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.

--

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/

--
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.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Pickpocket Politics

It's when one political party spins political news of the opposing party so that we the people become concerned we are about to be victimized.

Remember the old 50's theater screen announcement, "Watch for pick pockets!" just before the show starts? Knowing in advance when this line was flashed on the screen, the operatives would time their entrance to carefully watch for hands reaching for pockets. Then each pickpocket would have a target, and know exactly where the valuables are located on that victim. Pickpockets depended on a good theater manager concerned enough about thievery to flash that warning on the screen. The problem was complicated by bringing this concern to consciousness in the crowd and created the ideal environment for pickpockets.

Our media today, whether wittingly or not, has become part of our burgeoning problem of pickpocket politics. We are now down to the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections. Pickpocket political paranoia is just beginning to heat up in the media. Watch, listen, and laugh at it, or cry, for our country.

They'll be taking your social security! Destroying the economy! (the left wing media)

Socialized medicine! Failing schools! Gays in our military! (the right wing media)

But trust us, we will protect you from gays, terrorists, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers, Muslims, Jews, Frenchmen, Mormons, Irishmen, Japanese, Germans, Russians, illegals, non-English speakers, you-name-it ethnic minority. (all our media)

We hear the particular sound bite that tickles our fancy, and our hand dutifully goes to our pocket. It's as if the pickpocket sentry dutifully notes identifying marks to guide the operative to the correct victim, and we are had by our own fears of being had.

Investigations reveal the big moneyed interests in keeping us, the people, hyped up with indignant rage over how the bailout money was spent, how the health care reform laws were made, how the school reform package was assembled, how the wars are (were, or will be) going. Multiple billions from this small group funds political parties and fringe pressure groups to keep our dander up, and it pays off handsomely. For one example, look up "Koch reality scare" on Alternet, Ha'aretz, Guardian, Consortium, Huffington, Newsmax, Human Events, or your favorite non-mainline media source.

The mainline media, including NPR, FOX and talk radio, is largely bought off by these few who own billions in the energy and transportation sectors and the military/industrial complex. They have vested interests, and manipulate news to justify firing of honest reports who depart from their corporate party line. That small group needs the wealthiest 10 percent of our country as well as many of the middle class to cooperate with the scary language to make the scam work. Many of us who get duped are well-meaning, honest people, just like the manager of our local theater in 1955. Others, the few who are the real source of our pickpocket politics, scream against government regulation, and then scream equally loud about their patriotic fervor, and then further, rip us off.

In contrast, there are about 100 of the wealthiest, but responsible, loyal citizens of our country. Many, led by the Gates family, are members of "United for a Fair Economy" (look this up). They signed a statement earlier this summer promoting a large tax increase. Remember seeing this in the news? Know why not? They also repudiated the "End death taxes!" pickpocket proclamation of a decade ago.

Few are the politicians who avoid pickpocket politics. These few process decisions based on principle and truth instead of power and influence. We have them in Montana, and a few other states. Yes, some are in congress, in both parties. But I must confess that all I have heard so far from the "Tea Party," and disappointingly much from the new Republican platform "Pledge to America," are the alarms of pickpocket politics: legitimate concerns timed and phrased to end up building big money power and influence, and rip off our tax moneys.

Here in Big Horn County live people whose values are old-fashioned and honest. If we do spread pickpocket politics, it's not because we have selfish motives. Many of us have learned to be wise to the alarms. This more rational, careful commitment to the common good pervades our schools and college, the county officials, the farming and ranching community, the reservation, the Crow Tribe, and the variety of religions practiced here.

This is still God's best place. There's a lot about life here, not just on the back 40, that I'd just as soon not see change, especially under the paranoid pressure of pickpocket politics.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT
Sept 24, 2010

Terrorism Needs a Stronger Deterrent

We citizens of America agree:

We want a strong, secure country. Some of us also want all the world's citizens to live in peace and have resources to provide for themselves. A few of us see the two as deeply connected. We believe this ancient conservative idea from Jesus - "Do unto others as you would that they should do to you."

Our nation has been obsessed with a foreign policy do to other nations precisely what we don't want done to us. We want it done on their soil, not ours. It's amazing how so many citizens and media pundits believe it's just fine to make the nations of the world fear us. It's not just because Jesus disagreed that it's not working.

Famine, wars, insurgencies, terrorism and even genocide are driving the nations of the world frantic. Hopelessness is rampant. That's the hotbed of terrorism. That's where the "war on terrorism" should have begun, with more powerful, non-lethal weapons against what menaces human beings.

Remember our world before 9/11/2001?

Nine years ago this past Sunday evening I was in China. Bonnie and I just wanted to get a good night's sleep as we knew our preparation for the following day of instruction was fraught with uncertainty.

