On the Fourth of July, perhaps the highest of the holy days of the American civil religion, it seems worthwhile to me to reflect on the relationship between US polity and religion. Today I will focus on one aspect of this, the way that universal religious ideas are a part of the constitutive self-understanding of the American republic.
As a starting point, I recommend Robert N. Bellah's article, “Civil Religion in American.”
There is a long tradition of criticizing the civil religion as a false religion. Bellah's article mentions this strand, but takes a more neutral point of view. For my part, I see the civil religion as deeply ambiguous, in that it founds some of what is uniquely the best, and also uniquely the worst, aspects of our republic.
On one hand, our civil religion confesses the reality of God as creator, and ultimate judge of our actions. As such, it stands as a measuring stick against which governmental policies that are purely self-seeking might be judged. For example, the US (at least, post-civil war) has not been a territorial empire, but has been general content with its holdings. Yes, critics might note a few acquisitions of territory, e.g., Puerto Rico and Hawaii, but these seem somewhat anomalous. For example, the same event that resulted in US possession of Puerto Rico also resulted in US possession of Cuba and the Philippines, both now sovereign nations. Likewise, territory conquered in war (again, post-civil war) has generally been ceded back, e.g., Japan was under US occupation after World War II, but it has been restored to full sovereignty, albeit in reconstituted form. To take a more modern example, whatever one might think of the war in Iraq, no one believes that the US has territorial ambitions in Mesopotamia.
On the other hand, our civil religion often leads us to demonize our opponents, and it imbues US policies with an often unconscious self-righteousness. The US truly believes itself to the the new Israel, granted a special role by the creator as a lamp to the nations. Such hubris runs a real risk that we will forget God, and remember only our particularity.
I think it is incumbent on all Americans with true religious commitments (and by this, I mean to more than the ersatz American civil religion) to repeatedly call our government to the better part of it's ideals. To remember that if we are indeed in a special relationship with God, we should be humble, not arrogant. To remember that we are called to protect the weak—the widows and orphans and those dispossessed from the land. To remember that, to the extent to which believe ourselves to be God's chosen, we need to respond as God's people, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly.
Peace
17 comments:
I agree, but war comes into it, it's hard to remain sensible. Here's a very quiet rendition of one song that kind of stirs hearts on July 4th, and has good visuals.
There are much better versions. I heard someone singing it on the radio in a cowboy style today and had to pull over because I was crying.
This one doesn't do that, but I thought it might appeal to your more intellectual mind because of the way it pulls up history and puts the original context back in place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5mmFPyDK_8&feature=related
I don't understand how you intend to back up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (penned by Eleanor Roosevelt in the late 40s) without tanks and armored divisions. The British did listen to Gandhi. The Nazis would not have listened. They didn't listen to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghettos. They laughed.
When the conscience is so hard you can no longer deal with such people, you have to handle them. You have a good conscience, but most really don't. Remember 9/11 -- those men went for lap dances the night before. They were hard angry men.
Let us die to make men free, as God goes marching on.
Kirby -- I truly do not know how to overcome someone like Hitler during his lifetime without recourse to violence.
But let me note that the victory that was obtained was deeply ambiguous, and to the extent that it was one, it was won more by the Russians than by the western Allies. I do not mean by any means to minimize the sacrifice or commitment of the western effort, but I do believe that there is a tendency here to minimize what the Russians actually did.
And the end result was a Europe torn in half, with eastern Europe occupied by the Russians instead of the Germans. This was not much of an improvement for them, although it was undoubtedly an improvement for France, Belgium, and Holland.
As it is, we didn't do much for the Jews of Europe generally, and nothing at all for those of the Warsaw Ghetto. Indeed, if I recall correctly, the industrial scale murder of the Jews by the Nazis did not begin until they started to suffer significant military reverses (Stalingrad, Kursk), and this may well have been causal.
As for 9/11 -- the misdirected violence of our response did us far greater damage than the original attack.
I just had a chance to listen to the version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The photos were wonderful, although it's a bit depressing just how many I recognized.
I've always liked the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and find it more than a little depressing that these days how it is bowdlerized. The full hymn is six verses, three of which are explicitly religious, and two of the three draw explicit parallels to Christ.
Even worse, in a way, is the change from "let us die to make men free" to "let us live... ." The former, original, version explicitly acknowledged the sacrifices the troops were expected to make. The modern version is just pablum.
