An excerpt from a New York Times article, titled Race in the South in the Age of Obama. It covers a black politician, James Field, who is a representative of Cullman, Alabama.

Versions of Cullman’s old sundown sign hung beside county roads well into the 1970s, and all of them repeated the message that the travel writer Carl Carmer saw when he visited Cullman in the late 1920s: “Nigger Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in This Town.” The sign was notorious all over Alabama, and coupled with Cullman’s powerful Ku Klux Klan, it created a racial deterrent so effective that even today, Cullman’s are exits off the Interstate that most African-Americans avoid.

You can find the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28Alabama-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

 

 

Once, when I visited Peek’s shop alone, Peek told me: “James is not like any black man that I know. He’s just different. He just don’t have that mentality, anybody owes him anything. He just gets out and works and helps people, earns what he gets. If James wasn’t black, you’d think he was white. That doesn’t sound right, but you know what I mean.”

Everybody in Cullman knows what he means, perhaps most especially the men who gather weekday mornings at a round table at the All Steak restaurant, where many of them spent much of this past year not getting over the fact of an African-American president. The group fortified themselves with daily doses of rue — “Thought I’d never see it”— dared one another to use “the N-word” in front of a Yankee and shared memories of how Cullman used to be — “They were afraid to come to town.” One day in September, a retired Alabama state trooper named Charlie Shafer leaned back from his eggs and asked, “Have you all ever stopped to consider how much better off the country would be if Obama’d been. . . . ” Quick and fast came the replies:

“White.”

“Died in childbirth.”

Periodically, Fields’s name came up, and people leapt to describe what “a hard-working, down-to-earth person” he is. It was recurrent. Harsh expressions of disdain for blacks in general would smoothly give way to admiration for the black individual in their midst. The dichotomy was expressed in a particularly blunt way by a jeweler named Richard White. “Cullman’s the best-kept secret in the South,” White said. “Low-key. Everybody gets along. And the three-tenths of 1 percent might have something to do with it.” Then, without any kind of transition, he added: “James is a good friend of mine. He’s a good man. He’s straight. He’s honest. He’s well educated.”

When I asked Rozalyn Love, the medical student, about the daily scene at the All Steak, she said that in Cullman, “there’s almost to some degree pride about being a little bit notorious.” Then she added, “They’re a lot less racist there than some of them would like people to think they are.” This is undoubtedly true; it’s not 1964 anymore. Many older white people from Cullman also believe that attitudes toward race are slowly shifting. “My children have a different view of racial makeup than I had,” says Judge Chaney. “From my father’s generation — extremely prejudiced — to mine — we’re working through it — to my children, race is a nonissue. That’s not to say there still aren’t racial tensions, whether it be black or Hispanic.”

The owner of a classic-car rebuilding shop, Jerry Burgess, made a similar generational point one day at his garage when he described something he saw in the 1960s and has never forgotten. Burgess is a bootlegger’s son with long, stringy hair under a dirty cap, a ZZ Top beard, an arm sleeved in tattoos and friendly eyes. “I can remember when the sign was on the edge of Cullman, down on Highway 31, close to the tracks,” he told me. “It said ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on a Nigger at Night.’ I can’t hardly say the word. My kids raise Cain about it. A lot of old-timers still use the word. My uncle does. Don’t think a thing about it. He’s a little old-fashioned. To me it seems like a very different time. Now most people would be O.K. with black people.”

Still, when Cecil Parker, a retired African-American construction worker who grew up near Colony, thinks about race relations in Alabama, he says: “It’s better, but it’s not great. Some know better. Some don’t care. Same people who did all the hanging and burning are still alive. They were taught against us. That we weren’t human. Alabama do not like black folk telling him what to do.”

That Fields evaluated this situation and sensed he could win an election remains a source of wonder among Alabama political insiders. “Other legislators,” he says, “still ask me, ‘How’d you do that?!’ I look at them, ‘How’d I do what?’ It’s not like I woke up and hoped people would vote for me.” But of course he was aware of what he was up against. The famous phrase that V. O. Key invented to describe the intensely localized, almost tribal nature of Alabamians at the polls is “friends and neighbors” voting. Key’s insight was that Alabama voters prefer political representatives who lived close by, even when the more distant figure might better speak to issues of common concern. A result, according to Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, is that “I haven’t seen a lot of coming together in a shared cause.” Thus, the enduring importance of some feeling of personal connection: of a handshake, of being able to say a candidate embraces my values, if not my plight. In small communities like Cullman, there is an aversion to the intensely mediated sense of experience that the Internet has brought to so much American life — and to American politics. Fierce Southern resistance to political messages of change has a lot to do with belief in the value of immediate encounters and a primary fear of strangers and outsiders — especially black or Northern ones — who may bring harm. “Folks down here kind of like to touch and feel the merchandise” is the way a Cullman banker named Dan W. Mann puts it. So the problem for Fields as a candidate amounted to a fundamental, transformative question about race in the white South: could a black man be considered a friend and a neighbor?

The candidate who ran against Fields in the special election was Wayne Willingham. The difference between Fields’s devoted life of public service and his opponent’s sparser record was stark. Further, a Cullman relative of Wayne’s, Joe Willingham, is a reputed Klan leader. At some point, Fields says, in the Deep South, the race card “always comes up when there are African-Americans running against whites.” At the campaign’s outset, people told Fields: “James, it’ll be hard to beat him. He’ll bring out the worst in folks.” In recent years, racial and sexual innuendo helped North Carolina’s Jesse Helms and Tennessee’s Bob Corker defeat black Senate opponents, and of course, race-baiting also happens locally. In 1992, Selma’s white incumbent mayor, Joe T. Smitherman, prevailed against his black challenger, James Perkins, in part by renting a room, filling it with rows of elderly white women and just as many telephone lines and instructing the women to make white voters aware of what was at stake. Fields understood that to win he especially would need to neutralize resentments, fears and prejudices by blurring his color into the background where it was subordinate to his character. His life was his case, but his means of expressing it would have to be his personality.

