Bump Stocks: Aiding and Abetting the Enemy

This is why we banned bump stocks: Sixty dead. Four hundred and thirteen injured. One gunman.

Again, that's why bump stocks were banned. A massacre at a country music concert. Bump stocks permit terrorists, both domestic and foreign, to modify any semi-automatic rifle to full-auto. Thus modified, they are crude and easily accessible instruments of mass slaughter.

We banned them, and the Supreme Court overturned that ban. The odd arguments offered up by members of the Court about the mechanism involved were obviously, self-evidently immaterial, and the worst form of legalism.

With no training, anyone...I mean anyone...can put an entire magazine downrange in seconds. Reload, then do so again. And then again. Before the Las Vegas massacre, I'd watch gun enthusiast videos about bump stocks, and as they dished about how badass they felt using one, I marveled that they'd not yet been used in a mass shooting. They reduce accuracy, waste ammunition, and are useless for shooting sports. A bump stock would be equally pointless for home defense. But if you're firing into a fleeing crowd, that doesn't matter.

Watching the videos produced by avid gun Youtubers, there was no question about the purpose of a bumpstock. It was a cheap way to circumvent restrictions on full auto machine guns, for funsies. Because what's more fun than blasting away at a target with a couple of hundred rounds? I mean, it would be kind of fun, honestly, in a world where terrorists and psychopaths didn't exist.

But that's not the world we live in. The video above makes that abundantly clear, without commentary or question.

Nor is the world we live in one where making meaningless, obviously specious arguments about trigger mechanisms is anything other than evil. Sure, it's "true," but in the way that willful spin is often "true." We do not limit access to full-auto receivers because we have an issue with receivers. We limit access to full-auto receivers because of what they *do*.

C4 and dynamite aren't the same chemically, but they still blow things up, eh?

A workaround that allows you to do the same thing...to pour hundreds or thousands of rounds into a crowd of warm bodies...violates the obvious intent of restrictions on automatic weapon access.

The sophistry involved in overturning that ban is crude, self-serving, and willfully ignorant. It's argumentation straight out of scholasticism, in which the letter of the law is debated and the intent of the law is ignored. It shows a complete failure to understand the purpose not just of bump stocks, but of the entire system of justice. Overturning that ban poses a threat to law enforcement professionals, to citizens, to all of us.

This is Trump's court, after all, so that should come as no surprise.

The Supreme Court and Marriage Equality

I've blogged frequently and often about same-sex relationships, faith, and how that issue has stirred tensions both in congregations and in our body politic.  

I don't preach on it much, I'll admit.  From the pulpit, where dialogue is a bit more difficult, I tend to focus on those things that mattered to Jesus.  So I figure as I take his lead in teaching about the Kingdom, my preaching should reflect His stated priorities.  That means there is relentless talk about radically and unconditionally loving everyone, period.  If as a free human being you can't figure out where you need to take that, then you can explain that to Jesus when you get to the front of the line.  

As a liberal, my stance on this spiritually follows from this radical emphasis.  It shouldn't be surprising.  You can read it in its fullness by following the link after this comma, which lays out my scriptural and theological approach to the issue.  I'm for covenant commitment, for welcome, for inclusion, and for openness.  

This is a related but different kettle of fish than the one that's on many folks' minds today.  Today, the Supreme Court will be considering the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a popular referendum which overturned same-sex marriage in California.   A Reagan-appointed judge and a US District Court had both affirmed that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.  This being one of our favorite hot-buttons, though, the fight was always destined to go all the way to the top.

So here we go.

Looking at the issue, it remains as it was back when Prop Eight came down the pike.  Back when that went down, I went over some of the primary arguments against same sex marriage.  Here they are again:

1) Gay Marriage Threatens Marriage. This stance, which is a standard position, has the unfortunate character of being self-evidently wrong. 

Anyone who is married knows this. 

There are plenty of real threats to marriage out there.  Financial stressors, the insane overscheduled lives we lead, our own selfishness, and the hungers and insecurities that drive us to betray our commitments to others are real threats.  But same sex marriages are not.   The integrity of my heterosexual marriage is not impacted in any way by gay marriage, any more than it is threatened by Bosmer/Argonian marriages.  

If the state chooses to extend those rights to another class of citizen, that does not in any way abrogate my own rights. No matter where you stand on the issue, that remains true.  It also in no way impacts the sanctity of a covenantal union. If you believe that marriage is fundamentally a covenant between a man and a woman, bound together by the grace and power of their Creator, then the extension of legal and civil rights to gays and lesbians can in no way impact those covenants. One is an action of the state, and the other is an action taken from within the framework of faith.

