to two prisons in Taiwan.

Manyare asking the question in Russia today. With Vladimir Putin seeking to extendhis rule by subverting democratic elections and other human rights, people have taken to the streets in unprecedentednumbers.

A couple of weeks ago, the White Terror era was graphicallybrought to mind when my old friend, Hsieh Tsung-min, and his wife took me tovisit The Jing-mei Human Rights Memorial Park, located at the site of theformer Detention Center of the Taiwan Garrison Command. I had visited the sitein 2008, but not with my friend who had been incarcerated there for many years.

Mr.Hsieh, who on had been arrested a week before me in 1971, took me on a personaltour of the facility that included the cell he occupied. My former wife and Ihad been charged with “activities unfriendly to the government of the Republicof China”, put under house arrest, and expelled, whereas our friends andcolleagues, Hsieh and Wei T’ing-chao were tried in secret after a year and ahalf in custody, served long sentences, and were horribly tortured.

The tinycell where Hsieh had been held was hard for me to look at and almost as hard toview the drawings in the museum of the torture he described in a lettersmuggled out in 1972.

Allof the inhuman treatment of political prisoners and the climate of terrorcreated by Chiang Kai-shek and his security agencies came rushing back throughthe forty years as if it were yesterday.

Threedays after my visit to Jing-mei, I visited the Taipei Prison where formerPresident Chen Shui-bien is incarcerated.

Cheryl Lai (賴秀如) graciouslyaccompanied me to translate. When my family returned to Taiwan in 2003 afterthirty years, then President Chen had been extraordinarily kind to us. He hadtaken me aside and said that he was sorry that my activities in Taiwan hadcaused me to be blacklisted by the U.S. government for nineteen years. On thisvisit I wanted to thank him.

Beingallowed to visit him in prison was a reminder that some things have changedsince the beginning of democratization in the 1990s. His buzz cut hair andorange jump suit underlined the different settings and conditions when we hadlast met in 2003. Neither his smile nor his sense of humor had left him. Weboth chuckled about Dr. Peng Ming-min coming to visit him and bringing a copyof his then new book, The Perfect Escape,published in 2009.

Icame away from the thirty minute meeting with questions that continue to puzzleme as I think of Taiwan’s path:

Newspaperaccounts of his trials invariably point out that Chen is the first formerpresident to be indicted and convicted of crime in the history of the ROC. Whatis rarely said is that he is also the only non-KMT president in the history ofthe ROC. Is that one of the reasons he is in jail?

AlthoughChen was President for two terms, the KMT controlled the legislature, thejudiciary, and the central government agencies just as they have from the beginning.I wonder how his trials, which according to outside legal observers have said “dueprocess” was so convoluted it is doubtful that the truth of any of the chargescan ever be determined. Chen was emphatic that he does not want a pardon; hewants a fair re-trial.

FormerPresident Chen was an unapologetic advocate of an independent Taiwan, whichsent political shivers not only through the KMT but also through the leaders inBeijing. Is it possible that this is the real reason Chen is in prison? Chen seemsconvinced, and I have little reason to doubt it. Themanner in which the KMT-dominated government has conducted the formerPresident’s trials is enough to question how much Taiwan’s democracy has grown.

Formerpresidential adviser Dr. Peng Ming-min heads a new international committee calling for free andfair elections:

“We have only one sincere but strong demand — that the Jan. 14elections should be conducted fairly and properly, as fair elections are theminimum requirement for a democratic society and the polls come as a greatchallenge for Taiwan.”

It isthe same plea he and his two former students, Hsieh Tsung-min and WeiT’ing-chao, made in their Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation on September 20, 1964, a plea that landedall three in prison charged with treason.

Thisis not 1964 and much has changed since then, but how the January 14 election isconducted may go far in answering the question in Taiwan, “How many generationsdoes it take to grow a democracy?”

Milo Thornberry, author of FireproofMoth: A Missionary in Taiwan’s White Terror (Sunbury Press, 2011). The Chinese edition wasreleased on December 10 by the Asian Culture Company.

Political Musings on Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

I intended to work on another writingproject this morning but this Christmas Eve headline set me on another path: 'Russiawill be free': Huge rally increases pressure on Vladimir Putin:

“Moscow: Tens of thousands of demonstratorson Saturday cheered opposition leaders and jeered the Kremlin in the biggestshow of outrage yet against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's 12-year rule.”

The news reminded me of the struggle goingon in the fragile democracy of Taiwan from which Connie and I have just returned.My old friend, Dr. Peng Ming-min, is chairing a new internationalcommittee calling for free and fair elections on January 14, 2012:

“We have only one sincere but strong demand— that the Jan. 14 elections should be conducted fairly and properly, as fairelections are the minimum requirement for a democratic society and the pollscome as a great challenge for Taiwan,” said former presidential adviser PengMing-min (彭明敏).

Many Jewish people continue to celebrate Hanukah (December20-28) and recall how in the 2^nd Century BCE a small band offaithful Jews defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, and drove theGreeks from their land. Many Christians are gathering for Christmascelebrations praying for peace and goodwill. Religious and non-religious alikeare likely aware of political struggles for freedom and human dignitythroughout the world.

Christians may be surprised by what can beknown about the politics of that first Christmas. The earliest church seems notto have celebrated Christmas for its first two hundred years. Why was Christmasnot celebrated earlier? That's a matterfor conjecture, not proof. The fact is,scholars tell us, there is a conflict in the historical settings provided in theonly two Gospel accounts we have of the birth of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew sets the birth at thetime of King Herod. (2:1ff.)

The account in Luke sets the birth when Augustus wasEmperor of Rome, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. In spite of its scenes of angels singing toshepherds peacefully watching their sheep in the hills, it was a world ofpolitical conflict and human suffering. The birth of Jesus coincided with thecensus of Quirinius. This was not likeour every ten year censuses: the purpose of this census was to identify peopleso that even heavier taxes could be levied by Rome and so that Judean men couldbe identified for conscription into Caesar's army.

Althoughwe get no sense of it in Luke's story, we know from sources outside the Biblethat thisvery census provoked an armed uprising by Jewish patriots against Rome. A guerilla war against Rome began which wouldcontinue throughout Jesus' life and would end with the destruction of Jerusalemby Roman armies thirty or so years after Jesus' crucifixion. This census meant that Mary and Joseph hadto be on the road, away from their family support systems, at precisely thetime for the birth of their first baby.

Thecorrelation of Jesus' birth with the beginning of this war of resistanceagainst Rome was not coincidental. Theworld was moving according to Caesar Augustus. Caesar claimed to be "Savior" of the world. A "savior" was one who delivered orliberated people. It is in response tothat claim that Luke has angels announce news of "good news" and"joy" to the shepherds in the fields. To almighty political powerLuke’s message was that the real "Savior" was being born in tinyBethlehem; "the Messiah," was "Christ the Lord." The legions of Caesar Augustus sought toenforce the "Peace of Rome" on this subject people. Against the claims of the mighty power ofCaesar, the little birth story flings back the reply that salvation and peaceare not finally in Caesar’s hands. And this unsettling thought is a threat totyrants in every age and place.

Cynics(or “realists” depending on whether you are one or not) may argue that Caesarwon. Thirty plus years later Caesar’s administrator, Pontius Pilate, had Jesus crucifiedon the charge of insurrection. In 70 AD (or CE) Caesar’s legions defeated theJewish Zealots (including, no doubt, some Jews who believed Jesus to be theMessiah), destroyed the Temple, and razed Jerusalem. And in the fourth century,when Caesar Theodosius 1 made Christianity the religion of the empire,Christians’ belief that Jesus was “Savior of the World” was used as a clubagainst Judaism and other religions, eradicating most religions in the empire,and providing the ideology for persecution of Jews for the next millennium anda half. We are right to be sobered by these events.

ButCaesars’ of the world always think they’ve won. If we listen carefully to thebackstories told at Hanukkah, Christmas, and freedom stories in othertraditions, we are reminded that the Vladimir Putins, Hu Jintaos, Bashar al-Assads,and even the Wall Street tyrants are not invincible. And that’s good news!

HappyHolidays and a Wonder Filled New Year!

- Milo

Together, We Are Invincible

2011-12-17T22:09:00.000-08:00

[NOTE: This column appeared in the Daily News Miner in Fairbanks, Alaska on Christmas Eve 1996, Connie's and my first Christmas there. The author is Tom Teepen, long time columnist for the New York Times and more lately for the Cox Newspapers. This is, as Teepen says, "a Christmas column," and in my mind it would be a good one to read each year as we approach Christmas and Hanukkah.]

In case you begin to wonder, yes, this is a Christmas column.

The International Red Cross has released documents from its World War II files showing the organization knew at the time that what we've come to know as the Holocaust was under way in Nazi concentration camps.

The Red Cross kept quiet through the war. It feared that raising the alarm would compromise its neutrality and end its ability to inspect prisoner of war camps.

See? A Christmas column.

Here and there - in Hungary, Romania - the Red Cross did manage to save thousands of Jewish lives quietly where opportunity occurred.

The Red Cross was not alone in silence, or in reasoning the silence served some other end of good. Holocaust scholars, especially Deborah Lipstadt, have shown that far more was contemporaneously known about the Holocaust than later accounts admitted.

The United States, like most nations, enforced tight restrictions against the Jewish immigration that could have saved millions of lives. Allied strategists worried that concern over the slaughter in the camps might distract from the focus on winning the war as quickly as possible.

The bitter, bitter irony in all this is that we know now, from miraculous tales borne out of the war by survivors, that the Nazis often shied when a rare bold town or a brave pastorate refused to serve Hitler's Final Solution.

Nazi persecution of German Jews before World War II would still rank as a historic affront to civilization even if the Holocaust had not followed. But could the mass murder have been stopped if powerful agencies - governments, the papacy, the Red Cross - had stood together in their terrible knowledge and had said no to the horror?

Recently, one of the few Jewish families living on a cul-de-sac in Bucks County, Pa., was awakened by the sound of glass breaking. Vandals had shattered the living room window to destroy the electric menorah the family had lighted for Hanukkah.

By the next evening, windows in all the other 18 homes of Water Lily Way, most not Jewish homes, and windows elsewhere in the subdivision, too, glowed with unaccustomed menorahs.

And there would have been more but local stores had run out as neighbors scurried after the stocks. As it was, merchants caught up in the idea had busily phoned one another to round up as many menorahs as they could.

The vandals have not reappeared. The dark that covered them one night was gone the next, defeated by candlelight.

It is so simple, though it often takes such strength and courage: When we stand in our common humanity we are invincible against those who would divide us meanly.

The lesson of the Holocaust is not everywhere learned. Not in Serbia. Not in Rwanda. Last week six Red Cross workers were murdered in their sleep in Chechnya, for practicing humanitarianism without preference.

But if the lesson is not yet fully learned, neither is it lost.

It is known, and known well, on Water Lily Way, in Bucks County, in Pennsylvania.

Even small lights hold back the night.

Didn't I tell you this was a Christmas column?

- Tom Teepen

[For a fuller account of the Bucks County story see this in the Chicago Tribune.]

Living by Hope

2011-12-11T12:31:00.001-08:00

[NOTE: Pictured above are Lin I-hsiong, his wife Fang Su-min, and their grandchildren at a memorial service in 2009 at Taipei's Gikong Presbyterian Church, in remembrance of his mother and their seven year old twin daughters who were murdered nearly three decades ago on February 28, 1980. The murders took place while Fang Su-min was visiting Lin in prison for participating in a human rights rally on December 13, 1979.

When it was dangerous to do so, Presbyterian women reached out to comfort Fang Su-min in her in her grief. Later, when no one would buy their home, the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan bought the property and made it into Gikong Church.

It was a great honor for me to be invited to preach in this place on Sunday, December 11, 2011. Following is the sermon I preached.]

Deuteronomy 34:1-7; Luke 1:46-55s

I do not have words to express the depth of my gratitude for yourwelcome to join you in worship today in this holy place. The only words I haveare those some of you or your grandparents spoke to express profound thanks tothose, who like a farmer, have labored on your behalf. To you, I say for bothConnie and me, Lo Lat!

We are two weeks away from celebrating the birth of Jesus. Today, Iwant us to begin with something that happened twelve hundred years before Jesuswas born.

This is how I imagine it. He must have been exhausted. Inhis earlier years this climb would have been nothing for a man of his strengthand endurance. But he was not the man he once was. Onthis day he felt every rock underneath his callused feet. Everyplace where the gradual incline of the trail had been eroded by the ceaselesswind and spring rains meant that he had to force his tired body up to thetrail's next level. Sweat funneled down the deep creases on hisforehead and burned as they found their way into his eyes.

He was dying and he knew it. But something -- God! --beckoned him up to the top of the mountain, a mountaintop from whose peak hecould see over to the other side of the Jordan River to "the land of milkand honey," the land he had spent most of his life leading his peopletoward.

I wonder if this old man -- the text says Moses was 120 years old --protested this indignity to God. Why couldn't he have used his lastenergy to go from the Plains of Moab on over the Jordan River and into thePromised Land? It was not to be. Moses was led up themountain to see the land, but not to enter it. He had accomplishedso much in his life. He had resisted the temptation to live a lifeof luxury and privilege in the house of the King of Egypt to be with his peoplewho were slaves. He had confronted Pharaoh with God's demand to letthe people go. He led the people safely across the waters when thereseemed no other way. He led these slaves in their newfound freedomeven when they would have gladly returned to the security of slavery. Hewent up on the mountain and received God's gift of the Law, only to return tofind that the people had turned to a Golden Calf as the object of theirworship. Even when God was ready to disown these ungratefulwretches, Moses had successfully intervened on their behalf. No,Moses didn't need any more accomplishments. But somehow it justdidn't seem right that after his forty years of effective leadership he wouldnot be able to lead the people just a few more miles. But it was notto be. Having seen the Promised Land from the top of the mountainthe old man lay down and died without finishing what he began.

We, too, shall die without finishing what we began. Moses was strongand vigorous, but that was not enough to enable him to finish what he hadbegun. Not many of us have anywhere close to one hundred and twentyyears. And many do not even have a full lifetime to get done what welong to do.

It was and is okay because life is like that. We neveraccomplish what we begin in a lifetime, whether in 35, 70, or even 120 years.Accomplishment is intergenerational. Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the greatesttheologians of the twentieth century, put it this way: "Nothingthat is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be savedby hope.”

Please do not mistake what I am saying to be a message thataccomplishing all we can for good in our lifetime is not important. We not onlyneed to accomplish all we can, we need to be working toward that which ourchildren and their children, not we, will benefit.

For several years I lived on a small farmoutside Atlanta, Georgia in the southeastern United States. I had afew acres of orchard and a few acres in vegetables. Around the housethere were eight or nine large pecan trees. Pecan trees are native to NorthAmerica. The trees grow 65 to 130 feet high. They produce nuts that are richand buttery in flavor; they are eaten raw as well as used in cooking. When Iwas growing up, my favorite dessert was pecan pie.

You will understand that I listened attentively when I heard a storyabout an 81-year-old farmer planting a grove of pecan trees. Pecan trees takefrom ten to twenty years before they bear fruit. When the farmer was remindedthat he was not likely to live long enough to see the trees bear fruit, heshrugged and said, “Is that important? All my life I haveeaten fruit from trees that I did not plant. Why should I not plant trees tobear fruit for those who may enjoy them long after I am gone?

How many pecans had I picked up, given away and sold? Howmany had I roasted in the oven with honey and curry? I was able todo that because someone long before me on that piece of property had plantedthe trees, and perhaps not lived long enough to enjoy the fruit. Thisis true not only of pecans; we are always standing on the shoulders of others,benefiting from the labors of those who have gone before us.

Three close friends of mine - Dr. Peng Ming-min, and his formergraduate student collaborators Hsieh Tsung-min, and Wei T’ing-chao - wellunderstood how we need to accomplish all we can so that our children and theirchildren, but not necessarily we, will benefit. They had spent hours talkingabout how bad the situation under White Terror was, but the day came in 1964when the three of them decided to do something about it. You know the story,how they wrote a Manifesto for Formosan Self-Salvation, how they were arrestedbefore they could distribute it, and how they went to prison. Once out ofprison, they continued to work on behalf of the Taiwanese people. Dr. Pengwould be forced to escape from his beloved Taiwan; Hsieh and Wei would bearrested again in 1971. They went to prison again, and in 1980 Wei would go toprison for the third time. They knew that they could not accomplish everythingthey set out to do for the people of Taiwan. They knew that accomplishment isintergenerational.

On December 29, 1971, when the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan’sExecutive Committee issued its courageous “Statement on ourNational Fate,” most understood that this was just the beginning.

In December of 1979, General Secretary Kao Chun-ming was asked to helpsome Taiwanese pastors hide a human rights advocate being hunted by thepolice. He did not hesitate. Being under watch 24 hours aday by the secret police himself, General Secretary Kao couldn’t bring ShihMing-teh into his own home; but he arranged a place for him to hide. Kaoand the pastors were later arrested. Kao’s arrest and imprisonment was such anembarrassment to the Nationalist government that he was released in August of1984. So highly regarded was he by Presbyterians in Taiwan that each year whilehe was in prison you continued to elect him General Secretary.

When the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan purchased this blood-stainedproperty where three horrible murders had been committed, building a church wasan act of hope.

Two thousand years ago, an unmarried pregnant young woman was visitedby an angel who told her not to be afraid because she was going to give birthto Jesus who would be called “son of the Most High.” She couldn’t possibly haveunderstood the hard and heart-breaking road ahead of her. Yet, she affirmed herhope in a God who could bring down the powerful from their thrones, lift up thelowly, and fill the hungry with good things. Mary was prepared to live by hope,no matter how difficult the road ahead.

The “hope” of which Mary sang has little to do with optimism thatthings will inevitably get better. Hope that requires so little of the holderseems not to be hope at all. Saint Augustine who lived in NorthAfrica in the fourth century, understood the nature of hope. He said,

“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger andCourage: anger so that what must not be, may not be; and courage, so that whatmust be, will be.”

