Though many of you know that I can be quite critical of religion at times, sometimes even going so far as to mock modest clothing retailers and Christian Singles dating guides, my recent foray into the study of the history of American evangelicalism and revivalism has made me much more of a moderate, most likely toa Billy's chagrin. It goes to show that education can be a peacemaker.

In any case, for my final paper, I am doing an investigation on the notion of "complementarianism," a belief among many conservative evangelical Christians about the Biblically hierarchical nature of gender. Complementarians believes that men and women are equal in the eyes of God with respect to salvation, but are meant for different but "complementary" roles on Earth. This generally means that men are meant for headship (kephale) and women for joyful submission.

Long story short:

In the late 1980's, the feminist evangelical group Evangelical Women's Caucus granted rights to homosexuals, causing an uproar and a subsequent schism, creating the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus (EEWC, the liberal evangelical feminists) and the Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE, the conservative evangelical feminists). Of these two, the latter is more popular (300 and 2000 members, respectively). Nevertheless, each pales gravely in comparison to the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). According to surveys by an academic named Sally Gallagher, over 90% of self-described evangelicals consider themselves to have "traditional" views of gender. For well over 83% of this group, this means that men are the primary spiritual leaders of the family.

The most interesting part of this research has been a better understand of what it means to be accepted as an evangelical in America today. Through reading the movement's history (I recommend everyone research George Whitfield, Charles Finney, and D.L. Moody, what I consider big three icons of the major protestant religious movements in U.S. history!) it has become clear, especially through the CBMW watershed publication Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism that CBE is only feminist organization that CBMW actually thinks is evangelical - everyone else has a hermeneutic (theory of interpretation) of Biblical meaning which does not take the Scriptures to be authoritative enough to be labeled evangelical.

What makes CBE an acceptable level of evangelical? Well, I think this can be summarized by the following belief in their statement of faith: "We believe in the family, celibate singleness, and faithful heterosexual marriage as God's design."

In other words, though CBE reads the Bible to be gender inclusive, they still take it to be inerrant. CBMW thinks that this qualifies them to remain in the category "evangelical."

As a way to conclude, I'd like to highlight some of the ways that these two groups are different using on the one hand their respective interpretations of key biblical texts and on the other selective quotes from their web sites and publications.

From CBMW's Danvers Statement:

In the family, husbands should forsake harsh or selfish leadership and grow in love and care for their wives; wives should forsake resistance to their husbands' authority and grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands' leadership (Eph 5:21-33; Col 3:18-19; Tit 2:3-5; 1 Pet 3:1-7).

In the church, redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessings of salvation; nevertheless, some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 11:2-16; 1 Tim 2:11-15).

From CBE's Men, Women, and Biblical Equality:

11. The Bible teaches that husbands and wives are heirs together of the grace of life and that they are bound together in a relationship of mutual submission and responsibility (1Cor 7:3-5; Eph 5:21; 1Peter 3:1-7; Gen 21:12). The husband's function as "head" (kephale) is to be understood as self-giving love and service within this relationship of mutual submission (Eph 5:21-33; Col 3:19; 1Peter 3:7).

6. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ came to redeem women as well as men. Through faith in Christ we all become children of God, one in Christ, and heirs to the blessings of salvation without reference to racial, social, or gender distinctives (John 1:12-13; Rom 8:14-17; 2Cor 5:17; Gal 3:26-28).

There is a lot there. But briefly let's focus on two passages they both seem to mention here, and how they differ in their exegesis.

Here are two passages from the Bible that both CBMW and CBE think support their respective claims about gender:

Ephesians 5:21-33 (New International Version)

Wives and Husbands

22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing^[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."^[b] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Galatians 3:28 (New International Version)

28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Briefly speaking, with respect to the first passage, an evangelical feminist is tempted to say it must be read in the greater context of scripture, that is to say, in light of (among other passages) Galatians 3:28. As such, those passages are directives for "mutual submission" as opposed to hierarchy, ont heir view.

Complementarians, on the other hand, use passages like Ephesians to show that an inerrantist reading must take hierarchy into account, even though Galatians 3:28 shows that men and women equally share in salvation, even though not in earthly leadership.

So, what's the point of all this? Well it has serious implications for: the ordination of women, social support for female career aspirations, gender-inclusive Biblical translation, and many many other issues of every-day import to all people and families. CBMW publishes semi-practical advice for their adherents; I'd like to post some of it here for concluding amusement. Thank you!

Complementarian Singles: Who Should I Marry?
Walt Alexander
April 17, 2008

[Single female readers of Girl Talk and single male readers of Man Speak are regularly encouraged to prepare for marriage. Then the challenging and intoxicating process of discernment can begin (whether called courtship, rescued dating, or whatever) to answer the question posed in the title of this post. Walt Alexander is a regular contributor at Man Speak and provides the second part of a two-day challenge for single complementarians. — David Kotter]

If we become the "right" person who is prepared to marry, who should we "court" with the intention to marry?

This is a list to consider:

1. We should court someone who is a Christian. Because we — as Christians — are forbidden by Scripture to marry a non-Christian (2 Cor 6:14-15), we should not court one. This is a no-brainer. If you are courting/dating a non-Christian, break up with them.

PS - I might repost this on my blog, or a link to it, if anyone starts to care to generate more discussion.