I had just dozed off when the phone rang. I fumbled, and my sleepy mind accidentally substituted my newly learned "hue" for "hello." Our colleague, a fellow English instructor from our Foreign Language Department at XiHua University, got right to the point.

"Are you watching the evening news?" he asked.

"No, I was in bed," I said.

"I am very sorry, but you must turn on the news (CCCTV English), something terrible has happened in your country," he said.

"Wow, what arrogance! This must be something," I thought, but did not say it.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"Your nation has been attacked. A large building in New York City is on fire," he told me.

"Attacked? How?" I still didn't believe him.

"Some terrorists commandeered a passenger plane and crashed it into the World Trade Center, killing themselves and all the passengers."

Immediately I thought of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast on radio decades ago. I thought of the virtual reality special affects of Star Wars, etc.

"Listen, we have hoaxes like this in the US. This is too preposterous to be true. Let's look at this in the morning." I did not turn on the TV.

An hour later the phone rang again. It was the Communist Party Head of the Foreign Affairs Department, in charge of our security. He told me it was two buildings, two passenger planes, thousands of people had lost their lives, and the Pentagon was also being attacked. The United States was at war, he said. They were concerned we would want to return to the USA immediately.

I finally woke up and agreed to watch the news. I told him I would return his call in a few minutes.

Distrusting Chinese TV, I turned on the computer. I found ABC news, the only non-Chinese news source not regularly blocked by Chinese censors. Yes, it was real.

He called back. I told him I suspected our placement organization, Mennonite Partners in China, would support us staying in China all the more since the attack. No, we were not at all convinced we should immediately return home.

We were amazed the next few weeks with the outpouring of sympathy from students, our colleagues, and even the university president.

In the next weeks I heard the words of students, echoed from other nations, "This tragedy has brought us together with America. Through 9/11 you understand now what we have been going through."

Remember? Our TV media focused on a few hateful extremist Palestinians demonstrating and celebrating after 9/11, with a "serves them (the USA) right" attitude.

But our Chinese students heard the Palestinians who abhorred the violence and celebrated their hope of new solidarity with America. Not being in the US, I got the information that people such as the Palestinians were celebrating hope that America would practice justice, economic fairness, and the end economic blockades and military occupations.

Our media, loyal to our government, deleted this information. It was available from international news sources.

Our President's statement the following week to "…do what it takes," nurtured the media-driven perception: foreign anger at America is spawned by hate of our democracy, jealousy of our economy, and disagreement with our basic values and religious beliefs. So the Iraq war was prepared and justified with this and other false understandings. Bombing began, the invasion was launched, and our students' statements of support gave way to distrust, suspicion, and outright hatred of the president and our foreign policy. Being in China became less pleasant.

Some Resources on a non-lethal, more powerful war on terrorism:

Central Asia Intitute

Victim Offender Reconciliation Program

Human Rights Watch

The Internationalist Magazine

The Third Side at Harvard Law School

Jimmy Carter's peace center

Kroc institute Notre Dame

Peace Corps

Greenpeace

There are hundreds more.

 

All major religious have peace centers established for research and practice of waging peace in human conflict.  Search on line, for example "Peace Judaism"

 

Nearly all major universities have centers for the scientific study of peace and human conflict research.  Search on line "graduate peace studies"

 

Many of these centers are relatively new, but the research and practice itself dates back to well before Jesus of Nazareth, 30 AD, probably the world's most important peace activist. Look up the word Irene Bible in a Greek language lexicon, or peace Jesus in English.

--

David Graber

Want a phobia?

 Try thistle-o-phobia!

Wars need phobias. They are built on seeing human cultures, politics or religions as dangerous weeds in the flora and fauna of one's own national interests. 

Consider my phobia against Canadian thistle. This phobia became apparent to me because of the recent Islam-o-phobia and the polls demonstrating the power of talk media to spread this bigotry. I think my phobia is less of a hazard to human life on this planet. Now grown into bigotry, it can stay right here on the back 40, out of reach of media pundits.

I have thistle-o-phobia. I wanted to be tolerant and let nature take its course, trusting competing species to out-argue the thistles. But I'm just about to the point of believing the only good thistle is a dead thistle. I let one or two encroach on the economy of my best soil and it's like creeping socialism. Whole colonies have sprung up, crowding out my good intentions for this ground.

Last year, armed with liberation theology, I was determined not to pursue war on thistle-ism. I heard goats and sheep are natural and effective deterrents to thistle ideology, and hoped to try them out on this ground. I would rather harness these local critters with specialized equipment and experience to deal with this vermin. I did not want war.

But there's a problem.

Any livestock on this new pasture will compact the soil. Their hooves and teeth will damage the viability of the forage species I planted. At the same time, thistles just love compact soil with poor oxygen and near-anaerobic conditions. They thrive on ground that stresses out other plants. So, until my hopes for this ground are established with strong enough roots systems so grazers can neither pack the soil nor pull my choice forage species up by the roots, I need to wait. But two weeks ago I grew impatient. I almost got split-hoof critters tramping around in areas that are hotbeds for radical thistle infestation.