This is the hope lived out by Peng, Hsieh, Wei, Kao, and thePresbyterian Church of Taiwan, people who planted trees of truth and a demandfor justice.

Today, the important question for us is not whether we will live longenough to see the final results of their earnest endeavors, but whether we,like they, persevere in planting trees of truth demanding justice for those whocome after us. That’s what it means to live by hope!

- Milo Thornberry

Are You Ready for Thanksgiving?

2011-11-22T06:09:00.001-08:00

Soyou’ve bought your turkey, the cranberries, and pumpkin pie filling. The guestshave already been invited. You’re almost ready for Thanksgiving. Or, are you?

Harvestfestivals have been part of human history since the beginning ofagriculture. With harvesting completedand food stored away for the winter months, those early tillers of the soilcelebrated the results of their labor. They also recognized their dependence on elements and forces beyondtheir efforts that made harvest possible.

Jewscelebrated harvest thanksgivings in several periods throughout the year. In medieval times many Europeans observed theFeast of St. Martin of Tours on November 11, and in England "Harvest Home"celebrations began in the sixteenth century. Today, we no longer call these "Harvest Home" celebrations,but "Thanksgiving." Thanksgiving Day is observed on the second Monday of October in Canada,while in the United States it is on the fourth Thursday of November.

Atthis time of the year here on the high desert in central Oregon it is a littledifficult to enter into the spirit of an agricultural "harvest"festival. Here, the harvest was gathered in September and October. And, if thetruth be told, the celebration of a "harvest festival" at the end ofNovember is late, even for Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Actually,the "first" Thanksgiving in America is subject to debate. Some Native American tribes had been havingharvest thanksgiving festivals for centuries, as had the Europeans who came tothese shores. Perhaps the firstobservance of the latter was entirely religious and involved neither harvestnor feasting. On December 4, 1619, 39 English settlers arrived at the mouth of the James River in Virginia. Their charter required that their arrivaldate be observed yearly as a day of thanksgiving to God. Their thanksgiving was not for bounty, butfor the fact that they had survived. That was reason enough for an annual observance of thanksgiving.

Mostpeople, however, associate the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims who arriveda year later on November 11, 1620. Escaping religious persecution in Europe, these colonists attempted to reach the Virginia colony. Their sixty-seven day voyage ended insteadseveral hundred miles north on Cape Cod -- inwhat is now Massachusetts. At a recently vacated Indian settlement, theydiscovered corn set aside for spring planting. Already on a starvation diet, they were more concerned about theirimmediate need for food than for anyone's future crop, so they took ten bushelsof the Indian's seed corn in order to survive the winter.

In the summer of 1621, less than a yearafter their arrival and after a terrible winter when half of the colonistsdied, hope was renewed by a good corn crop. Squanto, a member of the Wampanoagnation who had previously visited England and knew how to speak English, helpedthe colonists during their first winter and spring, showing them how to preparethe fields and plant corn. He was alsothe Pilgrims' go-between with other tribes, helping arrange the pact thatallowed the Pilgrims and Indians to live in peace.[1]

Thefirst corn harvest brought rejoicing, and Governor William Bradford decreedthat a three-day feast be held. ChiefMassasoit was invited to share the celebration, and share he did. Ninety members of the tribe came with him --probably to celebrate their traditional harvest feast. The Pilgrims didn't have enough food forthree days of feasting with such numbers, so the Indians went out and broughtback most of what they ate at the feast: Five deer, many wild turkeys, fish,beans, squash, corn soup, corn bread, and berries.[2] Sweet strong wine from wild grapessupplemented the feast.

Thefeast lasted for days, with little attention to religious services. Some believe that the Pilgrims chose to keeptheir harvest festival secular because they disapproved of mingling religiousand secular celebrations. It seems tohave been a one-time occasion, with no thought to future celebrations. Although not a religious observance, thePilgrims celebrated their surviving that first disastrous year and the bountyof the land they had discovered. It wasalso a celebration with the peoplewho had made their survival possible. Itwas a grateful acknowledgement of the way their life, indeed survival, wasdependent on the Native Americans.

Seriousquestions have been raised about the nature and purpose of Thanksgiving Dayobservances in the subsequent one hundred years. William B. Newell, a Penobscott Indian andformer chair of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut,says that the first "official" Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by theGovernor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 -- fifteen years after the Pilgrims' celebration atPlymouth. The purpose of thiscelebration, says professor Newell, was to celebrate the massacre of 700 Indianmen, women and children at their annual Green Corn Dance (their Thanksgiving)in the previous year.[3]The murder of a white trader and Indian-kidnapper had been the excuse for thePuritans to make war on the Pequots.[4]After that there were massacres on both sides. For the next hundred years, says Newell, "every Thanksgiving day ordained by a governor of Massachusetts was tohonor a bloody victory thanking God for the battle won."

Onehundred and fifty years later on November 26, 1787,President George Washington issued a proclamation for a day of thanks, but formany years afterward there was no regular national Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Thanksgivingdid not become an annual observance until 1863, during the darkest days of theCivil War, when President Lincoln proclaimed it an annual national observance.

Ifcelebrations give voice to the values and ideals by which we are trying tolive, perhaps -- in view of the history of the way Thanksgiving has beenobserved -- it may be easier to first think of how we ought not observe it.

First,It seems to me that Thanksgiving ought notbe a day for thanking God for our affluence while others go hungry. The notion that it is God who gives affluenceto some and poverty to many not only ignores the role that humans have playedin arranging patterns of affluence and poverty, but flies in the face of the loveand justice.

Second,Thanksgiving ought not to be a timeto claim God's special blessing onany nation. As a persecuted minorityreligious group in Europe, the Pilgrims knewonly too well the problems that occur when the interests of God and nation areidentified by a dominant religious group. It was a lesson they themselves forgot as they became the dominantreligious group in New England, and it was theNative Americans who suffered.

Third,Thanksgiving ought not be anoccasion to romanticize the cooperation between the Indians and the settlers,unless to recall as well—and in sorrow—the subsequent centuries' genocide ofNative Americans.

Fourth,Thanksgiving ought not merely be aday of rest and football before the two largest shopping days of the year, whengiving thanks is swept out the back door so we can "shop till wedrop."

If wewant Thanksgiving to be a day that gives voice to our values and our highestideals, how might we observe it?

First,Thanksgiving is a day to remember with gratitude and humility that we alone arenot responsible for whatever bounty is in our lives. Let us not forget to be grateful.

Second,Thanksgiving is a day to acknowledge that part of our bounty has come at theexpense of others, including Native Americans, slaves, farm workers, familymembers and hosts of others we do not even know. We might even try to consider how illegalimmigrants contributed to our Thanksgiving dinner—on the turkey farms, in theprocessing plants, in the harvesting of the vegetables,…you get the idea—andgive thanks. It might be a time to acknowledge, if only to those around our tables, the hypocrisy of much of the talk about illegal immigrants.

Third,Thanksgiving is a day when we share what we have with others, and include inour celebrations those who might otherwise be alone.

Finally,Thanksgiving could be a day when weanticipate a world like that hoped for in 1621 when Native Americans and Pilgrimssat down at table together, a world where hungry children are fed; the homelesshave homes; and those who suffer from discrimination because of race, sex, sexualorientation, religion or age are respected; and where we live peacefully withthose who hold different opinions about important matters.

If this can be what we celebrate, then we will recapture theall-too-short-lived spirit of that Thanksgiving in 1621. Happy Thanksgiving!

- Milo Thornberry

[1] Larsen, Charles M., "The RealThanksgiving," the letter of Edward Winslow dated 1622, pp. 5-6. (TheCenter For World Indigenous Studies Project, c/o The Fourth World Documentation Project,| P.O. Box 2574, Olympia, Washington

USA

98507-2574)

[2] Ibid.

[3]Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation. Vol.12 - August 1980,p. 3.

[4]Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States,Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980. p. 14.

Trip to Washington

2011-10-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

Iam honored to have been invited to Washington, D.C. to address two prestigious groupswho play important roles in keeping Taiwan related issues before U.S. policy makers,the academic community, and the public at large.

On Friday, November18,2011 at 2:30 pm I will address theTaiwan Forum at George Washington University. TheForum is sponsored by the TaiwanEducation and Research Program of the Sigur Center for AsianStudies at The George Washington University. Forum members includevisiting scholars from Taiwan, American academics, journalists, members of thepolicy and diplomatic communities, and graduate students who share a commoninterest in advancing intellectual and policy-related discussions oncontemporary Taiwan-related issues.

The focus of my remarks will be on “Shadows of the Past: Diverging Views on Taiwan’s Future”.

On Saturday,November 19, 2011 atNoon I will be the keynote speaker at the Thanksgiving luncheon of the Taiwan Association of America Greater WashingtonChapter at the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport. TheTAA-GWC represents the Taiwanese community in the greater metropolitanWashington, DC area. It has been thetradition of TAAGWC to hold an annual Thanksgiving Banquet to express appreciationto American friends for their support of Taiwan’s democratization.

My address will be on “Legacies of Conscience and Courage: Peng Ming-min, Hsieh Tsung-min, and Wei T’ing-chao.”

- Milo Thornberry

New Dust Bowl?

2011-10-22T20:21:00.000-07:00

Did you read about the dust storm (hahoob) in Lubbock, Texas last Monday? As a child of the "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s I shuddered when I saw the Monday pictures and compared them to old pictures.

I was raised near the epicenter of the Dust Bowl, a light bulb-shaped one hundred million acres on the High plains that extended from southern Nebraska eight hundred miles south to Lubbock, from southeastern Colorado five hundred miles east to central Kansas. The area included the northeastern part of New Mexico, the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles.

TimothyEgan’s TheWorst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the GreatAmerican Dust Bowl (2005) tells how more than a quarter million peoplefled the area during the 30's. Surprisingly, almost two-thirds of the peopleliving in the area in 1930 stayed. They, including my people, were thesurvivors, who were too hard-headed, too poor, or too crazy to leave.

I was tooyoung to remember the Dust Bowl itself, but when it reappeared for shorterperiods in the late forties and early 50s I remember. Someone would spot thelarge red/black clouds on the northern horizon. The principal would call us allout of class and tell us to get home in a hurry. When I got home, it would beas dark as night. My mother would be stuffing wet towels around the windows andunder the doors in a fruitless attempt to keep out the dust. You even haddifficulty with visibility in the house. And you had difficulty breathing.

You may understand why when I read about the dust storm in Lubbock on Monday, although two thousand miles away, I checked to make sure I could take a deep breath.

My first question was "Are we about to see another Dust Bowl?" Not likely, the experts say:

Meteorologistssay people living on Texas' parched plains could see more dust storms as arecord drought tightens its grip across the Southwest. At least six sandstormshit Phoenix this summer, with the most powerful striking on July 5 andmeasuring a mile high. But experts say another Dust Bowl is unlikely thanks tomodern irrigation and farming techniques aimed at holding soil in place.

But not all agree.

Dust stormsform when wind whips up loose soil. They aren't unusual in West Texas, althoughthe size and speed of Monday's cloud was rare. Typically, the wall of dirtclimbs to only about 1,000 feet in that area, not the 8,000 feet seen with thelatest storm, experts said.

The windpicked up with a drop in pressure along the edge of a fast-moving cold front, apattern that typically happens in the fall and winter, meteorologists said.When the cloud hit Lubbock, winds speeds reached 74 mph in some places andvisibility was far less than a quarter of a mile...

"Thething that is scary is this exact type of dust storm is the same type of duststorm from during the 30s," said Tom Gill, a geology professor at the Universityof Texas-El Paso who has studied dust storms for years.

Gillbelieves dust storms could become more common as Texas' drought continues. Thestate just finished its driest 12 months ever and was blistered by triple-digitheat until early September. This year is on track to be the driest in Texashistory, with the average rainfall in the first nine months about 25 percentless than in the same period in 1956, the previous driest year, when 11.23inches fell...

There'salso concern that other advances since the Dust Bowl could be in jeopardy. Waterin the Ogallala Aquifer has been diminishing for years, causing worry inKansas, Nebraska and other states that rely on it. And, funding for the federalConservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep land at high risk oferosion out of production, is in jeopardy as Congress looks to cut costs.

Is Lubbock's storm a harbinger of things to come? I don't know, but you may understand why it not only brought my parents and grandparents to mind, but also my children and grandchildren.

- Milo Thornberry

What Else Can We Do - Occupy Wall Street?

2011-10-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago ata monthly luncheon where some friends gather to talk politics we went throughwhat has become a monthly litany of complaint about the obstructionistRepublican stance in Congress, greed on Wall Street, and the resultingparalysis of the means to govern by President Obama.

“The President’sjobs bill doesn’t have a prayer,” said one to approving nods around the table.

“We need to writemore letters and make more phone calls,” I said, realizing how lame it soundedas the words came out of my mouth.

“Writing and makingphone calls don’t accomplish anything anymore,” responded one, lamenting notrebuking.

“I wish there wassomething else we could do that would make a difference,” said another.

Within days of thatconversation, a demonstration in New York City calling itself “Occupy Wall Street” caught myattention. The previous week on September 17 I saw the news about 1,000demonstrators in lower Manhattan, a couple of hundred staying in cardboardboxes in the park, and on the 19^th how several had been arrested,but didn’t think much about it. On September 24^th, the day after ourlunch conversation, at least 80 arrests were made onSeptember 24, afterprotesters started marching uptown and forcing the closure of several streets.If that didn’t get my full attention, the arrest of 700 on the Brooklyn Bridge onOctober 1 certainly did.

Was this that“something else” for which my friend and the rest of us were longing? As the movement has spread over the country,there is a recognition on the part of masses of people that the ordinarypolitical processes and ordinary citizen involvement in those processes issimply not working. Occupy Wall Street has touched a deep and sensitive nervein the United States.

How do we makesense of the movement? Is it a flurry of activity today and gone tomorrow, asRepublicans and some Democrats hope? Is it the birth of a movement that will bean effective counter to the Right Wing extremism that has taken over the RepublicanParty? Is it that “something else” that demands my participation?

This morning, I sawthis piece by Walter Brasch in OEN (Op Ed News) titled OCCUPY WALL STREET: Separating Fact from Media. Based on what Ihave been reading and seeing on the news, Brasch seems to be on target. I hopeyou’ll follow the link and read his entire article. What follows are someexcerpts:

After citing theresponses of some Fox News pundits and mainstream media reports on the movementwho, Brasch says, just don’t get it, he asks who the protestors are and whatthey stand for.

“The protestorsrightly say they are part of the 99 percent; the other one percent have 42percent of the nation's wealth, the top 20 percent have more than 85 percent ofthe nation's wealth, the highest accumulation since 1928, the year before theGreat Depression. Even the most oblivious recognize the protestors as a largecross-section of America. They are students and teachers; housewives, plumbers,and physicians; combat veterans from every war from World War II to thepresent. They are young, middle-aged, and elderly. They are high schooldropouts and Ph.D.s. They are from all religions and no religion, and a broadspectrum of political views.”

Despitetheir different views, Brasch says they share some core beliefs:

“Theprotestors are fed up with corporate greed that has a base of corporate welfareand special tax benefits for the rich. They support the trade union movement,Medicare and Social Security, affordable health care for all citizens, andprograms to assist the unemployed, disenfranchised, and underclass. A nationthat cannot take care of the least among us doesn't deserve to be called thebest of us.”

And,he says, they are mad!

“They'remad that the home mortgage crisis, begun when greed overcame ethics and wasthen magnified by the failure of regulatory agencies and the Congress toprovide adequate oversight, robbed all of America of its financial security.During the first half of this year alone, banks and lending agencies have sentnotices to more than 1.2 million homeowners whose loans and mortgages are indefault status, according to RealtyTrak. Of course, less regulation is justwhat conservatives want--after all, their mantra has become, "nogovernment in our lives."

“Theprotestors are mad that the wealthiest corporations pay little or no taxes.They point to the Bank of America, part of the mortgage crisis problem, whichearned a $4.4 billion profit last year, but received a $1.9 billion tax refundon top of a bailout of about $1 trillion. They look at ExxonMobil, which earnedmore than $19 billion profit in 2009, paid no taxes and received a $156 millionfederal rebate. Its profit for the first half of 2011 is about $ 21.3 billion.”

“Theyrightfully note that it is slimy when General Electric, whose CEO is a closeObama advisor, earned a $26 billion profit during the past five years, butstill received a $4.1 billion refund.”

“They'remad that the federal government has given the oil industry more than $4 billionin subsidy, although the industry earned more than $1 trillion in profits thepast decade.”

“They'remad that Goldman Sachs, after receiving a $10 billion government bailout, and a$2.7 billion profit in the first quarter of 2011, shipped about 1,000 jobsoverseas. During the past decade, corporations, which have paid little or nofederal taxes, have outsourced at least 2.4 million jobs and are hoardingtrillions which could be used to spur job growth and the economy.”

“They'remad that corporations that took federal bailout money gave seven-figure bonusesto their executives.”

“They'remad that the U.S., of all industrialized countries, has the highest ratio ofexecutive pay to that of the average worker. The U.S. average is about 300 to475 times that of the average worker. In Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada,and England, the average CEO earns between 10 and 20 times what the averageworker earns, and no one in those countries believes the CEOs are underpaid.”

“They'remad that 47 percent of all persons who earned at least $250,000 last year,including about 1,500 millionaires, paid no taxes, according to Newsmax. Ifyou're a Republican member of Congress, that's perfectly acceptable. They'rethe ones who thought President Obama was launching class warfare against therich by trying to restore the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans. Theysucceeded in blocking tax reform and a jobs bill, but failed to understand thesimple reality--if there is class warfare, it is being wagedby the elite greedy and their Congressional lackeys.”

Braschconcludes with a response to the charge that the protestors are not patriotic:

“Herman Cain, Fox TV pundit Sean Hannity, and others fromthe extreme right wing said the protestors are un-American, apparently forprotesting corporate greed. The Occupy Wall Street protestors aren'tun-American; those who defend the destruction of the middle class by defendinggreed, and unethical and illegal behavior, are.”

Idon’t know about you, but this makes a lot of sense to me. I am angry about allof the things Brasch attributes to the protestors. What do you think? Is itpast time for you and me to stop talking and get onto the streets? Is this our“something else”? What else can we do?