Labels: evangelicalism, feminism, history, religion

Today is the 25th anniversary of one of baseballs most famous tirades. *Language Warning*

Here's the background from the YouTube clip:

On April 29, 1983, during Lee Elia's tenure as the Cubs' manager, the Cubs suffered a one-run home loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. After the game, he lashed out at Cubs fans for their fair weather support of the team. (Their consistent booing and heckling at Wrigley completely unnerved Elia.) A member of the press secretly recorded this "off-the-record" session with reporters.

Labels: Cubs, history

Today would be President James Madison's 257th birthday. I visited his estate at Montpelier today to pay a few hours respect to the man and the mind that arguably did more than any other to shape our republic. His home is currently undergoing a dramatic renovation, for more on that click here. If you can find the time, take a few minutes and read about the father of our constitution, the draftsman of much of the Bill of Rights, an author of the federalist papers, a Congressman, a Secretary of State, our Fourth President, -- the Sage of Montpelier.

If you have time to read just one work of Mr. Madison, read The Federalist No. 10.

Labels: Augur, heroes, history

Seventy five years ago yesterday, on March 4, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in to begin his first term. He delivered his famed inaugural address where he declared:

"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

My grandfather, like many of his generation from rural Midwest, credits FDR and the New Deal from keeping our family from starving. This speech reminded me that our country has made it through far tougher times. More importantly, it ignited a fury that burns against the politics of winning by making people afraid. Candidates that drum up fears of economic devastation, of never ending war, or of terrorism, should be rejected. We should all hunger for a rebirth of FDR's optimistic, uniquely American, spirit and resolve.

Update: The brilliant and lovely Dr. Rachel Maddow has a similar post up today. She says, in part:

In January 1941, at a time when the world was at war and the United States was more threatened than we had ever been in our history, FDR stood before the US Congress and hailed freedom from fear. That remains the paradigm of Democratic leadership in a threatening world.

When a politician looks at risks to our country and sees an opportunity for political exploitation, rather than an opportunity to rally the nation around our unified strength and fearlessness, that politician spits in the face of Democratic leadership and patriotic values.

If there's one thing we ought to have learned from the George W. Bush presidency, it's that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans on whether the American people should be encouraged to cower in fear.

Labels: Augur, heroes, history, Rachel Maddow

I'm watching this goodbye to Buckley by Charlie Rose now, judging on what I've seen so far, it's worth a watch.

Peggy Noonan in tomorrow morning's WSJ.

George Will too.

Labels: George Will, history, Peggy Noonan

In the wake of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s death, Andrew Sullivan posted this video clip of part of a debate between Buckley and Noam Chomsky on American imperialism that is interesting on its own and is particularly fascinating purely in terms of both the civility and the intellectual heft that went into this discussion. Would that these sorts of debates were more common today:

Labels: Brian, foreign policy, history

An op-ed by Caroline Kennedy titled "A President Like My Father" will run in tomorrow's New York Times.

This is important for the following reasons:

First, it reinfuses comparisons between Obama and JFK into the national debate. Perhaps we will even see legendary speech writer Ted Sorenson commenting on his perception of the commonality between the two inspiring leaders. In fact, Obama is the only Presidential candidate Sorenson has ever compared to his old boss. Sorenson has been described as JFK's twin soul.

Second, Bill Clinton has an almost creepy fettish for all things JFK. He wanted to run when he was younger, because Kennedy did. He fostered lore that his handshake with Kennedy was the passing of a magical torch from one leader to the next. His enormously petty behavior in South Carolina will lead some pundits to mention, hopefully repeatedly, that Bill Clinton has tarnished his legacy by engaging in the kind of classless, unpresidential rhetoric that cheapens the American civic faith, and fractures the party. It will become clear that Bill Clinton is purposefully harming the party in a gamble to help Hillary. His already-short-fuse could be further shaved down, leading to even more gaffes/hateful bursts in the coming week.

Third, think of how much it would have done to undermine the comparisons between JFK and Obama had Kennedy's daughter endorsed the Hillary Clinton Industrial Complex.

Fourth, it reminds America that Teddy Kennedy hasn't yet endorsed, and puts greater pressure on him to make his endorsement, which is rumored to favor Obama. The Clinton's worked him hard to at least stay quiet, but perhaps the increased scrutiny and a few glasses of Scotch will serve as a lubricant of sorts for getting Senator Kennedy to make his private preferences public.

Update: Thanks to my friend Nick for directing me to Andrew Sullivan's commentary on Caroline Kennedy's endorsement.

Update 2: Time reports, Teddy is Ready!!

*Disclaimer: Please note that the author is too blinded by his loyalty and devotion to Senator Obama to even be in the neighborhood of the ballpark of being objective or reasonable.

Labels: 2008, Augur, history, JFK, obama, politics

I have noticed a few sites comparing the Senator Obama to President Reagan, and sources calling Senator Obama "a liberal Ronald Reagan." (In terms of government spending some of you may find that description redundant.)

Senator Obama's New Hampshire "Yes We Can" speech reminds me of a common theme/connection to Ronald Reagan. President Reagan kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that said "It CAN be done." Reagan also used this theme/mantra occasionally in speeches.

