A Visit To Canada

Canada—the English speaking parts of it—often feels about as much like the United States as you can feel not being in the States. Talking to say, someone from New Brunswick (although it is legally bi-lingual), doesn’t feel all that different to a Michigander from talking to someone from Oregon or New Jersey.
I always feel comfortable in Canada—and the Canadians seem to feel comfortable with me as an American. Border crossings have gotten a lot harsher than they were ten years ago. “What’s your purpose in Canada? Put the windows down.” As he looks at our passports, “How are you related to each other? Delete all the pictures you took of this border crossing and then hand me your camera.”
That’s no longer so comfortable. Nine/eleven has changed a lot of things. They have you on computer from where you entered the country—and they ask you a lot of questions with no other purpose than to trip you up.
But, once you’re in, it’s basically a pleasant place to be. Canadians still profess a certain amount of annoyance at Americans who know nothing about Canada. One hotel clerk in Ottawa told me she gets people from the States, coming into Ontario, who express surprise at not seeing any igloos.
Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a state that borders Canada that I don’t expect Igloos. I have also taken a moment to read a bit of Canadian history. I am struck by how intensely aware Canadians are of us. They follow American politics more closely than most Americans do. By reading Canadian papers, I kept up with nearly everything significant that happened in Washington.
As I said to one Canadian naval reservist, “You’re our Finland”. She laughed, thought for a moment and nodded. That they are. For over a century, the very feeble United States wrenched concessions from the then superpower, Great Britain, by threatening to invade Canada.
Canadians don’t seem to resent us for that. (Of course the last time we did it was in 1922, and then only very subtly. The last time we did it seriously was in 1895.) We haven’t had a shooting war with Canada since The War of 1812. The Great Lakes, which define much of the eastern border between Canada and us have been neutral ever since that war.
I recall asking an American Coast Guard officer what the largest weapon his cutter could carry under terms of Canadian/American treaties. “A twelve gauge shotgun,” he answered. The three thousand mile long border remains basically undefended.
Those of us who do pay attention to Canada are probably aware of how close we came to having a full scale civil war on our northern frontier. Quebec nearly voted to secede from Canada in 1995. Had it done so, I cannot imagine how French and English Canada could have separated without shooting. Neither can a lot of Canadians I talked to.
What happened in Canada should be of great interest to Americans—who are finding more and more people on our southwestern border who speak a different language and have a vastly different culture from standard, English-oriented America.
After all, like the English speakers in Canada, we conquered Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California back in the 1840s. (Mexicans who sneak across our borders can be pardoned if they see nothing illegal about crossing into their own conquered territories.)
The same thing happened to the French in Canada. (One of the things I did on this visit was walk the Plains of Abraham outside old Quebec where Moncalm and Wolfe killed each other in a twenty minute battle in 1759 that resulted in all of Canada becoming English.)
For two centuries, French Canadians lived under the Union Jack and learned to deal in an English-speaking world. Then about fifty years ago, Canada agreed to strike the Jack and go over to a Maple Leaf flag that has no ethnic antecedent. They passed a law that required all Canadian highway signs to be in both English and French. The French of Quebec had never stopped being FRENCH.
In the 1960s, Charles DeGaulle, whose hatred for English and all who speak it was built into his bones came to the two islands in the St. Lawrence River that are still part of metropolitan France and urged the people of Quebec to become militantly French. You could think of him as a Gallic Hugo Chavez, if you want to. Unpleasant thought for us.
Letter bombs came in the mail. Secessionist movements arose in Quebec. (I still saw some graffiti in Quebec City that read, “Quebec Libre!”) By the skin of its teeth Canada hung together. I think of that when I look at our increasingly Hispanic southwest.
The highway signs in English Canada are bi-lingual. The signs in Quebec are French only. There is some bitterness in English speaking Canada over the fact Quebec refuses to obey the law. Your waitresses and hotel clerks can manage reasonably coherent English for tourists—but the French accent is heavy indeed. Get away from tourist haunts and you are often reduced to a patois that consists of about six French words I know and five or six English words he knows.
The Canadian brigade that mans the citadel just inside the walls of old Quebec speaks ONLY French. I asked a guide as we toured the fort (which was built, incidentally, to defend Canada from American invasion back in the 1820s) if that didn’t make maneuvers with the rest of the Canadian army a bit difficult.
He told me that the brigade has several officers whose only job is to translate orders from English to French, and he conceded that the language difference can make things quite inefficient. “But,” he pointed out, “it would be politically impossible not to speak French.”
It’s a fair question to wonder how much good Quebec’s insistence on dealing with the world in French has actually done them. As Quebec became more and more isolated in its hold on Eighteenth Century French culture, Montreal went from being the first city in Canada to being a bit of a provincial backwater. Business action takes place now in English speaking Toronto.
After all, English is still the dominant language of the business and scientific world. Those who speak it fluently enjoy a real advantage. One almost suspects that French Quebec is still trying to reverse the verdict on the Plains of Abraham when Wolfe sent his redcoats up the steep river bank to surprise and defeat the French defenders.
Even if this may seem somewhat irrational to an outsider, the feeling is intense and—apparently—eternal. It may also be so in our southwest. Time will tell.

Recession: All Over But The Shooting

Last week, July 24, the Canadian papers ran the headline, “The Recession is over in Canada”. This week’s Newsweek has as its full cover the line, “The Recession is OVER”. Below it runs an itty bitty tag line, “Good luck surviving the recovery”.
The unemployment rate will continue to climb. The upper echelons of American society—whose consumption has always fueled recovery in the past—will apparently not be fueling this one. News reports suggest that people whose net worth is twenty million and higher have lost enough money to actually be nervous. They will not be leading us into the new Walhalla, as they have so often in past recoveries.
Newsweek tells us that, of the $787 billion in stimulus money, approximately $230 billion has been allocated so far—as the ranks of the unemployed and furloughed keep climbing and more and more of the people still working face wage cuts.
Economists tell us that $787 billion is a drop in the bucket. Warren Buffett is quoted as saying the current stimulus package is like “half a dose of Viagra”. BusinessWeek tells us that we no longer have the industrial capability to manufacture crucial parts for a Twenty-first Century economy—we must now buy them from abroad.
Data seems to suggest that rather than creating any new jobs, the stimulus has merely managed to save some. In other words, thanks to stimulus money, companies that might have laid off 50 workers have now only had to lay off ten. That does help—but it doesn’t beat the recession.
Obama suggests that his stimulus package might ultimately create five million jobs. We’ve already lost way over six million—and the total is still climbing. Michigan, the hardest hit state, is at 15% unemployment.
I, for one, don’t see how a down-sized General Motors or a Chrysler in thrall to Fiat is likely to put all of us back to work. What we seem to have left is tourism, forestry and agriculture. None of these three are big time enough to make up the losses either.
The local consolidated school district just sent notices to all of us that it no longer has the money to drive school buses down the recently carved streets of the many new developments that sprang up in the past few years. The kids can walk to the corner of the nearest old street.
The township is going through the records with a fine toothed comb. A development near me that has been around since before my house was built—back in 1981—was apparently never registered as an official street. There will be no more grading or snow plowing for the poor souls who live on it. As I have written in previous blogs, for the first time in the memory of any living human, American society simply doesn’t have the money to do everything it wants to do.
A couple of minor things I’ve noticed. I just spent two weeks in Quebec, Ontario and upstate New York. In the past seven decades I’ve taken a lot of trips around this continent—Yellowstone, the West Coast, up and down the entire East Coast, et cetera.
This was the first trip I ever took in which I did not see a single Michigan license plate no matter where I went. Not even in Canada, twenty miles from the bridge from Sarnia to Port Huron. We did not see even one Michigan plate.
I talked to several motel/hotel owners/keepers this past two weeks. Travel is down. (That was nice for us—smaller crowds in places like Lake George and Quebec City.) Fewer and fewer freebies are available at the front desk—razors, tooth paste, etc. Bring your own.
I took my usual walk around this neighborhood tonight. It seems to me that there are an increasing number of SMALL cars—mostly Japanese and Korean—here, in an area that was so recently a bastion for GM, Ford and Chrysler mini-vans and SUVs.
GM has got to win those people back if we have any hope of seeing the money we taxpayers loaned them. I may not, unfortunately, be alone in my attitude that I do not buy hamburgers at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I probably won’t buy a small car from companies that only yesterday sneered at the very thought of building such a puny car. Small cars come from Toyota, Honda and places like Korea. Up until recently, GM was content to leave it that way.
We need, opines Newsweek, a “new kind of recovery”. Amen to that.
Are we capable? Do we have the economic and political will. (We haven’t had the will to fasten some serious regulation back on the banks—nor have we had the courage to talk seriously about effective health care reform.) Do we even still have the wherewithal?
Newsweek published a thought provoking—and even scary—paragraph toward the end of its article on recession and recovery. “To a large degree, the U.S. economy must now cope with an era of lower expectations. …”
After going into considerable detail about what road building, green technology and universal broad band WON’T do for us—at least not any time soon, Newsweek adds, “The recession may be over, but there’s likely to be plenty of tough slogging ahead.”
Interesting terminology. One can almost get an image of Bill Maudlin’s “Willie and Joe”, crouched down in a foxhole somewhere in Europe, muttering, “Tell me about it.”
It’s all over, fella’s. Except for a few pesky chaps who keep on shooting at us.