- Milo Thornberry

Legacies of Conscience and Courage

2011-10-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

(Photo courtesy of Dennis Chen, Oct. 9, 2011)

Legacies of Conscience and Courage:
Peng Ming-min, Wei T’ing-chao and Hsieh Tsung-min

Presentation to the Annual Meeting

Formosan Association for Public Affairs California-Orange Country

Atrium Hotel, Irvine, CA October 8, 2011

[This the second half of a two-part presentation to this Annual Meeting. The first half was by my former wife, Judith Thomas, who told how we first met and became involved politically with Dr. Peng. The text for her remarks is not available. Before our presentation, Dr. Peng made a video appearance from Taiwan in which he expressed his gratitude for what Judith and I had done for him and the people of Taiwan in the late 60s. Yes, it was a humbling experience. The following is my part of the presentation.]

I do not have words to describe my gratitude for the honor you have bestowed on Judith and me this evening. The words that come closest to what my heart feels are those a friend of mine in Taiwan is attempting to reclaim as a unique part of Taiwanese culture, “Lo Lat”. Do you know those words? To you I say, “Jin Lo Lat,” (inadequately rendered in English as “I am deeply grateful for all your hard labors on my behalf!”) Would you say it together with the proper tones? “Jin Lo Lat!” Yes, that is what my heart feels for you tonight: for Nick Wu, Chan Wang-Wang, and all of the Working Group; the participating FAPA Chapters, and all of you who came tonight.

Why Didn’t We Leave?

I have a friend, Ora Custer, ninety-five years of age and still counting. She’s almost blind; at her request I read Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror to her. Her question, asked several times, is this: “When you knew what kind of a situation you were in there and the danger to you and your family, why didn’t you leave?” In some ways, the book is my answer to that question. My short answer is this: “When you have made close friends and you learn that their lives are in imminent danger, it is easier to do whatever you can to help them than it is to walk away.”

Remembering Matthew and Tony

You have heard from Judith about how our relationship with Dr. Peng developed and how when we learned that he was going to be assassinated we found a way to get him out of the country. There were two other close friends and colleagues: Wei T’ing-chao and Hsieh Tsung-min. We didn’t meet them right away because they were both still in prison when we met Dr. Peng in 1966. These two former students of Dr. Peng at the National University had been arrested with Dr. Peng in 1964 in an attempt to distribute their “Manifesto for Formosan Self-Salvation” calling into question the legitimacy of the Chiang government. Looking back, many say that this was the real beginning point of Taiwan’s struggle for democratization.

Although we couldn’t meet them in person for two years, they were a part of our lives and what we had begun to do with Dr. Peng. Thanks to their courage and creativity, they were able to send out from prison lists on very thin paper with names of political prisoners, their situation and information about their families. We were able to provide the lists to Amnesty International, assuming that even a little public visibility was some protection. Their notes from prison also let us know the desperate plight of the families of political prisoners, and got our aid to families project started.

Wei was released from prison first on September 20, 1968. He hadn’t been out a week when Dr. Peng brought him to our house. The stories about his refusal to be intimidated by the court or his guards were well-known. During his trial, he stood up and dared the judge to sentence him to death. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he came in the door. Was he hardened and cynical from his experience?

Wei greeted Judith and me. Then, he saw our two and a half year old Elizabeth hiding behind a chair. Before we knew it, Wei was sitting on the floor talking with a delighted Elizabeth in both Mandarin and Taiwanese (and as far as I knew maybe a bit of his native Hakka too). Within weeks, Wei was tutoring me in preparing my history lectures at the seminary. We were also making plans for aiding families of political prisoners.

Hsieh got out of prison exactly a year later in 1969. Like Wei, he came to the house within a week of his release. Wei had already talked with him about the plan to aid families. He said he was ready to begin distribution of the funds immediately. I couldn’t believe it! Here he was, just out of prison and yet ready to assume the dangerous (and under martial law a capital offense) task of delivering money we smuggled into the country (money raised secretly by the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia) to families all over the island. He and Wei both laughed at the danger; and rightly pointed out that they were the only ones with the credibility and knowledge to get money to these families.

The distribution began within the next week. In order to avoid using their real names in talking together at home or anywhere else, we gave them English names as we had to Dr. Peng, who was and continues to be known to us as “Peter.” Wei we called “Matthew” and Hsieh we called “Tony.”

Working with them was consistent with what we had decided two years earlier when we determined to do what we could with Dr. Peng. Because Judith and I were foreigners we assumed that we could do things for which the worst that could happen was to get kicked out of the country, while Taiwanese doing the same things risked prison, torture, and even death. Because they took a great risk with working with greenhorns like us, we decided we would only work with Taiwanese who knew what the real costs were and had been in prison. There would be times in the coming days when we would have reason to wonder if our assumption about being “fireproof moths” and subject only to deportation was a false assumption, but we were right. We were also tragically right about what would happen to Taiwanese associated with us.

Dr. Peng escaped in January of 1970. Until the fact of Judith’s and my role in the escape was announced in the mid-1990s (how we did it wasn’t announced until 2003), neither the KMT nor the U.S. State Department, nor even Beijing’s vast security network, ever knew we were involved. And they all wanted to know. Neither Wei (Matthew) nor Hsieh (Tony) knew about the escape. We decided that even though they would be prime suspects, we could not add to their vulnerability by their actual involvement. It was not a matter that we didn’t trust them; it was a recognition that we were such rank amateurs at such things that we didn’t want to put them more at risk than they already were.

A year later on February 23, 1971, a week before Judith and I were arrested, Matthew and Tony were arrested. We had been right about what would happen to Taiwanese associated with us. It was over thirteen months after their arrest that they were tried secretly and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, terms later commuted by half. Both were tortured horribly. We know details of the interrogation and torture because Tony was able to smuggle out a letter that got to Judith and I in the U.S. On April 24, 1972 we were able to get the letter published as an op-ed piece in the New York Times.

After their release from prison the second time, Hsieh went into exile and lived here in southern California for a while. Wei was rearrested for his involvement with the Formosa Magazine in the Kaohsiung Incident on December 10^th, 1979 and was sentenced to another eight years. With the end of martial law in 1987, Hsieh and Wei continued to provide great service to the people of Taiwan. Although forever scarred by his torture, as a Congressman and advisor to the President, Hsieh has worked tirelessly both to document the casualties of “White Terror” and work for reparations to political prisoners. Wei did likewise; in 1997 he published the Taiwan Human Rights Report 1949-1996. After spending most of his adult life as a political prisoner, on December 28, 1999 on his morning jog, Wei’s great heart stopped beating.

Peter, Tony, and Matthew and the Genovese Syndrome

Peng Ming-min, Hsieh Tsung-min, Wei T’ing-chao, although not ostensibly religious, demonstrated to me with their lives the justice and mercy I associate with the highest Christian ideals. They were living examples of the core Christian teaching I had learned as a child as expressed in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan.

On March 27, 1964, I was in Boston preparing to go to Taiwan. In the Boston Globe I read the story of the murder of Katherine (Kitty) Genovese in Queens, New York two weeks earlier. Why a murder story in New York would make the papers in Boston was that this woman had been stabbed repeatedly for thirty minutes as she screamed for help in front of her house. Her cries had been heard by many of her neighbors, but only after the killer left in his car and returned ten minutes later to finish the job did one person call the police. It became a national story of shame for those who heard and did nothing.

The “bystander effect” or the “Genovese syndrome” became the name for the social psychological phenomenon in which individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present.

New to the urban northeast, it was easy for me to blame the neighbors in Queens; but my own conscience warned, “they” could be “me.” I was haunted by the picture of Kitty Genovese’s face. I wondered if I was the “they” by leaving the U.S. in the midst of the struggle for civil rights and the beginning of the anti-war movement. I didn’t change course, and I went on to Taiwan. In the reality I encountered there, I couldn’t understand how so many missionaries, American students, U.S. military, and embassy personnel who heard the cries of the Taiwanese people could rationalize their inaction in ways not dissimilar from the neighbors of Kitty Genovese.

Judith and I were told, “You are guests in another country,” as the reason for not getting involved in the political affairs of a country not your own. The principle has some merit in international relations, but it is a principle that serves the status quo. As desirable as that may be in the world of nations, the principle may also be an immoral rationalization. In Taiwan, a brutal and corrupt government was enabled to stay in power due in no small measure to the support it received from the United States. I love my country and I loved the work the church sent me to Taiwan to do, but my conscience didn’t allow the luxury of being politically uninvolved. By doing nothing, Judith and I believed we were putting our stamp of approval on what the U.S. government was doing there. As an act of faith, we chose otherwise.

I doubt that Peng, Wei, or Hsieh had heard of Kitty Genovese, but they would understand the tragedy of the neighbors’ inaction. They would also understand the story from several weeks ago when a group of bystanders in Utah risked their lives to lift a burning car off of a man trapped underneath saving his life. Dr. Peng, Wei, and Hsieh have spent their lives trying to help others at great personal risk. Their legacy will live on and continue to bear fruit because I believe such conscience and courage is never lost. Such a legacy has never been needed more now in Taiwan, the United States, and the rest of the world.

- Milo Thornberry

The Day After - How Do You Feel?

2011-08-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this cartoon from The Economist as an indication of how he felt about the debt ceiling debacle in Washington.

On Sunday, I was relieved, but by the time the Senate voted on Monday, I was angry, and still am.

I was angry that Wall Street was tanking because the economy is in such a fragile shape.

I was angry that the bill just passed will make it even more difficult (impossible?) to do what needs to be done to get more people working.

I was angry that we will have to go through the fall with this again as the super committee tries to come to an agreement that wasn't possible now.

I was especially angry at those who elected a Republican majority to the House and a stronger minority in the Senate in 2010. Paul Krugman put it best when he concluded his July 14 column "Getting to Crazy," with

So there has been no pressure on the G.O.P. to show any kind of responsibility, or even rationality — and sure enough, it has gone off the deep end. If you’re surprised, that means that you were part of the problem.

The Democrats, the media, and the citizenry failed to put that pressure on the Republicans so all of us bear responsibility for the continuing tragedy.

I tell myself that if our nation and the economy can survive the next six months, I look forward to giving the American people a chance to decide in the 2012 elections because I don't believe the Republican position can stand rational scrutiny and I hope the voters have learned a lesson.

But then again, does rationality count for much with the electorate?

- Doubtfully, Milo

Elements in the Debt Ceiling Agreement

2011-07-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

Here is an outline of the debt ceiling agreement announced by President Obama tonight.

A White House fact sheet distributed to reporters shortly after the president spoke laid down the specific elements of Sunday night's deal to raise the debt ceiling:

· The president will be authorized to increase the debt limit by at least $2.1 trillion, eliminating the need for another increase until 2013.

· The first tranche of cuts will come in at nearly $1 trillion. That includes savings of $350 billion from the Base Defense Budget, which will be trimmed based off a review of overall U.S. national security policy.

· A bipartisan committee with enhanced procedural authority will be responsible for pinpointing $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction from both entitlements and tax reform, as well as other spending programs.

· The committee will have to report out legislation by November 23, 2011.

· Congress will be required to vote on Committee recommendations by December 23, 2011.

· The trigger mechanism -- should the committee's recommendations not be acted upon -- will be mandatory spending cuts. Those cuts, which will begin in January 2013, will be split 50/50 between domestic and defense spending. Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries and "low-income programs" would be exempted from those cuts.

The fact sheet goes on to note that there is another enforcement mechanism that the president possesses.

"The Bush tax cuts expire as of 1/1/2013, the same date that the spending sequester [the trigger mechanism] would go into effect," the fact sheet reads. "These two events together will force balanced deficit reduction. Absent a balanced deal, it would enable the President to use his veto pen to ensure nearly $1 trillion in additional deficit reduction by not extending the high-income tax cuts."

-- Sam Stein, The Huffington Post

28th Amendment Email a Distraction

2011-07-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

Since the congressional debate about health care reform in 2009, the following proposed amendment to the Constitution has circulated around the internet, nearly always with the suggestion that if you send this on to twenty friends and they do likewise that very soon it will be in every citizen’s hands and that our Senators and Representatives’ elite status days will be numbered because a 28^th amendment to the Constitution will be passed. If I’m not mistaken, the original proposal started making the rounds as a way to punish legislators who supported the health care reform that became legislation.

The email is being circulated now as the “Congressional Reform Act of 2011.” I’ve received it several times in the past couple of weeks. Apart from the idea of it making us feel better in the midst of the current debt ceiling debacle, there are several reasons not to take it seriously. Here is the one I received today:

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits. 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two Six-year Senate terms

B. Six Two-year House terms

C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

I suspect that this email is circulating now out of the frustration all of us feel about Congress’ inaction on solving the debt ceiling crisis. Believe me, I am also frustrated and fear for what may happen to the nation, but I believe that circulating this email is a not helpful way to deal with our frustrations, and in fact is a distraction from the crisis we face.

Why? First, I want no part of punishing all of Congress because of the debt ceiling debacle. We have this crisis because Republicans have found a way to force spending cuts in government that they could not get passed in the House or Senate. The debt ceiling crisis is a way to impose not only their economic but also their social agenda. As I have written elsewhere, the Democrats have many “sins” for which they will have to answer, but the debt ceiling crisis is not one of them. They have been insisting that the pain of cuts be shared. That's what I want them to do.

Second, and you who know me will understand, this email fails the identity test. There is no name or organization attached to the email. If the author(s) don’t have enough confidence in what they wrote to say who they are, what they write doesn’t deserve my attention. (I apply this rule to ALL circular emails.)

Third, not only is this simply and “idea piece” and not proposed legislation that we can seriously consider, it is flawed by numerous mistakes of fact pointed out in this Snopes link, and, in my mind, others of poor judgment, sufficient to overshadow the couple of good ideas in it.

On the issue of term limits, we may be able to mandate limited terms for members of Congress, but not congressional staffs and lobbyists. I know the power of incumbency, but it seems to me that to have limited terms for our elected representatives simply makes them more dependent than they already are on those who don't have them.

I'm not sure I know what number eight means. Does it mean that retired legislators cannot serve as lobbyists. Does it mean they can't serve in the judicial or executive branches?

I like the idea of Congress not being able to give themselves pay raises. Having them tied to increases in Social Security wouldn't be a bad idea.Please check out the Snopes link to see the inaccuracies in this email. Then, consider sending it back to the people who forwarded it to you.

Now, it's back to waiting to see what happens in Washington.

- Milo

Debt Ceiling Debacle - Death Watch?

2011-07-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

Connie was on the other side of the room when I said I was going to post a note on "Debt Watch." She didn't quite hear and said "Death Watch"? Not hearing what I did say, she nonetheless may have it right.

We are six days away from uncharted economic waters that most Republican and Democratic legislators, as well as most economists, agree that we must not test. Forget Michele Bachmann and other "Know Nothings"! I need not list sources for the broad consensus that a genuine crisis lies ahead if the debt ceiling is not raised and serious steps are not taken to reduce the national debt.

Tonight, I was reminded of what I learned once in high school Civics: money bills must start in the House. (Article 1, Sec. 7) Speaker Boehner is having a difficult (impossible?) time getting a bill that will pass the House and go on to the Senate, where with any such bill's draconian cuts in programs and services is doomed to fail. I understand that if the House passed a bill, the Senate could amend it and it would go to a conference committee. (Please correct me if I've got this wrong.)

The bottom line is that we are moving perilously close to default. I doubt that the friend in financial management who told me a week ago that this whole controversy was "much ado about nothing," would say the same thing tonight.

In the great scheme of things, there are many "sins" for which the Democrats have to answer, but in my view this debacle is not one of them. The Democratic leadership has insisted that there be no cuts without the wealthiest sharing the pain. The Republicans, cowering from the threats of their Tea Party members, refuse to ask the wealthy do anything but continue to enjoy their tax breaks and loopholes.

I have written my Representative and Speaker Boehner, who insisted that he was the Speaker for all Americans. I have also made calls.

Last night, when I asked what more we should do, one friend suggested I take a vacation (he was probably weary of hearing from me about this). Another friend suggested it was time to leave it to God. My response was:

"I have a suspicion that God might say, 'You got yourselves into this mess. You'd better work your tails off to get out of it.'"

To that end, tomorrow I will begin another round of letters and phone calls.

What will you do?

- Milo

Remembering Our Roots - Honestly

2011-07-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

[For weeks this blogger has been preoccupied with personal matters and has had no time to write anything worthy of putting before you. As we approach the Fourth, I thought you might be interested in these reflections on religion and our Founding Parents that I wrote some time ago. I'll get back to my regular blogs, but not yet. Thank you for your patience.]

Would Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin have been in church on Sunday? The short answer is yes, no, and maybe.

During that hot summer of 1776 in Philadelphia, when you try to imagine the core leadership of that Continental Congress, without whom the Declaration of Independence might not have been written and approved unanimously by the delegations from the thirteen colonies, what names come to mind? I know that we and historians could debate this for a long time without consensus, but I suspect few would leave out these three: John Adams from Massachusetts; Thomas Jefferson from Virginia; and Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania. Would you agree?

This takes us back to the question I asked at the outset: would these three patriots have been in church when Independence Day fell on a Sunday? There is much made of “the faith of our founding fathers” that is much more a myth of how some folks wish it had been with these giants in our history than how it actually was.

In an email that a number of folks sent to me over the past few days was a copy of an illustrated article titled, “Forsaken Roots.” In fact, I have received email copies of it every year for the past seven or eight years, as people seek to remember and reclaim their roots. The claim in the article was made that 52 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were “orthodox deeply committed Christians,” the first in a long list of “facts” demonstrating that our nation was in its beginnings a “Christian nation.”

There was no author nor were there references to support the claims. Those of you who know me, know that it makes me very uneasy when anonymous documents make claims I don’t think can be supported by fact and when I see history being misconstrued and used as propaganda. In truth, there was such a diversity of faith perspectives among the “founding fathers” and “founding mothers,” some despaired of ever agreeing on the status of religion in the new country. Because the three giants I mentioned represent this diversity, I thought it perhaps useful on this Independence celebration week to be reminded of their religious perspectives and what they contributed to the nation that came into being on July 4th, 1776.