Invoking Reagan the same way he invokes JFK and MLK might be a useful for Senator Obama. It speaks to their shared unifying capacity, optimism, and ability to speak to all of America. More importantly, it serves as useful reminder of how historically greatness in a President is fundamentally tied to being a great communicator. It also may reinforce the sense some primary voters may have that Senator Clinton would at best be a competent but divisive President, but that Senator Obama has the potential to be the greatest president of our generation.

Labels: 2008, Augur, history, optimism, politics

October, 2007

The lights came up in the theatre and the credits for Across the Universe were playing over the multicolored faces of the actors and actresses spinning weightlessly. For over two hours, kitten and I had watched the stories of young people as they lived through five years of the 1960s, sung to the tune of no less than 33 Beatles songs. I turned to her, said, "Darling, I know you like to sit through the credits, but please, just this once, we need to leave. I've got a white-hot light burning its way out of my brain. If I don't get this down in print, I'll scream."

I drove home quickly, because I wanted to write this while the music was still echoing in my head. The movie had touched on the war in Vietnam in juxtaposition with Beatles music and memories came back so hard and so deeply that I almost had to leave in the middle. To a certain extent, what you are going to read now is a catharsis for me.

So often, people talk about the Vietnam War as something to compare other things to. They talk about it as a bad example of how well-meaning people can destroy nations. They speak of it as the great cause where the people made a difference. It was more than that. It was something that overwhelmed our lives for ten years, reached into the heart of my community and changed us forever.

Small towns are one of the places where soldiers come from. The parts of big cities where tenements crowd closely together are another source, but when you read the casualty lists of a war, you see the names of places like Sedan, Kansas, Lula, Georgia or, in our case, Tonica, Illinois. Every Memorial Day, we would gather as children at the Civil War cemetery on the hill overlooking the grade school and listen while Wilson Warrner read the Gettysburg Address in a deep, resounding voice that needed no amplification whatsoever.

We didn't think much of war, or going to it when I was a kid. Korea was in a stalemate when I was born. All of our fathers, of course, had been in World War 2--my father had met my mother when he returned from Europe and his best friend had taken him to a cabaret to see their new torch singer. When the mood struck, my father would talk about the good times that he had while he was in Europe--building airfields for the Brits, sneaking into town after it had been declared off-limits. He told me of watching aircraft come back from their bombing missions--the American B-17s at dusk and the British planes at dawn.

It was accepted that, while war was an event that happened far, far away from Tonica, participation was a duty that would occasionally fall to young men from the town. As I grew into my teens, I, like everyone else in my generation watched war unfold in real-time. By the time I was thirteen years old, we saw nightly news reports from Vietnam with video footage of our brave soldiers saving villagers from the enemy. Two hours later, my father would point out that the soldiers in the Combat! TV show had been trying to take that town in France for two months longer than he had taken in real life.

One of the first soldiers to return from Vietnam after he finished his tour was asked to speak to a school assembly. I was fourteen at the time--it was 1966. He spoke of the camaraderie of the troops, of the good work that they were doing. He presented a slide show with photographs of the countryside. There were muddy, muddy roads--we all knew about them. The poles carrying electricity to the villages there were tilted from the vertical as badly as the ones going down US 51. There were all manner of trees, though, in the photos that were unlike anything that we had ever seen. At the end, there were two slides showing enemy bodies. He apologized for not planning properly, "I'm sorry kids," he said, "I should have taken those out--don't mean to upset any of you."

Two of the Seniors in the back watched the slide show with a great deal of interest. Mike Puetz and Cody Calkins were inseparable.

I didn't know Cody very well at all, which was surprising, since his father, Ray Calkins, was the man who farmed my grandmother's land over in Deer Park township. I knew that he was in the FFA and he, being a senior, got to dance with all the girls at the sock-hops. Mike was the older brother of my buddy, Jim (who was my age). Mike played varsity basketball with a fervor that would incite the team to legendary feats when he'd swivel and then shoot unerringly. He was so thin that opposing team members would dive out of the way when they saw his elbows coming--we said that they were as sharp as railroad spikes. He resembled Gomer Pyle, a comic caricature of a Marine private, more than anything else.

All through my high school years, there would be graduates leaving for the various branches of the service and then returning. Most of the time, they didn't wait to be drafted--they volunteered in the hope that they'd get the sort of jobs that would help them when they returned to the farm since there wasn't a lot of call for trained killers in north central Illinois. Cody and Mike both graduated in the Spring of 1967.

As time went on, the war escalated. Some people began having doubts about whether or not the whole thing was a good idea or not. At the same time, my father's post-traumatic stress from his war began to take a toll on his personality and his relations with me. We had shouting matches over the politics of Johnson and Nixon that would sometimes last for up to an hour. As 1968 progressed, I spent more and more time away from the house and over at the Puetzs' place. Mike and his buddy Lowell Beenenga loved to fish at a pond Lowell's father had dug at the southern end of Ticona Road (the road which ran beside my house and connected to the Lowell Road, which led into Tonica.) That summer, at the pond, they taught me about Playboy centerfolds and how to drink beer. I only had a bike, so there was no danger riding home except for DeHasque's dog, which would lurk by the side of the road and wait for me to wobble by.