To explain his thinking about elections, Fields talks about Charlie Shafer. Fields says that Shafer was on active duty in 1965 in Selma, during the seminal civil rights movement demonstration that became known as Bloody Sunday after lawmen carrying clubs and tear gas attacked unarmed protesters. “When they marched to Montgomery from Selma, he was one of the troopers,” Fields says. “But if he lived in my district, I think he’d vote for me. I truly believe that. Because he’s gotten to know me. But then again he may not, and that’s O.K.” Fields’s point was not that he was irresistible, just qualified, and that voting for him didn’t have to be a big deal. The more normal it could be made to seem, the better.

Normal in Cullman means Christian. Conspicuous displays of faith by politicians are so common that it’s a surprise when one doesn’t have the Ten Commandments posted on his office wall. Accordingly, Fields began his last competition by placing a newspaper advertisement challenging Willingham to “a race that is God-driven and Christ-centered.” This was the only election on the ballot in the state at the time, and a black man running in Cullman was a big deal. Dozens of idealistic volunteers, most of them young and white, joined the campaign. Fields says: “I told the outsiders, ‘Don’t go out in the county. Just work the city.’ Out in the county there are people I grew up with, played ball with. If they went out there, some people would say, ‘Who are you, boy?’ ” Fields himself traveled door to door with his handshake and a message that, he says, boiled down to “vote for me for no other reason than you know and trust me.”

He continued: “I sat beside you in churches, restaurants, parks, at funerals, on the streets of Cullman, on hospital beds.” There were, he says, no soaring pulpit elocutions: “I don’t say anything profound. Just common, everyday things.”

I have meant, for a while now, to get around to writing a post regarding my own political stances (in regards to government, it's place, political efficacy, etc. I think all here are well aware of my political stances in most social issues). I'm not certain it's solidified into anything new (hence requiring an entry of its own rather than simply providing other sources) but I may discover that more clearly by at least starting to write such a post.

In the meanwhile, here's an article. It takes a position a bit more Left than my own politics (hence I'm not providing it with the affirmation of agreement) but it's interesting for the way it fleshes out more aspects of the past (particularly American history) that aren't often covered in mainstream circles.

I actually find it far more lengthy than it had to be and a bit repetitive (though that might be because I was reading it for the sake of a tid-bit rather than rigorous academic proof…). Consider it a the-more-you-know-the-better-always-so-read-it-just-so-you-know-even-if-you-never-use-it-again moment of mine.

The magazine itself is interesting, though – once again – I find it more Left than my own politics. While that doesn't necessarily negate use – for anything (I am, after all, still subscribed to Red State though I often find myself screaming at my computer screen in anger while reading it) –, I find that it takes certain ideas for granted and works from them while I might question those very ideas. Still, it often falls into the category of analysis (rather than simple critic) so I come across interesting articles (like the below) more often than not.

 

Wage-Slavery and Republican Liberty

Generations of workers critiqued wage-labor in the name of republican liberty.

In a recent interview, historian Quentin Skinner had the following to say about Karl Marx and the republican theory of liberty. The republican or ‘neo-Roman’ theory says that we are unfree when we are subject to another person’s will:

I am very struck by the extent to which Marx deploys, in his own way, a neo-Roman political vocabulary. He talks about wage slaves, and he talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat. He insists that, if you are free only to sell your labour, then you are not free at all. He stigmatises capitalism as a form of servitude. These are all recognizably neo-Roman moral commitments.

Skinner also says that “this is a question which would bear a great deal more investigation than it has received.”

I have been engaging in some of this investigation. It is not just Marx or even primarily Marx who believed that the neo-roman theory of freedom leads directly to a critique of wage-slavery. As early as the late 1820s, urban workers seized on the inherited republicanism of the American Revolution and applied it to the wage-labor relationship. They organized themselves city-by-city into the first self-conscious political parties of labor and their main campaign was against ‘wage-slavery.’

They argued that the wealthy “keep us in a state of humble dependence” through their monopoly control of the means of production. As Thomas Skidmore, founder of the Workingmen’s Party of New York, put it:

thousands of our people of the present day in deep distress and poverty, dependent for their daily subsistence upon a few among us whom the unnatural operation of our own free and republican institutions, as we are pleased to call them, has thus arbitrarily and barbarously made enormously rich.

Their “humble dependence” meant that they had no choice but to sell their labor to some employer or another. Their only chance of leading a decent life was if some employer would give them a job. Though formally free, these workers were nonetheless economically dependent and thus unfree. That is why they saw themselves as denied their rightful republican liberty, and why wage-labor merited the name slavery. Skidmore made the comparison with classical slavery the most explicit:

For he, in all countries is a slave, who must work more for another than that other must work for him. It does not matter how this state of things is brought about; whether the sword of victory hew down the liberty of the captive, and thus compel him to labor for his conqueror, or whether the sword of want extort our consent, as it were, to a voluntary slavery, through a denial to us of the materials of nature…

The critique of wage-slavery in the name of republican liberty could hardly be clearer.

Given their analysis of wage-labor, these artisan republicans were inexorably led to radical conclusions about the conditions that could restore workers their full independence. Every leading figure of these early workingmen’s parties made some form of the argument that “the principles of equal distribution [of property be] everywhere adopted” or that it was necessary to “equalize property.” Here, the “property” to be equally distributed was clearly means of production. And it was to be distributed not just in the form of land, but cooperative control over factories and other implements.

For instance, the major report articulating the principles of the Workingmen’s Party of New York included the demand for “AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF PROPERTY ON ARRIVING AT THE AGE OF MATURITY.” Only with control over this kind of property could workers’ structural dependence on owners be eliminated. For these ‘Workies’ following out the logic of the republican theory led not to a nostalgic, agrarian idealism, but to the view that each person’s independence depended upon everyone possessing equal and collective control of productive resources. Even more striking, they argued that the only way to achieve this condition of independence was through the joint political efforts of the dependent or ‘enslaved’ class.

As Langdon Byllesby, one of the earliest of these worker republicans, wrote, “history does not furnish an instance wherein the depository of power voluntarily abrogated its prerogative, or the oppressor relinquished his advantages in favour of the oppressed.” It was up to the dependent classes, through the agency of their workingmen’s parties, to realize a cooperative commonwealth.

