Income Inequality: The Occupy Wall Street Protests

Occupy Wall Street is a protest movement that has been gaining steam over the last two months and garnering a significant amount of media attention.  Honestly, I haven't paid that much attention to it until this week, and am only just now starting to give it some thought, simply because it has managed to have a little staying power - which is saying a lot in this day and age. 

Anytime something like this happens, my first reaction - as a self-described liberal - is to cringe.  Great, just what we need, another reason for conservatives to bash liberals.  Liberal ideology always seems to make itself so easy to parody, so easy to twist into something it's not.  Part of this is because liberals tend to be idealists, and idealists are usually good at seeing the big picture and envisioning something better, but not always so good at the practical implementation of those ideals.   

I've heard just about everything in regards to the OWS protests.  One friend on Facebook recently said: "Here's my suggestion...Occupy a Job, Occupy a Shower, Occupy Your Mom's Basement...Quit crying."  Another friend, on Twitter, said: "Some say the OWS protesters may resort to violence.  But that would require work....so therein lies the rub."

Others have given criticisms a bit more substantive, and a bit less ad hominem in nature.  One friend said: "It makes no sense to complain about unemployment and then advocate to take down the big corporations that provide the jobs that do exist." 

That seems reasonable.  But it also comes across to me as a bit of a strawman argument - a misrepresentation of what the movement is really about - a misrepresentation that is much easier to attack than the real issues being protested.  I haven't watched all the videos or listened to all the interviews or heard all the speeches, but I suspect the core group of folks involved in Occupy Wall Street are not so much interested in "taking down corporations" - in terms of destroying them - but overhauling the entire system for the betterment of all.  

So what is it, exactly, that the OWS protesters are saying?  What do they want? 

Well, this is one of the problems with the movement.  It does not seem to have a whole lot organization, and the people involved aren't necessarily all there for the same reasons.  Another factor is that the protests are, largely by design, leaderless.  According to a New York Times article  that I read, the whole point is to have what they call a "horizontal hierarchy" instead of a vertical one - meaning, essentially, that everyone is a leader.  This may sound ideologically attractive - particularly to a dyed-in-the-wool liberal - but it certainly is not practical.

Then again, the Tea Party movement began largely the same way - grass roots, mainly leaderless, comprised of people who were fed up with the system and who were connected by only the loosest of core philosophies.  

So what are the core philosophies of the Occupy Wall Street folks?  Their rallying cry, of course, has been "We are the 99%."  This has actually been a remarkably effective slogan which, in just a matter of weeks, has become widely familiar.  If only I could think of such a slogan to market my books!!  

The slogan, of course, refers to the wealth gap between the richest 1% of Americans, and everyone else.  More about that in a moment.

In general, it would appear that the core philosophies that tend to connect the various Occupy groups around the country include things like the aforementioned income gap, the role money plays in elections, federal tax structures, and the overpowering role of big banks.  On the OWS Facebook page, one of the more recent posts (as of November 4th), deals with encouraging people to move their bank accounts out of large national banks and into small, local financial institutions.  This, to my mind anyway, sounds reasonable enough - my wife and I have always banked with small, local banks, and I have never had much regard for the big national branches whose power reaches deep.

And I think, at its core, this is what the impetus of the protest is really about.  A general feeling that too much of the wealth is handled by too few people/corporations, and, as a result, those few people/corporations have an unfair share of the power and privilege and prestige and, most importantly, influence, over the direction our country has been taken in recent years and decades.  

This issue of the wealth gap - or income inequality, as I call it in the title - is one that is close to my heart, and one that makes me at the very least sympathetic towards the Occupy movement, even if I don't actually consider myself a part of it.

So what is this income gap?  Why do people like me have such strong feelings about income inequality?  What is the data that backs these feelings up?  Before I start, let me say that the following includes a lot of numbers and percentages, and while I have tried to use all my best writing skills to make it as easy to follow as possible, it might be a bit confusing and/or overwhelming.  I have included links to the sources I have used for the data, so if you feel confused, you can simply click those links to see the data and graphs for yourself. What I have written is essentially just a narrative of the information from the two sources I quote.  

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a non-profit think-tank based in Washington, D.C.  According to its website, it is an organization "working at the federal and state levels on fiscal policy and public programs...to help shape public debates over proposed budget and tax policies."  It has used data from the Congressional Budget Office and the IRS to analyze wealth distribution in America.

According to the CBPP's findings, during the period of economic growth from 2002 to 2007, the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households saw their income grow by more than 60%.  During that same period, the bottom 90% saw its average household income grow by only about 3%.  In other words, those who were already very wealthy grew significantly wealthier, while those who were not as well off did not grow very much at all.    

To put this in perspective, imagine one person with 100 dollars, and another person with 1 dollar.  The person with 100 dollars would have seen their income rise to about 160 dollars.  The person with 1 dollar would have seen their income rise to about 3 dollars.  The net income gap was originally 99 dollars.  After the period of growth, the income gap grew to 157 dollars.  This is an excellent illustration of what people are talking about when they speak of income inequality and how "the rich get richer."  

The CBPP went on to demonstrate that during the first year of the recession - 2008 - the top 1% of earners lost about 20% of their income.  The lowest 90% of earners lost about 7% of their income.  So the recession hit the wealthy much harder than it did the rest of us.  

However, as the CBPP's graph demonstrates, the losses suffered by the bottom 90% were more than double the gains they had seen from 2002 to 2007 - during the years of prosperity.  During that time, they had seen growth of 3%.  So by the end of the first year of the recession, the lowest 90% of earners had an average net loss of 4% since 2002.  So while the wealthiest households lost more in the first year of the recession than most everyone else, their income change going back to 2002 was still a net gain of about 30% (after being adjusted for inflation).

This, of course, is a further illustration of how even during a recession, and even despite large losses by the wealthiest people during economic crises, it is still ultimately the middle class who suffers the most.  If you were among the top 1% of earners in 2008, your net gain over your income in 2002 was about 30%.  For everyone else (90% and below) you had no net gain at all, but rather a loss of about 4%.  To use our 100 dollar vs. 1 dollar analogy, the person with 100 dollars now has 130 dollars, and the person with 1 dollar now has 96 cents.

And just to put this in perspective, that 7% drop for the lowest 90% of earners was the biggest one-year drop for that group since before World War Two - 1938.  It left the income of the 90% at its lowest level since the mid-1990's - effectively pushing the middle class back more than a decade, economically-speaking.  

I realize everyone has a different perspective, but when I see data like this, it definitely makes me feel like something is inherently broken within our system. 

The CBPP's analysis also looked at how much of the total income of the United States was concentrated at the top.  In the late 1920's, just before the start of the Great Depression, nearly 25% of the nation's income went to the top 1% of earners.  To put that in perspective, if 100 people collectively earned 100 dollars, 25 of those dollars would be earned by one person, while the other 99 people would earn about 75 cents apiece.  

How can this be?  How can one person be worth that much more?  And wouldn't it be better, from a market and economic stability standpoint, for that wealth to be distributed a bit more evenly, to give as many people as possible as much buying power as possible?    

After the Great Depression, this enormous income gap steadily declined throughout the remainder of the 20th century, to a low of about 8% in the 1970's - meaning that in the '70's, the top 1% of earners made only about 8% of the total income earned in the United States - the remaining 99% of earners earned the remaining 92% of the income - as close as we've come to a break-even scenario since this sort of data has been collected.  

After the so-called "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980's, the income gap began to soar again.  After hovering around 10% for almost 30 years from about 1950 to 1980, by the middle of the 1980's, it spiked back up above 15% - the highest it had been since the 1930's.  It has continued to grow since then, peaking at about 23% just before the start of the recession in 2008 - its highest point since right before the Great Depression.

I hope you notice the pattern here.  The two highest points of the income gap over the last 100 years have been right before a major economic recession/depression.  What does this tell us about the dangers of rising income inequality and the public policies that permit it to happen?  I'll let you answer that question for yourselves (or, even better, put your thoughts in the comments section).  

Another key point from the CBPP's data concerns the top .01% of earners - the richest of the rich, the super wealthy.  From 2002 to 2007, that group's income grew by a staggering 123%.  Recall that the lowest 90% of incomes grew by only about 3% during that period.  During the first year of the recession, this super wealthy group lost about 25% of its income.  As such, it's net change from 2002 to 2008, adjusted for inflation, was nearly a 70% increase.  Again, even during a recession, it is not the rich who are harmed, but the middle class.

It may be important to note here that this data concerns personal, household incomes.  This is not about business incomes or corporate growth and decline.  This is about individual people and the money that they earn. 

The last graph presented by the CBPP is perhaps the most disconcerting.  It is a bit difficult to interpret, but it essentially looks at how income growth has stagnated for the bottom 90% since about 1980, while it has grown dramatically since that time for the top 1%.  

In 1950, the bottom 90% made about 50% less than what that same group was making by the late 1970's.  In other words, during those years from 1950 to the end of the 1970's, the bottom 90% saw significant growth in its income.  In fact, during many of those years, this group actually saw greater increases in their income than the top 1%.  Income inequality was falling by the wayside.  