By September, it was pretty obvious that Mike was going to get drafted. He decided to volunteer for the artillery, since he was big enough to lug the equipment around, and he heard that they got better training. It was the end of summer and I had just started my junior year.

He stopped back after basic and we had a huge party for him and by dark, I ended up way too drunk to walk or bike home, so Mike and his brother drove me up to the house. We didn't want the night to end--the next morning he'd head back and it would be a long, long time before we saw him again.

Occasionally, during the school year, his sisters would receive letters from him and bring them to school. They weren't particularly eloquent, but they were consistenly funny. Winter turned to spring, then summer. In the middle of July 1969, we heard that Cody had been killed in action. This surprised us, since we hadn't really thought a lot about him since he had left town. He had been so quiet compared to his buddy Mike that it never really sunk in that he was overseas. I was absolutely ashamed that I had never bothered to get to know him well.

Mike finished his first tour and came back to the farm. He was changed. Where there had been a vivacious life-of-the-party fellow, there was now a serious man--a good soldier, but an angry one. He had been offered the chance to serve the rest of his term of service in the states, but he confided to us that he wanted to go back. He felt truly sorry that his best friend had died and wanted to make absolutely sure that Cody's sacrifice would not have been in vain.

I was becoming more and more sure that the war was not going to end well. I had been studying history in preparation for college and had found volumes on guerilla warfare in the Pacific. I talked to Mike, asking him if he really thought all this was worth it. He said that he thought it was--that the people there seemed grateful that the Americans were helping them out, especially since the Viet Cong had all but vanished by the time he had gotten there and that that they were fighting the North Vietnamese for the most part.

Early in 1970, Nixon sent US troops on incursions into Cambodia in an attempt to block the movement of supplies to enemy units operating in the areas around and south of Saigon. Mike was acting as a forward observer in an OH-6A helicopter that was shot down by enemy fire. It took them a long time to recover the body and ship it home.

I got to his wake early and was invited to sit with his brothers and sisters, since I had been virtually adopted by the family. The coffin was a shiny medium-brown with a flag draped over it and his basic training photograph next to its head. His mother came to me when she saw me begin to tear up and said, "I know that you say that you're an atheist, but if you want to, you can kneel and pray with me--it won't hurt anything, and you might feel better about everything."

She was right about that.

About twenty-five years later, I was at the Mall in Washington, DC and had a chance to go to The Wall. It's so quiet that you tread as softly as you can, lest you make a sound that would disturb the somber locale. The granite is mirror-smooth and in front of it are offerings that visitors would bring--a photo of a child, flowers, a little book of poems. Near the entrance to the ramp which leads to the center of the memorial, there's a notebook with torn, plastic-covered pages, in which you can reference the location of the fallen soldier's names:

Panel 21W, Line 106--PFC Cody Ray Calkins

Panel 14W, Line 128--Sgt Michael Duane Puetz

They were both 20 years old, and will be forever.

--Tom

Labels: history, Tet, Tonica Days, Vietnam

This evening I read All Politics is Local by former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. It is a breeze of a read, and I'd recommend it to those in the agora who are future public servants or just political junkies. It is a collection of short stories to illustrate what O'Neill calls the "rules of the game."

I wanted to one of his lessons with the agora:

"One day Jim Curley heard me make a speech and told me I was lousy. He invited me to go around to his home. 'I'm going to give you ten poems and essays to memorize,' he said. 'Never again will you be in the position you were in the other night, because you can always recite one of these to fit the moment. Believe me, people love it when you give them a quote, especially when you do it off the top of your head. They might not remember anything else from your speech, but they'll remember that.'"

Below is the list:

1. Polonius' speech to his son Laertes from Hamlet
2. "The Deserted Village" by Oliver Goldsmith
3. "It Can Be Done" by Edgar Guest
4. "Abou Ben Adhem" by Leigh Hunt
5. "Around the Corner" by Charles Hanson Towne
6. "If" by Rudyard Kipling
7. "Friendship" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
8. "Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
9. "The Man in the Glass" author unknown
10. "Rules of the Road" by John Boyle O'Reilly

I am not familiar with several of these, and sadly, I have only committed one to memory, but I'm going to read through these later this week. This post reminded me of the value of having a little bit of canned material, and inspired me to share a hidden treasure I recently discovered on the website of the University of Illinois College of Law.

One of the most revered legends of the University of Illinois is former Chancellor and Dean John Cribbet. Dean Cribbet was known for being able to seize any crowd with only a handful of different stories, which he could adapt to illustrate virtually any principle. The law school recently created this tribute to Dean Cribbet that tells some of his stories for a whole new generation of students. The most widely known, is Dean Cribbet's "big picture" story from his days serving as senior aide-decamp to Lieutenant General Troy Middleton, who served under General Patton. Please take a look.

A dear friend and mentor of mine worked with Cribbet for years and he told me that Cribbet liked to joke about how he only had 4 or 5 stories in his repertoire. Cribbet gave each of them a number, and when he returned from an event he'd say, "I told them number 1, 2 and 4." This joke picked up enough momentum that Cribbet could just say "number 3" and his staff would get a laugh, until one day when he said "number 3" and no one laughed. When Cribbet asked why no one laughed, someone quipped, "you just didn't tell it right that time."