There is an important historical connection between these radical artisans and Marx. As Maximilen Rubel and Lewis Feuer have shown, just at the time that Marx turned from Hegelian philosophy to political economy, in 1841-2, he began to read comparative political history. He was particularly interested in the American republic, and read three main sources: Beaumont, Tocqueville, and a less well-known Englishman, Thomas Hamilton. Hamilton was a former colonel who wrote his own, very popular observation of his time traveling in the United States called Men and Manners in America, published in 1833. For Marx, Hamilton was the best source of the three because Hamilton, unlike the Frenchmen, actually met with and spoke to leaders of the Workingman’s Party of New York. That section of Hamilton’s travelogue includes ominous references to the “Extreme Gauche” of the “Workies” who wish to introduce an “AGRARIAN LAW, and a periodical division of property,” and includes gloomy reflections on the coming “anarchy and despoliation.” It is these very sections of Hamilton that Marx copied into his notebooks during this period of preparatory study.

Unbeknown to Marx, he was copying a copy. In those sections of Men and Manners Hamilton had essentially transcribed parts of Thomas Skidmore’s report to the Workingmen’s Party of New York, which were a distillation of the ideas that could be found in Skidmore’s lengthy The Rights of Man to Property! Skidmore’s book included the argument that property rights were invalid if they were used to make the poor economically dependent, allowing owners “to live in idleness, partial or total, thus supporting himself, more or less, on the labors of others.”

If property rights were illegitimate the minute they were used to make some dependent on others then it was clear all freedom-loving citizens were justified in transforming property relations in the name of republican liberty. This was why Skidmore proposed the radical demand that the workers “APPROPRIATE ALSO, in the same way, THE COTTON FACTORIES, THE WOOLEN FACTORIES, THE IRON FOUNDERIES, THE ROLLING MILLS, HOUSES, CHURCHES, SHIPS, GOODS, STEAM-BOATS, FIELDS OF AGRICULTURE, &c. &c. &c. in manner as proposed in this work, AND AS IS THEIR RIGHT.” The manner proposed for this expropriation of the expropriators was not violent revolution but a state constitutional convention in which all property would be nationalized and then redistributed in shares of equal value to be used to form cooperatives or buy land.

Marx never knew these labor republicans by name, nor any of their primary writings, but it is clear from his notebooks that their ideas and political self-organization contributed to his early thinking, especially at the moment at which he was formulating his view of workers as the universal class. Indeed, in On the Jewish Question, Beaumont, Tocqueville and “the Englishman Hamilton’s” accounts of the United States feature heavily in Marx’s discussion of America. It is there that Marx makes the famous distinction between political and human emancipation, arguing that the American republic shows us most clearly the distinction between the two. This was almost exactly the same distinction that the Workies made when saying, as Philadelphian Samuel Simpson did, “the consequence now is, that while the government is republican, society in its general features, is as regal as it is in England.” A republican theory of wage-slavery was developed well before Marx (see here for evidence of similar developments in France that were also very likely to have influenced Marx).

In the United States, the republican critique of wage-labor went into abeyance for a time after the 1840s, or more appropriately, it was absorbed into the agrarian socialism of the National Reform Association – a tale masterfully told by the historian Mark Lause in Young America: Land, Labor and Republican Community.But ‘labor republicanism’ exploded back onto the political scene in the United States after the Civil War, especially with leading figures around the Knights of Labor and the eight-hour movement. The Knights were for a time one of the most powerful organizations in the country, organized skilled and unskilled labor together, and at their peak included more than 700,000 official members, probably representing more than 1 million participating workers. The Knights used the republican concept of liberty to assert the universal interests of labor and to argue for the transformation of American society. George McNeill, a leading Knight, wrote that “There is an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the wage-system of labor and the republican system of government.” Ira Steward, most famous as an eight-hour campaigner, demanded a “a republicanization of labor, as well as a republicanization of government.”

These turns of phrase were more than rhetorical gestures. They were self-conscious appeals to the republican theory. Indeed the Journal of United Labor even reproduced a famous passage on slavery from Algernon Sidney’s Discourses on Government in order to articulate why wage-labor was a form of servitude. The passage goes:

Slavery.—The weight of chains, number of stripes, hardness of labor, and other effects of a master’s cruelty, may make one servitude more miserable than another; but he is a slave who serves the gentlest man in the world, as well as he who serves the worst; and he does serve him if he must obey his commands and depend upon his will.

This passage, and Sidney’s writings, have played a major role in contemporary scholarship on early modern republicanism, and here it is deployed to critique not the political enslavement to a monarch but wage-slavery.

In fact, the labor republicans not only drew on the republican theory but further developed it in light of the new dynamics of industrial capitalism. They noted that there were two interconnected forms of dependence. One was the general or structural dependence of the wage-laborer on employers, defined by the fact that the monopoly of control over productive property by some left the rest dependent upon those owners for their livelihoods. This, as George McNeil put it, meant that workers “assent but they do not consent, they submit but do not agree.”

The voluntaristic language here was meant to capture how, thought the workers were not literally slaves, they were nonetheless compelled to work for others. As Skinner has shown in his book on Hobbes, it is precisely this conflation of voluntaristic action and freedom that modern republicans have always rejected, and which their enemies, like Hobbes, have regularly defended. Though here, the worker’s dependence was not a feature so much of being the legal property of another as it was being forced, by economic need, to sell his labor:

when a man is placed in a position where he is compelled to give the benefit of his labor to another, he is in a condition of slavery, whether the slave is held in chattel bondage or in wages bondage, he is equally a slave.

Emancipation may have eliminated chattel slavery, but, as eight-hour campaigner Ira Steward once put it, the creation of this new form of economic dependence meant “something of slavery still remains…something of freedom is yet to come.”

According to labor republicans, the structural dependence of the wage-laborer was translated, through the labor contract, to a more personal form of servitude to the employer. After all, the contract was an agreement of obedience in exchange for wages. It was an agreement to alienate control over one’s own activity in exchange for the privilege of having enough money to buy necessities, and perhaps a few luxuries. Indeed, even if the wages were fairly high, the point of the contract was to become subject to the will of a specific owner or his manager. As one anonymous author put it, in the Journal of United Labor, “Is there a workshop where obedience is not demanded – not to the difficulties or qualities of the labor to be performed – but to the caprice of he who pays the wages of his servants?” As nearly every scholar of republican thought has noted, the language of being subject to the caprice of another is one of the most enduring rhetorical tropes of the neo-Roman theory of freedom. It is no accident that it would feature so heavily in labor republican arguments about domination in the workplace.

