Huckabee's Trouble With Baptists Could Translate into Victory

Huckabee's tense relations with the conservative wing of the Baptist church, while ostensibly a sign of weakness in the Huckabee base, could actually turn out to be the issue that wins over republican moderates.

Huckabee's recent surge has frightened many of the moderate, secular, business-oriented republicans. While the republican party likes to project the image of piety, the actual presidency of a former Baptist minister frightens even professed religious Americans who may indulge in secular interests and who believe government should be essentially a secular affair.

Robert Novak's article in the Washington Post titled "Baptists Not on Board", in exposing a conservative opposition to Huckabee within the church, could actually help Huckabee to win the gift of the nomination. The conservative base of the Baptist church have not actually endorsed Huckabee and some conservative leaders have even spoken out against him. "More than personality explains why not all his Baptist brethren have signed on the dotted line for Huckabee. He did not join the 'conservative resurgence' that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago."

While Huckabee's protection of secularists in the Baptist church may have failed a generation ago, this past failure may translate into a future success in the primaries. The "glass jaw" of Huckabee may prove to be no glass jaw at all. Rather than representing the "fire and brimstone" pastor who frightens children by threatening the wrath of God, he may represent the friendly, God-inspired pastor who understands humanity for what it is and the true meaning of Christian forgiveness of sin.

NIE on Iran Nuclear Threat

It seems significant that the NIE report, which declares "confidence" in the notion that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons development back in '03, is very convenient for all parties involved.

The Bush administration is able to claim that they were right to be concerned in the first place. The "threat" is vindicated. But Iran can also claim that they are not pursuing nuclear weapons. The UN and the USA are able to find common ground.

It seems especially significant in light of the fact that the "surge" has been working so well in Iraq. How much of this success may have been determined by the fact that Iran has actually ceased its subversive activities? Directly, or indirectly, there seems to be a trade-off taking place. I think the key player in making this work is probably the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which for all of our criticism of them, we must admit they have done a as good a job as possible balancing friendly relations with both Iran and USA.

The success of the government in Baghdad looks more hopeful than it has since its establishment.

But while this may be a temporary easing of tensions between Iran and the West, it is probably only "temporary". The basic problem remains the same. Iran continues to pursue mastery of nuclear technology. Sanctions are still being pursued. Tensions are still high. Perhaps this is a way for Bush to offload the problem to the next administration.

Scratch Chavaz's Victory

Scratch last night's blog about Chavez's victory; the morning brings another result. It is a breath of fresh air to see that it seems as though the elections in Venezuela were truly fair. Not so much with Russia.

Chavez and Putin

What is the meaning of the coincidence of these two events on December 2, 2007: the victory of Putin's Party in Russia and the victory of Chavez in Venezuela. Both seek to transcend the problem of term limits in order to control the direction of government over a long period of time.

Even before the end of the day, the USA has already urged Russia to investigate widespread allegation of fraud to beckon the call of the rising tension between the United States and Russia. In name, we still call Russia our friend, but how far must things go before Russia falls back into the heap with Cuba and Venezuela?

To: Senator Barack Obama, From: Karl Rove, Subject: How to Beat Hillary

Now this is a fine piece of political writing by one of the greatest political hacks of America: Rove's Memo to Obama: win Iowa or lose the race

Patrick Buchanan's Doom and Gloom

When I am in the mood for some American social-economic doom and gloom, I like to order from the Patrick Buchanan Menu.

A great Buchanan quote:

"Say a prayer for Ben Bernanke. He may have to eat the football that scrambling quarterback Greenspan tossed to him far behind the line of scrimmage."

What is Adam Archetype?

I discovered Adam Archetype in 2002 as the Being for which I will devote the whole of my inspiration as an artist and a philosopher for the full career of my life's work.

Adam Archetype is a commitment to the Love, Life and Light of humanity.

Adam Archetype is a commitment to all things produced by the universal creative impulse; to all plants and animals that Spirit has raised out of the weight of dead matter; to the culmination of all living forms in the form of man, the Being who weighs and measures all Being, the form whose image is a reflection of the Image of the All Father, the creative Spirit embraced by the Original Unity of all Energy.

Adam Archetype is a commitment to the understanding of the whole of human history; to embrace the histories and societies of every make, model and creed, to partake of the splendor of the diversity of mankind.

Like the EPCOT Food and Wine festival brings together the most delicious food and wine from the most diverse regions and human societies of earth, Adam Archetype is a consciousness thirsty for the display and enjoyment of all of the glorious works of the human spirit, all philosophy, all religion and all art from every region wherever humanity flourishes today, wherever humanity has flourished in the past, wherever humanity will flourish in the future.

