So, About "Loving America"...

It is amusing to hear right wingers talk about whether someone has a sufficient love of America. I am almost 67 years old now, and no one has yet defined what that means in a satisfactory way. (Let's leave aside the curious fact that the Right seems to prefer that thrice-married adulterers pass judgment on the character and values of other people. [Sorry, Dinesh D'Souza, but you have an adultery or two to go before you qualify as such a spokesperson.])

But since the Right seems to be teeming with Constitutional scholars, and since those scholars believe that something is worthy only if it's explicitly in the Constitution, you'd think that they would disapprove of such talk. There is no Constitutional requirement to love America. So those of us who believe flag burning is okay should be left alone.

And for the Religious Right...There also isn't a biblical mandate to love America. There is a clear teaching to respect and honor government. But love your country? Not so much. Indeed, one could more easily make the case that American Exceptionalism is a form of idolatry.

So, even if all those constitutional scholars and Religious Right folks could come up with an actual working definition of "loving America"--other than wearing a flag lapel pin and hating Muslims--their own sacred documents contradict their efforts.

Kevin Drum Is Often Right On

From Kevin Drum's blog yesterday (here's the link for the whole thing):

So this is what I want to hear from Republican critics of Obama's ISIS strategy. I agree with them that training Iraqi troops and relying on them to fight ISIS isn't all that promising. But the alternative is likely to be something like 30-50,000 troops committed to a battle that will result in hundreds of American casualties. Are Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz willing to own up to that? If they are, then good for them and we'll let the American public decide who's got the better strategy. But if they're not, then it's all just a con job for the rubes. The GOP candidates are screaming for "more," but not willing to acknowledge what "more" really means.

Today's Random Thoughts

• I saw on my wife's Facebook page that our nephew and his wife just got their concealed carry permits. I hope they feel safer now because I sure don't.
• It's fine with me if real journalists like Brian Williams are held to higher standards than hacks like Bill O'Reilly.
• I reached page 1,000 in Les Miserables. Only 200 to go!
• Rudy Giuliani joins T. Boone Pickens and Jack Welch on my list of people who used to be obnoxious but are now actually dishonorable. (Ken Langone is close. He might make the list yet.)
• Yesterday's Andy Borowitz piece on newyorker.com is pretty good.
• When I went to church this morning and the pastor announced the forgiveness of sins, I noticed that he didn't say that my forgiveness required the approval of Phil Roberston or James Dobson or Franklin Graham or Sarah Palin or Tony Perkins or Mike Huckabee. Lucky for me, I guess.

Quote of the Day

"In a way, it's impossible to win a debate with O'Reilly because he is not bound by reality."

David Corn, in Mother Jones, on Bill O'Reilly's false claims

No Comment Needed

Here's the Real Giuliani.

From Steve M.

After I put up my last post, I came across this from Steve M. on his "No More Mister Nice Blog".  It's related to the second bullet point in my post about the Right's penchant for wanting the right words spoken rather that the right policy pursued.  I think he nails it.

From his post:

Our pols and reporters aren't much on picking up guns these days, but boy, do they love words. Words are obviously the journalists' stock in trade, but words are pretty much all we ever get from right-wing politicians -- they don't do anything. (OK, OK -- at the state level they bust unions and shift the tax burden away from the rich.) So they've persuaded themselves that words are the secret weapon. They shout "Radical Islam!" and tell themselves: THIS CATCHPHRASE KILLS ISLAMOFASCISTS. They think trash-talk equals valor. (Yes, I'm talking to you, Rudy Giuliani and Dinesh D'Souza.) They're still the self-deluding 101st Fighting Keyboarders -- but now they have the mainstream media on their side

In the News

In the news:

• The Religious Right would have you believe that the Atlanta fire chief was fired for his religious beliefs.  Hogwash.  He was fired for distributing his book to employees and improperly foisting his religious beliefs on others.  It was an abuse of his position of authority.  It's another phony religious issue by groups who apparently believe that Christians have more rights than non-Christians and that they have a blank check for any behavior.  In effect, they believe in a sort of Sharia Law for Christians. Well, I am a Christian and I think what he did was absolutely wrong.  Stop whining and accept the consequences for your actions, just like you expect everyone else to do.
• I really haven't heard a single conservative describe exactly what the US should be doing to combat ISIS other than saying that (of course!) whatever Obama is doing is wrong.  Instead, they seem more concerned with debating whether we are using the correct words to describe ISIS, rather than any serious discussion of actual policy.  Outrage and bluster is not policy.  We had plenty of that with John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney.  Look where that got us.
• So Rudy Giuliani says that Barack Obama doesn't love America.  Are there many people left who still care what Giuliani has to say about anything?  Surely he must rank high on the irrelevancy meter along with the aforementioned Dick Cheney.