It was for this reason that the Knights of Labor believed that the only way to ‘republicanize labor’ was “to abolish as rapidly as possible, the wage system, substituting co-operation therefore.” The point about a cooperative system was that property was collectively owned and work cooperatively managed. Only when the class differences between owners and workers were removed could republican liberty be truly universalized. It would, at once, remove the structural and personal dependence of workers.

As William H. Silvis, one of the earliest of these figures, argued, cooperation “renders the workman independent of necessities which often compel him to submit to hectoring, domineering, and insults of every kind.” What clearer statement could there be of the connection between the republican theory of liberty, economic dependence, and the modern wage-system? Here was a series of arguments that flowed naturally from the principles of the American Revolution.

To demand that “there is to be a people in industry, as in government” was simply to argue that the cooperative commonwealth was nothing more than the culmination and completion of the American Revolution’s republican aspirations.

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We have just lost the South for a generation.
     –Lyndon B. Johnson [apocrypha]

There is a phenomenon that I feel I occasionally hint at or passingly refer to from time to time on here in my life, where I find an aspect of myself which I recognize now but would seem to have roots that trace back to some point that fades into the past, and I can no longer discern it distinctly. My liberalism (and the creeping feeling that this was retrieved and enforced by my surrounding culture throughout the entirety – just about – of my childhood) is one of them.

And, it would seem, my Catholicism is one as well (which is particularly bizarre to me), because I really never identified strongly with my Catholicism until college. I don't believe I ever have mentioned this here (though I started to actually notice, and mention, it for the first time after discussing religion in college, first in Williams Secular Community, then with Arantza, Andrew, and Kahn, and then in InterFaith) but, in spite of attending Sunday School (on and off) and stepping foot into a church at least half of the year (Catholic, naturally), I didn't really have a particularly Catholic identity. Sure, I identified as Catholic, but my religious affiliation could really have been better described as a Christian identity than a Catholic one.

America is a Christian nation – insofar that "Christian nation" means one based upon a premise of generic Protestant Christianity largely due to a bizarre necessity, by a decent amount of people, for evangelism (including tacit evangelism like politicians feeling it's necessary to say God bless at the end of every speaking engagement, regardless of zir own religious identifications or those whom ze is addressing) and a held belief that, so long as we all believe in JESUS, everything else will turn out fine (seriously, though, we need to all agree on that one fact – we do, right? Right?).

The downfall of this approach (other than the glaring fact of expected cultural religious conformity) is that a lot of the cool denominational diversity that exists is passed over. However, from a personal perspective, it robbed me of the diversity within my denomination by making me think that Christianity meant X (and, since Catholicism is a form of Christianity, Catholicism must mean X). This provided me with thoughts like Catholicism believed in sola scriptura (Latin for "by scripture alone"). Or, as I've complained irately a multitude of times here, sola fide (Latin for "[salvation] by faith alone").

This, in turn, had me stating that there was no real Christian denomination that I agreed with (how could I, when, in my ignorance, they all required faith for salvation?); I identified as Catholic, because that's what I grew up in and, therefore, was the place of my attendance (it surely had nothing to do with me agreeing with the theology).

This, I think, is why discovery of my Catholicism was this very cool experience (and welcome relief) in college. However, it was also a somewhat bizarre experience, as I realized that a lot of my religion fit me so well. This was bizarre because I had not sought out Catholicism for its stances (indeed, I was so utterly clueless the whole of my childhood as to what Catholicism stood for that I actually rejected it (as I did all Christian denominations) as an imperfect expression of my own beliefs; I had no issue with being Christian: I just didn't agree with the conclusions most Christian religions extrapolated from that). And yet Catholicism seemed to verify so much of what I did agree with:

We employ incense and cross ourselves, because worship should involve all the senses?
Cool; I never thought of theology in that light before.

Our liturgy, like aspects of our scripture and Jewish liturgy, ought to be symbolic and metaphorical?
Cool; as an English major, I can completely get that.

Our Mass should include beautiful music and incense and pretty stained-glass windows, because it ought to be art, because art is a means of connecting with the divine and Truth?
What a beautiful idea.

Reason and logic are tools given to Human-kind, and we ought to use them and, indeed, can (and ought to) use them to perceive and understand God?
How very Enlightenment like.

In lieu of the last point, there ought to be a respect for science as an explainer of our current universe? So much so that St. Augustine said that scripture should possibly be regarded as metaphorical if science contradicts it. On top of that, there's a very rich history of priests as scientists, as well as the church being a patron of the sciences; lest we forget, it was a priest that helped formulate the concept of the Big Bang.
Wonderful.

Of course, some of why I like those things (stuff like the use of reason and the importance of beauty/art) are because they tie us very close to a celebration to the human/earthly form (which, in turn, is why more on the Protestant side dislike Catholicism and just see it as an extension of paganism. All that incense, candles, and stained-glass windows? Just distractions taking your mind away from focusing on God during the service). Admittedly, my favorite priests were the ones who'd sit down with you around at a pub with a beer (or mix drinks) or join you to hang out somewhere or had experience at college campuses – imagine the somewhat portly priest so ridiculed during the middle ages, the priest perceived to be too much of this Earth, too down-to-Earth. Of course, theology was always so much more strongly about morality rather than how wicked the Earth itself is, so I've never been too afraid of celebrating and enjoying our Earthly humanity.

An orthodox Catholic would probably find a middle ground, of sorts. Certainly our humanity isn't to be wholly repudiated. After all, Christ became man, and what was his first miracle? Making water into wine.

But I think this highlights the final conclusion I came to: while Catholicism, I discovered, was the religion that fit me the closest (sans Judaism), I still wound up disagreeing with aspects of it. I graduated with a degree in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in Queer Studies, after all. I would not be surprised to learn that the pope and I have some differing ideas. Despite the absolute unlikelihood of it, I want women ordained; I understand all reasons the why the church refuses on that point, but I can't – in good conscience – agree. And you know, really, my differences are small in number. But they all focus around things which are pretty much dogma by now. For all the changes the church can make (and they can be awesome; how the Mass is viewed after Vatican II is an awesome understanding and approach to our liturgy), they won't be any that address the bulk of my issues with Catholicism.

