The Alligator

Hearing that former Vice President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was news that gave my Bush-weary soul a boost. No one has done more in such a short time to raise awareness of the damage that humans have done to our planet and sounding the warning bell to thwart the horrors of global climate change.

On Feb. 2, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is “unequivocal,” and that human activity has “very likely” been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had “likely” played a role.

The addition of that single word “very” did more than reflect mounting scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests has played a central role in raising the average surface temperature of the earth by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900. It also added new momentum to a debate that now seems centered less over whether humans are warming the planet, but instead over what to do about it. In recent months, business groups have banded together to make unprecedented calls for federal regulation of greenhouse gases. Even the Supreme Court made its first global warming-related decision, ruling 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency had not justified its position that it was not authorized to regulate carbon dioxide.

The greenhouse effect has been part of the earth’s workings since its earliest days. Gases like carbon dioxide and methane allow sunlight to reach the earth, but prevent some of the resulting heat from radiating back out into space. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would never have warmed enough to allow life to form. But as ever larger amounts of carbon dioxide have been released along with the development of industrial economies, the atmosphere has grown warmer at an accelerating rate: Since 1970, temperatures have gone up at nearly three times the average for the 20th century.

The latest report from the climate panel predicted that the global climate is likely to rise between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit if the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reaches twice the level of 1750. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise between 7 to 23 inches, it said, and the changes now underway will continue for centuries to come.

Al Gore’s work and his Oscar winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” have raised awareness unparalleled. He has taken arcane scientific research and reports and made them accessible for the average guy- like me. Gore became intensely interested in the environment when he was a student at Harvard and he held some of the first hearings on the environment on Capitol Hill when he was a Senator. This is not a issue du jour for Mr. Gore. He has had this passion since college. During the 1992 presidential election, George H.W. Bush referred to Gore as “Mr. Ozone”. Maybe he had Gore and his son mixed up since his son seems to be somewhere in what is left of our ozone layer.

There are many Americans who would like to draft Al Gore to run for President again in 2008. A group went to far as running a full page ad in The New York Times urging Mr. Gore to run and using a little guilt- that he owed it to us to run. Former President Jimmy Carter- who I admire enormously- said this morning that if Mr. Gore ran he would immediately endorse him.

The world certainly would have been different if the 2000 election had given the Presidency to the man who actually won the majority of votes in the election- Mr. Gore. Mr. Gore received more than half a million more votes than George W. Bush and if it hadn’t been for the spoiler campaign of Ralph Nader and the decision of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. It’s nice to dream what would have been, especially in a world where what has been is a horror.

There is little doubt that 9/11 would have happened no matter who was President. But it is crystal clear that we never, ever would have ended up in Iraq. Mr. Gore spoke out against going into Iraq before the Congress gave Mr. Bush the green light to go forward with an invasion.

Mr. Gore let the Bush administration have it with both barrels in his captivating book, “The Assault on Reason”. In the book, Mr. Gore excoriates George W. Bush, asserting that the president is “out of touch with reality,” that his administration is so incompetent that it “can’t manage its own way out of a horse show,” that it ignored “clear warnings” about the terrorist threat before 9/11 and that it has made Americans less safe by “stirring up a hornets’ nest in Iraq,” while using “the language and politics of fear” to try to “drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts or the public interest.”

The administration’s pursuit of unilateralism abroad, Mr. Gore says, has isolated the United States in an ever more dangerous world, even as its efforts to expand executive power at home and “relegate the Congress and the courts to the sidelines” have undermined the constitutional system of checks and balances.

As stated in a a review of “The Assault on Reason” in “The New York Time” By Michiko Kakutani The former vice president contends that the fiasco in Iraq stems from President Bush’s use of “a counterfeit combination of misdirected vengeance and misguided dogma to dominate the national discussion, bypass reason, silence dissent and intimidate those who questioned his logic both inside and outside the administration.”  He argues that the gruesome acts of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq “were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity — encouraged, authorized and instituted” by President Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. And he writes that the violations of civil liberties committed by the Bush-Cheney administration — including its secret authorization of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court order on calls and e-mail messages between the United States and other countries, and its suspension of the rights of due process for “enemy combatants” — demonstrate “a disrespect for America’s Constitution that has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of democracy.”

