A few days ago Obama gave his first State of the Union address. I’ve spent the days since trying to figure out if there was anything worth responding to. I suppose you could have listened to that speech and said, “Well, he’s finally started to fight”.
Yea-ah, but when you compare his rhetoric to the parliamentary ripostes of a master orator like Churchill, or the emotion chocked response of the Army’s chief counsel, Joseph Welch, to the hectoring style of Joe McCarthy, Barack Obama still hits “like a girl”.
But he did do one thing that commentators tell us has only been done a very few times in the history of the Republic—he publicly, face to face, faulted the Supreme Court on a ruling (the one that allows corporations to give as much money to politicians as they wish). I’ll say Good On You for that!
The shocked justices sat stonily silent, except for Alito who actually shook his head back at the President. After all, the Supreme Court is sacrosanct, isn’t it? When it speaks, that’s the last word, isn’t it? Who would dare raise an issue after the Court has settled it?
Who is this Obama fellow, a mere President, to publicly suggest the Supreme Court made a bad call? It just isn’t done—not by Congress, not by ordinary people, not by presidents. And exactly why not?
However glancingly, even timorously, Obama made his point it’s one that’s worth looking at and thinking about. The court has been allowed to assume unto itself over the past two centuries a position not unlike that taken by Louis XIV when he declared that he, and he alone, constituted all the governmental powers of the state—“l’ etat c’est moi!”
It certainly didn’t start out this way. The job of supreme court justice had such low prestige when the country started it was hard to find men to take it. Those that did tended to resign rather quickly and go do something useful.
It doubt very much whether the Constitutional Convention ever intended this to happen. They were so concerned with too much power gravitating to the Executive (the King), that they really never gave much thought to reigning in the judiciary.
The President can veto a Congressional Bill. Congress can override the President’s veto. But where is there a right for anyone in any branch of our government to veto or override the Court? (Yes, we can pass a Constitutional Amendment, but that takes years and would often be impractical, cluttering up the Constitution with single case amendments. Congress can impeach—but what a mess that is—what if all Congress could do to stop a President was to impeach him?)
The Court stands alone with an unchallengeable power that would not doubt have horrified Franklin, Madison or even Washington. Obama is considered (validly so) daring and bold because he dares hint in public that a Court decision will do damage to the nation.
The mere fact that he’s right is irrelevant. He is guilty of lese-majestie—against a court of nine un-elected men empowered for life. Whoa.
Andy Jackson dared to react to a Court decision he considered wrong by saying, “John Marshall (Chief Justice) has made his law; let him enforce it.” That decision never was carried out.
After all, the right to overturn any law or regulation without question is a power only granted to the court BY THE COURT ITSELF (Marbury v Madison—1804). Maybe it’s time for another branch of the government to step in and say, “You’ve played with that long enough now”.
Jackson felt he could ignore it. (If either Congress or the President had the nerve to set aside a Supreme Court decision today, you’d be amazed at how circumspect the court would become in its future promulgations.) If the Court can proclaim it HAS absolute power—why can’t one of the other branches proclaim it DOES NOT?
Something to think about.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Art--Creating Worlds Beyond Sight
I substitute taught in a high school art room yesterday. I like artists. I’m not one—but I’ve worked with artists, writers and photographers for much of my life. They seem to like and work well with me. I once had the pleasure of reading a letter a top flight commercial artist had written about working with me—he was positively glowing in his comments.
So artists and I feel like a natural fit. My wife is an artist and, whatever disputes we have are rarely if ever over matters artistic. I enjoyed a whole day among budding artists, many of whom at sixteen or seventeen are already quite serious about it.
I’ve also been called a “philistine”—most notably one time when I argued that Aristotle would have been a footnote in history were it not for his physically active and bellicose student, Alexander The Great—who spread Aristotle’s teachings over the known world.
But that’s another issue. (I prefer Daumier’s drawings to Matisse; Kandinsky leaves me ice cold while I thoroughly enjoy Picasso and Modigliani. I quite willingly accept being faulted for lacking an appreciation for ALL art. )
Sitting at the teacher’s desk, I spotted a quote she had posted. It went something like, “Nature has made her world, art must create its own.” I sat and thought about it for awhile. The quote was attributed to Sir Thomas Browne. (I assume the Browne in question was the Seventeenth Century English writer.)
I don’t know if that was terribly true before the Nineteenth Century—when many artists were hired to or seemed essentially interested in DEPICTING nature—but it certainly became true once the camera was invented.
Painters who had made their living painting portraits and displaying landscapes were suddenly out of a job. In the hands of a truly skilled photographer, the camera essentially does both things better. It takes a bit of snobbery to insist on a painted portrait today.
Artists began to try to paint what lies behind the realistic depiction of a person, a river or a meadow. I don’t know if they were actually creating a world so much as trying to explain it, to make you see a reality invisible to human sight or even the conscious mind.