The Cop, The Prof and The Prex

I’ve been on vacation for two weeks, but one thing happened during that time that is worth commenting on. An unseemly example of black rage/white guilt took place in Boston—and the President of the United States mixed himself up in it.
My problem is that I understand all sides.
I understand the cop. He got a call two men were breaking into a house in a upscale neighborhood. When you’re a cop and you have to go check out two men breaking into a house, black or white, your adrenalin starts to flow. There is always the outside chance you’re not going to go home alive. No matter how many times you’ve done it, you go in tense, even scared.
The gentlemen trying to get in the door without working keys also seem not to have had much in the way of identification. Then one of them starts to berate the officer. The still tense cop decides to put himself out of harm’s way by handcuffing the offensive door breaker. That non-vicious or racist act has saved many a cop’s life.
I understand the prof. He’s a long time activist; his stock and trade has been to point out police brutality and to bring public attention to it. He may actually have believed the officer checking on his house was acting in a racially motivated way. (If he’d thought for a moment, he might have been grateful that the police were so quick to protect his life and property.) All he saw was white cop, black man.
(He might also reflect on what will happen the next time there is a report on a break-in at his home. “Sorry, all the officers were out on other calls.”)
But black Americans do have a point, no doubt. My wife will never forget the night she was in a hurry to get home from the mall. She’s tall and she walks swiftly with apparent purpose. That night there was a black family—grandma, mom, two small kids—ahead of her.
She moved to pass them, without thinking. As she came abreast, all of them turned toward her, fear written on their faces. They put their shopping bags down. Grandma spoke for all, “You can look through our packages. See? Here’s our receipts.”
She tried to apologize, to explain that she wasn’t any form of store security—but the fear never really left their faces. Yes, I’ve known black men who couldn’t get cabs, black families who lived in middle class apartments—their carpets cut so they could move quickly and run to another neighborhood when the need arose. Black kids who sat up all night, shotgun in hand, as the KKK drove by, honking and threatening.
I’ve been picked up a cop in a pricy Connecticut suburb at 4:00am—and released in five minutes. Black friends have assured me that, in the same town, they would have been held for three days or more. Even if all any of us were doing was walking back to the train after escorting a girl home.
Centuries of bitter memories inform the prof’s attitude and behavior.
Unfortunately, years and years of experience and memories also inform the cop’s behavior. As a cop he has probably had experiences similar to those I’ve had as a substitute teacher. The race card is played more often in schools than the biology book is opened.
People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can play it with as much vigor as George Wallace or Bull Connor—and they’ve taught black kids how to be just like them. As the Connor’s and Wallace’s have taught their followers.
I remember in one school a large black student was being so loud and disruptive no work could be done. When I asked him to move to another seat, he glared at me, “You’re just doing this because I’m black!” He expected me to wilt with white guilt. I didn’t.
“I’m doing this because you are the loudest, most disruptive person in the room. Now sit over here.” Sheepishly he obliged and was quiet the rest of the hour.
When I tried to enforce a school rule on another defiant black student, he snarled at me, “I ain’t your slave!” I got lucky. Another teacher came along and reamed him into place.
I wish I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve been called “racist” or “prejudiced” for just trying to enforce a little order (and a little learning) in a predominantly black classroom. Most white subs don’t really try. I had a black teacher warn me: “Be careful. You’re an older white male. You’ve got a target on your back.”
The cop did his job—target on his back and all. The prof played his card. The City of Boston wilted with white guilt and dropped the disorderly conduct charges.
The Prex—the President of the United States—forgot for an instant that that’s what he is right now—of all the United States and all of its people and, for an instant, he became another black kid with a tall white lady walking up fast behind him.
A graduate of Harvard Law, he didn’t verbalize it the way Sharpton, Jackson or the Prof would have. He just called the cop who went up scared to investigate a break-in “stupid”.
I can understand what his mind went back to, but that was really not a terribly bright thing to say. Would he say it about white members of his own Secret Service detail if they wrestled a black man to the ground who just seemed to fuddling with something in his pocket?
If we can’t get past tense cops, activist professors who know how to generate headlines, and even presidents who are scared by their own memories, we have a bad future ahead of us.

Sotomayor--How Fair Can She Be?

In defending herself for making that statement that “a wise Latino woman” could probably reach a better judicial decision than a white male, Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayer claimed that it was merely a play on words gone awry.
I wonder if a white, Republican candidate could get away with the same claim in front of our present Democratic Senate. “Oh, oops, I was just being witty when I said a “wise white man” could probably come up with a better decision than—a black judge, an oriental judge, an Hispanic judge or a female judge.
It seems to me that I recollect a white official who told a joke about black Americans in what he assumed was the privacy of his government plane wound up resigning. This was back in either the Ford or Nixon administration. I believe he resigned.
Personally I’m not all that offended by Sotomayer’s remark. It reminds me a lot of the female private detective in Baltimore who specialized in locating lost children. When asked why she thought a female could do well in the job, she reponded, “Would you want someone hunting for your child who couldn’t see the mayonnaise jar in the refrigerator?”
(After all, which of us men wouldn’t be stricken blind and immobile if we lacked a wife to find our keys and our glasses? [But, then, I have returned the favor a few times for my wife. She, however, does it more often for me.]
Perhaps Sotomayer was referring to a phenomenon I have noticed many times while substitute teaching in the elementary grades. I ten-year-old boy will stand in front of a closet in utter confusion, unable to locate a thing. Shaking her head, one of the ten-year-old girls will get up, go to the supply closet and put what he needs in his hand.
That has nothing to do, however, with “Latino”. That has to do with ANY female. God has just gifted them with the knowledge of where things are. And since mothers often spend more time sorting out disagreements between siblings than fathers do, possibly this too is a gift that carries over to the judicial bench. Or it’s just evolutionary conditioning.)
I really don’t care what Sotomayer meant by this particular remark. I suspect she might agree with me if I suggested she broaden the statement to include all women. What annoys me is the cloying, choking stranglehold “Political Correctness” seems to have over anything she said, I said or you said.
It may drive us to the point that we dare not make jokes about irritable Blue Jays—because some society or club, somewhere, will have made it their life’s purpose to advance the cause of blue colored birds. They will be offended.
I spent my own boyhood hearing a lot of bad jokes about dumb Hollanders—because Dutch immigrants were not held in high esteem in Grand Rapids in the 1950s. We stood out. We had names that were obviously Dutch to the most uninitiated—and the map of Holland adorns many of our blond haired faces.
I’m still acutely aware when I meet someone whether or not he’s Polish (major competitors to the Dutch in that era. For years I was scared stiff of English Americans (WASPs). But I’ve made friends in both groups since—and eventually it becomes a matter of “sticks and stones”. Most jokes about Hollanders don’t especially bother me anymore.
Let’s get back to Sotomayor and her comment about clever Latino women v less clever white males. (That would be me, wouldn’t it?)
I might fixate briefly on the word “Latino” in her statement—and repeat for her a story I was told years ago when I worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A young black lawyer, who became a pretty good friend of mine, was nominated for Commissioner. He had worked for the same law firm that fought several civil rights cases and was thought to be just a bit radical.
He was called in for his final interview—with Lyndon Johnson himself. He told me that when he entered the Oval Office, LBJ was rocking in his chair, looking at him. Finally Johnson spoke, “When I was a young Congressman, I had an office on the second floor of a building behind one of the town’s best restaurants.
“They put the garbage out behind that restaurant, right under my office window. In summer time, in Texas heat, it stunk.” He looked harder at my friend. “The little Mexican kids would come and pick through that garbage for something to eat. The owners of the restaurant would sic the dogs on them.
LBJ’s voice rose, “Mr. Jackson, can you be fair to white folk!?
That’s a good question to put to Sonia Sotomayer—someone who remains acutely aware of her Latino heritage in a nation that has not historically been kind to Latin Americans. She freely admits that her background influences her decisions.
So, asking how, to what extent, is a very fair question. Asking about her capacity for fairness is another very good question.
But working her over for a smart-ass statement she made nine years ago, probably isn’t. So let’s stick to asking her what matters.
“Ms Sotomayor, can you be fair to white folk?’