However, starting in about 1980 (again, one can't help but note that this was when the Reagan Revolution began), income began stagnating for the bottom 90%.  In fact, and this is almost hard to believe, by 2007, the average pre-tax household income for the bottom 90% was actually about $900 lower than what it had been in 1979 (this, of course, is adjusted for inflation).  Among the top 1%, however, their pre-tax, household income was about $700,000 (that's seven hundred thousand) higher than in 1979.  

This is absolutely staggering.  According to this data, and when you adjust for inflation, the middle class - the bottom 90% of earners - actually lost income, overall, from 1980 to 2007, while the top 1% gained more than half a million dollars on average.         

How can we have created a system where income inequality like this exists so blatantly?  And again I have to ask, is this actually good for our country's economic health?    

Moving on now, I want to look briefly at a second analysis, this coming directly from the Congressional Budget Office, released in October of 2011 - in other words, as up to date as possible.  

This is a very long document and I have not scoured all of it.  What I have done, essentially, is gather information from the summary page.  

In short, this CBO study essentially confirms much of the data collated by the CBPP.  From 1979 to 2007, overall income, across the board for all households in the U.S., grew by about 62%.  However, this increase, as we saw above, was top-heavy among the top 1% of households.  The income of that top 1% grew by 275% during the period in question.  The 81st through 99th percentiles (the "upper middle class") grew by about 65%.  The 21st through 80th percentiles (the "middle class") grew by about 40%.  And the lowest group - the lowest 20th percentile (the "lower middle class" and the poor) - grew by roughly 18%.  

There are some interesting things to take from this.  Clearly the top 1% of earners earned the vast majority of the income throughout the period from 1979 to 2007.  By the mid-2000's, in fact, the income earned by the top 20% of earners (the upper middle class and the wealthy) was more than everyone else combined.  

However, all groups saw increases between 1979 and 2007.  Even the poorest households increased by 18%, and as one of my conservative friends pointed out, these are inflation-adjusted numbers, so that means that even among the poor, people generally have more buying power today than they had in the 1970's.  

I'm not sure how to reconcile all this with the data above from the CBPP report, which says that, after adjusting for inflation, the bottom 90% has actually lost income since 1979.  The CBO's report would seem to contradict that.  The difference in numbers is probably due to how the data is collated - with the CBPP looking at overall numbers among the entire bottom 90%, and the CBO breaking it up into discrete categories.  Still, because the CBO's report is the official report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, I am inclined to trust its data more than that from the CBPP.  Interestingly, however, the CBO's report actually authoritatively cites the report by the same economists whose data informed the CBPP's report.  It's confusing, I know.   

Either way, it is clear that there is a major wealth gap in this country, and it has been growing exponentially for the last 30 years.  While this seems to have started with the Reagan Revolution, we certainly can't put all the blame on Republicans, because we've had two Democrats in the White House during that time too, not to mention plenty of Democratically-controlled Congresses, and none of the trends changed during those years.         

So what are we to make of all this?  Why does the wealth gap actually matter?  When I told one of my conservative friends that income inequality was the impetus behind the Occupy Wall Street protests, he said that if income inequality is what it's all about, then he understands it even less than he did before.  There will always be rich, and there will always be poor, he said.  Our job, according to him, is simply to ensure that everyone has equal opportunities - not, he said, to ensure that everyone is financially equal.  In short, "Say No To Socialism." 

I'm no Socialist, although I was called one by another conservative on the same Facebook thread where I was discussing this issue (this person, by the way, was not known to me - a friend of a friend).

Still, income inequality is something that is deeply concerning to me.  I suppose you could say that from an ideological standpoint, I believe in creating a world where people have reasonable opportunities to succeed, and where people have reasonable opportunities to make their way in the world from a financial standpoint.  And unlike my conservative friends, I believe the government has a role to play in this, through fair regulation, taxation, and other programs.  In short, I agree with Thomas Jefferson when he said that one of the responsibilities of a government is to provide for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for its people.  When a government endorses gross income inequality, it is not providing for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in my opinion.    

When I look at data like what is described above, I see a government creating policies and economic systems that are primarily designed to help the wealthy grow wealthier, without much regard for everyone else.  In fact, I see a government that I suspect, in many cases, has every intention of ensuring stagnation among the middle classes - because the rich can't get richer if the middle class is prospering - that much is evidenced by the slow growth among the super wealthy from 1950 to 1980, while the middle class boomed.  I'm not suggesting a grand conspiracy theory here, I am simply saying that when all of our politicians have the money of wealthy donors in their back pockets, and when they, themselves, are primarily wealthy individuals with their own business interests,  it is little wonder that they enact policies that are primarily geared towards helping the wealthy. 

This, I believe, is the soul of the Occupy Wall Street protests.  Those with the most money are the very same people electing members of their own group to make all the policies that have clearly been designed to primarily help those with the most money.  It's a vicious cycle.

I wish, at this point, I could provide a profound solution to this problem.  It would be a great way to tie this analysis all up nice and pretty.  But, as I said at the outset, liberals tend to be idealists and not pragmatists.  I don't know what the answer is.  I don't know how to overhaul the system.  I suspect that sitting in a park on Wall Street won't do much to change anything.  But I can't help but secretly applaud those people who are idealistic enough to believe that they can change something, that they can make life better for the rest of us.

As a sort of postscript to this analysis, I want to end with a brief comment about how this issue meshes with my perspective on Christianity.  In discussing this issue on Facebook, I noted to one of my conservative friends that as Christians, we should be dedicated to helping the poor and needy and thus working towards ending income inequality.  I said this in response to his argument that it was not the job of the federal government to ensure "financial equality" among all people.  He responded by saying that he differentiates between what we, as Christians, should do, and what the federal government should legislate.  Christians, he agreed, should be dedicated to ending income inequality, but that shouldn't impact what our government does.    

I can't help but disagree.  Jesus's message was anything but non-political.  In fact, Jesus's entire message was as much a political and social commentary as it was a religious commentary.  Jesus, in the gospels, talks about income inequality - rich vs. poor - more than just about any other topic.  It was clearly an issue close to his heart.  His vision of the kingdom of God, in fact, was an earthly kingdom of radical equality, where everyone would share in God's bounty.  He wasn't talking about heaven.  He was talking about life right here on earth!  This is why the earliest Christian communities, as we are told explicitly by the writer of Acts, were communal groups of Christians living together and sharing everything they had.  They were attempting to live the kingdom of God as envisioned by Jesus.  

So as someone who attempts to follow the path opened by Jesus, I can't help but believe that while I have a personal responsibility to help the poor and needy and do all I can to provide equal opportunities for others, I also believe in my community's, and society's, responsibility to do the same.  I don't want to live in a theocracy that forces its religious beliefs on others, but helping the poor and providing for the needy and, in short, providing for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of society, is not just a Christian ideal.  It's a human ideal, and it's one I believe in.  

Notes from the Cave

This must be the sort of day Axl Rose was experiencing when he wrote "November Rain."

It's November, it's cold, and it's pissing with rain.

Had a good Halloween with the kids this year.  In fact, I think I can say it was my favorite Halloween as an adult.  I dressed up as an undead Druid, using a black hoodie and my Buddhist meditation robe, along with a bit of carefully applied face paint.  I scared the crap out of a bunch of kids, which always makes for a fantastic time.  This picture pretty much says it all.

My brother-in-law handed out the candy and provided comic relief, while I just sat there silently, staring menacingly at people.  When kids would get squirrelly, and start touching me and asking if I was real, I would jump suddenly at them.  Good times.

I have had the last two days off, but work again tomorrow morning at 5 a.m., then Saturday night and Sunday night.  This will be the second year in a row I have worked third shift on the night we switch the clocks back.  That means an extra hour of work.  In addition, my hospital will be updating its systems starting at 1 a.m., which means we will not only work an extra hour, but also have our computers down.  This always makes for an enormous pain in the ass.

My debit card expired on November 1st (Tuesday) without my knowledge.  I went to buy a soft drink at the gas station that day and discovered it was expired.  A computer glitch evidently kept the new card from arriving on time.  As such, I have no access to cash at the moment.  I was going to grab something for lunch today, planning on using a credit card.  Without my knowledge, my wife had removed the credit card from my wallet.  Fortunately, I checked my wallet before going inside and ordering food.  Why she took the card is a mystery, but I assume she took it to use it, then forgot to give it back to me.  

I am working on my next e-book publication.  It is a short historical narrative on the Donner Party - the group of California emigrants who got trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the 1840's and had to eat each other.  This was originally published here on my blog in a series.  I am going to e-publish it as a short book for 99 cents on Amazon.  Obviously, I will post a link to it once it is available.  Even if you have read it already here on my blog, and even though you could right now find the links for the series on the sidebar, I sure would appreciate my loyal readers ponying up the 99 cents to support me on Amazon :)  

For all you gmail users out there, have you started using the "new look"?  Right now you can choose to use the old look or the new look, but eventually the old look will go away.  I hate to sound like all the crybabies who whine every time Facebook gets updated, but I really hate this new gmail thing.  It's taking a lot of time for me to get used to.  Like the recent changes to Facebook, these changes are pretty dramatic, much more than they have been in the past. 

I'm planing a blog post soon discussing the Occupy Wall Street protests.  I figure this is only fair considering all my posts about the Tea Party.  The gist of the discussion will center on income inequality, which is the primary impetus of the OWS demonstrations.  I hope to make it readable and politically centrist, so I hope you will read it. 

