Can a liberal follow Jesus?

I remember my dad talking about religion and liberalism. He was a liberal and a Bible scholar and a member of a fundamentalist church--unusual in combination and frequently frustrating to him, but he felt loyalty to his church and felt that a liberal voice was needed for it to grow.

He always held that the early church's attitude toward ownership was very like collective communism--not communism as it played out in the real world, but communism as a idealistic philosophy, one that favored "collectivism" over personal ownership. But the church got away from Jesus' point that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matt 19:24). Instead the church itself got caught up with money and possessions. Today Christianism has no trouble rewarding those who accumulate tremendous wealth and feel very righteous about it.

And now we have a rich, politically conservative, born-again president whose tax breaks protect the wealthy and whose campaign appealed successfully to the evangelical right to support him as their representative. I think of what Jesus said about the publicly self-righteous pharisees of his time, "do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full" (Matt 6:5).

I feel that Jesus would proudly wear the liberal label in our society—a bleeding heart liberal that Catholics portray quite literally.

And as Christianism has abandoned its liberal heritage, it looks to the Old Testament for rules, producing “Old Testament Christians" who quote from Leviticus and ignore the efforts of Jesus to move his followers away from judging other people, asking them to work instead on themselves: "first remove the hunk of wood from your own eye" and "let the one without sin cast the first stone."

That’s why I’m more comfortable saying that I follow Jesus, but uncomfortable with the term "Christian" and what it has come to mean. I take my philosophy and meaning from Jesus’ teachings. It’s the hypocracies of humankind that bother me.

Happy Holidays

It amuses me to read about the discomfort some people have with "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas." Somehow the change in greeting becomes another example of the persecution of Christians.

I was raised in the Church of Christ, a fundamentalist denomination to the right of Baptists, and the more conservative Church of Christ congregations had "holiday parties" rather than "Christmas parties," because the Bible doesn't tell Christians to celebrate Christ's birth. And if it isn't in the Bible, then the conservative wing felt it was wrong. The dictum was "speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where the Bible is silent." More liberal denominations might talk of Christmas, but generally did not sing Christmas caroles during worship and certainly had no nativity reenactment or anything so "popish."

This leads me to think that it isn't the fundamentalists who are griping about "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas." It's the people who work for the religion machine, Christianism. That's the money-making, corporate-religious, politically partisan, Christianistic henchman, the modern-day Pharisee.

And the irony to me is that religious groups struggled to change public-school halloween festivals to "fall festivals" because of the "pagan" aspects of halloween. But the origins of Christmas are in the "pagan" celebrations of the winter solstice, which fell around December 25 under the old Roman calendar. Christmas was invented to incorporate of the worldwide celebration of solstice--the point where days stopped getting shorter and began getting longer--the day that heralded the sun's triumph over darkness.

Big cat, little cat

Artemus and Monkey

Who's winning?

The Democrats are winning because they aren't being tempted into damnation.

When Mr. Bush can't come up with any better "solution" to social security's problems than preaching to the choir about private accounts, it's time to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Because that's no solution, and the people don't like it, and he's not addressing the people who need to be convinced. He's just biding his time, waiting for the Democrats to stumble into the trap. Because the first party to bring up raising taxes or cutting benefits is the loser. So Bush continues to stump to the faithful, waiting for the Democrats to say it. But all they're saying is, "Get thee behind me, Satan." That leaves Republicans in the fallback position of accusing the Democrats of having no solution, which is just another attempt to lead the Dems into temptation. But the Dems lay low. Eventually the Reps will have to bring it up themselves or look like they can't lead.

And as for judicial appointments, clearly Mr. Bush was hoping to lead the Dems into temptation when he renominated the candidates that had been filibustered before during the previous session. That should drive the Dems crazy! But the Dems lay low. The Senate Republicans said, "Don't make me have to get nucular on your ass." The Dems said, "Get thee behind me, Satan. You can have your appellate judges, and we'll lay low until the next Supreme Court vacancy." Now the Reps look weak, and the Dems are looking stronger every day.

Here's what we say in Texas: Fool me once--shame on you! But fool me twice--shame on me! That's the one Mr. Bush doesn't get, but it looks like the Democrats do.

Mr. Bush's ambivalence about research involving embryos

Mr. Bush publicized himself today with a group of children who had been adopted as embryos. He urged his people to support embryo adoption rather than using embryos for stem cell research, so I decided to do the math.

The Rand Corporation's 2003 report does a lot of the math and is widely quoted. Their researchers estimate that 400,000 embryos have been frozen and stored over the past 25 years in the U.S. (as of 2003). Of these, however, only 2.8% have been donated for research. The majority are being reserved for future attempts at pregnancy. So 11,000 are available for research.