What the Court is considering today is not the theology of covenant, thank God.  It's a question of constitutionally protected civil liberties and the State.  From the solely secular standpoint of the interests of the state, same-sex marriage does not jeopardize social stability.  Paired, committed, and legally affirmed relationships between couples are considerably less entropic.  They make for deeper opportunities for mutual care, and put individuals in a better position to cope with times of illness or economic hardship.  

And that's good for America, dagflabbit.  A strong, resilient citizenry might not be what a tyrant wants, but it is in the best interest of our free republic.  

Not that being single is evil or wrong, mind you.  That's not the case I'm making here.  But we need one another.  Be it a partner or a nurturing community, we are strengthened by mutually supportive relationships.  The Court should be able to recognize that.

2) Gay Marriage Stands Against the Will of the People. This is materially incorrect on a national scale.  Most Americans have come to terms with same sex marriage, either actively supporting it or realizing it has no impact on their lives.   In California, however, that may or may not be true.  A huge influx of ads and push-polls can skew the referendum process, but whichever way, Prop Eight did pass.

So lets imagine that the inverse is true, and that only a minority viewed this as impinging on their liberty.  Here, we need to consider the entire purpose of the judiciary in the American Constitutional system of governance. The judiciary exists to serve the law...and the Constitutional liberties of all Americans...over and above the will of the majority. That is the  special and particular purpose of the Court, which ideally -- if not always in practice -- exists to hold the principles of liberty above the whims of the populace. If a justice is doing his or her job, their fealty is first and foremost to the Constitution. Unfortunately, the case against gay marriage has little foundation in our Constitution, which stands as a clear bulwark against majorities who would impinge the freedom of minorities.

Here, there's an interesting tension for American conservatism, between the old state's-rights argument and the currently ascendant libertarian wing.  Do the the rights of a state trump the constitutional liberties of individuals?  Seeing where the court falls on this will be intriguing.

3) Gay Marriage Threatens Religious Liberty. This argument plays directly into the culture of self-entitled aggrievement that seems to define so much of American life. The argument goes like this: I believe, from my faith, that homosexuality is sinful. If I am required to provide benefits to gays and lesbians or tolerate their unions, the requirement that I be tolerant is a fundamental violation of my religious freedom.

This argument seems not to grasp the nature of freedom. Within our constitutional republic, the rights of every individual are protected, in so far as they do not impinge on the rights of other individuals. That's the purpose of the Constitution. There is no evidence that permitting same sex marriage in any way impinges on the rights of Americans to believe that homosexuality is sinful, any more than you are forbidden to believe that my drinking a perfectly-hopped Imperial IPA is a sin.

What might be limited is the right of a small business owner to deny health care benefits to same-sex partners, or to refuse to hire/rent or sell to/serve individuals who they view as basically evil. Here, those who resist same-sex marriage face a clear ideological conundrum. Within our republic, freedom is not without limits. If an individual acts in such a way as to restrict the liberty of another, they are using their freedom in a way that undercuts the freedoms of others. Again, the purpose of the government in a constitutional republic is to balance the liberty of all, at the least possible cost to liberty.

Against that metric, the socially conservative position clearly falters, particularly in comparison to the libertarian/liberal position. 

Gays and lesbians who seek legally recognized marriage are not meaningfully limiting the religious or personal liberty of those who view their behavior as undesirable. It does no harm to the liberty of a conservative, to the life they choose to lead, or to the faith they choose to practice. That's not the way it's going to be played, of course. But it is, nonetheless, true.

So now we sit, and we wait.  Let's see where this goes.

How To Celebrate Another Westboro Baptist Triumph

Yesterday's decision in the Supreme Court of the United States in the landmark Phelps v. Snyder represented yet another remarkable victory for America's most effective and successful small congregation, one that I think needs to be both honored and publicly recognized.

In most communities, the arrival of Westboro Baptist over the last several years has a consistent result.  There are counterdemonstrations.  There are lines of bikers and folks dressed as angels, placing themselves as a physical boundary between Westboro and whatever high-profile media target their governing committee has identified.  But in the light of this recent victory, we're now assured that Westboro will be able to continue their work, and I think that requires some different thinking in the communities blessed by their presence.

First and foremost, as I have argued before, the time has come for American communities to acknowledge the good work of Fred Phelps and his little family church. 

We all know what they're really up to, but just to be clear, let me enumerate:

1)  Calling Attention to Our Fallen Heroes:  As our long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on mostly outside of the public eye, it would be easy for Americans to forget the loss and suffering of families whose sons and daughters have died.  Only a small fraction of this country serves in the military, and because the military is increasingly a distinct subculture within our society, it grows easier and easier for us to just go about our lives as consumers and forget our duty as citizens to honor our citizen-soldiers.  The Phelpses single minded effort to call our attention back to that loss is truly a gift.