I love cubism, for example. It often shows me what I was sensing, what I was glimpsing in the periphery of my field of vision. That is probably validly called a creation of the artist’s own world. I might never have seen what I only glimpsed had an artist not showed it to me. No camera could do that.
But creating one’s own world can be a licentious, dangerous or even silly thing. It can be a form of narcissistic self-absorption which manufactures a world that is all too close to what many ancient Greeks called our world—the defecation of the gods.
I saw a bit of that today. Perhaps all young artists go through such a stage. I’ve seen much more of it in student art shows at art institutes here and in bigger cities. I’ve seen a bit too much of it in museum staged shows of established artists.
Create your own world—be sure that it relates even to philistine viewers like myself (as Modigliani, Picasso, and Gauguin did). Startle, amuse or bemuse me as Dali did. But don’t set a broken chair in a corner, cover it with dirty clothes and sneakers and call it a world of art created by an artist.
That cannot be what Browne meant. It cannot be what the camera has driven art to. A colorful splotch on a canvas can, sometimes, be merely a colorful splotch on a canvas. There may be no insight, no true creativity, no newly fashioned world. Just meaningless self-indulgence.
Art must indeed create its own world. I would ask of some artists (and students), Be careful that this is what you are actually doing.
So artists and I feel like a natural fit. My wife is an artist and, whatever disputes we have are rarely if ever over matters artistic. I enjoyed a whole day among budding artists, many of whom at sixteen or seventeen are already quite serious about it.
I’ve also been called a “philistine”—most notably one time when I argued that Aristotle would have been a footnote in history were it not for his physically active and bellicose student, Alexander The Great—who spread Aristotle’s teachings over the known world.
But that’s another issue. (I prefer Daumier’s drawings to Matisse; Kandinsky leaves me ice cold while I thoroughly enjoy Picasso and Modigliani. I quite willingly accept being faulted for lacking an appreciation for ALL art. )
Sitting at the teacher’s desk, I spotted a quote she had posted. It went something like, “Nature has made her world, art must create its own.” I sat and thought about it for awhile. The quote was attributed to Sir Thomas Browne. (I assume the Browne in question was the Seventeenth Century English writer.)
I don’t know if that was terribly true before the Nineteenth Century—when many artists were hired to or seemed essentially interested in DEPICTING nature—but it certainly became true once the camera was invented.
Painters who had made their living painting portraits and displaying landscapes were suddenly out of a job. In the hands of a truly skilled photographer, the camera essentially does both things better. It takes a bit of snobbery to insist on a painted portrait today.
Artists began to try to paint what lies behind the realistic depiction of a person, a river or a meadow. I don’t know if they were actually creating a world so much as trying to explain it, to make you see a reality invisible to human sight or even the conscious mind.
I love cubism, for example. It often shows me what I was sensing, what I was glimpsing in the periphery of my field of vision. That is probably validly called a creation of the artist’s own world. I might never have seen what I only glimpsed had an artist not showed it to me. No camera could do that.
But creating one’s own world can be a licentious, dangerous or even silly thing. It can be a form of narcissistic self-absorption which manufactures a world that is all too close to what many ancient Greeks called our world—the defecation of the gods.
I saw a bit of that today. Perhaps all young artists go through such a stage. I’ve seen much more of it in student art shows at art institutes here and in bigger cities. I’ve seen a bit too much of it in museum staged shows of established artists.
Create your own world—be sure that it relates even to philistine viewers like myself (as Modigliani, Picasso, and Gauguin did). Startle, amuse or bemuse me as Dali did. But don’t set a broken chair in a corner, cover it with dirty clothes and sneakers and call it a world of art created by an artist.
That cannot be what Browne meant. It cannot be what the camera has driven art to. A colorful splotch on a canvas can, sometimes, be merely a colorful splotch on a canvas. There may be no insight, no true creativity, no newly fashioned world. Just meaningless self-indulgence.
Art must indeed create its own world. I would ask of some artists (and students), Be careful that this is what you are actually doing.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wall Street--Call A Casino A Casino
A further comment on Wall Street. I am by no means advocating a lack of regulation—in fact I think the Street should be far more rigorously regulated than it is today. Falsified figures should be dealt with as the crimes they are; arcane instruments created for investors—who have no way of understanding or validating them should be ferociously banned.
Banks should not be allowed to speculate like crazed slot machine players in a casino. The Depression Era dividing lines should be re-imposed. I’m talking very specifically about the act of buying a stock on an exchange floor.
If we don’t regulate casinos—any fool is allowed to go in and spend his entire paycheck on the spin of a roulette wheel or the flip of a card—we should not impose criminal penalties on people who take advantage of the natural “house odds” on the street.
The Street began as a gathering place for speculators, and I think it should stay that way. Then, at least, people know what they are getting into if they want to play. Criminal activity like breaking into a safe and stealing someone’s data should be punished, but not rational acts like dumping a stock if you learn it’s going to flat line through an overheard or confidential source.
Punishing that is like punishing a poker player who is better at reading “tells”. Years ago I had a friend who was born rich and did a lot of investing. He worked for a government agency, doing good works. His investing consisted mainly in doing precisely what his well connected daddy told him to do.
