GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
Human Wrongs
In 1963 Martin Luther King claimed, “We are caught in
an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Anyone who lives in
the United States
can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.”
King’s statement recognized that human rights transcend race,
nationality, religion, politics, and citizenship. His appeal was to the Church,
the Southern states, and the moral consciousness of America. He was not
running for president, contradicting science, saving souls, or justifying
social irresponsibility.
Adaptation
Dale Maharidge’s 1996 book, The Coming White Minority, describes multiculturalism and America’s
future. We have a crisis of identity, amplified by the world wide 2008
economic calamity, and fear that as a people we may cease to be. We have
a challenge because no modern society that was dominated by whites has evolved into
a truly equal mixed color culture. Prejudice and passion increase anti-social
drives.
Whites don’t like living near minorities. This
fact is evidenced by walled and gated communities, inner city decay, and
economic ghettos that exist in many parts of the country. Economic power
and social privilege develop in every society becoming the basis for class
division solidarity. Privileged “job creators” practice
self-deception and hypocrisy claiming that they represent necessary and
sufficient universal values.
Nature’s laws include the forces of change that create
time and tomorrow. Adaptation is a force driving the evolution of species,
and determining how societies choose to fail or succeed. It is not an
unprincipled political chameleon changing its color moment by moment. Adaptation
is more than embracing minority populations with different values and religious
beliefs. It includes dealing with global competition, an aging American
population, and destructive climate change so rapid that adjustments are impossible.
Reform
The 2007 McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Act gave us the
comprehensive solution we dearly needed, but it was rejected with screams for
“no amnesty”, but amnesty includes time of residency, tax and work
history, education and skills, family, a penalty, and a path to citizenship.
Arizona Republicans rode fear of expanding minorities to office in 2010. Psychology
says that only positive reinforcement changes long-term behavior for the
better. Their brand of motivation was judgment and punishment.
Leniency does not encourage depravity. In Victor
Hugo’s classic novel Les Miserables,
Jean Valjean, given shelter for the night by the bishop, stole the silver table
service. Fleeing, he was caught and returned by the police to answer to
the priest whom he had robbed. Instead of indicting Jean, the
priest turned the other cheek. He gave him the silver candlesticks as
well, claiming to the police that it was a gift all along and that he had
forgotten them. Then, in a whisper the priest reminded Jean that it was
his soul that he was buying and returning to him and that he henceforth
belonged to good instead of evil.
Orchestra
Who is the most important musician in the orchestra? It
is the conductor. America
is a jazz orchestra where the musicians have no sheet music. Government is
the conductor. Without the conductor you have a cacophony. Government
has no expertise in science or health care, and so it draws on the knowledge of
industry experts to cooperatively debate and create standards that are necessary
for efficiency and job growth.
The Half-Full Glass
We have been on the road to serfdom, but not because of
scapegoated lazy immigrants intentionally coming to America to have anchor babies and
live off welfare. The forces of the status quo, anti-modernism, and
multinational capitalism are much greater threats.
There is a new study, The Consequences
of Legalization Versus Mass Deportation in Arizona, posted at
KJZZ.org. It quantifies both sides of the illegal immigration issue
concluding that “no amnesty” would cost Arizona $ 15.7 billion
while legalization would benefit us by an extra half billion dollars.
Socialist
The Tea Party swallowed the John Birch society and it did not
even make a budge in the snake. Democrats have become the replacement for
the Communist threat.
Individual extremism holds that society is entirely a
derived value and a means to the end of individual welfare.
Alternatively, collectivism claims the individual can be sacrificed to achieve
a utopian perfection. Collateral damage is when fear of socialism destroys
empathy, compassion, and being our brother’s keeper.
Socialism is Veterans’ Administration health care and
those who take more from social security than they put in. Absolute free
enterprise holds that government regulations requiring equal pay for women and
minorities performing the same job should be canceled. Free enterprise
allows separate water fountains, entrances, and lunch counters for Blacks.
Those who disagree practice situational ethics, bending capitalism to fit their
concepts of fairness and morality.
Ashamed
Historical revisionists, who desire to merge church and state
and revise school textbooks, say that the intent of the Founding Fathers was to
abolish slavery. Pride promotes a self-perception of purity and
righteousness. Slavery was controversial, biblical, and part of the Southern
history, culture, and economy. For America to become, it was necessary
to count slaves as 3/5 of a person. We could be ashamed that so many were
held in bondage for so long with the support of the Constitution and that it
took a bloody civil war to change that. We could ignore the unpleasant
message and shoot the messenger.
