Brother Al vs. the Liberals (2)

As I mentioned in the first post on this topic, our friend Brother Al Mohler recently did an aticle that I find fairly revealing about his approach to theology: Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens 01/26/10. It's about promoting fear-based theology. But the argument is couched in terms of a menace he considers allied with Hell if not even more dangerous: liberals.

I broadly summarized the history of Christian fundamentalism in America in the last post. Because to understand the way fundis see "liberals" as enemies, you have to realize that in fundi-speak, "liberal" doesn't just mean civil libertarian or someone who supports health care reform. (Most of them are likely only vaguely aware of what "liberal" means outside US borders, if at all.) For the fundis, "liberals" are theological enemies out to undermine the True Religion, enemies of God, allies of Satan.

Brother Al cites in his column a 24-year-old article by Martin Marty, a leading American religious historian, "Hell Disappeared. No One Noticed. A Civic Argument" The Harvard Theological Review Jul-Oct 1985, which doesn't seem to be available on the open Web. Marty's article was adapted from his 1984 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality of the same title at the Harvard Divinity School (which also doesn't seem to be available on the open Web).

Marty's argument wasn't so much about the theology of Hell as it was about the claims by the Christian Right that teaching religion or "values" in the public schools would result in better behaved young people. He argues that for any kind of religious instruction to have the claimed salutary effect, it would have to carry the threat of punishment. Which means, as Marty puts it, it would have to include some form of teaching about "hell", i.e., eternal retribution for sins.

But Marty also explains that fear of Hell has become "culturally unavailable" for use in public schools. What he means is that so few people in America, even among active churchgoing believers, really take the threat of Hell seriously. If they believe in it at all. And for those who do believe in it, most are pretty confident that it's going to be the eternal residence of someone else other than themselves. His main point is directed at the claims advocates of "values" education make for such courses in public schools that without being able to credibly invoke some sort of eternal punishment, a concept that is "culturally unavailable" because too few people take it seriously, the claimed benefits of improving behavior through "values" classes are unlikely. As Marty puts it:

Rewards and punishments already exist on the sub-God, secular level. There are report cards, demerits, merit badges, trophies, rewards, awards, detentions, expulsions, suspensions, blue ribbons, congratulatory letters, parent conferences, diplomas, and the like to assure some framework, some structure for regulating and endorsing or disapproving action. If religion is to be an enhancement of the above, then there must be specifically religious sanctions or rewards. Indeed, rewards and punishments would be the very linchpin of the system, and these relate to and derive from the character of the One who does the rewarding and punishing. This is the substantive issue that would come up sooner, not later, if and when God comes with content and attributes as God must in moral education.

I love the concept of "sub-God".

Brother Al in his article quotes from Marty's argument only, "Hell disappeared. No one noticed." He follows that immediately by writing:

The liberal theologians and preachers who so conveniently discarded hell did so without denying that the Bible clearly teaches the doctrine. They simply asserted the higher authority of the culture's sense of morality. In order to save Christianity from the moral and intellectual damage done by the doctrine, hell simply had to go. Many rejected the doctrine with gusto, claiming the mandate to update the faith in a new intellectual age. Others simply let the doctrine go dormant, never to be mentioned in polite company.

Interestingly enough, and despite the impression Brother Al's placing of the Marty citation gives, Marty actually makes the point that Christian thinkers should give more attention to the fact that Hell has largely dropped out of credibility among American Christians, even conservative ones.

He makes clear that he is not nostalgic for the prominence of the concept of Hell in Christian theology and preaching. His point is that in the Catholic tradition, in the Protestant Calvinist tradition and in the teaching of Jonathan Edwards, who was so influential among American Christians in the early years of the Republic, Hell was used "as a metaphor or threat ... in ways that should not permit dismissal by simple derision."

This is a way of saying that, if and since hell has largely disappeared from the culture, and even from the mentality, of its church members, someone ought to notice. Religious agencies can come up with other props for moral action with respect to God. Civil institution which lack such props because they are not constituted as agencies of salvation might, lacking the threat of eternal punishment, do well to elaborate moral system which do not, merely superstitiously or routinely, invoke the syllable "God" as an instrument for promoting "traditional values".

If Brother Al read more than the title of Marty's article, his own piece doesn't show any sign that he took this reflective passage to heart.

My point here is not to dissect the results of Brother Al's fundi theology. It's to point out the attitude in the article is very characteristic of the way many fundis approach politics as well as religion. Enemies are especially important for this outlook. And Brother Al mentions the following enemies: "Theological liberals" "theological liberalism" "theological liberalism" (again) "classic liberals" "modernists" "modernism" "secular culture" "the Enlightenment" "Protestant liberalism" "European sources" (no, not those!!!!) "Liberal theology" "Unitarianism" "revolution and intellectual liberty" "the larger culture".

Brother Al argues that shying away from the doctrine of Hell as understood by 18th- and early-19th-century Calvinists is one avenue by which true Christian doctrine gets onto that slippery slope that to liberalism, atheism and voting for the Democratic Party. Okay, that's my short version, he doesn't specifically mentioned the Democrats. Here's how he puts it:

Are we embarrassed by the biblical doctrine of hell?

If so, this generation of evangelicals will face no shortage of embarrassments. The current intellectual context allows virtually no respect for Christian affirmations of the exclusivity of the gospel, the true nature of human sin, the Bible's teachings regarding human sexuality, and any number of other doctrines revealed in the Bible. The lesson of theological liberalism is clear—embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.

Be sure of this: it will not stop with the air conditioning of hell.

Now, the fundamentalist posture and to a significant extent the largest born-again Christian approach (which isn't synonymous with fundamentalism) stress what we could legitimately call counter-cultural themes, though to them "counter-culture" still means hippie dope-smokers. They take pride in positioning themselves as possessors of God's Truth in the midst of a hostile majority culture. Although, as I discussed in the first part of this post, they manage to identify at the same time with what Nixon famously called the Silent Majority, who they assume share their basic approach to "family values" and American nationalism. You'll never understand American Christian fundamentalism if you try to see it as functioning according to an overarching formal logic.

But it's fairly conspicuous of Brother Al's polemic in favor of Hell - or at least the doctrine of Hell - that he doesn't give an real picture of what role he thinks Hell should play in the fundi worldview and preaching.

This is where Martin Marty's observations about the doctrine of Hell having in practice lost its terrors even for many of the most conservative Christians is relevant to the point Brother Al is making. Or, in Marty's phrase, "culturally unavailable" to them. Even the fundis that take it seriously tend to view Hell as the place their enemies are destined to wind up, not as a particular threat to their own eternal fate.