I once asked him if he had any advice on how a novice should invest in the market. He thought a moment. “If you don’t have connections, start with about [modern dollars] half-a-million and diversify widely. You can hope something will go up.
“Better,” he said, “have somebody like my dad call you—as mine did a month ago—and tell you to buy an IPO coming out tomorrow at about six dollars. (He should also have the connections so you can get in at that price.)
“Hold the stock until dad calls again—when it’s up to seventeen—and says, ‘Sell’. I sold. Next day it was down to nine and falling.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where my dad gets his information, and I don’t ask.”
He obviously didn’t think the market was anyplace for someone unconnected and underfunded. I had another friend, a wealthy man from the Midwest. His family had most of its money by having the good sense each generation to buy lots of land where their city was likely to expand.
But he also played the market. I saw him a lot because his broker was NOT in his Midwestern city. He picked a broker in New York who had good sources on the street and used them effectively for affluent clients. He told me, “I don’t want a broker who only knows what they know in Peoria or Louisville. I can read the ticker tape in the newspaper.”
He regularly flew to New York to have a face to face with his broker. That’s how it’s done. That’s reality. I would no more try to pick stocks with my assets and in my location than I would challenge a serious poker pro to a “friendly game”.
To pretend that all of our laws—like the stupid one that caught Martha Stewart off guard—are going to change things among big time and serious investors is silly. Let casinos be casinos, and for you and me, Wall Street is a casino—the stock market should be regulated accordingly.
Caveat Emptor. You’re on your own. (Warren Buffet may be a special case—he seems to have had a special sense of what products the American people were going to go on liking and using into the future. But even he got clobbered in a major downturn. Sometimes the best poker players have to hock their watches to get out of town. Even for him, house odds can be stacked.)
Just remember, unless you have connections, it’s a casino. If you want to take your retirement money to Vegas, hey—why not the Stock Market? Otherwise, find some connections. (And you will never convince me that Buffet doesn’t have any—just shop talk, of course.)
Banks should not be allowed to speculate like crazed slot machine players in a casino. The Depression Era dividing lines should be re-imposed. I’m talking very specifically about the act of buying a stock on an exchange floor.
If we don’t regulate casinos—any fool is allowed to go in and spend his entire paycheck on the spin of a roulette wheel or the flip of a card—we should not impose criminal penalties on people who take advantage of the natural “house odds” on the street.
The Street began as a gathering place for speculators, and I think it should stay that way. Then, at least, people know what they are getting into if they want to play. Criminal activity like breaking into a safe and stealing someone’s data should be punished, but not rational acts like dumping a stock if you learn it’s going to flat line through an overheard or confidential source.
Punishing that is like punishing a poker player who is better at reading “tells”. Years ago I had a friend who was born rich and did a lot of investing. He worked for a government agency, doing good works. His investing consisted mainly in doing precisely what his well connected daddy told him to do.
I once asked him if he had any advice on how a novice should invest in the market. He thought a moment. “If you don’t have connections, start with about [modern dollars] half-a-million and diversify widely. You can hope something will go up.
“Better,” he said, “have somebody like my dad call you—as mine did a month ago—and tell you to buy an IPO coming out tomorrow at about six dollars. (He should also have the connections so you can get in at that price.)
“Hold the stock until dad calls again—when it’s up to seventeen—and says, ‘Sell’. I sold. Next day it was down to nine and falling.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where my dad gets his information, and I don’t ask.”
He obviously didn’t think the market was anyplace for someone unconnected and underfunded. I had another friend, a wealthy man from the Midwest. His family had most of its money by having the good sense each generation to buy lots of land where their city was likely to expand.
But he also played the market. I saw him a lot because his broker was NOT in his Midwestern city. He picked a broker in New York who had good sources on the street and used them effectively for affluent clients. He told me, “I don’t want a broker who only knows what they know in Peoria or Louisville. I can read the ticker tape in the newspaper.”
He regularly flew to New York to have a face to face with his broker. That’s how it’s done. That’s reality. I would no more try to pick stocks with my assets and in my location than I would challenge a serious poker pro to a “friendly game”.
To pretend that all of our laws—like the stupid one that caught Martha Stewart off guard—are going to change things among big time and serious investors is silly. Let casinos be casinos, and for you and me, Wall Street is a casino—the stock market should be regulated accordingly.
Caveat Emptor. You’re on your own. (Warren Buffet may be a special case—he seems to have had a special sense of what products the American people were going to go on liking and using into the future. But even he got clobbered in a major downturn. Sometimes the best poker players have to hock their watches to get out of town. Even for him, house odds can be stacked.)
Just remember, unless you have connections, it’s a casino. If you want to take your retirement money to Vegas, hey—why not the Stock Market? Otherwise, find some connections. (And you will never convince me that Buffet doesn’t have any—just shop talk, of course.)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wall Street--Let's Not Regulate The Impossible
Do you remember a few years ago when everyone was telling us that putting our Social Security money in the stock market would assure us of a bigger, better return? Or that brokers and analysts would do better for us than a government run Social Security Administration?
