Disqus - Latest Comments for NMRod

Re: Israel Eases Gaza Blockade

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:31:51 -0000

There's no doubt they wouldn't be sympathetic to current Israeli policies, if you really knew anything about them.

Re: Israel Eases Gaza Blockade

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:27:45 -0000

Unfortunately, fundamentalists in Israel committed to violence and deceit against "inferior" gentiles - including Americans - as Talmudic values are believers in ethnic cleansing, and they have gained a lot of political and social influence creating de facto policy. The current government, with its prominent place given over to virulent racist Avigdor Lieberman, Foreign Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, has tilted towards the same sort of worldview.

Re: Time for Some Angry Work

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:11:38 -0000

Every time there is a significant price rise in fuel that lasts longer than a few weeks, unemployment soars. It's been a truism since the seventies.

You can bet if fuel costs fell back down to what they were, the economy would begin to boom, just as it did each time that occurred.

Re: Wendell Berry Protests Coal’s Influence in Kentucky

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:52:36 -0000

We suffer in America from the "technological imperative" - that what can be done, will be done - without any humanistic or spiritual brake whatsover. This means that we have become slaves to our technology and no longer decide for ourselves based on probable outcomes and consequences. For instance, someone invents a machine to undress people electronically, allowing security guards to look at everyone naked - it is deployed. It's why we, of all people, having developed the atomic bomb, had no compunction whatsoever other than having the capability, we must use it.

Re: A Strong Dose of Bipartisan Civility

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:45:44 -0000

Nonsense! Civility doesn't mean you can't disagree, just that you do it in a civil manner.

But, some people are always ready to fulminate and send people to Hell for actually not agreeing with them! A long Christian tradition, to be sure - just look at the intemperate writings of Martin Luther, for instance.

Re: Beyond Camelot: Britain’s Un-American Austerity Program

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:41:35 -0000

And me? You GOTTA be kidding. Wrong box buddy.

Re: McChrystal vs. Obama: Battle of the ‘Hard Hearts’?

NMRod — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:05:14 -0000

I'm interested in what's true, so I wouldn't state it unless I believed I had factual grounds to say so. Of course, further facts could come to light (and will) to modify current understandings.

I will say that my own understandings have grown the more that I have learned and verified - sometimes in directions that weren't my personal preferences and that I was uncomfortable with.

I consider myself a skeptic, but not a cynic.

Nevertheless, histories between nations are not based to a significant degree on ethics, but rather largely on economic and political interests. It is true that ethics have a way of intruding into these human affairs, but mostly to stand in judgment after the fact.

Re: Time for Some Angry Work

NMRod — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:55:43 -0000

Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech tried to tell us we had to get off our oil habit, make do with less instead of looking forward to more.

The public reaction was not favorable. Carter reversed himself by setting a policy for military intervention to secure the oil of the Middle East. But it was too late. Reagan promised a new morning for America, bigger and better than ever and defeated Carter soundly. Reagan and every President since has increasingly adhered to the Carter Doctrine on the Middle East's oil importance.

Drive down I-5 through Southern California through Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Any attempt to get off oil is going to result in hardships with enormous human costs. Any of the abrupt changes envisioned by some, I fear, would have just about the same results as the forced collectivization of the Ukraine in 1923. Economic collapse and starvation.

Really there is no alternative to drilling for oil in more and more technologically challenging circumstances. Every alternative comes with its own environmental and human tradeoffs. There is no easy answer on a planet of 7 billion that needs technology derived from mining and chemicals to survive.

And Americans will not vote for freezing in the dark, without transportation and jobless.

Re: Beyond Camelot: Britain’s Un-American Austerity Program

NMRod — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:56:59 -0000

Raising a national sales tax to 20% ... wonder what that would do to pinched retailers and customers in depressed areas of America ... while at the same time cutting government services.

Re: McChrystal vs. Obama: Battle of the ‘Hard Hearts’?

NMRod — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:51:10 -0000

There are opinions, and facts. As more facts emerge, it is wise to correct one's opinions.

