The Bosque Boys

Didn't we all see this coming?

On Monday evening, I encouraged GOP opinion makers to "be lucid, rational, and polite." I exhorted us to "use this episode as a teaching moment" and implored our public figures to "avoid unhinged diatribes” and “outlandish horrors."

Wasted breath. Here we are: red-faced and frustrated, forced to walk back from a haphazard and mean-spirited frenzy of wild accusations against a woman who will surely be the first Hispanic female on the Supreme Court of the United States. And for what? Ironically, once installed, we will likely find Justice Sonia Sotomayor fairly forgettable and insignificant.

How did this happen?

We thought we were settling a score. We desperately wanted to give the Democrats a taste of their own medicine.

Did we have a point? Sure. For years, the opposition pursued a single-minded obsession to obstruct (and destroy) Republican judicial appointees. In fact, as a result of their unprecedented disregard for decorum and fair play demonstrated during the 1987 Robert Bork hearings, a new verb entered the political lexicon.

Am I talking about a few isolated wingnuts? Not really. Bork could not have been "borked," and Clarence Thomas could not have been "lynched," without the compliant leadership of Joe Biden. Fast-forward two decades: President Obama served in the Upper Chamber for only one year before he threw his hat in the ring for a bigger prize--but he was in Washington long enough to speak out and vote against two impeccably qualified conservative nominees for the Court.

Do the Democrats just have it in for dorky white guys? Not really. Ask Clarence Thomas how much the opposition cared about his American Dream. As many commentators have pointed out, we had an amazing Latino nominee of our own, whom the Democrats destroyed simply because they could.

But here is the difference: that was then; this is now.

We say: we are only playing by the rules the other team insisted upon. Look what they did to Miguel Estrada.

They say: huh? what? who?

It is pretty simple. The mainstream media often cheered on the vile attacks against Republican nominees. When they weren't piling on, they were giving the Democrats a pass on their worst excesses. Therefore, while you can drag up a few moldy news items, there is virtually no agreed-upon public memory of the despicable behavior conservatives remember so well. For most citizens, Ted Kennedy's notorious speech about "Robert Bork's America" is as distant and irrelevant as a Daniel Webster Fourth of July oration.

In essence, "we got punked." Without any context, the breathless and hastily constructed pursuit of Sotomayor appears completely lacking in civility (which it is). If viewed through the lens of our own trauma, our pathetic blindness might be more sympathetic—but so it goes. No matter, regardless of our continuing maltreatment at the hands our persecutors, remember that our attacks REALLY ARE way out of line. Even worse, our street-fight strategy represents a gutter level of discourse that we have properly railed against for decades now. We should live up to our own standards—not adopt those that we know to be unworthy. We REALLY ARE wrong to engage in this low-level character assassination.

So, in the end, regardless of who started it, our current behavior rightly engenders revulsion. While it may not seem fair in light of the recent past, in the sense that our conduct actually merits censure, we REALLY ARE reaping a just denunciation.

Live and learn.

All across the country, but especially in the South, people will gather weekly or monthly to sing "sacred harp" songs. These songs are a capella, four-part harmony, using "shape notes" rather than modern transcription, and are a living tradition going back to the early years of our nation.

Here is the official website of the Sacred Harp Heritage Association, that has description, history, and other information, including locations of "singings" that anyone can participate in.

Some examples of Sacred Harp singing:

What Wondrous Love Is This, from a singing in Columbia, Missouri. Sound quality if amateur, but a good introduction. Notice that the singers begin by going through the tune fa so la, etc. Sacred Harp schools were held on the frontier in the 19th century and within a week could produce high quality choral singing from whatever group of pioneers were gathered. Rather than being taught conventionallly, the men and women were taught to associate notes with pitch using the do, ra, mi, etc

From Birmingham, Alabama.

This is an "internet ad" promoting a singing in Newbury, Vermont.

From the Cold Mountain movie soundtrack, better sound quality obviously.

Perhaps you've heard about the pharmacist who shot the robber up the road here in Oklahoma City. Story here.

Confronted by two holdup men, pharmacist Jerome Ersland pulled a gun, shot one of them in the head and chased the other away. Then, in a scene recorded by the drugstore's security camera, he went behind the counter, got another gun, and pumped five more bullets into the wounded teenager as he lay on the floor.

The store is in a bad neighborhood, and had been robbed before.

The pharmacist has been charged with first-degree murder. Lots of folks are praising him, though, and giving money to his defense fund.

