I was reading in the “sub-way” newspaper this morning that a woman is now suing ConEd because of psychological trauma due to the steam pipe explosion last week. I do feel bad for the woman because her sister died in 911, and as she said this has brought all of that back. She can’t sleep; she can’t eat, and everything else. Of course, her lawyer is looking a beau coup bucks if this thing actually goes anywhere.
My fear, and I see evidence to encourage this fear all the more, is that we have lost the essence that has enable this country to grow and prosper over the first 210 years or so of our existence.
The expectation that as an individual all others are somehow responsible for my happiness and success is a lie, yet we believe it all too often. Likewise, my misery or plight is the absolute fault of other people or entities is a lie, yet we believe all the more.
The idea that I have an absolute right to do or say anything and not bear the consequences or take responsibility for my own actions (or lack thereof) is a lie, but we assert this demand in a never ending spiral of social disintegration.
We have lost in too may areas of this nation and in our understanding of what human life and community really are the very notion that we are of something other than our own little, individual lives – we are to serve and not just be served, we are to give and not just be given to, we are to put aside our own wants at times for the benefit of the whole rather than acrimoniously demand MY way or need be realized at all costs.
We’ve lost this notion of being a responsible part of a greater whole -and- that perhaps the interests of the whole are actually more important than our own (or at least of equal value). This hyper-individualism is encouraged by marketing and consumer interests and by polarizing socio-political organizations that are only interesting in gaining power and advantage. It all leads to a disintegration of community – and here is the lie – that life will be better and good if only we as individuals can be islands of self-expression and want being unlimitedly met.
It is a lie, and we are reaping what we sow. This woman’s mental and emotional health will not be restored by suing ConEd. The lawyer’s pocket will be lined and she just may get some money, but she has fallen to the lie that money will make her happy and that punishing others, regardless of whether they truly are responsible or not, will sooth her soul. It will not. She thought processes and actions only contribute to the overall sickness that besets American society.

It seems that 7-11 Convenience stores, at least some of them, are in the process of transformation into the Simpson’s Kwik-E-Marts. As the Simpson’s movie premier is fast approaching, some of the 7-11’s are becoming Kwik-E-Marts, complete with “Frosted Krusty-O’s” cereal and “Squishees.”
The 7-11 on 42nd St. between 8th and 9th Ave’s. has undergone the transformation. I know what I am doing at lunch, today!

One of the things that frustrates me most about the politicized Religious Right is their propensity to rewrite history, established norms, even the meaning of the Constitution and our way of governance, to get their way. The theocratic end justifies their means, regardless of whether those means work contrary to the very Gospel message and standards they purport to champion.
The Religious Right political organization Focus-on-the-Family-Action has commented on the Massachusetts’ legislature upholding existing law and not allowing for a state-wide referendum vote on whether the state will continue allowing same-sex marriage or not.
Here is the headline from the story appearing in their “Citizen Update” daily e-mail: Massachusetts Lawmakers Silence Voters on Marriage, and graphic that accompanies it.

“We the People” is realized through our elected representatives in legislatures – this IS our form of government and has been for over two centuries. Our Founding Fathers and our founding documents make clear that we are a “Representative Democracy,” not a direct democracy. It is through our elected representatives that the People’s will is realized – even if the road to realization is bumpy and messy and slow. If we don’t like what our representatives do, we vote them out and vote in people who we think will reflect our desires.
The problem with the Religious Right in these kinds of situations is that they don’t have the numbers to elect people who will bend to their will, so they try other tactics to force their will. Their candidates did not win in the last round of elections in Massachusetts!
The Religious Right organizations said first that fascist and unaccountable judges were forcing their liberal agenda on the rest of the country – a judiciary out of control. These evil judges allowed for the killing of defenseless patients (Terri Schiavo case) or forcing gay civil-unions or ordered legislatures to find a way of granting equality under the law. These organizations then attempt to destroy the credibility and the public’s perception of impartiality of the judiciary. What will be the end result? Not a people living under the rule of law, but under chaos.
Now, in Massachusetts they are attempting to distort our way of representative and constitutional government because the legislature will not bend to their will.
So much of the rhetoric coming out of the politicized Religious Right slanted, bent, or downright false. They demand that the “people’s” will be done – and they claim that the people’s will aligns with their agenda, particularly on the homosexual issue. For the moment, that may be true – or they are simply the ones shouting the loudest. When they base the justification of their agenda on the “will of the people,” they may well find themselves stranded. The “will of the people” is a fickle and shifting thing – and this is why we have a representative and not a direct democracy. By their rhetoric, they shoot themselves in the proverbial foot in the long run.
The fact is, they will call for the “people’s will” to be done only as long as the people’s will aligns with their agenda (or they presume they have the majority position). Once the majority of people no longer vote their way, they will stop calling for the “people’s will” to be done.
Their goal is not the strengthening of the institutions of civil governance, social peace, or judicial integrity, but the implementation of their agenda. If they cannot succeed in the establishment of their agenda as the rule of the land and culture, they will call for the destruction of the present systems in favor of whatever will see their goals implemented – Theocracy, for example. They will support representative democracy as long as the representatives do their will. They will support the judiciary as long as the judiciary rules in their favor, and if they don’t they will denigrate the judiciary and all governmental systems and call for a radical reconstitution of it all into something they find more pleasing. Of course, under our present system, this is their right and I will defend it. However, this is not a right they would grant if they were truly in control (and I know this because I used to be in their midst).
Now, all of us are given the right to petition our government, vote for our representatives, and even work to change our form of government if need be. The issue with the politicized Religious Right is that if they loose in the legislatures or the courts or even the court of public opinion, they will not “play fair” by being a loyal opposition and working to see their people elected during the next election cycle, but they will do whatever it takes to have their way even if it means destroying the very forms of governance that gives them the right to champion their cause in the first place.