2)  Uniting Our Divided Nation:   We are increasingly a divided people.  Our public discourse too often descends into shouting and posturing, and it's a threat to our Republic.  But when Westboro Baptist comes to town, progressives and conservatives realize, suddenly, that we have common cause together as Americans.  We realize that for all of our shouting at one another, there are certain basic principles that we all share.  At a Westboro event, liberal students and GLBT activists stand side by side with law enforcement and biker veterans.  I've been to these events, and the sense of unity is overwhelming.  Who else has accomplished such an amazing thing?

3)  Challenging the Assumptions of Popular Theology:  Much of the ongoing discord in American society has to do with arguments about same-sex relationships.  Those arguments frequently are grounded in a set of particular theological assumptions about the nature of God.   Fred Phelps and his clan have artfully taken the theological assumptions against homosexuality to their logical conclusion.  In doing so, they have shown us that we do not really for a moment believe that God is a God of hate.  This is not the God to whom we pray on Sunday in church, or on Saturday in synagogue, or on Friday in the mosque.  Westboro makes us realize that the true nature of the Creator who blessed us with liberty is love, even for those with whom we disagree.  They have challenged our assumptions about how our Maker views those whose sexual orientation differs from the norm.  By making us aware of this, they have done more to further the acceptance of gays and lesbians in our culture than any other congregation in America.

4)  Defending the Right to Free Speech:  This is huge.  Absolutely huge.  What makes our Constitutional Republic noble and exceptional is our defense of the rights of unpopular minorities to speak their minds.  Phelps and his congregation have worked to defend this right, in a meticulous and systematic way.  By carefully studying the law, and maintaining a consistently legal and nonviolent posture, Westboro Baptist  yesterday delivered a Supreme Court precedent that will stand as a free speech bulwark for those we might silence in moments of nationalistic or politically correct fervor, for as long as our Republic stands.

Without question, then, Westboro Baptist is the most successful Queer Christian Performance Activist troupe in history.  The time has come for us to celebrate them, and to show them how much we appreciate their tireless work.

Let me share with you my vision of what that might look like. 

When they arrive for an event this year, ready for another performance, they would find not the usual counterdemonstrations.  Instead, there would be signs of welcome. 

They would read: "We Love You, Westboro Baptist!" "Thank You, Westboro Baptist!"  "Our Troops Salute You, Westboro Baptist!"  "GLBT's Thank You, Westboro Baptist."  "Westboro: Champion of GLBT Rights!"  I picture an Army band playing, while the combined voices of four Gay Mens Choruses sing Amazing Grace.

Chairs of honor would be prepared for the adults.  There would be lemonade and cookies for the Phelps kids.  Awards and certificates of thanks would be presented, from representatives of the local VFW and the local PFLAG chapter. 

The Phelpses would resist, of course.  They'd shout and carry on, and kick over the chairs, and throw the awards to the ground, or pretend to look confused.  Staying in character is important to them, and important to their art.  It's why they're so successful.  We must respect their commitment.

But we'd just give them a sly wink and say, "We know what you're up to.  Thank you so much for what you've done for all of us.  You are truly a blessing."

If we did this every time they showed up, perhaps...just perhaps...Westboro would be able to finally rest.   The work the Lord has appointed to them would be done.

Gaming, Violence, and the Supreme Court

I am, without question, a gamer.  Just about every evening, I kick back with my PS3 and play.  This has completely taken the place of watching television.  I'm not particularly into sports, and while I can enjoy a good football game or a rousing match of futbol, it's not something I make time for.  I have no patience for reality TV, and most scripted drama is too formulaic to hold my attention.  There are some great shows out there, stuff that's well written and worth watching, but I tend to approach those things as I would a movie...meaning I stream them, and watch them with my wife and/or kids.  If I'm left to my own devices, I just don't watch.

I prefer to game. Gaming is more interactive, more engaging, and if you get the right game, it's just as well acted and scripted.  For gamers, things get interesting tomorrow, because the Supreme Court is taking up a California law that bans the sale of violent video games to minors.  Specifically, they ban sales to minors of any game that involves, and here I quote:  "...killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."

As a parent and a pastor, I understand the impetus behind this law.  Gaming is...well...it's not what it was when I started gaming as a kid.  I'm a regular player of Battlefield Bad Company Two, for instance.  I checked my stats recently, and found that I'd sent about 1,600 other players to meet their virtual maker.  It's a pretty intense game.

But I don't let my kids play it.  Not because it's violent, mind you.  They are, after all, boys.  But they understand the difference between simulated combat and real combat.  It's not that great a moral leap.  As my big guy puts it, "I'd never want to go to war.  There's no respawn, and you have to watch your friends really get hurt and die."  Instead, I limit their access because the vocabulary of the game is...well...appropriate to a war zone.  And I don't really want that sort of language in my house.