Let’s pause to reconsider one more time. Recently a chimp was allowed to pick stocks at random and his performance was measured against skilled money managers on Wall Street. Guess what—the chimp got better results.
I suspect he would have done reasonably well at Monte Carlo or Las Vegas. After all, the stock market—since its inception under a butternut tree on Wall Street in 1792—is now and always has been essentially a crap shoot, a roulette play or a game of black jack.
People do win at the gaming tables. They also lose. Ditto Wall Street. Nobody talks about it any more, but in 1960 or so, Merrill Lynch took all the listings on the Big Board before the Crash of 1929 and took the names off them.
Referees gave all the data available at that time—annual reports, financial statements—on those stocks to a team of analysts. Pick stock A or F or Q. They then took a large round dart board and gave each stock a narrow pie shaped piece and glued all of them to it.
Analysts working with data (not knowing the names or having any clue as to subsequent, real life history of those stocks) vs people throwing darts (the actual name of the stock known only to the referees). Merrill Lynch was betting on the analysts.
Bad bet. You would have done better with the darts. (That’s why you don’t ever hear about that little project.) If chimps and darts can do better than the trained analysts you depend on when investing or buying a mutual fund, it should give you pause.
Especially as Congress is looking to reform the Street yet another time. One more effort will be made to make it fairer, more sure, safer. The idea that this can even be done rises out of a wholly absurd notion of what the Street is all about.
For one thing, it is and always has been a venue for rich men to get their hands on other peoples’ money so that they can gamble—and leave the risk to others. It has not been a bad system for those who understood it. Those who invest with their eyes open to what’s really going on can supplement their retirement income quite nicely.
But so can people who use the casino as an instrument for investment. Winston Churchill used to pay for his French vacations by judiciously applying himself at the roulette wheel. I knew people who would pay their own way to the Caribbean and then earn plane fare back to New York at the casinos. That’s not all that different.
But neither the casino nor the Street are about fairness or retirement safety. Trying to legislate these qualities into either is a form of silliness. The Market wasn’t “fair” in Jay Gould’s day. It isn’t “fair” today, and we cannot make it so. Anymore than the Volstead Act stopped people from drinking. All Congress has ever been able to do is impose a form of “prohibition” on Wall Street.
There are all sorts of laws to prohibit Wall Street brokers from talking shop. When they play poker on a Saturday night in the Hamptons, they may chat about opera or compare Chinese and Russian ballet troops—but they may not talk shop.
Teachers may, factory workers may, physicians may, salesmen may—but brokers and analysts are forbidden to gossip about work. (Not too long ago, they even charged some brokers for talking shop over a poker game one night.) It’s called “insider information”. It’s a big no no. But trying to imagine any one making serious money on Wall Street without it is like trying to imagine Al Capone swearing off booze.
The laws don’t stop it. They just make it riskier—like going to a speakeasy during Prohibition. I could probably give other examples, but let’s stick with this one—it’s a good example of what’s wrong with how we PERCEIVE Wall Street today. More tomorrow.
Let’s pause to reconsider one more time. Recently a chimp was allowed to pick stocks at random and his performance was measured against skilled money managers on Wall Street. Guess what—the chimp got better results.
I suspect he would have done reasonably well at Monte Carlo or Las Vegas. After all, the stock market—since its inception under a butternut tree on Wall Street in 1792—is now and always has been essentially a crap shoot, a roulette play or a game of black jack.
People do win at the gaming tables. They also lose. Ditto Wall Street. Nobody talks about it any more, but in 1960 or so, Merrill Lynch took all the listings on the Big Board before the Crash of 1929 and took the names off them.
Referees gave all the data available at that time—annual reports, financial statements—on those stocks to a team of analysts. Pick stock A or F or Q. They then took a large round dart board and gave each stock a narrow pie shaped piece and glued all of them to it.
Analysts working with data (not knowing the names or having any clue as to subsequent, real life history of those stocks) vs people throwing darts (the actual name of the stock known only to the referees). Merrill Lynch was betting on the analysts.
Bad bet. You would have done better with the darts. (That’s why you don’t ever hear about that little project.) If chimps and darts can do better than the trained analysts you depend on when investing or buying a mutual fund, it should give you pause.
Especially as Congress is looking to reform the Street yet another time. One more effort will be made to make it fairer, more sure, safer. The idea that this can even be done rises out of a wholly absurd notion of what the Street is all about.
For one thing, it is and always has been a venue for rich men to get their hands on other peoples’ money so that they can gamble—and leave the risk to others. It has not been a bad system for those who understood it. Those who invest with their eyes open to what’s really going on can supplement their retirement income quite nicely.
But so can people who use the casino as an instrument for investment. Winston Churchill used to pay for his French vacations by judiciously applying himself at the roulette wheel. I knew people who would pay their own way to the Caribbean and then earn plane fare back to New York at the casinos. That’s not all that different.