Mr. Gore is clearly in his milieu as an elder statesman who can speak his mind without political repercussions and follow his passion on the environment. He has won an Oscar, an Emmy, the Nobel Peace Prize and actually the 2000 Presidential election. He has nothing to prove to himself or anyone. And he is following his passion and making a difference globally.

After Bush has degraded the Presidency why would Al Gore want to take a giant step back and have less influence on the world than he does now? Mr. Bush will have to live with the fact that he didn’t really win the majority of votes in 2000 and than took that and led the country down a path of disaster- worse than anyone could have dreamed.

Al Gore can be proud that he has made a difference for good in the world and left the world of politics behind. If there were a Nobel War Prize, Mr. Bush would be on the short list.

Mr. Gore should not feel pressured by anyone to run for President. He is making a world of difference right where he is.

The stories about the out of control behavior of some employees of Blackwater USA in their “security” role in Iraq have highlighted a problem that has been a quiet truth in Iraq: the use of mercenaries by the United States government.

The definition of “mercenary” in Merriam Wesbter is simple: “One that serves merely for wages; especially : a soldier hired into foreign service”. What does Blackwater call theses “soldiers for hire”? “Global stabilization professionals” is how they describe them on their website. That makes it sound so “Ivy League” moving the mercenary trade away from images evoked by “Soldier of Fortune” magazine. This sounds eerily to me like companies redefining their customer service reps as “customer care professionals” or airlines that call their reservation clerks – “travel planning specialists”. OH PLEASE!

Not a real surprise that this has been an open secret. Everyone knows we have been using private security companies- but not until the most recent revelations about the behavior of Blackwater have most Americans equated that to mercenaries. I don’t know why most of my fellow citizens have been unable to see Blackwater as a 21st century mercenary army until the company got completely out of control- but I guess these are the same people that swallowed the Bush administration’s bilge water about Iraq’s ties to 9/11 and its imminent threat to our security.

Mercenaries have had a negative connotation since time immemorial, but American have an historic revulsion of mercenaries that is tied to our very founding. Thousands of German mercenaries- the Hessians- fought on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War.

Blackwater’s website reads like a website of some high-tech, humanitarian, non-governmental organization. One might think that they are on par with “Doctors Without Boarders”. Their slogan sounds tame enough- “When failure is not an option and hope is not enough”.

My mouth was agape as I read their home page:

“Blackwater Worldwide efficiently and effectively integrates a wide range of resources and core competencies to provide unique and timely solutions that exceed our customers’ stated needs and expectations.

We are guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer world. Blackwater Worldwide professionals leverage state-of-the-art training facilities, professional program management teams, and innovative manufacturing and production capabilities to deliver world-class, customer-driven solutions.”

I didn’t know that mercenaries had mission statements!

Blackwater has rightfully been racked through the coals. Erik D. Prince – the founder of the company has such strong ties with the administration, it rivals Haliburton in it’s access to “no-bid” contracts. Prince’s family has been Republican and Bush supporters and fundraisers. His father was one of the founders of über radical right wing- Family Research Council. This sort of rewarding supporters makes a night in the Lincoln bedroom seem like nothing. Of course the Republicans were all over President Clinton for “selling the Lincoln bedroom” but they say nothing about “selling a war”.

The House of Representatives took the correct step on Thursday when it voted 389 to 30 to pass legislation that would bring all United States government contractors under the jurisdiction of American criminal law. Mercenaries have been acting without any particular legal consequence – either Iraqi or American. Well- Blackwater did fire an employee and sent him back to the United States when he was drunk and killed an un-armed Iraqi. That was a tough sentence! Of course that justice was rivaled by the compassion displayed by Blackwater and the US State Department agreed to pay a whopping $15,000 to the family of the killed Iraqi. No doubt that the Bush administration will try and veto this legislation if it ever gets to his desk.