There are other games, like Grand Theft Auto or the brutally ultraviolent and hypersexualized Bayonetta, that I simply will not let in my house.  They may be well put together, but they go beyond just paintball-esque war games into a darker place.  Some inputs are to be avoided.  I won't play those games.  They're not good for ya.  Kids should not play those games...but they're already rated M, and not sold to minors.  I'm pretty intentional about placing boundaries around what my boys are allowed to play.  And watch.  It's called being a parent. 

In terms of blocking access to games that involve "..killing..an image of a human being.."  I think California has overreached.  The metric they're laying out doesn't just apply to some of the more extreme games out there.  It goes far beyond that.  Simulated combat is a central component of gaming.  Pretty much every Teen-rated Star Wars game, which are remarkably popular with boys, would need to be restricted.  As would many button-mashing fight games.  As would Outlaw for the Atari 2600, which is presented in all its brutal gun-blazing glory above.  It is killing, after all. 

This functionally removes California from the gaming marketplace.

I can't see how that definition provides a meaningful metric for what is and is not an acceptable game for kids.  If you're playing a game like Lego Batman, or Lego Indiana Jones, do you "kill" an image of a human being?  It's a Lego Minifigure, sure, but it looks like a human being.  What about games like, say, Dummy Never Fails, a physics game in which you hurl mannequins into objects?  That's definitely human-looking.

I'm not sure how California is going to regulate sales.  The gaming industry is rapidly moving from distributing games through physical media to distributing games via download.  Is California going to block access to gaming downloads over XBox Live or the PlayStation Network?  Or to downloads of games over iTunes?  My boys often get gift cards that allow them to access those games...if they did so directly in California, would that constitute a violation of this law?

Another often ignored but growing area of the gaming industry is free online flash gaming.  Through sites like miniclip or Candystand, you can play an amazing array of games that are paid for by ad placement.  Many of those games are superior to the console games of 10 years ago, and many contain simulated combat.  Unless California is prepared to become China, and to block access to large swaths of the internet, I just can't see how this law will be meaningful.

This seems, quite frankly, like one of those "what about the children" laws.  They're impossible to meaningfully enforce, and only serve to make Californian legislators feel better about themselves.  It's not just that it seems to fail the First Amendment test.  It's that the law seems painfully overwrought and fundamentally unrealistic. 

California needs to just pass Prop 19 and, like, chill, dude.

The Supreme Court and The Sound of Elections To Come

Much political press has been given to the recent success of the Republican right wing, as "Tea Party" activists have wrested control of the GOP away from crazy namby pamby liberal RINO apologists like Karl Rove. Seriously. When the right wing's shouting heads are accusing Karl Rove of being inadequately Republican for having the audacity to note that a particular Tea Party candidate isn't well suited to the state she's running in, we've wandered into a very strange place.

While that whole sliding away into madness is certainly fascinating, I've been struck by something else more locally. In DC, Mayor Adrian Fenty has been ousted by DC Council Chair Vincent Gray in the primary. In part, this is Fenty's fault. He comes across as a serious SOB. He's not someone you like. But he's someone you can appreciate. He's a technocrat, a hard charging manager who suffers fools and the incompetent lightly, and he's made things notably and markedly better. He made a point of paring the bloated ranks of DC's governmental bureaucracy. In particular, he and his take-no-prisoners School Chancellor went after the outlandishly wretched DC school system, which spends more than $25,000 per year per pupil and yet still manages to have buildings falling apart.

In doing that, he made enemies, particularly in DC's teacher's union and the unions that represent the swollen ranks of DC's government workers. Vincent Gray has repeatedly and outspokenly spoken in defense of those poor teachers who were fired for the sole reason that they happened to be demonstrably crappy at their jobs. Unsurprisingly, Gray is the serious beneficiary of union support and endorsements.

But the union support for Gray manifested itself in a new way this primary season, and that augurs some interesting stuff in this next election cycle. I listen regularly to WTOP, an all news radio station that's the market leader for ratings here in the DC metro area. If you want to influence someone here, buying ad time on WTOP is the gold standard for broadcast media in Washington.

What I heard on WTOP, for the first time ever, were political ads. Yeah, we've all heard them before, but not like this. These were not ads run by the Gray campaign. They were ad buys funded entirely from the coffers of the unions Gray represents. The cash came not from shady organizations that were created as proxies, but was done openly and explicitly. We are the union. Vote for Gray.

This has not happened in prior elections, not in my lifetime. It's a direct result of a recent Supreme Court decision in which the conservative wing of the court ruled that corporations...and, by extension, unions and any other private interest... had the same right to openly support political candidates as individuals.

