Rick Santorum is apparently a Christian.
Yes, the sort of Christian that thinks God gives gifts to women through the medium of rape. That kind of God. The sort of God that hates gays so much but seems to have made them a part of his creation. A bit odd that God. A God of Hate, not a God of Love.
I never quite understand how someone like Rick Santorum can call themselves a Christian when they clearly skipped all the bits about love and peace. The Beatitudes for example. Or that bit about throwing the first stone. Perhaps Rick thinks he is without sin so can chuck stones about to his bitter little heart's content. Don't worry your little head about the pain the stones might cause Rick.
The amusing thing about these Republican primaries is watching what amounts to a panel of arch-hypocrites trying to out God each other in a country where Church and State are expressly supposed to remain seperate. So you get evangelicals voting for serial adulter Newt Gingrich even though Jesus clearly doesn't like adultery. In fact he says much more about adultery in the New Testament than he does about most of the other subjects that tend to arose the ire of the Christian fundamentalists. There's nothing on homosexuality from Jesus. Not a word. He seems to have over-looked how important that issues was going to become a bit further down the line, which was a bit crass of him. But he's got a lot to say about divorce. Perhaps they are being forgiving. After all who can't forgive a chap who dumps his first wife whilst she's being treated for cancer. That's the kind of integrity that makes for great Presidential material apparently.
I've been working my way through the Bible - slowly but surely - as an exercise. I wanted to get an idea of what it actually contained as opposed to what I could vaguely remember from school or what I was told was in it. What I've realised is that you can take from the Bible whatever you wish to suit your politics. If you like a hateful God like Rick Santorum there's a lot you can pick to support whatever prejudices you might be pimping in the name of electoral support. The Old Testament is full of that kind of material, although there's some stuff in there about the Ezekiel about profit that seems to get over-looked by the right when talking about 'God's Will'.
Indeed it is why you can make a case for Jesus as a proto-Communist. After all he's not big on the whole money thing is he? Give it up and follow him seems to be a common thread. As is all that stuff about how hard it is for a rich man to get into heaven and that the rich get their reward on Earth so are likely to find heaven less welcoming than they might think. Remember folks, don't store your treasures on earth, store yourself for treasures in heaven. Then there's that quite strong admonishen about not being able to serve God and Money. But let's ignore all of that a round up Jesus for a celebration of the wealthy and the privaleged. I'm sure he'd be proud as punch.
It is the poor, the sinners and the wretched that Jesus reached out to. It is that Jesus I like, even though I'm aware that this suits my pre-existing beliefs about life. I'm not a hypocrite - well, not in this instance anyway - I know how I'm ignoring the stuff I don't like.
So I say unto you "If there is a God I hope he isn't Rick Santorum's God."
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
A Few Thoughts Before Holocaust Memorial Day
"Still Dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in Europe to hear the news of victory.. For surely this war was made to abolish Dachau, and all other places like Dachau. and everything that Dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever." Martha Gelhorn
But it did not. And the further we get away from the reality of the Holocaust the easier it is for the memory of it to be become indistinct that people can think it is amusing to dress up as SS Officers on their Stag Weekends as opposed to an insult.
When I first read about the Holocaust I could not understood what could make one group of civilised human beings so despise another group of human beings that they would want them wiped off the planet. The more I read the more frightening the explanations. The manipulation of a people struggling with economic uncertainty on a grand scale who had never properly come to terms with their defeat in the First World War was masterful. Hitler scapegoated entire races of people, they were dehumanised and debased. They were compared to diseases and to rats. Old anti-semitic tales were dug up and re-told. The result was to create an atmosphere where mass murder could eventually be the solution, the Final Solution, to a question that did not need an answer: the Jewish Question.
Of course it was not just the Jews that suffered under Hitler. It was pretty much anyone who did not fit the criteria: Jews, Roma, Gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists, Trade Unionists...the list goes on and on into the shadows. Not all of them were doomed to extermination, but extermination was their fate. Or experimentation. Or both. The stories are too well known to repeat but have to be re-told for fear that we may forget what man is capable of. What a man can justify in the name of ideology.
Martin Niemoller wrote famously, "First they came for the Jews. But I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew...Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up." This poem has had a great impact on me. It has informed my view of the world. It is why I believe that if any of us are to have 'rights', all of us must. That means those people who hate and despise us have as much right to speak as we do. We will not win by silencing them, for who is truly silenced in those circumstances? We win by taking them on in arguement and showing people that a commitment to human rights is not the usual hypocriscy. That if our values are to mean anything we can not abandon them at the first sign of difficulty or danger. That the price we pay for freedom is the risk of a terrorist getting through.