Don't get me wrong; I still believe intensive grazing is the best approach. I still believe that ultimately, with good forage competition and healthy soil, diverse quality perennial forages will out-compete even the worst weeds. But it will now have to wait for the supportive environment of a healthy soil and plant economy with established root systems.

Thistles have gotten out of hand. This ideology has taken over five acres and is encroaching on four more. Areas the size of a baseball diamond and larger are now a total thick carpet of evil green. No good forage species could possibly, on it's own, survive in this hostile environment.

So today I committed myself to a war to end the war against thistles. That doesn't mean I will use a scorched earth strategy and try to punish the entire plant population into oblivion. That could backfire, sowing the seeds for more war.

I have just purchased enough herbicide specially formulated to cover the size of my total thistle infestation. I rented the county weed control sprayer, and will take advantage of the unique capacity of Canadian thistles late in the summer to pump carbohydrates into their root systems, building rhizomes that bud and shoot up sprouts in the spring. As the thistles pump the carbohydrates into the roots my herbicide will ride along, in time destroying the thistle root networks. The plant above ground may stay green for weeks. But each warm day will allow the poison into the rhizomes in the roots, gradually killing the whole colony.

I have confidence in this strategy. I tried it last year this time on an intensive colony about three yards by 12 yards on the north border of our back 40. After frost, I seeded orchard grass seed directly into the still-green thistles. This spring, the orchard grass germinated and is still growing. The thistle colony is totally gone. I won one!

My neighbor said it right. Each year the herbicide marketers come up with a new sure-fire approach to the Canadian thistle problem. Each year we see a new outbreak and have to buy the new product. It's been a decades long addiction. The thistles don't care, Monsanto and the other chemical companies win, and the farmers? Well, they lose. Is there a way to win thistle battles? I've put together wisdom and information of the ones who claim the least expertise: local seasoned farmers. I think they are most trustworthy.

Here on the back 40, I enjoy feeding my thistle-o-phobia with my own aggressive defenses. I have no time to watch the media pundits feeding our nation's current Islam-o-phobia.

http://www.bighorncountynews.com/

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT

Christians who pray to Allah?

Two years ago at an evangelistic tent meeting, I was confronted with a difficult dilemma as the guest speaker attacked those who "pray to Allah." I was reminded of this dilemma last week by news of Christian opposition to the construction of a mosque in New York City.

With Rev. Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin leading, national Christian politicians have challenged the construction of a mosque near where the two WTC towers came down, because it would desecrate the site where many victims are interred. So now, Christians and Muslims who have worked together since 9/11 to make the NYC mosque a center of religious understanding and a place of peace between Muslims and Christians must struggle against the loud voices of bigotry in America.

The many people of good will in Big Horn County have a message for these folks. We here know about religious bigotry since the introduction of Christianity, when Crow and Cheyenne people began to suffer religious divisions. In the past decades respect has built for our different religious expressions. We are now better able to work together for the common good. This contrasts with our national religious and political leaders, and major media pundits. They should listen to us.

I'd like to tell them about my dilemma of two years ago.

With my wife and me were our good friends, a family from Kenya, the father a Christian pastor and theology student, his wife a teacher, and their two young daughters. I knew our friends have Muslim friends, and participate freely with them in religious dialogue, parenting and schooling children, and other affairs. I knew also from them that there are many Arabic speaking Christians in Kenya whose Arabic Christian Bible proclaims the message of Jesus the son of "Allah," because their Christian Bible uses the Arabic "Allah" instead of the German "God", or Crow "Akbaatatdia," or Cheyenne "Ma'heo'o," or Spanish "Deo," for the Supreme Being, initially unnamed in ancient Hebrew.

I could feel their discomfort at hearing an American Christian evangelist speak so negatively about a religion with which they are intimately acquainted. I was equally shocked with his ignorance about the millions of Christians worldwide who read their Christian Bible in Arabic, with its many references to "Allah," the equivalent of our German word "God."

I felt compelled to leave. But I had many friends present in the congregation that evening, and did not want to just get up and leave with our guests. I caught myself imaging the piece of my mind I would like to tell the evangelist, since I had no reasonable way to give it to him. I sat and pondered.

I thought about the millions of born-again Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus. I thought about the fact that Muslim-majority armies have not for centuries invaded nor are currently occupying by force any Christian-majority nation, while Christian-majority nations' soldiers are doing so in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought about the significant portion of all Muslim fundamentalists who are pacifists, while Christian fundamentalists have largely forgotten their pacifist history.