As heinous are all of the particulars in the Blackwater case, the use of mercenaries has some very fundamental flaws- in any conflict.

In the March 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs, Peter W. Singer, Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, Saban Center for Middle East Policy wrote a fascinating article- Outsourcing War that raises some very troubling issues.

Nowhere has the role of Private Military Firms (PMF) as these “security contractors” are more realistically called been more integral—and more controversial—than in Iraq. Not only is Iraq now the site of the single largest U.S. military commitment in more than a decade; it is also the marketplace for the largest deployment of PMFs and personnel ever. According to Singer, more than 60 firms employ more than 20,000 private personnel there to carry out military functions (these figures do not include the thousands more that provide nonmilitary reconstruction and oil services)—roughly the same number as was provided by all of the United States’ coalition partners combined. President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” might thus be more aptly described as the “coalition of the billing.”

According to Singer these large numbers have incurred large risks. As of March 2005 private military contractors had suffered an estimated 175 deaths and 900 wounded so far in Iraq (precise numbers are unavailable because the Pentagon does not track nonmilitary casualties)—more than any single U.S. Army division and more than the rest of the coalition combined.

More important than these numbers is the wide scope of critical jobs that contractors are now carrying out, far more extensive in Iraq than in past wars. In addition to war-gaming and field training U.S. troops before the invasion, private military personnel handled logistics and support during the war’s buildup. The massive U.S. complex at Camp Doha in Kuwait, which served as the launch pad for the invasion, was not only built by a PMF but also operated and guarded by one. During the invasion, contractors maintained and loaded many of the most sophisticated U.S. weapons systems, such as B-2 stealth bombers and Apache helicopters. They even helped operate combat systems such as the Army’s Patriot missile batteries and the Navy’s Aegis missile-defense system.

According to Singer, as of 2005 an estimated 6,000 non-Iraqi private contractors currently carry out armed tactical functions in the country. These individuals are sometimes described as “security guards,” but they are a far cry from the rent-a-cops who troll the food courts of U.S. shopping malls. In Iraq, their jobs include protecting important installations, such as corporate enclaves, U.S. facilities, and the Green Zone in Baghdad; guarding key individuals (Ambassador Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, was protected by a Blackwater team that even had its own armed helicopters); and escorting convoys, a particularly dangerous task thanks to the frequency of roadside ambushes and bombings by the insurgents.

PMFs, in other words, have been essential to the U.S. effort in Iraq, helping Washington make up for its troop shortage. When a country is asked to go to war, its citizens are usually asked to sacrifice for the cause- this would include the draft. Non-coms would do the work that Haliburton would do and PMFs shore up an over-deployed and thread base military. But in this war- we weren’t asked to sacrifice- we were told to go shopping. I guess the administration heeded its own advice and went shopping for contractors to wage their war in Iraq and to reward friends. These contractors pay much more than does the military to its troops and they are providing services that have traditionally been provided by the military and probably would be if we had had a draft. But a draft would have made selling this war to the American people a much more difficult task.

Singer writes that there are five broad policy dilemmas raised by the increasing privatization of the military.

The first involves the question of profit in a military context. He puts it bluntly: “The incentives of a private company do not always align with its clients’ interests—or the public good.”

His article posits that when contractors do military jobs, they remain private businesses and thus fall outside the military chain of command and justice systems. Unlike military units, PMFs retain a choice over which contracts they will take and can abandon or suspend operations for any reason, including if they become too dangerous or unprofitable; their employees, unlike soldiers, can always choose to walk off the job. Such freedom can leave the military in the lurch.

Signer believes that the second general challenge stems from the unregulated nature of what has become a global industry. There are insufficient controls over who can work for these firms and for whom these firms can work. The recruiting, screening, and hiring of individuals for public military roles is left in private hands.
The third concern Singer has is ironically the feature that makes them so popular with governments today. “They can accomplish public ends through private means. In other words, they allow governments to carry out actions that would not otherwise be possible, such as those that would not gain legislative or public approval”, Singer writes.