But neither the casino nor the Street are about fairness or retirement safety. Trying to legislate these qualities into either is a form of silliness. The Market wasn’t “fair” in Jay Gould’s day. It isn’t “fair” today, and we cannot make it so. Anymore than the Volstead Act stopped people from drinking. All Congress has ever been able to do is impose a form of “prohibition” on Wall Street.
There are all sorts of laws to prohibit Wall Street brokers from talking shop. When they play poker on a Saturday night in the Hamptons, they may chat about opera or compare Chinese and Russian ballet troops—but they may not talk shop.
Teachers may, factory workers may, physicians may, salesmen may—but brokers and analysts are forbidden to gossip about work. (Not too long ago, they even charged some brokers for talking shop over a poker game one night.) It’s called “insider information”. It’s a big no no. But trying to imagine any one making serious money on Wall Street without it is like trying to imagine Al Capone swearing off booze.
The laws don’t stop it. They just make it riskier—like going to a speakeasy during Prohibition. I could probably give other examples, but let’s stick with this one—it’s a good example of what’s wrong with how we PERCEIVE Wall Street today. More tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Haiti--Why God Sometimes Doesn't Help
I pointed out yesterday that Pat Robertson was merely citing basic Christian theology when he suggested that Haiti’s rejection of an exclusive relationship with the God of the Christian Bible may have brought her to grief two weeks ago.
I suspect that Mr. Robertson would be quick to agree that we Americans, so near and so rich, have an absolute obligation to help. Just as you would work to save the life of a drunken driver who had wrapped himself around a tree. You’d withhold any suggestion that he was at fault, and you’d work like a dog to keep him alive.
That’s another core tenet of Christianity: you work to retrieve a situation that may have been caused by folly or wickedness without a hint of recrimination. Christ said, “I came to seek and save the lost.” No matter that they had chosen to get themselves lost.
The fact is, as Christianity understands God and his relationship to men, Haiti wasn’t smacked by God for worshipping other deities (Voodoo); Haiti smacked herself. God needed to have nothing to do with it. He caused no hurt, and he was contractually UNABLE to prevent.
An example of God’s inability to help is found in one of the New Testament stories of Christ. We are told he went around healing the sick and the blind. But he came to one town where the people stubbornly refused to believe he could do it.
Christ said himself that he could not do any miraculous healings in that city because of the sheer power of its unbelief. Nothing. They were quite able, as human beings, to exercise their ancient contractual rights and prevent God from acting. That can still be true today.
If our Haitian brothers have chosen to be half Christian (part of the “bride of Christ”) and half something else (Voodoo), they are neither in his eyes. They have committed spiritual adultery. Until they say they are sorry)—and mean it—God will leave them to the mercies of their adulterous partner. He will tie his own hands.
Christians recognize this planet as a hostile place. Since Adam put it under new management—in the hands of someone who hates both God and mankind—it has become dangerous indeed. It is full of unpredictable volcanoes, storms, ice age cycles, earthquakes, viruses, tornadoes, hurricanes, Tsunami’s, poisonous snakes and dangerous beasts. How about disease bearing mosquitoes and other lethal pests?
(The Bible suggests over and over that this present, dangerous world is not the world that God made—it is a world that is now run by spiritual beings totally hostile to humans. This is one reason the Bible suggests man needs the constant protection of God.)
If Haitians truly chose to walk away from the Christian God in order to follow Voodoo, pact or no pact, then they are no longer under his protection. He doesn’t need to punish them—the planet and its new owner will do that all on its own.
This brings up another interesting point. What insurance companies are pleased to call, “Acts of God” are in most cases not his ACTIONS but rather his INACTION. He stands back, bound by his own contractual obligation to give humans free will.
Many Christians don’t like to think about that aspect of their faith. It would require them to have a much more intense and personal relationship with their God than they are comfortable with. Easier to believe he’s just a slightly senile, doting grandpa who defines love as “never having to say you’re sorry”. Or even to say anything at all.
This seems harsh. But it is basic Christianity. It was what Robertson was, however clumsily, trying to get across. (If you choose to walk away from a body guard on your own, bad things may well happen—but don’t blame the guard.) Biblically, Pat Robertson was not entirely wrong about Haiti, even if he got the wrong Napoleon.
God always weeps for those who die; sometimes he cannot help them.
I suspect that Mr. Robertson would be quick to agree that we Americans, so near and so rich, have an absolute obligation to help. Just as you would work to save the life of a drunken driver who had wrapped himself around a tree. You’d withhold any suggestion that he was at fault, and you’d work like a dog to keep him alive.
That’s another core tenet of Christianity: you work to retrieve a situation that may have been caused by folly or wickedness without a hint of recrimination. Christ said, “I came to seek and save the lost.” No matter that they had chosen to get themselves lost.