However, unless I decide to convert to Judaism, this is what I have. The time I became an atheist taught me (ironically) that I am a religious person; my understanding of the world involves religion. Honestly, I think it's inseparable from who I am (there's a reason I was co-president of InterFaith for two years).

However, this isn't a complete impediment. After all, I spent most of the entirety of my life in a religion that I disagreed with; I now agree with it so much more so, so it's even better than it was before, right?

And, really, I don't think I'm really making how clear I like a lot of Catholicism right now. I forget if I mentioned it on here or had only thought to, but it's very difficult to describe the feeling I got when hearing an organ playing from out of a cathedral while at Princeton for the interfaith summit. Or the sounds of, really, any form of chanting of psalms and hymns (though, naturally, Gregorian has a special place in my heart). And, of course, the celebration of the Mass.

But there's also another one of those phenomena I mentioned at the beginning of this post that makes my Catholicism so cozy. Again, for the life of me, I'm not sure where I get this feeling (in particular since I only really started understanding Catholicism in college), but there is a history of liberal Catholics throughout history, a group of liberal intellectuals who, in spite of their differences with Catholicism due to their liberalism, are fully Catholic (and are, in fact, liberal fully due to being Catholic). Yet, if you were to ask me for examples, I would come up short, which isn't to say that the idea is far-fetched. As I've already said, there is an emphasis and respect for intellectualism within Catholicism, particularly in the area of philosophy. And, while part of the reason you can consider the Catholic voting bloc Democratic for the most part (even to this day) is because most Catholic immigrants were Irish (and thus Catholic) while also being working class and, thus, labor (as well as Kennedy, obviously), I think it's telling, when Catholic no longer means Irish here in America, at least 50-some percent of Catholics are still voting Democrat. The only time I've actually really witnessed this was during my Senior year of college with Andrew. We were both pretty hard-leaning liberals, though of different stripes in the end, and yet entirely Catholic.

Both of us could back up why we do what we do during Mass and in most of our theology. Andrew was more versed in the philosophy used by Catholicism to justify itself. I'm pretty concerned regarding liturgy (including that outside of Mass). And, while I was always happy to find myself in a fully-Catholic room from time to time (due to, for nine elevenths of my life, not fully identifying as Catholic), Andrew and I would often laugh about what we disagreed with and perceived as ridiculous about our church (at one point, he mentioned that he thought he had heard that the papacy had released an official apology for what had happened with Galileo; we marveled how, in comparison to other Christian denominations, ours could get so many things right and yet others still so utterly wrong. Then we laughed as we noted the church had no problem with evolution (unlike other denominations) but still hadn't apologized for when it denied that the sun revolved around the Earth).

Side note: come to think of it, Kaz and I probably fall into that same place together, but I feel him and I haven't discussed politics enough for such a dynamic to unfold.

And this is my longwinded way of eventually reaching the point of this post.

I like my religion; I do. Actually, it's (admittedly) more torn than that, with high extremes of each end. While I often don't put anything in the collection plate each Sunday (in part because I don't really have any money, though more these days because I can't justify supporting financially an institution that I disagree so extremely on in some cases), I still vouch for the religion. But the point is, I'm trying to find my place in it. Based on the merits that Catholicism does have, I think we ought to root ourselves in that. In other words, Catholic culture. But what is that, exactly? Good question.

And these thoughts which are usually lurking around my head came to the forefront, when I came across this article: http://patrickdeneen.blogspot.com/2009/05/abortion-and-catholic-culture.html.

At first, I thought the article was going to make the argument that abortion and pro-life culture dominated Catholic culture at the moment (which, really, you can't create a culture around a singular idea), and it was because of this that people were leaving the church in droves (particularly young people). To quote two sentences from the article: "In my view, the singular focus upon abortion as THE issue over which conservative Catholics will brook no divergence and around which we are called to rally reveals, to my mind, not evidence of robust Catholic culture as much as its absence.[…]The ferocity over this issue – and this issue almost to the exclusion of nearly every other issue that might be part of a rich fabric of Catholic culture – suggests to me that Catholic culture, where it existed, has been largely routed."

Instead, the article is about how we live in American society's culture and not in a purely Catholic one, and this is why some Catholics feel okay not centralizing their Catholicism around abortion (after all, abortion is not at the center of Catholic spirituality or theology).

***Note: I'm not interested in contemplating the morality of abortion; that's not the point of this post. Everything written here will be sans my own opinions on abortion, if I even have any***

And this is somewhat central to my search for a Catholic culture or, really, namely a Catholicism I feel comfortable in.

As I noted to my dad a few days ago, I'm extremely conservative when it comes to liturgy (possibly a small part of why I'm so interested in Judaism – our liturgy came out of that, so, if you want to go back to the source…). On the other hand, as I've noted (and demonstrated) a multitude of times here, I'm extremely liberal (no surprise anymore). So, when I find someplace I really like worshiping, I will probably not be liked by most of the people there.

On the other hand, I agree entirely with the concepts of Vatican II regarding changes to the Mass. The difficulty comes with the part that calls for more local aspects brought in (which, ultimately, I do agree). A Mass is a Mass is a Mass. And while I recognize it as valid, it's not my ideal way of celebrating it (a valid opinion, I would argue, seeing that the very construction of the Mass was as an art to be enjoyed and admired). The part of the article that talks about how we are members of parishes (where we live) rather than shopping around for the right place and, thus, we have a culture of acceptance rather than transformation struck me as funny, largely because I've been going to different parishes to see the differing Masses because the one in my parish is far too liberal in its liturgy for my taste (and it's not even that liberal, by today's standards; it's actually rather common place – hence why I haven't settled for a particular parish yet).

Yet there's the rub. I agree with Vatican II (I know, technically I'm not supposed to even have the choice of disagreeing if I'm a part of this church, but clearly I'm not a fully orthodox Catholic). I don't disagree with these Masses; I simply dislike them (stylistically). There's an important difference in that.

