Advent brings Christmas: Strengthening America Against Evil

Four of my students in China in 2002 asked my help to arrange and produce a choric reading of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech, "I Have a Dream." . They knew the events surrounding King's 1962 letter from the Birmingham jail¹. We learned together how our nation rose to the moral challenge of segregation. They were impressed with the history. I was proud to be an American.

Prominent Christian leaders had urged Dr. King to stop demonstrating. They hadn't understood the brutality, the urgency of those suffering. The government and media had resisted the truth. Dr. King was arrested and jailed on charges of rioting and leading a demonstration without a permit. The law was imposed, and he was found guilty. In subsequent events, Dr. King's lawbreaking was vindicated; the ugly face of segregation was unveiled and God's Way prevailed over racial segregation in our nation. I was there in Mississippi in the 1960's, when Dr. King was assassinated; I saw God work amazing changes through citizens who looked to Him and His Way through Jesus. Citizens stopped treating blacks like rats.

Under pressure from the newly informed free press following the massive crackdown against Dr. King's organized civil disobedience, our government began changing laws. Instead of using the courts to oppress the message and the messenger, government found new respect for the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, and protected the victims of segregation². More importantly, the rights of informants to reveal the secrets of the brutality and economic deprivation were protected. Racial hatred, greed, hunger, sickness and imprisonment were dealt a devastating blow in America. Righteousness and the way of God scored a victory. Advent progressed into Christmas, and God's truth began to be credible again. Remember? We forget so easily….

Case 1: Killing Rats

We never told anyone. In fact, we brothers never mentioned it after the event. Raised in a hunting family, we knew better than killing for fun. Dad, had he known, would have punished us.

Back in the early '50's one January the price of corn went up. We had a grain bin inside our barn with tight walls and a concrete floor. We had shoveled it full with ear corn that fall, because Dad said the price was too low to sell. Now was time to sell that corn. The John Deere B's clutch pulley was linked by flat belt with the pulley of the staked-down elevator, and all three of us brothers shoveled several truck loads of that ear corn out of the grain bin until we got blisters.

I remember the mice running first. Our dogs had fun, and got full. But when the corn was down to the last 20 bushels or so, we began seeing rats. A dog caught one, got bit, and quit chasing them.

One of us got an idea, but the terror that happened bothered me. I won't admit it was my idea: "Shut the door and block it so the rats can't escape!"

We kicked the small pile of corn, the rats ran and panicked because there was no way out. We smashed them with our steel scoop shovels. We each got one or two, then the rats quit trying to escape. They stood, looked us in the eye, and attacked back, biting our boots and loose farmer overalls. In seconds my little brother let out a scream. A rat had run up his pants and fastened his teeth into his leg. I tried to help him smash the rat with my hands, but couldn't. I pulled the rat loose from its death grip on my brother's leg, got bit, and my older brother helped me dispatch that rat. My brother's pants were quickly red with his blood, and our hands were bloodied. For years I had recurring nightmares from this incident.

Here's what I learned: People are not rats. But when people secretly start cornering people, brutally exterminating their humanity, their place in their family or community, torturing them or taking their very lives, people begin acting like those rats. Jesus was such a victim. But he demonstrated God's way, a more powerful response to evil.

Case 2: Killing Jesus.

From before his birth to after his death, Jesus' home community was permeated with hatred, greed, hunger, sickness and imprisonment³. But within his faith community and family were those who hoped in God and His Way. Bible records of Advent songs of Zechariah, Simeon, Elizabeth, Mary, and Isaiah quoted by John, all focus carefully at least implicitly on these deplorable living conditions. There was hope in God. Not in the insurgency that arose from the violence of the occupation. Not in collaboration with the occupation, as led by the wealthy Jewish elite. Both these political parties had blood on their hands⁴.

Before Jesus' birth announcement, the message of God's Way lay quiet among these people. The time came, and the prophecies were about to be fulfilled. The oppressive "Peace of Rome" was stealthily shattered when boy babies of country parents were hounded down and slaughtered to protect government against the possibility of such a messenger arising and threatening the powerful. Jesus and his earthly parents fled to Egypt for sanctuary. The three wise men recognized Pilate's power to kill to keep secrets covered and fled back home another way. Jesus returned home after his exile, grew up, learned the power of God's Way, and at a mature age was baptized to follow His Heavenly Father's way.

Jesus' story illustrates that it's simply not possible to even quietly minister to victims of government oppression without earning the ire of that government. And when the time was fulfilled, he spoke strongly.

Case 3: Uncovering Chinese Government Secrets.

Liu Xiao Bo was sentenced to prison by the Communist government of China. His telling the truth of the brutality of the Chinese government won for him the Nobel Prize for Peace. The population of China, propagandized by media, has initially agreed overwhelmingly with their government⁵. The Chinese consensus: Liu Xiaobo is guilty of the crime of undermining the homeland security of China. Yes, the Chinese government still resists Advent, and has not learned from Jesus or Martin Luther King.

Case 4: Uncovering American Government Secrets.

Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held in a military brig in Virginia for uncovering military and diplomatic secrets via wikileaks. Our government and the media led by Fox News openly advocates killing him extra-judicially⁶. Here again is an opportunity not unlike Dr. King's letter. We can as a nation face the ugly truth of our oppressive misguided wars in the Middle East, and change the course our nation is on to shame and disdain internationally. We can rise to the truth of our great heritage, as we did in the Civil Rights era when we the people overcame the voices of fear, secrecy, violence and greed⁷.