The Bible--A Heritage Lost

A few years ago an English instructor at the local community college began a section of her English 101 course with a list of Biblical names that students were required to know. The interesting thing is that she was and remains vehemently non-Christian.
Her reason for the course requirement is that these names are part of our CULTURAL heritage—and that most high school/college students today have no knowledge of the names or the characters and traits they represent. She felt this should not be lost—especially in the study of English literature where so many allusions come directly from the Bible.
What’s the Biblical name for traitor? What are the Little Foxes? Who is Pontius Pilate—and what does it mean to “wash your hands of something”? Doubting Thomas? Who was the left handed assassin? Who got a whole town to circumcise themselves so they could be wiped out? Why?
In which Biblical book does “The Sun Also Rise”? Why is Jude obscure? What is significant about being “East of Eden”? Who built an Ark before it rained forty days? What does it mean to be wise as Solomon? And so forth, and so forth.
This heritage is rapidly being lost. I have sat in senior English class after senior English class—AP classes as well—where not a student knew who Noah was, or Adam, or Abraham. St. Paul drew a blank as did Peter, James and John. They didn’t know who the people were or any of their stories.
We’ve all but dropped back to the 1400s. That was a time (also) when a functionally illiterate populace stumbled through life without a written heritage. Most attended church regularly; but few understood what was read to them in Latin; fewer could read anything for themselves.
This was one of the great contributions of the Protestant Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) to western civilization. Starting with the notion that a man would be a better and more knowledgeable Christian if he could read a Bible for himself, they established schools to teach reading.
Not to be left behind, the Catholic Church (which had not favored reading amongst the laity) creating an entire teaching order of monks—the Jesuits. Even protestants hired the highly educated Jesuits to teach their children how to read.
Of course, once you could read the Bible—a reasonably difficult book—you could read anything else. Popular literature began. Books like “Don Quixote” and plays like “Hamlet” appeared. Scientific treatises were published—and read—suggesting such heretical notions as the world moving around the sun.
Political books, philosophic works, military strategies, mathematical treatises—the who cornucopia of human knowledge became available to anyone who wanted to buy a book.
This all came about because men like John Calvin insisted that people be taught to read the Bible and be taught from catechisms. All of this came out of the perceived need for people to know and read that one book.
The first public schools in America were essentially created to ensure biblical literacy. For those who had to work six days a week, Sunday Schools were created that allowed the unlettered to learn to read on Sundays. That’s what a “Sunday School” originally was.
It became a common tradition. Americans, like Lincoln, tutored themselves by reading the Bible and Shakespeare, the twin pillars of the English language. Luther created the modern German language with his Bible translations. It became a common European heritage.
And now we are losing it. Rapidly. That—for secular reasons alone—will be a true literary tragedy.

Who and What is a Messiah?

A Jewish chap named Jacob wrote the following highly irritated comment on John Calvin. “Read,” he suggested “about John Calvin from the Jewish perspective and his assault against the true messiah of Israel Marcus Julius Agrippa.” He ended by with a wonderfully graphic curse.
“May his bones be ground into dust.” See his comment on my previous blog.
When the followers of Yeshua, called Masiah in Hebrew or Moshiach in Aramaic, broke away from mainstream Judaism in the First Century of the Christian Era, they left a lot of angry Jews behind. They also left behind a fair number of folk who claimed to be the actual Jewish Messiah.
Marcus Julius Agrippa, one of two kings of Roman Judea, is one claimant. He lived at or near the time of the first Jewish revolt in AD 70. As a result of that revolt, Herod’s temple was burned down and the land was nearly denuded of trees to crucify the rebels. But the game wasn’t over.
“Another leader who was thought to be the true Messiah was Simon Bar Kokhbah who set up a Jewish State in Judea in AD132. When he wiped out an entire Roman legion, people began to think he might really be the Messiah.
He ordered all the Jewish Christians to leave what became known as Palestine, began minting his own coins, and waited for Roman reaction. It came a year later when a full third of Rome’s legions converged on Judea and flattened the place so thoroughly that Roman troops could pitch their tents on what had once been Jerusalem. It was the worst pounding the city ever took.
After that, until the Muslim incursion, no Jews were permitted to live in Judea. For the next 1300 years, Jerusalem had only a tiny Jewish community who spent much of their time bewailing the several falls of Jerusalem.
There were other Jewish leaders who were thought to be the Messiah by one group in Judaism or another. The Baal Shem Tov (early 1700s), founder of Hasidic Judaism, was thought by some of his followers to be the Messiah.
Many Jews still look for the Messiah. I remember reading that boxcar loads of Orthodox Jews would sing “What shall we do when Messiah comes; we shall make merry when Messiah comes” as their trains drove them into the death camps during World War II.
The chief theological difference between the Jewish belief about their Messiah and the belief of the Jewish—and later Gentile—Christians about their Messiah is that Christians believe their Messiah (Christ, from the Greek) is actually God.
To Jews who stayed behind in the First Century and those who have identified themselves as Jewish ever after, the very notion is absurd. It is a blasphemy. “Hear, oh Israel, the Lord Thy God is One” is bedrock to Jewish faith. It has been ever since the destruction of Jerusalem under the Neo-Babylonians in 586BC.
(Even if some Hebrew scholars insist that the word used for “one” here is actually plural.)
If Calvin’s bones should be ground to dust for suggesting that one or another of these claimants could not be the Messiah, then so should the bones of all orthodox Christians be ground into dust. Possibly my commenter would agree. I don’t know.
Since AD325, the position of all orthodox Christians—Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Coptics, Protestants, Maronites, Baptists and Pentecostals—has been that Christ was “very God of very God” as he was defined by the Council of Nicaea.
The Christian Church did not arrive at this position all at once! In the Fourth Century, about half of all Christians essentially believed what many Jews did during his time—that he might have been a wise Rabbi, a prophet, a miracle worker, but that he was certainly not fully God.
Such heretics were bounced out of the church and most eventually became Muslims three centuries later. In modern times, this belief has resurfaced in the church as the Unitarian denomination. But modern Christianity is founded upon the 1700 year old Nicene Creed which defined his deity.
Codicils of the Creed that are no longer published also did things like order Jewish Christians to stop practicing Jewish rituals, keeping Kosher, or using the Jewish calendar to celebrate “Pascha” (or, in English, Easter). This is why Passover and Easter are no longer in Sync.
Five centuries after Nicaea, the Jewish Christian Church no longer existed. They absorbed into the mainstream Gentile Christian tradition or they returned to Judaism proper. Jews at this point became known as the “Christ Killers” and their lot in Christian lands was not a happy one.
So if my friend, Jacob”, wants to grind someone’s bones into dust for refuting the claims of non-divine Messiahs—or any one of them—he must go much farther back than Calvin (or Luther) or anyone of that era. His problem began with the folk who defined Jesus Christ as God.
That movement began in the First Century of the Christian era. Christ himself said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father (God). I and the Father are One.” He commanded baptism in the “Name of the Father, the Son (himself), and the Holy Spirit”.
There was argument—among both Jews and Gentiles—that he was not God. The Gnostics saw him as only God. The Arians saw him as only human. There were a hundred shades of opinion in between. Gospels were written that backed any one of these beliefs.
Only after Nicaea the heretical Gospels removed from the canon, keeping only those that acknowledge Jesus as God. These are the people Jacob should be irate with. They are the ones who put an apparently unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Judaism, between Christianity and Islam, too.
Calvin was merely reiterating a 1200 year old tradition and doctrine.
In short: It required an infinite atonement (punishment, payment) to deliver humankind from the mess we had put ourselves in. Only God could make such an infinite sacrifice. Q.E.D. “Christ must be God. Or else as the Christian Rabbi from Tarsus wrote “we are of all men most miserable.” For a non-divine Messiah, according to St. Paul, could do nothing for us.
There’s your problem, Jacob. Like the orthodox Jews of the First Century—who were perfectly willing to follow a non-divine Messiah, with a human army—you cannot stomach the thought of a Messiah who is God himself. That’s been a Jewish position since Ezekiel.
Work that out for yourself—understand what your real issue is—and you’ll be less likely to rain down curses on any one poor Sixteenth Century preacher.