So, in the grand question of what is Catholic culture, how do we decide in such diversity? Well, the first problem, I would guess, would be that you can't define culture around the Mass (though there are some interesting questions that arise from such an idea and I'm certain there have been Catholic philosophers (and I would probably agree) that there are ways to do so partially). Sure, liturgy can be important to culture, but, as I've said several times, Mass is not the only part of the liturgy. Did you know that it is practically literally impossible (I don't know if I've checked all the possibilities yet) to find a parish that celebrates Vespers within a 45 minute drive from my house?

Perhaps it's more linked to the problem that I tend to find in my own spiritual life. If it isn't obvious yet, I prefer liturgical religions. There are some liberal reasons for this involving analysis of systems and how it affects the adherents, etc. but I think this post is getting long enough as it is. Yet if I wanted to find other means of discovering the wealth of diverse and beautiful liturgy we have? It literally took me a year to fully understand what the Divine Office was, let alone how to practice it. And, if it weren't for the particular people in my life during that time, I don't know I would have discovered it so quickly; yes, you can always ask your priest, but doesn't it make more sense to have that information readily available somewhere in easy-to-digest form rather than putting it through a bottleneck of one person?

So where was I supposed to discover the wealth of my Catholic faith? Arguably, Sunday School (and, God knows, those poor teachers did their best) but you can't expect children from such a young age to truly value the information their receiving (at one point, one of the kids just played his Gameboy under the table while claiming he was meditating; I'm pretty sure my teacher just gave up).

But after that? Sure, my brother and I were made altar servers (from which I learned a great deal), but there really isn't any other means other than lector or Eucharistic minister – all of which doesn't really teach you or envelop you in the liturgy (particularly outside of the Mass). It envelopes you scripture, sure, but – you know – we're heretics and scripture alone isn't enough for us.

And this is why I got so excited about that article. I thought it was going to repudiate abortion (or same-sex marriage or contraceptives) as the pillar in which to encircle our culture around. Because you can't create a Catholic culture around an external cause. It has to involve more (and I do defend this point, even to the issue of poverty, an issue which has been a Catholic cause for ages and strikes directly to Catholicism).

You want to know why people are leaving the church? The first is that you're zeroing in on divisive issues (homosexuals and Transsexuals and condoms in Africa) and, like good Catholics, the laity is using their God-given reason to see that the church's position just doesn't make that much sense (plus, it hurts people). At least, that's my pet theory.

However, more so, you're not giving these people any alternative. A religion focused around fighting abortion is not going to keep people; people want a little bit more.

Give them something which makes them feel Catholic. Because, right now, there isn't really much. I was stuck in rapt horror during the Mass before the March for Life as it was built up to with generic worship music (which, naturally, all sounded the same and could think of remotely creative lyrics even though they're supposedly written for a higher power). I might as well have been attending any evangelical group back at home because there was hardly any difference other than there were a bunch of priests and seminarians walking around. The only point that an actual difference started to emerge was during the introduction of the bishops present and a reference to the relic being used on the altar (and, of course, the Mass itself).

Now, there's a long and personal history as to why I'm so bitter against such worship, but the point still remains: why am I bothering to stick with Catholicism when evangelicalism is offering pretty much the same thing? Evangelicalism is able to keep its adherents, because it operates on a system of fearing about your own salvation and the salvation of everyone you care about with a constant threat of going to Hell and an expectation to be continually perfect to the point that it becomes an informal (not always realized) game of bragging rights. This is not Catholicism (though, of course, with some of the laity (and apparently some of the clergy) seeing no difference between evangelical culture and Catholic culture, who knows anymore).

Setting up places to more easily understand and learn about liturgy would be a start, as well as the ability to learn about Catholic philosophy would be good.

Of course, they may end up tacitly (and then un-tacitly) agreeing with opposition to same-sex marriage, contraceptives, and the like. I need more liberal Catholics; where do I find them?

 

***Note: I think it's obvious, but better safe than sorry – when I refer to evangelicalism here, it's a rather large umbrella term and is referring to those groups I have personal experience with, rather than everyone. Further, it's more often in reference to evangelical culture than necessarily theology***

Wanna know something funny? All recent (and it's been quite a lot) civil right advancement for the Queer community in the U. S. A. has been either legislatively or judicially.

Out of that, a decent portion of it has been done by either Republican judges or, to some degree, Republican congressmen (and, of course, we cannot forget Republican lawyers: Ted Olsen among them).

After plural sexuality is accepted as normal, wonderful, and the norm (and, if you've been tracing the trends from at least the 1920s like I have, believe me it will), the Republicans will argue that their party has been defenders for gay and Trans people since at least the 2000s and that crucial moments for the legal right of Queer people were made at their hands (which, admittedly, is true).

It'll happen. Just watch. Mark me here.

 

In other news, the U. S. Bankruptcy Court recently delivered a ruling that defines my legal view entirely:

"This court cannot conclude from the evidence or the record in this case that any valid governmental interest is advanced by DOMA as applied to the Debtors. Debtors have urged that recent governmental defenses of the statute assert that DOMA also serves such interests as “preserving the status quo,” “eliminating inconsistencies and easing administrative burdens” of the government. None of these post hoc defenses of DOMA withstands heightened scrutiny. In the court’s final analysis, the government’s only basis for supporting DOMA comes down to an apparent belief that the moral views of the majority may properly be enacted as the law of the land in regard to state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in disregard of the personal status and living conditions of a significant segment of our pluralistic society. Such a view is not consistent with the evidence or the law as embodied in the Fifth Amendment with respect to the thoughts expressed in this decision. The court has no doubt about its conclusion: the Debtors have made their case persuasively that DOMA deprives them of the equal protection of the law to which they are entitled." (emphasis mine)

Because I'll just create noise and strife rather than anything useful if I post this on Facebook…

 

I don't know what I love more about this day: the number of comments about Osama through the Islamic religion or the fact that aparently the best response to the death of a man who terrorized the Middle East and ruined American families is just chants of "USA!" (my all-time favorite was a site asking to submit one word in reaction to his death and a fairly prominent one was just the word American).