I really would love to have wings and beer right now.  Wish I had access to my bank account.  I guess I'll just end up walking in the cold November rain.

Notes from the Cave

Had to leave work early today to pick up M at school.  She was having one of the esophageal spasms she gets from time to time, and it was worse this time than it has been before.  These started about 1 week after she had her gall bladder removed a few years ago.  Searing pain across the upper abdomen with shortness of breath, paleness, sweating, etc.  The school nurse basically insisted that she either call an ambulance, or call me.  So I came and got her.  The doctor wants her to try medication first, and if that doesn't work, then they will have to take further action - scoping, dilating the esophagus, etc.

I work early every day this week - 5 o'clock today, 6 tomorrow.  Even though I have to get up before the crack of dawn, I like these shifts because I get home so early in the afternoon.

My books have been selling okay on Amazon, although I suspect 99.9% of the sales have gone to friends and family.  And even with that, I haven't sold quite as many as I had hoped.  Not that I expected to sell thousands or anything, but it kind of seems that those who were willing to buy the books, because they know me, have bought them, and now the books are just sitting there and not moving much at this point.  Oh well, I still plan on publishing more in the future.

We went to the lake this weekend and had a good time, although it seemed to go by very quickly.  The weather was nice, and we went to a pumpkin patch on Saturday, where the kids had a good time.

God, this post is really awful.  I hate these sorts of blog posts.  I just don't have much to say tonight, but felt like I wanted to make a post.

Saw a clip of Jon Stewart from the Daily Show recently that was just totally priceless.   Link.  Well worth the watch.

I have been thinking about a possible new book - a memoir of my childhood growing up in Louisville, Kentucky.  It's main hook would be humor - sort of like the theme of A Christmas Story - a humorous look back at growing up in the 80's.  If it ever gets off the ground, I already know the title - "You Folk Better Stop that Gigglin' and Snigglin' and What-Not!" - which is something one of my teachers used to yell at our 6th grade class.  I guess we'll see if it goes anywhere.

Currently reading book 2 in the Warlord series by Bernard Cornwell, a fictional account of Arthur, set in late 5th century Britain.  Like all his historical fiction, it is sublime.

Short Story Collection

As my regular readers will readily notice, I've become certifiably addicted to publishing my back catalogue of writing on amazon.com.

Today, I've published a second collection, this time a selection of my best short stories from roughly 1996 to 2006.  There are ten stories in all, with a variety of themes.  Many of them are what I would call "creepy" (making this the perfect time of year to read them), but there are also several others with varied themes, from political and humorous, to provocative and suggestive.  I've also included my four favorite stories from my so called "Great War" Series - stories about World War I.

Link to the book on amazon.com: Serendipity...And Other Stories

If you don't have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle App from amazon.com.

Whether you purchase the book or not, you can help me out by clicking the "Like" button on the book's Amazon page.  Also, if you do buy the book, and enjoy the stories, I would greatly appreciate if you would write a review and post it to the book's page.  These things help tremendously.

Book Report: The Jesus Dynasty

The Jesus Dynasty is a book written a few years ago by religious scholar James D. Tabor.  Tabor, according to his website, is the head of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC-Charlotte, and his specialty is Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism.  He apparently leads a lot of archaeological expeditions in and around Jerusalem and modern Israel and Galilee.

It's taken me a long time to get through the book, but that isn't because the book wasn't any good - I just haven't had nearly as much interest, in the last year or so, in critical historical Jesus scholarship.  I've gotten a bit burned out, I think.

But in any case, the book presents a very provocative reconstruction of the historical Jesus and particularly of the early Christian church that sprang  up in his name.


To put Tabor's thesis simply, he argues that early Christianity was split into two main groups - Jewish Christians, based in Jerusalem, and led by James the brother of Jesus, and Gentile (or non-Jewish) Christians, spread in pockets throughout the Roman empire, and led by Paul.

He goes on to argue that the Jerusalem Christians - that is, the Jewish Christians - were the ones who were staying true to the teachings of Jesus, and the non-Jewish Christians, led by Paul, were the ones really creating a whole new religion - one which diverged from the teachings of Jesus in dramatic ways.

He also argues - and this is where the title comes from - that the "Jesus Movement," as he calls it, was really a dynastic movement.  He argues that Jesus started as a follower of John the Baptist, and that these two men - Jesus and John - viewed themselves in prophetic terms as the ones God had chosen to bring a message of repentance to Israel, in preparation for the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.  The Jewish scriptures spoke of two lines uniting Israel - the priestly line of Aaron, and the royal line of David.  John the Baptist, Tabor argues, represented this priestly line, while Jesus - descended through the house of David - represented the royal, or messianic, line.

When John was executed, this threw the movement into confusion for a while, but Jesus eventually returned to the scene, leading the movement by himself, and increasingly viewing himself in messianic terms.  He genuinely believed, Tabor argues, that God was going to intervene to free Israel from its Roman oppressors and that Jesus himself would become the new leader of a new Israelite nation.  Even on the cross, Tabor believes, Jesus still believed God was going to intervene.

As a result of this, his eventual death came as a great shock to his followers.  But once they had recovered from their mourning, they kept his movement alive by coming to understand him through Jewish scriptures as the "Suffering Servant" who had to die for the sins of the world.  And they continued to believe that Jesus would eventually return in a Second Coming to rule as God's authority on earth from a new Jerusalem.

Since this entire movement, according to Tabor, was predicated on the fact that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah, it stands to reason that after his death, one of his relatives would take over the movement - like a son ruling after a father.  Jesus had no son to inherit his "throne" as it were, so it went to his brother - James.  After James died, Tabor argues that it passed to another of Jesus's brothers, Simon - the same Simon known as "Simon the Zealot" from the gospel lists of Jesus's 12 disciples.  After Simon's death, it passed to yet another brother, Jude.  Jude, according to James, was the last of the Jesus Dynasty, because by that time - around 100 C.E. - the Jewish Christian movement was virtually dead (except for a few pockets here and there).   It had been marginalized and ultimately killed by Paul's movement.

Much of these arguments are not so earth-shattering.  Many scholars argue that Paul's movement marginalized those Christians who believed in practicing Judaism, and many scholars agree that Jesus had an apocalyptic worldview and saw himself as God's messiah.

What is ground-breaking about Tabor's argument is the assertion that the movement was dynastic - that Jesus really did come from the line of David, and that leadership of the movement passed on successively after his death through his brothers.  Tabor argues that three of Jesus's 12 disciples - James son of Alphaeus, Judas brother of James, and Simon the Zealot - were all Jesus's half brothers.  He argues that Jesus was Joseph's son with Mary, but that these other sons were the sons of Joseph's brother and Mary - his brother having married Mary after Joseph's death, which was customary.

I'm not really sure what to make of this argument.  I find it provocative, but ultimately I think he is on very shaky ground from a historical perspective.  He bases his conclusions on very questionable passages within the Gospels and in a few 2nd century texts, and I simply don't know if there is enough reliable evidence there to make some of the assertions he makes.

For instance, he relies on the genealogies of Jesus to support his assertion that Jesus was from the royal line of David.  For those who don't know, the genealogy of Jesus is provided by both Matthew and Luke, and is somewhat notorious for the fact that each writer gives a completely different genealogy.  Most modern scholars (that I am aware of, anyway), don't put much stock in the accuracy of these genealogies, simply because they are, in fact, contradictory.  Furthermore, how could the writers of Luke and Matthew have known this information?

But Tabor relies on them as factual, and reconciles their discrepancies by arguing that Matthew's genealogy is through Joseph, while Luke's is through Mary.  This is not a new argument - it has been the position of the Catholic Church since time immemorial.  And I find it totally insupportable.  Both writers make it obvious and explicit that their genealogies are given through Joseph.

Matthew's starts with Abraham, and ends like this: "Mathan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus."

Clearly that's a genealogy through Joseph's line.

Luke provides his genealogy the other way around - starting with Jesus and going all the way back to Adam.  Here's what Luke says: "He [Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat...."

Clearly both these writers are explicitly providing a male genealogy.  I just can't see how any argument can be made to the contrary.  Yet the notion that Luke's genealogy provides Mary's line is an important argument in Tabor's overall thesis, underlying the claims he makes later.  It's a problem, for sure.

He also accepts Luke's story about John the Baptist's heritage - with a priestly father named Zachariah and a mother who was a cousin to Mary - making John and Jesus cousins themselves.  This is what Luke tells us, but most scholars I am familiar with do not take these passages seriously.  This story of John the Baptist is Luke's way of writing theology, not history.

The problem with all these background arguments is that so much of what comes later in the book - all his arguments relating to the Jesus Movement and the Jesus Dynasty - are built on these assumptions about the biological background of Jesus and John.  If those assumptions are shaky, it casts doubt on all the subsequent arguments.

In the end, I have to say that the book provided a very thought-provoking perspective on Jesus and the movement that sprang up in his name after his death, but I am not sure that I agree with all of Tabor's ultimate conclusions.  At the very least, I feel like he has not adequately provided reliable evidence for these claims.  It comes across to me as a lot of speculation based on shaky evidence and the occasional grasping at straws.

