Perhaps--just perhaps--a little more American humility is in order. . . .

I've been looking for a copy of this obscure book, Anxious About Empire, Theological Essays on the New Global Realities for three or four years. OK, maybe not that hard, since I probably could have found it on Amazon or at Abebooks.com, but at least checking out the used bookstores for a copy.

This paragraph is one of the reasons why. It was written by Robert Bellah just a few months after Dubya's "with us or agin' us" speech and the publication of our National Strategery against Terrorism:

The central point I want to make is that the American polity is in no way prepared for this world-historical role that has been thrust upon us, making it doubtful that we can sustain the hegemony the national security document asserts. We remain a profoundly provincial, monolingual nation. Most Americans are not interested in the rest of the world and certainly don't know much about it. Foreing news has been in decline as a proportion not only of television news, but even of newspaper reporting for decades. Our degree of national pride is unmatched in the world. Even before September 11 the National Opinion Research Center found that 90.4 percent of Americans agree with the statement "I would rather be a citizen of America than of any other country in the world" (rising to 97.2 percent after September 11). Only slightly fewer Americans agreed with the statement that "America is a better country than most other countries." After September 11 almost half of our people agreed with the state "The world would be a better place if people from other countries were more like Americans." In his cover letter to the National Security Strategy document Mr. Bush asserts that there is "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise." The document itself makes it clear that all other nations not merely should, but must, follow this single model--or else.

Then there's this, from Arthur Paul Boers:

September 11 has become a cliche. I reject the claim that "everything changed" or that everything should change because of that day. Rather, I see it in its truest sense as an apocalyptic moment, an opening or revelation where truths are made clear and are suddenly hard to ignore. The truths revealed, however, are not necessarily those being drawn by political leaders, the military, the media, or even many church folks, alas.

One concern I have as a pastor is how God-language, and Christian vocabulary are usurped for the purposes of war and patriotism. This is especially striking now. I was not listening to the radio on September 11, but was informed of the events by my born-again auto mechanic, who promptly proceeded to make hateful remarks about Muslims. I later watched with great sorrow as outspoken Christians and churches supported US violent responses in Afghanistan and Iraq. The largest American flag that I have ever seen (make that the largest flag I have ever seen) is draped on the outside wall of a local church. One bumper sticker reads: "It's God's job to forgive Osama bin Laden. It's our job to arrange the meeting." God is being called on to bless all things American and, I might add, all things commercial. I am perplexed when I see patriotic slogans and claims about God's blessings on stores and gas stations.

Thus, in absolute seriousness, I say we must for God's sake bear a different witness. We must not coast along with such agendas. Christians do need to take a stand on the national urge to violence. If we do not, our loathing and denunciation of the violence on September 11 is hypocrisy.

Why this post, and why now? Because I was disturbed that I could be disturbed by donviti's post on Christian When Convenient at Delawareliberal. There is a test for those of us who claim to be Christians of any flavor, and as a whole I believe so far that we're failing it.

Is it more important to try to be a good Christian or a good American?

Maybe it's just more important to try to be good.

And what does that mean?

Good night, moon.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...

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