Mid-Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Honey Flow Moon<\/p>\n
Independence Day.\u00a0 Celebrating our ancestor’s victory over the British army and considering how their enlightenment ideals apply to our time.\u00a0 Happy 4th of July!<\/p>\n
For an unreconstructed radical like myself, these are trying times.\u00a0 I wonder where the sense of communitarian spirit has gone.\u00a0 Yes, we have a can do, go it alone spirit, too and I participate in it.\u00a0 The ethical underpinnings of Western civilization, however, fed by the the deep springs of Athens and Jerusalem have always reminded us that we share this journey.\u00a0\u00a0 Our lives are not ours alone, but belong as well to the whole, to the commonweal.\u00a0 When we establish a government of the people, by the people, and FOR the people, we make this claim a part of our countries essence.<\/p>\n
The rugged individualist, the objectivist, the capitalist have the inclination to see the community as a source for their betterment, which is fine as long as their betterment does not come at others expense.\u00a0 In that case these same perspectives become exploitative and parasitic, not interdependent, mutual.\u00a0 A 5-year old knows that if all you do is take and take and take, then the other kids will no longer want to play with\u00a0 you.<\/p>\n
The atomistic viewpoints of groups like the Tea Party and, in an insult to the Christian faith, the evangelical right, make it clear that they want the government to enforce their bigoted views of morality:\u00a0 no stemcell research, homophobia and respect for only one point of view in struggle over Roe v. Wade.\u00a0 They want no government aid to the poor, no environmental review for corporate projects that threaten the long term health of our natural world.\u00a0 They have a vast umbrella of negatives with which they hope to block the sunshine of equality and shared responsibility.<\/p>\n
They want the constitution, like the bible, to be an inspired document, written not by men and women, but by gods, inviolate and sacrosanct.\u00a0 It isn’t true of the bible and it is even much less so true of the constitution.\u00a0 Both of these documents live, that is, they get swept into new eras, with new challenges and demand a hermeneutics for understanding their relevance.\u00a0 Always.\u00a0 This is an iron law of human history, no document from the past means the same thing today that it did yesterday.\u00a0 That is anachronistic thinking at its most damaging, its most infantile, its most destructive.<\/p>\n
My sister lives in Singapore and, up until very recently, so did my brother, Mark.\u00a0 This makes accessible, in a personal way, the viewpoints of other cultures toward our country.\u00a0 Many people don’t like us, see us as arrogant, uncaring and ruthless.\u00a0 Of course, the big kid on the block often has that reputation, deserved or undeserved, but our recent actions, Iraq and Guantanamo among them, have cemented these opinions.<\/p>\n
Even so, I have this urge to celebrate our country.\u00a0 We are a beacon of freedom, a beloved place of opportunity and real diversity.\u00a0 We have committed ourselves to constructing a nation not on history or geography, but on founding ideals of freedom and equality and brotherhood. (sic) The number and variety of persons who come to this country from all over the world, the number and variety of them who become part of the patchwork quilt that is our history and our present at its very best, attest to the essential value of our presence.\u00a0 We negotiate the boundary between sending cultures and our history and, again at our best, we do it with open hands and hearts.<\/p>\n
Have we slaughtered Native Americans and held slaves?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Have we engaged in first-strike aggression?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Have we often pretended that our nation, defended by two oceans, exists alone and isolated?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Have we laid waste to our natural resources in the name of jobs and profits?\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n
We should not be, cannot be, proud of these transgressions, but I submit that we are not the Great Satan.\u00a0 We are not the only nation whose actions have transgressed human decency.\u00a0 Further, I would submit that we are not even the worst, not even close.\u00a0 Look at the Armenian and Jewish genocides.\u00a0 The pogroms in Russia and the slaughter of the Stalinist era.\u00a0 The vicious regime of the Khmer Rouge.\u00a0 This is a long list and it runs deep in our world history.\u00a0 No, we are a nation that has blundered and made arrogant mistakes, but we are neither all bad nor all good.\u00a0 We are, rather, an imperfect nation with an imperfect history.<\/p>\n
As I look around the world, I find no country more committed to creating a united states of freedom, no country more committed to embracing the worlds refugees, no country more aware of its errors and no country more able to make amends.\u00a0 We are a young nation, barely 240 years old, maybe an early adolescent in terms of our development.<\/p>\n
We must not give in to the petty, the self-aggrandizing, the screw the other guy mentality of our rising political movements.\u00a0 We’re better than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mid-Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Honey Flow Moon Independence Day.\u00a0 Celebrating our ancestor’s victory over the British army and considering how their enlightenment ideals apply to our time.\u00a0 Happy 4th of July! For an unreconstructed radical like myself, these are trying times.\u00a0 I wonder where the sense of communitarian spirit has gone.\u00a0 Yes, we have a can do, … Continue reading The 4th of July<\/span>