There is no great religion of the world that does not fascinate the mind of Adam Archetype. Adam Archetype drinks the wine of religious myth like a newborn puppy laps the milk of its mother. Adam Archetype feeds upon the bread of the philosophers and the cheese of the artists. Art, philosophy and religion are taken together by Adam Archetype like the choicest wine, bread and cheese are taken together by the refined epicurean sensualist.

Adam Archetype is the End of All Being.

President-to-be Clinton Observes the Crisis of the Falling Flags

If this be a sign witnessed by the public which will foretell the future, then President-to-be Hillary Clinton will observe the financial, and therefore military, collapse of the government. The administration will flutter about confusedly with awkward looks on their faces. Hillary will observe that the "bases are not weighted enough." In other words, American money is no longer weighted in gold as it was when the spectacular rise of the U.S. government began and flourished across two centuries of rapid expansion, rising productivity, and an economy to eclipse all other economies, a military to eclipse all other military. The event begins when one of the four flags collapses and starts to bring down the other flags with it -- Oh Noes!!! -- Luckily, certain heroes of the staff were able to catch the other flags in mid-collapse and bring them all back up to standing. However, there is still that one flag at the end of the clip, which continues to flounder.

Looks Like Another Rough Day at the Maw-ket

9 trillion dollar debt

Congratulations, government of the United States of America, on reaching another remarkable milestone. Today, the national debt has hit $9 trillion for the first time.

Wall Street Plunges; Dollar Falls to Record Low

If you enjoy a picture of distress, fix your eye upon the volatile maw-ket!

China, the New Mistriss of the World

China has now blown past Germany to become the number one exporter in the world. Say hello to the Asian Rising Tide.

Quite astonishing that a nation ruled by the Communist Party should become the new capital superpower.

Of course, people will refer to other statistics, the fact of the huge population advantage for china, or whatever else to try to temper this fact, but the fact remains.

The United States was the world creditor in 1920 after it financed Europe's first world war. Europe was in debt to the United States as the United States bloomed into the commercial mistress of the planet. her material position, her abundant supply of natural resources and her hearty and hard-working citizens would erect the highest of nations by the outcome of World War II, when the United States, with a few other powers, initiated a world government, ruled over by a security council of a few great powers, most prominent being the United States.

Today the United States is a debtor nation. The dollar is worth about 3 cents what it was worth when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Today the United States is highly taxed, highly stressed and bogged down in expensive foreign wars that seem to have no end in sight. We pay for these wars by borrowing from China. As China finances our failing adventure in the middle east, she establishes peaceful trade relations with every other nation on the planet, she practices a foreign policy of non-intervention, and she bullies the United States into continuing to acquiesce in unfair trade practices that goes against everything Alexander Hamilton taught us 200 years ago.

Federalist Papers and the History of the United States of America

Much of the Federalist Papers takes the form of long and drawn out arguments, which appeal to the sober faculty of reason through a display of keen psychological insight, a sound comprehension of enlightenment political philosophy and frequent references to various epochs of the history of Western Civilization from Greece and Rome to the modern kingdoms of Europe.

But the formula might be found to be too dry, the demonstration too sober, if it were not for occasional rays of intuitive vision that appear less to convince reason than to intoxicate the passions of a people conscious of a world-historical purpose. Such vision is displayed by Hamilton in the final paragraph of Federalist Paper no. 11:

"I shall briefly observe, that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America--that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere. Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation. Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!"

We can now observe this statement by Hamilton at a distance of 220 years, having assimilated the history of this nation that Hamilton, Jay and Madison sought to establish. Within one century, that nation expanded her boundaries west to the pacific ocean to become a transcontinental power; fought a civil war, perhaps the bloodiest of history until its time, to preserve the union and abolish the institution of slavery; emerged on the global scene as a great power equal in stature and influence to Great Britain and France. "One great American system" had been erected, "superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence", which was "able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!" In the second century of her existence, the United States would rise even to eclipse the European powers on the world stage. By the year 1989, two hundred years after the first president, George Washington, took his first oath of office, the United States became known as the one and only Superpower nation on the planet. President George HW Bush would speak of a New World Order.

If Hamilton was aiming at an "ascendant in American affairs" in 1787, perhaps George Bush's announcement on September 11, 1990, of moving "Toward a New World Order," represented an aim at the meridian of American affairs, the fullest maturity of America's power on the planet.

Individual nations are like individual men: they display a psychological complexity of contradictions. Hamilton's condemnation of the European superiority complex is given to promote a Constitution that allowed the institution of perpetual slavery to continue under the pretext that the African people were inferior to those of European stock, that the black slaves were designed by God for the benefit of white masters.

This contradiction was severely felt in the consciousness of the convention that gathered to compose the Constitution. Slavery was such a painful moral issue, it had to be repressed. People like Benjamin Franklin, most fecundated with a vision of the world-historical purpose of this new departure, despised the institution of slavery and made strong motions to abolish it. But the subject was so controversial that its discussion created such fixed and determined opposition that no compromise could be made.