But the Battle Hymn is an excellent exemplar of the difficulties involved in intermingling US government policies with religion. I respect it, it is beautiful and moving, especially in its original version, but it is still it is deeply problematic. It assumes and emphasizes the notion that US war policy aligns with the will of God, and places the "enemy" explicitly in the role of "serpents" who are to be "crushed with the heel."
I very much prefer the second inaugural, which explicitly identifies this assumption, questions it, and calls instead on God's righteous judgment on all.
I can't remember who approved the emendation of Let us Die to Let us Live, was it Howe herself? I too like the original much better, though it's sadder.
On another note, I was in FDR's house yesterday at Hyde Park. It said that Stalin did of course win the war against the Nazis, at the cost of 20 million Russian lives.
American and British losses together were less than a million.
But it also said that without American aid, Stalin himself recognized that he could not have won. We pumped money into their economy. FDR did it.
I think Eleanor hated the war, and preferred peace.
I think she was even anti-war.
I have to get over to the church.
Strangely, Darwinism does seem to imply a war of all against all, with the winners getting to pass on their genes.
Nevertheless, Lutheranism appears to confer a Darwinian advantage. It appears to make the societies in which it prospers have the greatest longevity, highest average incomes, and so on.
I don't think it means that WE'RE better, but the system has an intelligent design in it, based on the recipe that God handed out, the ten c's.
Luther must have interpreted them correctly in the short and long catechism, just the same!
Strangely, Darwinism does seem to imply a war of all against all, with the winners getting to pass on their genes.
No. Competition, in the Darwinian sense, occurs only within an ecological niche. We don't compete with carp. Now, maladapted parasites can cause the death of their host, and extreme cases, this can result in their own extinction, but this is hardly a darwinian success story.
Nevertheless, Lutheranism appears to confer a Darwinian advantage. It appears to make the societies in which it prospers have the greatest longevity, highest average incomes, and so on.
OK, but Lutheranism correlates relatively strongly with liberal democracies, i.e., the kinds of places that have effective tax rates of 60%, but which provide nationalized (single-payer) health care, governmentally paid higher education, etc. It is these societies (by and large) which offer the greatest longevity, highest average incomes, etc. Now what point were you trying to make?
I will buy the high taxes, BUT with a stipulation, which is that there is a strong work ethic in 98% of the population. With a lot of pikers hanging about, those high taxes going to pikers so that they can be layabouts and scofflaws, would only enable the worst aspects of society, and cause the whole place to grumble and then crumble.
In Finland most people getting paid would rather work than lay about, and do nothing. That's not true in many places where the siesta and the manana and the other habits take precedence over getting something done for others.
Work ethic in this country no longer exists in certain quarters. It's why they call them slackers and generation zeros.
As long as you have everyone having a strong work ethic and thus feeling ashamed to go on the dole, the dole will work. But when no one is ashamed and no one wants to work, the dole will enable that lifestyle, and cause the leaven in the lump to fall. The lumpenproletariat needs the leavening of Lutheranism in order to function.
If they are just secularists they will use the dole to go to the brothel and shoot needles full of whatever into their eyeballs.
I will buy the high taxes, BUT with a stipulation, which is that there is a strong work ethic in 98% of the population.
I agree with the stipulation, in spirit, if not detail. (My quibble is that historical US employment to population ratios have been 55-65%, and currently are a bit below 60%. You need to adjust for retirement, students, non-working partners, etc.)
The question, then, is this: what aspects of society encourage a strong work ethic? Luther's theology of vocation (which was large enough to include civil employment) can't hurt. But neither can the sense of an intact social contract: that work will be available, and if pursued, will be rewarded. That's generally true in liberal democracies, although we face a few difficult years. It's not generally true in totalitarian regimes, in which I would include most communist, all fascist, and most theocratic regimes.
We've also got a glut of cheap labor working below the radio and below minimum wage. Heads should roll for having hired them. Why is it that neither party will do anything about that?
McCain hemmed and hawed about it, and Obama won't go near that, and Bush was quite simply for letting them become citizens.
I think Obama is actually going to cut them in on social security if he gets the chance, meaning all of what we've worked for will be portioned out to people who didn't do any of the work.
There has to be some clarity on that front. I don't think ANYONE has addressed it. I don't even think RON PAUL addressed it.
The libertarians just want open borders and roll up the military, and then what?
Ron Paul has four brothers who are Lutheran ministers. Wouldn't Luther do something? After all, most of the incoming flood is from the bloated entrails of the Catholic Counter-Reformation countries. Puerto Ricans, Philippinos, Mexicans, Guatemalans, etc.
And they bring ferocious gangs with them, and they'll sell their sisters for twenty dollars.