The fact is, as Christianity understands God and his relationship to men, Haiti wasn’t smacked by God for worshipping other deities (Voodoo); Haiti smacked herself. God needed to have nothing to do with it. He caused no hurt, and he was contractually UNABLE to prevent.
An example of God’s inability to help is found in one of the New Testament stories of Christ. We are told he went around healing the sick and the blind. But he came to one town where the people stubbornly refused to believe he could do it.
Christ said himself that he could not do any miraculous healings in that city because of the sheer power of its unbelief. Nothing. They were quite able, as human beings, to exercise their ancient contractual rights and prevent God from acting. That can still be true today.
If our Haitian brothers have chosen to be half Christian (part of the “bride of Christ”) and half something else (Voodoo), they are neither in his eyes. They have committed spiritual adultery. Until they say they are sorry)—and mean it—God will leave them to the mercies of their adulterous partner. He will tie his own hands.
Christians recognize this planet as a hostile place. Since Adam put it under new management—in the hands of someone who hates both God and mankind—it has become dangerous indeed. It is full of unpredictable volcanoes, storms, ice age cycles, earthquakes, viruses, tornadoes, hurricanes, Tsunami’s, poisonous snakes and dangerous beasts. How about disease bearing mosquitoes and other lethal pests?
(The Bible suggests over and over that this present, dangerous world is not the world that God made—it is a world that is now run by spiritual beings totally hostile to humans. This is one reason the Bible suggests man needs the constant protection of God.)
If Haitians truly chose to walk away from the Christian God in order to follow Voodoo, pact or no pact, then they are no longer under his protection. He doesn’t need to punish them—the planet and its new owner will do that all on its own.
This brings up another interesting point. What insurance companies are pleased to call, “Acts of God” are in most cases not his ACTIONS but rather his INACTION. He stands back, bound by his own contractual obligation to give humans free will.
Many Christians don’t like to think about that aspect of their faith. It would require them to have a much more intense and personal relationship with their God than they are comfortable with. Easier to believe he’s just a slightly senile, doting grandpa who defines love as “never having to say you’re sorry”. Or even to say anything at all.
This seems harsh. But it is basic Christianity. It was what Robertson was, however clumsily, trying to get across. (If you choose to walk away from a body guard on your own, bad things may well happen—but don’t blame the guard.) Biblically, Pat Robertson was not entirely wrong about Haiti, even if he got the wrong Napoleon.
God always weeps for those who die; sometimes he cannot help them.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Haiti--A Harsh Christian Answer
When disaster and death strike, Christians often ask, “Where was God?” Isn’t Haiti, for instance, a Catholic (Christian) country? How could a loving God let such things happen? Christian clergy with Haitian congregations are being inundated by such questions now.
Pat Robertson has made himself an object of loathing and contempt for suggesting that part of Haiti’s problem may be an ancient compact with the devil himself. But anyone who is aware of the Judeo-Christian concept of God—as he is defined in Jewish (Old Testament) and Christian (New Testament) Bibles cannot dismiss Robertson’s statement out of hand.
Robertson may be out of line with modern Christians, but he is NOT out of line with Biblical Christianity. Christians only like to talk about half the things their Bible says about their God. The Biblical God defines himself as a “jealous God”—and as a God who has deliberately limited his own freedom to act in order to protect the right of humans to make choices.
God is portrayed as proprietary. He made humans. He describes his church as his “bride” and the Israelites as his people. In both instances he compares those who worship anything other than himself as adulterers, as cheating spouses, and sometimes he is blunt enough to call them “whores”. He takes a dim view of infidelity.
On the other hand, he has made a contractual agreement with humans. He made them to have some- one to talk to. He gave them the recreated earth to live in and on. It was humankind’s. Adam was to “dress, till and keep it”.
According to the Bible, Adam chose to violate that compact. He had the freedom to do so—to wrest earth from the protective hand of his God and give it to God’s great and ancient enemy, the devil. In turn, God stepped back and honored the new contract. (I present this as basic Christian theology, not as scientific reality.) He continued to love what he had created, but under the contract mankind had made with the devil thousands of years ago, God set limits upon himself.
For a brilliantly clear explanation of this, I refer anyone to either the book or the film, “Lion, Witch and Wardrobe”. Aslan (Christ) keeps his contract with the Witch (devil). She has ownership over that which she has claimed.
Many Christians prefer to talk about a God who “is love”. He is, but he is also a God who keeps whatever contract he has made. Or whatever contract man has chosen to make. There is a significant rub when you are referring to Haiti.
Christians don’t like to talk about that part of their theology. They prefer the novel’s definition of love as being—“never having to say you’re sorry”. That’s not the love of God as defined in both Christian and Jewish scriptures. The Biblical God loves—but he allows you the freedom to screw up. Do it often and willfully enough and he also punishes.
A core tenet of Christianity is allowing you screw up royally—having you say, “I’m sorry”—and then trying very hard not to do it again.
Punishment often consists of nothing more than having the consequences of your actions come home to roost. (Rather like a drunk who chooses to drive and wipes out his entire family. He cannot validly ask, “Where was God?” “If he’s so loving, why is my wife dead?”)