It is easy, when things go wrong, to find scapegoats. To pin the blame. The Nazi's had an excellent way of clipping a nation's conscience. They did it in France, in Italy and elsewhere. They would introduce anti-Semitic laws but start with the stateless (made stateless in their flight from Germany & Austria). After all who can quibble about the rounding up and dispatch of illegal immigrants? Then they'd introduce the laws more widely and suddenly hardly anyone has a conscience left. It's why you have to be careful with the laws you pass and the language you use in politics, even now. Once you take away the rights of the people no one likes, cares about or even notices then it is easier to justify taking them away from the next group and the next group. Until there is no one left to speak up.
So as we approach Holocaust Memorial Day we should remember how easily neighbour can be turned against neighbour. How fear and desperation can be twisted into something darker and nastier. How justice denied to even a single individual in the name of ideology can just be the beginning of a process that destroys hundreds and thousands of lives.
Remember also that there are people out there that deny it happened. Or that the numbers have been exaggerated. It takes some historical blindness to believe that. The Nazis were very thorough, there's a lot of paperwork out there. All it takes is a little effort to read one or two books. The danger of course is that as old age removes the last of both the survivors and the perpetrators this historical trickery becomes easier to push but the evidence is there. Read The Hon Mr Justice Gray's summing up in the Irving Trial, read Hitler's Bureaucrats by Yaakov Lozowick or The Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher R Browning. Read.
I'm sorry if this is a little rambling but I wanted to try and sum up what impact the study of the Holocaust had on me. I don't need to make the case for its importance, that would appear to be self-evident.
Never forget.
But it did not. And the further we get away from the reality of the Holocaust the easier it is for the memory of it to be become indistinct that people can think it is amusing to dress up as SS Officers on their Stag Weekends as opposed to an insult.
When I first read about the Holocaust I could not understood what could make one group of civilised human beings so despise another group of human beings that they would want them wiped off the planet. The more I read the more frightening the explanations. The manipulation of a people struggling with economic uncertainty on a grand scale who had never properly come to terms with their defeat in the First World War was masterful. Hitler scapegoated entire races of people, they were dehumanised and debased. They were compared to diseases and to rats. Old anti-semitic tales were dug up and re-told. The result was to create an atmosphere where mass murder could eventually be the solution, the Final Solution, to a question that did not need an answer: the Jewish Question.
Of course it was not just the Jews that suffered under Hitler. It was pretty much anyone who did not fit the criteria: Jews, Roma, Gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists, Trade Unionists...the list goes on and on into the shadows. Not all of them were doomed to extermination, but extermination was their fate. Or experimentation. Or both. The stories are too well known to repeat but have to be re-told for fear that we may forget what man is capable of. What a man can justify in the name of ideology.
Martin Niemoller wrote famously, "First they came for the Jews. But I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew...Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up." This poem has had a great impact on me. It has informed my view of the world. It is why I believe that if any of us are to have 'rights', all of us must. That means those people who hate and despise us have as much right to speak as we do. We will not win by silencing them, for who is truly silenced in those circumstances? We win by taking them on in arguement and showing people that a commitment to human rights is not the usual hypocriscy. That if our values are to mean anything we can not abandon them at the first sign of difficulty or danger. That the price we pay for freedom is the risk of a terrorist getting through.
It is easy, when things go wrong, to find scapegoats. To pin the blame. The Nazi's had an excellent way of clipping a nation's conscience. They did it in France, in Italy and elsewhere. They would introduce anti-Semitic laws but start with the stateless (made stateless in their flight from Germany & Austria). After all who can quibble about the rounding up and dispatch of illegal immigrants? Then they'd introduce the laws more widely and suddenly hardly anyone has a conscience left. It's why you have to be careful with the laws you pass and the language you use in politics, even now. Once you take away the rights of the people no one likes, cares about or even notices then it is easier to justify taking them away from the next group and the next group. Until there is no one left to speak up.
So as we approach Holocaust Memorial Day we should remember how easily neighbour can be turned against neighbour. How fear and desperation can be twisted into something darker and nastier. How justice denied to even a single individual in the name of ideology can just be the beginning of a process that destroys hundreds and thousands of lives.
Remember also that there are people out there that deny it happened. Or that the numbers have been exaggerated. It takes some historical blindness to believe that. The Nazis were very thorough, there's a lot of paperwork out there. All it takes is a little effort to read one or two books. The danger of course is that as old age removes the last of both the survivors and the perpetrators this historical trickery becomes easier to push but the evidence is there. Read The Hon Mr Justice Gray's summing up in the Irving Trial, read Hitler's Bureaucrats by Yaakov Lozowick or The Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher R Browning. Read.
