Would Newt return our lost colony?

The BBC's Mark Mardell asks this question in an intriguing post related to Gingrich's remarks that President Obama can only be understand through the prism of Kenyan anti-colonialism.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  If it's bad, does it mean that the former history professor who once wrote somewhat wistfully of the Belgian colonial experience in the Congo (an experience so brutal that another observer Joseph Conrad turned into the novel Heart of Darkness).

Is Newt Gingrich a Closet Jihadist?

Is Newt Gingrich a Closet Jihadist?

Mark Vakkur, M.D.
9/22/10

Before dismissing that question, consider the following:

While playing Grand Inquisitor against President Bill Clinton for having an affair, Gingrich now admits he was cheating on wife #2, Marianne Ginther (who he married after cheating on wife #1).   Unlike Clinton's fling with Monica Lewinsky, Gingrich's affair with Congressional aide Callista Bisek, 23 years his junior, destroyed his marriage (Callista and Newt are now married, at least for now; give it time though - they have been married only since 2000 and Gingrich's pattern seems to be a marriage-ending affair every 10-15 years).

So, if history is any guide, then the man who was so publicly outraged about adultery but was privately engaging in it who is now so publicly outraged by the threat of radical Islam may be secretly embracing it.   Gingrich's rants against radical Islam may be a signal that  he has privately converted.   

It would not be the first time Gingrich has made a religious conversion after all.  Raised a Southern Baptist, the party that once condemned the Pope as an anti-Christ (the disproportionately Southern Baptist KKK was as anti-Catholic as it was anti-black and anti-Jewish), he converted to Catholicism in 2009.   To outsiders this may seem like a small change among interchangeable denominations of a shared Christian faith, but not to anyone privy to the ugly politics of the Jim Crow south where Gingrich spent his formative years.  He  graduated high school in segregated Columbus, Georgia, 2 years before Martin Luther King was to give his "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, and the better part of a decade from implementation of the historic civil rights legislation passed by a process of judicial activism Gingrich later condemned as overreaching.  

So a man who condemns adultery but commits it and who has a history of being flexible when necessary (his conversion to Catholicism was apparently to please his wife) might now be praying in the direction of Mecca five times a day.  

Not that I have anything against that, but then again, I am not Newt Gingrich, who seems to be doing his best to make Islam the new Red Menace.  He describes a vast left wing Islamic conspiracy (left wing because of course Democrats, the same ones who he once claimed would inspire mothers to drown their children if elected, appease closet jihadists).  I did not realize it, but by embracing secularism and separation of church and state, I am actually helping Islamic fundamentalists impose Sharia Law on unsuspecting Americans.  

Frankly, when Newt first told me what I was really doing without knowing it, I thought it sounded like his latest attention-grabbing gimmick to differentiate himself from the right wing pack (if you really fear Islam, vote for me, that sort of thing).  But as I considered the possibility of Gingrich's conversion to Islam, I realized he might be far more intelligent than I imagined. 

This is a twist so deep and drenched in irony it just might be true.  Imagine a plot to implant radical Islam in America spearheaded by a cranky white man who alleges to hate Muslims!  Brilliant. 

Of course, many will say that this is nonsensical, that baseless accusations that a public figure is Muslim (as though being a Muslim is a crime) require proof, or that making these charges against all contradictory evidence is irresponsible.  To which I have to agree except that the right wing of the American right - Gingrich's base - continues to make identical speculations about the winning candidate in the last presidential election cycle.  Am I then not free to make a similar charge against one of the losers (of the campaign that is)?

There is at least as much evidence that Newt is a closet Muslim as there is that President Obama is.  Newt is, as his political allies once said of Valerie Plame Wilson, fair game.

So now Newt Gingrich, whose serial adultery became Exhibit A as to why those who proclaim their personal honor the loudest are most likely to steal your family silver (to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson), tells us he sees religious extremists under every school desk.   Eugene Robinson points out in a recent editorial in the Washington Post "there is no left-of-center movement dedicated to fighting the steady, stealthy insinuation of sharia into America's legal system because no such thing is happening. Gingrich invents an enemy and then demands to know why others haven't sallied forth to slay it."

Or does he?  If Gingrich cries shrilly enough that the sharias are coming!  the sharias are coming! then when they really do.... ah, you see where this is going now.