I haven't seen it yet on the national stage, but I can't imagine that 2010 will look quite like 2008. We've already seen NewsCorp, the corporate parent of FoxNews, funnel over $1,000,000 to the Republican governors association. As corporations and unions seek to defend their profits and their interests, I can expect that we'll see more and more of this.

Snyder vs. Phelps and the Price of Freedom

It was perhaps inevitable that America's third most relentless attention hogs (Hi, Glenn! Hi, Sarah!) should make their way back into the baleful glare of the national limelight.

This last week, the Supreme Court began consideration of a case against Westboro Baptist, that sad dark cult of intensive hatred that blights Topeka, Kansas and is misused to assail the entire reputation of Christian faith. One of the many families who lost a soldier-son in recent conflict filed suit against Phelps after his family engaged in one of their trademarked hate-fests outside of the young man's funeral. After an initial $5 million dollar verdict for inflicting emotional distress, an appellate court overturned the award. Now it has come before the highest court in the land.

The issue is freedom of speech. Phelps and his brood are justifiably despised by essentially everyone. Even the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of Phelps, described his activities as "highly offensive" and "repugnant." But the broader ruling asserted that the speech was "intended to spark debate about issues," and was therefore protected speech.

I can appreciate the intent of the Circuit Court argument, and think that ultimately it's necessary to permit even the speech of nasty pieces of work like Phelps if we take free speech seriously.

That said, I do wonder if the idea that this speech serves the cause of debate is actually...well...you know...true. Discussion and debate are not really things that the Phelps clan care a whit about. They are opening an exchange, sure. But they aren't opening a discussion or a debate. Not really.

Let's say I start a conversation with the phrase: "You are a worthless piece of ****, and you and your mother****ing piece of **** dead child can just **** my ****." That's not an invitation to have a discussion or a debate. It's an invitation for you to give me a little closed-fist dental work. What Phelps is doing is simply that, with a slight gloss of "religion." It's just being abusive and nasty-truculent.

That's not to say that plenty of folks aren't under the misconception that being cruel and hostile somehow constitutes debate. Tens of thousands of internet trolls seem to think precisely that. But while disagreement can get intense even within the bounds of normal political discussion, there is a point we reach when it ceases to be part of the dynamic tension of democracy. It's just screaming and tearing and brokenness.

Ah well. Maintaining even the freedom of those who have no respect for others is necessary for freedom itself to be maintained.

Powers, Principalities and Alito

After getting a heads-up on this from another spear-oriented blog I regularly read, I've been recently watching chunklets of a rather interesting documentary on corporations, which is accurately if unimaginatively titled: "The Corporation." It's faskinating schtuff, and draws from perspectives from both within and outside the business community. It's worth a watch.

It's particularly intriguing given the recent Supreme Court decision to permit corporations to act as if they had the same rights as citizens of our democratic republic...up to and including direct action to effect an election. One of the more striking segments (which you can watch above) discusses the dynamics of these corporations. The question is asked: What kind of person is a corporation? Among the answers:

• They are "immortal persons," meaning they can exist forever.
• They are constituted for the purpose of shielding human beings from culpability for their actions towards other human beings.
• They exist for the purpose of providing profit for themselves.
• They have no soul.
• They cannot be held personally accountable for their actions.
  

Reflecting on this, I encounter two things. First, a slight shiver as I think about the ground that such "persons" stand upon morally and spiritually. One wonders how Jesus would respond to such a "person," and whether that response would involve a herd of pigs and a cliff.

Second, I wonder how these "persons" relate to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Are they the governed? Is government instituted among them, and does it require their consent for it's just powers? Are they...men? Meaning, you know, people?

They do not live. Liberty means nothing to them. They cannot know happiness. And these entities will be influencing and guiding our nation?

I've said it once, and I'll say it again, these are interesting times in which we live.

That Sound is Eisenhower Rolling Over In His Grave

Another interesting bit of collateral damage the recent SCOTUS decision allowing corporations to directly influence elections may only be immediately evident to those of us who live in the Washington Metropolitan Area. From my vantage point inside the Beltway, I see things that most Americans don't get to see.

By "things," I mean advertising. By advertising, I mean the aggressive but very localized ad campaigns run by defense contractors to influence the decisionmaking of military bureaucracy and your elected leaders.

I've blogged on this before. In no other city in the nation do you see advertisements touting the effectiveness of ships and tanks and weapons systems. Full page color ads in the Post and the Times. Tightly produced radio spots on the number-one rated station in the area. Posters with patriotic slogans, flags, eagles, and weapons systems festoon the walls in our Metro subway system, particularly at the Pentagon and Pentagon City stations.