But the Rand report points out that the best embryos have already been used in pregnancy attempts, so these are not the best embryos the patients produced. And some embryos have been stored since the late 1970s, when freezing technology wasn't well developed. So only 65%, or 7334, embryos are estimated to survive freezing and thawing, and only 25%, or 1,834, embryos are estimated to continue to develop.

Now let's be very optimistic and say that all 1834 surviving embryos are good enough to implant in healthy, willing women— the vessels. Now not all of these embryo transfers are likely to "take"--that is, to stick the landing. According to the American Pregnancy website, as many as "48% of women using donor eggs will experience pregnancy, however approximately 15-20% of women will lose the pregnancy through miscarriage." Let's continue to be optimistic and say that 48% of these embryos will implant—that is, stick to the vessel—and that only 15% of the vessels will miscarry (we'll also assume that only one embryo was transferred to each vessel). That would mean as many as 748 pregnancies.

The other 10,252 embryos wouldn't survive the process of thawing and embryonic transfer and drug-induced pregnancy.

When embryo implantation works, it's a miracle. But to develop these successful techniques, doctors failed many times, and each failure involved the loss of embryos. Bush's political stance, i.e. his opposition to research involving the loss of embryos, would have blocked the research that produced the children standing with Bush today.

Howard Dean just went on and told him

This morning, on NBC News' Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked him why, and Dean just went on and told him. transcript

He made some extremely important points about way the Bush administration works to mislead and manipulate--about social security, Iraq, abortion, Schiavo. He made the move that is essential for religious Democrats--he referenced the Bible, and he called the pompous, religionist politicians, "hypocrites" and "Pharisees." He claimed and named the moral imperatives of the Democratic party--concern for the working people, the old, the children, the ill, the uneducated. He hit all the talking points I've wanted to hear from Democrats. I kept thinking, "I've blogged on this!" He even explained that, as a doctor, he knows no one and cannot imagine anyone performing a late-term abortion when it wasn't medically necessary. That has seemed obvious to me--what doctors would destroy children who could survive and be adopted? It's not happening. And his explanation of the problems with the abortion debate was brilliant. The other side interprets "pro-choice" as "pro-abortion," when that's not the case, so that many self-professed "pro-lifers" are actually pro-choice. His example: a woman, self-described as "pro-life," who didn't like abortion, but wouldn't be judgmental if her neighbor had one. Well, that's actually pro-choice, and as Dean pointed out, it probably describes most people who self-identify as "pro-choice." The labels have become meaningless. Most Americans agree on this issue, but they don't know it. And Dean explained this well.

He wasn't crystal clear about the traps the Republicans have been setting for the Democrats, but he defended their refusal to be tricked. I think Bush's silly private accounts campaign has been a stall, while his machine waits for the Democrats to fall for it and propose the only real solutions--we have to raise taxes or cut benefits. Then the Rovesky machine can use it to decry Democrats, while supporting the solution, since it's the only way. Same with the Schiavo case and the failed effort to bring Democrats into it. These are instances of the same old trick: leave a burning bag of dog dung on the porch, and wait for the homeowner to rush out and stomp the fire. The Republicans have been waiting for Democrats to rush out and stomp, which would allow the Republicans to point out how stinky they are, a plan that has often worked, but the Democrats aren't falling for it these days. Dean clearly knows why the Democrats are hanging back, but he didn't lay it out. That, too, may be strategy, because the Republicans will eventually only hurt themselves with their own foolishness.

I didn't support Dean for president, and I still wouldn't. But I did support him for Chairman of the DNC, because that's where we need a blunt and courageous spokesperson. But not in the presidency, where diplomacy is required.

A good president must be a negotiator. Sometimes those negotiations involve short hairs and paybacks, but the best presidents have known how to do it. Dean would not be a good player, any more than George W. Bush is.

The telling critique of Bush's presidency is to imagine Bush's "influence" if he faced a Democratic congress, like his father or Reagan did. Bush's success relies on the support he gains from Republicans controlling two branches of government (and Republicans having controlled judicial appointments for 17 of the past 25 years). He hasn't had to be a negotiator or a politician. He is only able to be effective as a CEO-president because he has been protected by a Republican congress.

I'm also very grateful to Tim Russert for giving Howard Dean an hour to tell it like it is, to keep asking hard questions that Dean was willing to answer bluntly. It was a great start on exposing the corruption under Republican control.

'Cause it's bad, you know.

I'm giving Friday cat blogging a try

A baby picture of the twins, helping with the laundry.