Fourth are the legal dilemmas that using these mercenary forces raises. One military law analyst noted, “Legally speaking, [military contractors] fall into the same grey area as the unlawful combatants detained at Guantánamo Bay.”

The final dilemma raised by Singer is the extensive use of private contractors involves the future of the military itself. The armed services have long seen themselves as engaged in a unique profession, set apart from the rest of civilian society, which they are entrusted with securing. The introduction of these contractors (mercenaries) and their recruiting from within the military itself, challenges that uniqueness; the military’s professional identity and monopoly on certain activities is being encroached on by the regular civilian marketplace.

The use of mercenaries seems sleazy to me- let alone a colossally dangerous practice. Unlike Military personnel, mercenaries aren’t people who are dedicated to their nation’s cause and serve out of a sense of duty- they serve merely to make money. Blackwater’s track record is troubling and evokes images of men who love guns and killing more than they love their country.

I have visions of the private military firms becoming so powerful that they could eventually be in a position to wage a private coup d’etat.

Congress and the next President must seriously abandon the reliance on mercenaries- our nation’s image, integrity and safety depend on it.

A friend with whom I disagree with about most things political, recently asked me what I thought about the recent “60 Minutes” interview with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In response I expressed my dislike of Justice Thomas unequivocally. My impression of Mr. Thomas is that he is not a brilliant legal mind and I don’t think an uninspired mind deserves to be on the Court. He also seems to an angry and bitter man filled with self loathing and a vindictive nature.  My friend seems to admire this man.  When I disagree with a friend about an issue that I think is so obvious, it compels me to look at the issue a little more in depth. 

The mere fact that the man is hawking a book that is being released on the first day of the 2007-08 term of the Court is very disconcerting.  Justices rarely write books about themselves when they are on the bench. The members of the highest court have deliberately shied away from this sort of project because they run the risk of divulging their politics and thus taint their judicial objectivity. But not Justice Clarence- a $1 million advance was more compelling than appropriate restraint.

But the real outrage here is that his book is so clearly partisan. His hatred for liberal groups and liberal causes is very disconcerting to hear from a sitting Justice. I would have the same problem if a Justice clearly despised conservative groups too. How can there be any judicial objectivity? How could any group arguing a cause that Mr. Thomas disagrees with personally get a hearing based purely on law?  Justices have always avoided divulging their personal views about issues that may appear before them at some point. Justice Thomas obviously didn’t see the wisdom inherent in this practice.

This level of unadulterated partisanship is reprehensible from a sitting Justice.  But the Justice’s book offers a self serving view- so let’s look at his record as a Justice and with less bias.

For the vast majority of cases defining modern major American legal issues, you can find decisions authored by every justice to sit on the Supreme Court in the past 20 years, with many justices having written important opinions across multiple areas of law. Every justice, that is, except for Clarence Thomas, whose legal interpretations are so different from those of his peers that he often writes his own opinions even when he votes with the Court’s majority. “In just the past term, Clarence Thomas has written concurrences saying that students have, essentially, no free-speech rights when they are under school supervision and that there is no constitutional right to abortion,” his biographer, Michael Fletcher writes “I think even many of the court’s conservatives want to have more nuance than that.”

Fletcher, together with fellow Washington Post writer Kevin Merida, just penned the most revealing biography of Thomas to date: “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” . Their book makes clear that Thomas’s lack of major legal scholarship and his frequent lone dissents are indicative of a greater sense of alienation in his life than simply the isolation of one justice aligning against a majority of the other eight.

To Fletcher and Merida, the more interesting sense of separation is how Thomas’s judicial philosophy has led to a sense of racial isolation—and vice versa. That isolation stems not from Thomas’s place as the sole African American on the Supreme Court (and only the second in history, after he replaced Thurgood Marshall), but from his status as a hardened pariah to his own race through his vehement opposition to issues important to many African Americans, especially affirmative action.

While many jurists see the law as filled with gray, Thomas once described it as yielding “right and wrong answers.” And, clearly, he thinks he is right. Some of Justice Thomas’s former clerks say that he sees himself as a purist when it comes to the law and that he believes he has courage of conviction. So he views standing alone as a sign of being principled. One of Thomas’s favorite justices is Justice Harlan, the former slaveholder who was the one justice to vote against the court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the concept of “separate but equal” for more than half a century. Harlan stood alone in 1896 and he was not fully vindicated until the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. Thomas sees his example as a courageous one.