John Adams and Abigail, his wife and best counselor, were devout Christians and independent thinkers who saw no conflict between the two. As well as the Bible, John loved the classics and scholarly reflection. He always carried a book of poetry in his pocket, telling his children, “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.” He was one of the most sensible and powerful forces at the Continental Congress; it was John Adams that persuaded Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence and John who persuaded the Congress to allow Thomas to do it. Adams became the second president of the United States. John was in church at least once on Sundays and often two or three times. He visited Anglican Churches, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Moravians, and at least on one occasion a Roman Catholic mass. But his own was a Congregational Church in the Puritan tradition in Massachusetts. Adams was committed to the principle of everyone’s having the freedom to worship as they chose, but felt it was everyone’s duty to worship. There really had to be a crisis for the Adams’ not to be in church on Sunday. I think we would be safe in saying that the Adams family would have been in church, even when Independence Day fell on a Sunday.

Thomas Jefferson, unlike Adams, would not likely have attended church on July 4th any more than he attended any other worship services. Jefferson was the one who wrote the Declaration of Independence and became the third president of the United States. Those who put religious labels on would consider Jefferson a Deist, those who believe that God created the world and then left it to run on the laws God had created. As suspicious as he was of the unchecked power of government, and he was, Jefferson was even more suspicious of the power of unchecked religion to coerce others. He knew well the history of the intolerance of churches that were “established” or identified with the state in Europe and he feared for what might happen in America. He wanted a high “wall of separation” between church and state so that neither infringed on the responsibilities of the other. In 1817 when Congress passed the Elementary School Act, Jeffersoninsisted on this provision:

"No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced {in the elementary schools} inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination."

Given this founding father’s deep suspicions of organized religion, I think we can safely conclude that he would not have been in worship on a July Fourth that fell on a Sunday.

Benjamin Franklin, was more casual about faith than Adams but not nearly as wary of it as Jefferson. Franklin’s creed was simple: serve God by serving others. Much has been made of Benjamin Franklin's suggestion that the Constitutional Convention in 1787 open its morning sessions with prayer. His motion was turned down, however, and not again taken up. Franklin himself noted that

"with the exception of 3 or 4, most thought prayers unnecessary."

What distinguished Franklin from Adams and Jefferson was his “good-natured religious tolerance.” Franklin was not a member of any church but supported them all. In his hometown of Philadelphia whenever a new church would be built he would give to their building funds. It is little wonder that on July 4th, 1788 when Franklin was seriously ill, two years before his death, and couldn’t get out, the clergy of the city of Philadelphia including a Jewish Rabbi paraded arm in arm right under his window, a first not only for Philadelphia but perhaps a first in the history of Christianity.

Franklin biographer, Walter Isaacson, concludes that Franklin’s

“good-natured religious tolerance was in fact no small advance for civilization in the eighteenth century. It was one of the greatest contributions to arise out of the Enlightenment, more indispensable than that of the most profound theologians of the era… In a world that was then (as, alas, it still is now) bloodied by those who seek to impose theocracies, {Franklin}] helped to create a new type of nation that could draw strength from its religious pluralism. As Garry Wills argued in his book Under God, this ‘more than anything else, made the United States a new thing on earth.’”

Those who are interested in examining the accuracy of the claims in “Forgotten Roots” can check George F. Smith’s “History Remembered” or the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (not to be confused with the Southern Baptist Convention).

Remembering our roots is a good exercise for observing Independence Day, but we do ourselves no service if we remember them as we wish they had been and not the way they were. We will also do well to remember some of our other roots that we are still working to overcome: the way our nation treated Indians, slaves, and women. We might recall the words of Frederick Douglass, freed slave and newspaper editor:

“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year the gross injustice to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license…”

Unlike whoever wrote “Forgotten Roots” and those who are fearful about what has happened to our “Christian nation,” I believe that we will have forgotten our roots if we adopt their view of our nation’s history. An honest reading of our history will better equip us to understand how we could have invaded Iraq on such flimsy evidence and how precious civil liberties have been sacrificed in the name of fighting terrorists.

I am grateful that the heritage from our “founding fathers and mothers” had within it the seeds of diversity and tolerance. Can we respect those who don’t worship the way we do, and those who don’t choose to worship at all? Can those who don’t worship respect those who do? Diversity and tolerance are precious gifts. Cherish and nurture them.

Remember that tomorrow as you and your friends barbeque ribs, grill brats or TVP burgers. Happy Fourth of July!

- Milo

Part Three: Why No Outrage?

2011-06-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

In this call to Action, the last of three blogs based on Dr. George Yates' lecture, The Political Power of BIG MONEY in America, I am encouraged to remember to whom he was speaking. On April 28, this address was presented to a group of seniors in Western North Carolina who call themselves "Elders United for a Just Society," who "refuse to retire from what matters." I am also mindful of the "emeritus" in Dr. Yates title. Every age group and socio-economic group has a huge stake in the 2012 elections, and I'm glad to hear about seniors who are not about "to retire from what matters." These folks in North Carolina are examples we would do well to follow. Thank you, Dr. Yates!

Why hasn’t the American public risen up in outrage about this tacit agreement between the rich and the TPR? The answer is that Americans are legendary in terms of their passive unwillingness to take the effort to inform themselves of the facts. This leaves the public wide open to the influence of propaganda paid for by the rich and implemented by the TPR. And that is why there has been so little negative public reaction to the Supreme Court’s ‘Citizens United’ decision. This decision has made unlimited amounts of corporate money, and a comparative trickle of union money, available to finance elections.

The Role of the Supreme Court

‘Citizens United’ is a 2010 Supreme Court ruling by its 5 member conservative majority that relies on an interpretation of the Constitution’s 1st Amendment ‘free speech’ clause. The decision invalidated the portion of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign law that strictly limited the amount of political contributions corporations could make. What was the objective of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority?

Extrapolation from the public record of statements and decisions strongly supports the conclusion that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority objective was based on ideology, and not the constitution. Those justices knew that since corporations have no brains, all political contribution decisions are made by the senior managers. Apparently, the objective was to allow the corporations’ senior managers, who are also primarily conservative, to use as much of the corporations’ funds as they wanted to pursue their political agenda – which includes more tax cuts and loopholes for the rich. And those justices were also well aware that a lot of that additional corporate money would fund the TPR propaganda mill that so effectively influences the voters, thereby enabling the imposition of TPR ideology on the U.S.

Further, the Supreme Court conservative majority did not revoke existing regulations that allowed corporations to make very limited political contributions to ‘front’ entities, such as non-profit groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or 501(c)3 or (c) 4 private ‘committees’, while allowing the contributors to remain anonymous. Thus, the senior managers can conceal their now unlimited spending of corporate funds to further the TPR’s objective, and also obtain more wealth for the rich. Certainly precedent wasn’t considered, because over 100 years of diametrically opposed Supreme Court decisions were ignored.

As a final demonstration that the entire ‘Citizens United” decision was completely ideological, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority specifically stated, without providing any evidence whatsoever, that unlimited campaign contributions by corporations would not cause political corruption. If that were indeed true, then why would the corporations want their identities concealed? Because they are well aware that obtaining favorable legislation for the rich through large contributions to politicians can easily be construed as bribery, or at the very least manifestly bad behavior.

What makes these political contributions so effective? The reality is that vast amounts of money are a political necessity given the strong correlation between how much a politician spends on an election and winning it. To ensure an uninterrupted flow of ‘big’ money, all politicians have no choice but to compromise their ethics. (Lecturer’s note: Cecil Bothwell is one of the few exceptions to this statement). But the TPR politicians’ ethics are particularly limited because they have to vote as they are told to by the ‘front’ entities and the corporations’ senior managers. Otherwise, they won’t get TPR money and will most probably lose their next election. Of course, politicians insist their virtue cannot be questioned because this flood of money does not in any way – not even to the slightest degree – influence their legislative decisions.

Ryan Plan: A Case in Point

Well, here is a very recent example of how ‘Citizens United” has changed America’s politics. In this year’s Wisconsin State Supreme Court election between a conservative candidate who supported the TPR policies of Gov. Walker and a liberal candidate who did not, the conservatives outspent the liberals by nearly 2 to 1. In fact, $3.6 million was spent primarily on TV propaganda ads. Now keep in mind – this was just for one judge in one state. And who won? The money contributed by the rich.

But we have only begun to experience the negative consequences of ‘Citizens United’. Given the TPR ideology, the U.S. will in the future be besieged by too often irrational and counterproductive policies and legislation. An excellent example of that behavior is the Republicans’ 10 year budget for the U.S. government presented on April 5, 2011. Known as the ‘Ryan plan’ for the chair of the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee, its fiscal projections are based on the results of a purported ‘analysis’ by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization.

The irrationality of the Ryan plan is established at the outset by the Heritage Foundation’s assertion that $4.2 trillion in tax cuts, inordinately benefiting the rich, would cause a gigantic increase in GDP. According to its ‘analysis’, which would result in an increase of almost $600 billion in federal tax revenue over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, the Ryan plan cuts government spending over the next decade by $4.3 trillion. This includes: 1. Abolishing Medicare and replacing it with fixed value vouchers to buy private health insurance; 2. Replacing Medicaid with fixed amount grants to the states to use as they wish; and 3. Cutting ‘discretionary’ spending by $1.6 trillion. And 2/3rd of those spending cuts come directly out of programs that serve low and middle income Americans.

Of course, the Ryan plan is just trickle down economics, which has already been irrefutably proved to have no redeeming features for our nation. No wonder the non-partisan CBO’s analysis of the Ryan plan comes up with a significantly different outcome. It estimates that in 2022 the value of the annual health insurance voucher will be $6,400 to $7,000 less than that required to obtain comparable annual coverage under traditional Medicare. Overall, the CBO finds that in the next 10 years the Ryan plan will lead to more federal debt than under current law. And the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates the $4.2 trillion in tax cuts, primarily for the rich, will reduce federal revenue by $2.9 trillion over the next decade. In short, the Ryan plan would be an economic catastrophe – except for the rich and the TPR.

However, the most significant aspect of the Ryan plan is that it demonstrates how smoothly the tacit agreement between the rich and the TPR is working. Both groups’ objectives would be fully achieved if the Ryan plan were to actually become the road map for the next 10 years of annual budgets. At this point that does not appear to be possible, yet it would be a horrible mistake to underestimate the power of ideology and greed.

What's To Be Done?

How can rational and concerned Americans combat this tacit agreement between the rich and the TPR? Well, in a democracy the vote is the supreme weapon. But the 2010 election demonstrated the voting power a minority party, in this case the TPR, can exercise in a democracy if it is organized, dedicated and well-funded by ‘front’ organizations. That’s because many Americans just don’t want to be bothered with registering to vote. And many more who are registered are not motivated to vote. Perhaps most tragically, many of those Americans who are both registered and willing to vote have no knowledge of the pertinent facts, and so they depend upon electoral propaganda – much of which is provided by the TPR using money contributed by the rich.

Ultimately, the responsibility for defeating the TPR at the polls lies with the Democratic Party. However, to do that the Democratic Party must dramatically change. It has to:
1. Promote unity within and between its ranks and its leadership;
2. Propose policies that possess credibility and vision for America;
3. Possess the courage to bluntly explain to Americans why both the greed of the rich and the TPR ideological policies are harmful to them and their nation;
4. Assert an aggressive posture that boldly sets forth the critical political issues instead of meekly allowing the TPR to continue taking the lead, and
5. Be led by compelling leaders who can energize the voters by speaking the truth.

At this time I don’t know if the Democrats are capable of meeting those requirements, but I remain hopeful.

I’ll conclude my comments with two pertinent TPR insights. The first is the comedian Lily Tomlin’s description of the difficulty informed Americans have in reacting to the TPR’s ideological statements:

“I try to be sufficiently cynical, but it’s hard to keep up”

The second is Mark Twain’s satirical comment that precisely describes the TPR’s ideological attitude toward the truth.

“Truth is very precious, use it sparingly”.

- Dr. George C. Yates

Part Two: The Super Rich and TPRs United

2011-06-06T15:58:00.000-07:00

In the introduction to his lecture, The Political Power of BIG MONEY in America, which we posted as the first in a three-part series, Dr. Yates described our current economic reality:

1. 5% of the U.S. citizens own 65% of the nation’s wealth.

2. Middle and low income citizens have not profited (and most have lost) from the increases in the GDP.

3. The U.S. has one of the most inequitable distributions of wealth among the 27 largest industrial nations.

4. The U.S. has the most limited upward income mobility from one generation to the next of all those 27 nations.

After fact-checking Dr. Yates' data and finding it confirmed by credible sources, I believe his description is accurate and comprises a reality that would be stunning to most citizens. Dr. Yates is not alone in painting this picture, but it is a reality rarely seen and heard in our mass media.

In the second of the series from the lecture, Dr. Yates lays bare the myth of “trickle-down economics” and explains the politics of it as well.

What has enabled the rich to enjoy such an immense increase in their wealth over the last 30 years? A primary contributor is a strategy called ‘trickle down’ economics, which provides large tax cuts and an array of tax loopholes that disproportionately benefit the rich. Trickle-down economics was first instituted by Reagan and then used by Bush I and Bush II. This strategy has given the rich a form of the Midas touch – but rather than turn things into gold, they turn high nominal tax rates into low effective tax rates.

In fact, during the last 10 years the wealthiest 5% of individuals received tax savings of $1 trillion from Bush II’s trickle-down economics, enabling that wealthiest 5% to acquire more than 65% of America’s total family assets. How much do you think the bottom 50% of Americans own? Just 2%. Clearly, the TPR has devised an incredible strategy to reward the rich, and has thereby successfully fulfilled its half of their tacit agreement.

And how does the TPR justify this blatant strategy of greed? It’s not a problem, as long as you are comfortable with ignoring the facts. This is the TPR’s justification. “The tax cuts provided primarily to the rich are actually only the 1st phase of a 4 phase process. In the 2nd phase, the rich invest most of the additional cash provided by the large tax cuts in productive business assets. Then those investments ‘trickle down’ during the 3rd phase, causing robust growth of GDP, and thereby also reducing federal debt. The ‘payoff’ is in the 4th phase, when the other 95% of Americans receive higher incomes due to the more robust economy.”

Well, during the 20 years that trickle-down economics has been used, only the 1st phase – where the top 5% have had their taxes greatly reduced and their loopholes greatly enlarged – has ever been realized. So trickle down works just fine – if you are one of the rich. Otherwise, federal government data conclusively demonstrate the only economic result of the first phase tax cuts has been to cause a very, very large increase in U.S debt.

The TPR has used obfuscation to conceal that inconvenient fact. Here is an example. Last December a TPR U.S. Senator proudly justified the 2 year extension of tax cuts and loopholes for the rich by stating: “You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans”. I think the following observation by Winston Churchill regarding the behavior of ideological politicians best enables you to appreciate the irrationality of that statement:

“(The ideologists) run the risk of being most humorous when they wish to be most serious”.

However, the TPR’s political hypocrisy has recently caused the rich to become concerned. Every objective economic study has determined that to eliminate annual deficits, one necessary action is to require the ‘rich’, and the middle class, to contribute their fair shares to government revenues by paying more income taxes.

Well, the foregoing describes how the rich have used the TPR to greatly magnify their wealth, and to concurrently gain greater control of America over the last 30 years. But as I earlier noted, the objective of the TPR is also to gain national control. Aren’t the two groups’ objectives in direct conflict? Not at all! The rich want economic control to obtain more wealth, while the TPR wants political control to impose its ideological principles.

What is an ideology? It is a belief system that exists within its own specifically defined reality that often differs from real world reality. The belief system typically relies on dogmatic principles, including an ethical system whose truth cannot be questioned. Thus, followers of an ideology are ‘true believers’ because they are convinced their dogmatic principles are infallibly correct. That’s why they tend to be intolerant of people or ideas that deviate from those principles. That is also why compromise is unacceptable – it requires deviation from those principles. Thomas Jefferson described a major deficiency common to all ideologists, including the TPR’s:

“He who knows best demonstrates how little he knows”.

A primary characteristic of an ideology’s defined reality is its reliance on irrationality. For example, a year ago TPR Representative Bachmann publicly stated that:

“We’re on to Obama’s gangster government. We need to take out some of these guys.”

Her office hurriedly issued a hilarious, but totally irrational, explanation that her words actually referred to a small business bill. But the joke in Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall says it best:

“This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “My brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken”. The doctor replies, “You should put your brother in an institution.” And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs”.

So say good bye to rationality when discussing TPR principles.

The influence of the Tea Party ideology on American politics is far larger than the percentage of Americans who are actually dedicated TPR activists, for 3 reasons. First, the Tea Party’s successful co-optation of the Republican Party converted it into the TPR. Second, the TPR is intensely focused on enacting its ideological principles. This dedication explains its preference for irrational but simplistic and emotionally satisfying beliefs over objective facts. Third, the TPR’s ideological influence on American politics has been immensely increased by the flood of money from the rich. Thus, the rich have also totally fulfilled their half of the tacit agreement.

Ironically, the TPR advocacy of greater tax cuts for the rich is another perfect example of total irrationality. Why? Because most all TPR’s are in the middle income class! They don’t seem to realize that while the rich have prospered from trickle-down economics, their financial condition, like that of all other Americans, has diminished. Apparently, they don’t know that since 2002, the wealthiest 1% of Americans have received 2/3rd of all the growth in national income. Thus, the TPR’s have had to wrestle with the other 99% of Americans to try to get their share of the remaining 1/3rd of national income growth.

Nor do the TPR’s comprehend that at yearend 2010 the top 1% of Americans held about 36% of all national assets while the bottom 80%, which includes most all of the TPR’s, held just 16%. Further, the median household income in 2000 was about $52,000. This year, 2011, the median household income is estimated to be $49,300, adjusted for inflation. That is a decrease in spendable income over the last 12 years of 5%. So the TPR’s have seen their living standards diminish just like the rest of Americans. In short, they are happily cutting their own financial throats to satisfy the rich. But that’s fine with them, because they are receiving the rich’s money to facilitate the imposition of TPR ideology on our nation.