Abridged histories for popular consumption and for education of children are always going to reflect propagandistic purposes.

Most of these sorts of bowdlerized histories are heavily in favor of a narrative that gives assent to the priorities of elites and what they have done, in order to generate authority for the status quo.

Unfortunately for the efficacy of public debate, such childish cant is all that most people have ever developed their sense of the past with, which further distorts the constrained decision-making proffered them by political elites in thrall to financial elites.

Since human beings don't live forever and new ones are being born all the time, living memory is short. It behooves those interested in what's really occurred and who strive for understanding based on reality, to return to historical documents using a holistic approach.

Political documents that cast light on historical events are often suppressed for a generation or more under secrecy laws. Understandings of events and the decisions that drove them when finally revealed can cast historical players in an entirely different light.

If you don't know where you've been, you can't possibly know where you are going - or even what your current situation really is.

Plenty of the same mistakes as every generation has made - but now with a magnified technological effect that has increasingly dangerous consequences - are being made, sometimes allowed out of public ignorance, proving the truth of Santayana's observation that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat its errors.

Re: A Late-Night Save, A Lifetime Commitment to Social Justice

NMRod — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:21:54 -0000

We need to build a parallel, alternative society, of loving community, in which we can welcome all who are ready, because the one that's been made for us by others simply no longer works, if it ever really did.

Re: McChrystal vs. Obama: Battle of the ‘Hard Hearts’?

NMRod — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:55:59 -0000

Everything that the Rabbi says applies to military commanders by definition applies to either Gen. McChrystal or President Obama, both of whom are military leaders, does it not? The way this question is put, sounds simply like trying to put Ms. Berger in a political box, where you can then dismiss her. Why?

Re: McChrystal vs. Obama: Battle of the ‘Hard Hearts’?

NMRod — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:19:28 -0000

It's clear that none of it has the slightest connection to Christian values, then or now.

Gen. McChrystal, however arrogant he might be, argues against indiscriminate killing, while his troops chafe under not being able to shoot unarmed civilians, their desire being to kill indiscriminately, spraying bullets at anything that moves, out of fear for their own lives in a completely foreign land whose natives are hostile to them. (One wonders if this is just an argument from personal preference and practical utility rather than morality, given Gen. McChrystal's personal background in assassination - i.e. targeted, rather than general killings.)

Continuing the theme of Christian values past and present, Pres. Truman never lost a night's sleep (he bragged) over dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations that hadn't done anything wrong nor posed any threat whatsoever, in order to pressure early formal surrender, to prevent our Soviet Union ally from gaining any territorial claim. For that, the official surrender had to happen to us alone, as fast as possible. (The de facto surrender had already occurred, for defeated isolated island Japan had no air force or navy and US warplanes had flown daily over the country for months without drawing fire.) There never had been any threat to the American mainland at any time during the war, only to outlying colonial possessions that we had either subjugated ourselves or obtained from other colonial powers as the spoils of war.

Ironically, the city of Nagasaki had the largest presence of indigenous Christians in Asia. They perished in a moment by the command of our leaders, at the hands of those who were simply following orders as good Christians against any individual conscience, for the sins of some of their countrymen and for ours. Again, the practical fallout of the pernicious sacralist state theology set in motion by the Roman emperors Constantine and Theodosius, who transformed Christ's cross into the state's sword.

Gen. MacArthur wanted to win an atomic war with China, to re-establish the hegemony which had been built on the western colonial opium subjugation of the population. His difference with Pres. Truman was over means, not ends. Their argument boiled down in the end to the sideshow of just another internal power struggle. But their combined message was clear to the rest of the world - possessing atomic weapons would be the only protection against an enemy's aggressive nuclear hegemony.

None of this baggage did anything to enhance the reputation of the western missionaries whose presence seemed part and parcel of all the continuing economic, cultural and military domination.

Who lost China? was the big question. But the question assumes it was ours, that the Chinese belonged to us, instead of themselves.