I would suggest that the other enemies mentioned by Brother Al in this column, as well as the terrible pressing immediate mortal threat represented by a few Islamic fanatics hiding in caves in the badlands of Pakistan, largely plays the role of conformity-inducing fear the Hell might once have played in the consciousness of fundamentalists and evangelicals. Along with voodoo-worshipping Haitians in a Pact With The Devil and other bogeymen that pop up from time to time.

So the question is, just what the hell does Brother Al want to do with the doctrine of Hell?

Tags: albert mohler, christian fundamentalism

Normalizing torture has consequences

Consequences like this: U.S. soldier 'waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn't recite alphabet' Daily Mail 02/07/10.

It would be interesting to know if this soldier had taken part in interrogations involving torture.

I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions that child abuse is going to become more common in the US because the government has been officially torturing people. This one case certainly doesn't constitute evidence in itself for such a conclusion.

But it's clear that for the Republican Party, torture is now almost explicitly defended as a virtuous thing. In a Republican sub-culture that, as Max Blumenthal has described at some length in Republican Gomorrah (2009), celebrates physical beatings for children and pets, that official level of approval validates and strengthens authoritarian attitudes toward employing violence and cruelty against the vulnerable. I haven't seen anyone yet systematically trace the current Republican embrace of torture to the lynch-law in the segregated South on not-so-distant decades ago. But I'm sure there are important connections.

Sarah Palin, current darling of the Christian Right, alluded in a somewhat oblique way to the standard Republican criticism that the Obama administration should have treated the suspect in the inept and failed attempted terrorist attack over Chicago as an "enemy combatant", and should have tortured him and not recognized any of his Constitutional rights.

The events surround the Christmas Day plot reflect the kind of thinking that led to September 11. That trag-, th-, th-, th-, the threat then, as the USS Cole was attacked, as our embassies were attacked, it was treated like an international crime spree, not like an act of war.

We're seeing that mindset again settle into Washington. That scares me for my children, for your children. Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risk.

Because that's not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we're at war, and to win that war we need a Commander-in-Chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.

Child abuse was certainly a problem before the Cheney-Bush torture program was adopted. And certainly I wouldn't want to see child abusers escape legal consequences for their acts by pleading that Dick Cheney and his torture program made them do it.

But the Republican endorsement and passionate support of torture does validate the Christian Right's authoritarian reverence for the use of violence against the weak and the helpless. And, yes, even individually tough prisoners are in a vulnerable position. The Obama administration's refusal to prosecute torture perpetrators only gives more social validation to the same attitude.

And one of the practical consequences of the torture program is that it required hundreds if not thousands of people to take part in systematic infliction of sadistic cruelty. How do those torturers compartmentalize those impulses when they get back into civilian society? Some of them will wind up turning down self-destructive practices. Others will find wind to act out their impulses and utilize the skills they developed in the torture program.

I wish our torture-supporting Republicans had thought through some of this while they were making torture one of their Party's core values.

Tags: accountability for torture, torture

What the evangelical Christian adoption business wants to keep under the radar

Joyce Kathryn, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (2009), provides some important background to the stance of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and far-right extremists like Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition defending the 10 American Baptists arrested for kidnapping in Haiti in Evangelicals' Adoption Battlecry The Daily Beast 02/06/10:

The news of an adoption organization driven by missionary zeal surprised many, but it shouldn’t. Although [the Idaho group] New Life’s illegal actions [in Haiti] have been condemned by other religious adoption agencies, their sense of calling fits into a growing movement of American evangelical churches embracing a new orphan theology that urges Christians to see adoption and “orphan-care” as an integral part of their faith—and a means of spreading the gospel. ...

This June, [Russell] Moore [of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] helped pass a Southern Baptist Convention resolution calling upon all 16 million members of the denomination to prayerfully consider whether or not God was calling them to adopt. With both domestic and international adoption described as almost "contagious" in evangelical churches, with even small congregations boasting dozens of adopted children, it’s evident that more Christians are feeling that "call" — whether from God, or from leaders like Moore.

Kathryn also describes some of the serious ethical problems with the approach being taken by the country's largest Protestant denomination on the issue of adopting children from poor developing countries like Haiti:

In the wake of the New Life fiasco, Russell Moore worried the news would “give a black eye to the orphan-care movement,” as anti-abortion vigilantes had to the pro-life movement—a lawless take on a shared agenda. But there are larger problems with the call for American Christians to adopt en masse. Among them are the widely misunderstood definitions of orphans, which lead to ever-ballooning estimates of children in need of adoption. Another is the strong taint of colonialism in casting American adopters as saviors and focusing on adoption as a solution for impoverished communities. In some countries in recent years, including Liberia and Ethiopia, religious adoption organizations have been singled out for censure by national authorities, accused of using church ties to legitimize unethical practices. [my emphasis]

The link to the Miami Herald's excellent story on the recent history of orphanage and adoption problems that I quoted in an earlier post is still broken as of a few hours ago. (That's actually the main reason I use a practice still uncommon for bloggers of usually citing the title, author, date and publication of articles I link. I discovered early in my blogging experience that if a link is broken, it's much easier to find the story if you have the exact title and the author.) But the story is now available at the Idaho Statesman: Why Haiti is so upset with the American detainees by Scott Hiassen, Kathleen McGrory, Jacqueline Charles and Trenton Daniel, McClatchey Newspapers 02/07/10.

But the New York Times has weighed in with its own story on those problems in Haiti: Bleak Portrait of Haiti Orphanages Raises Fears by Ginger Thompson 02/06/10. The story also appears at MSNBC under a similar title, Bleak portrait of Haiti orphanages raises fears. Thompson reports:

At the front lines of the system are the orphanages, which run the gamut from large, well-equipped institutions with international financing to one-room hovels in a slum where a single woman cares for abandoned children as best she can.

Most of the children in them, the authorities said, are not orphans, but children whose parents are unable to provide for them. To desperate parents, the orphanage is a godsend, a temporary solution to help a child survive a particularly tough economic stretch. Many orphanages offer regular family visiting hours and, when their situations improve, parents are allowed to take their children back home.

But instead of protecting Haiti's most vulnerable population, some orphanages have become tools of exploitation, the authorities fear.

“There are many so-called orphanages that have opened in the last couple of years that are not really orphanages at all,” said Frantz Thermilus, the chief of Haiti’s National Judicial Police. “They are fronts for criminal organizations that take advantage of people who are homeless and hungry. And with the earthquake they see an opportunity to strike in a big way.” [my emphasis]

The Idaho Statesman has new articles related to the case:

At Sunday service, Meridian church members are asked to pray for Haiti detainees by Bethann Stewart 02/07/10. This report says that only five of the 10 arrested in Haiti are actually members of the Central Valley Baptist Church, which sponsored their "mission" and of which far-right activists Patrick Mahoney says he has worked on past projects with members of that congregation in a small Idaho city. I hope the church members also prayed for the well-being of the 33 children whose safety was put at risk by the reckless acts of their "missionaries".