John Calvin--Making Work Respectable

For a thousand years, Europe lay in thrall to the notion that there were three kinds of people, and most of us didn’t count. The very top of society consisted of “those who pray”, the First Estate. These were the Pope, the bishops, the priests and the deacons.
Iron bars separated them and their high altars from the mere laity who stood for an hour on hard stone floors and watched a ritual through the bars that few understood. Laymen were not permitted even to take full communion—only the bread, not the chalice.
The Second Estate was a step down from the “Lords Spiritual.” These were the “Lords Temporal”, “those who fight”—the kings, the dukes, the counts and earls, the barons and the knights. Please note that these two upper classes did not work for a living.
“Those who work”, the Third Estate, did all the grunt work. They farmed, they were blacksmiths and carpenters, stone cutters—whatever was needed around a manor house or a cathedral. They were really beneath the notice of the first two estates, their “betters”.
As late as the 1750s, in Colonial America, the one ambition a man like Benjamin Franklin had was to make enough money so that he could cease working and call himself (and dress as befitted) a “gentleman”. Gentlemen DID NOT work.
In democratic England, in 1830, if a member of the lower classes even struck a nobleman, the penalty could be death. Today, British aristocrats still look askance at any of their members who have any kind of gainful employment. (This prohibition has long driven Prince Charles nuts.)
Even when money began to come into circulation in Medieval Europe, people whose only claim to position was earned money (the Sine Nobilis—those “without nobility”, where we get the word S.Nob from) were legally limited as to what they might wear. They must not be confused with either of the higher estates.
Five hundred years ago yesterday (July 10, 1509) a boy was born in a small town in France who would singlehandedly begin the theological and social changes that would make work—and those who do work—respectable, even honorable, even a sign of distinction.
He was raised to be a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. His would have been a life of privilege, standing before an altar that lower classes might not even approach. As a teenager he switched from theology to law, but went on studying religious subjects like Greek.
When Luther’s Reformation spread to France, the young man found himself on the wrong side of the issue. He left France (and his French name—Jean Cauvin) behind and fled to Switzerland. Here he studied the Bible, wrote and preached for thirty years.
Few men have left behind a greater influence than John Calvin. His followers founded the state churches of Holland, Scotland—the dissenting Congregationalist Church of England—the Reformed Churches of Western Germany and had a powerful influence on Roman Catholic nations like Hungary, Ireland and France. (“The Three Musketeers” were fighting against French Calvinists.)
A great deal is written about his supposedly joyless theology, but the man enjoyed a good glass of wine (at one point his entire salary consisted of so many barrels of wine, which he was expected to use and sell for his support). Unlike some members of the Medieval Church, he saw sex between married partners as a good and joyful thing.
He differed sharply from Luther on one point—the authority of laymen in church and in the world. When Lutheran revolutionaries in Germany went beyond what Luther could tolerate in the behavior of the working classes, Luther called upon the Temporal Lords of Germany to strike them down. His quarrel was with the First Estate (Catholic clergy) only, not with feudalism per se.
Calvin created a church structure in which laymen had a vote and a real voice in church affairs. More than one historian has suggested that—through the Calvinistic influence of Puritan (Congregational) New England--this had a strong influence on the creation of American secular democracy.
Calvin viewed God as sovereign over all the earth. That included work and those who work. Yes, one could gain great merit in Heaven as a preacher, but in Calvin’s theology anyone could gain merit in Heaven who worked with all his might for the Glory of God—farming, shipping, manufacturing, selling, whatever one’s job was.
Thus was born “the Protestant work ethic” which made work respectable. In fact it tipped the other way—NOT working was considered frivolous and sinful. A thousand years of Christian history was dumped on its head.
Calvin’s theology opened the door to the use of capital (money) as a commodity—to be bought and sold like any other. The Medieval Church had long held that loaning money (to start a business or to buy a house) at interest was sinful.
Since business is impossible without the use (borrowing and lending) of capital at interest, Christians had been forced to turn to non-Christian sources like Jews. This made Jews pariahs and subject to a lot of extortion and robbery. Now that Christians could take on the onus—banking became respectable and moral.
Under Calvinism, money ceased to be “filthy lucre” and became a useful tool. It is to be noted that some of the wealthiest nations on earth up until very recently have been nations with strong Calvinistic influences like Great Britain, Holland, Germany, France and the United States.
(Some Catholic theologians are going to take peevish exception to my suggesting France has a strong Calvinistic strain. Admittedly most Huguenots were expelled and Jansenism (a Catholic form of Calvinism) was declared a heresy, but the influence of these two groups did not go away.)
To those of you who own stocks and bonds, who have a mortgage or a savings account—and to those of you who have respect because of what you do for work, those of you who can take pride in it—a tip of the hat to the man they called “That Frenchman!” John Calvin.