I just discovered the “Onion News Network” through Jason Miller’s blog “Discovering the Hope.” If you are familiar with “The Onion” newspaper, you’ll love this.
Here is an example:

Gap Unveils New ‘For Kids By Kids’ Clothing Line

Since high school, I have claimed to be a “Progressive-Conservative.” Working in academe for all my adult life (until now), claiming to be anything with the word “conservative” in it is not a good career advancement move, but hey, I’m a rebel (!). Working within The Episcopal Church and referring to oneself as some sort of “conservative” can be a form of ecclesial suicide, too.
American “conservatism” (political, social, economic, or religious) is a very different animal than it was 20 odd years ago when I was an idealistic high schooler. I was a political and international-affairs geek, you bet ya. (As I’ve mentioned before, during my senior year I was voted most likely to become president.) Conservatism today, in its more popular and public form, is of a different nature, particularly as it is expressed through the Republican Party and this administration. (In my humble opinion, the Bush administration is not at all “Conservative.” I don’t know what it is, aside from the “neo-conservative” label often applied to it.)
Why is the world experiencing such a relatively swift move to “conservatism?”
Western-Rational-Liberalism (not that individually “Western,” “Rational,” or “Liberal” are to be understood pejoratively) in its drive to remake the world and all institutions and with its underpinning in the Enlightenment idea that history will realize the continual forward movement of humanity as it evolves for the benefit of maximizing human fulfillment, is coming to an end. Modernism vs. Post-modernism. Even during its zenith in the West, it ended up being not much more than “managerialism,” and not done very well at that. (That term comes from Andrew Sullivan’s book, “The Conservative Soul,” which I’m reading right now.) This idea of rational-liberalism had a wide berth – seen in Johnson’s Great Society, the democratic-socialists states of Western Europe, and in Stalinist and Maoist Communism in the USSR and China. It expressed itself, too, in the theologies of the Liberation and Social Gospels, and in “Death of God” and Process Theism. In the United States, the full results of the building societal shift to this way of thinking burst forth most profoundly in the reactionary and revolutionary Baby-Boomer generation of the 1960’s.
Society change was needed legitimately needed during that time. Change still needs to happen, but that generation was determined to bring about the change it deemed necessary. Much good was done, but one of the more negative results occurred in the negative over-reaction to the past and to tradition. There was an obsessive drive to usher in the Age of Aquarius and remake all things in this new image. We are still living with the consequences and still living through the push for such change by those in power who cannot realize that the 1960’s are over and the Age of Aquarius never materialized.
Change in and of itself isn’t the issue. Change is always with us. Uncritical change is the problem – unrelenting change for changes sake. The issue is whether the change being called for or realized is honestly beneficial for the society and for the individual or not. There has been a lot of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” A common accusation made by the younger generations towards their parents and grandparents. Remember, the beginnings of Gen-X are now in their mid-40’s. Those that make up Gen-Y have been graduating from college for a few years now.
What has resulted from the often uncritical change occurring over the last 30 years and on such a massive and all pervasive scale is chaos. Forms of chaos are now the norm in education, in economics, in international affairs, in trade, in war, in perceptions of the common good or cohesive cultural glue, in morality, in politics, in religion, in every aspect of life. When chaos rules and when there is little sense of common connections that give identity and the assurance that what one is doing matters and is able to survive and contributes to something good, when all this is missing then the human tendency is to move to “conserve” at least what is perceived to be left of that which gave meaning, identity, and assurity.
We are in a state of chaos, and as a human reaction we have moved more diligently and deliberately and far more swiftly towards “conservatism.” But, towards what kind of conservatism are we moving?
Due to the long march against “conservatism” over the last 30 years by those who claim the “liberal” label, but are really only “anti-conservatives,” what has developed is a form of “conservatism” that no longer represents its best philosophical ideals, but a fundamentalist form of “conservatism” fuelled by angry zeal and a determination for revenge. The label “conservative” is still used, but it has morphed into something different, something more radical, something more determined, something more totalitarian that belies what traditional, philosophical Conservatism actually stands for.
As a result of the inherent deficiencies of Western-Rational-Liberalism, “anti-liberals,” who opened up the table to anyone and everyone except conservatives (even serious and thoughtful ones), are now falling pry to the fruits of their labor. The marginalization and demonization of reasonable, thoughtful conservatives (particularly in academe) has enabled a “conservative” backlash to occur that is far more extreme then anything that existed before. We are in the midst of the backlash and are experiencing the results in politics, economics, and religion; we see it expressed in the American culture-wars, the increasingly fundamentalist turning of the Religious Right and American Evangelicalism, the angry polarization and developing schism in world-wide Anglicanism, and the list goes on and on.
There are positive signs that mitigating forces are afoot, and I can only hope that they will come into ascendancy and keep the extremes from their ultimate triumph – collapse as proof of the evil of the other. I still refer to myself as a “Progressive-Conservative,” and hope that I can live up to the best ideals held within what may seem to be contradictory concepts.

Remember what I was saying about younger people and religions/spirituality. Here is an article from today’s New York Times entitled, “Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus.”

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