My suggestion: Help strengthen America through this Advent season. Encourage neighbors and friends to live up to our heritage of moral values reinforced by Dr. King. Check out one of the thousand+ links to the info our government wants to suppress from its citizens: www.wikileaks.ch/

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1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail

2.Vincent Harding, 2010. Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement. This author, a sociologist and Biblical scholar, was on Dr. King's staff for years through his assassination. His book gives profound impetus to the passion of this week's Spirit and Dust column.

3.See my previous column, and the many sources listed therein documenting the social and political climate of Galilee and Judea in the decades around Jesus' life and ministry.

4.Myers, Binding the Strong Man. My favorite of several sources listed, detailing the conflict between the Sadducees and other collaborators with the Roman military government, against the insurgency groups, most famous being the Zealot party, of which Simon was one of Jesus' disciples.

5. http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-10/582916.html The Chinese government/media conglomerate has been successful keeping the lid on the information Liu XiaoBo has researched. The government attacks the messenger who has revealed secrets threatening to the "state security." The media collaborates. They cannot focus on the information because the secrets revealed are true and cannot reasonably be discredited. See other news reports, from sources not in China. There are many.

6. Several key government officials and Fox News have joined in calling Assange a terrorist and calling for his assassination. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36xEvVnF2I&feature=player_embedded Notably Ron Paul disagrees. http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-12-10/ron-paul-defends-wikileaks-dont-kill-the-messenger-change-our-foreign-policy/ It's also noteworthy that Nixon's secret tapes revealed that he attempted to draft Cuban expats to secretly assassinate Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. But that time, it remained secret and totally un-American to advocate extra-judicial killing of a messenger. Fox News and some in our government/media conglomeration are way off the mark of pride in American values.

7.Harding, ibid. See also the sources listed in my previous post.

Further comments:

Sensitive potentially libelous information was redacted by Wikileaks. Unfortunately, the happened without military or government help. Our government refused requests to help Wikileaks separate legitimately secret military information from the truth of our tax investment in raw violence against innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regardless of our political opinions, we all need to back up and take a look at our strategies for getting along with our friendly fellow citizens who disagree, and with our world citizens as well. They are humans, not rats. The survival of "we the people" of this nation is at stake.

When Jesus said truth gives us liberty, he meant for us to see the power of our choice to follow God in response to his torture and death. His innocent capital punishment, being treated like a rat by the Romans and their Jewish cronies, was the central ritual of the first Christians, and remains such today. He spoke from the cross, in the midst of his torture and terror. Early Christians learned God's freedom to be, even in the midst of such inhumanity.

Such victimizing didn't work then for that government to defeat Jesus' threat to the way of Rome. Jesus had already spent his life revealing the true face of the government's evil, both Jewish and Roman. When, after their experience with Jesus' crucifixion, the Romans finally stopped torture by crucifixion as an instrument of government policy, it was too late. The government crumbled anyway.

The world hasn't changed. Governments still torture and terrorize the world's people. They are still brought to defeat. It's in God's plan, as Jesus and the prophets foretold it, to proclaim the better Way of God to deal with evil. "Nations rise and fall, but the word of our God remains forever."

The kind of love Dr. Martin Luther King had for Bull Conner and the segregationists who tried to kill him is the same kind of love Jesus had for the Roman government leaders and members of the Jewish insurgency. It's not namby-pamby walk-all-over-me love. Jesus and Martin both confronted evil with the most formidable power in the world. That power, translated in English, "love," includes strong confrontation, and often gets a violent response from enemies. When thus confronted, evil governments fight back and lose, or else come to see the Light of the Power of God. Prophets like Jesus held up the mirror of humanity to the evil in their time, and let it be seen. Governments, wise to the looming loss, have always opposed this truth. It's the reason Liu Xiao Bo is in a military prison in China, and the reason Pfc. Manning is in military prison in America. It's also the reason Martin Luther King spent so much time behind bars, and was assassinated. True prophets have always pulled off the veil of the pretty face of government and revealed underneath its desperate brutality to suppress the truth of its illegal and abominable inhumanity against human beings.

As much as government soldiers and workers don't want it to be that, that's the "cost of freedom" they have levied when, like an adolescent in a fight, they are blind to considering God's way to combat evil. They all say, "We could do nothing else." This is the classic entrapment of fight or flee familiar to the reptile species' brain.

My bias is that the best proof of our greatness as a nation is that we—our government and our citizens—listened to Dr. Martin Luther King. We began to dismantle evil institutions and began following the Way of God because of his ministry. My greatest fear for our nation is that we will not listen to the same revelations of our secret evil in our response to our world's criticism today, and continue on the path to destruction well trod by empires of the past. Only the Truth of Jesus can liberate us from our current path. That's why our nation needs its Christian influence now more than ever. Wikileaks, while not under Christian control, is being used by God to bring His Truth to America now, this Advent season.

So what have Chinese and American leaders done when the truth is uncovered, and they find Jesus' way to be unbelievable? The same thing Romans and Jews did when Jesus' death tore the veil and uncovered the truth. They deny the truth. They try to escape the truth. And they attack the messenger, the one who uncovers what is really done and said, often without editorializing or complaining.