Labels: Augur, heroes, history, literature, poetry, politics, U of I

These days it’s easy to forget that there was ever any integrity in Illinois politics. Illinois papers are full of stories on Governor Ryan’s conviction and upcoming trip to the big house, including one featuring former Governor Dan Walker’s account of his experience in federal prison. Prior to Ryan and Walker, former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner spent 3 years in federal prison for accepting bribes. (Fun fact: former Governor Jim Thompson prosecuted Kerner and is now defending Ryan.) Before Kerner, former Republican Gov. William Stratton was charged with tax evasion, but he was acquitted of those charges.

Of our last nine Governors, two spent time in federal prison, one is on his way, one was acquitted of tax evasion charges, and one is Rod Blagojevich.

Despite our long history of corrupt Governors, many in Illinois would likely consider Blagojevich the worst of the lot. (A little over a year ago, Rich Miller wrote an article about a poll where 41% of Illinois residents believed the Blagojevich administration was more corrupt than the Ryan administration.)

Despite these blackmarks on our state's reputation, we have much to be proud of. Below is a quick list of those who help us hold our head high. (please add your own in the comments)

Governor John Peter Altgeld: The "Eagle Forgotten" sacrificed his political career with the Haymarket pardons, and is the only governor featured in JFK's Profiles in Courage.

Governor Adlai Stevenson: Adlai Stevenson was a lifelong champion of peace and public integrity and he was probably the last Presidential candidate to write all/most of his own major speeches. He was imminently quotable and represented Midwestern decency to the entire world.

Governor Jim Edgar: He had the courage to say "no" and hold the line on budget issues, and is considered by many in Illinois to be the only honest politician they remember. My only criticism is that he did nothing when he knew (or at least should have known) our death penalty system was broken. The case that troubles me most is that of Girvies Davis, who Eric Zorn wrote numerous columns about regarding the likelihood that he was actually innocent. Despite this significant misstep, Governor Edgar was a principled public servant who gave the people of Illinois his best.

Senator Paul Simon: He was everything a Senator should be: a personable policy wonk with values that outpaced his ambitions. He retired because of the growing burden of fundraising on public servants. On his retirement, he said "I have an obligation to the people of Illinois, to the Senate and to myself to leave the Senate while I am still eager to serve, not after I tire of serving." In his retirement he created a lasting gift to the people of Illinois, a public policy institute he called a "do tank" rather than a think tank. The institute focuses on promoting ethical conduct in government, creating opportunities and fair treatment for people throughout the world, and promoting responsible citizenship.

Oh, Lincoln too. Even if he did suspend Habeas. One short story that moved me: when he laid in state in the Old State Capitol in Springfield two banners were suspended in the House Chamber. The first said "Washington Father" the second said "Lincoln Savior."

Some of you may object to Obama not making my list, despite my love for him, his many "present" votes in the Illinois Senate made me trust him a little less.

What about today's political leaders in Illinois? I personally believe the following people to be mostly honest and ethical: Lieutenant Gov. Quinn, Sen. Dan Rutherford, Sen. Jacqueline Collins, Sen. John Cullerton, & Rep. Bill Black.

One explanation for our culture of corruption that many of you might not be aware of: there are legal limits on the amount of money individual and corporations can donate to federal representatives. Not so with state representatives. Illinois has less regulation, outside of disclosure, than virtually any other state in the Union. If you doubt me, look up some writings by UIS Prof. Kent Redfield.

Labels: Augur, ethics, history, politics

Tonight I met an eighty-five year old friend of my grandfather named Oscar Plummer. Mr. Plummer served in World War II, fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and was awarded the Purple Heart. While at war, he regularly wrote poetry to his young bride who was waiting in central Illinois. Several of these poems were published in a local newspaper.

We had a wonderful conversation where he shared a story from the final days of the war. Mr. Plummer was a Sergeant on patrol when he saw three young, uniformed Germans coming out of the woods. They were unarmed, cold, hungry and offering their surrender. All involved knew the war was ending within the week. Seargeant Plummer said, "if I accepted your surrender, I'm not even sure where we would take you." He advised them to return to the woods, find some local farmers and do their best to swap their uniforms for plain clothes and return to their homes. They took him up on it, and he said that to this day he wonders if they made it home.

During dinner, this long-retired warrior-poet recieted a short poem. It appears below with Mr. Plummer's permission.

A Leaf

When I see a leaf upon a tree,
I believe that leaf is like you and me.
When it is young and green and strong,
the wind can blow it all day long.

And as the wind blows it, most every day,
it bends and clings to the limb to stay.
But when it gets older and becomes dry and brittle,
it falls dead to the ground when the wind blows a little.

The smoke when its burned floats up to the sky,
just like our souls whenever we die.

Labels: Augur, history, philosophy, poetry

October 1962....

It was over 75 miles to the center of Chicago, so we were going to be the survivors.

How much can a ten-year old understand about the end of the world? My father had lost the woman who would have been my mother in London, killed by a V-2 rocket as she left her job at the Windmill. He told me and my brother about the rockets and bombs then and that we'd have to stay in the basement for a few days while the dust settled, then we could come up and figure out what to do next.

I had been reading two serials in the Saturday Evening Post--Fail-Safe and Triumph, both explaining in detail the events leading up to a nuclear exchange. In my Uncle Joe's library in Oglesby, I had read Level 7 and Alas, Babylon so I knew what to expect. The cover of Level 7 had a blurb--"the story of a society hell-bent on nuclear destruction."

