Sorry, Ericka–It Isn’t Change Indy Is Spurning

I generally like Ericka Smith’s columns–indeed, she and Matt Tully generally write the only things worth reading in what used to be a real newspaper. But she got this one really, really wrong.

I know a fair number of police officers, and a significantly larger number of politicians. I also have several colleagues who work closely with IMPD as consultants and researchers. I have not heard any of them criticize Frank Straub’s ideas for change. What I have heard–frequently–is criticism of Straub himself.

I have never personally met the man, but the picture painted by those who do is consistent: he came to Indianapolis with an “attitude.” He gave  orders but never listened. He let everyone know that he was from a real city, and knew lots more than the “rubes” here in India-no-place. As willing as he was to dish out criticism, he was incredibly thin-skinned and defensive if anyone dared question or criticize him.

Think about your own job: how likely would you be to accept changes initiated by a boss who acted like that?

We teach public and nonprofit management at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. One of the central points we make is the importance of “owning” change. Most people–not just in Indianapolis–are uncomfortable with change; in order to effectively shift an organization, a manager must create an atmosphere of trust, must obtain not just the acquiescence, but the understanding and “buy in” of the employees who must implement that change.

If a manager doesn’t do that, it doesn’t matter how great the ideas are. (Remember Steve Goldsmith?)

Indianapolis isn’t rejecting Straub’s changes, Ericka. It’s rejecting Straub.

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Filling the Void

I know I keep harping on the damage caused by Americans’ ignorance of our most basic history and philosophy, but the evidence just keeps piling up. I’m pasting, below, a recent essay by noted religious historian Martin Marty, in which he weighs in on David Barton–a charlatan who has made a living by manufacturing the sort of history fundamentalists want to believe. It’s easy, because most of us come to these issues with absolutely no knowledge. Instead, we have large voids, which these people are all too eager to fill. UPDATE: IF YOU CANNOT READ THE ATTACHMENT BELOW, HERE’S  THE LINK: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2012/0430.shtml

Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Sightings 4/30/2012

David Barton’s Jefferson

— Martin E. Marty

Our premier historian of late colonial and early republican America, Gordon Wood, while reviewing a book on Roger Williams warms up readers with references to Thomas Jefferson. “It’s easy to believe in the separation of church and state when one has nothing but scorn for all organized religion. That was the position of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s hatred of the clergy and established churches knew no bounds. He thought that members of the ‘priestcraft’were always in alliance with despots against liberty. For him the divine Trinity “was nothing but ‘Abracadabra’ and ‘hocus-pocus’. . . Ridicule, he said, was the only weapon to be used against it.”

If you wanted to promote the idea of “a Christian America,” one which would privilege one religion, a version of Christianity, and de-privilege all others, and if you want to get back to roots and origins, the last of the “founding fathers” on whom you’d concentrate would be Jefferson. Yet the most ardent public and pop advocate of privilege and virtual establishment, David Barton, cites Jefferson for Bartonian positions which are directly opposite of Jefferson’s. Never heard of David Barton? Most of the historians you would ever meet never heard of him, and if you told them about him and his positions, they would yawn or rage about listing him among those who deal honestly with Jefferson.

Sightings does not over-do ad hominem and sneering references, so we leave to others all the disdaining that Barton so richly merits. Do note, however, that he has invented a case and product which serve his viewpoint and draw him enormous followings among “conservative” factions which oppose separation of church and state in most cases except those they choose. Listen to Mike Huckabee or Glenn Beck or rightist cable TV and you will find Barton showing up everywhere.

His favorite founder seems to be Jefferson, of all people. How does he work his way around to the prime builder of “a wall of separation between church and state,” in the metaphor that would not be my favorite. Sample: Thomas Jefferson, razor in hand snipped all supernatural references out of his copies of the Gospels (in the four languages he read in White House evenings), to keep Jesus as a pure ethical humanist. This spring Barton is publishing The Jefferson Lies, which most historians would title Barton’s Lies about Jefferson. Astonishingly, he twists a slight reference to Jefferson’s book on Jesus and turns it into a tract which, Barton says, Jefferson would use in order to convert the Indians to Christianity. Reviewer Craig Ferhman in theLos Angeles Times found all that Barton found to be “outrageous fabrication.” On TV, Barton even said, with no evidence, that Jefferson gave a copy of his Jesus book to a missionary, to use “as you evangelize the Indians.” Had the Indians been converted with that text, their heirs would have had no place to go but to what became the humanist wing of the Unitarian-Universalist church.

Why does any of this matter? One, basic honesty is at issue; do American religionists need to invent such stories in order to prevail? Two, what if they did prevail? Most of the founders thought that religion was most honest and compelling when its leaders and gatherings did not depend upon lies about the state and, of course, upon the state itself. “Separation of church and state” is admittedly a complex issue, dealing as it does with inevitable conflict and messiness in a free and lively republic. May debates over it go on, but with honest references to Jefferson and his colleagues and not on the grounds David Barton proposes.