The messengers bringing the truth of our government's ugly face are simply carriers. They really simply transmit what others say, with a sense of reverence because God's way is to give voice to the oppressed, to set them free. For all their personal defectiveness, these three truth carriers are the instruments of the love of God through Jesus Christ. If our nation would listen again, like we as a nation did in the civil rights movement, and like Jerusalem failed to listen and Jesus wept over it, we could as a nation repent again, and survive our sin, and rise to strength and credibility around the world.

American politics has gone far into rat behavior, and far from Jesus. The media pundits and politicians with the most claims to following Him seem farthest from Him. Even most Christians in America think that Jesus' way is the wrong way, especially when it comes to really bad evil. We have a long ways to go to arrive at true repentance, and learn the Way of God against evil that besets us.

Nothing has changed since Rome. Governments desperately want to keep secret the truth of their desperate dealings with terrorized people. When torture and terror of opponents become acceptable policy, as formulated by the Bush administration and confirmed by Obama, governments want us to think everything is hunky-dory: either

1) Those people are better dead anyway, or

2) Sorry, but things happen in war. But war is necessary to destroy EVIL people/rats.

But most of all, they want us worked via the media into a frenzy of hate for the one(s) who reveal their secrets and in so doing undermine their pet theory: "It's far better to pursue terror and torture of terrorist and torturist enemies away from our land and keep our homeland secure." Note the Romans' finding of Jesus guilty by association with the Zealot insurgency, and sending the intended signal to the insurgency with the marquee on his cross, "The King of the Jews."

"Who's the guilty leaker?"

This is the only question the media/government can come up with regarding the wiki leaks, with the unquestioned assumption a crime has been committed causing human suffering and loss. And it has. That's what the leaks reveal. It's the reason they want them suppressed.

What in fact is the crime against humanity? Answer: the depredation and foolishness of our confused foreign policies, wielded by the world's most lethal military hardware.

Unlike that rat in my brother's pants, Jesus didn't attack back; the Gospels all make abundantly clear that he remained perfect in his Truth: that through Him and his way, hoped for by the prophets, we human beings have a better way to deal with the deadliness of our rat behaviors. The way of the Roman Empire to homeland security was soundly discredited. The way of the Zealots to national restoration was equally rejected. What he did is often portrayed as the "loving" way, and rejected as categorically weak. But our English word for this kind of love doesn't say it right.

In his ministry Jesus stated explicitly that Salvation constituted imitating his acts on behalf of the hungry, imprisoned, thirsty, and ill (Matthew 25). His disciples remembered and followed suit. As portrayed in all four first evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, hatred and murderous conspiracies built among the powerful, and led to his execution. After his death and resurrection many early followers were similarly executed.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Our Lord’s Advent and American Democracy

The Salvation longed for in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth in 4BC, and the American experiment in democracy for the last 250 years, have much in common. We have a nation built on principles central to Christianity. Let's flaunt them.

The first Advent was about people longing for life. Freedom from oppression by a foreign regime was a dominant concern. It was military, and it was economic, not unlike the British Crown's domination of the colonies in the 1770's. The Roman-orchestrated exploitation of Galilee, where Mary's hometown was located, makes our nation's current economic problems look like a picnic. The government had little respect for an individual's rights to pursue meaningful life for his/her family.

Jewish farming families of Galilee in 4 BC suffered loss of their farmland. They could no longer depend on the traditional Jewish Jubilee, nor on Roman law, to guarantee land access for survival. Shrewd tax collectors and loan brokers, Jewish wealthy elite of Sepphoris, 3 miles from Nazareth, conspired with the Roman occupation to foreclose on these subsistence farmers. Land was converted into greater profit in the Mediterranean global market of purple, linen, and wine. It was profitable to pick up loan-default farmland, select managers to hire from among the landless peasant throngs, and add acreage to acreage (documented in Myers, Binding the Strongman.)

The rich got richer, and the poor lost their means of survival. Most children of farmers found it hopeless to follow their parents' livelihood; they lacked the capital. The best Galilee farmland became a playground of the rich. So insurgency and terrorism arose, as recounted by Flavius Josephus, the first century historian and recruiter for the insurgency in Jesus' time.

Previously successful farmers, probably including Jesus' earthly parents, were forced to join the newly landless multitudes of peasant families who struggled for bread, safety from robbers, release from jail, a place to lay their heads at night, and freedom from military or insurgent recruiters who kidnapped their sons for war. These landless poor were at the bottom rung of society. The stigma of mismanagement, fault, and sin were wrapped up in devastating poverty. Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, and Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament, continually refer to these people as needing Salvation.

It's from this stigma of sin=indebtedness to which our translation of the Lord's Prayer gets it right: "Forgive us our debts as . . ." Jesus, following John's example, focused on these multitudes burdened with real debt and its sin stigma, rather than on those who would reward him with riches for his miracles.

But let's go back a few decades:

Enter Mary, Jesus' mother-to-be, with an amazing announcement. Deliverance from the downtrodden comes from God through real flesh-and-blood human beings, most pointedly, herself.

Mary's "Magnificat," KJV:

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:

For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;

As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

The most amazing miracle in Mary's body was not the undoubted miraculous conception, but the fact that here was a woman of "hunger" and "low estate" whose womb contained the very chosen Messiah of God, who would lead his people—in fact, all nations—out of desperate poverty into the very light of God. Mary got it right about her Son.