When I Was a Freshman in College...

When I was a freshman in college in the late 1960s, the liberal arts school I attended had a course called "Freshman Studies".  The course was required for all freshman,and it covered two terms.  (The school had a trimester system, with the school year consisting of three ten-week terms.)  Another interesting thing (for those who have never heard of a Saturday class in college), is that the classes for everyone met on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings.  I guess the idea is that they really wanted us to stay on campus and study all weekend rather than going home to do our laundry at Mom and Dad's.

Anyway, the syllabus consisted of ten books, five for each semester.  The books were read, discussed, and a paper written for each book.  The intent was to introduce us to the kinds of topics and ideas that we should expect to encounter during our four years at a liberal arts college (rather than just a course on "Great Books").

Now that I am pushing 70, I tried to recollect the list of books that we read in my freshman year (the list varied from year to year and era to era).  Here is the list I came up with, in no particular order (I think it's actually accurate):

Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics

William Faulkner, Light in August

Feodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Ben Shahn, The Shape of Content

J. H. van den Berg, The Changing Nature of Man

Plato, The Republic

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto and                     Friedrich Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific

Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Bertholt Brecht, The Life of Galileo

I found most of these books in my bookcase, the very ones I bought in college.  (We won't even talk about the prices in 1966.)  The only ones I seem to have lost are Marx and Engels.  One thing to note is that this list would be entirely fitting for a similar class today, even though it's almost fifty years later.  A second thing is for me to confess that I didn't read all these books in their entirety when I was a student.

With that in mind, I think I will try to reread (or read, as the case may be) most of these books.  I have read Light in August two or three times since my college days (it remains one of my favorite books of all time) and Crime and Punishment is a bit long (and yes, I actually read the whole book in college), so I might pass over those.  But maybe I can read the rest of them during 2015.  It'll be fun to try.

When #JonStewart leaves the only reliable news source left on cable tv will be #AlJazeera America.

— Ed (@leftistlutheran) February 11, 2015

Quote of the Day

“And what about the great granddaddy of zombie lies, trickle-down economics,” Bill Maher asked. “Can’t we throw that one under the bus too? It’s never worked and it never will work for good reason. Because it is like having three dogs and giving a wiener to one of them and thinking, ‘He will share it with the others.’”

Bill Maher, giving his ideas on some additional things for Republicans to throw under the bus, now that they've done it to Sarah Palin...

Boehner's Boner

Even the generals think Boehner and Netanyahu are wrong.

From the article:

Serving uniformed officers are loath to comment on an inflammatory political question — “You’re inviting me to end my career,” one senior Pentagon officer told me when asked to comment on Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu, “but, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” But a senior Joint Chiefs of Staff officer who regularly briefs the U.S. high command was willing to speak bluntly in exchange for anonymity. “There’s always been a lot of support for Israel in the military,” the officer said, “but that’s significantly eroded over the last few years. This caps it. It’s one thing for Americans to criticize their president and another entirely for a foreign leader to do it. Netanyahu doesn’t get it. We’re not going to side with him against the commander in chief. Not ever.”

And:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, a West Point graduate and veteran of two U.S. wars, carefully calibrated his comments to reflect his unease with describing what serving officers think about Israel or Netanyahu. “It’s a really politically freighted question,” he said, “but I can tell you from my own experience that Mr. Netanyahu is way out of his lane. And you can be sure there isn’t a military officer in uniform who would get involved in this issue. It’s not just that Netanyahu is showing disrespect for Mr. Obama. It’s that he’s disrespecting U.S. institutions. He’s thumbing his nose at our way of doing things. Even for those out of uniform, this is a mistake. It’s one thing to show disrespect for President Obama — that happens all the time — but it’s another thing to show disrespect for America. That just can’t be tolerated.”

I doubt that you see this reported on Fox News.

Les Miserables

As I've gotten older and have fewer years left to read all the books that I should, I have resolved to read at least "big" (i.e., many pages) book every year.  Two years ago I finally read Ulysses.  Last year it was War and Peace.

This year I found Les Miserables in our bookcase--I have no idea where we got it--so I decided it was a good candidate for 2015.  Well, I just passed by page 500...only about 700 to go!