References

Gordon S. Wood, “Radical, Pure, Roger Williams,” New YorkReview of Books, May 10, 2012.

People for the American Way, “David Barton’s ‘Outrageous Fabrication’ about Thomas Jefferson,” Right Wing Watch, January 9, 2012.

Martin E. Marty’s biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

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This month’s Religion& Culture Web Forum features “Three Lights on the Queen’s Face: On Mixing, Muddle, and Mêlée” by Larisa Jasarevic. Jasarevic writes about encounters at a singularly popular therapist in Bosnia, Nerka, whom patients have lovingly titled “the Queen of Health.” In the midst of the new medical and magical market, sorcery and Koranic healing appeal to people inBosniairrespective of their religious backgrounds, upsetting the conventional image of Bosniaas forever divided by ethno-national-religious considerations. According to Jasarevic, Nerka irreverently puts into play and displaces the differences reified since the 1990s genocidal conflict. Beginning with Jean-Luc Nancy’s reluctant writing on identity and mixing–provoked by the Bosnian war and discourse of ethnic cleansing–Jasarevic’s essay visits some local, ritual, and habitual responses to magical, medical, and religious mixing and paints a gathering around the impossibility of belonging. Read Three Lights on the Queen’s Face: On Mixing, Muddle, and Mêlée.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
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Different Worlds
	


	
	

		


One of my husband’s favorite stories about his college years concerns a wealthy fraternity brother who, upon learning of the pregnancy of another  member’s wife, congratulated him and asked him whether the happy couple had hired a governess yet.


A couple of days ago, Mitt Romney spoke to a group of college students worried about student loan interest rates. Among other bits of advice, he encouraged those of an entrepreneurial bent to take the plunge and start businesses. How? “Borrow the capital from your parents at a favorable interest rate.”


And while they are at it, perhaps they can borrow a bit extra to pay the governess…

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Priorities, People!
	


	
	

		


Well, I see that Congressional Republicans bowed to the inevitable–aka looming voter outrage–and passed an extension of the measure to keep student loan interest rates at their current levels. The rates would have doubled without congressional action, and while the Tea Party faction supported letting the rates increase (who cares about those snotty little elitists who go to college?….), the few remaining realists in the party prevailed–at least to the extent of a one-year extension. (Down, Rover! Once the election’s over, then we can screw the college kids, but not now!)


Of course, the legislation had to be paid for. So the “family-friendly” party emptied out a fund that had been established to pay for poor children’s immunizations and women’s health–pap smears, breast exams, silly shit like that.


After all, we couldn’t expect them to take the money out of the massive subsidies we give the oil companies! How long will those obscene profits last, anyway? And god forbid we might raise the marginal rates on those overburdened “job creators” raking in a paltry million or two a year.


We have our priorities!


How unbearably despicable these people are.


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More on Bork
	


	
	

		


In a recent post, I made the case that Romney’s choice of Robert Bork as his legal/courts advisor should disqualify him from the Presidency.


I subsequently ran across a more in-depth discussion of Bork, borrowing liberally from his own writings.


This extended essay is well worth reading in its entirety, but let me whet your appetite with my “favorite” Bork quote: “No activity that society thinks immoral is victimless. Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.”


The U.S. Constitution was based upon the Enlightenment belief in personal autonomy; the libertarian principle that humans have the right to pursue their own ends–the right to “do their own thing”–so long as they respect the equal right of others and do not cause harm to the person or property of a non-consenting other.


This is sometimes called “the harm principle,” and it limits the zone of freedom individuals enjoy. If something I am doing harms you, the government is justified in intervening. So, for example, free people can choose to smoke, even though it may be bad for them, but when substantial scientific evidence confirms the harm done to others by passive smoke, government can constitutionally prohibit smoking in public places. People of good will can and do debate whether a particular activity is harmful, of course, but in our system, if your personal behaviors don’t affect anyone else, the government is supposed to butt out.


In Bork’s world, however, simple awareness that someone is doing something of which you disapprove constitutes a harm.


In Bork’s world, if “society” believes that a behavior–contraceptive use, sex between unmarried adults,  homosexual sex, masturbation, smoking, whatever–is immoral, that disapproval constitutes a harm sufficient to justify outlawing that activity.


Freedom, in Bork’s cramped vision of that word, is freedom to do the “right” thing–as defined by Robert Bork and his ilk. It is hard to imagine a more unAmerican understanding of our legal system.


Bork actually makes Jay Sekelow–Pat Robertson’s lawyer, and the other Romney legal advisor–look moderate.

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