Very deep, Mr. Gingrich.  Very deep.  We should all watch carefully to insure he does not order a matching set of prayer rugs from IKEA or avoid pork at the next fund-raising Tea Party Barbecue.  

Christianity and Sex: It's a Problem That Won't Just Go Away

The modern obsession with sexuality would have struck a contemporary of Jesus as odd, perhaps startling. He had some things to say about adultery, but never once mentioned homosexuality, for example, and good luck finding any clear and convincing reference to masturbation as a mortal sin, which the Catholic church still teaches. It might be surprising to some that Catholicism had no fixed teaching on contraception until recently and until the 13th century it was possible for priests to marry. In 1968, the commission appointed by Pope Paul VI initially found no reason a Catholic in good standing could not take the pill or use other forms of contraception, but that was not the answer Paul wanted to hear, so he fired those who favored the pill and voilá, Humanae Vitae was issued which split the church, with the hierarchy upholding the ban and the laity virtually ignoring it. (Karen Armstrong gives an excellent history of this period.) 
But I think regardless of the facts of the specific issues at hand, the method by which religions in general, especially those who are more concerned about orthodoxy (right thinking) not just orthopraxy (correct behavior), seek truth is deeply problematic. Galileo exemplifies this: a few passages of the Bible seemed to imply that we live in a geocentric universe. Until the discovery of the telescope, what the Greeks had actually known (and the Roman church forgot) could not be proven - that our system is actually heliocentric. So if you have a sacred text that stakes its claim on something that its authors could never imagine to be able to be proven or disproven, then what do you do when technology allows you to discover things with your own eyes that clearly are not accurately portrayed in that text, or collection of texts? The modern solution has been generally to shrug and say of course those texts were a product of their time and contain great wisdom in general even if some of the particulars are glaringly inaccurate (as Galileo asked, why would anyone turn to a text as an authority on a topic on which it is generally silent - why indeed?). But that approach is of course not good enough for fundamentalists of all stripes, and also for traditionalists, such as the Pope, who are confronted with overwhelming evidence that the way they have conceptualized the world is deeply flawed. The idea of renouncing your sexuality in some spiritual union with God does not seem a particularly reliable construct, and those who are compelled to take vows of celibacy seem empirically to include some who are deeply troubled, perhaps looking for refuge from forbidden impulses that torment them. Put those men together with a vulnerable population and disaster results. 
This is not to say that all who pursue celibacy or other forms of self-denial are all pedophiles or predators, only that one can't help wondering if allowing priests to marry and have a healthy, pro-life outlet for their natural, God-given sexuality might decrease or even eliminate the types of horrors that have occurred with numbing frequency in so many settings that have the same elements: demands for celibacy, exclusion of women, and an unyielding centralized chain of command where loyalty to superiors trumps loyalty to scientific or forensic reality. 
So I doubt cosmetic changes or another commission or tearful apology will do the trick. What is needed is a fundamental overhaul of how authority flows, which in a sense was what the Reformation was about, although Martin Luther and King Henry VIII had their own demons also, and Protestants showed our our side of the Atlantic that they could be as good at imagining witches and killing innocents as any Inquisitor. 
We know the earth is much older than Usher's 1650 estimate (he dated genesis to Oct 23, 4004 BC), in fact so much older that all of the history of our species would represent less than a fraction of a second of the earth's hour of time. We know leprosy is not particularly infectious and we believe that slavery is wrong and that adultery or cursing your parents should not be capital offenses. So the logical and moral gymnastics required for belief, certainly the type of authoritative belief and obedience demanded by Rome, are much greater today than ever which is why all churches, despite the recent evangelical flourish in the United States, are facing a very deep credibility crisis. How they negotiate that crisis will determine how and in what form they survive, but if educated people of good will are ever to take the pronouncements of an unelected group of celibate males seriously, they must first renounce the idea of infallibility (itself a modern doctrine promulgated by Pius IX in 1870) and admit they put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. Maybe even more so.

Ron Paul to Sunshine Patriots: Stop Your Demagogy About The NYC Mosque! | Ron Paul .com

Excellent article by Ron Paul, someone I rarely agree with:

The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we're supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems.