- Dr. George C. Yates

The Political Power of BIG MONEY in America - Part One

2011-06-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

This blog has a loyal following, but I doubt that few would be among the top 5% of the wealthy in this country. I would hazard a guess that while this country’s GDP has increased 2 to 3 percent a year since 2002, most of you have seen no increase in your family’s income and maybe have watched it decline. You may even be wondering why recovery of employment from the Great Recession of 2008 is so slow and tentative.

An address by Dr. George C. Yates a few weeks ago offered such clarity to what has happened that I want to share it with you.

Dr. Yates is Associate Professor Emeritus in the Management and Accountancy Department at U.N.C. Asheville. George Yates' particular scholarly interest is Strategic and International Management, and he has extensive business experience across the globe.

He has kindly given me permission to post his lecture. Although separated into a series of three posts, I have kept his lecture in the order in which he delivered it. By dividing it this way, I hope you will be able to focus on it in manageable “chunks”. If any of you are impatient with having it presented over a three day period, send me a note and I’ll send you the lecture all in one piece.

One of Dr. Yates’ themes is the persistence of irrationality in U.S. political discussion. That’s why when a friend in North Carolina sent me the speech the subject line said, “Please Read (I don’t ask that too often).” And now I ask you to do the same. And if what Dr. Yates says makes sense to you, please send links to whoever you think will read it.

I begin with these words:

“Our country is divided into 2 nations, between whom there is no contact and no sympathy, which are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings as if they were inhabitants of different worlds”.

That’s certainly an accurate description of the effects of America’s political polarization today. Yet these are the words the famous early 19th century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, used to describe British society’s polarization between the small, rich upper class and everyone else. I cite this quote to put into perspective America’s current situation. While our nation is suffering from an unusually intense polarized society, the condition has been experienced before.

However, the unique aspect of America’s current version of polarization is that it features a very effective and mutually beneficial, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type of tacit agreement between the rich and the Tea Party co-opted Republicans – hereafter I’ll refer to that political grouping by its acronym ‘TPR’. The rich give the TPR unlimited amounts of money, thereby assisting the TPR’s objective of controlling the political system so it can impose its ideology on America. In return, the TPR enacts laws enabling the rich to become far richer. This tacit agreement hangs over our democracy like the sword of Damocles, and the hair holding that sword up is fraying badly.

How did America get itself into this democracy-endangering polarization? Well, a certain amount of the blame is attributable to the Democratic Party. In a 1936 speech to Parliament, Winston Churchill excoriated his own party’s failure to take a firm position against Nazi Germany. However, his words accurately describe the Democratic Party’s recent behavior: “We are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, and all-powerful to be impotent.”

And the Democrat’s typical reaction to TPR policies can be aptly described in terms of its being a baseball team at bat. Most of the Democratic batters go to the plate, bat on shoulder, and then with open-mouthed amazement watch 3 TPR policy fast balls whiz past them. That’s called striking out. Do Democrats want to lose this crucial ballgame? Well, to win they must hit those pitches so hard the balls unravel; they must realize they are a team that has to work together or else be demoted to the minor leagues; and they must bluntly tell the American public everybody has to pay for a ticket to once again enjoy a winning economy.

Now I’ll define who America’s ‘rich’ are. They consist of corporations with equity of $200 million or more combined with the wealthiest 5% of individuals. Actually, corporations and wealthy individuals are one and the same. Why? Because corporations can’t do anything – they are just legal fictions. The senior managers determine all of a corporation’s policies and make all of its critical decisions, including how to allocate its profits – generally to themselves and their fellow rich. Since the wealthiest 5% own over 65% of the nation’s common stock, it’s understandable that they receive over 60% of annual corporate dividends and capital gains paid in the U.S. So when large corporations do well, the rich do even better.

Here is an example of that symbiotic relationship. Over the last 9 years America’s productivity has annually increased on average by 2% to 3%. Yet American workers have received no increased benefits from their increased productivity. Why not? Because most all of the income attributable to that growth in productivity has been retained by the corporations’ senior managers and paid to its shareholders. That is why the earnings of middle and lower class workers today make up the smallest percentage of GDP since such data were first recorded in 1929!

Meanwhile, the TPR constantly endeavors to further cut taxes and increase tax loopholes for the rich, asserting they now pay unfairly high taxes. This is false. The World Bank reported that for the 20 most industrialized nations, the 2008 total effective income tax rate for U.S. corporations was lower than 2/3rd of those 20 nations. Clearly, corporations are being treated very fairly. And for the year 2007, the latest data available, the nation’s 400 highest gross income taxpayers paid an effective average income tax rate of about 17%. In comparison, in 1995 their effective average income tax rate was about 30%. The wealthiest 5% of Americans have enjoyed comparable reductions in actual taxes paid, so they are also being treated very nicely. And that is why the U.S. now has the most inequitable distribution of wealth of the 27 largest industrialized nations.

Here is one result of that inequitable distribution. Which would you say is the best predictor of the future wealth a child will possess – diligence, intelligence, knowledge, or creativity? Well, those are all wrong choices, because the best predictor is the current wealth of that child’s parents. As a result, economic mobility in the U.S. has in recent years been significantly declining. In 2008, the median American worker 30 to 39 years old had an inflation-adjusted income that was 20% less than what a comparable worker made just 11 years ago. As a result, of the 27 largest industrialized nations, the U.S. now has the most limited upward income mobility from one generation to the next.

- Dr. George C. Yates

Look for Part Two on Monday: The Super Rich and Tea Party Republicans United

The Science of Water and the Poetics of God

2011-05-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

Humans have always been more comfortable with terra firma, which we can feel beneath our feet, than aqua, that substance, definitely not firma covering almost 71% of the surface of the earth. So pervasive is this aqua outside and inside of us - up to 60% of our bodies, 70% of our brains, and 90% of our lungs – from the beginnings of time it has been an object of awe and fear.

“Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water…,” our response to that chilling line from the movie Jaws, has less to do, I suspect, with great white sharks than with lingering primeval fears about what lies beneath the surface of aqua. Little wonder that it has been at the center of so many religious rites. At the same time, its ordinariness in the same human eyes has resulted in abuse on a scale that gives new meaning to concept “endangered”.

“Imagine!” That’s the human function that the author most wants the reader of The Holiness of Water to exercise. Imagine the words “water,” “holiness,” and “baptism” as bubbles floating in the air of traditional theological, historical, and scientific discourse. And then imagine the bubbles bursting, with the new meanings exploding unfettered into human understanding.

That’s what Jim Campbell, my colleague in Alaska for many years, gives us in his new book. Never again will I use any of the three words without being reminded that they are vessels for cargoes far more precious than my mind ever conceived. This book is not a scientific treatise on water, but it could be. It is not an historical and theological exposition of a Christian sacrament, but it offers insights into Christian history that I suspect will leave readers asking, “Why didn’t I see that before?”

No, The Holiness of Water is the work of an artist, plumbing the depths of nature and human rite as only an artist, who is also a pastor, can. Through Jim’s eyes and his life with water, he gently peels away the layers of meaning convinced that the more we come to know about water the more we will be led into the mysteries of God. I think he succeeds.

Unlike any treatments of water or baptism I encountered as a theological educator or pastor, The Holiness of Water reminds me of my favorite movie, Babette’s Feast. This Danish film about the preparation of a French meal in an austere religious community can be appreciated by persons with vastly different interests and backgrounds because of its artistic excellence at multiple levels: music, preparation of food, the human condition, and cinematography. I imagine that the artistic excellence at multiple non-competing levels in Jim’s narrative will enable persons of religious and non-religious orientations to relish what they find.

Henri Nouwen once told two seminary students who had signed up for his course that they should schedule nothing following because they would need time immediately after to process what they heard in his class. Maybe the students were slow; maybe the teacher had an inflated ego; or maybe the teacher was right. While The Holiness of Water may be quickly read, I suggest that you don’t. After each chapter, take time to see yourself in the story. As if in a gallery or natural history museum standing before a work that compels your gaze, pause and allow your imagination free reign.

The book was released by Sunbury Press last week. It is available from Sunbury Press and from Amazon in paper. Expect it to be available from Barnes and Noble soon. Electronic versions (Kindle and Nook) should also be available.

I hope you'll get the book and see where your imagination takes you.

- Milo

Crimes to Remember - The Rest of the Story

2011-05-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

This all began with reflections on President Obama’s pronouncement after the assassination of Osama bin Laden that “justice has been done.” I said, and still believe, that finding bin Laden was a necessity, but in my mind justice will not be done until all of the unconstitutional measures employed in name of “War on Terror” are rescinded. Seeing the movie, The Conspirator, prompted a reflection, “Crimes to Remember in History,” wherein I recalled in sadness the judicial aftermath of President Lincoln’s assassination, but how it brought to mind John Adams’ refusal to abandon the right to due process even for the British soldiers charged in “Boston Massacre.”

On March 5, 1770, Adams agreed to defend the British soldiers accused of murder in what came to be called the “Boston Massacre” because no one else would. He was denounced as unpatriotic and worse. And when he won the case, successfully proving in court that the British soldiers were not guilty, John Adams was vilified. His life was threatened. He lost half his law practice. Why had he taken the case in the first place? Because he believed that no one in a free country should be denied the right to counsel and a fair trial. John Adams had been tempted to compromise his ideals, but in his resistance he helped to insure that “due process” according to the law would be a part of the bedrock of this country’s new constitution.

Eventually, the people remembered Adams’ integrity and the principle of “due process” which he had been tempted to forsake for his personal safety and convenience. He would go on to persuade the Continental Congress to ask Thomas Jefferson to draft the “Declaration of Independence” and would himself become the second President of the country when George Washington retired.

In the weeks after 9/11, I told this story to my congregation because I feared that in our government’s desire to find those who were guilty of the bombings in New York and Washington that we might be tempted forget the ideals we hold most dear in this country. In the days and years that followed, the Patriot Act (what a travesty in the name!), rendition, Guantanamo Bay, not to mention the war in Iraq, all became words that describe how many of our ideals were sacrificed in the fight against terrorism. And it is why I cannot say that in the death of bin Laden “justice has been done.” Justice demands far more for its scales to be righted.

If Paul Harvey were telling this story (he probably wouldn’t because of his politics), he would doubtless call what happened next, “The Rest of the Story.”

Despite Adams’ great accomplishments, another test of his ideals came in the summer of 1798. Adams, then President and a candidate for a second term, was weary of being under constant attack by his political opponents, led by his Vice-President Thomas Jefferson, and fearing the real possibility of war with their old ally, France. The burden of the presidency has always been an impossibly heavy burden; it was then and it is now.

In that summer, in the midst of war fever and hysteria about a possible invasion by the French and worry about what French-speaking Americans would do in such an event, Congress passed into law extreme measures that Adams had not asked for nor encouraged, but which he signed into law. They were the “Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” The acts nullified the constitutional guarantees of “due process” under the law and gave the President enormous powers to imprison or deport suspected saboteurs. It also gave the government unprecedented powers to suppress dissent in the press. Jefferson, and the other Republicans, said that the measures were Adam’s attempt to suppress the Republican Party. After the election when Adams was soundly defeated and Jefferson elected President, the measures were repealed.

Despite the fact that, as President, Adams had prevented a likely disastrous war with France and had also prevented a military takeover of the U.S. government from within, Adams’ presidency is still primarily remembered for the passage of the “Alien and Sedition Acts.” Adams’ biographer, David McCullough, acknowledges that the passage of these acts under Adams’ administration is “rightly judged by history as the most reprehensible acts of his presidency.” (David McCullough, John Adams, p. 504)

What happened to the man who so championed the rights of due process that he risked his life, his family’s life, and his livelihood to defend those British soldiers in 1770 and insure provision for due process in the U.S. Constitution, only to sign into law the “Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798”? Was he just weighed down by the impossible burden of the presidency preventing war and a military coup in the White House?

As President Obama has backtracked on his commitment to close Guantanamo Bay and allow military tribunals for “terrorists,” I would hope that the President might remember both of these stories of John Adams.

But, damn it; it is not President Obama who most needs to remember these stories. It is Congress who has refused to allow the closing of Guantanamo and who created such hysteria about trying terrorists in our nation’s courts and on our soil. Despite their rhetoric, not nearly enough of our lawmakers have confidence in the U.S. Constitution. The Tea Party doesn’t have confidence in the Constitution either, and judging by their acquiescence on these violations of the Constitution, neither does a sizable portion of the U.S. citizenry.

Maybe that is what John Adams faced in 1798 and he just got tired of fighting. What do you think? What do you intend to do in our time?

- Milo

Crimes to Remember in History

2011-05-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

I have just come from seeing The Conspirator, a docudrama about the judicial aftermath of the assassination of President Lincoln by Confederate zealot John Wilkes Booth. Fear and anxiety grip the nation. Secretary of War Stanton jettisons judicial process in the belief that any sign of weakness (read “fairness”) in the trial of those accused of conspiring with Booth will incite other acts of “terrorism.” In the frenzy Mary Surratt was condemned to death despite having all her rights guaranteed in the Constitution disregarded. She was reluctantly defended by Frederick Aiken, a rookie lawyer and Union war hero, who came to see what terrible injustices were being done to innocent people.

The assassination of President Lincoln is a crime to remember, but so is the crime against Mary Surratt.

Similar crimes were almost committed over a hundred years earlier, and would have been, had it not been for another brave lawyer who believed in the Constitution. As I watched The Conspirator I couldn’t get this story out of my mind.

The year was 1769 and the place was Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.(1) Boston was full of red-coated British troops – sent the year before to keep order as another round of taxes was imposed by the English Parliament, this time on paper, tea, paint, and glass. The atmosphere in the city was volatile. Incidents of violence between the townspeople and the soldiers, the hated “lobsterbacks,” began to erupt.

Four American sailors were arrested and charged with killing a British naval officer who had boarded their ship with a gang to “kidnap” them into the British navy. The sailors resisted and the British officer was killed. John, like other American colonists, was outraged by the British policy – called “impressments” -- and eagerly agreed to defend the sailors. The sailors were acquitted and John became a hero to the people of Boston.

A year later on March 5, 1770, the streets of Boston were covered in a foot of snow. On the icy, cobbled square at Province House near the harbor, a lone British sentry stood guard. He was taunted by a small band of men and boys. Just after nine o’clock a church bell began to toll, the alarm for fire, and almost at once crowds poured into the streets, many brandishing sticks and clubs, not buckets. Eight British soldiers with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets soon reinforced the lone sentry. Shouts and curses were exchanged. Then the crowd began to pelt the despised redcoats with snowballs, chunks of ice, oyster shells, and stones. In the chaos, the soldiers suddenly opened fire, killing five of the colonists. Patriots Samuel Adams and Paul Revere portrayed the incident as the slaughter of innocents, an example of British tyranny. It came to be known as the “Boston Massacre.”

Now thirty-four years old, John was asked to defend the British soldiers and their captain. Hesitating no longer than it had taken him to agree to defend the American sailors a year before, he said “yes.” He said that no one in a free country should be denied the right to counsel and a fair trial. John knew that this would not be a popular decision, that it could ruin his reputation, his law practice and, because feelings were running so high in Boston, possibly endangering the lives of his wife Abigail and their children. The rumor spread that he had been bribed to take the case, when in fact eighteen guineas was the only payment he would ever receive. With the political climate as it was in Boston, John was scorned as few ever experience in their lifetimes.

There were actually two trials, one for the captain and one for the soldiers. In the first, John argued that there was no proof that the captain had given an order to fire, and the captain was found not guilty. The city was enraged.

The second trial began immediately afterward. In defense of the soldiers John argued that the tragedy was not brought on by the soldiers, but by the mob. And the mob, he wanted it understood, was the result of bad British policy of quartering troops in the city on the pretext of keeping the peace. One of the soldiers, he pointed out, had been knocked down and then hit again when he tried to get up. John argued that the soldiers should be acquitted because they acted only in self-defense. Without clear and compelling evidence, John argued, it was better that guilty persons escape unpunished than that one innocent person should be punished. This is the way he put it in his summation to the jury: “The reason is because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished.”

The jury was out for two and a half hours. They came back with verdicts that acquitted six of the soldiers and found two guilty of manslaughter, the punishment for which was branding their thumbs. John was vilified in the press and lost over half of his practice. He soon regained the respect of the citizens of Boston and beyond. In fact, John was one of a few brave people who made possible the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the United States.

We are at the end of a decade of a “War on Terror” deemed by many to be such a threat that due process guarantees in the Constitution should be set aside. Do you believe in Adams’ summation to the jury? I believe that equivocation on this point betrays both the Constitution and our national ideals.

I’d be interested in know what you think.

- Milo

(1) This account is based on David McCullough’s, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) pp. 65-68.

Crimes to Remember - Part One

2011-05-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

“Justice has been done,” President Obama said late Sunday night, April 24, 2011 when he announced the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. That sounded better than “retribution has been exacted,” which I thought more accurate.

People flooded into the streets to celebrate the death of this villain who claimed to be the mastermind of the horrific events on September 11, 2001, a crime forever marking the people of the United States and beyond. Confronted with a death of such magnitude, I suspect many weren’t sure how to respond.

Joy is not what I experienced; maybe relief. I took comfort in what I heard a woman’s whose husband was lost in the inferno at the World Trade Center say: “I don’t experience joy at the death of anyone. My husband is still dead.” She didn’t say she wished that bin Laden was still alive, only that as someone who lived with death daily she didn’t feel “joy” at this news.

In the still outpouring of details about the assassination, which I confess to have read as they have emerged, and the speculation about what this death means in the “War on Terror”, which I have assiduously avoided, I found my attention turning to the past. In the case of bin Laden it wasn’t to sum up his contributions to the world but rather a reflection on the damage he did.