That certainly summed up the world I was seeing on the set in the living room. Each night, Huntley and Brinkley would show photos of ships blockading Cuba and read the announcements by the Soviet head of state and the American replies.

The Chicago Tribune had diagrams, concentric circles centered at State and Randolph with a legend describing the extent of destruction that would occur within each of them in the case of a 50-megaton explosion. There were listings of times that the USAF would be making sonic booms above the city, as they practiced for possible attacks on the Baku oil fields adjoining the Caspian Sea.

It was Indian Summer, the leaves has already turned and fallen, and we were burning the ones that my grandmother had removed from her yard. A pall of smoke hung in the still air over the farm. My father would tune between the stations on the radio listening for new information while he milked. The sky was filled with contrails since as many planes as possible were kept in the air to avoid being surprised on the ground by a first-strike.

Fifteen minutes from detected launch to detonation--that's what was expected. We waited for the CONELRAD symbol to come up on the television. The radio had two frequencies marked by the manufacturer that we were to tune to when the announcement was made of the attack.

I read, went to school--tried to get all of this off of my mind. It was easy sometimes, when Billy from down the road would clown on the bus. Still, part of my mind waited for the flash and my body would tense as I looked for a spot that would provide shade from the searing heat of the fireball.

The month drew to a close. The newspapers announced that Khrushchev had backed down and that the missles would be withdrawn. The flights overhead were less noticeable, although they never disappeared completely. The exercises at school returned to fire drills instead of students collecting in the halls and sitting against the walls in the interior hallway.

The anticipation didn't go away completely, either. As I grew to adulthood, there was always that little air-raid warden in the back of my head that cautioned me to look for a safe spot, perhaps under that desk over there. Occasionally, I would jerk uncontrollably when an unexpected flashbulb went off, then shake my head with embarrassment.

Twenty-seven years later, I watched on a television as the Berlin Wall was hacked to pieces. Some of our nuclear missles were going to be dismantled and their silos filled with concrete. As that evening progressed, the tension in my shoulders that had first appeared in the Missle October finally went away. I hoped at the time that it would be forever. As it was, the danger retreated for a decade, then returned from a different direction.

There are many idealistic projects that we can work to promote. There are hungry and hopeless people that we see every day. There are those scarred by violence that need the righteous to seek justice.

Being a child can be hard enough as it is. For the future of humanity, it is essential that no child on this planet needs to wake weeping from a dream in which they are startled to consciousness just in time to be burned alive.

Tom

Labels: Cold War, history, personal, Tet, Tonica Days

Today Tommy is the birthday boy!

Fifty five years ago, God (or maybe the Gods) went apeshit and created a brilliant hippy philosopher king. He endowed him with a zest for life, the ability to read very quickly, and evidently durability.

Around a year ago, our friend and guru Tet wasn't sure he would have made it to today. With the nurturing care of his big wonderful family, help from a few doctors, and a tremendous showing of personal discipline, hopefully Tom can have many more happy, healthy years of teaching, entertaining, mentoring, and loving life.

Happy Double Nickle Birthday Big Fella - we love ya!

Labels: Birthday Boy, BOOYA, history, Tet

I was sitting in the basement of the Illini Union an hour ago and opened my copy of the Chicago Sun-Times to an actual Roger Ebert article (a rarity during his long recovery.)

It's Studs Terkel's ninety-fifth birthday today.

I have to spend some time this afternoon raving about this man--the person whose writing, whose insight, I have grown to love over the past thirty years. Although I am growing into my father's son in so many ways, I wish instead to become like Studs when I finally become the man that I want to be.

I was working in a factory when another hippy handed me a copy of Working: What People Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. I was hooked instantly. Studs had an amazing ability to encourage people--the famous and the simple--to tell their stories to an old man with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He just set it down in front of them and distracted them from its operation with a few select questions and we were off in a study of the American heart and soul.

I have learned from him on every page. From Working I learned that the measure of success did not lie in one's salary or influence, but with a deep-seated sense of satisfaction in a job well done. From Hard Times I finally understood the quirks of my grandmother and so many others who had been young parents during the 1930s. Race made me realize that I was treating black and disabled people as invisible. After I changed my paradigm in that respect I began getting smiles and surprised looks from people that I encountered in daily life that had grown enured to being unnoticed except as part of the background.

He has always been an unapologetic radical--a major Red, he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He's still going on in that manner--in 2006, he was part of a class-action suit against ATT for turning over phone records to the NSA. (He lost in District Court.) I find it fascinating that he went to all the trouble to get a Law Degree from the University of Chicago, but instead decided to use the mechanisms of print (and later radio and television) media to bring about social change, rather than get involved in government himself. Hmm. Perhaps there are others out there who could benefit from this example? (I believe that I loaned one of his oral history books to Augur as a matter of fact--How you doing on that, bro?)

I'll give you an example of how this man, deaf as a post, and at the ripe old age of 94, completely dominates an interview with someone who is well-known for maintaining control over his show. Even after all this time, I cannot watch this clip without falling off my chair laughing.

Every day he stays with us, the world is a slightly brighter place. Happy birthday, Studs, and may you have as many more as you wish.

