Obama’s 2013 SOTU Address

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Jeff

One can access the SOTU here. Obama continues to be an effective speaker, and he continues to be able to make lists of ideas that would move some way from far right to center right legislation. But too much of what Obama says lacks vision.

Vision, you say? Yes, I know Obama is often credited with having vision. But that’s in fact what he lacks. Ask yourself, what unites all of these policy proposals together into one coherent vision, one story? Very little. The best one can do is pull out the continued praise of business.

Let’s prove that there is no better place to do business than the United States of America. And let’s start right away.

Why should the US’s main goal issue in having “no better place to do business”? Why is business the driving force behind American life? Yes, we can go back to Benjamin Franklin who decried a leisurely hour because it detracted from one’s earnings and largesse. But why does Franklin speak for the citizens of the US rather than Jefferson who spoke of the pursuit of happiness, which may, and often does, have little to do with business?

This bowing to business takes egregious form in Obama’s discussion of education.

Tonight, I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy. We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math – the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.

Here, education is to serve high-tech economy. The economy is not to be at the service of the individual; rather, each of us becomes a thing to place at the disposal of a high-tech economy. Why? Because we need to have the skills to fill jobs for business. Since when did education become a matter of having skills for jobs? Even Franklin would have sneered at this concept.

And tomorrow, my Administration will release a new “College Scorecard” that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.

How do we measure colleges? Again, what gives the most bang for the buck.

I ask you, will you sit by while the democrats and republicans turn you and your children into things to serve an economy? Do you believe the economy is beyond your control, some god which deserves the sacrifice of your child’s happiness? We create the economy. Every time we go to the market and buy something with cash or credit card, we create the economy to work as it does.

And we can take it back.

But it begins with education.

It begins with taking back our government so that it is by the people for the people, and with the people.

Not by the corporation, for the corporation, with the corporation.

But the choice is always….

YOURS.

Bishops Bash Compromise

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Jeff

I was not originally going to post on this issue, but it seems worthwhile to say a few things about the USCCB reaction to Obama’s attempt at compromise.

My first reaction is, geez, Obama keeps trying to compromise with people, and every time he gets bashed. Poor guy. And I’m no big fan of Obama, but at a certain point, one starts to cheer for the underdog. And Obama certainly seems to be that every time he tries to compromise. Also, the USCCB doesn’t come off very pretty here: they, like the Republican caucus, are trying to threaten the president’s attempt at compromise with the continued support of law suits against the health care coverage. My pappy always said, “you’ll get more flies with honey than with vinegar,” but Cardinal Dolan’s probably never heard of compromise.

And yet…

One of the bishops’ complaints is

“It appears that the government would require all employees in our ‘accommodated’ ministries to have the illicit coverage—they may not opt out, nor even opt out for their children—under a separate policy,” he said.

I’m not sure what Dolan and the USCCB expect here. How can one legitimately opt out of something completely like this? It’s as if public schools could opt out of teaching evolution because some of their science teachers don’t believe in evolution. Or, as has been said over and over in social media, a Christian Scientist could stop his child from receiving necessary medical care because of his religious beliefs? The Court has never upheld that right. But, of course, with this Court, it might do so by a 5-4 margin. And it wouldn’t mind that this puts us right back in Jim Crowe land — maybe my religion means I don’t have to serve homosexuals at my restaurant. Or my hospital. Or my church. Really, can Dolan open his eyes enough to see the problem here, or is he just so caught up in his passion for free-market libertarianism that he can’t see it?

Do you really like think I am being unfair to Dolan and the USCCB? Than how do you explain this:

Cardinal Dolan also said the proposal refuses to acknowledge conscience rights of business owners who operate their businesses according to their faith and moral values.

Yes, Dolan immediately follows that statement with another more damning one:

“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath,” Cardinal Dolan said. “We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”

So, Cardinal Dolan, when was the last time you went to a rich donor’s house and asked that donor to give all of his wealth to the poor? When was the last time you visited a business owner and said that, regardless of the law, he must provide immediate health care coverage for all of his workers? And a fair, living wage? When was the last time you spoke with George W. Bush and said he could not kill people on death row?

I know nothing of Cardinal Dolan, so maybe he has done these things. But if so, that should be at the center of his entreaty to negotiate a compromise with Obama. Not a threat of legal action in the courts. Because, despite what my pappy said, my Lord Jesus said to turn the other cheek and to love thy neighbor as thyself. But maybe Dolan and the USCCB enjoyed going to court over and over again because of the sex-abuse scandal.