It's going to wreck the country if the flood tide isn't stopped.
In Finland, foreigners are just beaten to death. I don't think that's the answer, personally. I'd rather have some kind of identity card, and have it scrupulously checked, and have the owners fined in a serious way for trying to hire undocumented workers.
In Finland, even I was chased around for having darker hair than most. Didn't appreciate it, but that's what's keeping those countries largely Lutheran. It's more or less a secret in that the world media rarely reports on it.
If you're black, your gas tank is going to be filled with sugar in places like Finland.
It's just a matter of time.
Meanwhile, they will fight for anyone who will fight with them and adopt their ways, no matter what color. But they wipe out slackers.
Hard to know how a culture can keep out pikers. Has to be done, but it requires vigilance and a certain level of meanness that might not seem very Christian.
However, it is LUTHERAN.
Luther kept the notion of a work ethic alive in various ways through vocation, but also through social ostracism for pikers and derelicts and degenerates.
It's hard to balance all these things and come up with normality and decency. Ever since the 60s which normalized slacking, and degeneracy, and demonized anyone who tries to keep lines intact (the goons who shot the bikers in Easy Rider come to mind), now there must be some way to keep the lines intact (ten c's, plus their positive corollaries as outlined in the catechism), but God knows how you'd start to spread these notions through a whole society esp. since we only make up about 3% of this Heironymous Bosch-like turf.
We've also got a glut of cheap labor working below the radio and below minimum wage. Heads should roll for having hired them. Why is it that neither party will do anything about that?
Each party is a bit different. To a certain extent, both parties are tools of the wealthy (i.e., people who are willing to spend money to influence policy, not exactly the same category as the rich). But each party's patrons have different agendas.
The R's patrons are all about making money, for themselves. Undocumented labor lowers costs many ways -- it enables them to pay a lower salary (often below US minimum wage), it enables them to dump "surplus" labor cheaply (no unemployment insurance payments, no third-party review, no severances, etc.), it gives them a de facto exemption from workplace safety, sexual harassment, equal opportunity, and other "inconvenient" laws. You should never expect a meaningful effort to restrict immigration from the R's -- what they do (e.g., the fence) will be pure theater.
The D's patrons are all about social justice, and (less often) about military appropriations and defense contracts. The former, more dominant strain, is deeply ambivalent about limiting immigration, simply because they're not willing to take a philosophical position that places a higher value on an American life than a Mexican life, especially if the Mexican is a potential US citizen.
A somewhat more nuanced position (taken by a few R's and D's) is to recognize that the root problem is a lack of opportunity in Mexico (and central America, more generally), a consequence of widespread corruption, poor education, and relatively limited resources per capita compared to the US. You'd probably note work-ethic issues, but I'd respond that the people who are coming here want to work, and can't find work in Mexico that is as rewarding as they can find in the US shadow economy.
I think Obama is actually going to cut them in on social security if he gets the chance, meaning all of what we've worked for will be portioned out to people who didn't do any of the work.
I don't think this is quite right. I don't know Obama's position on the issue, but I'll take an educated guess. Social security benefits are tied to FICA payments. There is something intrinsically unfair about the situation of those immigrants who are paying FICA taxes, but are ineligible to receive SS payments because of citizenship. This is especially true in the case where the individual has been a long-time resident, and is a de facto citizen.
In this case, basic fairness suggests that we should not have the lowest paid members of our society (and they are members of our society, whether they're citizens or not) subsidizing the retirement benefits of the rest. I think this would all be a bit easier to swallow if the social security system was put on a long-term actuarially sound basis (i.e., money loaned to the treasury was valued at realistic long-term interest rates, and payments were based on generally accepted actuarial statistics). The discrepancy isn't large -- I believe it's less than 5% -- but under current law there is a long-term deficit build into the social security system. My guess is that this is largely an artifact of an extended social contract with WW II veterans (which does not extend to Korean or Vietnam war veterans), and that the structural defects will be dealt with after they have passed.
It's a question then of who's subsidizing who? Why do the illegals pay FICA?
Aren't they paid entirely under the table so that the income is completely off the IRS radar?
It's a question then of who's subsidizing who? Why do the illegals pay FICA?
There's variety. Some illegals work in the shadow economy, others try to go legit, obtaining social security numbers, paying income taxes and working in the above-ground economy. The economic benefits work in favor of those who can find a way to go legit.
So long as benefits are tied to contributions, extending social security benefits to aliens wouldn't result in social security payments to workers in the shadow economy -- they'd have neither employee nor employer contributions of record.