Maybe this Advent is a time to wonder: With such a powerful connection between the most conservative, original Christian understanding of Salvation, and our American democracy, why don't we flaunt it?

For over a hundred years Christian leaders have struggled needlessly over the argument between a "salvation gospel" and a "social gospel." In fact, Jesus' Gospel never separated the two, but prioritized the social component of Salvation as did Mary, Jesus' mother. Prioritizing a futuristic Salvation in life after this life came into vogue only around the time the empire adopted Christianity as the only legal religion, in the fourth century AD.

Mary's status in society made her a prime choice by the very God of Creation to bring forth his Son, to turn upside down a political/religious/economic order that had devastated her own family, and that of the multitudes of farm families in Galilee. This "preferential option for the poor" in Mary's song has enormous sanction from the Psalms, the Prophets, Writings, and Moses. In modern times, the Catholic church has led Christianity back to this most conservative theological bias, for the poor.

The Bible seems to have one package of God's acts of "Salvation" that does not differentiate between the current social/political trauma and desire for life beyond this current life. Often diminished by modern Bible teachers, it's the oldest and most original understanding. It includes the whole person, family, community, nation and the world in the here and now. It's in more than half of all the chapters in the Bible, so would be difficult to ignore were it not for the limits of the English language in translation from the original Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. It's also thoroughly researched by Bible scholars representing all denominational perspectives.*

The modern definition is like the frosting on the cake, which reminds me of my grandkids and birthday cake. They focus on the frosting. Paul describes it as a profoundly important additional mystery of the Gospel.

Some authors and titles alluding this more comprehensive Biblical understanding of human sin and of its remedy, Salvation:

Dorothy Day, Selected Writings*

Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down*

Tayor, The Executed God

Carter, Matthew and Empire

Heschel, The Prophets

Romero, The Violence of Love*

Wink, The Powers that Be*

Stark, The Rise of Christianity

Swartley, Covenant of Peace

Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

Crossan, God and Empire

Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity

Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist

Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ

McLaren, Everything Must Change*

Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation

Myers, Binding the Strong Man

Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity

Horsely, Jesus and Empire

Berrigan, The Kings and Their Gods

Padilla, The Local Church Agent of Transformation*

Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

Whiston, translator, The Works of Josephus

*Start with these

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
http://www.bighorncountynews.com/clergy.html

Honoring the Fallen

Complete column continued below from the Big Horn County News Nov 17, 2010---

Honoring our Fallen

The courage of those who leave home and family to serve in the armed forces cannot be questioned. We must honor and respect their sacrifice for all of us. But it’s both morally reprehensible and economically foolish to shed human blood outside our borders unless we have examined carefully, honestly, and rigorously why we are doing it. We have, as a nation, neglected that quest. The primary purpose of honoring our fallen and wounded veterans should be restored: to find and follow better ways to combat the evil that besets our nation, ways that are far less prone to bloodshed.

Note last week’s release from the bipartisan presidential deficit commission:

“The arithmetic is compelling. This debt is like a cancer that will truly destroy this country from within if we don’t fix it.”

Totally omitted in the conversation is the $3,000,000,000,000.00 tab on our last wars, and the cost ticks on. But it ticks differently; we are not paying as we go, thanks to Republican tax breaks. Previous wars were paid as we went, through tax increases and bonds that distributed the burden throughout the citizenry, in the present. But in our recent wars, the financial sacrifice is postponed to future generations, and the blood sacrifice occurs now. That means our families get a double whammy in America for our humongous war making and debt hiding. It is by far the biggest drain on our economy and society, present and future. And it remains unexamined in the commercial media, government, politics, and private sector.

The commission is right on the debt. But wrong to ignore the trillions tumbling down the debt hole. And also wrong to ignore the long history of nations seeking empire-style world wide military control. They all collapsed economically and socially from within, with huge drains of resources and bloodletting in military campaigns without.

It seems our government has joined Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and the Axis in blundering distortions to sell our last three wars to the families of our own nation. Our families are the ones who desire to honor our nation as we honor our dead. And it’s our family members who can call our nation to a higher honoring of our lost loved ones:

Open the closed conversational box about the true cost of war.

Demand the truth of why we are asked to shed blood.

Bring to light the researched alternatives to mortal combat in each theater.

See our families as the economic foundation for our nation.

Found our national security on our traditional values instead of on our control of the world’s energy resources.

Study the waging of peace instead of war to bring security and vitality back to our nation.

God help us avoid the tragedy of past nations seeking the empire solution to security and economic woes! And God will help us, as we link with families of unfriendly nations who share with us our distrust for our government. It takes only a little research to find that the Tea Party hatred of our government pales in the face of many foreigners’ view of our government. Only by linking with those families, in nations where our government is distrusted or outright hated, can we begin addressing the root cause of mortal conflict and terrorism in our world today: loss of the means of human survival. And that’s economics. What drives our ambitions as a nation into self-destruction policies? Excessive profit. Good capitalism gone sinister. Check out this web link from the alternative media:

http://www.alternet.org/story/148786/

That’s why Jesus talked and walked economics more than prayer. That’s why today, honoring our fallen means pursuing the many options to mortal combat, including economics.