Droning on: how paying the mortgage justifies lies

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Jeff

NBC news has a justice department memo that argues that drone strikes against American citizens are legitimate. Yes, conditions apply: the target must be a “suspected” terrorist leader, must be difficult to capture without risk, and other rules of war must apply.

The legalese behind the memo reminds me so much of the sophisticated rhetoric used in the movie Thank You for Smoking. This movie wonderfully represents a lobbyist for the tobacco industry and how he manages to pull the wool over congress’s eyes to prevent a poison sticker being placed on cigarette packages. He teaches his son that winning the argument is all that matters regardless of the truth. All for the sake of paying the mortgage.

The US government isn’t concerned about paying the mortgage… but other external goods drive policies like the one that allows drone strikes against American citizens. The language is similarly twisted as in Thank You For Smoking.

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,”

The word “imminent” means “about to happen,” or “likely to happen at any moment.” In what sense can a leader present an imminent attack for which there is no evidence? This is the same rhetoric that the Bush administration used to justify an invasion of Iraq. The imminent threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction which no one could find, and which have never been found.

I don’t want to preach about this point, but this issue is serious for United States citizens to consider. We are being lied to blatantly. And the administration is using the threat of terrorism to feed our fear so that it can legitimize policies like this. Americans must wake up to this language. But like Nick Naylor says in the movie, all that matters is paying the mortgage.

Do you want to know why we are kept poor, why policies are aimed at helping the rich and keeping the poor poor? It’s because then the fear of not being able to pay the mortgage allows the government to pass policies like this. We have to undermine that sort of thinking.

We still live in a free state in which the news can report policies like the present one. But for how long? How long will the news be free if you and I do not stop voting for the power-hungry plutocrats? We have to — simply must — stop voting for the people who are currently in office.

Take back the power, or succumb to fear? Every time we allow someone to use a word in a way that it doesn’t mean, we succumb to fear.

Contraceptive, Compromise, and (lack of) Consensus

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Jeff

As NPR reports, the Obama administration has offered a further compromise on the health mandate that required some religious institutions to provide coverage for contraceptives. The new condition allows religious employers to be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage if they meet the following conditions:

opposes providing coverage for some or all of any contraceptive services required to be covered under Section 2713 of the PHS Act, on account of religious objections;
is organized and operates as a nonprofit entity;
holds itself out as a religious organization; and
self-certifies that it meets these criteria and specifies the contraceptive services for which it objects to providing coverage.

I am not concerned about this set of criteria, although I think others could critique it if they want. What I am concerned about is the moral vision that underlies it. Given this exemption, employees would be able to have contraceptive coverage without additional coverage through some other means (which remain nebulous for me as I read the news release).

But what is the moral vision that underlies Obama’s attempt at pacification and compromise? Is he worried about keeping or losing the Catholic vote or being condemned by bishops, or having the whole health care law go down over this one issue because of the number of lawsuits brought forth over it?

And what is the moral vision of the American Catholic bishops who resist the HHS mandate? I remind the reader that this resistance is singularly American coming from the bishops of this country. When speaking to priests even in very religiously conservative nations like Ireland, they ask me why the bishops are making such a fuss over this. Our tradition calls for a right to health care. Should we wonder that the concern raised comes from bishops who openly reject principles of Catholic social thought?

The culture of the United States suffers from an inability to discuss these types of issues from a reasonable standpoint. All we are left with are power moves. We lack an identifiable set of criteria by which to judge what our policies should be, what the common good, and how to prioritize the goods pursued in our society. Even the American bishopric lacks this unifying idea, a symptom of the corruption of American consumerism on the Catholic church. If Catholics in the United States had to struggle like those in other nations to be Catholic, would our bishopric be so divided?

Again, the issue for me is not the lack of merit of either case here. The issue is an inability to articulate a set of moral principles by which we guide and ground social policy and action. We can cite many reasons for the lack of such a set of moral principles, from a history of religious persecution, to the fact of pluralism, to the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Until we are able to overcome our divisiveness, we will be at the hands of those who know how to pull the strings of power, and we will have harder and harder times of trying to achieve a common good or our own individual goods.

Obama’s Gun Stance

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Jeff

Please read the full text of the Obama’s plan to limit gun violence. It’s helpful.

President Obama should be congratulated on moving swiftly regarding gun violence in the United States after the shooting in Connecticut. He has put forward a moderate program to curb gun violence that does not only look at laws about guns but also considers what to do about health care for the mentally ill and security in schools.