Still, despite that rather harsh criticism, I think the book is a valuable asset in the growing body of work on the "historical Jesus," and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who has a serious interest in this field.    

Christianity is a Verb: My First e-Book

As mentioned in my previous post, I have recently published my first book on amazon.com.  It is an e-book available for the Kindle reader, and I hope to make it available soon for the Barnes & Noble Nook reader as well.   You can click the book cover at the right of the main page to see the listing on amazon.com.

The book is a collection of 18 essays, broken up into three groups of six, discussing Christian history, Christian theology, and Christian living in the 21st century.  It will set you back $1.99.

Even if you don't buy the book, I would surely appreciate it if you'd visit the Amazon page and hit the "Like" button.

Notes from the Cave

I published an e-book last night.

It's not available for purchase yet, but should be within the next 24 hours.  It will be available as a Kindle book on amazon.com, and if I am able, I plan to make it available for Nook readers on barnesandnoble.com as well.  It's a collection of essays taken from my blog over the last few years, all dealing with religious scholarship and commentary.  I don't have any delusions about sales figures, but I decided this would be a nice way to break the ice on e-book publishing for myself.  I'd like to eventually put some of my historical essays together as well, in addition to some of my fiction.  I really want to get back into fiction writing, but it is extremely difficult now, after so many years away from it.  I may publish one of my old novels, and I also have plans for a new short story collection.

Once the current book is available, I will make another post about it and provide a link. 

I was sick for several days last week and had to miss three days of work.  I can't remember the last time I missed that many days with an illness.  I had bronchitis, and although I feel fine now, I still have a lingering cough.  It's especially bad when I lay down.  Perhaps I should stop smoking.  

I mowed today for what I hope will be the final time this year.  I was extremely displeased to see a snake while I was mowing.  It was just a tiny little thing - not even as thick as my pinkie - but where there are baby snakes, there are papa and mama snakes.  Of course, I think I mentioned in a previous post that we found a rather large snakeskin in the backyard about a month ago.  

I find this to be extraordinarily disturbing.  

I don't do snakes.

I've been enjoying watching the MLB playoffs this week, though my own team - the Reds - failed to qualify.  Still, it's always fun watching post-season baseball.  It's a good alternative to all the boring football that fills the sports channels this time of year.  I'm already starting to get excited about the upcoming NCAA basketball season, which should be starting in another month or so.  

Work is the same as always.  I had to miss a wedding last Friday night because I was sick - I had been looking forward to it for a long time.  Fun was apparently had by all.  This coming weekend some people at work are having a get together, so I may try to get off on Saturday night if I can.  Otherwise, I'll be missing out again, because I am currently scheduled to work that night.  

On the reading front I recently finished The Jesus Dynasty, which I will be doing a post on soon, and I also finished a Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child novel called Gideon's Sword.  I'm currently working on book two of the so-called "Millennium Trilogy" - The Girl Who Played With Fire.  It's pretty good, and the story line starts clipping right along from the very first page, unlike the first installment, which took about 300 pages to really get moving.  

I got pulled over a few weeks ago on my way to work on a Sunday night, and although the cop let me go without giving me a speeding ticket (hospital scrubs save you every time), he did cite me for failing to have proof of insurance in my car.  It was sitting at home on the counter, where it's been for about 6 months.  So I have to go to court on Tuesday and show the insurance card so I can get the ticket dismissed.  It shouldn't cost me any money, but it's a big pain in the ass.  I'll have to miss half a day of work over it.  

That's about all I've got.  I've been dying to go out with someone and have a few beers, but everyone I know sucks.  Anybody wanna hang out?  

A Brief Comment on Taxes for the Wealthy

How can we live in a country where millionaires pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families?  And how can anyone, millionaire or not, claim that this is not only okay, but absolutely fundamental?

From doing just a brief bit of reading, the reason why this phenomenon exists is because everyone - whether they are a millionaire or not - pays the same tax rates on their salaries.  The rate varies depending on how much you make.  Very wealthy people, however, frequently receive a great deal of their income from capital gains investments, which are investments in things like real estate and businesses and the stock market.  This income is different from a paid salary.  The taxes on those capital gains incomes are something like 15%.  So a billionaire investor, like Warren Buffett, whose income is more or less exclusively from capital gains investments, pays 15% in taxes, while a middle-class worker making $50K per year in salary probably pays a higher rate.

Can someone explain why people whose income comes from capital gains shouldn't pay the same sort of tax rates as people whose income is primarily from earned salary?  Why should unearned salary (salary made from interest in investments) be taxed lower than salary you actually work for and earn?  I suppose a quick and simple answer would be that it encourages investments, which is good for the economy.  But I still can't help but wonder why perhaps increasing that amount by a small margin (say, from 15% to 18%) wouldn't be beneficial for the federal budget and the overall tax burden and economy, while at the same time it wouldn't discourage people of means from investing in things like businesses and real estate and the stock market.

I'd love to hear some opinions on this, if anyone has one.    

Notes from the Cave: Kitchen Edition

The laptop is sitting on the kitchen table, so this isn't really "from the cave."  There are pumpkins in front of me, and unpacked groceries on the counter.  The lawn is freshly mowed, and my wife is completing her female duty of folding laundry.

(That's a little joke, by the way.)

Have I ever mentioned that I am totally disinterested in football?  College, NFL, high school, whatever the level, I find it not at all exciting.  In fact, I always get irritated this time of year at how much the sports news gets controlled by football.  This disinterest in football must be Prosecution Evidence #273 for why I'm a bad American.

Cook-out this afternoon with the in-laws.  It's overcast and cool, but frankly - at this point - I'd take that over 95 and humid.  This has been the first real "autumn" weekend in these parts.  It finally cooled off this past week, and yesterday was a beautiful 72 with sunshine.

I attended Happy Hour with my co-workers on Friday night at a club at Newport-on-the-Levee, which is a swank shopping and restaurant district in Kentucky, right on the Ohio River opposite downtown Cincinnati.  Out of our group of people, which waxed and waned throughout the night, swelling up to maybe 12 or 13 souls, I was easily the oldest.  In fact, I think there was only one other person there who was even past 30.  I was the only one married with children.  Several people in our group are young enough, biologically-speaking, to be my daughters.

In short, I was the creepy, old, fat, married dude among the young, hip party crowd.

I joked about it all night, but by the time the festivities were over, I was left with a legitimate feeling of being too old for this shit.  The bar crowd was a touch on the trashy side, and the average age was probably 24.  I saw some guys get carted out by the bouncers after jumping onto the stage during intermission, and around that same time, I saw a girl bare her breasts at the foot of the stage, Mardi Gras style.  Those were both firsts for me, and I've been in a club or two in my life.  There was also a tall, blonde drink of water who jumped onto the stage during the first set to dance and gyrate her hips in a very good imitation of sexual intercourse, holding her hand in the air, a drink in the other, and getting all orgasmic as the cover band played "Crazy Bitch."

I think this really was the first time I have ever been out in a setting like that and thought that I was basically too old to be there.

I also did a "Four Horsemen" shot while I was there, and I felt like I had battery acid in my stomach until about noon the following day.  The Four Horsemen, by the way, is a shot made up of equal portions of Jack, Jim, Johnny, and Jose - i.e., whiskey, bourbon, scotch, and tequila.  In other words, hairspray.

I found a big snakeskin in my yard about a week ago.  How disturbing is that?  With the trees and the horse pastures behind us, I've always been aware that snakes were not only possible, but probable, but it is still disturbing to finally see the evidence.  I have no idea what kind of snake it might have been, but it was not exactly small.  I'm guessing there probably aren't poisonous snakes back there, but of course I don't know that for sure.  In any case, it's getting cool now, so they'll be retreating to their dens.

We also have bats, screech owls, raccoons, and of course horses back there.  And just to remind people, I live in a metropolitan area of over 2 million people.

Apparently, the plural of "raccoon" is "raccoon," because Google Chrome is telling me I spelled it wrong above.  I'm leaving it, though.

The dog is scratching his water bowl, so I suppose I will sign off and hydrate his annoying ass.    

Government Spending

Sounds like a fantastically interesting blog post to come, eh?  Stick with me...I think you might find it more through-provoking than you think.

Before I start I want to make a few statements about the information below.  First of all, when I say "government spending," I'm talking about the United States federal government.  I am not talking about what an individual state government spends on any given program.  Secondly, I am obviously not going to cover every single government program in existence.  I'm just going to touch on the big ones and the "hot button" topics.  Third, what follows is by no means a scientific analysis of the federal budget.   I've basically gathered this information doing Google searches and am simply spelling out my findings.  If you want a thorough analysis, go buy a book or something.  And finally, the numbers below are not exact figures.  As anyone who has ever tried to make sense of the federal budget can attest, it is extremely complicated.  We like to compartmentalize things and simplify them, but in reality there's nothing simple about it.  For instance, we tend to think of "Welfare" as some official program that has a specific budget.  In fact, it's a whole slew of programs that have a wide variety of budgets and funding sources.  Social Security, for instance, is a form of welfare, but most people aren't thinking of Social Security when they think of "the Welfare program."

Okay, now on to the good stuff.