Silsby 'lying,' detainees say 02/07/10. The members of the missionary group kidnapping gang are starting to turn on each other, it seems. They would have been well-advised to work through an established charity or NGO that knew what they were doing:

Meanwhile, the Haitian lawyer for the Baptists charged with child kidnapping tried to bribe their way out of jail and has been fired, the attorney who hired him told The Associated Press Saturday.

Haitian lawyer Edwin Coq denied the allegation. He said the $60,000 he requested from the Americans' families was his fee.

Jorge Puello, the attorney in the neighboring Dominican Republic retained by relatives of the 10 Americans after their arrest last week, told The Associated Press that he fired Coq Friday night. He had hired Coq to represent the detainees at Haitian legal proceedings.

Coq orchestrated "some kind of extortion with government officials" that would have led to the release of nine of the Baptists, Puello charged.

Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times of London reports Clinton brokers deal over Haiti orphan abductions by Tony Allen-Mills 02/07/10. The Times of London's repeated reports of an imminent Israeli nuclear attack on Iran which never happens make me cautious about their diplomatic reports. We'll see what happens on this. Allen-Mills article looks like it may have been based on the reports of Edwin Coq, the Haitian attorney who was just fired from the Americans' case.

Tags: haiti kidnapping, southern baptists

Baptist branding issues

The conservative Christian Post reports that Baptist groups not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the US, are making sure to distance themselves from the Baptists in jail in Haiti for kidnapping Haitian children (Baptist Bodies Distance Themselves from Americans Charged in Haiti by Ethan Cole 02/05/10):

The global fellowship Baptist World Alliance issued a statement Thursday "to assure its member bodies, the media and the public" that neither the team of missionaries nor their churches are affiliated with BWA or with any of its member bodies.

Similarly, the American Baptist Churches USA on Wednesday stated that the ten American Baptists arrested by Haitian authorities over concern about child trafficking are not members of churches affiliated with the denomination.

“While the people involved are Baptists from the United States, they are not members of the denomination known as ABCUSA,” the denomination stated.

Most of the team members are from two Idaho churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The SBC itself has a double track going. They seem to be highlighting their cautious concern for the well-being of those arrested while at the same time promoting it as a case of innocent Christians being persecuted for their good-faith acts as "missionaries". Morris Chapman, president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee, wrote on Wednesday of the arrested Americans in Pray for the detainees in Haiti Baptist Press 02/03/10:

The Haitian government and the international community immediately interpreted their actions in the worst light possible, alleging that they were trafficking in children. As the story has unfolded, it has become more and more apparent that these ten individuals were driven by the true selflessness of altruism. Moved with compassion, they acted.

Really? The more I hear about this story, the less credible "true selflessness" sounds as an explanation. At at some point, subjective intention can't really count as goodwill if it overrides a basic sense of responsibility. Anthea Butler in Missionary Imposition: Idaho Baptists Charged With Kidnapping 33 Haitian Children Religion Dispatches 02/05/10 takes this case as an example of how (presumed) good intentions in these situations can wind up at the service of arrogant and egotistical ones.

The Haitian lawyer representing the 10 arrested claims that the leader of the group, Laura Silsby, fooled the other nine into thinking she had the correct legal papers: Haitian lawyer: Nine Baptists were conned by Bethann Stewart Idaho Statesman 02/06/10. I don't know how effective that may be as a defense. But they certainly knew they were there at the border with a bunch of Haitian children on a cowboy operation on behalf of a mission group with apparently no formal legal existence.

Meridian church goes into lockdown mode after learning of charges NWCN 02/05/10. The local officials of the Idaho church sponsoring this cowboy mission program to kidnap Haitian children are probably realizing that they are facing not only scandalous international publicity but some potentially serious legal liability. If evidence were to emerge, for instance, that the "mission" group had conspired inside the US to commit an illegal act in taking the Haitian children out of Haiti, they could face federal charges here.

Marley Greiner has been following this story closely and commenting on it at her blog The Daily Bastardette and the Web page End Child Exportation and Trafficking in Haiti.

Tags: haiti kidnapping, southern baptists

Haiti kidnappers: the Persecuted Christians pitch is now underway

One of my more irreverent Facebook friends on the East Coast just posted that the mega-snowstorm has only been going on a few hours and the Baptists are already showing up to steal their babies.

The Miami Herald has a good background article on the problems that Haitian "orphans" have been encountering in recent years: Haiti 'orphans' face a life of neglect and pain by Scott Hiaasen, Kathleen McGrory, Jacqueline Charles and Trenton Daniel 02/05/10. [02/06/10 - The link to this article at the Miami Herald appears to be temporarily broken. The first few paragraph appear at the McClatchy DC site.] The orphanage business there can get really ugly. Including ones that call themselves Christian:

Haiti's record before the Jan. 12 earthquake showed just how vulnerable to abuse the country's children have been. Consider:

• In September, U.S. prosecutors indicted Douglas Perlitz, a Colorado missionary, on charges that he used food and gifts to extract sexual favors from teens at an orphanage he ran in northern Haiti. The orphanage was financed with donations from a Connecticut church group. Perlitz has pleaded not guilty.

• Two years ago, two Canadian aid workers were convicted in their home country of sexually abusing boys at an orphanage in southern Haiti.

• In 2007, the International Organization for Migration discovered 47 children who were solicited from their parents by the operators of a rogue adoption center in Port-au-Prince.

• That same year, Haitian police arrested the operator of an orphanage housing 32 children being offered in black-market adoptions.

I first came across that article via an aggregator site that I just found out about, the Haitian News Network.

Apparently it's dawned on the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) officials that this is not good publicity for their denomination, as the A********* P**** reports in Baptists concerned Haiti arrests may hurt image by Travis Loller Idaho Statesman 02/05/10. Duh!

At the SBC Web site is an article providing the text of a letter to President Obama that is clearly but not unambiguously defending the dubious group of white Idahoans busted trying to take 33 Haitian children out of the country illegally last weekend: In letter, Baptists ask Obama to aid 10 held by Haiti 02/05/10. My own first reading of this letter is that the SBC would like to get those Idaho Baptists sprung from jail and put this story to rest before it draws too much scrutiny to other orphanage and adoption services being run by conservative Christian groups dealing with Haitian children.

Richard Land, a top SBC officials and one of the most influential leaders of the Christian Right, sent his own separate letter: Land: Haiti govt's behavior 'outrageous' Baptist Press 02/05/10. Land's letter puts a different spin on the SBC's position than the A********* P**** story gives it.