The same applies to Afghanistan.

Re: McChrystal vs. Obama: Battle of the ‘Hard Hearts’?

NMRod — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:35:01 -0000

A permanent colonial occupation to get control of vast mineral wealth, as it turns out. Everything else is just window dressing. The elites just have to have it and everyone else. on every side, is collateral damage.

Re: Missionaries: What’s Wrong with Them?

NMRod — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:59:29 -0000

I have to say, having just looked at this site, this is more of an approach designed to stir up conflict and generate more heat than light. I think it's not surprising that you have also been a backer of aggressive violence as a Christian value in recent discussions. Many of the posters seem to look forward to a time when there can be outright warfare with Islam within the United States.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:23:46 -0000

As long as we're playing out scenarios like this, the assumption is that when you "blow their friggen' head clean off their shoulders" you will actually make it to church the next Sunday. It might be that there are relatives or friends inclined to revenge that will waylay you and murder you in yet another cycle of repeating violence.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:50:04 -0000

But which one? There are many false constructs, including the War Jesus.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:35:07 -0000

Both Catholics and Protestants were violent during the Reformation, and it was said that Luther secured it by embracing the violent backing of Princes militarily opposed to Rome and ready to use force to enhance their own power buttressed by the religious claims Reformers used.

However, Luther's embrace of a more localized sacralist state, where all are baptized into citizenship of a "Christian" nation had a terrible result later on. Jews and heretics were excepted from the universal infant baptism that welded the state's authority with that of religion - and later on, such a people, whether Catholic or Lutheran, found it impossible to resist the calls to persecute, then liquidate the non-citizens. Moreover, the fallacy of a theology that made individual Christian conscience only operative in private, personal matters, but could be overruled by the divine authority of the state, left such "Christians" believing they were disobeying God if they did not obey the state in opposition to what their own consciences told them. "We were just following orders" was the plaintive excuse - one we hear today from our own torturers.

It didn't help, either, that in Luther's own writings he exhorted that the Jews be burnt out of home and synagogue.

Fortunately, for Christians, there is still the theology and example of Jesus Himself to follow, which is mirrored in Anabaptist Christian faith and practice, which closely mirrors the faith before the Constantinian betrayal.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:25:24 -0000

It's pretty sad (but an historical repetition) that those who are against violence quickly become equated with the worst enemies their violent accusers can think up.

Rome and Israel, Jew and Gentile alike, turned their full hatred upon Jesus, the very incarnation of God. To the natural, sinful man, violence in our own culture is like Mom and Apple Pie.

We can't really be against it for our children, because we need those children to come of age finding violence natural and easy, that our elites can make use of it for their conquests.

That you could say something like this shows that whatever spirit you express this out of, is not that of the Holy Spirit.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:46:14 -0000

Think of the real world - how a propensity to see the world only in violent terms led policemen to riddle an innocent, unarmed man in New York with 40 bullets.

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over - and expecting something different.

The only "war to end all wars" - unlike that promised by the politicians in the last century - is the one that will unleash a holocaust and wipe out all human life.

For those who long for a violent Armageddon triggering Jesus' return, don't think that this is some beautiful event for humanity. It's clear that it will be the culmination of all man's failures, for which all of us are responsible.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:28:50 -0000

What does this have to do with anything under discussion? The President, as we know, is not a practitioner of non-violent resistance, but believes in militarism. As commander of a mighty military by choice and elected to wield it, what else would you expect? He has even acknowledged outright that he doesn't believe one can actually follow Jesus or others whose example he nevertheless avers we should be inspired by.