1.  Planned Parenthood.  Funding for Planned Parenthood has long been a hot button topic when it comes to government spending.  Opponents say it's a liberal program that spends enormous sums of money to help people get abortions and encourage teens to have sex.  Supporters say it teaches healthy sexual behavior and provides vital medical services to citizens.  Regardless of your opinion about Planned Parenthood, the fact is that about $350 million is spent by the government every year on this program.  Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  In fact, if you compare that to the U.S. population, it averages out to about 1 dollar a year for every American.

Now, obviously, not every American is a tax-paying citizen.  A 5-year-old doesn't work, after all.  According to the IRS, something like 100 million people pay taxes every year.  So if you are a taxpayer, Planned Parenthood costs you about $3.50 every year.  Three dollars and fifty cents.  Per year.

It hardly seems worth complaining about, no?

2. NPR.  If all the time spent fighting Planned Parenthood over $3.50 a year seems silly, you'll really be shocked by this one.  This spring, there was a big fight about ending the federal funding of NPR, with conservatives saying it was money that could be spent better elsewhere, and liberals saying the conservatives just didn't like NPR because it's not FOXNews.  Regardless of your stance there, what most people don't realize is that this fight was over roughly 3 million bucks.  I call it "3 million bucks" intentionally, to imply what an infinitesimal amount of money this is, when compared to the federal budget.  Roughly $0.03 comes out of your paycheck every year to fund NPR.  That's 3 pennies.

By comparison, the amount of taxpayer money spent by Congress this spring to draft this legislation, debate it, and vote on it, probably cost more than the actual amount of taxpayer dollars spent to fund NPR for a whole year.  Think on that for a minute.

3. Medicare.  Medicare is always a popular topic in major elections and every candidate has his or her own opinion on what should be done about Medicare.  For our purposes here, I will simply note that it costs about $800 billion a year, and that number includes Medicaid, which provides health services for the poor and elderly.  This is roughly 23% of the total U.S. federal budget.  (This data, and the data the follows, is based on numbers from 2010).

4. Social Security.  Like Medicare, everyone has an opinion about this.  The government spends about $700 billion on Social Security every year, or about 20% of the total budget.

Together, Medicare and Social Security account for about 1.5 trillion dollars, or roughly 45% of the total U.S. federal budget.

7. Welfare.  This  is a biggie.  Eeee'rrbody wants to fix Welfare.  Too many hard-earned taxpayer dollars going to support losers who won't work.  The interesting thing about this is that there is no single government program called "Welfare."  "Welfare" is just a generic term referring to government money given to citizens.  Technically speaking, Social Security is a type of welfare, and so is Medicare.  For that matter, so is money given to people for disaster relief.  

So in order to define what I mean when I say "Welfare" (with a capital "W"), simply understand that I am specifically referring to government money that is given to poor people to help with their life expenses.  These officially include housing, food expenditures, and "other income security."  In 2009, those expenditure totaled about $285 billion.  That's a lot of money, no question.  But unfortunately, it doesn't actually tell the whole story.  Some of the programs included in that total are not specifically directed at the poor.  They are programs that are available to the poor, but they are also available to people who do not qualify as "poor."  Counting only those programs that give money to poor people, and only poor people, the number drops to about $190 billion dollars.

Still a lot of money, right?  But there's still more to the story.

Roughly 60% of that $190 billion goes to organizations which help the poor.  That means it is money being spent only indirectly on the poor.  If you count the actual amount of money given directly to the poor each year (i.e. "the welfare check," or food stamps, or government housing), the total is about 80 billion dollars.

There's no question that 80 billion dollars is a lot of money.  But it's only about 3% of the total amount of tax dollars received by the federal government every year (in 2008, that total was $2.7 trillion).  So if you want to simplify it, you can imagine that for every 100 dollars you give to the IRS every year, exactly 3 of those dollars goes directly to help the poor and indigent.

Anyone who has a problem with that probably needs to re-evaluate their opinion.    

6. Defense.  Defense spending is enormous, and includes everything from the Department of Homeland Security to the U.S. military.  It's budget is broken up into several parts, some of which are expenses associated with the Department of Defense, and some of which are expenses that come from outside the Department of Defense, but which are still classified as "defense" expenditures.  These would include things like money spent on FBI counter-terrorism, or the money paid to a doctor at a VA hospital for treating a soldier.

All together, defense spending costs taxpayers about 1.5 trillion dollars a year.  The same as Medicare and Social Security.  However, since Medicare and Social Security have more varied sources of funding than simply taxpayer dollars, the amount of actual taxpayer dollars that go to defense spending every year is something like 55% of all taxpayer dollars spent every year by the U.S. government.

That means that for every 100 dollars taken out of your paycheck and given to the IRS, roughly 55 of those dollars go to defense spending.

Let me repeat that:

55% of your taxpayer dollars funds defense spending every year. 

Compare that to the 3% that funds direct government assistance to the poor.


The ironic thing about this is that when people talk about the 14 trillion dollar budget deficit - or whatever it is right now - it's NPR and Planned Parenthood and Welfare that they want to cut out of the loop.  No one would dare suggest that maybe our defense spending is what's really eating up our tax dollars.  Don't get me wrong...I'm not suggesting we weaken our military or refuse to provide services like healthcare to veterans.  I'm simply saying that when people consider the debt crisis, it is ironic that the single biggest eater of American taxes gets totally ignored.  Defense spending is as great as Social Security and Medicare combined!!  And when you compare something like government assistance for the poor to these enormous consumers of taxpayer dollars, it's just a tiny little fraction of the total - a few percent!

What I hope my readers may take from this post is that it is very easy to get fixated on hot button issues and government programs that politicians like to criticize for political points, but the fact remains that when it comes to the U.S. budget crisis, things like Welfare and NPR and Planned Parenthood and half a dozen other programs are nothing but chump change to spenders like Medicare and Social Security and the biggest spender of them all, defense.

What's really scary is that in researching Tea Party groups for my last blog post, I found at least one that said it wants to increase military spending, while simultaneously decreasing taxes and balancing the budget.  Evidently they want a military junta to be in control of this country, because the military is all we could afford if we balanced the budget, lowered taxes, AND increased defense spending.

Notes from the Cave

"Well, here we are in the Fabulous Forties, and life couldn't be better.  Sports!!"

Sorry, that's an inside joke that only my sister and parents are going to get.  Just seemed like a good way to start off this latest edition of Notes from the Cave.

Someone asked me today for my thoughts on the classic Thomas Paine treatise "The Age of Reason," which is one of the most widely-read pieces of literature from 18th century America.  Paine was an Enlightenment thinker and philosopher, and one of the most influential figures of the American Revolution, and this work is a well-known pamphlet discussing Paine's views on religion and the role of the Church.  I haven't actually read the entire thing, but in perusing it a bit this evening, I was struck right off by what he says in the opening section.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy...I do not believe in the creed professed [by any church]...My own mind is my own church.

This passage resonates strongly with me, to say the least.  In short, it sums up my own feelings perfectly.  My perception of God is probably different than Paine's was, and my reaction to "the Church" (as an institution) is probably somewhat different than Paine's, because "the Church" has a different role in society today than it did then, but the overall theme and feeling is definitely identical.  His description of "religious duties" could be my own spiritual mantra.  Later in the opening section, he says that all religious institutions, whether "Jewish, Christian, or Turkish" ("Turkish" referring to Islam), are "human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."  If you think this sounds inflammatory today, imagine how it sounded in 1794 Puritan America!!

Unlike Paine, who was a deist, I have come to realize in recent months that I can best be described as a panentheist.  I realize that most of my readers will not be familiar with this word or what it means.  It is a bit difficult to describe, and I have no doubts that some people will think it's just some fancy philosophical idea that would only appeal to someone who thinks way too much about things.  Well, that's me.

You may notice right off that the word is similar to "pantheist."  A pantheist, of course, is someone who views the universe - the cosmos - as one and the same with God.  To the pantheist, nature itself is sacred.  Pantheism can be characterized by the fact that it does not hold to beliefs in any personal god, supernatural creator, or divine being.  Pantheism, then, differs from atheism only in that it affirms the sacredness of the cosmos itself.

Panentheism is similar in many ways, but vitally different in one way in particular.  Like pantheism, panentheism affirms the sacredness of the world and the cosmos.  However, where the pantheist says that God and the universe are identical, and one does not exist without the other, and one completely encompasses the other, the panentheist says that the observable universe is only a part of what God is.  In other words, God encompasses the universe, but the universe does not encompass all that God is.

Because of this vital difference, panentheism is not a form of atheism.  In fact, it specifically affirms that God exists, encompassing and embodying the universe, but also separate from and greater than the universe.

A good analogy to better understand the difference here is one that I like to call the "severed arm" analogy.  The pantheist looks at a severed arm and calls it complete.  The panentheist, on the other hand, looks at a severed arm and says it is incomplete.  It is only part of a much larger system, namely the human body.

In the same way, the pantheist views the universe as the sum total of what God is.  The panentheist, however, says the universe is only part of the reality of God.

As a panentheist, I believe God exists, and I believe the universe, and everything in it, is suffused by God and encompassed by God.  But I don't believe the universe is God.  It is only part of God's reality.  I do not believe God is a personal deity or a supernatural being.  I don't view God in anthropomorphic terms - that is, I don't believe God has a gender, or a body, or eyes to see with, or a voice to speak with, or kidneys or skin.  God can be seen by humans, but only in the sense that we have eyes to observe the world and the cosmos around us.  When you look at a flower, you are looking at a part of what God is.  When you look in the mirror, for that matter, you are looking at a part of what God is.         
  