One of the pieces of legislation I was hoping to see, however, did not appear: the use of thumb-print identification technology on guns. Such technology can greatly reduce accidental shootings (e.g., when a child finds a gun and fires it thinking it a toy gun) and the shootings like in Connecticut (where the shooter used his mother’s guns). Obama is obviously aware that he is working with a very resistant Congress on a very high-charged issue that has people literally up in Arms about the second amendment. He is for all practical purposes unable to begin a dialogue about the nature of the second amendment, but I suspect that he would not want to in the first place. Obama is, at heart, a center-right moderate- not left and certainly not progressive.

We Christians, however, should be able to have this debate. What is the nature of our “right to bear arms”? What is the justification of this right and how is it prioritized with other rights?

As I’ve said before on this blog, these kinds of questions are almost impossible to answer because they require a discussion about the common good. A discussion of the common good entails prioritizing the goods we value politically as a community. The United States, however, lacks the shared standards for making those priorities clear and the practical reasoning for having a conversation about those priorities. This fact is clear in the gun-control debate, the abortion debate, the tax debate, the energy debate, and almost every debate we have in this country. What shows this lack of practical reasoning even more is that those who consider the protection of fetal human life a priority are linked with the right, when the protection of life has always been a progressive cause.

Gun’s do have some value. They are a good for us. The questions we must ask to curb gun violence, however, cannot be asked in this country.

Gay Marriage: A New Christian Response

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Dave

Gay Marriage: A New Christian Response
By Dave Kovacs

Since everyone* is talking about Barack Obama’s affirmation of gay marriage** today, I suppose I should say something about it. First, I am going to suggest that people of faith ought to radically re-think the issue from scratch. This is as true of conservatives as of liberals. Then I am going to suggest that when President Obama’s comments are taken in context, he might actually have a good idea.

(*That is, everyone except people being attacked by predator drones, or by predatory lenders, or who are victims of other injustices).
(**Really, I don’t like the term “gay marriage” since no marriage license application asks your sexual preference. Homosexuals have always been allowed to get married, just as long as it was to people of the opposite gender. But since the parlance of the times must win, I will concede and use the term “gay marriage” in this post in the usual sense).

Part I: The traditional argument against gay marriage.
The old argument goes something like this. Things have purposes and proper ends. The proper end of the sexual act is procreation. Homosexual acts can not result in procreation. Therefore, homosexual acts are morally problematic. Since marriage is the proper place for sexual acts, homosexuals can not get married.

It is worth noting that at the Second Vatican Council, it was hotly debated whether the section of Gaudium Et Spes dealing with family life should invoke the claim that the proper end of marriage is procreation. It was a narrow vote, but the decision was that the old scholastic distinction between “primary” and “secondary” ends of marriage was no longer useful.

Part II: Where I try to save teleology while questioning the traditional argument.
I’m a (subversive) Thomist, so I like teleology (the claim that things have purposes and proper ends).

But it is a basic principle that we come to know the proper function and end of a thing by observing what that thing does in the most general way. That is, what characterizes it? The proper end of a bird is to fly because, as we see every day, birds are basically understood as flying creatures. The proper end of a knife is to cut stuff because knives are cutting instruments.

But it seems that the sexual act, while capable of procreation, is not usually understood as “the procreating act.” There is a reason couples make love even when not trying to conceive. If we thought of the sexual act primarily in terms of procreation it would be, at the least, unromantic. Worse, it would call into question why we expect parents to love each other.

Nor should we be so base as to say that the proper end of sexuality is merely genital stimulation and pleasure. Rather, let us say that, if we observe human sexuality in its best forms, it serves as a basis for self-giving. It is the means by which two people grow in trust, love, affection, and absolute self-giving.

Part III: Why not?
Is there any reason that homosexuals should not be able to participate in this sort of self-giving love?

If sexuality, as I described it above, is what I think it is, then it is also ultimately a spiritual act. Lovers, in finding each other, can find God. For Christians believe that God, in purest terms, is complete self-giving. The message of Christ on the Cross is one of absolute self-giving and total self-sacrifice. When we love, whether in sexual union or in caritas, we are following Christ, we are finding God.

So why should homosexuals be denied this spiritual experience?

Part IV: The “official” argument is self-contradicting.
The official argument of Church officials, for some time, has been that homosexuals are, by reason of their identity, called to celibacy. To refuse to be celibate, for a homosexual, is supposedly sinful.