The nineteen suicide bombers didn't come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Fifteen came from our ally Saudi Arabia, a country that harbors strong American resentment, yet we invade and occupy Iraq where no al Qaeda existed prior to 9/11.

Prosecutors Charge White Man for Racially Motivated Shooting in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Democracy Now has a good series of articles into the lethal racism that swept through New Orleans following Katrina.  Unbelievable that this could still happen in the United States:  

'And I went to him, and I said, "What? Got one what?" And he said, "A looter." One of his friends comes running up the street and said, "You got one, but he ain't dead yet." And he proceeded to run, with no shoes on, around the corner, wherever this man was laying down. After, I asked him—I said, "Roland, you don't have to kill him. He's already down. Just leave him alone. He's going to die anyway. Just leave him alone." And he said, "I'm going to kill that nxxxxxx." And he went around that corner, and we heard the shot. I didn't see him shoot him, but I felt it.' 

Healthcare reform is needed now more than ever

The following is a recently submitted letter to the editor:


To the Editor:
I am a psychiatrist in private practice in Atlanta who saw every day how broken our for-profit healthcare system is. In fact, calling it a system is inaccurate; Americans are covered by a patchwork quilt of private and public providers, all interested in shifting cost to someone else. As a result, the patient loses. 
I cannot count the number of times I have faced a patient in distress because a for-profit insurance corporation refused to pay for needed care, or found some excuse to defer or deny payment for services rendered. I cannot count the number of bankruptcies I have witnessed, survivors of trauma, cancer, and heart attacks whose insurance companies fought them at every step of the way. Simple human decency is absent in such a system, staffed by layers of faceless bureaucrats who have never met my clients making decisions in an attempt to maximize corporate profits.
Since insurance is a zero-sum game, every dollar that goes to CEO bonuses represents a dollar that could have gone towards a medication, a hospitalization, a pap smear, or vaccination.  A country that allows 45,000 of its citizens to die for want of health insurance, according to a recent Harvard study, does not deserve to call itself civilized. Half of those without insurance are children. 90% of the uninsured families are employed.
The United States remains the only industrialized country that does not insure all of its citizens. Now, thanks to the misinformation of powerful interest groups posing as populists, we may retain that status indefinitely. Thank you, Tea Party organizers. Profits have trumped patients once again.
Insuring our children is no more of a moral option than feeding them. Almost half a million Americans, some of our most vulnerable citizens, have died needlessly since 9-11 but there is no equivalent war on uninsurance. We should all be ashamed.  There is a solution, actually several dozen, but all involve making universal healthcare a reality. We can pick and choose from the best plans worldwide. I do not believe that the bill now threatened with dilution to meaninglessness is a great bill, but it is a move in the right direction. 
Americans deserve access to their own healthcare system. No child should ever have to die simply because their parents worked for Enron or were between jobs when the cancer was diagnosed. History will judge us not by how much a privileged few made in corporate bonuses, but by how well we took care of the least among us. Failure is not an option. We need healthcare reform and we need it now. 
Sincerely, 
Mark Vakkur, MD

Clara Barton House Tour

Clara Barton House Tour

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1/2/10

-         notes based on an outstanding tour given by Park Ranger Kevin Patti

Clara Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1881.  She was raised in N. Oxford, 50 miles from Boston; she had been raised a Universalist Unitarian.  Her father passed down a tradition of service; he had been a captain in the Army and founded a local Universalist church in Oxford, Massachusetts.

She was the youngest of 5 children, with a gap of 10 years from the next youngest.  They taught her and she became a school teacher in Massachusetts at age 17.

At age 30, she wanted to do something more, so she decided to pursue a university education, something hard for women in those days.  She went to Clinton Liberal Institute in Clinton, NY, run by Universalists.

She then moved to New Jersey which unlike Massachusetts had only "subscription schools" (private schools).  She could see many children running around during school hours, their parents unable to afford the fees.

She was willing to teach for free, and offered her plans to start a public school.  Her first day she had 6 students, the next day she had 20, then finished her first week with 40.  Word spread and more teachers were hired and eventually a whole new school was built around this revolutionary idea she had introduced.

Unfortunately, they didn't believe a woman, even the one who came up with the idea, should serve as principal, so gave the job to a man, whom they paid twice her salary.  She stayed on for awhile, but eventually left and ended up in Washington.