Even though I think that tweaks of social security are reasonably likely, I am highly doubtful that substantial change (e.g., going to a system that does not link contributions to benefits) would fly. Indeed, what makes social security so powerful politically is that it accomplishes a universally recognized social good (eliminating most indigence among the elderly) in a way that is generally regarded as equitable, and therefore forms an important component of the US social contract.
The kind of tweak I imagine (providing benefits to aliens who paid in) extends that equitability, while implicitly recognizing that citizenship is not always a simple you are or you aren't kind of question.
I think there ought to be a clear line between someone who's here legally and is paying into a bona fide social security system and who isn't. I don't know why the Feds aren't on this.
It's driving me crazy that there don't seem to be any clear laws in this country any longer.
http://www.immigrationready.com/immigration/683-immigration-2.html
This guy claims that most dno't pay FICA and that their kids meanwhile use more than 10 grand of school money. I can't verify this.
You look further and find all kinds of progressives saying everything's ok, and that Obama and his cohorts have already passed a bill saying all illegals will get social security.
Hard to know what's what. There are no trustworthy sources. the journalists just lie, as do the politicians, as does everyone else.
There doesn't seem to be any oversight any longer on any front.
It's quite amazing.
Even you say there is no clear line between who is a citizen and who isn't, and you imply we ought to keep it that way.
How does any of this add up?
Kirby -- I'll take this out of order, to suit my convenience.
Even you say there is no clear line between who is a citizen and who isn't, and you imply we ought to keep it that way.
Actually, the laws are clear enough, they're just pretty blunt instruments. E.g., under US law, there was a Presidential candidate of a major party who was technically ineligible for the office, and it wasn't Barack Obama. John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone to US parents. Under US law at the time, this did not count as "naturally born." This law was later changed, but there were two issues -- the first is that it did not affect McCain (he was born in the wrong year), and the second is that it was an ex post facto law, and therefore unconstitutional.
You know what? Except for a few real zealots on the left, no one really cared. McCain served the US throughout his life as a soldier, a citizen, and a politician. Most folks are wise enough to know that the law can be applied too narrowly, and this would have been such a case.
This was my point -- that the law is the law, but the written laws, clear though they may be, sometimes do a poor job of capturing what we want of them. Citizenship is such a case. What do we expect, intuitively, of citizenship? I expect someone who identifies with this as their nation, who agrees to be a part of our society, to live under the obligations it imposes, etc. This is where the ambiguity lies.
Consider, for example, a Mexican citizen who came to this country in the early 70's at 17 years old, and was issued a social security number, and worked, paid taxes, married and raised children, lived and contributed to their community, etc., for almost 40 years. They may have even been drafted, and served. Are they a citizen? Under the law, unless they went through the formal naturalization process, no. Under common sense, yes. This is, naturally, a somewhat extreme case, and in less extreme cases, judgments are going to vary. Hence, no clear line.
Again, all I'm implying is that laws are blunt instruments, all the more so when they attempt to apply a binary classification (you are, or you aren't) to an intrinsically continuous phenomenon.
This guy claims that most dno't pay FICA and that their kids meanwhile use more than 10 grand of school money. I can't verify this.
Ten G's per kid per year sounds a bit high to me. I'd expect more like 6G/kid/year for primary schools, and 9K/kid/year for high schools. Maybe someone has better statistics.
But here's the issue. Would someone who is working in the shadow economy be very likely to get their kids in and registered? I'm doubtful -- I've seen the lengths that school districts in my area go to in order to verify residency, etc. Many of these workers are in migrant jobs, and hence have little incentive to put a student into a school where they're only likely to be for a few months. Moreover, putting the kid into school increases their exposure, and therefore their likelihood of deportation. Does it happen? Probably. Does it happen a lot? I find this implausible
But even more so -- is the issue that these workers are in the country illegally, or is it that they're working in a shadow economy? I think it is the later. If the latter, who bears the responsibility for that economy -- those who create it, or those who are exploited by it? I think it is those who created it. Find them, and send them the bill. With interest and penalties.
You look further and find all kinds of progressives saying everything's ok, and that Obama and his cohorts have already passed a bill saying all illegals will get social security.
I checked Google News, and found nothing. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. A bill number and/or name would be helpful.
Stu, these are good points you make. I'm working on a project and will be out for a coupla days. See you Wednesday or so.
Best, Kirby
I just looked up FICA and Do illegals pay taxes, and up came lots of progressives and lots of conservatives.
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