Whether Haitians actually made some sort of “pact with the devil” back in the 1790s is actually irrelevant. (Adam did that for them and for us all long before). No one question the fact that Haiti is and has been a nation (as they admit) that is “100% Catholic—Christian—and 90% Voodoo”. In the eyes of the Christian God that is infidelity, pure and simple. (Ask Tiger Woods’ wife what she thinks of a situation like this.)
Does this mean the Biblical God smacked Haiti with an earthquake? Probably not. He didn’t need to. Haiti is on a fault line—no doubt Haitians needed someone to PREVENT earthquakes. From a Biblical standpoint, they shook off their protector. They cheated on them. He stood back. Their Voodoo gods had neither interest nor power to protect.
Let’s talk tomorrow about the Christian God when he is UNABLE to help.
Pat Robertson has made himself an object of loathing and contempt for suggesting that part of Haiti’s problem may be an ancient compact with the devil himself. But anyone who is aware of the Judeo-Christian concept of God—as he is defined in Jewish (Old Testament) and Christian (New Testament) Bibles cannot dismiss Robertson’s statement out of hand.
Robertson may be out of line with modern Christians, but he is NOT out of line with Biblical Christianity. Christians only like to talk about half the things their Bible says about their God. The Biblical God defines himself as a “jealous God”—and as a God who has deliberately limited his own freedom to act in order to protect the right of humans to make choices.
God is portrayed as proprietary. He made humans. He describes his church as his “bride” and the Israelites as his people. In both instances he compares those who worship anything other than himself as adulterers, as cheating spouses, and sometimes he is blunt enough to call them “whores”. He takes a dim view of infidelity.
On the other hand, he has made a contractual agreement with humans. He made them to have some- one to talk to. He gave them the recreated earth to live in and on. It was humankind’s. Adam was to “dress, till and keep it”.
According to the Bible, Adam chose to violate that compact. He had the freedom to do so—to wrest earth from the protective hand of his God and give it to God’s great and ancient enemy, the devil. In turn, God stepped back and honored the new contract. (I present this as basic Christian theology, not as scientific reality.) He continued to love what he had created, but under the contract mankind had made with the devil thousands of years ago, God set limits upon himself.
For a brilliantly clear explanation of this, I refer anyone to either the book or the film, “Lion, Witch and Wardrobe”. Aslan (Christ) keeps his contract with the Witch (devil). She has ownership over that which she has claimed.
Many Christians prefer to talk about a God who “is love”. He is, but he is also a God who keeps whatever contract he has made. Or whatever contract man has chosen to make. There is a significant rub when you are referring to Haiti.
Christians don’t like to talk about that part of their theology. They prefer the novel’s definition of love as being—“never having to say you’re sorry”. That’s not the love of God as defined in both Christian and Jewish scriptures. The Biblical God loves—but he allows you the freedom to screw up. Do it often and willfully enough and he also punishes.
A core tenet of Christianity is allowing you screw up royally—having you say, “I’m sorry”—and then trying very hard not to do it again.
Punishment often consists of nothing more than having the consequences of your actions come home to roost. (Rather like a drunk who chooses to drive and wipes out his entire family. He cannot validly ask, “Where was God?” “If he’s so loving, why is my wife dead?”)
Whether Haitians actually made some sort of “pact with the devil” back in the 1790s is actually irrelevant. (Adam did that for them and for us all long before). No one question the fact that Haiti is and has been a nation (as they admit) that is “100% Catholic—Christian—and 90% Voodoo”. In the eyes of the Christian God that is infidelity, pure and simple. (Ask Tiger Woods’ wife what she thinks of a situation like this.)
Does this mean the Biblical God smacked Haiti with an earthquake? Probably not. He didn’t need to. Haiti is on a fault line—no doubt Haitians needed someone to PREVENT earthquakes. From a Biblical standpoint, they shook off their protector. They cheated on them. He stood back. Their Voodoo gods had neither interest nor power to protect.
Let’s talk tomorrow about the Christian God when he is UNABLE to help.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Haiti--The Maelstrom
So graphic was Haiti’s economic collapse, its unending race hatreds, and its grinding poverty, one can understand how a Pat Robertson—working from a religious point of view—could suggest that these multiple disasters must have risen out of some pact with the devil.
It may have seemed that way to many Haitians. On the other hand, American troops must have seemed like a blessing. American army engineers built almost 200 bridges, hundreds of miles of roads, schools and public buildings. No Europeans were allowed to forcibly collect on debts.
Agriculture became viable. Sugar, cotton and other crops were making money again. The Americans settled several boundary issues with the Dominican Republic—the larger half of the island. Land was given back to Haiti.
Then, in 1934, President Roosevelt gave Haiti a new constitution and pulled the troops out. Angry Dominicans struck back, retaking their old borders. As many as 20,000 Haitians were slaughtered in less than a week.