Back in the 60’s, I remember when our national ignorance of options to combat this world’s evil was the focus of Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speeches and campaign against the Viet Nam war. He founded this focus firmly and directly on his faith in Jesus. So it was Jesus, Dr. King’s example and Lord, who pioneered and practiced God’s Way for nations in his advocacy of those suffering from war and its associated economic and health deprivations. This advocacy is implied or explicit in nearly all his miracles of healing, and it led politicians to designate him, God’s Son, as enemy combatant. They had Jesus crucified AD 33 for sedition, as documented in the Gospels, and in Roman history (see Josephus, primary secular historian of ancient Rome in 1^st century Palestine wars).

Economics for waging peace instead of war has been the focus of many of our most able and talented national leaders.

Column continued below

from “Honoring our Fallen” in the Big Horn County News Nov 17, 2010---

Leading the effort to fill the information gap on alternatives to current wars is the organization “Veterans for Peace.” Many veteran memorial services nation wide this month have included information gathered by this organization. Many members are Christian veterans, with a sound Biblical basis for their peace efforts. (http://www.veteransforpeace.org/).

I cannot understand why we have a blackout on this discussion in the main media, both from the religious and the scientific research facets. The NY Times posted an opinion regretting this neglect. Unfortunately, Obama has kept to his promise not to “question our national defense” in his economic policy proposals. Now this is weird. Though hated personally by most Republicans, every member of his deficit commission, Republican and Democrat, has fallen in line rubberstamping his decision.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/politics/29war.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1)

Unless we spare no resource to employ our best and brightest in the quest for the more powerful alternatives in defense of our national security, we are doomed to unending warfare that will only stop when our resources are exhausted. That would come quickly for us were the Chinese, holding title to much of our trillions indebtedness, to demand repayment on loans we our citizens should be holding. This information is readily available from many news outlets. Just search “national debt China”

It’s foolish to degenerate our fine military tradition into the world’s secret police, guiding bombs from Colorado to destroy households in Afghanistan in order to assassinate one citizen who hates America It’s far better to use the many proven alternatives. We can hold our heads high with the values of fairness and compassion that founded this nation as we daily continue to honor our veterans. After all, they are our American families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/politics/29war.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1

I have on my shelf the complete speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King. Contact me if you would like to borrow some, or look them up on line. Here’s one:

http://www.mlkonline.net/vietnam.html

Senator Mark Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, is one among many of our national and Montana leaders who had the courage to pursue alternatives to the drumbeat of war to solve our problems

Now I'm not a pacifist, I'm not anti-military. I think there's a very legitimate, important role the military plays in our overall security. What I'm saying is until we see our national security made up of a number of components -- education, housing, diet, job opportunities, etc., etc. -- they're all part of our national security. But every president has been seduced into believing that you measure your national security by the megatons in your arsenal and ignore these people needs, the spiritual needs, and all the other parts that make up a total nation. I don't understand why that is so elusive in people's thinking.

(http://www.cdi.org/adm/1027/):

· See Nir Rosen’s new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World. An independent journalist, he has been covering the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this new book, he writes in length about Iraq, the U.S. occupation, the civil war, and how the war affected the broader Middle East, from Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. Rosen also writes about Afghanistan and his time unembedded with the Taliban, as well as the role of independent media and the failures of the U.S. press. Nir Rosen’s experience in Afghanistan parallels that of Greg Mortinson. See also his first book, Three Cups of Tea.

--
David Graber
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Small Potatoes and the Big Pumpkin

I cranked up my headgate and went over to my third cut to irrigate my new meadow early this summer, and watched with glee. A menacing wave of rising water flooded the abodes of prairie dogs that dared set up house in my elite acreage, where they should have known better than moving. They scampered and swam—those that survived the water eviction—back to the ground where they should have been satisfied. Some didn't make it. Serves them right.

Now I do try to take responsibility. I knew what I was doing to the prairie dog families when I opened the head gate, installed the canvas and cut the ditch. It was intentional, and I had nothing to hide. And I knew three years ago, when first I saw the encroachment into lush prairie dog housing far beyond ability to handle the consequences, that the bubble would burst, the flood of evictions would come, and it would be disastrous for these prairie dogs. I ignored their agony. But my land is small potatoes. So is the market economy that get's all the government, media and business news focus. Let's look at the big pumpkin.

Our American Family Economy. The people responsible for our national family economy—the big pumpkin ignored in our national media political discourse—have conspired to neglect the common good of families and their children's future in our country. But unlike me with my prairie dog families, these folks systematized fraud and predatory lending. The big pumpkin is rotten. They are doing everything they can to keep the focus off the big pumpkin. With the media's help, they keep our families' anger focused on small potatoes. The whole nation is deeply at risk.*

My grandkids are fascinated with the tiny potatoes from the less-fertile quadrant of our garden. I don't think they are worth the bother. But with salt and gravy, they aren't too bad. Grandma and I indulge their fantasies and help them scrape off the mud, boil and eat them with butter and gravy. We'll accommodate a few small potato obsessions.

But look what is happening to our country! It's not just over 30 million families evicted, it's the pervasive rot of the family economy. Eighty years ago, in the depression, one father could get one mule and 40 acres from the government. If the family lived on the farm and worked the land, they could get title to it. Forty acres was enough to feed a family back then. The mules are gone. So is the open land. It takes two wage earners for most families to barely survive in today's American economy. Health costs cause mortgage defaults, which cause transportation loss, which causes family income loss, which causes massive spending reductions. The last step, when the market economy suffers, is when the nation's media finally take note. Families can't colonize and farm the moon, so it's families that need bailout, not wall-street tycoons.