"The Haitian government is receiving massive assistance from the United States, from both public and private sources," Land the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, wrote to Obama. "Our nation's churches are giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to relief efforts for the people of Haiti. These fine Christian men and women sought to do even more to help alleviate the suffering of some Haitian children. For the Haitian government to respond in this way to the obvious good intentions of these honorable Christians is outrageous. [my emphasis]

Before I saw the Land article, I would have said that I hadn't seen anyone making an outright pitch that these accused kidnappers are white Christians being persecuted for their religion by a bunch of black voodoo-following, Devil-worshipping Haitians. Of course, Land didn't explicitly put it that way. But the framing of this one isn't ambiguous, though the other SBC letter is. Land is explicitly saying these are "honorable" Christians with good motives and that their arrest was illegitimate.

It says a lot about Land, not much of it good, that he would so enthusiastically endorse such a dubious undertaking.

But you can also see the outlines of that framing of the issue in the first SBC article linked above and the milder letter to the President. It's also not far below the surface of the latest statement from the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, that was sponsoring this particularly strange international mission program:

It's perfectly natural for the families and friends of those arrested to try to put the best face on their actions. I would be doing exactly the same thing if a relative or friend were in that situation. And it's part of the duty of the State Department to monitor situations like that and do what's possible to protect the rights of Americans detained.

But if these Idahoans were well intentioned, their good intentions didn't include a minimum sense of responsibility. It especially disingenuous for the church to talk about their special concern "for the young people who are jailed in a foreign country." This sounds like a typical paranoid-conservative projection. None of the ten Idaho "missionaries" is a minor. But they attempted to take 33 children, ages 2-12, out of Haiti in a manner that at very best recklessly put the safety of the children at risk. That kind of screaming hypocrisy will work fine if their goal is whip up a frenzy among Christian Rightists and white supremacists. But it's not very likely to work in the favor of the 10 sitting in jail in Haiti.

The SBC's news service is also running a story that includes a ringing defense of the group by the pastor of a Kansas church that one of the group attended: Attorney asks for release of volunteers by Erin Roach 02/05/10. That piece also quotes the SBC's North American Mission Board making it clear that the Idaho operation was not one of theirs but nevertheless defending them. The group's interim president says, "We believe the mission team had the best intentions for the children they were transporting." Exactly why would he believe that? The story doesn't say

Loller's AP story reports a statement by an SBC official not included in the SBC news article linked above:

The Christians, most of them Southern Baptists, weren't acting under the auspices of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention, when they were arrested Jan. 29 while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti. Even so, Vice President of Convention Relations Roger Oldham said, "Clearly there is a concern that, because of the acts of this one team, our tremendous history of relief over the years would be tainted in some people's minds."

The Southern Baptists' Disaster Relief ministry is the third-largest relief organization in North America, according to the convention. Oldham said Friday that more than 90,000 trained disaster relief volunteers are ready to assist Haiti with earthquake recovery as soon as they are invited in by the Haitian government. [my emphasis]

Which raises one of the biggest questions about this "mission": why would an individual Southern Baptist church whose members genuinely wanted to help in this emergency in Haiti use their own separate mission program when the denomination has established, experienced resources of its own to which they could contribute.

It would be interesting to know if the SBC's Disaster Relief group would have accepted anyone on the Idaho team as a volunteer. I've yet to hear that any of them had any relevant skills for this situation. I also wonder why the Haitian government hasn't yet approved the official SBC group to enter the country yet. I'm sure this cowboy mission from Idaho didn't inspire confidence among Haitian officials. But is there more to it than that?

I'm also intrigued by this language in the SBC letter to Obama:

We ask, therefore, that you use all means necessary to secure for these mission volunteers the medical treatment and spiritual counsel that they need while imprisoned, and that you arrange for a representative from their churches or from the Southern Baptist Convention, or both, to visit them in Haiti as soon as possible. Upon their release, we also ask that those representatives be allowed to accompany them home to provide pastoral care and spiritual encouragement. [my emphasis]

There's no point into splitting hairs over individual phrasing. But it sure sounds to me like the SBC is trying to take ownership of this situation and hush it up, while at the same time trying to avoid any damage to their brand name or any legal liability.

Just to be clear, brand identity and legal liability are perfectly valid concerns for the SBC. And in itself, it's good to see that the denomination seems to be taking an active role in intervening for these unofficial missionaries.

But big questions remain as to what they were doing there. And I sure hope some competent reporters follow up on the claim that Patrick Mahoney of the far-right Christian Defense Coalition that he had worked with members of the sponsoring church in Idaho on past projects. I'm also curious why the SBC leaders decided to go with two different letters to Obama. Land's is much more explicit in defending the kidnappers. Is this kind of like when the Supreme Court has concurring opinions? I'm guessing it's something like a two-track strategy: protect the brand but set up the political issue as "persecuted Christians" and victimized white people.

Monica Potts at Tapped has a good post on this, on which I commented there: Helping Haiti With Arrogance 02/05/10.

Tags: haiti kidnapping

Brother Al vs. the Liberals (1)

Our friend Brother Al Mohler recently did an aticle that I find fairly revealing about his approach to theology: Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens 01/26/10. It's about promoting fear-based theology. But the argument is couched in terms of a menace he considers allied with Hell if not even more dangerous: liberals.

Brother Al cites in his column a 24-year-old article by Martin Marty, a leading American religious historian, "Hell Disappeared. No One Noticed. A Civic Argument" The Harvard Theological Review Jul-Oct 1985, which doesn't seem to be available on the open Web. Marty's article was adapted from his 1984 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality of the same title at the Harvard Divinity School (which also doesn't seem to be available on the open Web). In this post, I'm commenting on Marty's article and some of the background of fundamentalist theology. In the second and final part tomorrow, I'll address Brother Al's article.

Marty's argument wasn't so much about the theology of Hell as it was about the claims by the Christian Right that teaching religion or "values" in the public schools would result in better behaved young people. He argues that for any kind of religious instruction to have the claimed salutory effect, it would have to carry the threat of punishment. Which means, as Marty puts it, it would have to include some form of teaching about "hell", i.e., eternal retribution for sins.

But Marty also explains that fear of Hell has become "culturally unavailable" for use in public schools. What he means is that so few people in America, even among active churchgoing believers, really take the threat of Hell seriously. If they believe in it at all. And for those who do believe in it, most are pretty confident that it's going to be the eternal residence of someone else other than themselves. His main point is directed at the claims advocates of "values" education make for such courses in public schools that without being able to credibly invoke some sort of eternal punishment, a concept that is "culturally unavailable" because too f ew people take it seriously, the claimed benefits of improving behavior through "values" classes are unlikely. As Marty puts it:

Rewards and punishments already exist on the sub-God, secular level. There are report cards, demerits, merit badges, trophies, rewards, awards, detentions, expulsions, suspensions, blue ribbons, congratulatory letters, parent conferences, diplomas, and the like to assure some framework, some structure for regulating and endorsing or disapproving action. If religion is to be an enhancement of the above, then there must be specifically religious sanctions or rewards. Indeed, rewards and punishments would be the very linchpin of the system, and these relate to and derive from the character of the One who does the rewarding and punishing. This is the substantive issue that would come up sooner, not later, if and when God comes with content and attributes as God must in moral education.