Most of all, from two years service in the Far East, I remembered that the vast majority of the world's Muslims, far from being obsessed with a passion to kill Christians, know how to live together peaceably with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths, shopping at the same stores, their children attending the same schools and playing in the same parks.

In the tent meeting, the rhetoric increased in intensity. All who use the word "Allah" to invoke the Supreme Being in prayer were lumped together with the militant Islamic extremists responsible for the World Trade Center bombing. I began regretting my silent assent to what the speaker was saying.

Suddenly I felt myself standing up, interrupting the evangelist with these words,

"You must be mistaken, since I know Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus." The congregation froze. He responded by reasserting his condemnations, insisting I was mistaken. I asked him if he approved of the German, Crow and Cheyenne words for the Creator, but not the Arabic word. After the service I left a note requesting dialogue on the issue. There has been no response.

This prompted an interesting discussion with our friends, who were at least as shocked as I was with my behavior at a Christian service of worship.

Next morning, just before their departure, we prayed for deliverance in the Christian media from the frequent undercurrent of bigotry against Islam. We praised God for the few Christian media speakers who follow Jesus' example with religious conflict as recorded in John chapter 4 of the New Testament. Then we parted.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

Tea party? Really?

This new one is far from the original Boston tea party. Now it's 2010 and both parties are right in step with the lambs on our back 40, who would bloat and die if I would indulge their emotions and let them go after the new alfalfa I seeded.

Listen to the propaganda bloat that passes for democratic debate, promoted by the new "Tea Party" leadership, corporate and media backers, etc. It goes something like this:

"The best government is the least government. End taxes! End regulation! It's time for real change."

Look at 1773.
Yes, the original Boston tea party was about taxes, but not whether there would be taxes. It was about who was doing the taxing. There was a history of the British crown taxing American colonial citizens' purchases of imports, and then that money pot sailed away right back the Atlantic with the next clipper.

Yes, it was about big government, a big British government with no vote or voice from the colonies. It was NOT against the growth of government on the land in which these citizens lived, for which they soon elected representatives. In fact, they are among those we venerate in our high school history classes who helped our fledgling government on this land grow constitutionally, to the benefit of all of us today.

Yes, it was against government regulation passed by the British parliament to "teach the colonists a lesson" and force them to submit. But it was also for new regulations to break the oppressive collusion between the British crown and one of the first multinational corporations, the East India Tea Company. That collusion smashed what sovereignty the colonies enjoyed and destroyed fair competition in overseas trade.

Now it's 2010.
Look at Republicans and Democrats who distrust the modern tea party. The "racism" controversy recently in the news is nothing more than a sham. The real issue is loss of collusion benefits, which would happen if either party started adopting priorities similar to the original Boston Tea Party. The fact is, there are huge benefits to both parties today from collusion between government and big business. And that, my friends, is the biggest bipartisanship our Congress can muster. Few politicians of any party want that changed.

Our citizenry, raised by mainline radio and TV, love pretense and surface rhetoric; we like that luscious look and smell, deep green and tender, of government sham-regulation of big business for the benefit of all the people, but in reality no change, so the few, the richest, benefit the most.
Unfortunately, we sheep give our votes to the sham of ending big government. We roll over and ignore the deception and theft from our own pockets.

Take the government's recent sham crackdown on Goldman Sachs. After packaging and selling mortgages they knew were bad, they got off scot-free with their deception and theft:

1) No further investigation of fraud.

2) No jail sentences (The S & L scandal decades ago led to 1000+ sentences).

3) A fine payable to the Securities and Exchange Commission of a fraction of the profit made from the scheme.

4) No requirement to pay back their ill-gotten wealth; no restitution.

5) The system of secrecy and deception stays in place.

The media still hypes the biggest fine ever levied against a Wall Street corporation. Hidden in its back pages are the data: millions in profits from the deception.

Sometimes it takes a fringy documentary news source to plumb reality and feed it to the mainline media, who then cannot afford to ignore it, like the recent WikiLeaks version of the Pentagon papers.

I would applaud a reincarnation of the Boston Tea Party. I hoped the Obama presidency would deal with the sham in the collusions. So far I see same old same old across the political spectrum.

Meanwhile my sheep, resentfully munching the tough old brome and wheat grass of the wild meadow strip along our channel, stop and turn west, sniff their noses in the morning breeze and exclaim in chorus, "Baa-a-a! We want our fresh green alfalfa, and want it right now, early this morning when our stomachs are empty." Sometimes we, like sheep, would be better off munching on what's best for us, not what our TV and radio pundits put out to titillate our tastes and thinking habits.

Oh, for some help in our country and on this back 40 to take rational charge of these colorful delicious delusions! Slowly, carefully, transparently and honestly, with the kind of courage and determination absent in Washington right now in either party, and disappointingly absent in the new tea party.

Previous columns and comments: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

David Graber