Thomas once said he would never accept a race-based job, and yet he spent an entire federal career in such positions, including a stint as the longest-serving chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the agency’s history.” Thomas is the second African American in Court history, having filled the seat vacated by the first. It seems that those points are irreconcilable, which we feel lies near the center of the justice’s divided soul. For public consumption, Thomas disavows the role race has played in his career. His friends once said that while many people would speculate that Thomas made it to Yale Law School because he is black, Thomas would say he made it despite the fact that he is black. And while there may be something to that, there is also something to the notion that race played a role in Thomas getting many jobs, including his appointment to the high court.

According to his biographers Thomas’s sense of turmoil, his resentments—his sense of being a victim of liberal and black elites—is greater than we imagined. Also, his sense of racial solidarity is greater than we knew. In his book and in recent interviews Mr. Thomas has validated his biographer’s assessment.

Robert Reich a rather brilliant lawyer and the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley was clear about the Justice’s recent comments and his dull judical mind on his blog:

“Thomas, in a new autobiography, labels Anita Hill his “most traitorous adversary,” once again denying the sexual harassment claims she made against him at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and calling her a mediocre but ambitious lawyer. If Thomas wants to dredge up his past in an autobiography for which he reportedly got a million-dollar advance, he’s fair game for those of us who want to dredge up his background, too. At Yale Law School, which I attended with Thomas in the early 1970s, he was notable only for his silence, within the classrooms and without. He wore a skullcap and a scowl. After graduating, he led an undistinguished legal career. Under Reagan, he ran the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission without interest or vigor, and was tapped by George H.W. Bush  for the Supreme Court only because he was a black conservative. Since then, Thomas has spoken rarely from the bench, asked few questions of lawyers appearing before the Court, and has issued opinions often lacking clarity or coherence. By contrast, Anita Hill has had a distinguished career as a lawyer and legal scholar, teaching and publishing on issues ranging from legal contracts to discrimination. She was my colleague on the faculty of Brandeis, and I know few people with more integrity. There’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that she told the precise truth at Thomas’s confirmation hearing, about the lurid sexual comments and advances he made to her. In my view, he was unqualified then to be a Supreme Court justice, and America is much the worse for the ease by which the Senate was intimidated into confirming him by his claim of being subjected to a ‘high-tech lynching’.”

So these are some of the reasons I think that Clarence Thomas is a questionable Justice. No Justice should be so obviously partisan and every Justice should have an inquiring mind- not one that decided a case long before it even appeared before the Court.

Not showing up at debates and not meeting with groups that are focused on communities of color seem to be a habit for the front runners in the Republican Party. Quite frankly it was appalling to see that none of the four front runners for the Republican presidential nomination showed up at last week’s debate focusing on issued facing the African American community at Morgan State University.

“We sound like we don’t want immigration; we sound like we don’t want black people to vote for us,” said former congressman Jack Kemp (R- NY), who was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 1996. “What are we going to do — meet in a country club in the suburbs one day? If we’re going to be competitive with people of color, we’ve got to ask them for their vote.”

Making matters worse, some Republicans believe, is that the decision to bypass the Morgan State forum comes after all top GOP candidates save McCain declined invitations this month to a debate on Univision, the most-watched Hispanic television network in the United States. The event was eventually postponed.

“For Republicans to consistently refuse to engage in front of an African American or Latino audience is an enormous error,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R- GA.). It’s just fundamentally wrong. Any of them who give you that scheduling-conflict answer are disingenuous. That’s baloney.”

Giuliani, Romney and McCain also declined to appear at events sponsored by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the National Urban League, and the NAACP which some say suggests a pattern of ignoring minority voters. I tend to agree. Quite frankly I think that Jack Kemp scored a bull’s eye when he suggested that the Republican might as well just meet at Country Clubs. But heck even some of the snootiest Country Clubs such as Baltisrol in New Jersey had to abandon their “exclusive” policies in order to be on the PGA Tour!