 

I mean, I never thought I, of all people, would be one to play judge during a moment such as this. Normally I'd tell the person that they're bothering themselves too much with other people's thoughts or I'd play devil's advocate and say, "Well, why shouldn't we be glad?" And, while I'm not exactly sure what I was, I know I'll never forget when I saw. Just going to boxturtlebulletin.com like usual and the opening article reads, Justice Has Been Done. And I was just shocked. For all those familiar reasons. For justice, because the specter of my childhood actually turned out to be there after all the newscasts and reactions and 10 years of living with it so that I was reminded just how ingrained he was in my memories, peers, psyche, and culture and now he could finally be extinguished, and (I admit) because I knew this was perfect political fodder. Forever the PR individual, this was what Obama needed for 2012.

For all these reasons, I was taken aback. I haven't slept since (and I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before). And yet, I keep feeling disgust when I see reactions. I mean, I know people are stupid. If you fall for anything within propaganda (which is PR and advertisement, as far as I'm concerned), you're stupid. The backbone is manipulation. Clearly my expectation was that people would eat this up, see it as "a reason to believe in America again" (fuck, was I ever this much of a cynic?).

And yet all I can see are the same problems that came up, starting with Reagan, during the Bush years. "USA! USA!" I suppose it's suitable enough to run around in a U. S. flag because of this; or at least, normally, you might be able to convince me that I shouldn't think negatively of it. But all I can hear when I see it is, "America is the best country in the world." That ridiculous, egocentric, and mind-numbingly stupid tag line of American politics.

I want to just sigh, give a bittersweet rejoicement (if I must party, celebrate resentingly), because life was spilt. If I thought I was a cynic before, I thought I was more of a cynic than to make a comment such as, "Is life so cheap now?" I'm glad he's gone. To quote someone else, "Glad Obama got the bastard." But I am not happy. Happy is unmuddled, too pure. It rings of celebration as if the Bears just won the Superbowl. "Yeah, we got 'im." Death (and news about a man who murdered people) should not be celebrated like a sports event; the reaction is so fundamentally detached from the notion of sadness that I can't help but think that the majority of those people only saw the man as a symbol, not a life, not a taker of lives, not an opressor, but an opponent to which our team was losing. Because, all along, it was just about us, right? It was America's personal agenda to settle because it's the strongest country in the world. Because we have a manifest destiny that entitles us to anything we fucking want.

I want to be happy. Today is a good day.

But it makes me a little sick inside to call myself an American.

Just because I'm American, don't assume I'm Christian.

Just because you worship a particular deity, don't assume that I do too.

And, if your organization's purpose is not for the proselytizing of a particular faith, do not waste my interest and insult my identity by implicitely, or explicitely, telling me I should follow your faith or assuming that I have religious belief (and that belief is yours).

Am I the only one thoroughly (or, at least, enough) pleased with how the whole budget thing went down?

The repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell?

I actually think I don't need any other Christmas presents, tbh.

Alright, I generally try to be tempered with politics. If it isn't gay rights related and it doesn't involve inane, regressive social policies (keep your abstinance only education out of me and my siblings' schools), I tend to be live and let live. When it comes to economic issues, I admit my own general ignorance and try to listen and learn from anyone. And, as I've said many times before, I hate how politics tears apart people who are otherwise friends and how it causes fighting. I don't want to fight and I don't want to degrade. So, I try to stay tempered.

The issue? I quite secretly (okay, maybe half secretly) love politics. It's something over the past 3 years or so that I've tried to strengthen. And so, of course, I can't possibly not form an opinion around it (even if said opinion is hesitant and vague).

Though, admittedly, while the recent election results more than infuriate me, I still offer my congrats to my fellow conservative Americans to their victory. And, were it simply a matter of economic conservatives coming out in droves to vote their opinion, I might reside myself to non-hindering and unoffensive grumbling off in the corner.

But let's be honest, that's not why the Dem majority got ousted. It was people fed up with the job they perceive Obama to be doing. And, were it often reasonable objections, I – again – might not be so angry at the moment. No matter which way I twist it, high spending will never look appealing to an economic conservative. I understand that's liberal economics (well, technically conservative, but I'm not talking liberal economics in the classical, laissez-faire sense, clearly). However, to complain that Obama is the worst president ever??? As I said some post before – I've ceased to have any intellectual respect for you (also, if you really think the Nazis were proper socialism in any sense of the term, please shoot yourself. They hated the communists, too; stop twisting history to fit your agenda. There, Godwin's law, I thought I'd get it out on the table). 

So, this is not aimed at conservatives. This is to my liberal brothers and sisters who have said that Obama has not done enough or anything at all. This is not a debate of whether conservative or liberal policy is better. This is purely from a liberal standpoint (whether it's good or bad, I have to admit – cut me and I bleed blue).

As I've said countless times on here, I didn't like Obama at first. He seemed to be another Clinton – "I'll say whatever it takes to get elected." Well, I was partially right. Obama is pure politics and, to somewhat of a degree, he knows how to work politics. The difference between him and Clinton? Obama actually works it to get the policies he promised done.

 

I keep hearing, "What has Obama done, what has he done?"

How about financial reform requiring lenders to verify applicants' credit history, income, and employment status, allowing shareholders of publicly traded companies to actually vote on executive pay, and prohibiting banks from engaging in proprietary trading?

The elephant in the room (no, not that elephant) but I'll say it anyway - fucking government public health care!!! (okay, not really. But damn well closer to the ideal thing) Ever since my economics teacher in Junior year of high school was completely baffled that Canada had perfectly functioning public health care and we didn't, I've been in total support. I mean, progressives have been wanting this since Teddy. Obama did it.

What does that really mean? Extending health coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, for one. It also cuts prescription drug cost for those on medicare by 50%. I'm partially parroting, but it also means, starting in 2014, insurance giants will be banned from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions and from imposing annual caps on benefit payouts. Which, of course, also means not having to wait until they near death and then using government funds to save those in the ER who are uninsured. "As of September, insurance companies can no longer arbitrarily revoke coverage for those who get sick. Children with existing illnesses can no longer be denied insurance. Younger Americans can stay on their parents' policies until they're 26. And 1 million elderly citizens are receiving checks for $250 to fill the gap in Medicare's coverage of prescription drugs." And? Accomplishing "all this while extending the solvency of Medicare by a dozen years and cutting the deficit by $143 billion over the next decade."