Obama--In Uncharted Waters

Major banks have said they are going to stop accepting California IOUs; the SEC says it is thinking of allowing them to be traded like stocks—so people can find some way to get money out of them.
Frightened consumers have begun to do something they haven’t done in years and years—save money. While that’s salutary behavior, it puts the 60% of the American economy that depends on consumer spending on hold for a bit.
Unemployment continues to rise at a clip that may scare even more consumers into saving rather than spending. PIMCO, the world’s largest manager of bond funds, suggests that while the actual recession might end this year, there will be no rampaging recovery like we’ve gotten used to since World War II. In other words, lots of people are going to go on saving or being unemployed.
Obama is perhaps the first president in ninety years to find himself in a situation in which he—and the United States—is not master of his and its own destiny. We had basically been a debtor nation since 1776, but in 1916, we became the world’s creditor. World War I was enormously good for business. We were about the only industrialized nation that wasn’t getting shot to pieces.
We allowed everybody else to do the fighting and dying until the last year of the war when we jumped in to “save Democracy” and protect our investment. The Allies owed us three billion dollars for war materials, a huge sum back when autos sold for $500.
(Germany and Austria only owed us about $30 million. They had no way of getting through the British blockade to buy anything from us. So, even if we hadn’t liked the Allies better, we really had to go with them. And, of course, the Germans made some disastrous PR blunders—like the Zimmerman Telegram in which they promised to give California and Texas back to Mexico if Mexico would distract us by attacking along our southwestern border.)
Because we got in the war at all, we were able to sit at the adult table at the Versailles Peace Conference, and Wilson got to force a bowdlerized version of his Fourteen Points on everyone. (Clemenceau muttered that God had only ten commandments and we hadn’t kept them.) Wilson had to be listened to. His was the most powerful nation left standing.
We had the money, we had the military potential—in the Naval Conference of 1922, England ceded to us the right to build a fleet equal to her own. Had anyone been so presumptuous in the previous century, it would have meant war. She had conceded the Caribbean as an American sphere of influence nearly twenty years before.
When we lost our footing economically in the Great Depression of the 1930s, we took everyone else down with us. During World War II we supplied every nation fighting Japan and Germany with material and munitions—free.
In 1944, we could summon the entire world to a conference at Breton Woods and basically dictate how the post war economy was going to be run. Today all sorts of nations and currencies could veto an agreement like that.
Only in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union finally recovered from World War II and had in its possession sufficient nukes to assure mutual destruction did a President have to take someone else into serious consideration when deciding on his foreign policy.
In the 1980s, Reagan upped the ante in what had become an international poker game between the USSR and the USA to a point where the Russians could not afford to continue playing. They folded in 1991, and we were left as the only Super Power on the planet.
America under Clinton and George W. Bush continued to be perceived that way until Wall Street REALLY laid an egg in 2008. Now it’s a totally different game, with totally different rules—some of which haven’t even been written yet.
All we really know is that the old ones—that FDR, Ike, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton—played under don’t apply. We aren’t even back to the Nineteenth Century. Then, at least we had the British Navy standing between us and the rest of the world.
Our situation in the 1800s, after 1820, was very comparable to Japan’s today. We defend Japan and do all the heavy lifting in their national defense. After Britain made it clear in 1820 that her fleet would keep Europeans from intervening in the United States and the rest of the Americas, all we needed was a handful of regiments of cavalry to handle the Indians.
American presidents were pretty free to do as they pleased with Indian tribes and Mexico. Britain even backed off and gave us half of Oregon. We were free to buy Alaska and Guam. When we took over the Philippines, Britain put her Asiatic Fleet across the bows of any other European power that might want to interfere. (Specifically the German navy.)
We had a very small expense on military affairs. This left us free—like Japan—to plow our investment into factories and product development. Within the boundaries of Britain’s vital interests, we had basically a free hand. Our army was so tiny that as late as 1916 a French general could sneer at us that France lost “more men before breakfast every morning than you have in your entire army.”
But this is a new day. There is no Britain to stand between us and anybody else. The incomparable power we enjoyed in the aftermath of World War II is badly eroded. There are other kids in the sandbox who have ideas of their own—and the heft to make people listen.
We have been a debtor nation again since 1986—a date that should seem hugely significant, but we tend to ignore it. Breton Woods is long gone. The dollar itself is being questioned as a world currency. Our consumers—whose spending drove world prosperity for so long—have pulled back.
Obama faces a whole new world. There is no one to call for advice. No one since James Madison has faced anything quite like the world situation he faces. Nothing at Harvard, the Senate or the neighborhoods of South Chicago could have prepared him for what he faces.
It’s probably going to be a lot less fun than the world most other presidents faced. It’s going to be lonely—who can he go to for ideas? I only hope that this quite facile and intelligent man quickly realizes he is in terra incognito—and adapts effectively.
Otherwise it could be an unpleasant ride for all of us.

Obama And The Seven--Dwarves No More

The Big Eight are meeting now—amidst talk of the American stock market being overvalued and the possibility that the United States will need a second stimulus package. Even the Vice President admits the administration got it wrong in January—“we didn’t know how bad things were”.
Actually it’s a smaller meeting right now—as the Chinese delegation hurries home to confer about the increasingly nasty ethnic riots in China’s western, Muslim regions. Russia remains very likely to veto any action suggested against Iran’s nuclear development policies.
She’s angry and resentful—feeling that when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s and looked to the West (especially the US) for help, guidance and some semblance of friendship, she got badly used. Russian feels her overtures were met by American missiles in her front yard and an American attempt to take over the oil fields in the newly independent, ex-Soviet Republics.
Watching video of Obama talking to Putin reminded one of a desperate chap pleading for an uninterested girl to give him a date. Whether he’s right or wrong, Putin doesn’t feel that there is or ought to be much friendship between Russia and America. I doubt if we will change his mind by pleading or murmuring sweet nothings.
France hasn’t been a real friend since the 1960s (when De Gaulle threw NATO out of Paris and went ahead and made his own atomic bombs). And the power we once had to force everyone else to paper over the divisions and smile for the camera is gone. The seven dwarves have grown up.
Even as the International Monetary Fund proclaims that the end of the recession is in sight, no one of the other Big Eight Members can be unaware that the world’s largest economy faces problems that will not go away at the end of this recession.
A few figures: right now our national debt $11.4 Trillion. (We didn’t know what a trillion was when I was a kid.) That’s $37,000 indebtedness for every man, woman and child in this nation. (That doesn’t count mortgages, school loans, credit cards, auto loans, etc.) That’s 80% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) just in what we’re liable for government debt.
Using that figure is actually cheating. When you factor in unlisted liabilities—what will we really owe on the toxic assets we’ve guaranteed in our banks, for instance—unfunded liabilities—pensions and Social Security payments and so forth—and health care commitments, we come to $45 MORE trillion bucks you and I owe in government debt.
Total that up and you get $56 Trillion dollars (what comes after trillion?) that we owe in national debt. That’s $184,000 per head. (You say you’re pregnant? The kid already owes the price of a house just for being conceived—and the hospital bills haven’t come in yet.)
(Some will argue that this isn’t really a problem. We took on $75 million dollars in Revolutionary War debt right after we swore in George Washington. It took us until 1834 to pay it off—1834 and 1835 being the only two years we were every debt free. But this is worse. We were growing up until recently. We could afford to take on new debt. Now we have mammoth debt, we face competition like we’ve never known and our economy is shrinking.
If you doubt it, walk along the shores of Muskegon Lake and look at the empty land where the foundries that won World War II used to stand. Those guys haven’t gone out and gotten better paying jobs, I assure you.)
Inflation has taken a savage bite out of what we think we still have. I read a figure the other day—if you had $100,000 to live on in 1970, you would have needed $175,000 to maintain the life style in 1997. Not everyone’s wages went up that much in twenty-seven years.
We’re still inflating—at about the same rate, around five percent or so. I recall that when I was a boy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, we used to compare how much our present dollar was worth in terms of a 1939 dollar.
It got down to sixty cents, fifty-five and, finally, dipped below fifty cents. At some point they simply stopped talking about the 1939 dollar—I suspect it was too embarrassing. What would it be worth today—less than a dime? Just a few pennies?
Remember when you could buy a large candy bar for a nickel? Make a phone call for a nickel? Buy a comic book for ten cents? Paperback books were a quarter and the really big, thick ones were 35 cents. A large hamburger was a quarter—a nickel extra for cheese.
In the 1960s, we called McDonalds the “fifteen cent hamburger store”. You could buy a VW for $1700; a Chevy would run you over $2000. In 1976, a friend bought a nicely tricked out Buick for $3,000. In 1980, I contracted for a house for $46,000. Twenty years before it would have been around fifteen.
Yes, that’s inflation. A sixty-nine or seventy-five cent candy bar isn’t really worth that much more than it was when it cost a five cents. No value has been added.
What concerns me is that somebody is going to figure out that inflation—hyper inflation—may be the best way for the government to handle all this debt. Desperation can make the unthinkable seem the most feasible alternative.
Imagine a scenario like that of Germany and Austria in the early 1920s. Ordinary workmen were being paid in basketfuls of billion mark notes. The currency was so debased that this would scarcely buy a week’s worth of groceries. But think how possible it would make paying off a debt that numbered in the trillions.
It is not absolutely impossible that the hugely indebted United States could reach a point like that in the next twenty years or so. Like the old Central Powers we are caught up in wars that cost and cost and never seem to end. Our national debt is spiraling out of sight. Job losses are getting serious—and no one can say for sure what kind of employment will replace the good paying industrial jobs that are disappearing. Whole industries have moved overseas.
This is something no one at the Big Eight wants to think about. Not even for a second. I’m sure they could go on and on about why such a thing could NEVER EVER possibly happen. Saying it does not necessarily make it so. This makes for a big shadow over L’Aquila, Italy.

