The Prescribed Fourth of July Pap: It's a Wholesome American Tradition
Yesterday (July 3) the Los Angeles Times opinion page had four pieces all having something to do with the holiday season, this time of year when we are all supposed to give a cheer for that one thing that wraps us all up in red white and blue. (Got warm star-spangled fuzzies yet? Visions of ferocious Samual Adams orations dancing in your head?)
That thing is, of course, freedom.
Freedom? Are you kidding? That thing is
Tyranny.
Huh? Don't we all wave the little toy versions of the star and strips in the parade for not-tyranny? Anti-tyranny? Vomit-from-our-very-being-the-very-spittle-of-tyranny?
First from the LA Times there was Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford professor and someone who seems to be getting quite a bit of newspaper space these days. He bemoans U.S. imperialism, but has nothing new to offer about it. Essentially, "Come on, we just don't have to do the Iraq thing with every country. Here's what let's do instead..."
His four things, condensed a bit: One, see what we all have in common. Two, use the literature, philosophy, and history of non-Western culture to find those things we have in common. Three, note there is precedent for good things taking root in some unexpected places. And four, people like those things so let's show them to them.
Guh? This is it? Dance in front of people with good things and they'll be cool? Those good things, by the way, he says are, quote, "freedom, toleration, reciprocity, and accountable government." These are good things, but people don't flourish with the law schmushing them into their faces.
They do that when introduced to Jesus Christ. I don't think Ash shared that as a fifth option. All he knows is Cain and his seven-fold power to cram good wholesome things down people's throats.
Then there is regular Times columnist Rosa Brooks, a constitutional professor by trade, who in her piece decries our disdain for the rights protections inherent in the U.S. Constitution. Using the recent Supreme Court decision to offer some measure of due process to Guantanamo detainees as her pretext, she gushes that all people have rights-- a concept as treasonous today to those who think they only belong to U.S. citizens as it was to those when the document was written in 1787.
What Brooks doesn't get is that people need government to crack heads of those who lie, cheat, steal, murder and jerk others around thousands of different ways. She is guilty of the key flaw of Cicero, that there is actually any good commoner, the idea that poor simple exploited people by virtue of being poor simple exploited people are somehow exempt from government messing with their rights by doing something so abusive as incarcerate them if need be.
Sure many many have died for that document, but only because they believe their freedom comes from Cain. Cain's agency-- the political and military hegemony that is the United States-- does offer some freedom from a hostile enemy who these days is embodied by some nebulous ugly terrorist somewhere, but Christ offers freedom from something worse.
Ourselves.
Thank goodness there is a tyranny like the United States government to rein us in with the oppressive enforcement of the law (wave the flag now), until perhaps someone will see the body of death that it is and ask Christ to be in the Kingdom.
Thirdly there is other regular Times columnist Patt Morrison, who prides herself on her eccentric takes (to match her eccentric hats). She comments on George Orwell's 1984 as compared to the new Pixar film Wall-E. They are the same, she says, in that both get us to know what real freedom is in their own peculiar way. We can all be fat pampered slobs by way of sinister social control as in 1984, or we can all be fat pampered slobs by way of spiffy advanced technology as in Wall-E. Or we can be free from that by,
Free by what?
No, sorry, she doesn't mention that One Freedom-Maker. Quite predictable, really. She considers 1984's Winston Smith exuding everything that is in Wall-E's fat-slob captain's cry, "I don't want to survive--I want to live!" and then,
Leaves us hanging.
Finally there was a gem from Penn Jillette, part of the two-man comic-magic Vegas act, whose LA Times piece was a surprisingly humble polemic as to why he's just not quite yet buying into the global warming hysteria. His point: I just don't know yet, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Jillette generally is quite strident about those who claim to know, particularly about religious things. Forgive me if I don't have this exact, I'm drawing from what I've seen of him and his perspective in this piece, but it seems his take is, "I can't know there is a God." This is the typical agnostic position, which is funny because for someone who prides himself on being a skeptic he sures know a lot about God, namely that he cannot be known.
The agnostic may then retort, "I'm just saying that it is impossible for anyone to really know about God." Problem is, he then is making a dogmatic claim about someone else. Does he know about every single person and what they've experienced? Does he know that God has not spoken to any of them?
To his credit Jillette states in his piece that there are some things we can know for sure, and other things we can't. Great. The issue then is really what are we genuinely willing to learn and what are we going to reject out of hand because it doesn't fit with our World-ingrained world view.
Each of these writers is propounding a version of tyranny that keeps everyone feeling good about his or her World inhabitant status. Each has a Straw-Man Jesus they've concocted, and those Jesuses are really nothing new in pantheon of World Jesuses.
Ash's is the Jesus of Being Nice To Different People Of Other Cultures As The Way To Bring Peace No Matter How Much Force We Must Use To Do It. Brooks' is the Jesus of Making Sure We All Know What Our Constitutional Rights Are Damn It. Morrison's is the Jesus of Seeing What Fat Slobs We Can All Be If We Don't Go To The Movies To See What Fat Slobs We Would Be. And Jillette's is the Jesus of Being Proud Of Knowing What Things We Do Know And What Things We Don't Especially Those Things The World System Tells Us About.
Each one sputters that just by thinking about things in a fun witty (but by no means original) way we can kinda feel good about this sorta freedom thing we timidly wave our flags at during the town's Independence Day parade.