Tom

Labels: heroes, history, media, radicals, Tet

Richard Posner explains why those of us who are anti-Iraq War should not be too hard on today's college students for not acting like their parents.

I agree with him on this completely. Nixon was a crafty SOB, I'll give him that. When the draft was ended, the resistance movement on college campuses ended virtually overnight. Posner's analysis explains why only a complete madman would even consider reinstituting it.

Tom

Labels: draft, history, Iraq, Tet

LBJ is becoming my favorite President a little more every day. Kennedy may have sold us on progressive reform, but Johnson did the heavy lifting. I also miss White House wit. LBJ was hillarious, whether or not he meant to be. I'd like to urge the wikischolars among you to give President Johnson's memory at least a few minutes worth of research. I was reading a collection of Johnson quotes this morning, and I wanted to share a few with the rest of you:

On Women:
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it.

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

On Loyalty:
I don’t want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smell like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket. (on hiring a potential assistant)

LBJ's Political Wisdom:
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim."

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.

Jerry Ford is so dumb that he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.

Why Brenda should love LBJ:
The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.

LBJ says Tet is doubly worth a damn:
No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.

On the American Spirit:
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground.

Labels: Augur, God, greatness, history, politics, quotes

Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, history, quotes

Folks that have listened to me speak are certainly aware that I'm a proponent of what is termed SMIILE--Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension. Ever since the death of Robert Anton Wilson, I've been meaning to tell some stories about him, Doctor Leary, the Illuminatus Trilogy and the High Weirdness Weekend(tm). If you don't know who Timothy Leary is, I suggest you follow this link first.

Let me start out by talking about my buddy, Scout. When I arrived at the University of Illinois in 1970, I felt intimidated by the older hippies there. Even though most of them were three years older or less than I was, they had lived through massive changes within the Twin Cities--the start of the Community Council (the alternative city government), the establishment of West Main Street in Urbana as the Hippy Ghetto, the burning of the North End and the campus demonstrations and riots. Being a poor farm boy from a graduating class of 28, it was hard to get the cow manure scraped off of my shoes.

Scout was my native guide. When he drew himself up to his full height, he nearly reached 5 foot 2 inches and his weight managed to hit 93 pounds if he had just eaten and not shot any speed for a day or two. This was before the radical hippies had long hair in the Midwest, so he had a ducktail with a goatee and handlebar mustache. To tell the truth, he looked like the Mayor of Munchkinland would, had the part been played by Satan.

Scout taught me how to tell stories, how to flirt with a woman and that being from a small town wasn't necessarily a handicap, since we had a tendency to speak plainly. He introduced me to the rest of the hippies and made sure that I was as comfortable as possible.

He had a great story, though, about Doctor Tim. It was the autumn of one of the years right before I got to school. Scout was wandering through the basement of the Illini Union and noticed a tall man in a white robe with a flower-chain around his neck who was wearing sandals in an Illinois November. Scout walked up to him and said, "Doctor Leary, I presume?"

Scout would say, "He dug it!" and go on talking about the wise sage and his philosophies. At the time, Leary had mysteriously vanished from prison and the Weather Underground was hiding him somewhere in the country. Every week, there would be a "Leary Sighting" somewhere or another. Finally, the Doctor surfaced in Switzerland.

Fast forward now to the early 1980s. Leary had been recaptured and spent a few more years in prison. I had lost track of what was going on with him, since I was drinking about as much as he was at the time. Imagine my surprise when I found a flyer announcing a debate by him and G. Gordon Liddy, (the man who had arrested him while Liddy was working for the State's Attorney's office in NY state.) They were going to be at the Auditorium in the next week, so a bunch of us got together and got there very early to get good seats.

It was a strange, strange debate. Liddy took the side of the traditionalist, all-American believer in patriotism and manifest destiny. Leary didn't really look at the audience as much as look through them at a cosmic target somewhere on the other side of Venus. He spoke of trans-humanity resulting from the unlocking of higher states of conciousness and how they would allow us to colonize the galaxy. Liddy kept looking at him with raised eyebrows and Leary would smile knowingly across the intervening space.

Afterwards, my friends and I decided to head for Coslow's, which was a campus bar that was a socialist/intellectual hangout. (They also had nachos that people had crawled six blocks after a hard night of drinking to obtain.) We had reached Daniels Street, the home of the Frat Bar Extraordinaire, Kam's, when we noticed a very lost-looking Guru of Psychedelia talking to a not-so-bright, but extremely beefy bouncer.

"Excuse us, Doctor Leary?"

"Yes?"

"What seems to be the problem here?"

"Well , these nice young men from a fraternity told me that this would be a good place for me to get a drink, but the attendant here at the door doesn't want to let me in."

"Hey, we know a much better place a block over, come on...."

So, we trooped over to Coslow's where folks like Railroad Terry, his sister Jan and Rasta Wilson were already sitting at this bar's version of the Group W Bench. The incoming four of us, including Tim, sat down and, of course, ordered nachos.

