Happy New Year to each of you this “cliffy” New Year’s Eve.
Every Valley
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Happy New Year to each of you this “cliffy” New Year’s Eve.
Category Archives: Politics
NRA vows to fight arms trade treaty at the U.N.
Click HERE for the article published today by MSC.com
“Fiscal Cliff” …?
“Black Sheep Lemming” reprinted with permission of Just Outside the Box.
There is no real cliff.
The only cliff is the one created by the imagination of the lemmings now running toward it.
“Just Outside the Box” published a cartoon of a group of lemmings running toward the cliff. One of them has turned back to run from the cliff. One of the lemmings asks, “Why’s he going in the opposite direction from us?” to which another replies, “Don’t worry about him. He’s the black sheep in the family.”
There never has been a real fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that “the cliff” will disappear before the lemmings reach the brink. If the lemmings that created their cliff don’t all become “black sheep”, they’ll all be in big trouble with their constituents back home.
Maybe the partisan brinksmanship will end up serving a different purpose. If it does, it may turn out to have been one of those “teaching moments” when the light bulb goes on among the students in the classroom.
The United States of America is a representative democratic republic that places the art of compromise for the sake of the common good at the center of the nation’s life. If the perception of a “fiscal cliff” calls the electorate back from the precipice created by ”one-issue, my-way-or-the-highway, lemming politics“, the cliff that never was will turn out to have had the good effect of a new civility.
2012 NRA Christmas Message – Part 2
Angels announcing good news to the shepherds.
Gospel according to Luke 2:8-14, Revised Version, NRA Bible:
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them,
“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is announced this day the gift of armed guards in every school. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find Joseph standing guard over an innocent child in Bethlehem.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
“Glory to guns in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.”
” Fear not, I bring you good tidings of great joy! – NRA Christmas Message, December 21, 2012
2012 NRA Christmas Message – Part 1
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.- NRA Press Conference, Dec. 21, 2012
“Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man), Albrecht Durer
“If I’d only had a gun….?” – Jesus of Nazareth, First Century CE.
The Worship of Death, MPR
“Sandy Hook was a symptom of the American tragedy: our worship of safety — arming ourselves to the nines — turns out to be the death of us. The idolatry of safety is the worship of death itself.” – guest commentary, GCS, MPR (91.1 FM, Dec. 20, 2012)
Click HERE for the entire commentary on safety and the worship of death aired yesterday on “All Things Considered” (Minnesota Public Radio, MPR, 91.1 FM) The page you will see includes an audio link to listen.
The MPR site also provides opportunity for readers and listeners to chime in with your point of view to generate further discussion of safety, guns, death, and American culture.
On the day the world comes to an end, thanks so much for choosing to drop by Views from the Edge for a definitive, final word from a completely reliable source of all wisdom and truth. Later this morning I meet with a group of students to discuss the Mayan Calendar hoax and the misreading of the New Testament Book of Revelation …assuming, of course, that we’re all still here at 9:30 A.M. Central Standard Time :-).
In that same vein – or is it “vain”? – last Sunday’s sermon at Shepherd of the Hill on the tragedy of Sandy Hook in light of the biblical tradition will go up on Views from the Edge. and the church website.
“All Things Considered” (MPR, 91.1 FM) This Afternoon
The Tragedy of Sandy Hook is scheduled to air this afternoon between 5:25 and 5:50 CST, but as one of the producers reminds us, “the time is always subject to change. To be safe, listen to the whole show.”
Thanks to the good folks of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR 91.1 FM) for publishing the piece.
My Grandmother’s Rifle
My 90 year-old Grandmother kept a revolutionary war rifle under her bed in Rockport, Massachusetts. She wanted to be safe. When she showed it to me, I could barely drag it out from under the bed. How she would have gotten it out and lifted it to point at an intruder was a puzzle, but my Grandmother, like many of us, thought a gun would make her safe.
My Grandmother’s revolutionary war rifle.
Security, weapons, and freedom make strange bed-fellows. Guns will not produce security, and the freedom to buy and use the weapons of war equates pulling a trigger with free speech.
In America the mixing of the right to bear arms, the search for security, and the sanctity of personal freedom without limits are the ingredients of a national security state…and a state of permanent anxiety.
We are not safe in America. The six-year-olds and seven-year-olds of Sandy Hook were not safe. Their teachers were not safe. Their town was not safe. The five-year-old and the two-year-old in Minneapolis who found a pistol under the pillow in their parents’ bedroom were not safe. The two-year old is dead. The five-year-old and his parents will never be the same. Nor will the people of Baghdad, the U.S. Army base at Fort Hood or the folks killed at McDonald’s. We are not safe either at home under Homeland Security or in the places around the world where un-manned drones kill and maim not only those who threaten our safety but innocent children, under that banner of freedom, democracy, and national security.
The U.S. Constitution is a work of genius and wisdom depending on how well it is interpreted by the Courts. The First Amendment the right to free speech. The Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, a right originally intended to maintain the power of the people, collectively, to overthrow another King George or a government that did not serve the well-being of the American people.
Among the “arms” protected by the Second Amendment there was no assault weapon able to shoot 100 times in 60 seconds and then reload or a pistol capable of 30 shots before reloading. What the framers of the Second Amendment had in mind was muskets.