As for homosexuality, it has never been found to be contrary to militarism and violence; take the ancient Greeks and Spartans, for instance. You will find those practicing homosexuality among every human group. There were even Nazis who did so, so I fail to see just what point you are trying to make.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:25:02 -0000

And what the heck has happened when we have morphed into "Of, course, we do live in a highly militaristic society, so..." Was this REALLY the vision the Founders had for our ultimate national destiny, a violent militaristic society garrisoning and dominating the world? As an historian, I would have to say that this is a betrayal of their best hopes and dreams, even misguided and mixed up as they were with self-deception, self-interest and idealism - just like us. It is true that the possibility was incipient from the beginning, founded as it was in the crucible of rebellion and violence, then a reinforcing rebaptism of fire soon after, with the worst war toll in human history to that time in the civil war.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:11:43 -0000

What images are acceptable? We can't even agree if there are any limits on what our own side ought to be able to do and call moral. Would it be OK to show lawful torture? If not, why not? One man's terrorist (Bush) is another man's freedom fighter (Reagan), so showing the same Afghans fighting foreigners during the eighties would be OK, but not now?

Under Just War Theory, war was still seen as a failure and a sin, even if necessary, but this has gone beyond to worship of warfare in and of itself as national identity and as a positive good. This is definitely a mutation even from Just War Theory and certainly a perversion of any of Jesus' teachings - though obviously, that doesn't apply to government schools, where presumably anything connected to Jesus is out of bounds, anyhow.

Is this a common good that an education system is established for or is it outside that purview? Are we teaching children that war is a terrible thing that we resort to only reluctantly and with ambivalence, or something that we actively seek?("Bring it on!")

People complained that homeschoolers like ourselves were radical right types who didn't want our children to be left-wing liberal indoctrinated. But political winds shift and public schools could become indoctrination madrassas for right wing propaganda, too.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:51:44 -0000

It doesn't cut any ice with me that Protestant and Catholic preachers wedded to a Constantinian compromise of Christianity constructed an elaborate theology to justify it. In fact, during the Reformation, an affair marked by massive amounts of killing on both sides amidst charges of heresy, both Protestants and Catholics, both of whom relied on military force to defend their state/religion mix of power murdered the Anabaptists who refused to kill in the name of religion and for condemning that violence.

Without the Anabaptists though, no progress would ever have been made towards the separation of church and nation that humans always instinctively gravitate towards. The sacralist system that arose after the emperors Constantine and Theodosius fused Christianity to the violent Roman empire, thereby subverting its threat and transforming it into a power supporting domination and coercive power, relies on this man-made theology of submission of conscience to the state. First through obedience to the Holy Roman Empire as an article of faith, then to the lesser princes and dominions that rebelled against it, but still sought divine authority for their own emerging nation-states.

Just like the Catholics who wanted the people not to read the scriptures for themselves, but be subject instead to the substitution of priestly dogma, Legge is simply another in the long line of apologists for and teachers of false doctrine in order to further state power and diminish the power of Christian conscience to act as salt and light and with prophetical purpose. It is true it is theology heavy with tradition, but the long weight of time does not make a grievous error any less mistaken.

This false theology bears rotten fruit: just in one example of many, several hundred years later, it is why good German Christians, whether Catholic or Lutheran, had no problem at all carrying out the orders of the state to liquidate 12 million purported enemies of that state, nor to participate in launching aggressive wars of conquest against neighboring states - all having been taught, according to the same flawed theology Legge espouses, that their own individual will was
not their own when commanded by the state, but that individual obedience to God must always be trumped by state authority, according to God's Will, in this pernicious heresy.

Now you might think that there is some special cachet to these theologies, espoused as they are by individuals who claim they have a high regard for scripture and are Bible-believing. Unfortunately, fundamentalists turn out to be not so fundamental after all. They pick and choose and embrace or discard scripture according to their own pre-existing personal proclivities (and those of their big donors and political allies), preferring private interpretation instead, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The unsaved will do what they will. But Christians are not to "Lord it over them" as seems to being argued for, using their methods, according to the very paradigm that Jesus rejected from Satan when offered that. That is an attempt to make the supposed good end justify bad means, a logical impossibility. All you ever end up with is the bad means, over and over, substituting for the good end.