(I love the concept of "sub-God".)

David Weeks in a review discussing opposition to Woodrow Wilson's League of Nation among many conservative American Protestants (Politics and Religion Apr 2009) gives a good description of how "liberalism" came to be the bogeyman that it still is for Christian fundamentalists:

Although the Social Gospel [a variety of Christian teaching that emphasized secular reform to address social evils] was a source of consternation among evangelicals, they were very apprehensive about a world turned upside down by the recently minted intellectual forces of historicism, positivism, Darwinism, and Marxism. Theological liberalism was just one additional expression of evangelicalism’s bête noire, modernism run amuck.

It was during the late 19th-Century that modernity took a turn that gave pause to many Christians. Individuals such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, G. K. Chesterton, and Pope Pius X expressed deep-rooted reservations about the ideological temptations arising from the marriage of Enlightenment rationalism to German historicism, which had unleashed the notion that human reason inevitably would restructure the world, relieving all that ails humanity. Conservative evangelicals also opposed this trend in ways consonant with the theology distinctive of their denominations, thus finding themselves at odds with powerful political forces.

Christian fundamentalism as we know it today first emerged then. It built on earlier ideas. But its suspicion of science and "modernism", and its chronic posturing as being persecuted even when they are plainly not in any meaningful sense of the word, were established in the latter part of the 19th century. The name Fundamentalism was derived from a series of essays published under the title The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth beginning in 1909.

But the belief structure obviously preceded that, because these articles were summarizing a particular trend in Protestant theology going back to the 1870s, that had strong apocalyptic (millenarian) beliefs, held that the Scritures are verbally inspired by God and without error in their orginal forms ("autographs", which are no longer extant), and emphasized combatting scientific theories like evolution by natural selection ("Darwinism") that they found threatening.

One of the challenges of defining Christian fundamentalism historically is that the fundis had at least as much of an inclination toward schism as other Protestants, probably more. And fundamentalism was and is a cross-denominational phenemenon. Ernest Sandeen in a 1970 aricle ("Fundamentalism and American Identity" The Annals Jan 1970) noted that despite their claim to be holding to the true and original faith, fundamentalism was "a theology with no more seniority than modernism, and, in a real sense, the product of the same culltural complex".

While fundis actually created a kind of counterculture of their on over decades, they both considered themselves a minority holding out against a wicked majority culture but at the same time took pride in defending that culture against various perceived enemies: modernists, teachers, scientists, Commies, hippies, black people. But it's also important to remember that, as Sandeen put it:

Fundamentalism lives in symbiotic relationship with its adversaries. ... The very breath of life seems to be provided for the Fundamentalist by those whom he opposes, each of his positions and opinions beingh conceived through opposition to a liberal tance or utterance.

Christian fundamentalism, in other words, has always strongly identified itself by its opposition to its enemies: "the liberals" being the most persistent target.

Sandeen's conclusion on the viability of Christian fundamentalism as a social/religious/political movement are worth quoting. Because liberals in 1970 tended to see fundamentalism as a throwback movement on the decline, not one on the rise. Sandeen wrote in refutation of arguments made by Richard Hofstadter and William McLoughlin had made earlier in the 1960s:

We exist in a fragmented and divided culture, not in one pervaded by consensus. We live in a society in which most of the problems are created by sub-groups whose values and ideals are threatened by changes in technological, economic, or political practices, and who doggedly refuse to drop their claims or change their attitudes as the result of a little more education or the passage of a little more time. Prayer in the public schools, Negroes living in white neighborhoods, the guaranteed annual wage, the new morality, Communist infiltration of government agencies, deficit spending -the list of issues seems almost infinitely expansible. It seems very much to the point, in the face of such a catalogue of grievances - each with its own organization dedicated to maintain ing that particular truth and defeating the agents of innovation - to challenge the pollyanna of progress, and to recognize that this century is seeing American culture in a new context.

Tags: albert mohler, christian fundamentalism

Coming soon: "Let my white people go!"

I see a Christian Right claim of "persecuted Christians" about to emerge over the Haiti kidnappers case. Nine of the white Idahoans busted at the Haitian border trying to take Haitian children out of the country illegally were formally charged today with kidnapping in Haiti.

Stephen Kurczy reports on it in Haiti ambassador: 'compassion' for American missionaries charged with kidnapping Christian Science Monitor 02/04/10. And he links to a story reporting on the Christian Defense Coalition getting involved in the case: Update on Attempt to Free American Missionaries in Haiti Christian Newswire 02/04/10.

The official story of the accused kidnappers so far has been that their local Southern Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho (pop. 85,000) had set up its very own international mission program to set up an orphanage in the Dominican Republic to care for orphans from Haiti. The project started in late 2009. Their project's documents talked about putting kids up for adoption, as well. But the defendants are claiming that they intended to keep the 33 kids they had in their bus in an orphanage - even though they don't have a facility set up yet - in the Dominican Republic, claiming they thought they were orphans. The Haitian Christian minister who, according to press interviews with some of the children's parents came to ask them to give their kids up to the American group, was promising the parents that they could visit them regularly at the orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

So this jumped out at me from the Christian Newswire story, apparently a press release from the Christian Defense Coalition, which Dave Neiwert says "is constantly on the lookout for 'anti-Christian' activities on the part of whatever miscreants it can manufacture":

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition and the Rev. Rob Schenck, President of the National Clergy Council, prayed and shared their concerns with the [Haitian] Ambassador [in Washington].

Rev. Mahoney, who has worked with members of the Central Valley Baptist Church of Idaho on past projects, assured Ambassador Joseph that the missionaries were caring, loving Christians who were not kidnappers or traffickers. [my emphasis]

Say what? So in addition to this program whose founder with a shady business history was recently inspired to set up isn't the first, or even the second program from that same local church that required the services of the Christian Defense Coalition (CDC)?

Mahoney was formally involved with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. His CDC group is highly political: Conservative Christian Group Invokes Slavery In Opposing Obama by Jake Tapper ABC News 07/08/08. Mahoney was very involved with the Terry Schiavo protests in 2005: Activists see base being fired up by Maeve Reston Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/28/05.

So what "past projects" has the far-right activist Mahoney worked on with the good white folks at the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho?

Tags: christian right, haiti kidnapping

Why the Democrats aren't hopeless

Because Republicans are still Republicans. The invaluable Gene Lyons sums it up well in The deficit blame game Salon 02/03/10:

If President Obama's recent face-to-face meeting with congressional Republicans had been a prizefight, they'd have stopped it: Obama by TKO. It was such a mismatch that Fox News, unofficial network of the GOP, basically conceded defeat by cutting away 20 minutes before it ended. Other networks showed it all.

