I’ve been reading Reinhold Niebuhr for a while now – actually, I finished a collection of his essays, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, some time ago. My habit is to to use little 3M flags to highlight interesting passages of a book as I read it, and then later to transcribe those passages into quotation files on my computer. I may never look at them again, but there is something about typing out the words that allows them to penetrate deeper into my conscious brain. Such as it is.

Anyway, my late Friday afternoon is that process, and I realized as I typed that Niebuhr had in two short paragraphs very effectively dealt with a passion of the left, pacifism, and one of the right, the sanctity of self-interest.

To wit, pacifism:

It was inevitable that this [the scene at the cross] ultimate illumination should be mistaken again and again in human history for proximate forms of moral illumination and thus lead to pacifist illusions. According to such interpretations, the goodness of Christ is a powerless goodness which can by emulated by the mere disavowal of power. In such interpretations the tragic culmination of the cross is obscured. It is assumed that powerless goodness achieves the spiritual influence to overcome all forms of evil clothed with other than spiritual forms of power. It is made an instrument of one historical cause in conflict with other historical causes. It becomes a tool of an interested position in society; and a bogus promise of historical success is given to it. Powerless goodness ends upon the cross. It gives no certainty of victory to comparatively righteous causes in conflict with comparatively unrighteous ones. It can only throw divine illumination upon the whole meaning of history and convict both the righteous and unrighteous in their struggles. Men may indeed emulate the powerless goodness of Christ; and some of his followers ought indeed to do so. But they ought to know what they are doing. They are not able by this strategy to guarantee a victory for any historical cause, however comparatively virtuous. They can only set up a sign and symbol of the Kingdom of God, of a Kingdom of perfect righteousness and peace which transcends all of the struggles of history.

I suppose conservatives and libertarians will say that they embrace the following words, but my impression is that they believe that there are no bounds to the fruitful rewards of unregulated self interest.

In this country, and in spite of all our weaknesses, our pride and pretensions, certainly there is life. Our national life is based on the vitality of various interests balanced by various other interests. This is the heart of the free enterprise doctrine. These self-interests are not nearly as harmless as our conservative friends imagine them to be. Here we have to violate the parable, and provisionally make judgments and say, “This form of self-interest must be checked.” Or, “This form of self-interest must be balanced by other interest.” Otherwise we will not have justice if the powerful man simply goes after his interest at the expense of the weak.

Finally, a word for both sides – what goes around comes around:

Must we not say to the rich and secure classes of society that their vaunted devotion to the laws and structures of society which guarantees their privileges is tainted with self-interest? And must we not say to the poor that their dream of a propertyless society is perfect justice turns into a nightmare of new injustice because it is based only upon the recognition of the sin which the other commits and knows nothing of the sin which the poor man commits when he is no longer poor but has become a commissar?

In the comments below a post down below, 30,000 angry, suggestible victims, Swede links us to a photograph and an inspirational quote by Sam Adams very similar to one by Margaret Mead.

I suggested to Swede that he had linked to a faked photo of the 9/12-13 Teabagger protest in Washington. Right wing media all over the country misreported the attendance, and circulated a photograph at least ten years old claiming it was of the event. Their objective in saying there were two million there (when it was more like 20-30,000) was apparently to beat the attendance at the Obama inauguration.

That they can get away with shit like that in the age of Twitter and security cameras everywhere is a demonstration of the power of the right wing media.

Anyway, Rusty Shackleford asked if I could offer evidence that the photo was a fake. He could do it himself, I suppose. I wondered how he could miss something so widely covered on the Internet, but then realized that right wingers really, honestly, stay queued in their little domains.

Anyway, Rusty, the photo was exposed by a web site called Politifact. It’s pretty much foolproof – a building that was constructed in the last ten years, the National Museum of the American Indian, is absent in the photo given us by Swede. According to Politifact, the purported Teabagger photo is actually one of a 1997 gathering of the Promisekeepers.

That too is troubling.

Anyway, this is well-covered and all over the place. I’m just putting this up for Rusty’s benefit.

I am still mouth-agape as I peruse the comments following Rob Natelson’s post yesterday at Electric City Weblog, Using Your Money Against You. It brings out in the open one of the major defects in right wing thinking. It is a false dichotomy – there is us (dissipated citizenry), and them (government). Here’s Natelson:

The outrageous practice of using taxpayer money to lobby ought to be illegal in Montana, as it often is elsewhere. If public officials think a subject is so important they want to lobby on it, they should have to do what everyone else does – visit Helena at their own expense or take up a collection from like-minded people to finance the trip.