No compromise meant no Constitution. It is for this reason that Hamilton and others supported the "gag rule", and forbade discussion of the slavery issue on the grounds of the Convention. The civil war would be fought seven decades later to decide the issue.

Every new emergence of life, at any level, whether it be an individual human life, or the birth of a nation, is haunted by the karma of the past. There may be a vision of a truly "new world", and this vision may be so powerful that it engenders a new nation, a new government, but this "new world" must carry the issues that the Old World produced. There can never be any truly clean break from the past. For the United States, this karma is represented by the history of the Indo-European will to divide, conquer and dominate the resources of the planet. As we observe the history of the United States, we perceive the same social arrogance of Europe. We have seen in her arms and in her negotiations, in her force and in her fraud, a definite will to extend her dominion.

Iran Nuclear Case "Closed"

Ahmadinajad announced to the world today that the Iran Nuke Controversy is "closed."

Thanks God for that. We can all rest assured. No more worry about Iranian Nukes. Thanks for clearing everything up, Mahmoud!

Federalist Papers - A Study

I have begun working in my historical studies upon a Round through the years 1787-88, in the city of New York, where the Federalist Papers were first published in a series of articles that appeared in the city's newspaper.

The pen name attributed to the articles was Publius. Under the name of Publius, a series of 85 articles represented the argument given by the men who sought to unite into a powerful federal government the hitherto independent "confederate" States.

In these past three days, I have read and reflected upon the first 3 federalist papers.

The first paper, written by the hand of Alexander Hamilton, served as an introduction to the whole work. There is a strong appeal to Reason. If only the calm, unbiased, critical observer will weigh point and counter-point, his mind will inevitably be led by the gravity of Reason to the Conclusion that Union is preferable to Dissolution. So goes the Hamilton appeal, which is hampered down by an overabundance of verbiage.

The second two papers were written by John Jay and I found them to be wholly more agreeable to my appetite than Hamilton. I found Jay to be a much more perfect example of the 18th century style of prose. He delivers in his first two articles probably the most important principle upon which the whole argument of Union is founded: security.

The reason for forming the union is pure and simple. Union is strength.

Jay praises highly the men who gathered at the convention in philadelphia to compose the constitution, "men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men."

That the constitution is not being imposed upon the States, but only recommended, appeals to the intelligence of the reader.

"This plan is only RECOMMENDED, not imposed, yet let it be remembered that it is neither recommended to BLIND approbation, nor to BLIND reprobation; but to that sedate and candid consideration which the magnitude and importance of the subject demand, and which it certainly ought to receive."

Probably the most compelling argument of all, the one calculated to greatest effect, is the specious appeal to Providence.

"With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence."

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

We can see that the government of the United States, in its genesis, was formed as a kind of super-council of Anglo-Saxon tribal elders. It formed the nucleus of an extended Anglo-Saxon tribal body sharing similar ancestors, language, and religion.

In Massachusetts, a particular sect of fanatical Christian zealots had sought to build a New Jerusalem. This fervor, this belief in being a chosen people, an instrument in the hand of God, has been among the most powerful motives to the militant mindset that has made the history of the United States a bloody one.

In Virginia, there was another kind of "divine right" than we find in the puritan Pilgrims. This powerful class of men was descended from adventurers who built personal agriculture empires through the use of slave labor. Much suffering is buried in the history of the African natives that were held in perpetual slavery by their Indo-European masters during the same time those masters founded their own rebellion upon the principle that "all men are created equal".

Were the Washingtonians so much different than the Assyrians, the Babylonians or any other empire in history, which sought through social power to bind servants to their will? The history of every empire or kingdom is rooted in the deep and dark tribal past of humanity where the difference between winning and losing in conquest is the difference between mastery and slavery.

So it is indeed apparent that this was no pure democracy that was being instituted, but a republic bound together by a fraternity of masters distinguished by a common language, common religion and common ancestors. The slaves were excluded from government because only the chosen are fit to rule, and the covenant of every chosen people is its bloodline.

The first and most sacred purpose of this government is as a monopoly on the power to make war and peace. The genius of the anglo-saxon mind flattered itself that it had reached the loftiest intellectual heights, that it could solve the problem of human government through science and reason. But the darker, more real motives lie not in the lofty abstractions of science and philosophy, but spring from the loins of biological nature, where there is always a lust for the good life that drives political formations. How much further along was the nobility of the Founding Fathers than the Norman conquerors who seized Mother England seven centuries before? How far beneath the surface of the gentleman's civilized demeanor and humanitarian pretensions did the primal barbarian still live and have its being?

Because the Union is what makes us Great.

"I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet: "FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS."