Republicans appeared to make the elementary mistake of believing their own ... um, propaganda. Believe it or not, Obama's use of Teleprompters has convinced GOP stalwarts that he's kind of thick. I get frequent e-mails to that effect from people who marveled at the wit and wisdom of George W. Bush.

I know, I know. That's what they think, is all I'm saying.

House Republicans shouldn't have allowed the encounter to be televised. But then believing their own disinformation is basically what makes them Republicans.

As genuinely badly as the Democrats have been stumbling over their own unwillingness to be Democrats, the Republican Party has some amazingly unattractive features. Next time you see Senate Minority Leader Growling Mitch McConnell on TV, stop and listen to him a bit. If Hollywood casting were looking for a mean old man, they would pass on McConnell because he would seem so over the top in the role. A Party whose face to the public includes a character like that isn't in a completely enviable electoral position this year.

Tags: republicans

It's almost like a throwback...

... to those long-ago days when TV news was actual news instead of bad infotainment.

Brother Al defends the controversial Christian adoption business taking Haitian children

ABC News actually did a segment asking questions about what's up with the Christian adoption business with Haitian children, putting it in the context of the white Idahoans who got busted trying to take 33 children out of Haiti illegally: Saving Haiti's Children 02/03/10.

This report raises some real questions, not just about this very suspicious Idaho group, but about how Christian adoptions of Haitian Christians children were being carried out even before the earthquake emergency.

This segment features our friend Brother Al Mohler, one of the most prominent honchos in the Southern Baptist Convention, seemingly defending the whole enterprise and, at least by implication, the Idaho crew. He makes it sound almost like a civil rights project. And Brother Al doesn't seem to think that the Librul Media quoted him out of context, because he posted a link to the segment on Twitter:

Brother Al also put out a defense of adoptions in Haiti at his blog: Adopted for Life ... and in Death 02/03/10. His blog post comes days after the arrest of the white Idahoans, and it doesn't so much as mention the case. Instead, it's a maudlin defense of foreigners adopting Haitian children. According to the ABC News report, even before the earthquake some of these adoptions were of children that had parents and were giving them up for American adoption. And it's clear that less missionary-oriented adoption services think even the technically legal practice is often downright unethical. Does Brother Al mention any of this in his article? No. But he assures his readers, "Adoption is perhaps the most powerful depiction of the Gospel found in the Bible."

There's a larger story here. The very fact that a high-profile Southern Baptist like Brother Al is defending the Idaho kidnappers, albeit very cautiously and by implication (but clear implication to those following the story), tells me that more is going on here than one quirky Southern Baptist church in Idaho setting up there own international mission to help little black children in Haiti.

Responsible government agencies and the press need to start taking a much harder look at the adoption business run by conservative Christian groups. I posted earlier about this story concerning Christian adoption services called "crisis pregnancy centers" targeting young mothers who don't want to have an abortion but who initially feel unable to properly care for a child: Shotgun Adoption The Nation 08/26/09. Some of the practices reported there are ugly.

Tags: albert mohler, christian right, haiti kidnapping

Torture nation

I don't recall stumbling across the First Thoughts blog at the neoconserative Christian theocratic journals First Things' Web site until a few days ago, when I read that rant against hippies I posted about. First Things pitches itself as an intellectual journal. But their blog has not only a juvenile tone, but a pretty disturbing one, as well.

And Joseph Bottum writes In Defense of Trial by Ordeal 02/01/10, i.e., the type of systematic torture used in Europe in the Middle Ages, whining that it's not considered socially acceptable to make that case today. A strange thing to say, since the Republican Party endorses torture enthusiastically, the Obama administration is giving torture perpetrators a pass, and the Republicans are currently blasting Obama for not torturing the suspect in the Christmas Bombing attempt over Detroit.

Bottum's post is creepy enough. But he references it to an article by a University of Chicago visiting professor in the Boston Globe Justice, medieval style 01/31/10, defending the trial-by-ordeal brand of torture. This is pseudohistory worthy of Jonah Goldberg of Liberal Fascism infamy. And a credulous, authoritarian defense of sadistic cruelty and superstition. And this is the kind of thing our "quality" press is publishing these days.

Bottum then went on to post "Peter Lorre, For No Reason" 02/01/10, in which he recalls what a great job Peter Lorre did in playing a child murderer in the Fritz Lang movie M, quoting a passage in which the Lorre character raves about his compulsion to kill children. That post is also really weird and creepy. Yuck! (I decided not to link it because it's just disturbing, though obviously you can find it easily.)

Greg Sargent catches Joe Lieberman joking about the drowning torture, aka, waterboarding: Lieberman Jokes About Waterboarding The Plum Line 02/01/10. That inspired Glenn Greenwald to tweet: "Joe Lieberman is the single most repulsive human being in politics - and has been for quite some time."

Torture is becoming increasingly acceptable among conservatives, something to brag and snicker and snark about in public.

Tags: torture

More on the Haiti kidnapping case

This is an article about the youngest a member of the Idaho "mission" team that got busted for trying to take Haitian children out of the country to the Dominican Republic, Charisa Coulter: Boisean 'felt call from God' to help Haitian children by Bill Roberts Idaho Statesman 02/02/10.

Coulter, probably foolishly from a legal viewpoint, admitted that the group knew they didn't have the proper papers to transport the children. She had been working as a nanny for Laura Silsby, who is considered a co-founder of the group with Coulter. The article mentions that Coulter's father attends a Nazarene church, a Pentecostal denomination.

This group's story sounds stranger the more I think about it. A single Southern Baptist Church in Idaho sets up its own international mission project in Haiti? And sends a bunch of white people down there in middle of a terrible natural catastrophe? Coulter is diabetic; did any of them take into account that she could easily wind up with problems in that situation, i.e., having her insulin stolen or lost? I still haven't seen anything that tells me any of the people in the group had actual experienced organizing mission work in another country, in orphanage or adoption services, or international charities. I haven't even seen anything saying that any of them were fluent in French or the Haitian Creole dialect.

UNICEF seems to share with SOS Children's Villages, both of which are active in Haiti, a very critical and downright suspicious attitude toward the Idaho group (Rescue attempt could hamper Haiti adoptions Idaho Statesman 02/02/10):

Child trafficking across the Dominican border is a serious issue for the poverty-stricken country [Haiti].

In 2005, UNICEF officials estimated that 30,000 Haitian children were trafficked each year to be used as prostitutes or to perform other types of degrading work.

"They do go into servitude in the (Dominican Republic), because they're Haitian and they're not considered human beings," DiFilipo said. "The best intentions can really do damage and that's what happened here."