What's funny about all this is that I was first introduced to the concept of panentheism almost seven years ago now, when I first began delving into religious philosophy and scholarship.  It resonated with me at the time, but it's almost like I sort of tucked it in the back of my mind and have only recently begun pulling it back out again and really thinking it through.  It's almost like I wasn't quite ready for it before, but now I am.

I still have all the same feelings and beliefs that I have always had in regards to the life and teachings of Jesus.  In that sense, I don't have a problem being called "Christian."  If a Christian is someone who tries to emulate the ethical message of Jesus, then I'm a Christian.  But I have started using that term less and less to describe myself simply because I have begun to realize that it is simply inadequate, and way too top heavy with theological and institutional religious baggage of which I want absolutely no part.

Well.  I didn't exactly mean for this to become a serious theological post.  So on now to some more mundane bullshit.

I have been doing a lot of shifts in the OR at work lately, and it's starting to piss me off.  I don't mind OR work, but when I have to be up there three or four days a week, every week, I start to get irritated.  Today I was expecting, based on my shift, not to be up there at all, and instead I came in and had to work there all day because of a call-in.  Tomorrow I am working a swing shift - 11-7:30 - and so I shouldn't have to do anything in the OR (fingers crossed).

I think I've mentioned before how I have started working this year with an old friend from high school who has started an online business giving English speaking and writing lessons to Japanese people.  Last week, I did my first "solo" lesson over Skype, and then did another the following day.  Both went reasonably well, and now I feel much more confident going ahead with this in the future.  I am also going to begin keeping a company blog to talk about writing, and I've already recorded a podcast on writing tips, which is part of the free content on the website.  I don't know yet what this work is going to promise me from a financial standpoint, but it's fun doing it for what it's worth.  If I can make a few extra dollars on the side, all the better.

I tried to watch the GOP debate the other night on CNN.  I really did give it a good faith effort.  But I only lasted about 10 minutes.  They weren't even done with the first question when I decided it was better to turn it off than sit there and get pissed.

I finally finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which took me about three or four weeks to get through.  I've heard other people say that it starts slow and gets better later, and that is definitely how I felt about it.  It's a 600 page novel, and I didn't really feel like the plot started moving in any significant way until about 300 pages in.  Despite this, I would still recommend it, because it was entertaining, and the last half of the book is a definite page-turner.  The writer simply takes too long to get to the good stuff.  Since he died shortly after sending the manuscript to his publisher, I can't help but wonder if they wouldn't have done some more work on it had he lived.  In any case, I intend to read the remaining two books in the series.

For now, however, I am reading Gideon's Sword, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.  These two people coauthor intelligent thrillers together, and they are among my dwindling list of authors whose books I always buy in hardback.  I used to have four or five of these "hardback" authors, but nowadays I'm down to just them and maybe one other person.    

On the non-fiction front, I am reading scholar James Tabor's book "The Jesus Dynasty."  I've been slowly moving through this book since early in the summer, but I don't think I've touched it since before our vacation in July.  It's not that it isn't any good, I just haven't been all that interested.

OK, I guess that's it.




 

The Tea Party and Libertarianism

If you Google the incomplete phrase "Are tea partiers," the first suggestion that pops up is: "Are tea partiers racist?"  The second is: "Are tea partiers libertarian?"  Considering that those suggestions pop up based on the number of times people enter them in the search box, the question of the connection between Libertarianism and the Tea Party movement is clearly a prominent one among Americans.

It seems that in mainstream society, there is quite a bit of confusion about this.  I have had people tell me personally that they believe the Tea Party movement is just a "rebranding" of the Libertarian movement.  I was thinking about this today, and decided it might be instructive to write a brief post about it.

In a word, the Tea Party is not Libertarianism rebranded.  In fact, if you want to think of the Tea Party as a rebranding of something, it is most simply a rebranding of Republicanism.

In a nutshell, the thing that has always differentiated Libertarians from Republicans or Democrats is that their party is a true amalgam of traditional conservative values and traditional liberal values.  Put simply, Libertarians are known for being fiscally conservative (low taxes, limited government involvement in the private sector), and socially liberal (individual freedoms and civil liberties).  Their overarching desire it to see a truly "small government" - one that pretty much stays out of your job and out of your home.

As such, Libertarians have always been supporters of typically conservative ideals like low taxes and very limited government spending.  They support balanced federal budgets, free market capitalism, and greatly reduced interference by the federal government in the business sector.  They have also long supported a greatly reduced military budget and military presence around the world, and have generally been considered "isolationist" from a military standpoint.  For a Libertarian, the U.S. has no business engaging in military nation building or foreign military intervention.  

In keeping with their "small government" ideals, they also support typically liberal notions about government involvement in people's private lives.  For instance, they have long supported abortion rights and gay rights, including gay marriage rights, the legalization of things like prostitution and certain drugs - especially marijuana - physician-assisted suicide and other end-of-life considerations, and have even lobbied for changes to statutory rape laws, allowing minors and their legal guardians to determine the appropriate age for a minor to begin having sex.  They also believe very strongly in a "wall of separation" between Church and State - in other words, keep God out of government.  In short, they believe in personal rights, privileges, and responsibilities.  This goes hand in hand with their commitment to a truly limited federal government.

The Tea Party, on the other hand, has nothing at all in common with this second aspect of traditional Libertarian values.  To begin with, many Tea Party groups are strong supporters of blurring the lines of Church and State.  One Tea Party website I visited (teaparty.org/about.php) explicitly says that America is a "Christian nation" and goes on to say that: "The Tea Party dream includes all who possess a strong belief in the foundational Judaic/Christian values embedded in our great founding documents."  This same site explicitly states, among their 15 "non-negotiable core beliefs," that the U.S. must have a "stronger military."  Clearly these are not Liberatarians.

In addition to this, and much more significantly, the Tea Party supports limited government from a government spending standpoint (low taxes, decreased federal budget, decreased government presence in the business sector), but has no problem at all with government telling you who you can and can't marry, what you can and can't do when you are pregnant, and who you can or can't have sex with when you are 17.  They have no problem controlling what patients and their physicians do in end-of-life scenarios, and they are not concerned with the government telling people what they can or can't smoke, or under what conditions two consenting adults can or can't have sex.  In short, the Tea Party consists of people who are fiscally conservative and socially conservative.

This doesn't make them Libertarians, it makes them conservative Republicans.

Thoughts On the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

Rather than go into a long exposition about my opinions and feelings about 9/11 and its aftermath, I decided today to simply post the journal entry I wrote the day the attacks took place.  I think these words say far more than I could say today, looking back in retrospect.  This is the first time I've ever made anything in my journal public.  I've copied it word for word.

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September 11, 2001

That date seems so insignificant looking at it here on the page, but I know in the future, it will be a day that will be well remembered by all Americans.  Today, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed, and the Pentagon was attacked, all with hijacked airliners on a kamikazee-style mission.  It was utterly horrifying.  Never in my life have I felt panic over a world event.  Vietnam was over before I was born, I was too young to care about Reagan’s near assassination, The Gulf War wasn’t really much of a war, and Waco, the ’93 World Trade Center bombings, and the ’98 US Embassy bombings didn’t phase me much.  But today, for the first time in my life, I felt true panic as I watched smoke and flame pouring out of the Pentagon, America’s symbol of military strength and power. 

I was sitting at my desk this morning at 9:00, like I do every morning.  It was a pretty day – pleasant temperatures and clear skies.  It didn’t seem like a special day.  I got up at about 7:20 and took a long shower as usual.  I got out of the shower, got dressed, took the dog out, read a note from my wife saying that her sister Sarah would be bringing my lunch with her to work (and noted that I wouldn’t need it as I already had lunch plans), and then gathered my planner and tennis shoes for working out, and walked out the door.  The drive to work was pleasant.  I said my morning prayer and then listened to a Guns n’ Roses CD.  Walking into work, I met up with the head of the sales department and we had a friendly conversation about Melanie and her pregnancy and how things are going.  Neither of us had the slightest concern for the security of the United States.  At the same moment we were walking into Tempur-Pedic together, there were people walking into the World Trade Center buildings, blissfully unaware that within an hour they would die in the worst terrorist attack in world history.    

At 9 a.m., my co-worker, Bill, was on the phone with our Connecticut warehouse.  The owner of the warehouse has a home office, and he evidently had the radio or television on.  He told Bill that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in New York.  Bill relayed the information to me and I sort of filed it away, assuming it was a small, private plane.  No big deal.  No panic.  Ten minutes later, our local warehouse manager came over and told us two planes had hit the twin towers.  I was incredulous.  “You mean to tell me that two separate planes randomly hit the World Trade Center towers five minutes apart?  That’s impossible.”  He assured me it was indeed possible and that the word was it was terrorists.  Strange.  But not strange enough for panic.  Not long after that, one of our executives tuned into CBS News on the internet and we watched as Dan Rather talked about the tragedy.  They showed footage of the second plane as it hit the tower, exploding in a belch of flame and smoke.  We were amazed and awed.  But still no panic.  We discussed the possibilities.  The ramifications.  Very strange indeed.  I returned to work.