These are not ads for you and me, because we don't tend to purchase fighter aircraft, no matter how much our 9 year old son might beg and plead. We don't buy military transports, or missile defense systems, or destroyers. But these products are all advertised inside the Beltway, by major corporations that produce systems that are only bought with our tax dollars. General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman exist in their current form not to provide products for individual citizens, but for consumption by the federal government. Their considerable profits are dependent on the largesse of Washington.

Now, lets for a moment imagine that a United States senator feels that a particular weapons system...say, the engine for the Joint Strike Fighter that the military doesn't want but that we're making anyway...should be canceled. The corporations whose profits are dependent on We The People buying this weapon already have a substantial advertising budget. What do you suppose the odds are that when this senator comes up for re-election that instead of just ads inside the Beltway, we might now see some attack ads running in this senator's home state? Or some juicy gotcha clips that seem to imply that said senator has a prurient interest in livestock? Or worse yet, that they Don't Support Our Troops (tm)? The self-dealing manipulation of the electoral process by corporations who need compliant senators and representatives is now perfectly acceptable. It's always been there, of course. Money has been funneled to oppo researchers and into the coffers of political action committees. But now it can operate unfettered in the light of day.

Looks like the military-industrial complex is going to be adding a marketing department.

All Hail Our Beloved Chinese Masters!

There's been plenty of back and forth about the recent Supreme Court decision permitting corporations to directly support or oppose candidates for political office. Some folks, mostly libertarians and conservatives, argue that preventing corporations from engaging in this sort of activity represents a violation of the First Amendment. If a business is prevented from supporting or opposing someone, and cannot run ads directly attacking or lauding that individual, then the rights of the owners and directors of that corporation are being violated.

Or so the argument goes.

Yesterday, while passing some time in good meaty political discussion with a church deacon, I realized that there was an element to this whole thing that I had not previously considered.

American corporations are not individuals, sure. They wield far more power and influence. But they are also increasingly not American. We do not live in an age when the interests of business play out on a local or national level. This is, as anyone who pays attention should have realized by now, the era of market globalization. For all of our jabbering about the importance of small business, business does not now exist on a primarily local level. It exists across national boundaries. Because of this, ownership of corporate entities in the United States does not stop at our borders. One does not have to be a citizen of this nation to own or govern an entity incorporated here. So what does that mean?

Let's for a moment imagine the 2012 race for the presidency of the United States of America. One candidate strongly favors pressing China more aggressively on their approach to human rights, and wants the United States to begin weaning itself from foreign oil. Following this last week's Supreme Court decision, there is no impediment to corporations that exist as subsidiaries of the Chinese government from throwing as much money as they want into attack ads against that candidate. There is nothing to prevent Aramco and Citgo from doing exactly the same thing.

Sure, nonprofits and associations can try to do the same. But they're drops in the bucket. Wealth is power, and an immense imbalance of power that has been created here. Sure, there have been periods in the history of the United States when business has been a governing power in the affairs of state. But the dynamics of the marketplace in the 1890s were still mostly national in scope, and the interests of the robber barons were at least tangentially linked to the interests of this nation. They were, at a bare minimum, citizens. In 2010, wealth is radically global...and the most powerful corporations no longer see their interests tied to those of this particular nation.

I'm not alone in noticing this. E.J. Dionne pitched out a very similar theme this morning. But most human beings only see what is right around them. We are compulsively parochial little critters. In a nation that is soon to be ruled not by citizens, but by the power of multinational corporations, that lack of a broader vision will bear predictable fruit. We have already allowed multinational corporations to strip this nation of it's productive capacity, which even our enemies recognized as our greatest strength. Now, they will dominate our political discourse.

But I hear that Octomom has a new bikini bod. That makes it all better.

Freedom to Associate and Pluralism

The latest salvo in the endless saga of church/state relations here in the You Ess of Ay will be coming before the Supreme Court in the nearish future. The court case is Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, and revolves around the refusal of the Hastings College of Law to officially recognize a conservative Christian legal association.

It's a fuddler of a case. The college is a public institution in California, and specifically refuses to provide support for groups that discriminate on the basis of religious belief, sexual orientation, race, or disability. The Christian Legal Society clearly runs afoul of that standard.

It isn't generically Christian, meaning, it's not open to all Jesus people. Their expectation of their membership is that of any fundamentalist Christian parachurch organization. On their national website, they clearly indicate that they will accept as members only a particular sort of Christian. Profession of faith in Jesus Christ as one's Lord and Savior just doesn't cut it. Meaning, I wouldn't be welcome. And it's not just my openness to gays and lesbians, or my understanding of the authentic Christian approach to heterosexual behavior. My interpretation of the Christian walk would directly threaten their worldview.

But while I personally find the CLS a wee bit on the Pharisaic side, I can't quite see why they should be refused status based on the exclusivity of their membership expectation. Groups are often defined by a particular governing ethic, and that ethic may come into conflict with the ethics of other groups. Let's look at other groups at Hastings College of Law.