With this background, the Idahoans' attempt to take a group of children across the borders, some of whom were not even orphans, without having any kind of permanent orphanage facility for them in the Dominican Republic, without proper papers, and on behalf of a group that had no history of mission or charity work in Haiti earlier than a couple of months ago just looks awfully suspicious.

Tags: haiti kidnapping

A strange story: Idaho Baptists kidnapping Haitian children

Kidnappers? Human traffickers? Well-intentioned fools? Some of the Americans held in the Haiti child-kidnapping case

I know appearances can be deceiving and all. But when I look at the pictures of these folks busted in the Haiti kidnapping case, the first thought that comes to my mind is definitely not, "Gee, these look like bleeding-heart Christian missionaries who were inspired to go to a dirt-poor underdeveloped country and care for black orphan children."

That story about the Southern Baptists from Idaho who got busted allegedly taking kids from Haiti illegally bears following. It may wind up shining a bit of light into one of the many dark corners of the Christian Right.

BBC News has a background story on the group responsible, Profile: New Life Children's Refuge 02/01/10. I thought the story sounded weird from the beginning. Why would a group of Baptists from Idaho come down and scoop up lost kids in Haiti and try to take them out of the country without proper authorization? The BBC reports, this part apparently based on the group's official claims:

New Life Children's Refuge (NLCR) is the brainchild of Laura Silsby, 40, and Charisa Coulter, 23, who are both members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho.

The charity, which Ms Silsby incorporated in Idaho in November last year, says it is "dedicated to rescuing, loving and caring for orphaned, abandoned and impoverished Haitian and Dominican children, demonstrating God's love and helping each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ".

Before the earthquake devastated Haiti, NLCR had planned to buy land and build an orphanage, school and church in Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic.

The profile discretely raises a flag of suspicion, noting that the people arrested came from two Idaho churches: "The two churches are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination which has extensive humanitarian programmes around the world."

Yes, it does. And there are lots of other organizations like the well-established and respected Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages charity and the Red Cross, who have actual experience in extreme crisis situations like this. The Haitian children that were taken from the New Life Children's Refuge group were put into the care of SOS Children's Villages. (This is grotesque; the New York Times Web version of this article, Case Stokes Haiti’s Fear for Children, and Itself 02/01/10, misidentifies the group as "SS Children’s Villages" as of this writing; SS Children's Villages?!?

At there very minimum the members of this Idaho group were amazingly lacking in responsibility. The most benign interpretation I can think to put on it would be this group had just started a project to set up an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, and they saw this emergency as a way to jump-start the project and maybe get raise some bucks through grants and donations. So they went down not really knowing what they were doing, snatched a bunch of kids off the street at least some of whom have parents or other living relatives, and tried to cart them out of the country.

But I find even that hard to believe. Because not only does the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have missionary and charity organizations, but there are others coming from a more-or-less Christian fundamentalist perspective that do, as well. So why would a group of white people from Idaho want to start up a project like this? Did any of them have any real experience in Christian missions, working with orphans or international charities? The BBC profiles lists Carla Thompson, one of the Idahoans arrested, as "missions coordinator at the Central Valley Baptist Church". Which probably means she was in charge of putting together a special presentation once a year in support of the annual drive for mission contributions. Not exactly training for assisting orphans in a catastrophic earthquake situation.

The whole thing sounds like some sort of scam to me. Although they were apparently very serious about taking kids out of Haiti for some purpose.

I'll bet scriptwriters for Law and Order are already working on a episode based on this case.

This article, Baptist group denies trafficking in Haitian kids MSNBC 02/01/10, quotes an official from the SOS Children's Village as basically convinced that the group was indulging in human trafficking, aka, slavery:

"As far as we know they would have been, I say it clearly, sold for $10,000 each," said Georg Willeit, who runs the SOS Children's Village outside Port-au-Prince. "That's what one of the policemen told us. Every child was very desperate, hungry, thirsty. They all were in a bad condition."

"One of the elder girls told us, 'I'm not an orphan. I still have my parents,'" he added. "She thought she was going on a summer holiday vacation given by friendly people from America and the Dominican Republic."

The MSNBC piece identifies the group as the "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" instead of "New Life Children's Refuge." This El País article also uses the New Life Children's Refuge name (in Spanish): Los falsos huérfanos de Haití von Francisco Peregil 02.02.2010.

The Idaho Statesman has video of the Clint Henry, pastor of the Central Valley Baptist Church, reading a statement to the press, apparently on Monday. Even taking into consideration that this is probably the first time Brother Henry has found his church in the center of a serious international controversy, the statement is surprisingly empty. He didn't even bother to vouch for the good will of his church members or their dedication to the Lord or whatever. The News Update on the church's Web page as of this writing is only slightly more generous:

A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince.

Henry gave an interview to CBS News in which he at least vouched for their good intentions.

The Christian Science Monitor also has coverage: Haiti 'orphan' rescue mission: Adoption or child trafficking? by Matthew Clark 02/01/10; Haiti: Americans accused of child trafficking could be tried in US by Matthew Clark 02/01/10. Clark uses both names for the organization.

Tags: haiti kidnapping

You hippies git off my lawn!

This is one of those no-it's-not-from-the-Onion items. Joe Carter at the First Thoughts blog at the Web site for the Christian neoconservative theocratic journal First Things did a post on 01/28/10 entitled The First Amendment Doesn’t Protect Libertarian Hippies Who Dance in the Jefferson Memorial.

Things like this make me wonder if the Republican worldview generally isn't in some basic ways frozen in about 1969. Carter writes:

So you can imagine my dismay when on midnight April 12, 2008, the eve of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, a group of eighteen libertarian hippies donned iPods and danced inside the Jefferson Memorial. The Man - in the form of a National Park Service officer - told them to stop the tomfoolery (he may have also told them to wash their hair and get a real job (i.e., stop interning at Cato) but the news reports don't say). The leader of the hippies, Mary Oberwetter, refused to stop that awkward gyrating they call dancing and was arrested, though the charges were later dropped (The Man is getting squishy).

Instead of being grateful for the leniency, Oberwetter sued the Park Service last year claiming that the very reason the First Amendment was added to the Constitution was to protect libertarian hippies who like to dance a jig in front of statutes at midnight (or something like that).

Carter hangs his post nominally on the fact that the "hippies" lost their case, in what seems to be a pretty trivial matter.

But it sure gave Joe Carter an excuse to spew about "hippies".

I've never been to visit the Cato Institute, which along with the occasional isolationist paper on foreign policy mainly puts out endless justifications for standard Republican articles of faith like deregulation and the desperate need for the wealthiest people to be free of the burden of paying taxes. But knowing what they do, it's hard to imagine what kind of people it may attract that qualify to Joe Carter as "hippies".

This is a screen shot of coverage of the incident itself showing Oberwetter being arrested:


I don't see any flowers-in-her-hair or tie-dyed clothes or pot bongs in that shot, do you?