She lived in Washington, working as one of the first female federal employees, when the Civil War broke out.

Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to help defend Washington.  One of the first units to respond was from her state of Massachusetts; the 6th Massachusetts journeyed south by train, but had to detrain at Baltimore, march through the town to take another train to Washington.  En route, they incited a riot and this represented the first blood spilled in the Civil War on 4/19/1861.

Washington was not actually ready to house and support the Army it had requested, so Clara Barton used her mailing address to receive supplies for the troops that she solicited from her native state; the supplies came pouring in.

She was never trained as a nurse, but did a lot of nursing activities.   She earned a reputation as the "Angel of the Battlefield" during the Civil War.

After the Civil War she was touring Europe when she visited Geneva and learned about the International Red Cross.  She returned to America to form the American Red Cross at age 60.

The two men who bought the land on which the home was to be built had made a fortune in the food business and wanted to build a retreat, a wooded oasis separate from the City of Washington.  They bought  an amphitheater.  You could take classes, paint, sew.  It was called Chautauqua #53; there were many in the country at the time, where people  could go to get Enlightenment; its motto was "culture and education for the masses."  Teddy Roosevelt called Chautauqua "the most American thing in America."

A trolly was built to get people  here in an hour from Washington.  They thought about families, giving them a place to stay.

In the 1920s, however, the Chautauqua system had become less popular.   There were some traveling Chautauqua; you could also learn through the mail, for example, a farmer who could continue his education without leaving his farm.

The oldest book club in America was started here.

They offered Clara Barton a building and land for free.   She chose the design of the shelters she had constructed during the Johnstown Flood.

The Johnstown Flood occurred on 5/31/1889 and killed 2,209 people.   It was the biggest flood in American history.   The young American Red Cross responded, building shelters with big open central areas that would let light in and hot air out.   They used the design of this building to build what became the Clara Barton House.   When it was originally built, it had a stone facade, which Clara Barton removed to make it less ornamental.  She installed paneled walls behind which were stored an array of materials for disaster relief.  She also wanted to make it a home for herself and her volunteers, whom she encouraged to live there in residence.

She was very frugal, so used what she had rather than spent a lot on things she didn't.  She had a surplus of cotton muslin dressing, so used this to line the ceilings and walls (it is still visible today).

Her office featured a paperweight that was a shattered cannon ball from Gettysburg (she was not at Gettysburg, actually, but at Antietam, but always wanted to remind herself of the reason she was doing what she was doing).  She also had a book on display that she had written:  Red Cross Peace and War.

Next door was a room in which her staff wrote.  Every desk had a typewriter with special ink that would not dry right away; the paper was taken to a letter press so that copies could be made.

everyone including her was a volunteer.  They received and to this day receive no federal funding.

Dr. Julian Hubbell was a physician with some architectural training who helped design the building and served as an early American Red Cross executive.

We saw the room in the front where guests who came "calling" (this was an era where only 3% of the country owned phones in 1900) could be entertained.

The home was the first permanent home of the American Red Cross, which Clara Barton led for 23 years.

Also served as the National Headquarters from 1897 to 1904.

There were 10 bedrooms for volunteers.

She never married or had children but had a nephew who would stay in an upstairs room when he visited.

The building was also a massive warehouse, filled with tools and supplies for the disaster relief work they did.

They had $3,000 downstairs in a vault in case a disaster struck on Sunday when  the banks were closed.

In 1900, a hurricane struck Galveston, and the disaster was responded to from this house; the American Red Cross was on the scene in 8 days.

The Spanish American War also was responded to from this house.

 In 1904, at age 82, she resigned; there was some pressure to do so since she was getting older and the new organization became more bureaucratic and progressive after she stepped down.

The house remained her home however, and she did more writing here.

She lived through 23 American presidents but could not vote for any.   (The 20th Amendment granting women the right to vote was not passed until 1919).

Clara Barton died on 4/12/1912, 3 days before the Titanic sank.

The house became a set of apartments from the 1930s to the 1970s, luckily preserved by a management respectful of its history; they even kept the original furniture, which the guests used.

In 1975, the first unit of the American Park Service to be dedicated to a woman.