“Load… aim… fire….. Load… aim… fire.”
The Second Amendment never imagined the likes of the M-16 or its knock-offs or a semi-automatic pistol concealed in one’s purse or trousers. The weapons used against a mother and elementary school children in Newtown and against customers having a cup of coffee at a McDonald’s were the furthest thing from their time-bound imagination.
There were no McDonald’s when the Second Amendment was adopted and there were no semi-automatic weapons sold at gun shows. Today, ABC News reports that, according to the 2011 statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there were 4.17 times as many federally-licensed retail gun dealers and pawn shops(58,794) than McDonald’s (14, 098) in the U.S – more death shops than places to eat a Big Mac.
ABC News also reported that “2012 has been a record-setting year for gun sales. As of November, the FBI recorded 16,808,538 instant background checks for gun purchases for 2012. Even without counting December, which has historically been the busiest month, this beats last year’s record by more than 350,000.”
Argument for strict Constitutional interpretation by Justice Scalia
Strict Constitutionalists like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia know full well that my grandmothers revolutionary war rifle was the “arms” the Second Amendment had in mind. Every citizen in America has the right to have a revolutionary war rifle – a single shot “load…; aim…; fire… re-load…; aim…; fire…” under the bed… or under the pillow in the parents’ bedroom.
Freedom was never intended to produce a domestic or international killing field. If we Americans have learned anything from 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbine, Red Lake, and Sandy Hook, it is that our security is not found in a gun or a drone in every home. Neither was the nation’s security license to monitor the phone calls, emails, texts, bank records, and personal movements of citizens.
I exercise my right to free speech by writing and publishing words as the weapons of persuasion in hopes that they might contribute in some way to a national introspection and action that minimizes the human impulse toward violence and destruction. I have to believe that words are more powerful in the end than the Bushmaster .223 assault rifles and drones that kill at home and abroad – all in the name of keeping us alive and “safe”.
According to strict judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment, everyone in America has a right to own a musket or, perhaps, pull a revolutionary war rifle from under the bed.
The “Tragedy” of Sandy Hook
If philosophical parsing of the meaning of Sandy Hook was inappropriate just a few days ago, it is mandatory now.
The slaughter of these dear little ones and their teachers was a moment of terrible and terrifying insanity. When Adam put on his body armor and turned his mother’s guns on his own mother and Sandy Hook, insanity broke out to bring grief that chilled the bones of everyone in America.
Today there are calls for gun control and mental health services, and those calls make perfect sense as practical responses, but they will not fix the problem.
There is a more profound collective insanity that pervades our culture and our nation. It’s a tragedy in the sense of the old Greek and Shakespearean theater: a fatal flaw that is doing us in.
Sandy Hook was the latest symptom of the American tragedy: our worship of safety – arming ourselves to the nines – turns out to the death of us. The idolatry of safety is the worship of death itself.
A five year old boy in Minneapolis is playing with his two-year-old brother in their parents’ bedroom. He finds a loaded pistol under their father’s pillow, points it at his brother as one would point a toy gun. His brother is dead. The surviving five-year-old and his parents will never be the same – because a father sought to keep his family safe with the pistol under his pillow.
A mother in Newtown has guns in the home she shares with the disturbed son she loves and seeks to protect from a cruel world. Like so many others in America, the guns were purchased either for safety or for sport, but the results are the antitheses of safety or fun.
Whether in our bedroom at home or in the nation’s Capitol, when the insurance of safety rises to the top of the pyramid of values, death ascends as the power that destroys, the fatal flaw in a natural human instinct toward safety and security.
Freedom and safety are basic human needs. They are American values. Each is important. But neither freedom nor safety is God. Neither one is worthy of enshrinement by itself, and the two of them mixed together make for a Molotov cocktail thrown back into our own bedrooms, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Baghdad, and anywhere else that the concern for safety releases the tragic flaw of the Greek theater, Shakespeare, and the American theatre of the absurd.
Pieta – Michaelangelo
Grover Norquist: High Priest of Purple Kool-Aid
Grover Norquist is quoted in Mallory Simon’s “GOP Resistance to Anti-Tax Pledge Grows” as saying:
“You’ve had some people discussing impure thoughts on national television.”
“Impure”?… Is The Taxpayer Protection Pledge a religion? With its own “elect”? And its own high priest and Lord High Executioner: Grover Norquist? Thank God for the former cult members who have had “impure” thoughts and are going on national television to either repent or to “weasel out” of their pledges.
No elected representative should take any other pledge than to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and to faithfully exercise the duties of their office. The Norquist pledge, while it has rallied support for candidates’ election to office, limits their ability to exercise of the duties of office, as many former signers are discovering while standing at the edge of “the fiscal cliff”.
The Taxpayer Protection Pledge (“Anti-Tax Pledge”) was always bad religion. It asked candidates, and the whole country, to follow the example of another religious high priest, Jim Jones, who led this flock into the jungle where they frank the purple Kool-Aid of mass suicide.
We’re not in the jungle of Guyana with Jim Jones. We’re in the United States of America. Time to dump the purple Kool-Aid religion. Time for some fresh orange juice, a bowl of nutritious oatmeal with raisins, and lots of conversation over coffee in the Congress and the White House.
Views from the Edge 