What of the Clara Foltz Feminist Association? They exist to give a forum to individuals with a feminist worldview, and to encourage the spread of that worldview at Hastings. Would a conservative Muslim woman be admitted into membership? And even if they were, would they experience discrimination within the group?

What if a group of Jews for Jesus decided they'd been called by God to reach out to the Hastings Jewish Law Students Association? What if they showed up, day after day, using the meetings to prosthelytize? Could the Jewish Law Students deny membership to the Jews for Jesus? They'd be justified in trying.

Or what if a group of lawyers promoting "gay conversion" decided to take over the membership of Hastings OUTLAW, standing on their religious beliefs and declaring that removing them would constitute a violation of the school's anti-discrimination policies? How would the LGBTQ community at Hastings respond? Would they be entitled to defend the integrity of their organization?

Groups that are organized around a particular set of beliefs...not just faith, but beliefs generally...inherently discriminate. That's the nature of interest-based association. In a pluralistic setting, that will mean that groups may have sets of values that are in competition with one another.

So...what are the bounds of pluralism here?

A Question of Diversity

With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, I'm seriously stoked. Who'd have thought my 200-to-one bet would come in? I mean, dang. I had to argue a bit with my bookie about her cat's name, but Puddles Q. Puddleton still counts.

Given this potential new addition to the Supremes, there's a great deal of chatter in the media and the blogosphere about the role of diversity on the court. The whole event is highly charged, crackling with allegations on both sides of racial bias. Racism is, in the strange spin calculus of America's binary political system, the primary charge being leveled against Sotomayor by her opponents. Given the rather tenuous and troubled linkage between the conservative movement and Latino culture, this seems a rather foolish approach. The most effective counterspin seems pretty straightforward: "So she's proud of her culture and her heritage, and that makes her racist? Being proud to be a Latina makes you racist?" I guess the Latina vote in Florida and Texas just aren't important any more. The GOP seems so deafened by the din in it's increasingly small echo-chamber that it's walking right into that one.

The charges that she's an "intellectual lightweight" aren't going to help them much either. So...she's a Latina, ergo she could only have gotten where she is with the help of bleeding heart liberals, ergo she must be una muchacha estúpida. Again, I'm not sure that conservatives grasp the whole concept of getting la gente to vote for your candidates.

The piece that most interests me in this whole media maelstrom, though, is the rather odd spin this puts on the religious makeup of the Court. If Sotomayor is confirmed, the Supreme Court will have a Catholic supermajority. Of the nine justices, six will be Catholic, two Jewish, and one Protestant. This little oddment hasn't really made it past the radar of the faith-blogosphere into the broader media, but it's interesting. There was a time when the idea of having a Catholic in a position of leadership was a radical thing. Now, people seem utterly unphased by the idea that one of the three branches of government...the one in which people have lifelong appointments....is two-thirds Catholic in a nation that is majority Protestant.

As my tinfoil hat is quite effective in keeping the transmissions from the Illuminati at bay, I don't worry too much about some great Catholic conspiracy to take over the nation. What I do find myself wondering is what factors have lead to this seemingly random and utterly disproportionate weighting.

This seems mostly a construct of interesting dynamics within the conservative movement. Given that two of the last three administrations have been conservative, and that the conservative wing of the Court (Roberts/Scalia/Alito/Thomas) is entirely Catholic, I find myself wondering: is there something about conservative Protestants that makes them steer away from careers in law and government?

In stark contrast to the vigorous intellectual life that is encouraged in certain quarters of the Catholic church and Catholic systems of education, the American evangelical movement has been typically charged with a strong anti-intellectualism, favoring instead an emotive approach to faith. I'm not sure that this is all that is at work here, as within fundamentalism in particular the life of the mind can be surprisingly active. It is constrained within presuppositions about Biblical inerrancy, sure. But it's amazing how much intellectual capital one can expend defending that worldview.

What I think is more significant is the conservative Protestant understanding of the role of the state. Moving in step with cultural conservatism, the evangelical movement has woven into itself a deep distrust of government and the federal government in particular. This doesn't mean that evangelical Conservative Protestants are averse to practicing law. Some of the most intensely fundamentalist souls I've interacted with have been lawyers. Folks who get off on the structures of the law can find the legalism of a literalist faith deeply affirming. Even Jesus noted that tendency on occasion.

But given the deep distrust of government that defines Protestant conservatism, finding evangelicals whose calling is to federal civil service might be something of a challenge.