The charges were filed because he shot the robber five more times after getting another gun, while the young man was lying on the floor.

My thoughts: his first actions were justified, but he went too far when he fired the second-round of shots. However, first-degree murder seems too harsh. A massive rush of adrenaline in the context of fearing for your life can give a person a sort of "tunnel vision," a locked and intense focus akin to an experience of autism.

This man is a civilian, who had to be on edge working in a store that had been robbed before, had just had his life threatened, and was reacting primally. Reduce the charges.

Stupid quote of the story: "He didn't have to shoot my baby like that," Parker's mother, Cleta Jennings, told TV station KOCO. Your "baby" attempted an armed robbery; better his funeral than his victim's.

Worth reading are the essays by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (PCUSA). Website here.

Especially helpful is his destruction of the argumentation of those who seek to set aside St. Paul's obvious meaning in Romans 1.

Christianity Today, the Books & Culture section, has an interesting and enlightening panel discussion of James Elkins' On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Elkins is the E. C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Panelists who responded to his book are Bruce Herman of Gordon College, James Romaine of Bethel University, Bruce Ellis Benson of Wheaton College, and Theodore Prescott of Messiah College.

Elkins was prompted to write this book by

his experience as one of four jurors for the 1990 exhibition "Revelations: Artists Look at Religions." It was a big show with several famous artists in it, including Andres Serrano, the maker of Piss Christ. But the jurors also had to slog through hundreds of submissions, looking at slides, reading statements, and scanning résumés. It was a daunting, numbing job. One submission caught their attention, and they were ready to accept it until they learned the artist was a nun, and her work, which the jurors had found quirky, was her vision of heaven. "Oh God," moaned one of the jurors, and they voted it down. Elkins was the only one to vote for it: "I wanted to accept it because it was religious, and religion was supposedly our theme."

This experience started Elkins thinking about "the exclusion of religious meaning in contemporary art,"

This panel discussion provides a good starting point for reflection on the world of contemporary academic art discourse, and on the larger problem of modern aesthetics.

A Waco Farmer votes "Aye."

Why?

[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint...judges of the Supreme Court....

Presidential elections matter. The Constitution, which we hold so dear, lays all this out quite clearly. The people elect a president, and he nominates justices to the Supreme Court. The Senate has a say--but, barring extraordinary circumstances, this is manifestly a presidential prerogative.

Enough said.

That is not how the Democrats play it!?!

Not the point. Our job is to abide by the obvious intent of the framers. The egregious partisan antics employed by the opposition over the past twenty-five years has done great damage to the judiciary. The fruits of their unforgivable political vandalism provide a stark lesson on why we should do the right thing--not a license to respond in kind.

Elections matter. Choke it down and go on. Losing should hurt.

How disastrous is this pick, really? Relax.
This is not the death knell of the Republic.

Sotomayor does not change the game. Right now right-wing bloggers and talkers are breathlessly painting her as an incompetent radical. This is most likely a wild exaggeration. But, even if it is spot on, so what? Does anyone really think her voting record will be that much different from David Souter's.

Best Case Scenario: she is just another liberal jurist in the mold of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. You win some; you lose some.

Worse Case Scenario: if by chance, she does turn out to be a wild-eyed racist radical, she will be an embarrassment to the Obama administration--and, more importantly, a crucial rallying point for the coming Republican resurgence. The public will not appreciate a fanatical loudmouth throwing her weight around on the Court. Trust me. If she is half as bad as Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin claim she is, this the best thing that has happened to us politically in 121 days.

Relax. Make your case. Be lucid, rational, and polite. Use this episode as a teaching moment. But avoid unhinged diatribes in which we predict a whole slew of outlandish horrors that are very unlikely to come to pass (at least not on a timetable rapid enough to provide vindication).

Here is the pdf document for HRes 397, that would establish the first week in May as Spiritual Heritage Week. Link from Layman Online.

I don't know that this resolution would change much, but it could provoke a good discussion. At a minimum, the Resolution itself demonstrates that ours was not founded as a secular society. Here is the beginning of HRes 397.

Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `America's Spiritual Heritage Week' for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith.