Michael Jackson: Fall of a Demigod

China has ethnic riots. Sarah Palin has had enough already. Putin looked like an atheist in church as Obama rattled on about how much common ground there is between Russia and the US. Bombs are blowing up in Iraq. Major auto parts manufacturer Lear just went into Chapter 11.
For the moment everything takes a back seat to Michael Jackson’s memorial service. A politician raised the ugly point that he may have been, after all, a pedophile (you don’t hand out millions to some kid’s dad because you were merely tousling his cute blond hair). Everybody is mad at him for saying it out loud. Who is this spoilsport ruining our national catharsis?
The Reverend Mr. Jesse Jackson reminded us that Michael came from a tiny house that held nine kids and a mom and dad. Dad held two day jobs and taught music at night. The good reverend rhapsodized that Michael was a role model for anyone who was born poor but had a dream.
Michael represented all that was good about “rags to riches” America. See, Jesse told the camera, what having a dream and lots of discipline can bring to pass. He was asked by the moderator if Jackson had “invented popular music”.
Even Jesse demurred at that. “No …, but he took it to a whole new level.” I’ll buy that—I do remember there was some music around in the 1940s and 50s before Michael Jackson was born. Guys like Fats Domino, Elvis, and the like.
But he was a phenomenon—a seven year old kid taking the world by storm. Yasha Heifetz started the violin at three, but he didn’t debut in Carnegie Hall until he was seventeen. And while he, too, may have the best at what he did—he had scarcely a thousandth of the impact.
Jackson was certainly not the first to die of drugs, if that’s what he died of. No official cause of death has yet been given. Doctors, friends, visitors, staff—all face police interrogation. The LAPD apparently pulled enough little pills and vials out of his house to stock a hospital pharmacy.
We remember Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. There was Marilyn Monroe and Jim Belushi. The list could go on and on. All the way from the night when Alexander the Great got so drunk he choked to death on his own vomit. These are sad and ugly pictures.
Alexander had reached the end of his worlds to conquer. Jackson was about to launch a fifty concert tour to try to conquer still more of his worlds. Both men started young, took the world by storm and left a vast cultural heritage. Both men somehow lost their way and destroyed themselves.
We need heroes. If they don’t come riding on a magnificent charger, we create them. We’re sometimes willing to put ourselves under the surface of the celebrity pond so that they can appear to be walking on water as they step on the hands and heads we hold up to them.
We do this to singers, entertainers, clergymen, politicians, business tycoons—and often we make them believe their own press. Almost. (Inside they know they are only human, and the fear of a misstep that could shatter the image they have built must tear at the insides. That’s when the pharmacopeia comes into play. It numbs the terror.)
It isn’t only baseball players and deer hunters who choke and can’t hit or aim. The Romans tried to protect their heroes by putting a slave in the chariot as the hero of the moment rode in triumph. The slave’s job was to remind the latest demigod that he was, after all, merely mortal.
“Sic transit gloria mundi”. “Thus passes the glory of man”. It was his job to keep repeating the refrain to the conqueror of the moment.
It was meant to keep the hero from feeling he could walk on water. We make our heroes and entertainers feel not only that they CAN walk on water—but that they MUST. That was a load the Monroe’s, the Bulushi’s and Hendrex’s couldn’t carry. Very possibly Michael Jackon—who spent so much of his huge fortune on a fantasy hideaway just for himself—couldn’t either.
He came out of nowhere as a tiny child. He remade MTV. He spread his new style, his manic dances all over the world. And then he went and hid. He became a grotesque caricature of what he had once been.
They followed the boy-man into his fantasy world and created total ugliness with charges that shattered much of his image even if they were never proven. Always there was something appealing about him—he kept many friends. Mostly they were people in the business who understood what his life was like and why he built fantasy worlds.
I recall that a New York publisher who wanted to do a piece on him sent Jackie Kennedy Onassis to interview him—knowing that she understood what it was to both need and fear public adulation.
People who have no idea—of what his life became like (he once said, “I only feel natural when I’m on stage”) and who he really was will line the streets. They will light candles. They will cry. They will turn on his music and his videos. Once again he will be the conquering hero.
And then the explosions in Iraq, the riots in China, the belligerence of Russia, the swelling rolls of the unemployed will come back to haunt us. Real life will again impinge upon our fantasies.
But for one day, we dreamt of another Camelot. I suppose we should thank Michael for giving us that. Fifty concerts probably couldn’t have done as much.

McNair, et al.-- No Fool Like An Old Fool?

A popular former NFL quarterback. The governor of South Carolina. Men with longstanding Christian ministries. Presidential candidates—all with seeming suddenness caught in the hideously embarrassing position of an involvement with a much younger woman.
We wonder: are they stupid? Is it a form of hubris (a counterpart of the “too big to fail” notion in economics)? Do they think they’ll never get caught? One of the first stories ever told of an older, married man and a young girl comes from the Bible, three thousand years ago—David and Bathsheba. The affair launched a civil war that didn’t end for decades.
The McNair affair, double murder, murder and suicide, whatever, raises the age old questions once again. Why? How? What did she see in him? What did he see in her? Especially, how did it all begin? We read the news accounts and they can’t really tell us.
I sat down and thought about it this morning. I’m not famous, rich or powerful. So I don’t have the temptation of younger women who are drawn to power or wealth like moths. (As Henry Kissinger once said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”)
(Years ago, when I enjoyed a measure of power in my job, I recall a few instances when a woman showed interest in me just because of that power. Once or twice I had to duck kind of hard. I was married at the time.)
So that’s a real consideration—something to be wary of if you have power or position. It isn’t necessarily that you are so dreadfully handsome or appealing; it’s just that your wallet or your clearance card is irresistible. If you choose to succumb, do so with your eyes open, aware of what’s really going on—and give some thought to potential consequences.
In short, it is highly unlikely that she loves you for you.
But there’s another factor at work here—and that’s the one a lot of men may be completely unaware of, and it can affect all of us. This is the one I reflected on this morning. We’re older. Just that, we’re older. And that gives us an edge we may not want to have.
It’s an edge we probably don’t even realize we have. Two things have happened since we left twenty behind, got married and lived a few more decades. One) we’ve gotten a bit smarter, and 2) we now come in the innocently appearing guise of being grandpa or even dad. Younger women tend to let their guards down.
Do you remember what it was like to meet a really interesting and attractive girl when you were eighteen? She had walls up—until she had vetted you for social, personal and educational acceptability. These guards protected everyone, annoying as they may then have seemed to a young male predator. How well we recall the frustration.
I still remember the first time I went into a supermarket and the young female cashier no longer dealt with me as a peer, but she called me “sir”. That was already long ago. Things began to change at that point.
I look like grandpa now. (And he’s safe, after all.) The smiles and twinkling eyes are quite unguarded today. Also, I don’t make the inane gaffes natural to a young, single man meeting someone for the first time. (At least not as many.)
If there is a moment, I can enjoy an intelligent conversation—where does she plan to go to school, what does she plan to be, where did she go to high school? Often she’s delighted to talk about herself. (I totally lacked the wit to use this as a pickup line when I was younger.)
Sometimes I find myself startled and delighted at the pinpoint precision with which she has laid out her life—what she plans to do and why. (Young men at that age rarely have as much direction—although I have had similar conversations with a relative handful.)
(I very carefully do not give my name or ask hers. When I walk away from the cash register it is over with and forgotten.)
I suspect that many a May-November affair begins simply because the older man shows a genuine interest in the person she is—or wants to be. Age and experience have brought him beyond the behaviors for which a young woman of our acquaintance once faulted an ex-boy friend.
“He’s twenty,” she said with asperity, “going on sixteen.”
I’m often struck when I substitute teach with how much more mature high school girls can seem than their high school boy friends. There seems to me to be about a ten year maturity gap in the teens. An older man who will talk seriously can seem appealing.
If he foolishly allows himself to be flattered into something more because of this, he is a likely candidate for tomorrow’s headlines.
Just remember gentlemen, your gray hair and the smoothness that comes from being several years older and smarter than you were in college can just possibly get you in much deeper than you planned to be. Even with “nice” and relatively innocent young women.
Throw substantial money and power into the calculation and you have an almost certain ticket to marital and political disaster.
Hey, I can still be attracted—but try to do at least some thinking above the waist. Remember, you’re “grampa”. She hasn’t suddenly found the love of her life, not really. It’s so easy to be flattered when an attractive young lady seems to be warming to you. Try to remember: you had your day. Back then, you probably made all the mistakes her contemporaries are making today. That’s part of being a young fool.
The wise thing for you to do might be to walk quickly away while you still can. Do that at day number one and the horrors and disasters that have come upon so many men in the news will hopefully not come upon you.
What did she see in you initially? Grandfather. Rich or poor.