Yes, we didn't get the public option. In fact, Obama used that as a bargaining chip so that, when the bill was whittled down for compromise, we'd still have something to rejoice over. Harsh? Yes. But – we still got it!! Remember how hard a battle (even WITH an f-ing Democratic majority in both chambers!) it was? As a friend of mine had said, Clinton would have taken some sort of compromise rather than fighting for it.

What else?

Providing $12.2 Billion in new funding for Individuals With Disabilities Education Act?

Hell, he's also supported getting the Matthew Shepard act passed and extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees for his administration. He's also given more coverage and voice to the gay, bi, and Trans community than it's received from just about any president since Clinton (and we all remember how that turned out, don't we?). Hell, the man's appointed more openly gay officials than any other president in US history – and a transgender woman ('bout time the Trans community got more public, official attention; it's still small steps (did my pathetic hyphen and specificity not tip you off?)...but they're big and necessary steps).

Should I get started on the stimulus plan? No, I won't even. I'll just highlight how he saved the auto industry from tanking. Some say he should have let them go bankrupt – because apparently the part builders and dealerships that would undoubtedly have suffered on top of just GM and Chrysler and have resulted in the loss of more than 1 million jobs isn't all that big of deal. Maybe I'm just a bit biased, being from Illinois and all (and, therefore, in the midwest), but I'm pretty sure my parents really appreciate that. Sure, admittedly, I don't like active use in the government. I actually do believe in as much limited government as is reasonable (so, no, public health care is not stricken from my list). Basically, create the rules (read: laws) and then let it function on its own. Taking active role smacks a little too much of king (though, keep in mind, congress can always refuse; checks and balances for a reason). However, this was a crisis. No one seemed to mind Bush making special rules in light of a crisis. Of course, I'd love to hear what people would say about Obama handling the economy had he just let it run its course and let the auto industry just fail. All in all, I'll take the bailout rather than not.

Now, again, I don't want to turn this into liberal vs. conservative. However, Bush was our president for 8 years (though, in fairness to my conservative friends, I generally hesitate to ever call Bush an economic conservative, though a social one he often was (even if just to get votes: gay marriage, anyone?); spending as much as he did on Iraq is not fiscal conservatism and we all know it). So, I say this just to put things in perspective: in 2010 alone, more jobs were created in the private sector than in all 8 years under Bush. Honestly, take a look at some of the charts and the info. in the article. It's absolutely amazing what's been going on economically.

I really hesitate to throw in voluntary disclosure of White House visitors for the first time in US history as a show of transparency seeing as it was backroom deals that got us most of our progressive achievements. That's fair criticism.

I also hesitate to mention that he appointed the first Latina supreme court judge (I was raised in the suburbs – I see the world in a colorblind fashion, even if I know enough about race politics to know we cannot do that quite yet), but it really is important.

I could also add to the list eliminating subsidies to private lender middlemen of student loans and protecting student borrowers.

For those Teddy fans out there, he's also increased funding for national parks and forests by 10%.

Fan of world peace (I say that only half sarcastically)? He signed a new START Treaty, a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia.

I'm not the biggest enviromentalist nut, but one I was personally thrilled about: increased average fuel economy standards from 27.5 mpg to 35.5 mpg, starting in 2016.

Extremely passionate patriot? Now the Pentagon provides travel expenses to families of fallen soldiers to be on hand when the body arrives at Dover Air Force Base.

Need something to go with the last point I made? He's reversed the policy of barring media coverage during the return of fallen soldiers to Dover Air Force Base.

Also repealed Bush era restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (oh, thank God, yes).

Dislike torture? He ended the Bush administration's CIA program of "enhanced interrogation methods" by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terrorism interrogations.

Alright, fine, don't like taxes? Tax cuts for up to 3.5 million small businesses to help pay for employee health care coverage.

And, while on taxes, could we end the complaints about them? Yes, no one likes taxes - but they pay for the services that your government provides. The reason why my public high school was so damn good was because of the taxes paid. Failed public schools? Not when you actually don't try to cut the system.

And, really, the list could go on. Seriously, way on.

Now, of course, I'm not entirely pleased. While I might be able to swallow creating a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, making the Tobacco industry susceptible to the FDA smacks a little too much of too much big government and government intervention for me (this libertarian streak in me is hardly surprising, seeing as social liberalism meets economic conservatism by virtue of a belief in a non-intrusive government; and the ability for every individual to choose their own course in any manner they choose so long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else is core to my being).

And, have we gone over the offenses he's done to gay rights? His administration releasing a defense for Prop. 8. The removal of our large category of civil rights on the website early in his presidency. Promising us a gay marching band to make up for the lack of a gay speaker at his innaugeration. Not doing more to end Don't Ask Don't Tell and currently asking for a stay on the immediate cease that was declared for DADT by a federal judge? Offensive is barely the words I could muster.

However, much like I've always suspected that his whole "I believe in civil unions, though not gay marriage" thing was a political ploy (however, seeing how much everyone seems to hate him at the moment, he might as well go for broke since he's playing politics severely wrong), I suppose so is his hesitance on gay issues. He's not the open president we expected.

However, he is the progressive president we wanted. I was hesitant before. While I was, admittedly, incredibly impressed by his campaign and the image that was being crafted and will likely survive in history (as a PR person and an activist, I tend to look for these things; it also explains why I have an absolute love for memorials), I was not impressed by the man. I thought he wasn't doing anything. I can now say that I can place him in that great line with FDR (and when I say that, you know I'm meaning buisness). He doesn't have the openness that's made me an Adlai E. Stevenson man even though I never saw the man alive (then again, Adlai didn't win election twice, if we remember), but he's done more for progressives than has been done in a while.

I've complained for the past 10 years that politics is a sham and that, while my party fits just about every issue that I would ideally want covered, they don't actually stick to those issues. Obama has. For the first time I'm able to say, he's the president we've been waiting for.

Honestly, get off the man's back. He's done more in two years than many Democratic presidents have done in 8.