Celibacy, meanwhile, is seen in Church tradition and current practice as something someone freely takes up in a special way to enhance one’s love affair with God. This is noble and can be found in most of the world’s religions.

But there is a tension: If the homosexual is required to be celibate on pain of sin, then how can it be said that his celibacy is truly free? The homosexual who chooses to be celibate on pain of sin isn’t choosing out of freedom in the virtuous way a priest chooses celibacy. No such merit can be said to exist in such a case.

So the official argument seems self-contradictory.

Part V: Toward a new Christian Response.
I am not here going to suggest a rush to legalize, either in secular law or Canon law, same-sex marriage. My reasons for hesitating are given below. Instead, I am going to suggest that the Christian response is to completely rethink sexuality and to open ourselves toward homosexuals in a radical way.

We must purge our language of terms that are causing homosexuals to have feelings of shame or guilt. We see this when clergymen declare that homosexuals have a “war on marriage.” There is no homosexual war on marriage. In fact, many homosexuals are trying to embrace marriage for the same reasons any lovers do.

We must examine for ourselves, in our own lives, how we treat and view homosexuals. We must open ourselves to them the way Jesus Christ would. Nay, we must treat them with the tender compassion with which Jesus Christ does treat them and all of us.

Part VI: Why a top-down law is not the solution.
Today Obama said he thinks homosexuals should be able to get married; more importantly, he said he thinks it is an issue that should be worked out by the states. I think he is right on both counts.

Recently, Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that the Supreme Court made a serious error in even hearing the Roe v. Wade trial. It wasn’t that their decision was flawed: It was that they should have let the issue work itself out in the states and local courts. Her belief is that in the long run the outcome would have been the same but that the subsequent culture war that it caused would not have happened.

I think there is an analogue here. We live in a country where right wing neoconservatives have already made people very suspicious of the government whenever it steps into controversial social territory. Rather than exacerbate that, the Federal Government does well to express vocal support for same-sex marriage (this includes removing barriers to it that are imposed on the states) but to let states work this out over the coming generation.

Those who wish to move this forward may serve their time best, not in political battles, but in social ones. Are we opposing church initiatives to discriminate and harm homosexuals? Are we being vocal about our tolerance, love and compassion? Are we stating publicly that we don’t believe, as some clergy do, that homosexuality is equivalent to a war on marriage?

Once we change the minds and hearts of people that way, I expect the question of how homosexuals express their love (in ways analogous to how heterosexuals currently do) will resolve itself.

As always, the mission of the Christian is the struggle to find ways to live justly and kindly in a world on the brink of collapse. But that collapse is not one that homosexuals are perpetrating.

Views expressed herein are my own and may or may not be shared by other blog contributors.

Contraception, Obama, and Backlash

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jeff

Michael Winters writes at National Catholic Reporter about what progressive Catholics should think and do about Obama’s recent decision to require Catholic insurance providers to supply contraception to their employees.

If you are not familiar with the issue, here’s a recap as I understand it. Back in the Fall, Obama promised Bishop-elect Dolan that he would not require Catholic institutions to provide contraceptives to their employees with the new health care law. He recently changed his decision, probably, as Winters suggests, under pressure from lobbyist who support contraceptives for all. Now, a Catholic institution, like a hospital or school, must, like any institution, provide health insurance to their employees, but it must be a health insurance that will cover contraceptives. Importantly, it must also cover “the pill” which in a small variety of cases acts as an abortifacient.

A number of issues propose can be discussed here: are most Catholics opposed to using contraceptives, religious freedom, abortion and the right to life, and the right to health care (yes – a right defended in a number of social encyclicals).

Winters is right that Catholics must put pressure on Obama now to rescind his decision before the elections.

But what if he doesn’t? What do Catholics do then?

Unfortunately, what I have heard over and over is that Catholics will have to vote for the republican candidate. But, hold-up! That is not what Catholics have to do.

I’ve stated on this blog before, Catholics who uphold the principles of Catholic social justice must opt-out of this electoral facade. What would send a message to both parties would be for 35% of the people who voted last time to show up and write in this time. What should they write in? I’m not sure it matters, but why not Bobby Kennedy, or Timothy Dolan? The point is to send a message – we are Catholics and we are no longer going to compromise and be forced to choose between bad and badder.

Subversive Thomism

Living Justly and Loving Kindness in a World on the Brink of Collapse

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