Apart from the death and destruction wrought that morning ten years ago, there have been other things that might be included in the obituary of Osama bin Laden. In its obituary, the New York Times reported that bin Laden hoped that if he were killed in an attack, the Muslim world would rise up and defeat the country responsible. But I discovered that Comley Beattie put into words some other things I felt should also be included:

Truth is we were defeated with a weapon of mass destruction called the Patriot Act—you know, after 9-11, when Congress passed it and G. Bush signed into law the sacrifice of our rights.

More than 6,000 US troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we've killed over a million Iraqi and Afghan civilians under the pretense of multiple pretenses. Trillions of dollars have been spent.

The assassination of bin Laden doesn't bring peace of mind or troops home. Nor does it end the suffering of those in war-ravaged countries.

I had another item for inclusion in the obituary. Osama bin Laden had a victory when his action provided justification for the Bush administration to approve torture as an official instrument of policy.

The euphemism of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, or Verschärfte Vernehmung, was a term coined in Germany in 1937 to describe torture that would leave no marks. It was designed to save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. It was torture that in 1948 Nuremburg specifically denounced and convicted Nazis as war criminals for using.

There has been a rush by some to claim that this torture produced intelligence that resulted in the location of bin Laden. That’s not what I heard former director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, say on NBC News following the assassination of bin Laden. He said

We had a multiple source -- a multiple series of sources -- that provided information with regards to the situation. Clearly some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees but we also had information from other sources as well.

Even if such information was critical in locating bin Laden, does that mean the United States is justified in using the very “enhanced interrogation techniques” we condemned at Nuremburg?

As heinous as the attacks on 9/11 were and the unimaginable suffering they caused, Osama bin Laden may have himself rejoiced at the crimes he prompted us to commit in the “War on Terror.” He provoked us to act more like he always imagined us to be.

I do not mean this as a rebuke to our President. He is trying to clean up a mess not of his making. Unlike some friends on both the left and the right, there is no one I trust more to sort all of this out.

Al-Qaeda is doubtless still a threat; but if we think that many of the policies enacted to fight Al-Qaeda are not equally threats to us as well, we deceive only ourselves. Like the attack on 9/11, these are also crimes to remember, and until these policies have been rescinded, justice has not been done.

- Milo

Coming Soon: "Economic Crimes to Remember"

The Past and Present in Taiwan

2011-05-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

In Fireproof Moth I wrote about events forty years ago, but even in the euphoria of my being welcomed back to Taiwan in 2003, the gaity was sobered by remembering not only the human cost of what had gone on years earlier but the possibility that days like that could again return. The seeds of democratization planted by Peng Ming-min, Hsieh Tsung-min, and Wei Ting-chao in 1964 and many others through the years began to bear fruit with the end of martial law in 1987, and finally the election of a non-KMT (Nationalist Party) President in 2000. Then, with the election of the KMT's Ma Ying-jeo in 2008, I couldn't get the overused but true words of novelist William Faulkner out of my head:

The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.

I do not subscribe to a cyclical view of history or theory of inevitability, and I doubt that Faulkner did either. I think he was acknowledging that the past is always alive in our present. Our experiences of deja vu remind us that hands from the past are always reaching into our present.

Readers may understand my sense of deja vu with certain recent events in Taiwan. The following was my OPED in the Taipei Times on April 29, 2011.

I was one of the signatories to the “Open letter to Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) KMT government” published in the Taipei Times (April 11, page 8), questioning his administration’s decision to investigate former senior Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials over 36,000 supposedly missing government documents.

Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) denied in a letter received by academics this week that the investigation was politically motivated, even though it was announced on the eve of former premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) registration for the DPP primary for next year’s presidential election.

I confess that Lo’s response to the letter from 34 academics, experts and writers gave me feelings of deja vu.

Deja vu is a French term for the experience of reliving something, or a compelling sense of familiarity with events in the past. I had several such feelings as I read the response.

Instead of speaking about the issues raised in the letter, Lo’s denial rested on his claim that “the Republic of China is a nation based on the rule of law.”

What is at issue is not that the Republic of China has laws, but how those laws are being used for political ends. The first feeling of deja vu took me back to statements of former Alabama governor George Wallace during the US civil rights movement when he tried to defend the practice of racial segregation by claiming that the state was “based on the rule of law,” as if that somehow justified its manipulation of the law to perpetuate segregation.

These were also the words government officials used in response to criticism of monumental human rights abuses during the White Terror era.

My second feeling of deja vu came when I read how the Presidential Office attempted to discredit the signatories of the letter, rather than engage them in serious conversation. I was taken back in time to the defenders of US racial segregation who criticized their critics by claiming that “the trouble is being caused by outside agitators.”

That seems to be the case now with the government’s response to the 34 signatories. I look over that list and I see the names of those who have been Taiwan’s friends for years, who are not ignorant of the country’s history and politics, who have lived for many years in Taiwan, who are Taiwanese and those who are deeply committed to democracy.

Late in life, Wallace said he was sorry for the way he had disregarded blacks and even sought forgiveness from some civil rights leaders.

In 2003, my first trip back to Taiwan since being deported in 1971 for what were termed illegal activities, I appeared on a panel discussing life in Taiwan in the time of the White Terror. After the discussion, a young Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) official came up to me and assured me that “we are not the same KMT we were when you lived in Taiwan.”

I replied: “I hope not.”

However, after the government’s response to the 34 signatories, I still have these feelings of deja vu.

Milo Thornberry is a former missionary professor and the author of a memoir about his days in Taiwan titled Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan’s White Terror.

Which 2 of 3 Do You Choose?

2011-05-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Illustration: Christoph Niemann

This is about choices. Washington D.C. is ablaze with hysteria about the national debt. On Friday, I sat at table with nine others trying to make sense of the problem and the ideologies shaping the debate, if indeed the current brouhaha rises to the level of actual “debate”. We were frustrated by the complexity of an issue of such great importance to all of us. Saturday night, a friend sent me a link to an article in the current issue of The New Yorker by their Financial Page writer, James Surowiecki, titled “Bitter Pills: Who Is Responsible for Fixing Medicare?”

On Facebook my friend wrote that the article was “far and away the clearest summary of the issue I’ve read.” Clarity is what I need. If Surowiecki is right, the Administration and Congress face the hard choice of choosing only two of three things most voters want, which also means that if you and I have any political leverage and expect to try to influence the outcome we too must choose two of the three things most voters want.

Let’s look at what Surowiecki says are the three things most voters want. “The ideal system, for most voters,

a) Would guarantee all seniors reasonable health care,
b) Stop the debt from getting out of control, and
c) Keep paying health-care providers as before.

“The problem,” he continues, “is that you can only do two of those things at once. The debate between Ryan and Obama is a debate over which of the three we’re willing to give up.” Before I ask you to say which of the three you are willing to give up, let’s look at how Surowiecki concludes that we must make such a choice.

Despite Republican claims of vast overspending, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s lowering its outlook on U.S. debt because of concerns about the long-term budget, and President Obama’s stating the need to cut two trillion dollars from government spending over the next ten years, Surowiecki says

Yet, strange as it may sound, the federal government does not have a spending problem per se. What it has is a health-care problem. The cost of most budget items typically rises at a reasonable rate, if at all, but the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax subsidy for employer-provided insurance has been rising much faster than everything else: in the past forty years, Medicare costs increased 8.3 per cent annually. If they’re not controlled, Medicare and Medicaid will eventually be by far our biggest expense. Preventing that is the key to getting our fiscal house in order.

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican, has proposed a simple solution: give seniors less money. He would replace Medicare as we know it and the government would give vouchers to seniors to buy private insurance.

His plan saves money because the value of the vouchers would rise at a much slower rate than health-care costs themselves; as the years pass, the government’s contribution to seniors’ health-care spending would shrink. As a result, seniors would have to spend more and more of their income on private insurance and out-of-pocket expenses, or go without. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Ryan’s plan would actually increase the amount of money Americans spend on health care, since private insurers aren’t as good at curbing costs as Medicare. But taxpayers would pay less.

The health-care bill that Congress passed last spring represents a different approach.

It trims more than four hundred billion dollars from Medicare spending, and contains a host of initiatives designed to make the health-care system more efficient and effective. In line with that, it creates a body called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which determines how much Medicare will spend annually. The American health-care system is riddled with waste and unnecessary and ineffective procedures. Relative to every other industrialized nation, we spend more and our health outcomes are no better (and often worse). In American medicine, supply often creates its own demand, and paying doctors on a fee-for-service basis encourages more high-cost procedures. The I.P.A.B., in conjunction with other cost-cutting provisions in the bill, would look to fix the skewed incentives that lead to overtreatment, bargain for better prices, and insure that we’re spending our money more effectively. The Affordable Care Act is far from a perfect law, but the C.B.O. estimates that, if implemented as planned, it could cut the long-term deficit by more than a trillion dollars.

One might have thought, mused Surowiecki that this would have gotten “some love on love on the Hill,” but it didn’t. During the 2010 elections, Republicans used those very cost-cutting provisions as a club to bash Democrats for threatening to trim Medicare spending. And the strategy worked: Republicans won the senior vote by a twenty-one-point margin. Now, some Democrats are joining Republicans in trying to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board:

From Congress’s point of view, there are three problems with the I.P.A.B. First, it may take spending decisions out of Congress’s hands. Second, talk of restraining health-care costs sounds like rationing, which Americans hate. (That’s why, as the debate over the Affordable Care Act progressed, Obama said less and less about “bending the cost curve.”) Third, and most important, one person’s “waste” is another person’s “income”—the income of doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug companies, medical-technology makers.

Contrary to the focus on insurance companies in much of the debate on health care in the U.S., Surowiecki says

but, whatever their [the insurance companies] problems, they’re not the main driver of health-care inflation: providers are. Hospital stays, MRI exams, drugs, and doctor’s visits are simply more expensive here than they are elsewhere, and the fee-for-service structure insures that we use more of them, too. It’s really just math: most of our health-care dollars go, in one way or another, to health-care providers, so if we want to restrain the growth of health-care spending, less money will have to go to them.

This makes a lot of people, and not just politicians, uncomfortable: people, on the whole, understandably like and trust doctors and hospitals. They want to be able to choose their own doctors, and don’t want them to drop out of Medicare because the fees are too low. This is the fundamental dilemma: we’re unhappy about the rising cost of health care, but we’re also unhappy about what we would have to do to curb it. [My bold]

So, we are back to the question at the beginning. What is the provision of the “ideal system” you are prepared to live without? That, according to Surowiecki, is what the Administration, Congress, and the U.S. citizenry will have to decide.

Before you answer that question, ask yourself (and then share with the rest of us), is Surowieckie right about the choices we face? And is the fixing of Medicare really the core issue in dealing with our national debt?

My answer? Yes, I believe he is right about the choices we face. The provision I am prepared to live without is “c”, and I believe that the health care legislation passed by Congress with the Independent Payment Advisory Board is a fair way to lower the costs of health care. I also believe that many seniors couldn’t see beyond their fears in the last election. Those of us who are seniors, I believe, have to do everything we can to see that doesn’t happen again.

At our luncheon on Friday, Alice put it well: “Let’s fix the things in Medicare that need fixing. Don’t destroy it!” I believe that if we do that, we will also fix the biggest problem of our national debt.

What say you?

- Milo

Easter People and Lo Lat

2011-04-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a Jewish friend of mine in Taiwan took his song to a nursing home near his home. The song he composed is part of his effort to recover an old way of saying “Thank you” in Taiwanese. His song is “Lo Lat” and sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” He went with an elementary school teacher who is Tzu Chi Buddhist and who goes every Saturday to play his harmonica for the people in the home.

My friend sang “Lo Lat” to fifty very old and very sick people, he said. He wondered if any of the many comatose people even heard his song or the harmonica played by his friend. It reminded me of the experience of a friend of a friend several years ago.

Early in her ministry, Jaime Potter-Miller served as chaplain in a retirement community. She determined that one way of loving the people was to bring her guitar and sing. There was one patient in particular, however, for whom even singing seemed a waste of time. A brain-stem stroke had left this woman virtually comatose, with not even a twitch of response to any stimuli in years. Her family had tried everything they could to reach her, but nothing evoked even a semblance of recognition.

Unable to bypass this woman’s bed, Jaime bent down with her guitar as close to the woman’s face as she could get, and began singing. “I wonder what she sang when she went to Sunday School?” Jaime asked herself. She begin to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” During this song, Jaime thought she heard a groaning sound. Then she watched in amazement as this stroke victim began to make guttural noises. She stopped singing, afraid that the woman was having another stroke, and called the nurse.

The nurse examined the woman, and found her no different than usual. “You had to be imagining it, Jaime. This woman hasn’t had any bodily response to anything or anyone in years.” But Jaime wouldn’t let her go.

“Listen to this,” Jaime insisted. Once again she sang, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” And once again the woman began making those signs and sounds “too deep for words.” The nurse bolted out of the room, collected every other medical staff person she could find, and brought them to witness a miracle. A simple song of love had reached into this woman’s soul and touched her where nothing else could.

Today, many will be singing “Easter People raise your voices!” Maybe this will be a day when Christians can remember that "Easter People" are in fact people of any race or creed who are so taken with a spirit of love that they take their guitars, harmonicas, voices, and whatever skills they have, often at considerable risk, into the most unlikely places to sing, play, teach, or cook their ways into the most unlikely of hearts.

Happy Easter! Lo Lat!

- Milo

Untruths in My Religion (Part 4)

2011-04-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

From the beginning of this exercise that began almost a week ago on Thursday, April 14, when I began reflecting on the practice of sharing “untruths” in their religions by the “Interfaith Amigos,” I invited you to share what you felt were untruths in your religion and said that I would share them in Part 4.

On April 15, I said I believed it untrue that God required Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in order to forgive our sin.

One of you wrote what many could have said,

Your blog about Jesus not having to die for our sins is another 'truth' that I grew up thinking. I thought He was the sacrificial lamb for us, just as in the Old Testament they sacrificed animals. The more I hear the more at sea I am . . .sigh

Jim wrote from another perspective:

God's need for a blood sacrifice creates a fear of God that unless Jesus is in the room to intercede God becomes vicious in holiness and consumes us out of vengeful purity. Jesus literally becomes greater than God… Your blog makes me wonder who is working through new understandings of the cross and salvation?

On April 17, I said the claim that Christianity is the only way to God I believe to be untrue.

One Julia wasn’t so sure it is an untrue claim:

I can certainly see your point, but I have also found validity in the explanation for the TRUTH of this has to do with why the Lord "tarries" so that all WILL have an opportunity to hear of Him, believe in Him and receive Him as Savior.

Charles spoke volumes with one line about his ancestors,

I find it hard to believe early Inupiaq (pre-contact) had no chance of going to be with their maker.

What audacity to believe by accident of birth they couldn’t be with their maker! And yet that is often exactly what they were told. I can only hope they were wise enough not to believe it!

Bill wrote,

You have to admit that holding an exclusive path to salvation is a great recruitment tool. I can identify with Christianity because Jesus, through his ministry, showed me a path towards God. But for this white, western, man to think that this path is the only path is pretty arrogant.

Another Julia wrote in response to both of my untruths:

I have never believed Jesus is the ONLY way to God, just one of many paths up the mountain. That's one way in which I identify as a progressive Christian. But Jesus is MY way to God, as Jesus "saved" me, not by being the sacrificial lamb that gets me into heaven, whatever that is, but because he taught me the true nature of God, who gives me a new chance every day to forgive myself for my sins, and thus begin again to try to be the best person I can be. Jesus saves me from myself, from my self-condemnation, and frees me to start each day a new sin-free person, thus I can enjoy heaven right here on earth.
I think it's so important to let people know that... there are MANY Christians out here that believe in the message of Jesus, but not in all the mythology that humans have added to his story. I have been tempted many times to leave my faith because of Christian atrocities, such as bigotry, righteousness, intolerance of God's beautiful diversity, but have always come back to Jesus, and have decided to work from within the church to make change and to invite people to think and experience for themselves what truths their own hearts can embrace.

Sandra said

it can't be because I think God allows EVERYONE into heaven, because not everyone had the chance to know Him on earth.

Dan, who ignited this exercise, wrote:

We must take the exclusivity claims and triumphalist claims OUT OF CHRISTIANITY's doctrines, if those doctrines and faith are to mirror the essence of the real Jesus…

Thanks to all of you who took time to participate!

For those observing Passover, I wish for you a renewal of the sacred memory of a God who cared about a slave people and freed them, and who still cares about suffering people whoever and wherever they are.

For all observing Lent, I wish for you a re-discovery of Jesus, perhaps for the first time, as one who died because of his identification with politically oppressed and religiously disenfranchised people, not because of some cosmic chess game God was playing.

And for those not at home in either Judaism or Christianity, I wish for you new friends in both traditions.

- Milo

Untruths in My Religion (Part 3)

2011-04-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

On April 14, inspired by an article I read about the “Interfaith Amigos,” I began what I hoped would be a conversation in which participants would share the “untruths” of their religion. It is only natural that we would rather talk about untruths in religions other than ours, but three clerics in Seattle – a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian – found that by having the courage to confess what they believed to be untruths in their own religions helped them in their dialogue and in becoming friends.

On April 16, I offered this: “The claim that God required Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in order to forgive our sin, I believe to be untrue.”

Today, I offer this: The claim that Christianity is the only way to God, I believe to be untrue.

The claim echoes through much of what Christians call the New Testament. John 3:16 is perhaps the best known:

“For God so loved that world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And if there remained any question about what the author meant, the next verse was even more explicit: “…those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only son of God.”

The next best known perhaps are the words of the apostle Peter to the Jerusalem Council in Acts 4:12:

“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

I don’t know why it was so important to make exclusive claims about believing in Jesus being the only way to God. Other religions, especially monotheistic ones, have made claims about their being the only way. Maybe they too think that the validity of faith would somehow be diminished if they admitted theirs might not be the only way.

It matters to me that I find no serious evidence of Jesus making such a claim for himself. I have never considered the claim in the John 14:6 – “No one comes to the Father except through me.” - to be anything other than the author’s belief. And when I look at the consequences of such claims, I can only shudder.