The Civil War was still being fought in 1965 when pastors
preached separate but equal in order to assuage the congregation and maintain
their property values.
Conservatives have created a politics of good versus evil.
Biblical inerrancy promotes Republican ascendency. They demonize liberals,
claiming ethical relativity as the cause of society’s sin. The
roots of ethical relativity are not shallow as claimed.
They go far
before the Vietnam War, Fletcher’s 1967 book Moral Responsibility, and Macgregor’s 1936 book, The New Testament Basis of Pacifism.
They can be traced to the horrors of two world wars, the depersonalization of
humanity, the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr who tried to take the contemporary
world and Christianity equally seriously, and Bonhoeffer’s holocaust ethical
musings.
Natural law, scripture, and special revelation are differing
references for moral behavior. A second civil war called
“values” divides our society. It does not cease in us but
tears our persona asunder. The religious view of reality that is so
necessary for our wholeness is threatened more by its impotence to solve the
world’s problems than by the fact that certain aspects of its dogma are
not intellectually respectable and contradict science.
Niebuhr theorized that groups like nations and political
parties are less likely to be moral than individuals because of irrational egoism
and arrogant hubris. However, religion is a danger when it introduces absolutes
into the reality of relative values. Ethics is elastic and situational,
requiring tremendous personal responsibility that cannot be exculpated by
legalistic doctrine. Divine command’s content varies in different
situations.
Exodus 21 thru 23 gives 5000 year old rules for ox ownership
that don’t unambiguously apply to modern life. Justice Scalia
accuses liberals of “making it up” suggesting that he doesn’t.
Sociology and Physics recognize that Einstein’s relativity was as
evolutionary as revolutionary. How we think changes with time, culture,
knowledge, and technology.
Kevin Phillips traces the rise of Republican theology in his
book American Theocracy.
When 1860 Northern Republicans came out against slavery, they were ethically
relative. The Bible legitimizes slavery in Exodus 20-21, Matthew 10:24,
Ephesians 6:5-6, and others. Proud Southern Democratic segregationists
defended moral slavery. Since President Johnson’s Great Society,
the political parties’ roles have flip-flopped with the Republicans now
defending Biblical inerrancy.
Crimes
In 2011, DHS removed 392,000 people from America, just
below the all-time record in 2009. Drones alone in 2010 led to the arrest
of 62,000 illegal immigrants, 2000 smugglers, and the capture of 800,000 pounds
of drugs.
To be a nation we must have a border. Homeland security
has become big business. Marketing estimates that it will grow to $113
billion in three years. Border enforcement has gone high-tech, starting
with the failed multi-billion dollar Boeing SBInet border surveillance system and
developing into many forms of new border control automation. Now we have
270 aircraft and 10 drones at $18 million each for border security to help the
60,000 employees of Customs and Border Protection. The drones can scan
wide areas and track individual foot-prints from 20,000 feet up. Still,
the Republicans fear monger and complain that the border must be secured first.
Law
It’s the law, build more prisons, arrest and deport
them, but the law should be helpful, building up instead of tearing apart, and
not denying civil rights.
There was an eruption of repressive Tea Party bills
revealing disrespect for humanity. Radio talk referred to their ideas as
“awesome”. They wanted hospitals, schools, utilities, housing,
and transportation to be denied, and people to be forced to become informers,
not realizing that the extinction of human rights in Nazi Germany was
facilitated by a repressive and authoritarian culture and public collaboration.
Recently, the GOP tried to add proof of citizenship for voter registration,
perhaps to shut down community voter registration drives that historically have
registered people likely to vote against them.
The Supreme Court has sensibly ruled that Arizona and the Federal Government can
cooperatively work together on immigration, a Federal responsibility. The
immigration status of a person stopped or arrested for a law violation can be
checked by state officials and reported to ICE for disposition. ICE is
presently deporting only the most serious offenders and those who pose a threat
to national security. Immigration reform is necessary, but we must not be
willing to punish millions for the crimes of a few.
Conclusion
There is a difference between unavoidable bias, flights of
fantasy and pure conjecture, and intentional propaganda. If we have a
victim mentality, is it because of Democratic Socialists or deregulated Wall
Street’s destruction of our home values? Are you enslaved?
The Bible admonishes us “… Knowing that whatever good anyone does,
he will receive the same again from the Lord, whether he is a slave or
free”.
What is the soul of America? Is it tough love or
mutual sacrifice that is needed? What kind of country do you want it to
be? When our politicians appeal to our selfishness, and our fear, we have
the power to say to them, “We are better than that.”
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