Whereas religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization, and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated into all 3 branches of the Federal Government from their very beginning;

Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed this self-evident fact in a unanimous ruling declaring `This is a religious people . . . From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation';

Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible;

Whereas the first act of America's first Congress in 1774 was to ask a minister to open with prayer and to lead Congress in the reading of 4 chapters of the Bible;

Whereas Congress regularly attended church and Divine service together en masse;

Whereas throughout the American Founding, Congress frequently appropriated money for missionaries and for religious instruction, a practice that Congress repeated for decades after the passage of the Constitution and the First Amendment;

Whereas in 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence with its 4 direct religious acknowledgments referring to God as the Creator (`All people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'), the Lawgiver (`the laws of nature and nature's God'), the Judge (`appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world'), and the Protector (`with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence');

Whereas upon approving the Declaration of Independence, John Adams declared that the Fourth of July `ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty';

Whereas 4 days after approving the Declaration, the Liberty Bell was rung;

Whereas the Liberty Bell was named for the Biblical inscription from Leviticus 25:10 emblazoned around it: `Proclaim liberty throughoutthe land, to all the inhabitants thereof';

Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of `Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches,' announced that they `desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement' and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported `into the different ports of the States of the Union';
. . .

The Resolution now has 61 cosponsors, and has been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Here is the Library of Congress Thomas site for more information.

The Pew Forum examines this question through a Q & A with Ira “Chip” Lupu, the F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School, and Robert W. Tuttle, the David R. and Sherry Kirschner Berz Research Professor of Law and Religion, The George Washington University Law School.

There are reasons to be concerned. Can religious organizations, e.g. hospitals and colleges, be forced to hire, and to provide benefits, for those in same-sex marriage? Can churches refuse to host same-sex marriages on their property, including campgrounds? The article notes that concerns such as these have caused

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch (D) to say he would sign legislation legalizing gay marriage in that state only if lawmakers add provisions giving religious organizations the right not to recognize such marriages. Another possible flash point involves private individuals and businesses that, for religious reasons, do not want to provide wedding-related or other services to same-sex couples.

A Clash of Rights? Gay Marriage and the Free Exercise of Religion

As one of the participants notes, so far the courts have addressed the relationship of governments to same-sex marriage. The relationship of religious institutions to same-sex marriage has yet to be tested.

The travelogue continues. For previous entries Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

South of Burnet is Marble Falls. One of the most beautiful towns in central Texas--rocky hills and a lake--with some of the worst traffic in Texas, apparently because getting anywhere in town means using U.S. 281, putting the locals and those just passing through onto the same pavement. The lake resulted from the damming of the Colorado River (of Texas), which covered the Falls that had given the city its name. Can't have everything. Perhaps the town best should be known as having elected the first woman mayor in the United States in 1917 when the voters were all men.

The small community of Round Mountain is off the highway, but along 281 is a truckstop that a sign proclaims to be municipally owned. While I don't think that the Federal Government owning GM or Chrysler is a good idea, I'm OK with communities choosing to operate businesses within the larger structure of regulated Capitalism.

Above the Pedernales River sits Johnson City, hometown of Lyndon Baines Johnson. The town was named for a relative of LBJ, one James Polk Johnson. The LBJ boyhood home is now an historic site maintained by the National Park Service. It was a Texas-sized ambition of LBJ's to eliminate poverty in the U.S. The Great Society did not turn out as planned, and probably could not have under any circumstance. Dependency on the Federal government, like any dependency, tends toward dystopia, no matter how noble the initial vision.

The next town south is Blanco, along the Blanco River. To the traveler, the town looks like a tourist jumping-off point for fun in the Hill Country, especially tubing the rivers.

San Antonio. Germans, Hispanics, the Alamo, the Riverwalk, the Spurs. And Trinity University, the goal of our trip, to see our youngest graduate (with honors I might add). A fun town. A big city. And I can't help but wonder how its residents will have enough water in the 21st century. San Antonio is perhaps the easternmost of the major cities in the U.S. such as Phoenix, where population growth seems destined to outrun the water supply. We Americans have operated on the assumption that we can always bend nature to our desires through our technology. The Greeks had a word for this attitude--hubris. Every so often the Mississippi, or a hurricane, reminds us 'tain't necessarily so. Drinking water may be our future lesson in humility.

Muslims attack Hare Krisna center in Bangladesh. Must be grievances over the Crusades, or maybe Hare Krisna support for Israel.

Muslims in the Palestianian Authority desecrate Christian graves. Must have been self-defence, or maybe the dead provoked the peaceful Muslims.

Copts continue to be harassed in Egypt. Must be the usual tensions between a new immigrant community and the established society. No wait, the Copts were in Egypt before Mohammad.

Remember, the one using the terms must define their meaning. When Muslims call Islam The Religion of Peace, they mean the "peace" of submission. If you refuse to submit, things are not so peaceful.