July 4: Hellfire, Masons and Clerics

Once again the argument is upon us. It was splendidly encapsulated for me today by a sermon this morning and a public television presentation this afternoon. Was the United States founded as a Christian nation? Was it secular at its inception?
The gentleman who preached this morning came in with a stack of late 18th and early 19th Century books and papers. These included the first English language Bible ever published in the colonies (1782), printed by Congress and advocated for general use.
(Britain had not allowed the colonies to print Bibles in English; you were supposed to buy them, along with most other manufactured goods, from the Mother Country. After the surrender at Yorktown, we felt free to print our own.)
He had a record of the three hour prayer meeting and Bible study that preceded the opening of the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774. They had reason to be scared—they were on the verge of committing a real form of treason, and the certain penalty would be the gallows.
The report suggested that even some of the toughest of those present had tears in their eyes at the end of the Bible readings and prayers. John Adams especially urged Abigail to read Psalm 35 to herself and to her clergyman father. In it King David urgently asks God to defend him, protect him and take vengeance on his enemies. Very fitting.
At high speed the gentleman went through the various pro-Christian writings of the men who signed the Declaration and the Constitution. He cited the tremendous number of these men who had been educated as Christian clergy.
There can be little doubt that there was a tremendous amount of Christianity floating about at the beginning of the nation. There are endless references to Almighty God, to Jesus Christ and even to the Sacred Trinity. There can be no doubt of both the spiritual and cultural Christianity present in 1776 and 1787.
The PBS documentary suggested there was also present a darker side to at least some of these men. There was the Hellfire Club in England—frequented by government officials, the nobility—in short any one who held power, rank or wealth.
Young girls were brought in; orgies were held. Even in the church building the founder built on his estate there was a room for dalliance. One of the paintings on the wall shows Benjamin Franklin having a wonderfully debauched time.
After all, he lived in London over 15 years (as a single man) and even had ambitions to become a member of Parliament himself. (His conversion to the notion of American independence didn’t come until the mid-70s.)
The program went on to suggest that there is decent evidence to suggest that such clubs were exported to the American colonies. Again, men with wealth and power—and ambition to meet people who already had it—joined.
Franklin carried his promiscuous ways to Paris in 1776 where he single handedly obtained the munitions that kept us in the war. There seems to be no question that his way with highborn ladies and his willingness to join in the fun and games of the decadent French court aided the American cause significantly. (Other American diplomats were perfectly shocked at his behavior, but they weren’t getting the loans and the guns.)
Another factor PBS brought out was that Franklin’s membership in the Free Masonic Order gave him useful entry when he represented the colonies in both London and Paris. PBS went to some length in enumerating how many founding fathers were members of that order.
Washington apparently came from a family line that claimed to date its membership in the Masonic Order all the way back to some of the founding families in King Solomon’s time.
The program strongly suggested that the Masonic Lodges—since they were outside of any specific church structure—strongly influenced the American tendency to separate church and state. Such a postion would logically, offer Masons a certain amount of protection they might not enjoy in countries with a national church.
(Incidentally, the Constitution did NOT prohibit government affiliated Christian churches in the individual states. Several of these existed at the time the Constitution was written. It merely prohibited a NATIONAL church from being imposed by the federal government. This was no doubt as much to protect the state churches as it was to separate church from government.)
So we have two pictures—a nation founded by Godly men with strongly held Christian doctrines and positions. And a nation founded by men with sexual appetites that would draw prison sentences today, who were more firmly members of their lodges than their churches.
Which is true?
Both, obviously—just as it can be 2009.
One thing we can say. It was certainly not the intent of the founders to make Christian references and prayers off limits. Separation of church and state certainly did not mean that. It was much more a reference to preventing an INSTITUTIONAL rivalry, not prayer at football games.
We would not have a Catholic Church (Spain, France, Austria, Portugal, to name some) or a Protestant denomination (Holland, England, many of the Germanies, Scandanavia, Scotland, to name some of those countries) dominating the politics and the faith or our nation.
There is no doubt the founders—however personally hypocritical some may have been—believed this to be a Christian nation (just not under any one organizational banner). There can be little doubt that the Masons had a large influence (look at our national symbols!)—but they derived from Christian origins—modern Masons coming out of Presbyterian Scotland in 1599.
One could even suggest that eliminating prayer in schools violates the Constitution—as written and understood by the founders—as much as would creating a national state church. Today’s two pictures of America offered nothing in the way of a solution to any modern dilemmas.
But it did show us where we actually came from. That’s always helpful to know. It was somehow a mix of Hellfire Clubs, Masonic lodges and fervently Christian theologians. In other words, there were good people who did bad things; bad people who said good things.
How like today. We will solve nothing by suppressing either part of our heritage.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Sam