But while the GOP campaigns have generally offered no public rationale other than timing for missing the forums, an adviser to one candidate suggested they had little to gain from attending an event such as the debate at Morgan State according to an article in the Washington Post. “What’s the win?” said the adviser, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “Why would [the candidates] go into a crowd where they’re probably going to be booed?” My question is- maybe there is a reason that these crowds would boo you? Ignoring them ensures that they will always boo you. Besides- the candidates that did show up hardly were booed.

On “Meet the Press”, radical right commentator Pat Buchanan also suggested that it was total political calculus. Buchanan noted that there were few black voters in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. So what? Does that mean communities of color don’t really matter until you have to court them in the general election? Mr. Buchanan’s explanation is blatant political cynicism.

These early days before the primary season begins are really the only opportunity when folks from both parties can really look at the entire field of candidates in both parties. Face it, once the primary season starts- it will only be a few weeks before we know who are the candidates in each party since so many states will hold their primaries earlier than ever.

Sure the politics is partisan now- but wait until March or April when parties will be backing their candidates and things boil down to two options. All the candidates, in both parties, owe it to all Americans to speak to all Americans now. This is the first time since 1952 that there hasn’t been a sitting Vice President or President running for office making it more important for us to hear from all of the choices in both the parties.

Yes I am a liberal Democrat, but I have been paying attention to the Republicans and even though I completely disagree with him on virtually every subject, I have to admit I like Mike Huckabee (R-AR). He has integrity. His positions reflect who he is and not who he thinks people want him to be. He showed up to the debate at Morgan State and stated “I’m embarrassed for our party. I’m embarrassed for those who did not come.” I’ve heard him described as a conservative who isn’t angry about it. Although I would oppose Hucakbee vigorously in a general election, it would certainly be an invigorating and impassioned campaign. If it hadn’t been for the debates, I really wouldn’t know how much I admire Huckabee because I disagree with his positions so much.

But as far as the current crop of front runners in the GOP- I think the answer to my question – “Are they racist, ignorant or cynical?” – is that it is a mixture of all three.

GOP policies have not been friendly towards communities of color, gays and lesbians or any minority group- so I do think that these folks are racist and homophobic- with few exceptions. Most of the GOP remind me of a dear friend of mine who is also a Republican.

My friend can never seem to talk about someone who is Asian, African American, Latino or gay without pre-defining them as her “Asian neighbor” or “Lesbian friend” and always stating that of course I should know that it doesn’t make any difference to her.  As much as I love my friend- whenever you have to define someone by race or sexual orientation and follow it by a declaration that it really doesn’t matter,  it sounds like “some of my best friends are…”. It’s racism and homophobia and in some ways it is more disconcerting to me than full on expressions of hatred. The racism is subtle but it is there and by always adding that caveat about race not mattering it means that the possibility of ever recognizing it as inherently, it will never be appropriately addressed. The GOP frontrunners seem to embody this mix of racism and ignorance.

The “some of my best friend are” attitude is not only racist at its core but also very ignorant. Quite frankly as a white man I can not understand what it is like day in and day out to have people see my color first- I can hail a cab and not worry that I won’t be picked up due to my race.

And as for cynical- I think that if, as Mr. Buchanan suggested, there was political calculus involved in the decision not the show up at Morgan State, it is the height of cynicism. I would have a similar problem if Democrats didn’t show up to an NRA event- if they were invited.

So Republicans should hang their heads in shame. The GOP frontrunners seem to express racsim, ignorance and cynism as bywords for their party. They did nothing to ease any tensions that the party has with people of color and actually exacerbated the problem. If you are afraid of a little booing- you won’t do very well in a job where every day you will have to deal with people and countries that don’t much like you.

But the prolem is not the booing the problem is that these candidates intrinsicly don’t understand nor do they care about communities of color.