It is interesting that leading Protestant theologians, debating what was to be done with the Anabaptists, could find no flaw at all or anything unscriptural in their practices, but still argued that not branding them heretics and killing them could threaten to undermine the whole authority and order in the church-state fusion. As Zwingli put it, "Good God, what confusion and upturning of everything! Take away the oath of fealty (as Rome had required) and you have destroyed all order!" in their taking up the Cross according to basic New Testament precepts. Thus, their fate of martyrdom was sealed.

It would do great good for all those who consider themselves Christian to genuinely study Church history, instead of being afraid to look in fear their own faith would be destroyed. Yes, it will be destroyed - but only when lies are disposed of, no matter how fondly held as belief, can the true destiny of any Christian be fulfilled and genuine faith be empowered.

Re: Confusing our Kids

NMRod — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:07:31 -0000

The human lust to violence is so long-ingrained that it is reflexive and seems wholly natural to the unregenerated sinful man.

Just as with the adage that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, to the man with a gun in his hand, every solution is seen as easiest accomplished with a bullet to someone else's body. Our whole culture is suffused with a worship of violence and its invocation is most casual and unchallenged.

Jesus' disciples were ordinary sinners. They had just the same propensities as we do. Like Thomas, they were doubters. Like Israel at large, they sought to view and interpret Jesus through their own pre-existing understandings. Israel wanted a warrior, a militant tribal War Jesus who would slaughter their fellow humans - their "enemies." This was their shortsighted view of what salvation meant, not unlike our Wall Street elites, with similar human shortsightedness who are oblivious to the ultimate consequences of their actions, who can only think of methods to goose next month's stock prices, regardless of how ultimately destructive that is - even by fomenting actual warfare at times.

So Jesus allowed Peter to take his sword with him to the Garden. Peter at the time had shown himself so far to be invincibly ignorant. Notice Jesus, whom we are supposed to model, did not pick up a sword. This is something Peter wanted to do. Peter certainly wasn't in the Lord's will at this time; not long before, Jesus told this disciple, "Get thee behind me Satan; you do not have in mind the things of God, but those of men" in regards to this very situation. Shortly hereafter, Peter himself would selfishly betray Christ. The reflexive action to rely on a sword is wholly consistent with the similar earlier worldliness and the reflexive denial of Christ soon to follow afterwards, both out of fear for his personal safety and his dogged commitment to his own error - even when rebuked by God Himself..

In the garden, Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, after Peter had used it to cut off the ear of one of the soldiers sent to apply the worldly domination methods of earthly kingdoms. Again Peter was trying to say, by his actions, "Lord, this will never happen to you!" for which words Jesus had sharply rebuked him and compared Peter to Satan. Moreover, Jesus had warned Peter that Satan had asked him for Peter, to sift him like sand between his fingers. This is not a man who is in God's will, but a man who needs badly to learn the truth of God's will - as do we all.

Jesus demonstration of true Godly power comes by his restoring the ear and healing the wound of the soldier who Peter had used the sword against. A stronger demonstration of Jesus' not only being opposed to violence, but His ultimate power in opposition to domination, instead of through service, could not have been made.

The Old Testament and purported commands to "smash the babies' heads against the rocks?"

If this is the way you wish to proceed in furtherance of your own natural man instincts, then you must acknowledge you have no place for Jesus, for it is He who said that all that Israel had done was evil, that their fathers were murderers who killed all the prophets sent to them. And Jesus' explanations and practical living example, straight from the Godhead, have precedence in correcting all the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of scripture used to intentionally misunderstand God's purpose and substitute our own - and not coincidentally, Satan's - instead. To deny this, you must, like the as-yet-unregenerated Peter who nevertheless protested he would follow Christ, but wouldn't, also deny Jesus.

I have not heard God's command to go to war. The Holy Spirit has never spoken to me thusly. I have heard commands to do so from Presidents, Kings, Prime Ministers, Party Secretaries, dictators, rabble-rousers, insurgents and some preachers - and from Satan and his devils. At least the last weren't hearsay, being direct from the principalities and powers behind the worldly domination kingdom. But - get thee behind me, Satan, in the Name of Jesus.