Judgment and Empathy

As I mused over the recent charges leveled by American conservatism against "empathy" as a judicial virtue, I found myself wondering how that played off against specific Biblical instances of justice. Two came to mind:

The first is perhaps one of the most famous stories of jurisprudential skill from scripture: Solomon and the Bisected Baby. It's a classic tale, in which two women both claim to be the mother of a child. Solomon suggests that the baby be cut in half, thus giving each woman what she wants. The real mom refuses, relinquishing her claim so that the child might be spared. At that point, Solomon gives the child to the one who clearly loves it more. This sort of story is common in the wisdom traditions of the Ancient Near East, as a way of evidencing the benevolence and discernment of a worthy ruler.

What's the Biblical metric here? It's not a knowledge of the law. It's a willingness to apply it gracefully. What makes Solomon's decision in this story worthy is not that it meets the standards of precedent, but rather that it comes from a deeper and more powerful understanding of the role of the law. It's driven by discernment of the human heart. In other words, by empathy.

The second instance is the story of Christ before Pilate. Presented with someone he knew he could free, and who he suspected was not guilty of any significant charge, Pilate yielded to to two things. First, to precedent. Only one prisoner was typically released. Though it was within his power to pardon who he saw fit, he couldn't bring himself to make a bold decision, even if that decision was in the interests of justice. Second, Pilate yielded to the will of the people. The people, stirred and agitated by those whose power was threatened, called out for the blood of a man who he knew was innocent...and he acquiesced. It was not that Pilate lacked empathy. It was that he lacked the moral integrity to let it drive his decisions. He hid behind the structures of the law, and for that act of cowardice, he has been found wanting by billions across thousands of years.

Given that most of the folks who are dead set against empathy as a judicial virtue claim to be Christian, I do wonder sometimes about the quality of pastors these days.

Are You, or Have You Ever Been, A Follower of Jesus Christ?

Here inside the Beltway, the political classes are humming with anticipation at the upcoming nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. Talking heads and politicos and apparatchiks of every possible persuasion are trying to figure out just who is going to get the nod to replace Justice Souter. What will the criteria be? What peculiar mix of jurisprudential knowhow will the individual bring to the court? Even more importantly, what demographic check-boxes will they fill?

As someone who finds this kind of prognostication entertaining, I think we're going to see a female nominee. I mean, c'mon. 51% of the population...and only 11% of the court? No progressive could possibly resist shifting that imbalance. The question is: what kind of woman? Will she be a Latina? I think the odds are good, and it would make political sense. But why stop there? How about a lesbian Latina? Or maybe a disabled lesbian Latina? Or a disabled lesbian Latina single mom with two biracial kids and a cat with a learning disability? You can get 175-to-1 on that last one at any DC bookie. 200-to-1 if the cat is named "Puddles."

Of course, that OCD progressive tendency to want fairness and balance in all things is not shared by folks on the other side of the aisle. But if the conservative pre-response to the not-yet-announced nominee is any guide, it seems that the GOP has only one criteria for rejecting a nominee:

They cannot under any circumstances be a Christian.

The one criteria that's been repeated by the administration, over and over again, is that the candidate must show "empathy." And so it is against empathy as a judicial virtue that conservatism as a movement is now railing. Anyone in a position to judge must be utterly dispassionate, completely unswayed by feeling and solely motivated by a cool clinical and academic understanding of the history and dynamics of the law. "Personal feelings," which is how conservatism interprets empathy, have no place in the law. This position has been resounding throughout conservative corners of the blogosphere, and was reiterated in an op-ed piece today by Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Unfortunately, Christianity is all about empathy. Yeah, I know, we've been lead to believe Jesus only taught about abortion and gay marriage. But we have all of us, as the breathy lady says at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings, been deceived.

Compassion and an unconditional love of neighbor are the roots-rock-foundation of Christian values. If you've missed this in your readings of the teachings of Jesus, or in the teachings of the Apostle Paul, then you haven't been paying attention. Love is the highest law, and the law that defines and interprets the application of the law. Christian compassion is also not something that exists for us in the abstract. It is a value...a virtue...that must be manifest in every corner of the life of every person that claims to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. You can't say he's your Lord and Savior unless that love for others suffuses every part of your life.

Unfortunately for American conservatism, that includes your vocation. You're a Christian if you practice medicine. You're a Christian if you work in a cubicle next to a guy who smells of tobacco and rancid cheese. You're a Christian if you're appointed to serve as final arbiter of the legal framework of a constitutional democracy for the rest of your born days. You never leave that behind. It defines you, in all that you do.

That means that anyone who authentically roots their faith in Christ...well..let's just say that conservatives need to be sure none of those radicals get on the Court. Nominal, surface-level, wink-wink-nudge-nudge Christians are fine. Cultural Christians are fine.

Just no real ones. They can't help but be compassionate. Think of the mess they'd make of the law if they started actually interpreting it through the lens of Christ's teachings!

And we can't have that.