Two more coups, a resignation in the face of a general strike and finally came the election of 1957. Francoise Duvalier, who instituted one of the most racist regimes ever seen on earth, was voted in as president.
“Papa Doc”, as he was known, was from the lowest class in Haiti—the former slaves, the black underclass. He came with—and violently represented—all of the hatred Haitian blacks felt for the “gentlemen of color”—the Creoles, the Mulattoes.
He and his private army of bully boys—the Ton ton Macoutes—set out to either kill or drive the Mulatto class out of Haiti. Thousands of Haiti’s most educated citizens fled to places like the newly free French colonies in Africa where their expertise could be of benefit and they could make a living.
(Back in 1961, I had a good friend in New York City who worked as an executive for a large retailer. He was a refugee from Papa Doc who took his abilities and education with him. His family had been among the Haitian elite. His sin was his light color. He was often amused at the racial prejudice he faced in New York because of his DARK color, especially being married to a Parisian.)
Papa’s son, “Bebe Doc”, succeeded Papa in 1971 and continued the anti-mulatto program until he was thrown out in 1986. He took refuse, ironically, not in Africa among his fellow blacks—but in Paris. A new constitution was put in place the next year.
Elections scheduled for 1987 didn’t happen because the Ton ton Macoutes, aided by the Haitian army, shot dozens of people around the country. Bereft of much of its educated class, the nation sank further into chaos.
Finally the American military stepped in in 1994—to restore a very corrupt Jean Bertrand Aristide to power. He abolished the Haitian army and, by 2000, he was rigging elections and using his new “police force” to intimidate the opposition.
This time a United Nations peace keeping force stepped in to create and maintain order of some sort. They stayed until their headquarters fell down around their ears in the recent earthquake.
You are left with a desperately poor nation, dominated by descendents of ex-slaves who never had proper opportunity for education or improvement. The educated class has been driven out. The military does not exist. Infrastructure has been allowed to decay for the past seventy-five years. There is no real economy.
One can almost ask, what is there to rebuild? We may have to start from the very beginning—and do all of the educating and building that should have been done back in 1804. That’s what we face in Haiti. Sending in the Red Cross for a few months isn’t going to fix it. It will take far more than the Corps of Engineers. More tomorrow.
It may have seemed that way to many Haitians. On the other hand, American troops must have seemed like a blessing. American army engineers built almost 200 bridges, hundreds of miles of roads, schools and public buildings. No Europeans were allowed to forcibly collect on debts.
Agriculture became viable. Sugar, cotton and other crops were making money again. The Americans settled several boundary issues with the Dominican Republic—the larger half of the island. Land was given back to Haiti.
Then, in 1934, President Roosevelt gave Haiti a new constitution and pulled the troops out. Angry Dominicans struck back, retaking their old borders. As many as 20,000 Haitians were slaughtered in less than a week.
Two more coups, a resignation in the face of a general strike and finally came the election of 1957. Francoise Duvalier, who instituted one of the most racist regimes ever seen on earth, was voted in as president.
“Papa Doc”, as he was known, was from the lowest class in Haiti—the former slaves, the black underclass. He came with—and violently represented—all of the hatred Haitian blacks felt for the “gentlemen of color”—the Creoles, the Mulattoes.
He and his private army of bully boys—the Ton ton Macoutes—set out to either kill or drive the Mulatto class out of Haiti. Thousands of Haiti’s most educated citizens fled to places like the newly free French colonies in Africa where their expertise could be of benefit and they could make a living.
(Back in 1961, I had a good friend in New York City who worked as an executive for a large retailer. He was a refugee from Papa Doc who took his abilities and education with him. His family had been among the Haitian elite. His sin was his light color. He was often amused at the racial prejudice he faced in New York because of his DARK color, especially being married to a Parisian.)
Papa’s son, “Bebe Doc”, succeeded Papa in 1971 and continued the anti-mulatto program until he was thrown out in 1986. He took refuse, ironically, not in Africa among his fellow blacks—but in Paris. A new constitution was put in place the next year.
Elections scheduled for 1987 didn’t happen because the Ton ton Macoutes, aided by the Haitian army, shot dozens of people around the country. Bereft of much of its educated class, the nation sank further into chaos.
Finally the American military stepped in in 1994—to restore a very corrupt Jean Bertrand Aristide to power. He abolished the Haitian army and, by 2000, he was rigging elections and using his new “police force” to intimidate the opposition.
This time a United Nations peace keeping force stepped in to create and maintain order of some sort. They stayed until their headquarters fell down around their ears in the recent earthquake.
You are left with a desperately poor nation, dominated by descendents of ex-slaves who never had proper opportunity for education or improvement. The educated class has been driven out. The military does not exist. Infrastructure has been allowed to decay for the past seventy-five years. There is no real economy.
One can almost ask, what is there to rebuild? We may have to start from the very beginning—and do all of the educating and building that should have been done back in 1804. That’s what we face in Haiti. Sending in the Red Cross for a few months isn’t going to fix it. It will take far more than the Corps of Engineers. More tomorrow.
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