It's basic deprivation, personal frustration, social and political marginalization that plague our families. Even more, their personal initiative no longer suffices. And more yet, our PC talk radio and TV maintain the illusion that financial failure is the fault of those failing. Witness all the financial advice services and predatory loan consolidation marketing on TV and talk radio.

There is a group of people at our national economic head gate who have responsibility, just about as much as I do over my prairie dog families. These are the top 1% in wealth holdings, and income. Sure, the government takes our money in taxes. But that's small potatoes. It's the top % that takes our money in hidden profits and corporate monopolized pricing, gouging the rest of us.

C'mon Obama. Let them have their wedge issues with which they love to pickpocket the citizens of this country. Either get out of the way or deal with the real issues. I won't vote for a Demoblican, but I darn sure would not vote for a Republicrat, unless someone in politics takes seriously the hurting families of this great nation. And, in case you wonder, the tea parties, with all their obsession with small potatoes, has agreed on is one real pumpkin issue: the big wall street bailout was bad for the country.

THE FOLLOWING IS CONTINUED FROM THE BCHC NEWS

There is a point to having valid incentives so the wealthy of our nation can drive our economy with their business. There is a point to rewarding successful entrepreneurs at any level of wealth. But what we have now is way too much. The excessive redistribution of wealth through tax benefits, off-shore investment credits, exporting of jobs overseas, hedge fund marketing, all conducted behind closed doors with government collusion, has got to end. We have to get back to a conservative American value: money in peoples' pockets in proportion to their work for a living wage. That's what has powered our economy to its peak in the 70's.

As money is taken out of the 99% less rich, and concentrated more in the hands of the top 1%, the economy does not improve. We are at the end of a 30-year experiment with supply-side economics, with a perception that more wealth for the wealthy makes all of us better off. It's time to end wealth redistribution to the top.

It's bad news. But it does no patriotic good for our nation to skirt it. The big pumpkin, the American dream for families, is rotten. There is nothing left for a disastrously rising segment of our population who cannot keep food on the table. For reliable data on this coming increasing tragedy, check out a scholarly review of our economy by Stiglitz, Free Fall.

Who's responsible for securing the economic access of the American family? Whose neglect let the pumpkin rot? First, check out the media. It keeps our attention on small potatoes: unemployment, gays, immigration, anything the military-health-energy-banking/industrial complexes tell it to focus on.

Second, check up on our government. Didn't President Obama say "the buck stops here?" Yes, he speaks compassionate words, but he portrays the big players that cue the media content as suffering an unavoidable lapse in foresight. This is baloney. He, like the commercial dependent TV and radio sources, are owned.

Third, what about the party temporarily out of power, Republicans? They systematically stripped government regulation—read public oversight—of the mortgage industry, while they propagandized us into believing they were saving our country from our government. In international politics this propaganda is called sedition.

Fourth, What about the courts, the judicial branch? Look at two biggies from the Supreme court, on cue from their corporate connections: 1) Decades ago they found that corporate rights to privacy should be elevated to those of individual citizens. Thomas Jefferson turned over in his grave. And, 2) just this year, they found that this corporate privacy right to secrecy extends to funding for political candidates. Tom turned again. There goes our free elections tradition.

Where can we go? The various branches of "Tea Party?" They got one thing right: the wall street bailout was controlled by the bailees. But unfortunately, what appears to be a grass roots movement is really not. Their funding and agenda control are deeply imbedded in the biggest most right wing consortiums of the country. There's where the glee is. Sic the nation's families on gays, brankrupt families, immigrants and minorities. Use the tea party. It has worked in the past in our country; inflame the populous with small potatoes, to delay the inevitable as long as possible, and leach the most from us taxpayers.

How about the ones in charge of our national housing acreage? Do they know what they are doing? They don't want a moratorium on evictions, and the government colludes. They claim enough knowledge to know a legitimate eviction from one flawed with deception, and will only evict with legitimate mortgages defaulted. But can they honestly find a legitimate mortgage now defaulting to make an eviction process legally legit?

Irrationally, they also denied their wisdom to know their mortgage industry and pled ignorance. Obama had mercy; the mortage crisis "--was unforeseeable," and he granted their wish. The evictions continue.

We are focusing on the small potatoes of our market economy and instead or prioritizing our family economy. That's the big rotten pumpkin we aren't seeing.

Glee vs. benign neglect. I'll give them a break. At least I see no evidence of the glee I felt when I imagined those prairie dog families evicted and struggling through the rising tide to the fence, and dry grassy ground. It's a little different for the big pumpkins standing by the national mortgage industry headgate. They really just don't care, because their lizard brains are obscured by their focus on the small potatos of huge profits at the expense of others. They miss the big pumpkin mess of 30 million American families out of home, job, good schools, and a place in the American dream.

The midterm elections. The families of this nation will tolerate neither the Republicans who got us into this huge rotten pumpkin nor the Democrats who have refused to address the rotten flesh in the commercial market economy of the nation. This repudiates the Republicans, dams the Democrats, and fuels the various tea partiers' emotional fixation with small pumpkins. This pumpkin is too big. It's not small potatoes on the field of our national economy. We are, at root, a nation of families.