Clearly it was the desire of the politicians, in creating the union, to give birth to a great power, to be on equal footing with powers like France, Spain and Great Britain. Jay closes the Federalist No. 3 with an appeal to the pride attached to being a great power.

"In the year 1685, the state of Genoa having offended Louis XIV., endeavored to appease him. He demanded that they should send their Doge, or chief magistrate, accompanied by four of their senators, to FRANCE, to ask his pardon and receive his terms. They were obliged to submit to it for the sake of peace. Would he on any occasion either have demanded or have received the like humiliation from Spain, or Britain, or any other POWERFUL nation?"

The Great 21st Century Problem of Christian Fundamentalism

It is not unusual for me to discover the most insightful interviews and articles at the Asia Times Online. I paste below an excerpt of an interview of James Carroll by Tom Engelhardt. The entire interview is well worth the read.


"TE: People sometimes ask me about Iraq: "Well, what would you do?" It's a question that drives me crazy. I always think: Well, why didn't you ask me back when it mattered? Why didn't you ask me when I could have said, "Don't go in"? So I'm hesitant to ask you, but if you had the power to begin to organize people in some fashion, what first steps would you take to mend this world?

JC: Let me just say that we've been talking only America here, in part because I think people are attuned to the threat from what's called "Islamic fundamentalism". My own conviction is that a crucial 21st-century problem is going to be Christian fundamentalism. Its global growth is an unnoticed story in the United States. Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia are now absolutely on fire with zealous belief in the saving power of Jesus, in the most intolerant of ways. A religious ideology that affirms the salvific power of violence is taking hold. It denigrates people who are not part of the saved community, permitting discrimination, and ultimately violence. Hundreds of millions of people are embracing this kind of Christianity.

So what am I doing? I'm a Christian. I'm raising this alarm from within the community. That's why I believe, as a Roman Catholic, that my own tradition must be rescued from its current temptation to fundamentalism. There are a billion Catholics in the world. For all its problems, Roman Catholicism has reckoned with the Enlightenment, has accepted the scientific world view, has no argument with evolution, has learned to read the Bible in metaphoric ways, as opposed to literal ones. Today we have a fundamentalist pope, but he rules from the margin. It's hugely important that the Catholic tradition not go fundamentalist.

You ask me what I would do. I think, for one thing, that believing people, whether Jews, Muslims or Christians, need to affirm the importance of pluralism, respect for the other, and modesty about religious claims. I could be a Jew sitting in Jerusalem and offer exactly the same argument about the Jewish zealots making claims on land in the name of God. So Jewish zealotry, Muslim zealotry, Christian zealotry, all three empowered lately, all three armed to the teeth. That's what's really terrifying - and, in the world of weapons of mass destruction, it's not that hard to get armed to the teeth.

So here's a message addressed to the participants in the Tomdispatch community who may have a religious interest: embrace it. Fight for it. Fight for a post-Enlightenment, post-modern, intelligent approach to religion. Don't surrender religion to the wackos.

If the wackos take over religion, they're going to take over state power, and the world won't survive the 21st century. And the United States of America has been at the center of this. When George W Bush launched his war in the name of God ... even more, when this nation took the September 11 assaults as a religious war, Muslims attacking us good, virtuous - we didn't call ourselves Christians, but we were an inch away from it - that's when we began to make our part of this mistake.

TE: And we should have taken it as ...?

JC: A savage crime. Think of al-Qaeda as the Mafia. When the Mafia blows up a distillery and kills 18 people in the neighborhood as part of a turf war, or goes after a hardware dealer who doesn't pay protection money and paralyzes the neighborhood with fear, or when the Mafia takes over a whole region of a nation, as it did in Italy for most of the 20th century, fight back; but fight back against the criminal network with a massive act of law enforcement the way the Italian government did.

It took the Italian government 50 years to break the Mafia's hold over Sicily, and they still have to keep fighting. But they never declared war on Sicily. They never went in and bombed Sicily. They gave their judges and police inspectors and detectives body armor and they went after the Mafia hitmen with highly armed SWAT [special weapons and tactics] teams. I'm not talking about pacifism here. But keep religious ideology out of this. And keep the language of war out, too.

You know, only in going to war do humans feel the need to appeal to God. There's no "God with us" on the belt buckles of cops. God gets invoked in war, because it's a much more extreme state of the human condition. War always brings you very quickly to the point of "us or them".

When somebody comes at you with a savage act of violence, go back at them with your best, most heavily armed cops. Don't go to war against them. It's a very basic idea. It can't be emphasized enough. We're going to have another terrorist attack in this country. It's crucially important that, however horrendous, it be treated as a crime - not an act of war."

Ahmadinajad Wants to use 9-11 as Photo Op

A request by Iran's president to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site next week has been turned down by police and blasted by U.S. diplomats as an attempt to turn ground zero into a "photo op."

God forbid should some dirty politician....