I'm sorry if this is a little rambling but I wanted to try and sum up what impact the study of the Holocaust had on me. I don't need to make the case for its importance, that would appear to be self-evident.
Never forget.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Something Old, something New, Something Borrowed, Something Bozier
So a chap called Bozier has left the Labour Party in a flounce and joined the Conservatives because they are the keepers of the sacread Blairite flame. The Labour Party isn't a serious political force anymore apparently.
I don't know much about Luke Bozier. He isn't an MP, a Shadow Cabinet Minister or a member of the House of Lords. As far as I can tell he blogs a lot and writes articles, which I suppose makes him not disimilar to a lot of us. He's just made something of a career out of pontificating. That's fine. I'd do it if I could. It must be more fun than actually working for a living.
However two things have irritated me about the follow-up to this.
One is the pomposity and ego of the man himself with his talk of statements as if his departure should be greeted with wailing and gnashing of teeth. As if a Bevan or Crossman has left the Labour Party.
The second thing is that people seem to think we should be nice to him. Yes, it is a bit sad when someone leaves a party they've spent time supporting but it was people like Bozier who greeted the potential departure of the old school left from the Labour Party with glee. I don't remember anyone trying to bend over backwards to be nice to me when I had concerns about the 'reformist agenda' (whatever that actually means in non-politicalese). We were 'Old', they were 'New'. The force was with Tony Blair and if we didn't like it that was tough. Leave if want I was told. You won't be missed. Political parties change I was told. This isn't about YOU, it is about the party and victory.
But at the first sniff of change - and it doesn't look like much of a change over here outside the party - Bozier goes running off into the sunset and joins the Tories. That doesn't seem like a political act to me, that seems like a selfish careerist thing to do. Having supported the Labour Party since the 80s it looks to me like Bozier doesn't actually have the stomach to fight his corner.
At least Bozier has a choice. My disillusionment with the Labour Party leaves me without much of a home to go to, except the Green Party. I feel like I've been disenfranchised. I can't jump to the Conservative Party or the Lib-Dems. But then I'm just an ordinary voter. My views won't get me a column in the Independent. I'm expected just to put up and shut up.
The blogosphere has created a sub-division of the political class. People who can't - or won't - stand for political office but build up a following or influence through their internet activities. Their opinions are expected to count for something, hence the puffery abut Bozier. I think there's something a bit wrong with that. But the only way to fight it would be to multiply the number of voices out there and reduce the dominance of the one or two political blogging sites that seem to be working hard at being the 21st centuries example of 'power without responsibility' as the old media dies.
I don't know much about Luke Bozier. He isn't an MP, a Shadow Cabinet Minister or a member of the House of Lords. As far as I can tell he blogs a lot and writes articles, which I suppose makes him not disimilar to a lot of us. He's just made something of a career out of pontificating. That's fine. I'd do it if I could. It must be more fun than actually working for a living.
However two things have irritated me about the follow-up to this.
One is the pomposity and ego of the man himself with his talk of statements as if his departure should be greeted with wailing and gnashing of teeth. As if a Bevan or Crossman has left the Labour Party.
The second thing is that people seem to think we should be nice to him. Yes, it is a bit sad when someone leaves a party they've spent time supporting but it was people like Bozier who greeted the potential departure of the old school left from the Labour Party with glee. I don't remember anyone trying to bend over backwards to be nice to me when I had concerns about the 'reformist agenda' (whatever that actually means in non-politicalese). We were 'Old', they were 'New'. The force was with Tony Blair and if we didn't like it that was tough. Leave if want I was told. You won't be missed. Political parties change I was told. This isn't about YOU, it is about the party and victory.
But at the first sniff of change - and it doesn't look like much of a change over here outside the party - Bozier goes running off into the sunset and joins the Tories. That doesn't seem like a political act to me, that seems like a selfish careerist thing to do. Having supported the Labour Party since the 80s it looks to me like Bozier doesn't actually have the stomach to fight his corner.
At least Bozier has a choice. My disillusionment with the Labour Party leaves me without much of a home to go to, except the Green Party. I feel like I've been disenfranchised. I can't jump to the Conservative Party or the Lib-Dems. But then I'm just an ordinary voter. My views won't get me a column in the Independent. I'm expected just to put up and shut up.
The blogosphere has created a sub-division of the political class. People who can't - or won't - stand for political office but build up a following or influence through their internet activities. Their opinions are expected to count for something, hence the puffery abut Bozier. I think there's something a bit wrong with that. But the only way to fight it would be to multiply the number of voices out there and reduce the dominance of the one or two political blogging sites that seem to be working hard at being the 21st centuries example of 'power without responsibility' as the old media dies.
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