June 21, 2002

Cal Thomas makes a case

Cal Thomas makes a case for banning Saudi-funded and -trained Wahabbist imams from US prisons:

Inmates of whatever faith, or of no faith, are entitled to visits by lay or professional ministers. But Supreme Court rulings grant the prison system the right to determine who might undermine order and who best preserves it. Wardens in state prisons and officials in the Federal Bureau of Prisons should issue new guidelines and bar radical Islamists.

While the government is at it, a serious investigation should be conducted into the proliferation of Islamic front groups in this country. Influential American political activists are rumored to be taking money from Islamic states and seeking to shape U.S. foreign and domestic policies that may not be in the best interests of their own country. They should also be the focus of journalistic concern.

Posted by Dr. Frank at June 21, 2002 11:34 AM | TrackBack
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Have Yourself A Cal Thomas Christmas
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota

I have always thought that there is really nothing worse than a lawless cop or a pedophile priest or an unethical physician or an incompetent teacher or a corrupt politician or a greedy, self-righteous businessman - because these are the people who do it all for you and me in the name of everything good, e.g., good law enforcement, good spiritual groundings, good medical care, good education, good government and good business.

These are the people with their arm around your shoulder and their hand down in your pants. These are the people who screw over "the People" and their common values in their own self-interest. These are the people who have denigrated Jefferson's Democracy and commercialized Christmas beyond recognition. These are the "false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matthew, VII, 15)."

Cal Thomas, a favorite columnist of conservative fundamentalists, has recently taken to reminiscing about the ''old Christmas'' while deploring the crass consumerism that largely characterizes the Christmas season of today (Keeping Christmas, Dec. 1, 2003, www.townhall.com). Cal has even concluded that the "great story" of Christian compassion and love for one's fellow man "has been hijacked and transformed into its opposite ... I have come to detest the masquerade that does not even pretend to be what it was when I was growing up."

This is a powerful indictment coming from a religiously-conservative thinker. It is also a self-evident truism to most sighted people in the western world, i.e., that virtually all of the original meaning beneath the birth of Christ has been perverted into a monument to mammon, the antithesis of nascent Christian belief.

The entire hypocrisy exemplifies Sherwood Anderson's "Theory of Grotesques," in which one value (e.g., giving) is taken to such an extreme that it achieves precisely the opposite of its original intent. We are so into "giving" for the sake of "Christian" giving, we end up spending enormous amounts of money and giving very little that is lasting. Even worse, we seem to no longer know what constitutes a heartfelt, lasting gift. Cal Thomas has precisely defined the symptoms of a problem known to all, but a problem which has the American people completely befuddled in terms of the causes of it all.

Every year since since World War II, when capitalism achieved both liberal and conservative dominion, the "traditional" Christmas shopping season has been moved up, from after Thanksgiving to after Halloween. Every year, consumerism has changed Christmas giving from thoughtful, time-laden gifts to WalMart stock items. Every year, capitalism, with its notion that the "marketplace" ought define everything from education to medicine to spirituality, has usurped the meaning from more and more people's lives.

Every year it has become increasingly impossible for family farms and ranches to compete, for family businesses to compete, and for small communities to survive. Every year it has become increasingly impossible for working people to support their families. The end result of 50 years of capitalistic dominion is the largest gap between the rich and poor in human history, a world in which it takes two working people and three jobs to accomplish what one person could accomplish with one job in 1950 (Dr. Robert Bowman, True State of the Union, www.rmbowman.com/bowman2000/stateofunion2003.htm).
Capitalism, of course, has never had any particular respect for the People, seeing them more as an expendable resource. But, it has done a marvelous job taking care of itself, from the early days of the "military-industrial complex" to the wonders of Enron and Halliburton, the utility of "influence-for-a-fee" government, and the glory of right wing political dominion. It has indeed been a "hijacking," right before Cal's eyes by Cal's own kind of people, unseen only because Cal is not a "doubting Thomas."

How is it, as a would-be Christian, that Cal is content to lament the "old Christmas" and the loss of meaning without bothering at all to concern himself with causation? One must presume that the western commercialization of Christmas is the will of Cal's JudeoRoman god. As such, Cal need not worry about causation because it is out of his hands. Yet, in his lack of doubt, Cal misses what most religious people miss and what seems so clear to most everyone else, that greed-driven crony capitalism and consumerism have been integral to the "hijacking" of Cal's "old Christmas."

It is truly a marvel that the religious mind can be so distraught over the perversion of the Christian story (compassion) and yet so loyal to religion (vengeance, self-righteousness) as to be absolutely blind to the shortcomings of JudeoRoman religion and its evolutionary role in Roman imperialism, Catholic and Protestant colonialism and Republican crony capitalism.

Unbeknownst to Cal Thomas, Jefferson and Franklin made (in the Deist tradition) a complete distinction between nascent Christianity and JudeoRomanism, the former a living philosophy, the latter just another wretched Old Testament religion. They both wished to eliminate the mutually-exclusive moralities (what will it be today, vengeance or compassion?) that had, by their time, legitimized self-righteous conquest in the name of Christ. They both wished to restrict JudeoRoman supernaturalism to the home front alone and to eliminate its despotic influence on a government ostensibly "of, by and for" the People. To this end, they argued for the separation of church and state and Jefferson, with a bit of help from Franklin, incorporated nascent Christian values (human rights) directly into the Declaration, where these truths were declared not to be sacred but to be "self-evident."

The blind irony is that Cal Thomas, by virtue of his religious capitalism, has been himself integral to the destruction of the "old Christmas" which he misses so much. But, there is still hope for Cal and for all of us. It begins by ignoring that which is "revealed" by others and paying more attention to that which is self-evident and before everyone's eyes.

The most blessed wish of all for this Christmas season is that the People would see that which is self-evident, that they would think for themselves and be their own judge of other's judgements. That is all the first Christian ever asked, so sure he was that we would find him inside ourselves. That is all Thomas Jefferson ever asked, that we think for ourselves ... in Christ's name and for Christ's sake.

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Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Keystone, South Dakota in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. His primary interest is the development of a rigorously-definable global philosophy and ethics suitable for a global democracy. His recent book, "Jefferson's Eyes," can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.

Posted by: Dr. Gerry Lower at December 12, 2003 11:20 PM