By now I was emailing like crazy.  My friends and family were talking about it and sending me emails.  I was having a hard time concentrating on work.  Then, from inside his office, our exec said, “I knew it.  They got the Pentagon.”  And now the panic set in.  We rushed into his office and saw the image of the Pentagon in flames.  We were confused and scared.  Was it a bomb?  Was it another plane?  What was happening?  What would happen next?  The White House?  Where was the President?  I tore myself from the screen and went back to my desk.  My hands felt cold and my stomach was in knots.  I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack.  I called a friend at home and he was watching the telecast (he’d read one of my emails about the tragedy and thought I’d been joking).  He told me that Tom Brokaw was reporting that one of the towers had collapsed.  “Collapsed?” I asked.  “What do you mean it ‘collapsed?’”  He told me it had evidently collapsed.  Again I asked, “What do you mean by collapsed?  You’re telling me that one of the World Trade Center towers has fallen?  It’s completely gone?”  Evidently, he told me.  I felt slightly light-headed and still didn’t quite believe him.

A few minutes later we were back in the exec’s office, watching the telecast via the internet.  CBS was interviewing an eyewitness to the Pentagon explosion, but the camera view was still showing the single twin tower.  The upper floors were in flames and black smoke poured into the sky.  As the interview went on, the burning portion of the tower suddenly disintigrated.  On television, it looked like it had been turned to dust.  Then the building imploded on itself, falling straight down.  It was as if it had been vaporized.  The interview went on for a few seconds longer until Dan Rather cut in and told America that the second tower had fallen.  The camera angle panned out.  Where the two twin towers used to stand, regal and mighty, symbols of America’s economic strength, there was only dust and smoke and debris.  Unbelievable.  Amazing.  Like a movie.  How could they be gone?  How could such a well known pair of buildings – buildings I’d seen a million times on television and in pictures – be reduced to rubble in less than an hour?  The twin towers of Manhattan, GONE!  Wiped out.  No longer in existence.  Once the tallest structures in the world, now just a pile of debris.  Sitting here at half past midnight, fifteen hours after it happened, it still feels surreal.  Is it really true?  It can’t be.  But it is. 

 

Words can’t describe the feeling after seeing the second tower fall on live television.  Work stopped.  I couldn’t concentrate on anything.  I got NOTHING accomplished all morning.  I was on edge.  When would the next bit of news come over the wire that another place had been hit?  What was the deal with all the stories of hijackings?  Were there passengers on the planes?  We didn’t know.  It was a mass of confusion.  Rumors flew.  Bombs seemed to be exploding everywhere, planes crashing everywhere.  It was impossible to separate fact from fiction.

And sitting here tonight, there are still many questions and few answers.  We still don’t know how many are dead.  Perhaps thousands.  We know that four airliners were hijacked.  All four were transcontinental flights, full of fuel.  All four had passengers aboard.  It’s believed that the hijackers themselves wrested control of the plane from the pilots and guided the planes into the targets.  Two hit the twin towers in New York.  A third hit the Pentagon.  And a fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania.  At this time, it is not known what happened to that flight.  Did the hijacker lose control and crash the plane?  Did the pilot crash the plane on purpose to avoid disaster?  Was there a struggle in the cockpit that caused the plane to lose control?  What was the intended target?  The White House?  The Capital?  Some other military or government installation?  We don’t know the answers to any of these questions right now. 

And so I’m left considering the ramifications.  What does all this mean for the future?  War?  Perhaps.  I think that war is the most extreme possibility.  Retaliation from the U.S. is almost certain.  Osama Bin Laden is suspected as the mastermind.  He also suspected to be in Afghanistan.  These two facts have led public opinion against Afghanistan.  Would air strikes in Afghanistan be worth it?  Right now, I say yes.  The sense of revenge is strong within me.  For all my liberality, I’d like nothing more than to see every major city in Afghanistan razed by air and missle strikes.  Show them we mean business and that we won’t take this lying down.  I don’t generally have a patriotic bone in my body, but when someone sneaks into your house and starts trashing it, it makes you want to retaliate.

What about the impact on America?  How will this change things as we know it?  Security concerns will certainly be prevalent in airports.  How could four separate domestic flights be hijacked successfully from three different major airports?  Is it really that easy to hijack a domestic US flight?  What about further terrorist acts?  What will happen tomorrow?  Boston?  Miami?  Houston, where my parents live?  L.A.?  San Fransisco?  How vast is this ring of terrorism?  Too many questions, too few answers.

But the possibility of war frightens me.  We haven’t had a major war in this country in nearly 30 years.  That’s a long time, especially by the standards of the last 150 years.  Could this be the beginning of another world war?  A year from now, might we be bogged down in a war with Afghanistan and its allies?  Again, my gut feelings says no.  But I suppose only time will tell. 

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As a sort of post-script, here is a portion of the entry I made the next night, on September 12th.

In light of the events of the last 36 hours, I felt I needed to write in my journal again, to put on paper the strange coincidence I’ve just discovered in my novel.  I’m working on a book right now tentatively called Everyday Experience.  In it, my main characters are on an international crime spree, and currently, they have just completed the succesful robbery of a death mask from a previously undiscovered tomb beneath the Great Sphinx.  I’m in the process of developing a mini-plot that involves the death mask and the curse of the pharaoh from whom it was taken.  In the story, I am leading my characters through an array of accidents and mishaps and catastrophes (or rather, they are leading me), all with the ultimate goal of showing the reader that the curse of the pharaoh is real.  The section that I am in the middle of right now has the main characters in their hotel room in Cairo.  They have just woken up to the sounds of fire alarms.  The building is on fire.  They run out to the veranda to look for a way out.  Smoke and flame are pouring from the windows.  One of the characters says the following: “We’ve got to get down!” Henry said.  “The fire’s below us . . . that means the floors above the flames will start caving in.  The entire building is in danger of collapsing!”  Strangely enough, this was where I left off when I finished last time.  The very last line I wrote.  That was on Monday night, around midnight.  Septebmer 10, 2001.  About 9 hours later, the World Trade Center was attacked and the twin towers collapsed in smoke and flame, due to the caving in of floors.  I find it very odd, and bit unnerving, that when I wrote that passage, I had no idea such real events would take place in America in just a few hours.

Thoughts About "Third Reich: The Rise & Fall"

This was the name of a recent 4-hour documentary on the History Channel in two parts - split between the rise of the Nazi Party, and it's fall.

I watched the first part today and was totally blown away.  Let me just say at the outset that if you have any interest in history in general, and the World War II era in particular, or if you are one of the many people who have ever wondered how the Germans could have let Hitler come to power, this is an absolute must-see.

The entire two-hour episode, from the first minute to the last minute, consists of historical video footage.  Unlike typical documentaries, which consist of still images and diagrams shown with narration, interviews with experts and eye-witnesses, and re-enactments of historical events, this documentary consists entirely of real video footage of Nazi Germany.  The producers use everything from news reel footage and Nazi propaganda movies, to amateur films and private home videos.  Some of the video footage has never before been shown on American television, and several of the pieces are still banned to this day in Germany (such as the propaganda film "Triumph of the Will," which was released in 1935).

In addition to narration, the episode includes dozens of relevant quotes from journalists, writers, diarists, and letter writers from the era, both pro- and anti-Nazi.

Because of these personal quotations, and especially because of the non-stop, period video footage, you feel - as the viewer - as though you are right there inside it, experiencing it first hand, rather than sitting back and having the story told to you second hand.  The narration aids in this, because the narrator frequently starts new sections with phrases like: "If you had been a German in Berlin, in February of 1934, you would have...," and so on.  It really draws you in, makes you see things through the perspective of the time.  It's a highly effective documentary technique.    

In short, the episode looks not at the political machinations behind Hitler's rise to power, but instead attempts to address the questions of why and how the German people allowed this to happen.  In that sense, it's not a political or military documentary per se, but instead provides a much more personal, sociological, and psychological view of the situation than what you typically find in documentaries and books discussing the rise of Nazism.

I think this documentary struck home so much with me because this very question - how could this have happened - is the primary question I was left with earlier in the year when I finished reading Herman Wouk's epic novels on World War II, "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance."  I think when most Americans consider things like the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or the genocide in Somalia in the 1990's, they just assume that things like that are prone to happen in backwater, third-world nations.  Much more difficult to understand is how Hitler and the Nazis - and all the terrible things they perpetrated - could have happened in a modern, industrialized, well-educated, Christian, western European nation.  And if it happened there, could it happen here?

That question has been raised practically since the Nazis first came to power.  I'm reminded of a Sinclair Lewis novel from about 1937 called "It Can't Happen Here," which fictionalized the rise of Fascism in America.  I don't think it was Lewis's best book from a fiction standpoint, but the question he addressed was definitely a relevant one.

Some may argue that it's not relevant today.  Sure, it's disturbing that this could happen in a western European country populated by well-educated Christians who were basically decent people.  But then again, this was 80 years ago, so it's not exactly a pressing concern, or necessarily analogous to the world today.