What followed was a couple of the strangest two hours of my life. We all talked about big things, future things, evolutionary things. The Good Doctor dominated the conversation, of course. He explained that human beings were a product of their brain's wiring, which was a result of both their genetics and environment. This wiring enabled or retarded their development in life depending on how it agreed with what was necessary to get by in life. This wasn't all, though. It was possible, using various psycho-active substances, meditation or ceremonial magic to rewire parts of the brain--the programming could be altered, just as a computer's programs could be altered by installing new instructions. At closing time, we parted. Some of us were shaking our heads and the rest were very far away, envisioning a world where the evolved lived like some kind of secret superheroes.

Another nine years passed. I realized that I was not utilizing my full potential, so I found a job working on a project investigating the first few microseconds of the universe's existence at Fermilab. The conversation with Leary had demonstrated to me that we could rise above our circumstances and that each one of us had the potential to contribute greatness to humanity.

During Labor Day weekend of 1991, kitten and I attended the World Science-Fiction Convention in Chicago. It was an amazing weekend, since during the period beginning on Thursday and ending on the following Monday, the following events were simultaneously taking place in Chicago:

The World SF Convention
The NORML Legalize Marijuana Activist Convention
The Chicago Jazz Festival
The opening of the Battletech Center, the first VR video arcade
The Libertarian Party Presidential Nominating Convention
The Wilson-Leary Virtual Reality Roadshow

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the greatest panel ever in the history of weird--a full two hours featuring Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea, and Philip Jose Farmer. During the panel, the members spoke on the nature of reality, the paranoid truths of the Illuminatus Trilogy, and "where do we go from here?" for humanity. Wilson threw in his pet theory that, since English didn't have a number-for-letter transposition possible, anagrams were the way in which to do English gematria.

Following the discussion, I wandered down the street to where Leary and Wilson had their show set up. It had a bank of DEC computers and heavy air-conditioning. They had a helmet and glove combination. I sat in a chair and they fitted me with the helmet, which covered my entire field of vision, (even the peripheral) and slid the glove onto my hand.

The screen turned on on the inside and it was no big deal. It was a badly-depicted version of Seattle, nothing to see here.....

And then I turned my head, the view turned with me and my brain lurched (as did my stomach) when I suddenly was in the middle of a badly-depicted reality. Seattle was there, around me, moving. It was the strangest thing that I had ever seen. Then, Tim said, "Point the finger of the glove up." And I did. And I began flying. I could control my movements with the glove. I soared over the skyline, did laps around the Space Needle and dive-bombed some orcas in the middle of the Sound. I did this for what seemed like hours, yet only took the fifteen minutes for which I had paid.

When I finished, I looked at them and said, "How long? How long before this is everywhere?" Tim chuckled and RAW said, "Well, my guess is that it'll be used first for pornography and recreation long before it ever makes it to use in day-to-day life. That's all right, when humanity needs it, it'll be ready."

They're both gone now, but every time I walk down the road in TES:Oblivion or fly over Paragon City on my way to a meeting of the Global Heroics Supergroup in City of Heroes I think about them and raise a silent toast. We're not there yet, perhaps a generation more, but we're going somewhere else. Sometimes I worry I'll end up like Moses on the wrong side of the Jordan forever in the end, but other times I know that I've been at least afforded a glimpse of the Promised Land.

Tom

Labels: future, history, personal, Tet, weirdness

Pat has expressed some opinions on the Iran attack thread that I'd like to refute concerning the history of strategic bombing. This is not a personal attack, but an attempt to clear up common misconceptions about military strategy held by quite a number of individuals.

[Mark Harrison, "The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison," Cambridge University Press (1998).]

German Gross National Product,
1940--387 billion dollars
1941--412 billion
1942--417 billion
1943--426 billion
1944--437 billion
1945--310 billion

Japanese Gross National Product
1940--192 billion
1941--196 billion
1942--197 billion
1943--194 billion
1944--189 billion
1945--144 billion

The Germans were still running a primarily civilian consumer economy until well into 1943. There appears to be early signs of impact on the two nations' economies by 1945, when you stated that the bombing campaign was being halted in Germany due to total success.

In 1945, the RAF and the 8th AirForce dropped 382kT of bombs on Germany in the first four months. Had that continued at that rate for the rest of the year, it would have exceeded the previous year's total by 200kT--not a reduction or cessation, but a 20%+ increase. The reason that the Allies stopped bombing Germany in May of 1945 is that they had surrendered.

"War in the Air 1939-1945" Richard Humble.

There was some spectacular successes on the German oil industries and, on a tactical level, the interdiction of the Wehrmacht was very successful, particularly when the P-51 were used as fighter-bombers. However, myth of the stunning airpower victory is just that, a myth. (For a Nazi take on the campaign, read Speer's "Inside the Third Reich."--Albert Speer was the minister of armaments for Germany during the bombing campaign.)

For an overall review of the strategic bombing successes and failures in Vietnam,

The Strategic Bombing Debate

Since most of the North Vietnamese war material came from the Soviet Union and China, and the damage to infrastructure such as wooden bridges could be repaired in a matter of days, it was less than optimal for the losses incurred.

As far as Desert Storm goes, take a look at

Desert Storm Victory

While the tactical ability of the Air Force was admirable when the targets were caught in a massive traffic jam (Highway of Death.) It was still necessary to hit strategic targets night after night to insure that they were destroyed.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that an attack on Iran is insane. However, I posit that the only strategic bombing that ever ended a war were the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Tom

Labels: foreign policy, history, Tet