Now I'm just a musician. Not much of a farmer, definitely not an economist, But I do know my potatoes and pumpkins. Corporate funding of the media pushes small potato issues to keep our focus off real problems faced by real families of this nation. So I really have a problem voting. Know any politician or political party who takes seriously enough the real problems our nation should address, for example, 30 million families kicked out of their homes by mortgage default? Most of politicians and their corporate sidekicks are busy sidetracking as many citizens as possible. Elections are no longer about real issues. Our media, politicians, government and election campaign financiers have opted for trench warfare over small potatoes.

Another Small potato: I got the news again just today. Obama is going to raise our taxes. Well, it turns out the tax rate he's proposing, the one bandied about by the unbiased media, it's just for the folks well into six figure incomes. The rest get tax breaks, or it stays the same. And it turns out this tax increase for the wealthy remains well under the one President Reagan promoted and congress passed for the same bracket.

Small potato 3 I got a huge colorful postcard in the mail last week: "Stop the Real Estate Double Tax," referring to an initiative with huge funding from the National Association of Realtors. Here's the wedge issue: property taxes. Bet I know the zinger. With the deteriorating economy, these wealthy scavengers know more property will change hands. They don't want their cut of the coming exchange increases to be reduced with a tax, even though there is no such tax now. But with the current money crunch for government and corporations, they'll be fighting over every crumb. The big National Association of Realtors wants an edge.

Yes, as well meaning and as much as I agree with the conservatives on these small potatoes of gay marriage, prayer in schools, abortion, etc., they were initially selected and marketed for the purpose of sidetracking us away from the bigger issues, many of which are themselves the cause. It turns out we neglect attention to our pumpkins and the small potatoes just proliferate.

It's time to look at the big potatoes. It's not the market economy, constantly touted in the news.

In the 1920's the equivalent of hedge funds, tax breaks and loopholes, and a lassiez faire economy figured strongly in the rise of income among the wealthiest sector and the drop of income among middle and lower class citizens. It set the stage for the collapse. After Wall Street busted, responsible politicians took note. In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt created an alliance between the suffering middle class and a portion of people in the top 1%. Together they orchestrated economic reforms. Taxes were increased, peaking at 90% for the wealthiest bracket under the Republican Eisenhower administration. Loopholes were closed. Secret government/corporate collusion was revealed. Government created incentives for businesses to open jobs and put people to work with physical labor for living wages. People at the top had less disposable income. But all over the country, prosperity returned, and families could make a living again with one wage earner.

Now, it's 2010, and the wealthiest 1% have reached the 1923 mark, the second time in less than a century. At 23% of the total personal income of the nation, it's still growing. Unlike the early 30's, we got a hard knock on the door: the biggest baddest recession ever. But our politicians have not responded like Franklin Roosevelt and other progressives did after the 30's depression, paying attention to the plight of average and poorer families. They have forgotten that big boats need to rise in the tide of all the families of this nation gaining a living, not having to accept welfare.

Thirty years ago the median income male was making more real money (inflation is adjusted out), than the median income male today. Problems for real families are multiplied by the personal debt burden, the astronomical increase in health care and insurance, home foreclosures, and unexpected job loss. Yet the top 1% has no incentive from government or within the secretive economic system to loosen their hold. In spite of this, a growing number of the wealthiest Americans are joining forces with economists and middle class business people who are aware of the deep economic problems facing the human economy of this country, unlike the market economy. Look up Citizens for a Fair Economy.

Some critters just have trouble keeping in their place.

The neglected big pumpkin in our national discourse is the family economy. We don't pay attention. More than 30 million families of this nation have been evicted from their homes by the high water of the recession, especially the collapse of the mortgage sector. It isn't just loss of homes. It's health care costs, loss of jobs or pay cuts, and loss of the means to provide for one's family. The personal emotional costs to parents who go through this is compounded by our traditional national mantra: anyone can succeed. I can hear it: "Those who fail, do so by their own choice. They just need to honestly try."

With this imbedded in our thinking, our culture is still tuned in to reinforcing the guilt self-imposed by the many new desperately poor heads of families.

*Look these up:

"MERS mortagage fraud" search words on your web search engine. You will find two kinds of results: 1) from the mortgage industry, ads for MERS digital services to protect small investors and borrowers from fraud. 2) recent documentation of how MERS was set up for the very opposite: to facilitate fraudulent predatory lending, and protect large investors from the consequences. Read them, and let me know which is legit.

Stiglitz, Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. Just out this month, this book by a leading scholar of world economics should get any patriot's attention. Read the reviews on a web book source like Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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David Graber

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Our home-schooling roots

Montana is still in the throes of a negative sum conflict over home schooling that most states and Canada have solved decades ago. Here both sides lose. Our district loses the average daily attendance count from home schoolers, and this reduces funding. Home schooling parents lose their property tax investment in education for their children, and end up paying double in the time/money crunch.

No one benefits from the current conflict over the home school movement.

Twenty years or more before I first set foot in the one room country school of my childhood, farmers in Mud Creek Valley had organized to end home schooling. Busy farm life of the 1920s meant sporadic schooling, if at all, for the children of rural America. The school was considered an extension of parents' teaching and training in socialization.

I remember starting my first day at Montgomery School in first grade, in the late 40's. There were a dozen others in the school, grades 1 – 8. I looked around, and saw a desk with a name carved in the blond maple surface. It belonged to an 8^th grader named Jimmy, strong and angular, old for his grade. I was shy, and I quickly adopted my hero. I had my trusty pocketknife.