The dichotomy is further delineated in the comments. Gregg:

it frankly pisses me off that I have to take virtually a whole day off to go give my 10 minute blurb to a yawning committee, while the regulatory folks camp out with our legislators all day, propose language for the bills, and talk with them before and after hearings…all on our nickel. It’s supposed to be government for the people, not government for the bureaucrats.

Gregg, independent citizen-lobbyist. Gregg’s elected local government representatives: Bureaucrats.

A commenter, Ken Thorton, introduces the 800 pound gorilla

… that would be the special interest, industrial and the like private lobbyists.

Enter Dave Budge, Natelson sympathizer in this thread and candidate extraordinaire for the disjointed train of thought award:

Limit lobbyists … which part of the 1st Amendment do you what to throw out next?

Got that? Private industry lobbying is a protected first amendment right. Lobbying by elected officials is “using your money against you.”

Budge further adds

There’s no reason that citizens of any given municipality can’t band together to form a lobbying arm to go vent their spleens. But I don’t think you can ask anyone else to pay for it since lobbying our representatives locally can be done with a phone call or a letter…

This is right wing thought on parade, replete with disjointed suppositions and cognitive dissonance. Citizens of any given municipality have already banded together to form a lobbying arm. It’s called “local government.” For so long as those governments are elected by a majority of the citizenry, what they and their appointees and hires are doing in lobbying the legislature is called “representative government”. Corporate lobbyists are, or should be known as “special interests.-

An amazing report over the weekend from the Littleton (CO) Courier, says that a local man is not afraid of stuff.

Jason Blantonhawk, a Littleton native, reports taking out his garbage at night, having his windshields washed at busy intersections by African Americans, getting on airplanes and walking through crowded Hispanic areas of nearby Denver without fear. Further, he reports hiking the previous summer in Rocky Mountain National Park, and not being afraid of either mountain lions or bears.

When asked about getting on airplanes, Blantonhawk said “They’re pretty safe. Pilots are well-trained, the equipment has been flying thousands of hours, and nothing bad has happened.” He was asked about the possibility of terrorists on airplanes, and amazingly said “Pretty rare, really. When you think of all the people who are going to die this year from smoking cigarettes or not being able to get health care, terrorists on airplanes is really way, way down the list.” He later added “When I fly I read books and listen to my IPod, and when we land, I get my bag and go where I have to go.”

Local authorities, asked about Blantonhawk, referred reporters to the local department of health, where a psychiatrist had been assigned the case. Citing confidentiality, Dr. James Gelfan only said “I’ve heard of this happening outside the United States, and I’ve read some New England Journal stuff about a guy up in Seattle, but I’ve not personally encountered any American who are not afraid of a lot of stuff. This is really unusual.”

Blantonhawk’s background is unusual too. He was a student at Columbine High School in Littleton in 2009 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed or injured 36 students and teachers. Asked about this, Blantonhawk said “You know, that really affected me. I lost friends that day, and I knew Dylan. I realized at that time that events are pretty much random, and what happens happens. Since that time, I’ve pretty much accepted that I can only control a few things. So I relax.”

“But what about 9/11! What about terrorists? Aren’t you scared about that?”, a reporter asked? “No, not at all,” he replied. “That was a crazy day, for sure, and I’m glad I wasn’t on those airplanes. But I don’t much think about it. I see people on airplanes with turbans and I figure they are from the Middle East somewhere, and I think that’s pretty cool that we’re not scared of them.” He later added “You know, every day there about 25,000 flights in the U.S., and like 1.5 million people who fly. The odds of something bad happening, even on 9/11, were really, really slim.”

Blantonhawk’s case first came before authorities when at Denver International Airport he publicly questioned the need for airport security. He was said to have complained about having to give up a bottle of shampoo, and was heard to mutter when he took off his shoes to be xrayed “This is bull****.” He was arrested that day, and later, when testifying before the local FISA court, said “All of this airline security is just to make us afraid. There’s no reason to have to go through all of that.”

Blantonhawk was fined, and ordered to attend sensitivity sessions with Dr. Gelfan. He is currently under house arrest.

Blantonhawk’s neighbors say that they never would have guessed him to be a thought-crimer. “He seems normal in every way”, said one. “He mows his lawn, comes home with groceries, and smiles at people when he meets them. Who would have guessed? Right here in our neighborhood, right under our noses.”

Either here or in a comment at some other blog, I regretfully referred to the march in Washington, DC over the weekend of 9/12-9/13 as the “60,000 moron march.”

That remark was not original with me. Someone else said it first, and I thought it was really clever.

I’ve been chastened and corrected, and I humbly apologize. Apparently, the number of morons was somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000.