 UPDATE: After reading this article, you may wish to read my most recent article about McCain and the US as a Christian nation: The United States is A Christian Nation: True or False?: McCain and Parsley have it wrong

 The United States was founded as a Christian nation? I think it’s time for Senator McCain to get a refresher course on the Constitution of the United States. 

I guess he has been too busy reading polls. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation’s founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the “State of the First Amendment 2007” national survey released Sept. 11 by the First Amendment Center.

“Senator John McCain said in an interview posted on the Internet on Saturday that the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation and that his faith is probably of better spiritual guidance than that of a Muslim candidate for president.” (New York Times 9/30/07)

It is rubbish. The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.

A few Christian fundamentalists attempt to convince us to return to the Christianity of early America, yet according to the historian, Robert T. Handy, “No more than 10 percent– probably less– of Americans in 1800 were members of congregations.”
The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges. According to John J. Robinson, “Freemasonry had been a powerful force for religious freedom.”

Freemasons took seriously the principle that men should worship according to their own conscious. Masonry welcomed anyone from any religion or non-religion, as long as they believed in a Supreme Being. Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Hamilton, Lafayette, and many others accepted Freemasonry.

The most convincing evidence that our government did not ground itself upon Christianity comes from the very document that defines it– the United States Constitution.

If indeed our Framers had aimed to found a Christian republic, it would seem highly unlikely that they would have forgotten to leave out their Christian intentions in the Supreme law of the land. In fact, nowhere in the Constitution do we have a single mention of Christianity, God, Jesus, or any Supreme Being. There occurs only two references to religion and they both use exclusionary wording. The 1st Amendment’s says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . .” and in Article VI, Section 3, “. . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Thomas Jefferson interpreted the 1st Amendment in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in January 1, 1802:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

Some Religious activists try to extricate the concept of separation between church and State by claiming that those words do not occur in the Constitution. Indeed they do not, but neither does it exactly say “freedom of religion,” yet the First Amendment implies both.

Let’s look further at Jefferson. In spite of Christian right attempts to rewrite history to make Jefferson into a Christian, little about his philosophy resembles that of Christianity. Although Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence wrote of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, there exists nothing in the Declaration about Christianity.

Although Jefferson believed in a Creator, his concept of it resembled that of the god of deism (the term “Nature’s God” used by deists of the time). With his scientific bent, Jefferson sought to organize his thoughts on religion. He rejected the superstitions and mysticism of Christianity and even went so far as to edit the gospels, removing the miracles and mysticism of Jesus leaving only what he deemed the correct moral philosophy of Jesus.

Distortions of history occur in the minds of many Christians whenever they see the word “God” embossed in statue or memorial concrete. For example, those who visit the Jefferson Memorial in Washington will read Jefferson’s words engraved: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every from of tyranny over the mind of man.” When they see the word “God” many Christians see this as “proof” of his Christianity without thinking that “God” can have many definitions ranging from nature to supernatural. Yet how many of them realize that this passage aimed at attacking the tyranny of the Christian clergy of Philadelphia, or that Jefferson’s God was not the personal god of Christianity? Those memorial words came from a letter written to Benjamin Rush in 1800 in response to Rush’s warning about the Philadelphia clergy attacking Jefferson (Jefferson was seen as an infidel by his enemies during his election for President).

The complete statement reads as follows:
“The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me. . .”

In Jefferson’s writings there are numerous castigations of Christianity. Here are a few:

“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” -Notes on Virginia, 1782

“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.” -Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

“I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.” - Letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote “Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?”)

Senator McCain- What do you have to say about that? To suggest that our nation was founded as a Christian nation is a complete and utter distortion of the intent of the founders of our nation and the framers of the Constitution. Rewriting history is dangerous especially when that revisionist history includes hateful and pious remarks about our leaders needing to adhere to a “Judeo-Christian” ethic and that this makes for a better presidential candidate than does faith in Islam.

Excuse me Senator McCain- but not only do you need a refresher on American History, but you obviously need a refresher course in Comparative Religion. Remember- Abraham is the father of all three faiths!

I guess Senator McCain made one too many visits to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. It is clear that Falwell needs to be exorcised from McCain’s soul!