Quietly and carefully, while the two 8th graders were reciting, I carved my name (DaviD) starting with a forward capital D and ending with a backward capital D. I almost got spanked at school, and did get a good tongue lashing at home. No hiding that crime. For every school day the next several years, until I outgrew the desk, I had to face that dyslexic spelling.

Human interaction was integral to our learning environment. We learned reading with older students reading to us, and they practicing their reading. They watched out for younger students' safety on the school sledding hill in winter, and the younger ones learned to trust older ones' judgments.

No one questioned the government's essential role in supporting this alternative to home schooling or no schooling. The government was us--the community working together to build something of value for the next generation--with funds from property taxes. With uniquely human interaction in a mixed age group of a dozen or so students, we had space to build social learning skills.

Over the following decades, the strong bond of ownership between school and family has changed. Schools have grown larger, age stratification has become mandatory, and parent roles in formulating school policy have diminished. Choices of school curriculum, and administration are more likely to come down from state or even federal government than from the local community.

For some parents, the disconnect is enough that they choose to withdraw their children from district enrollment to school them at home. That's where we are now, and everyone loses.

This is not the only solution. Other states are looking at partnerships with mutual benefits. My daughter works for the Delta County School District in Colorado as a science curriculum coordinator in the "Vision School" home-school network, an arm of the district. Parents can choose to register with the school district. If they do, the district reimburses costs for materials they purchase, up to $500, provided the materials do not promote a particular religion. At their discretion, parents can have their children enrolled in extra-curricular activities and participate in standardized tests. Parents can choose and pay with district funds a teacher to serve a group of home-schooled children in particular subject areas. The district provides a building for this service. The district receives state funds for the Vision home school network based on numbers of students enrolled, just as in the regular classroom. Everyone wins.

Both sides should be winning here. We have in Big Horn County the skills and the community support to catch up with Colorado and other states. It's time to brainstorm rationally how we can all win. Marketers are making millions promoting wedge issues that stalemate support for home schooling linking with school districts. Both sides can start examining the distortions and allow truth to win for the good of all the children. Now may be a good time to transform this conflict so the families of Montana have reasons to trust their school districts, whether they home school or not.

Check this web link: http://www.visionhcp.org/

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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

Why kids learn

Enormous attention is paid to how we humans learn.  Less to why we learn.  We learn best when we feel OK.  It's the emotional factor: when we feel safe, secure and respected by those around us, we have the right space in which to learn. This is a foundational truth for our species. 

Things are different in the world of lizards and snakes.   Theirs is a world where it's kill-or-be-killed.  Greed reigns in the lizard world.  But this should be different among humans—we were created to learn to look out for the good of others.

I'm a bit skeptical of Bush's "No Child Left Behind."  This program was mandatory, and well-funded at first, but while it is still mandatory, is no longer funded.

I'm similarly concerned about Obama's "Race to the Top."  Both these well-funded education reform programs diminish the extensive research into how emotional intelligence drives all learning.

Both were set up with prioritizing the "Three Rs" not alluding to the research demonstrating the emotional and cognitive learning is foundational for the "Three Rs,"and neither program paid much attention to emotional and social learning.

Both programs heavily depend on evaluation of instruction through cognitive tests.  This testing projects a vision of the ideal adult: one who can compete financially in the world today.  It's not far removed from lizard brain thinking.  It's even in the rhetoric: learning for survival.

 But education reform should prioritize learning beyond financial success.  Unfortunately the federal government's education department is crammed with people from the business sector.  Education models were shoved aside in the Obama administration's education department to make room for the profit model for education.  I have little hope for long-term results from this emphasis.

While teaching English in China in fall of 2002, I sat in an academic conference on English language instruction in a major Chinese city.  A paper was presented that discussed how students can best learn conversational English skills. They discovered that a sense of safety and security was critical: students learned best in a low stress, socially inclusive, accepting environment.

The same observation applies to Chinese education in all subjects.  For millennia, Chinese schooling ignored social and emotional intelligence in learning.  In my two years' teaching there I saw fear of failure routinely used as a prime motivator.  This approach worked passably well for learning to read or write another language.  It also worked to enforce government control of the population.  But not for learning conversational English skills.

Chinese education is now trying to reform:  away from nationalized, centralized curricula; away from frequent testing and teaching to the tests; away from evaluating teacher competency based on students' achievement test scores; away from a cultivated fear of failure.  Ironically, our education system seems to be adopting the patterns Chinese educators are leaving behind.   

Interestingly, all we would have to do is access the most important and influential document in our civilization here in America:  the Bible.  Loads of the content of Jesus' teaching and service to humanity is based on emotional and social intelligence learning.  Read the Gospels.  Find the stories.  Virtually every one of his parables is a social commentary, teaching humans how to treat each other with respect and honor.

Is the dumbing-down of American education the result of our national obsession with the myth of redemptive violence?  Get them before they get us.  Watch your backside.  Learn to survive at all costs.  Remember that TV and movie action dramas are designed to appeal to our lizard brains. It sells better…

I teach at Crow School.  I know the parents and faculty there. I am grateful for the many teachers and parents of Big Horn County who model and promote the kind of education motivation that really works.  We have a school district that continues to prioritize performance arts and athletics, where students build emotional intelligence through learning trust and cooperation skills.  We need to pay better attention to the research that demonstrates the importance of this learning.

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David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org