In the fourth century when Christianity was made the religion of the empire, and in the process, irrevocably separated from Judaism, claims of exclusive access to God are married to claims of absolute political power, creating the ideological rationale for the persecution of Jews and every other non-Christian religion, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and a unique blend of politics and religion that came to be called “Western Imperialism.”

Down through the centuries, there were always Christians who did not embrace the exclusive claims of the institutional church. D.T. Niles of Ceylon, and to my mind one of the great Christians of the twentieth century, was fond of saying that our witness to Christ is not in presuming to speak for God; rather, we are like “one beggar telling another where we have found food.” If we are honest that’s all any of us who believe can say. This is not the same thing as saying that “all roads lead to God.” We’ve no more knowledge to make that claim than that our way is the only way.

In one of the best (and most readable) books on Jesus I have ever read, “Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus,” Thomas Cahill concludes with this plea:

“At the turn of the new millennium, it may be time for everyone to reassess Jesus. I hope that the progress of Jewish-Christian reconciliation will soon have progressed far enough that Jews may reexamine their automatic (and completely understandable) fear of all things Christian and acknowledge Jesus as one of their own, not as the Messiah, but as a brother who called God Abba. For Christians, it may be time to acknowledge that we have misunderstood Jesus in virtually every way that matters. [bold mine.] As Raymond Brown was fond of remarking, if Jesus were to return to earth, the first thing we would do is crucify him again."

This paragraph may be worth remembering if you gather with others on Good Friday and sing the old spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my lord?” especially the words “sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

- Milo

Untruths in My Religion (Part 2)

2011-04-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

In yesterday’s blog, I asked, “What Are the Untruths in Your Religion? Part 1” I reported on three clergymen of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths who have become known as the “Interfaith Amigos.” They, with their families, have become genuine friends because of their frank and honest confronting not only the differences between their faiths but also “untruths” in their own faiths.

In this holy season for Jews and Christians, their example spurred me to speak directly of what I believe to be “untruths” in my faith, Christianity. I invited readers, of whatever religious or non-religious persuasion, to join the conversation.

You may participate in two ways (I hope you will participate in both!): one, you may enter a “Comment” responding to whatever I said in that day’s blog. Your comment won’t show up until I okay it, but don’t worry, I will approve it.

The second way I hope you will participate is by sending me what you believe to be an “untruth” in your religion. If you are not religious, send me an “untruth” in non-religion. I will take your statements and include them (as you wrote them) in Part 4 which I hope to put together early next week. Please don’t wait until after you’ve seen Part 3, which will be my second “untruth” in the Christian faith, but send them as soon as you can. You can send your message to me by email at milot@bendcable.com. Please indicate whether or not I should use your name. If not your real name, give me a pen name.

In one or both ways, please join the conversation. Now, let’s get to today’s untruth.

The claim that God required Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in order to forgive our sin I believe to be untrue.

In nothing do the four Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- succeed in more than their depictions of Jesus' sufferings -- their careful, step-by-step recountings of his arrest, interrogations, torture, humiliation before hostile crowds, condemnation, the public parade in which he was forced to carry a splintery instrument of his own execution. If this is what is meant by the familiar words from John 3:16 -- "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son…" -- then God chose for this son a time and place to be born in which one might die by the most painful means that human beings ever devised.

Of course, there were those in the decades after the crucifixion of Jesus who hadn’t been actually present who, when they contemplated the horror of Jesus' suffering, concluded that Jesus was not really human and so didn't really suffer. I feel confident that none of those who had actually been there would have harbored such illusions.

Even then those early Christians tried to comprehend the meaning of the suffering. Down through the centuries, Christians tried to give meaning to Jesus’ death with theories claiming that his death was a sacrifice whereby God was enabled to forgive our sins. There were many different theories of atonement, as they are called. No one of them was ever made THE doctrine in Christianity; but at the core of most Christian traditions is the notion that Jesus’ death on the cross makes possible God’s forgiveness.

How does that work? Some said Jesus' suffering and death was the result of a deal God made with the devil -- the death of God's beloved son in exchange for forgiving the sins of human kind. Others said that Jesus' suffering and death was the requirement of a God of justice in order to be able to forgive our sins. There are other theories, but they are improvisations on the same theme.

For me, those images are of a God that I don't know. They depict the image of a God who requires some kind of blood sacrifice, a practice that many of the Hebrew prophets had rejected long before Jesus' time. I believe they also depict a God that Jesus did not know. Jesus knew a God he called "Abba," a familiar term for "Father" that in our time might be more accurately translated "Daddy."

This untruth about Christianity has had enormous negative consequences in our history. First, besides making a monster out of God, it takes away responsibility from humans.

The Hebrew prophets before Jesus understood the negative consequences of a sacrificial system and could hardly have been clearer in their rejection of it. As Amos spoke for God eight centuries before Christ,

“I hate, I despise your festivals…Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them…But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24.)

Hosea also said it plainly: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”(Hosea 6:6; see also Micah 6:6-8; Jeremiah 7:21-23; et al)

Were those prophets wrong about sacrifice, or did God change God’s mind in the case of Jesus?

The second great negative consequence of viewing Jesus death as a sacrifice is that it obscured the obvious fact that Jesus was executed by the Romans on the charge of insurrection.

At the end of the first century when the books of the New Testament were being written, Christianity was under attack by the Roman government throughout much of the empire. Christians were under suspicion because Jesus had been executed for insurrection and thus their loyalties to the empire were questionable. Because of the threat of persecution, it was better not to acknowledge the real reason for Jesus’ death; and so his death was explained as “a mistake” and called a “sacrifice” that reunited humans with God, completely exonerating the Romans. Given the situation, the response of the early Christians may be understandable, but it didn’t resolve the question of who killed Jesus.

The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem became the scapegoats. Remember, Jesus and the early Christians were all Jews. They were, as it were, “Jesus Jews,” but until the fourth century, most Christians considered themselves Jews, however much they disagreed on Jesus with other Jews. What the Christian Jews did was to hand the Romans and their descendants justification for persecuting Jews. And that consequence is almost incalculable.

If Jesus’ death was not a pawn in some kind of cosmic chess game played by God to be able to forgive our sins, then why did he die? My answer to that question is beyond the scope of this blog series, but I believe the real reasons he died make sense and have relevance for us today.

What do you think: did God sacrifice Jesus in order to be able to forgive us our sins? Or, is it one of Christianity’s “untruths”?

- Milo

What Are the Untruths in Your Religion? Part 1

2011-04-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

You might not think the timing of this question is good. Even though Muslims have no major holy days until August, persons of Jewish faith will begin Passover observance at sundown on Monday, April 18, and many Christians will observe their highest holy day on April 24. Maybe we should wait for “a more convenient season” to ask such hard questions. Or maybe, when the devout are focused on their rich traditions, when the less devout who don’t attend services any other time swell the congregations in this season, and when even the secular press seems to give a pass to religious traditions, just maybe it is the right time to ask some hard questions about religious faiths.

Interfaith dialogue wasn’t convenient after 9/11 but some thought it essential. In Seattle, a Jewish rabbi reached out to a Sufi Muslim, and together they reached out to a Christian minister. After the November 5, 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Laurie Goodstein told the story of “Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship.”

They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding in a country reeling after a Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood, Tex., was charged with opening fire on his fellow soldiers, killing 13.

“It arouses once again fear, distrust and doubt,” Sheik Rahman said, “and I know that when that happens, even the best of people cannot think clearly.”

They say they became close by honestly facing their conflicts, not by avoiding them.

They put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another’s holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and, of course, Israel.

“One of the problems in the past with interfaith dialogue is we’ve been too unwilling to upset each other,” Rabbi Falcon told the crowd at the Second Presbyterian Church here. “We try to honor the truth. This is the truth for you, and this is the truth for me. It may not be reconcilable, but it is important to refuse to make the other the enemy.”

Goldstein reported that interfaith dialogues were occurring in many ways and many places all over the country. There had been interfaith dialogues for years, but after 9/11 many groups felt it urgent to include Muslims, and Muslims were eager because they didn’t want their faith defined by terrorism. Now there are interfaith Thanksgiving, interfaith college clubs, interfaith women’s groups, and interfaith teams building affordable housing. And for these efforts, I am grateful.
The “amigos” have gone beyond most of the interfaith dialogues with which I am familiar. They make presentations around the country with what they call “the spirituality of interfaith relations.” Goldstein attended one of their presentations:

At the church in Nashville, the three clergymen, dressed in dark blazers, stood up one by one and declared what they most valued as the core teachings of their tradition The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.”

But then, Goldstein said, the room then grew quiet as each one stood and said what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith.

The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

That’s what really got my attention. Can an adherent of one faith admit that there are “untruths” about that faith? We are usually quick to cite “untruths” in the faiths of others, but in our own…?

In the audience that day in Nashville was Mark Wingate, a computer programmer, who said,

“Talking about the untruths of each tradition is very courageous. It gets it out of the platitude category and into dialogue.”

Mr. Wingate’s wife, Sally, added: “They had to work really hard to get to that point. Most of us are not willing to work that hard.”

Dialogue on the untruths of each tradition is not only needed at an interfaith level, but also within faiths.

I propose that we have a little intra-faith and interfaith dialogue right here; and that we share what we think are untruths in our own faiths. I have two that I want to share, and I plan to do so in parts 2 and 3 of this series over the next couple of days. Part 4 will be made up of your responses about untruths in your faith. If we need more parts to accommodate the responses, we add them.

I hope to hear from you.

- Milo

Picking the Pockets of the Poor

2011-04-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

As I await word about whether leaders can cut a deal to prevent a government shut down in another hour, and as I contemplate the battle looming behind it about how to reduce the federal deficit, I want to scream. Even if they cut a deal to keep the government running this evening, what comes to my mind are words of a verse from Woodie Guthrie's song, "Pretty Boy Floyd," that dates back to the Great Depression."

As through this world I've wandered,
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six gun;
Others with a fountain pen.

Instead of ranting, I want to share the words of Jim Winkler, General Secretary, General Board of Church & Society of the United Methodist Church. Those of you who know me, know I am sometimes in sharp disagreement with the Church. But in this article, I think Winkler accurately describes (factually and theologically) how what is happening now is nothing less than "Picking the Pockets of the Poor" and calls the Church to get on the right side.

Between1947 and 1979 the income of the poorest 20% of people in the United States grew by 116%. The lowest income growth during those 32 years took place among the richest 5%. Their income grew by 86%. In other words, the poor gained a little on the rich.

Just 400 people have as much wealth as half of the population.

This changed dramatically from 1979-2008. During those 30 years, the poor saw their income shrink by 4% while the rich gained 73%, far more than the rest of the population.

The richest 1% in the United States owns 33.8% of the wealth. Just 400 people have as much wealth as half of the population.

The Central Intelligence Agency points out that income distribution in the United States is more unequal than it is in Guyana, Nicaragua and Venezuela. I find this interesting. When I was in college the maldistribution of wealth in Latin America was frequently cited as an example of the failure of that part of the world.

What has happened?

So, what has happened? Have the poor simply become lazy and stopped working? Of course not. It’s rare any longer to run into a couple in which one spouse stays at home. People work more and longer hours than before for less money. The rich are hoarding the wealth and income. God frowns on this.

Interestingly, to question the growing gap between the rich and the poor is often denounced as an attempt to provoke class warfare. I suppose if I were rich and didn’t want people to raise questions I might try to shut them up by suggesting they were simply envious. After all, who wants to have questions of justice raised?

The minimum wage has been largely stagnant over the past several decades. A superstar pay structure has emerged in the business world. A sense of entitlement exists among the rich. Those who have not succeeded financially are scorned.

I’ve never understood how Christians could prefer the rich over the poor, but many do. You don’t have to read very far into the Bible to learn that God sides with the poor and the oppressed. By the third chapter of Exodus, God is telling Moses: “The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

As an African history major in college, I studied the struggles for freedom from the colonial rulers throughout the continent. My heroes included African liberation leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere. Many African leaders were training in Methodist mission schools! We did a better job of teaching freedom and justice in Africa than we did in the United States.

The budget deficit

On Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where the United Methodist Building is located, the news is all about the fight over the government’s budget and the huge deficit connected to it. No one is talking about having the rich carry their share of the burden or reducing the vast sums of money spent on war, weapons and spies.

Instead, a new plan has been unveiled by House Finance Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). His plan is to cut health care and food for the poor, as well as education, job training, low-income housing, and Social Security, to name but a few of the punishments designed for those on the bottom. The rich would get more tax cuts. Rep. Ryan would further skew the distribution of wealth and power in favor of the rich.

God sides with the poor, not because they are more virtuous than the rich, but because that is God’s way of healing the pain in the human family. If your preacher is not talking about what is happening in the world around us, it is either because that preacher sides with the rich or is too scared to exercise his or her prophetic responsibility. It’s time for the community of faith to be heard.
Date: 4/6/2011

Chanticleer, the Fox, and House Budget Bill 1

2011-04-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

In his “Writer’s Almanac” for today, Garrison Keillor reports on possible origins of April Fool’s Day. He said that the earliest recorded association between April 1st and foolishness is in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. He points out that this may be a misinterpretation rather than Chaucer’s intention, but in any case the story of Chanticleer, a vain rooster being tricked by a fox in “The Nuns’ Priest’s Tale” is believed by many to be the way the date became associated with harmless trickery.

Some of the trickery going on today is not harmless. I was reminded of the foolishness going on in the U.S. House of Representatives by none less than Mark Bittman, the New York Times food columnist. He’s been urging Americans to change the way we eat for decades and published Food Matters which explored the crucial connections among food, health and the environment.

Bittman has been fasting in protest for what I think he rightly sees as an attack on the poor in House Budget Bill 1:

“The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted “Welfare Reform 2011” bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I’m sticking to those related to food.)

These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending.”

Supporters of these cuts say that everybody has to bear the burden of reducing the deficit. What Beckmann, on his fast, sees is quite different. He sees trickery and outrage on a grand scale:

“In 2010, corporate profits grew at their fastest rate since 1950, and we set records in the number of Americans on food stamps. The richest 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all American households combined, the effective tax rate on the nation’s richest people has fallen by about half in the last 20 years, and General Electric paid zero dollars in U.S. taxes on profits of more than $14 billion. Meanwhile, roughly 45 million Americans spend a third of their post tax income on food — and still run out monthly — and one in four kids goes to bed hungry at least some of the time.”

Perhaps his mental faculties sharpened by the not eating, food columnist Beckmann concludes,

“This is a moral issue; the budget is a moral document. We can take care of the deficit and rebuild our infrastructure and strengthen our safety net by reducing military spending and eliminating corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich. Or we can sink further into debt and amoral individualism by demonizing and starving the poor. Which side are you on?”

Good question for this April Fool’s Day! Many of us are like the vain and unwary Chanticleer. The question is, will we wake up before the trickery does more damage?

If you are angry enough about what amounts to war on the poor, you can let your Representative know what you think. (Click here to locate your Representative. Look in the top left corner.) Let them know that when they come up for re-election in 2012, you will remember how they voted.

- Milo

Atheists and Theists - A Personal Reflection

2011-03-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

A few days a friend forwarded to me the following story, one many of you have doubtless received, and maybe chuckled about:

In Florida, an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians and Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.

The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, "Case dismissed!"

The lawyer immediately stood objecting to the ruling saying, "Your honor, How can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays."

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant."

The lawyer said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."

The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 states, 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that, if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."

You gotta love a Judge that knows his scripture!

The story is a politics-cum-humor item that purports to be true but that is false and has been circulating through the Internet since at least 2003. I suspect that my friend who forwarded it didn’t know or care that it wasn’t a true, but sent it as a joke. The friend had also forwarded the story to several of our mutual friends.

I didn’t find the story funny. Those of you who know me, know that I have little patience with political, religious, or any other stories that purport to be true but aren’t. My thought about such stories is that if you need to make up a story and circulate it as true when you know it isn’t, then there is something wrong with the cause you are trying to bolster. My friends would also tell you that I love jokes so much that I die laughing at my own jokes which interrupts the telling of the joke. I didn’t love this joke.

So, I hit the “Reply All” button and sent this response:

Apart from the fact that the story about the Florida judge is not true, I do not chuckle at it as a joke. Maybe my sense of humor is lacking, but I take little delight in the caricature of people who do not believe in God, even as I do not delight in the caricature of people who do believe.

No sooner than I had hit the “Send” button than I began to have second thoughts. Has that ever happened to you? I said what I thought, but I wondered if I weren’t too harsh with my friend, who is about the least bigoted person I know. The story touched a nerve deep inside me, and I wasn’t sure why.

At breakfast, I talked to Connie about the forward, my reply, and my second thoughts. She asked if my response had anything to do with my new friend in Taiwan. The light went on! “Yes, no doubt!” I replied, and began to think again.

I have a lot of friends in Taiwan, but this one I’ve known only about twelve weeks and have only talked to on the telephone.

After breakfast, I went back to the computer and began to write a letter back to my friends. I said that my initial response had been too abrupt, and I apologized. These friends had all heard something about this friend in Taiwan so his existence was not news to them.

I explained how I met this friend in Taiwan. In late December (2010) I posted a description of Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan’s White Terror on my blog in hopes that someone might see it and help me find a publisher. At the time, my manuscript and proposal were on the desks of half a dozen publishers collecting dust. Within a day or two of my posting, he came across my blog.

This person, I went on to the friends, sent a comment to the blog saying that he was an atheist and chastised me both for believing in God, and more, for having been a “missionary imperialist” imposing western cultural values in the name of religion. I hadn’t a clue who he was. I had responded with this message:

Thanks for your candid response. In my time in Taiwan I saw much that would fit your description, but I also saw those who resisted the imperialism of government and our faith.

I resist the dogmatism of your "there is NO God" as much as I resist the dogmatism of religions. I think modesty in the face of both is appropriate.

In response, this unknown person in Taiwan read through my old blogs (all of them) and wrote me back that he was really amazed that I believed and practiced what I said. He apologized for his harsh language and removed his comments from my blog. (If you go to the site, you can see where the comments were “removed by author.”)