I would agree, of course, that we probably aren't in any danger from neo-Nazis or neo-Fascists.  They have been effectively stamped out and sent underground, much like the Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations.  But on a much broader level, we have to ask whether or not we, too, like the Germans of the 1930's, could ever let extremism - in whatever form - take control where we live.

This, I think, is the important question, and I think Germany of the 1930's is terribly relevant and analogous in this regard.  In a general sense, it certainly seems to me that extremism is on the rise, both in this country and around the world.  The Tea Party movement is an example of this.  Of course I'm not saying that Tea Party activists are Nazis who want to commit genocide or take over the world.  In fact, the Tea Party, from a political standpoint, couldn't be more unlike National Socialism under the Nazis.  Nevertheless, the Tea Party is an extreme, nationalistic response to a perceived crisis in government and culture, just as Nazism was an extreme, nationalistic response to a perceived crisis in government and culture.

What is even more disturbing to me than political activists who want to virtually eliminate the powers of the federal government, are the individuals loosely associated with the Tea Party movement who have much more insidious opinions and views.  I can't tell you how often I've heard people lament at all the Spanish they hear spoken around them all the time, and how they have to choose which language they want on an automated phone menu or ATM machine.   I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about how we need to shore up immigration and stop the flow of people across the border, whether illegal or otherwise.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about the loss of American values, corruption of the Constitution and the principles of the Founding Fathers, and the secularization of society.

All of these things stink of extremism, and have parallels in the Nazi movement as well as many other extremist movements throughout history.  Among the so-called "25 Points" of Hitler's National Socialist movement were clauses about shoring up immigration, returning to the principles of German law and customs, and advocating Christianity as a uniting religious principle to undermine secularism.

I tend not to be an alarmist.  I tend not to assume that events in the world spell looming and imminent disaster.  I think people who have "survival kits" at home are ridiculous (I heard a show about this the other day on a public radio call-in show, and I swear to God the people calling in sounded like they actually can't wait for some horrible disaster to befall the country so they can play Survivorman).  But I have been feeling increasingly concerned in recent weeks and months about the general undercurrent in America these days.  There is something decidedly insidious about many of the attitudes and opinions I encounter in daily life and how widespread they seem to be.

Mistrust of scientists in general, and scientific principles in particular, is especially disconcerting.  In a 2009 Gallup Poll, only 39% of Americans affirmed that they believe in evolution (of course, using the phrase "believe in" regarding a scientific principle is ridiculous and just shows how totally distorted by religion the issue has become, but that's beside the point).  Among regular church goers, the number dropped to 24%.  Granted, a significant number of people - nearly 1 in 3 - answered "no opinion."  But the very fact that 1 in 3 Americans could claim "no opinion" on something as basic as evolution is disturbing in its own right, and I suspect that anyone who would claim "no opinion" is basically saying they aren't sure - in other words, they have doubts.  It's a little like claiming "no opinion" on whether you "believe in" the theory of gravity.

In June of this year, a New York Times poll found that 64% of Americans agree that global warming is happening.  However, only 47% agree that human activity is the leading cause.  Perplexingly, 76% said they trusted the scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Of course, the NOAA strongly asserts that global warming is real and is primarily caused by human activity, so one has to wonder why people claim to trust them, but don't actually trust their conclusions.  This, of course, simply shows that many people simply don't know what they are talking about.  

Even more than this mistrust and misinformation regarding basic scientific principles, is the rise in recent years of extremist religious views in America.  America has always had a lot of crazy-ass fundamentalist Christians.  No one is disputing that.  But they are becoming more and more vocal and are beginning to infiltrate some of the highest offices in the country.  This is not so surprising, considering that religion, as a whole, is on the decline.  In 2010, for instance, 20% of respondents in a Gallup poll said that religion was "not important" in their lives.  That's the highest ever since the question was first asked in 1992 (that year, it was 12%).  Similar polls show that in 2010, 61% of Americans were member of a church or synagogue.  However, only about 40% of them attended regularly.  In 1992, 70% were members, with nearly 45% attending regularly.  

Despite this, the same Gallup polls show that Christians who consider themselves "evangelical" or "born again" Christians (which, of course, is a nice way of saying "fundamentalist Christians") are actually increasing in number.  In 1992, 36% of Christians claimed to be evangelical, with nearly 60% of Christians saying they were not evangelical Christians.  By 2010, evangelicals had risen to 42%, with non-evangelicals dropping to 53%.

I would argue that this illustrates my argument - religion as a whole may be on the decline, but extremist forms of religion are actually on the rise.

Well, I've managed to take this post in an unexpected direction.  I hadn't originally intended to go off on this tangent about modern American perspectives on science and religion.  But I think it's a good exercise in understanding why I am feeling increasingly alarmed at the mood in modern America, and the general undercurrent of extremism.  And this whirlpool has been stirred by watching this incredibly well-made documentary on the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in 1930's Germany.  Look for it on the History Channel and DVR it or something.  It's worth watching.

Also, thanks to the Rev for suggesting, via Joseph Campbell, that I cut off my head.  It seems to have worked :)  

Notes from the Cave

I wonder if I'll ever actually write another essay for my blog?  The prospect seems dim at the moment.  Even my reading has fallen off the map.  I've only finished two books since the beginning of June, and none since the end of July.  I can't seem to stay focused on the books I've been trying to read.

I went out last night for Happy Hour with friends from work.  We had a really good time, although I drank too much.  Have paid the price for it today, but expect to get a good night's sleep tonight.  A bunch of people showed up, so it was a good time.  My face hurt from laughing so much.  I'm sure I made an idiot out of myself.

I slept funny last night or something, because my ear - and particularly my ear lobe - has been numb all day.  I first noticed it in the shower this morning after I had been leaning kind of funny on my shoulder, so I'm not sure if it started at that point, or if I had actually done it during the night.  In any case, I'm guessing it must be a nerve in my neck that is irritated or something.  Either that, or a tumor is cutting off the blood supply to my ear.  I did have a few moments of panic at the thought that I was having a stroke.

In-laws are coming over on Sunday for dinner, so we have been cleaning around the house today, which is even less fun with a hangover.  I did nap for a while to the soft sounds of the Weather Channel reporting on Hurricane Irene.  The Weather Channel is a great station for napping.

I think maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis.

Notes from the Cave

Hello, Blogosphere.  Sorry for being so hit or miss lately.  I haven't had much in the creativity tank.  I actually tried to write some poetry a few weeks back, but it went nowhere.  I couldn't get it out.  I'm creatively constipated.

I worked third shift last weekend, as I always do on my weekend rotations, but for some reason I feel like I never got back on track from it this week.  I've been exhausted and sleeping a lot all week.  I hope this is just an aberration, because it's going to make things pretty miserable if I have to go through this every three weeks after my weekend shifts.

I managed to get out and mow the lawn today for the first time in almost a month.  I think I mowed it the weekend after we got back from vacation - July 24th or so - and hadn't mowed it since then.  It was actually good for the lawn, because it had time to get nice and lush.  Now that's it's freshly mowed, it looks good.

We got a new dog shortly after getting back from vacation.  Our last dog died about a year ago, and our daughters were begging for another one, so we caved in.  He is a Maltese-Havanese mix, and his name is Finley Henry Longshanks.  We call him Fin.  He's about 6 pounds with furry white hair.  He doesn't shed and his coat is supposed to be hypo-allergenic, so he was a good choice for our allergy-suffering family.  He's basically a lap dog.

Haven't seen much of the horses in the backyard lately.  They've been going out at night because of the heat during the daytime.  I see their shadows out there in the evenings every now and then.  I've also discovered that we have a lot of bats in the trees behind our house (the horse pasture basically comes up to our backyard through a break in the trees).  If I go out on the deck around sundown, I always see five or six bats flitting around the sky, searching for bugs.  I always vaguely wonder if they will echo-locate onto the end of my cigarette, but it hasn't happened yet, thankfully.

I had a rather interesting experience a few weeks ago.  I don't really want to talk about it publicly, because there are at least a few people I wouldn't want to tell, but if you want to know, email me and I'll tell you (unless you are one of the people that I don't want to tell, of course; in that case, I'll probably make up a lie and tell you something else, so you won't know you are one of the people I don't want to tell).

Does my tone in this post sound depressed?  I think I'm depressed.  My wife told me tonight that I just have a "depressive" personality.  That's fantastic.  Just what I always wanted!  It might help if I could actually get a good night's sleep once every couple of months or so.

I want to write more, but I just don't have anything.
 

Notes from the Cave

Just a quick entry tonight so that my readers don't think I have fallen off the face of the earth.

Went on vacation in mid-July with my in-laws to Isle of Palms, South Carolina, which was very nice.  A real tropical paradise, and the weather was perfect the entire time we were there - literally not a drop of rain all week.

Since getting back, I have stopped smoking again - today is Day Five.  In case you hadn't known, I had stopped back in October, only to start again in March.  Quitting this second time around has been harder, perhaps because my heart has not been in it as strongly as it was in October.  I want to quit, but I also don't want to.  So it's been a hard and stressful week.  I was a total monster this past weekend.  Embarrassed myself a bit.

Work is fine as always - really, really love my job and my co-workers.  This has proven to be such a positive move for me - which is even more remarkable considering how it happened and how crappy I felt about it at the time.  Hard to believe I've been there for a year already.

I literally can't think of anything else worthwhile to say.