Happy Fourth of July. Like so many other things, it isn’t quite what it seems to be. The actual day Congress voted for independence was July 2. That’s when Adams—part of the committee that oversaw the Declaration—thought the holiday would be.
They finally got around to ratifying the Document itself on the 4th. It wasn’t signed until sometime in August. So, pick your day and celebrate. For us in Michigan, it’s really the start of summer. None but madmen and children small enough that their pain receptors haven’t yet connected to their brains go swimming in Lake Michigan before the Fourth.
It’s a beautiful lake. I’ve taken friends who have lived along the ocean down to see it. They are often astonished that something wet and fresh enough to drink (Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and uncountable small towns all do) can look so like the ocean.
But it’s cold. Only after a spell of truly hot weather—without much wind—does the water along the shore climb into the 70s so that an adult (with attached pain receptors) can go in without whimpering. Right now, on this Fourth—after recent wind and rain—it’s back down in the 50s.
You’re liable to have about ten good days for dipping more than your toes in the Lake, usually between July 4th and mid-August. The beach sand is some of the finest on the planet, even when it’s cold out. The State of Michigan had the wisdom decades ago to string the Lake Michigan shore with large public parks from the Indiana border all the way to Traverse City. You can camp or daytrip.
These are still wonderful parks—at one time there was budget enough to maintain them better. Most of the concession stands are shut down; the life guards have passed into the mists of history. There are still red (don’t swim), yellow (watch yourself) and green (go for it) flags, but everyone ignores them and few may know what they stand for.
A day in paradise is that rare occasion when waves are four or five feet and water is warm. You can body surf for yards or just stand and get knocked about. You can ride small surfing boards or inner tubes and then pull yourself back out for the next wave. (Life guards used to run up red flags whenever things got that much fun [See? Budget cuts aren’t completely horrible.] But there can be real danger—especially near a pier where there are powerful currents and undertows.)
No one should swim in Lake Michigan who hasn’t been told how to survive being caught in an undertow and dragged out to sea under water. Don’t walk on the piers in heavy weather. The most popular pier—in Grand Haven—has a large monument to all those who have been swept off to their deaths in storms. Waves can hit 15 feet. But there are no sharks.
On a relatively calm day, walking out a quarter of a mile into Lake Michigan is a glorious sight and experience. The promenade along the Grand River and out into the Lake is the finest I’ve walked either at the Atlantic, Pacific or Lake Michigan coasts.
People come for hundreds, even thousands of miles with their campers. Reservations at popular State Parks on holidays often need to be made a year in advance. For a few hours on the evening before the July 4th Holiday, US 31 looks like New York City at rush hour.
They come from Chicago, St. Louis, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Detroit, Texas, Kentucky, Ontario, the Carolinas, New York and even further. In the course of a summer it is not unusual for me to see license plates from every state but Hawaii. One year I actually saw one from there.
In between the State and county parks (some of them hundreds of acres in size) are the cottages. People from Grand Rapids and Chicago seem to predominate. Although you will also have cottage owners from as far away as Texas—they just leave a car up here.
Chicago people cluster in whole colonies—spending the season in summer homes that have been in their families for generations. There are plenty of winterized, year around homes for people who commute from the shore to inland jobs the year around.
I know of one man who parks his family along Lake Michigan and commutes to his job in Boston. If you want to buy a home on the shore itself, just tack several hundred thousand onto what would normally be the price of that particular house. Even in a nasty recession.
That’s why it is so wonderful to have the parks with their hundreds of yards of open beach. Within 20 miles of my home there are five huge state parks, three large county parks and four city-owned parks. The smallest of these is contains a few football field lengths of public beach.
In one, guides will show you nature trails, you can stop in at the museum to learn how the huge dunes were formed or you can climb to a long walkway at the top of the dunes to see what they look like in their various stages of development. You can camp in all the state parks and at least one of the county parks.
Here come the tents, the pop-up tent campers, the camping trailers, the sometimes house-like motorized campers, the boats, the dune buggies, the four wheelers, rolling up US 31 or coming across on US 94 or 96. It is a procession that goes on all summer.
Of course you cannot forget the hundreds—no, thousands—of small lakes dotting the entirety of Michigan. Many have their own public beaches, campgrounds or boat launches. Their shores are lined cheek by jowl with cottages and winterized homes. People rent, own and/or commute from these as well. Tonight I’m going to the home of a friend on one of these lakes to watch fireworks over the water. We’ve done it for years.
The real push to get out of the hot cities begins this weekend. At ten miles from the shore, we are degrees cooler than inland. Drive toward the shore and it gets cooler by the mile. (That coolness gives us lots more snow in winter, too. An occasionally significant downside to living here.)
It’s party time here. I stood behind a man yesterday at my super market. All he was buying was tomatoes, strawberries, hot dogs and hamburger. Four hundred dollars worth. I kidded him about following him. He shrugged, “Come along. Just bring your appetite.”
The days are obviously gone when you could stand in line at the checkout and see Paul Newman or young John Kennedy ahead of you. But we still have some good festivals and parties here. In any case, Happy July Four.

State Of The States

We’re so used to getting our bad news with a New York or Washington tag line, it might be appropriate to look at the news that’s coming out of our state capitals. No, not just the fact that the governor of South Carolina took a South American vacation—and he’s now spending a little family time explaining things to his wife.
Nor the fact that Alaska’s Governor Palin has just announced she is resigning at the end of July. Most assume that this is to free her up to launch a presidential campaign three years from now; some suggest that dropping the governorship this early is a bit foolish.
In any case it seems reasonably certain that she has no plans to quietly fade away. She burst upon us like a sun flare ten months ago, and she seems to enjoy the spotlight. I would not be surprised that there might be an element of wanting to show the Republican nabobs who treated her with such contempt last year, not least John McClain, that she is too a political force to be reckoned with.
(You do have to wonder what McClain was thinking last August. Or if he was thinking at all—beyond the desire to give the Democrats a momentary jolt. [It was very momentary.] But if I were Palin, I would feel used and abused. Not least because the Party first demanded I go shopping to upgrade my wardrobe—and then demanded all the clothes back. That’s adding injury to insult.)
Then there’s California where the governor announced this week that he would likely need to issue I.O.U.s in lieu of checks for welfare recipients, contractors, and a whole bunch of other people the state owes money to, in and out of state.
Can you imagine going to a grocery store and handing the cashier an I.O.U. from the State of California in the condition it’s in!? (I recall that my aunt took a teaching job in the State of Michigan back in the 1930s for six hundred dollars a year. They paid her $300 in cash that year—and gave her a warrant for the other $300. This is not a new idea—it’s just startling that we are back to it again.)
“BusinessWeek” suggests that the huge size of the California economy (one of the ten largest or so in the world) and the huge size of its deficit could slow down recovery for the entire nation. Unfortunately, unlike Washington, California has no printing press for money.
Speaking of California—and Michigan. The respective governors are trying to work out a deal whereby excess California convicts are sent to Michigan for incarceration in prisons Michigan can no longer afford to keep open. California will supposedly pay for this service—with what? I.O.U.s?
They are closing down the correctional facility in nearby Muskegon, Michigan, for one. Michigan is rushing to release prisoners as soon as they’ve served their minimum sentence—regardless of how dangerous they may be.
In the past few years Michigan, once an industrial hub of America—and the world, has lost around a fifth or even a quarter of its jobs. This is primarily due to the collapse of the auto industry. While it isn’t completely true that Michigan is a one company state, it’s close.
Now as General Motors sits in bankruptcy, lawyers are playing chicken with the government. One lawyer who represents some small bond holders was quoted today as saying that he can hold out for more money because the government would never let GM go down.
He hopes. But any way you cut it, a lot of people who were born in Michigan are going to have to move elsewhere if they ever plan to work again. Oh yes, they just laid off a raft of State Police—as tax income falls, there’s less money for fripperies like police protection.
A whole list of industrial states—Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, to name a few—are in serious trouble because of tax shortfalls due to declining industrial production, especially automotive.
Of course every state is saddled with a series of unfunded federal mandates. That means that when Washington gets a brilliant idea for making education—or some other state function—more complex and more expensive, it sends no money to pay for the new program.
There are a lot of federally mandated services out there that states MUST provide—and must also pay for. If they plead insolvency, they will be deprived of other federal monies as a penalty. This has been a growing phenomenon since the 1970s.
These mandates add to state grief. The states often pass these mandates on to local governments who must then pay for them without any state help. (That, boys and girls, is one of the reasons my property taxes keep going up, just like yours.)
For decades now this burden of unfunded programs mandated by Washington has grown heavier and heavier. (Some of Obama’s proposals will no doubt result in more of them.) It will not get lighter, no matter what the economy does.
Washington will volunteer no additional monies; it is extremely unlikely to repeal any of the programs or their mandates. At some point the whole upside down pyramid may just collapse.
Meanwhile, Palin has set her sights on Washington and California would like to ship a few hundred undesirables to Michigan. And this is the state of only a few states.