His response, I explained to my friends, began a daily dialogue (and that is indeed what it has been) about matters of faith and non-faith. Only last week, I received from him this powerful (and I believe true!) statement:

"I find that almost any system can theologically and intellectually produce "authenticity" in terms of creativity, humanity, social consciousness and individual freedom in healthy balance. But the institutionalization tends to destruct the values of this authenticity. This is true whether one is an atheist or a spiritualist, or a convert to religion. The tension is always there. The magnetism of an institution which provides legitimacy, power, and authority is both seductive and enriching (financially and in terms of power). The lone individual is like Odysseus (sp) fighting against all temptations."

I had to do a little research on Odysseus to fully appreciate his statement, but when I did, I wished I could have stated what he and I both believe as well as he did.

This is the friend who within two weeks of our first cyber encounter decided that my book was worthy of publication. It was he who knew a publisher and persuaded him to publish it and to do it quickly. The rest, they say, is history, except that it is not over. He has also been the driving force to get publicity for the book and to get it into a Chinese edition. Over these twelve weeks, he and I have become friends.

To my friends here, I went on about how this friend comes from a Jewish family in Massachusetts. While he is non-practicing and more of an agnostic than an atheist, he has respect for his heritage.

His first hot words to me about “missionary imperialists” were an appropriate reminder that in much of the world (perhaps most of the world) “Christian missionaries” are viewed the same disdain as many in this country regard “Muslim extremists.” This was not news to me. There is sufficient historical truth to the charge of “missionary imperialism” for us not to disregard it. At the time, he didn’t know that my book acknowledged the truth in that charge.

My long note to these friends concluded with recognizing Connie was right (she usually is); it was because of my friend that I am more sensitive to the way many Christians view atheists. The story about the judge seems a good example of how we shouldn’t deal with each other. The dialogue with my friend is an example of what can happen when theists and atheists take each other seriously without feeling the need to deride or belittle each other. As I wrote in the conclusion of my book, the most “real Christians” I met in Taiwan (those who genuinely practiced what I had learned as the “Christian way”) were three men who had no affiliation (or interest) in the Christian religion.

There is great need for serious conversation between theists and atheists so together we can discover what gifts we have for each other. What do you think?

- Milo

From Oregon to Taiwan

2011-03-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

[Photographs by The Bulletin's Rob Kerr show Thornberry with Peng, holding a sweater given to Peng the night he escaped Taiwan in 1970. Another photo shows Thornberry in a recognition ceremony with President Chen Shu-bien in 2003.]

By Dan Bloom, Chaiyi, Taiwan
Special to Janus blog

TAIPEI -- A newspaper in Oregon has applauded the work of a former Methodist missionary in Taiwan during the 1960s who played a key role in secreting Peng Ming-min out of the country to Sweden in 1970.

The Bend Bulletin in Oregon profiled former missionary professor Milo Thornberry last Saturday, saying he aided Taiwan in the "fight for liberty in Taiwan in 1960s, 1970s."

Reporter Heidi Hagemeier reported that Thornberry and his then-wife Judith Thomas participated in experiences "worthy of a spy thriller: smuggling cash to families of political prisoners, slipping victim names to Amnesty International, and orchestrating the escape of an internationally known scholar and democracy activist."

The newspaper noted that "change has come to the island [nation] where he risked so much as a missionary in the late 1960s and early 1970s, [and now] Thornberry [is] free to tell his tale, he said he feels it's an obligation."

When asked why he was going public with his story now in an English-language memoir published in the U.S. last month, Thornberry told The Bulletin:

"I'd like for Americans to know a little bit more about this history. My role is only a couple of sentences in this struggle in Taiwan."

Deported as "terrorists" in 1979, Thornberry and his ex-wife did not return to Taiwan until 2003, when they and others were honored their contributions to Taiwan.

"That meant a lot to me,” Thornberry told the Bulletin, his voice cracking with emotion.

The newspaper also interviewed Taiwanese journalist and historian James Wang, who told the Bulletin:

"Milo is really a low-key person. When we [first met], he didn't reveal how he helped Peng escape from Taiwan. When I found out, I said, 'You have to write about this.'"

While Thornberry's book is currently available only in English, he told the Bulletin that he is in talks with a book company in Taipei, which is interested in releasing it here in a Chinese-language edition. Interminds Publishing, which published Peng's memoir in 2009, is among those publishers in Taiwan interested in the translation rights to Thornberry's book, according to sources.

Wang told The Bulletin that he hopes the book will reach Taiwanese readers:

"[The KMT] would rather not have it published .... in Taiwan. They don't want the younger generation to read it. But it's an important page in Taiwan's political history. We should know this and we should appreciate Milo's help.”

Turn Out the Lights [Before] The Party's Over

2011-03-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

Canberra, Australia

I can still hear “Dandy” Don Meredith intoning these lines (slightly off key) at the deciding moment of a Monday Night Football game. There might be time left on the clock, but the winner and loser of the game had been decided. On Saturday night, March 26th, when people around the world turn off their lights for an hour, between 8:30 and 9:30 pm, it will be in a symbolic stand against climate change, an expression of hope that it is not too late (that the “party” is not yet over).

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take this stand. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries/territories participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbor Bridge, CN Tower in Toronto, Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Coliseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

On Saturday 27 March, Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever. A record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Asia Pacific to Europe and Africa to the Americas switched off. People across the world from all walks of life turned off their lights and came together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.

Will turning off the lights for one hour really make a difference in combating climate change? Only in the sense that we will be reminding ourselves that the sum of our actions is important and CAN make a big difference.

Believing that the SUM of our actions is important, a group of students at National Cheng Cheng University in southern Taiwan with their teacher/ journalist Dan Bloom have produced a short virtual graduation speech video about the need to "tighten the noose around coal and oil" in the coming decades -- or else (“the party’s over”)!

CCU senior Aremac Chuang produced the 4-minute YouTube video titled "A Virtual Graduation Speech to the Class of 2099" and filmed it in the communications department's blue-wall studio, with British National Taiwan University exchange student Deanne Laforet writing a translation in Chinese on a separate blog. The students persuaded their teacher to be the graduation speaker for the “Class of 2099.”

Listen to the student-produced "Class of 2099" speech and see if it adds anything to your knowledge of "what must be done" if humankind is to survive the coming centuries and continue with its magical exploration of the marvels of high-tech and electronic reading devices.

What will life be like on planet earth in 90 years, when the “Class of 2099” graduates at Taiwan National University and at universities throughout the world? It might be something to ponder on March 26 as Earth Hour is observed throughout the world.

Our lights will go off at 8:30 pm next Saturday night as an expression of our hope that the game has not yet been undecided and that we can still make a difference. What about your lights?

- Milo

St. Patrick: A Story Worth Re-Telling

2011-03-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

No matter one’s faith persuasion or choosing not to have one at all, I suspect that we all live by stories. Even though I am neither Irish nor Roman Catholic, and not one given to venerating many Saints, I think this is a story worth remembering. Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. I would like to think that all those lining the parade routes in South Boston, New York City, Dublin and hundreds of other cities, and who will fill large churches in special services to honor him, will be doing so because they admire the way St. Patrick lived and want to imitate him, but I'm not sure that will be the case. I sometimes wish that it was St. Patrick that I see on Wheaties cereal boxes or in the Nike ads, but perhaps its OK that he never has been and never will be. It may be that my children will only know about St. Patrick if I tell them.

Patricius was born around 389 on the western edge of the Roman Empire in a place in Britannia we now call Scotland. Patricius spent his early years in comfort in a family of Roman citizens. His parents were nominally Christian, like many of the hundreds of thousands who had become Christian because it was the fashionable thing to do. Their casual indifference to genuine faith would not sustain the boy when he was sixteen years old and kidnapped, taken to Ireland and sold as a slave. Across the sea to the west Ireland was just beyond the westernmost boundary of the Roman Empire. Patricius was sold to a tribal chief who sent him to the mountains to care for his sheep, a place where he was so alone that his only constant companions were nakedness and hunger. Without any other faith resources, the youth began to pray the only prayer he knew, "Our Father, who art in heaven…" Over and over he prayed it, day after day, night after night, until the time came that God became close and real to him.

After six years as a slave, Patricius was led in a vision to escape. He walked over 200 miles to find a boat that took him back to the safety of his family. Although his family wanted nothing more than for him to stay at home and pursue a career there, Patricius had another vision that called him back to Ireland, the place where he had been a slave. After he was trained as a priest and became a bishop, he returned to Ireland to serve for the next thirty years, where he became St. Patrick, apostle to the Irish nation. As the Roman Empire was crumbling, Ireland was moving from chaos to peace. And it was because of Patrick.

There are many legends about Patrick that may or may not be true. He didn't really run the snakes out of Ireland. He may or may not have used a three-leaf clover as a symbol for the Trinity. But what he did is far more remarkable than any of the legends about him. I want to mention three of them.

First, Patrick led the people of Ireland, the whole nation, to Christianity. Most of the other nations in Europe and the Middle East had become "Christian" because it was the "Roman" thing to do. Ireland is the first nation to become Christian because they chose it, not because of political coercion or any social status it offered. In fact, the Christianity established in Ireland by Patrick was distinctly un-Roman. Not connected with the papal system or the Roman hierarchy, Celtic Christianity developed around individual leaders and monasteries, and the Irish monks were leaders in spreading and preserving the Christian faith. In the monasteries a woman could have authority over men and women alike – an irregularity which would have offended Roman sensibilities. And it may very well be that one of Patrick’s converts, Brigid of Kildare, was the first woman ever to be consecrated a bishop.[1]

Second, under Patrick’s leadership the previously illiterate people of Ireland became literate. The Irish were learning to read and write as the people of the Roman Empire were sinking rapidly into illiteracy. As the libraries and precious manuscripts were being destroyed throughout the old empire, the Irish became the scribes who copied and preserved the books. Where once they had prided themselves by carrying the heads of their enemies tied to their waists, now they carried books. That so many early Christian documents and scriptures, as well as the classics of Greek and Roman culture, survived the “Dark Ages” is largely due to Irish Christians, hence Thomas Cahill’s conclusion stated in the title of his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.

Third, led back to serve in the country of his enslavement, Patrick became the first person in recorded world history to speak out unequivocally against the institution of slavery. Within his lifetime or shortly thereafter in the fifth century, the slave trade ended in Ireland. No voice would be heard like his on this issue again until the seventeenth century -- thirteen hundred years later! It would not end in England until the 18th century, and in America it would not end until the 19th century.

Don’t you think this a story worth re-telling? Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

[1] Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Anchor Books, 1995) p. 173.

- Milo

Is This What Class War Looks Like?

2011-03-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Would most of us know what class warfare looked like if we saw it?

One of the cherished myths many of the people of the United States have held is that we are a “classless society.” “Class warfare” was a reality in other countries, but not ours. At least that is what I was taught in school. Okay, so it was school and college in Texas, and it was many years ago. You probably never held the notion.

For many, publication of Howard Zinn’s A Peoples’ History of the United States: 1492 - Present, in 1980, forever disabused them of that myth. That's a book I really wished had been available when I was in school. Zinn was fond of saying, “We have had class warfare for a very long time,” and an honest reading of our history demonstrates it.

More recently, Warren Buffett said without pride, "There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."

Donna Cooper has prepared “Infographic: Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts” that may give us a graphic picture of class warfare in real time. The chart above compares the 10 safety-net programs slated for deep cuts with the cost of the tax breaks that should also be considered for reduction or elimination to bring the budget into balance. The column on the left is a list of safety-net programs that have already been targets of the House leadership’s budget ax. The column on the right is the cost to specified tax breaks (see end of her article for her sources).

According to greywolf359 this charge mirrors what we're seeing in Wisconsin,

where Governor Walker (R-Koch) claims that ordinary public sector workers need to fork over at least $137 million to save the budget. Problem is, he just gave away $117 million in tax breaks for his corporate pals. This is out and out class warfare. The big corporations in America have decided that they can get even richer by raiding the public treasury. It's time for the middle class to stand up and defend itself!

If I were to look class warfare in the face now, I could imagine it would look a lot like this. What do you think?

- Milo

Swindler Wins Journalism Award for Integrity

2011-03-12T10:53:00.000-08:00

She has to be tough to take all of the ribbing she gets for her name, but on April 1st Samantha Swindler, publisher and editor of the weekly Headlight Herald in Tillamook, Oregon will receive the 2010 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.

In case you didn’t know,

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, gives the award in honor of the couple who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years. Tom Gish, who died in 2008, and his wife Pat were the first recipients of the award.

Samantha, like the Gishes, is being recognized for her journalism in Eastern Kentucky and in Texas, where she began her newspaper career less than seven years ago. She has been in Oregon since July 2010.

The award will be presented to Swindler on April 1, at the spring symposium of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association in Albany, Ore. A native of Metairie, La., Swindler is a 2002 graduate in communication from Boston University.

What did such this young person do to deserve this prestigious award?

As managing editor of the daily Times-Tribune of Corbin, Ky., circulation 6,000, Swindler spearheaded an investigation of the Whitley County sheriff that helped lead to his defeat for re-election and his subsequent indictment on 18 charges of abuse of public trust and three counts of tampering with physical evidence.

Swindler and her reporter, Adam Sulfridge, received repeated warnings about their safety as they revealed irregularities in how Sheriff Lawrence Hodge accounted for missing guns his officers had seized, problems with his alleged payments to informants, his failure to present cases against anyone arrested for felony drug violations, failure to send seized drugs to the state crime laboratory, and his officers' repeated failure to testify, resulting in dismissal of serious drug charges.

“She did not let anyone scare her off the story or push her around,” said William Ketter, who worked with Swindler as senior vice president/news for Community Newspaper Holdings, which owns the Times-Tribune.

Swindler recounts her experience in the latest edition of Nieman Reports, published by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

“There is a great need for good investigative journalism in rural America,” she writes. “Young reporters tend to think they need a byline from The New York Times to make a difference in the world. If they really want to have an impact, get a job with a community paper and start asking the tough questions that no one ever asked before.”

Swindler’s exemplary work on behalf of the community was not only in Kentucky. When Swindler was managing editor of the Jacksonville (Tex.) Daily Progress, the paper won a Freedom of Information Award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors for coverage of city police corruption. The city manager was fired after Swindler, then a reporter, found he was illegally burning condemned houses.

“She makes a wonderful example for the rest of us,” said Ben Gish, editor of The Mountain Eagle, son of the couple for whom the award is named and a member of the award selection committee.

“If in the past decade there's been any other journalist in America, rural or city, who has demonstrated the level of tenacity, courage and integrity Swindler did with that series, then I'd like to meet them,” Gish said. “Unless they were able to walk in her shoes, it would be impossible for a reporter/editor at a large metropolitan daily to understand the danger Swindler faced while letting Whitley County know its top law enforcement officer was a crook.”

William Ketter put in words why this story struck me with such force and made me think how fortunate Oregon is to have her here now:

“Never has there been a greater need for perceptive, courageous reporting in smaller communities as big city papers reduce their resources and reach across rural America. That’s why it is so important that journalists such as Samantha Swindler stand their ground, however fraught with risks, as the people’s surrogate, holding public officials accountable.”

Welcome to Oregon, Samantha! May your tribe increase!

- Milo

Forgiveness From Another Angle

2011-03-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

[Note from Milo: "Forgiveness" is a common theme in the Christian tradition during Lent. A friend wrote to me saying that he was doing a series of sermons on the subject and asked for any insights I had. I confessed to him that what seemed such a simple concept to many, had always been difficult for me, and I thought much abused as to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer might have called "cheap grace." Connie and I talked about it one more time (we've talked about it many times before). After the conversation, she read me a few paragraphs in a book she is reading. I think there might actually be a breakthrough in my understanding of this issue. I encouraged her to write what she found to our friend and send me a copy for my reflection. When I read what she wrote, I asked her if I could share it with you. I'll be interested to know what you think. Thanks Connie!!!]

Milo tells me you are doing a series on forgiveness for Lent and I thought it interesting that some of the stuff I’m reading right now goes along with that. Have you heard of Caroline Myss? She is a medical intuitive. I’m reading her book, Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason. I’ve just started reading and have jumped into a deep pile of something that has everything to do with forgiveness. She states that healing can’t come without it and that neither healing or forgiveness can come from reasoning. The following quote nailed me!!

“Until you surrender the need to know why things happened to you as they did, you will hold on to your wounds with intense emotional fire. Your mind will want to heal, but your pride, anger, and emotions will remain caught up in wanting to make sure that the people who hurt you feel bad about what they’ve done. Or you may want to hurt them back. But rest assured, your emotional self will remain attached to the unfinished business rooted in feelings of abandonment and humiliation, of having lost something or been cheated. Your mind may do what’s required for healing and go through all the prescribed steps, but your heart will never fully participate in the healing process. In the end, forgiveness is an act of release, surrendering the need for an explanation. From that perspective, forgiveness has nothing to do with the individuals who harmed you. It is the act of accepting that there is a greater map of life, through which flow many rivers of events and relationships, all interconnected. Forgiveness is your release from the hell of wanting to know what cannot be known and from wanting to see others suffer because they have hurt you.”

She describes surrender as “fundamentally a mystical act of transformation, not a rational or intellectual one. It is a leap into the unknown that defies reason and requires every ounce of courage you have.” Also, “Giving up the need to know why things happen as they do requires a belief in some higher order or power that transcends rational thought….’some call it surrendering to God’….others surrendering to the Universe.”
She says the people she knows who found healing found it elemental and essential to give up the need to know why things happened as they did. What she clearly states is that because of our “reason,” our need to know belief system, that we think we can somehow answer the question, “what went wrong,” and that knowing will cut off the "bad juice", so to speak, so we will be healed. Our punishment and reward belief system in a nutshell, yes? Well apparently it can’t hurt to know the whys but it doesn’t guarantee healing. Like my surgeon said, “It might be a perfect surgery, but you may not get what you want.” I’m not quite sure whether that was wisdom on his part or a foot in the back door – guess I need to work on some forgiveness when it comes to him??

This is only the beginning in the book and I can see that it may take some trudging to get through it because like many people I know I have a tenacious grip on wanting to “know” and wanting “revenge.” But it seems this material has come to me in a timely way and I thought I might share some thoughts with you.

- Connie