Tags: hippies

Perils of the Democratic Moderation Offensive

Tennessee Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn at this past week's Republican meet-and-greet with President Obama asked him about health care reform alternatives. Obama responded:

BARACK OBAMA: If you look at the basic proposal that we put forward, it has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool and can get bargaining power the same way big companies do, the insurance reforms that I have already discussed, making sure that there's choice and competition for those who don't have health insurance.

The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker and Tom -- certainly, you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much. But that's not a radical bunch.

But, if you were to listen to the debate, and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that's how you guys -- that's how you guys presented it. That -- and so I'm thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist... No -- no, look, I mean, I'm just saying -- I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans -- it's similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.

So, all I'm saying is we've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. [my emphasis]

Obama's appearance got good reviews as political theater. On the PBS Newshour's weekly Brooks and Shields Clown Show, here is how it was reviewed:

JIM LEHRER: But first, as promised, the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Mark, what did you think of the Obama and the Republican show in Baltimore?

SLEEPY MARK: I thought it was terrific.

I think, if the White House had had its choice, it would have substituted that for the State of the Union address and presented it in prime time. I mean, I

I think, if the White House had had its choice, it would have substituted that for the State of the Union address and presented it in prime time. I mean, I thought it showed the president at his best.

He marshals facts. He presents arguments. He rebuts criticism, does it in a civil way, without any rancor. I just thought it was a tour de force. And the Republicans are sort of hoisted on their transparency petard. They had criticized the president for not fulfilling his pledge of openness and transparency and having the hearings on C-SPAN, as they promised during the campaign.

And, so, they were stuck with this being open. They didn't want it to be televised, that Q&A part. And I think...

... JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, worked to his advantage?

BOBO BROOKS: A bit, though everyone was sort of charged up about it. All of Washington is actually very excited about it. People were thrilled.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

BOBO BROOKS: I mean, and Democrats were very thrilled. The president's naturally going to dominate an event like that. He's got the podium. They are just holding handhelds. He's got -- but Republicans were thrilled, too, actually.

I spoke to a bunch of Republicans who were there afterwards and people who are writing online.

JIM LEHRER: What did they say? What did they say?

BOBO BROOKS: They were happy. They said, you know, he said all along we don't have plans, but, over and over again, he acknowledged, yes, we do have alternatives. We have been offering them.

So, they acknowledged that he got most of the time and he did very well. But they were thrilled that they got some points across. And they were thrilled by the exchange.

And I think Americans will be thrilled by the exchange, to the extent they see it. And will it lead to a mass depolarization? Not exactly, obviously. And, you know, there are fundamental differences on many issues, like health care. There's just different approaches.

But I think one of the things the president did very well was list a whole series of things on which there's not necessarily differences, things like pay-go...

JIM LEHRER: He made a big point of that, yes, yes. [my emphasis]

It gave the Beltway Village pundits that proverbial thrill up their legs. It was a bipartisan political orgy, Obama/Democratic style, in which the Democrats show up begging the Republicans to cooperate with them while the Republicans think themselves successful with their policy of just-say-no fundamental opposition.

It was great that Obama called them out on their Bircher rhetoric ("Bolshevik plot").

But I'm getting a bad feeling about all this. We've got the Republicans pounding their drums for their usual ideology of war, tax cuts for the wealthiest and deregulation of business. And we've got the Democrats bending over backwards to show how much like the Republicans they are.

Obama's accurate references to how Republicans at various times had supported various aspects of the Obama-Lieberman health care reform plan. But when does the begging to the Republicans stop? The reason he could say those things accurately is that the Democrats started out the health care reform process by pre-compromising, designing a health care reform approach based on the neoliberal ideal of relying on private insurance, and generally incorporating ideas that Republicans had proposed in the past as their own paper-tiger alternatives when they were trying to block Democratic health-care proposals.

The result was that the Republicans spent the whole year wailing about the Bolshevik plot. If they were doing that when they seemed to be politically on the ropes, why will they change now when they perceive themselves to be in the middle of a political surge?

Obama devoted his weekly radio address on Saturday 01/30/10 to talking about tax cuts for business and reducing budget deficits, straight out of the neoliberal playbook: pay as you go rules, a partial spending freeze, cutting civilian government program, and that "bipartisan" deficit-cut commission to help Republicans set the stage for new attacks on Social Security and Medicare. He again used the silly comparison of family budgets to the federal government's budget that appeared in the State of the Union Address.

Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod appeared on Meet the Press Sunday 01/31/10 in full begging mode, stressing how much like the Republicans the Obama proposals are. If this was done to give some political cover to a decisive ground of Congressional Republicans that was prepared to support Obama on a critical program like health care reform, that would make some short-term sense. But when do the Democrats say, let's stop kidding ourselves, the Republicans are just being obstructionist and we're not going to pretend otherwise any more? And when do the Democrats build an alternative meta-narrative to the Republicans' gubment-is-evil/deregulate-business/cut-taxes-for-the-super-rich-narrative?

House Republican leader John Boehner followed Axeload pursuing the usual Republican obstructionist hard line, talking about the Democrats wanting a "big government takeover takeover of health care", the "giant security threat" represented by a few Islamist fanatics hiding in caves in Pakistan, and whining about how that there stimulus bill a year ago just didn't no nothin' for nobody. And, of course, using the cutsey Republican grammar of "Democrat Party".

There is moderation as a style and a strategy. And there is moderation as an unwillingness to do what needs to be done. Herman Melville memorably portrayed the latter type in his novel The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857). The novel is build around a strange figure on a riverboat trip down the Mississippi River who morphs into many different guises during the trip and having encounters with a variety of characters. In the guise of a herb-doctor, the Confidence Man makes a pitch to a Missouri woodsman who is also an Abolitionist. Toward the end of their encounter, the Missourian demands his views on abolition, asking "YOu are an abolitionist, ain't you?"

... squaring himself with both hands on his rifle, used for a staff, and gazing in the herb-doctor's face with no more reverence than if it were a target. "You are an abolitionist, ain't you?"

"As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a zealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for all men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly abolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among mankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say."

"Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable understrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for wrong, but are useless for right."

I hope the Democrats' current Moderation Offensive doesn't end up this way.

But it's certainly true that the Obama administration's Look Forward Not Backward policy on not prosecuting torture perpetrators from the Cheney-Bush administration has made them "the invaluable understrapper of the wicked man" on that issue.

The Republican Party has major problems in marketing itself at the moment, so the Democrats aren't in nearly the political trouble that our Pod Pundits seem to think he is. But if the Democrats want to establish the kind of long-term dominance in politics that the current moment still gives them the chance to do, they will have to establish a clear profile for the Party that provides a coherent alternative to the Republicans' Predator State ideology. And they can't do it with a moderation " opposed to nobody's interest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity."

Tags: hippies