No wonder.
It's all just cultural tyranny anyway.
Long may she reign! (Insert vigorous flag-waving here)
That thing is, of course, freedom.
Freedom? Are you kidding? That thing is
Tyranny.
Huh? Don't we all wave the little toy versions of the star and strips in the parade for not-tyranny? Anti-tyranny? Vomit-from-our-very-being-the-very-spittle-of-tyranny?
First from the LA Times there was Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford professor and someone who seems to be getting quite a bit of newspaper space these days. He bemoans U.S. imperialism, but has nothing new to offer about it. Essentially, "Come on, we just don't have to do the Iraq thing with every country. Here's what let's do instead..."
His four things, condensed a bit: One, see what we all have in common. Two, use the literature, philosophy, and history of non-Western culture to find those things we have in common. Three, note there is precedent for good things taking root in some unexpected places. And four, people like those things so let's show them to them.
Guh? This is it? Dance in front of people with good things and they'll be cool? Those good things, by the way, he says are, quote, "freedom, toleration, reciprocity, and accountable government." These are good things, but people don't flourish with the law schmushing them into their faces.
They do that when introduced to Jesus Christ. I don't think Ash shared that as a fifth option. All he knows is Cain and his seven-fold power to cram good wholesome things down people's throats.
Then there is regular Times columnist Rosa Brooks, a constitutional professor by trade, who in her piece decries our disdain for the rights protections inherent in the U.S. Constitution. Using the recent Supreme Court decision to offer some measure of due process to Guantanamo detainees as her pretext, she gushes that all people have rights-- a concept as treasonous today to those who think they only belong to U.S. citizens as it was to those when the document was written in 1787.
What Brooks doesn't get is that people need government to crack heads of those who lie, cheat, steal, murder and jerk others around thousands of different ways. She is guilty of the key flaw of Cicero, that there is actually any good commoner, the idea that poor simple exploited people by virtue of being poor simple exploited people are somehow exempt from government messing with their rights by doing something so abusive as incarcerate them if need be.
Sure many many have died for that document, but only because they believe their freedom comes from Cain. Cain's agency-- the political and military hegemony that is the United States-- does offer some freedom from a hostile enemy who these days is embodied by some nebulous ugly terrorist somewhere, but Christ offers freedom from something worse.
Ourselves.
Thank goodness there is a tyranny like the United States government to rein us in with the oppressive enforcement of the law (wave the flag now), until perhaps someone will see the body of death that it is and ask Christ to be in the Kingdom.
Thirdly there is other regular Times columnist Patt Morrison, who prides herself on her eccentric takes (to match her eccentric hats). She comments on George Orwell's 1984 as compared to the new Pixar film Wall-E. They are the same, she says, in that both get us to know what real freedom is in their own peculiar way. We can all be fat pampered slobs by way of sinister social control as in 1984, or we can all be fat pampered slobs by way of spiffy advanced technology as in Wall-E. Or we can be free from that by,
Free by what?
No, sorry, she doesn't mention that One Freedom-Maker. Quite predictable, really. She considers 1984's Winston Smith exuding everything that is in Wall-E's fat-slob captain's cry, "I don't want to survive--I want to live!" and then,
Leaves us hanging.
Finally there was a gem from Penn Jillette, part of the two-man comic-magic Vegas act, whose LA Times piece was a surprisingly humble polemic as to why he's just not quite yet buying into the global warming hysteria. His point: I just don't know yet, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Jillette generally is quite strident about those who claim to know, particularly about religious things. Forgive me if I don't have this exact, I'm drawing from what I've seen of him and his perspective in this piece, but it seems his take is, "I can't know there is a God." This is the typical agnostic position, which is funny because for someone who prides himself on being a skeptic he sures know a lot about God, namely that he cannot be known.
The agnostic may then retort, "I'm just saying that it is impossible for anyone to really know about God." Problem is, he then is making a dogmatic claim about someone else. Does he know about every single person and what they've experienced? Does he know that God has not spoken to any of them?
To his credit Jillette states in his piece that there are some things we can know for sure, and other things we can't. Great. The issue then is really what are we genuinely willing to learn and what are we going to reject out of hand because it doesn't fit with our World-ingrained world view.
Each of these writers is propounding a version of tyranny that keeps everyone feeling good about his or her World inhabitant status. Each has a Straw-Man Jesus they've concocted, and those Jesuses are really nothing new in pantheon of World Jesuses.
Ash's is the Jesus of Being Nice To Different People Of Other Cultures As The Way To Bring Peace No Matter How Much Force We Must Use To Do It. Brooks' is the Jesus of Making Sure We All Know What Our Constitutional Rights Are Damn It. Morrison's is the Jesus of Seeing What Fat Slobs We Can All Be If We Don't Go To The Movies To See What Fat Slobs We Would Be. And Jillette's is the Jesus of Being Proud Of Knowing What Things We Do Know And What Things We Don't Especially Those Things The World System Tells Us About.
Each one sputters that just by thinking about things in a fun witty (but by no means original) way we can kinda feel good about this sorta freedom thing we timidly wave our flags at during the town's Independence Day parade.
No wonder.
It's all just cultural tyranny anyway.
Long may she reign! (Insert vigorous flag-waving here)
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