Pious Fabrications

Jaroslav Pelikan

2012-01-22T14:38:00.001-05:00

The Golden Thread of the Saints

2012-01-22T08:33:00.000-05:00

So Why Read Anymore?

2012-01-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson of Works and Days has a must-read post on why reading great books on a regular basis is essential. I believe he also make the case, without actually stating so, for liberal education. A sample:

The mind is a muscle. Without exercise, it reverts to mush. Watching most TV or using the normal electronic gadgetry does not tax us much — indeed that is by design the very purpose: to eliminate effort, worry, unease, and afterthought. None of us thinks back a year ago to a great video game session. Few off-hand can recall the Super Bowl winner of 2001. I remember the scenes in a Shane or Casablanca, but not many others in the other thousand of movies that I have watched.

By nature, our ways of expression and even thinking always fossilize and are withering away with age and monotony — a process accelerated by the modern electronic age and the neglect of replenishment through reading. The actual vocabulary of our present youth seems to me reduced to about 1,000 words or so. “Like,” “whatever,” “you know,” “cool,” and other pop culture fillers now substitute for entire phrases, a sort of modern porcine grunting. The Greeks used particles to accentuate vocabulary and guide syntax; we used them instead of vocabulary. Our syntax, both written and oral, is reverting to “Spot is a dog”: noun, verb, predicate — period. How did incomprehensible slang, spiced with vulgarity, become an object of emulation? I used to listen to farmers without college degrees speak wonderful English; now to listen to a member of Congress almost requires a translator.

Reading alone enriches our vocabulary; it teaches us that good writing requires a sense of melody as well as a command of grammar. Soon those well-read become the well-spoken.

Summary on science & religion

2012-01-18T08:46:00.000-05:00

What I've been reading

2012-01-17T20:09:00.001-05:00

Tradition Betrayed: The False Prophets of Modernism

2012-01-16T23:48:00.001-05:00

The God-Man in history

2012-01-16T20:26:00.002-05:00

Psalms of the saints

2012-01-16T16:36:00.000-05:00

As there are “psalms,” and “songs,” and “psalms of song,” and “songs of psalmody,” it remains that we discuss the difference between these. We think, then, that the “psalms” are those which are simply played to an instrument, without the accompaniment of the voice, and (which are composed) for the musical melody of the instrument; and that those are called “songs” which are rendered by the voice in concert with the music; and that they are called “psalms of song” when the voice takes the lead, while the appropriate sound is also made to accompany it, rendered harmoniously by the instruments; and “songs of psalmody,” when the instrument takes the lead, while the voice has the second place, and accompanies the music of the strings. And thus much as to the letter of what is signified by these terms. But as to the mystical interpretation, it would be a “psalm” when, by smiting the instrument, viz., the body, with good deeds we succeed in good action though not wholly proficient in speculation; and a “song,” when, by revolving the mysteries of the truth, apart from the practical, and assenting fully to them, we have the noblest thoughts of God and His oracles, while knowledge enlightens us, and wisdom shines brightly in our souls; and a “song of psalmody,” when, while good action takes the lead, according to the word, “If thou desire wisdom, keep the commandments, and the Lord shall give her unto thee,” we understand wisdom at the same time, and are deemed worthy by God to know the truth of things, till now kept hid from us; and a “psalm of song,” when, by revolving with the light of wisdom some of the more abstruse questions pertaining to morals, we first become prudent in action, and then also able to tell what, and when, and how action is to be taken. And perhaps this is the reason why the first inscriptions nowhere contain the word “songs,” but only “psalm” or “psalms;” for the saint does not begin with speculation; but when he has become in a simple way a believer, according to orthodoxy, he devotes himself to the actions that are to be done. For this reason, also, are there many “songs” at the end; and wherever there is the word “degrees,” there we do not find the word “psalm,” whether by itself alone or with any addition, but only “songs.” For in the “degrees” (or “ascents”), the saints will be engaged in nothing but in speculation alone.

St. Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on the Psalms (Schaff ANF, Vol. 5, p. 201)

Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963) by Martin Luther King, Jr.

2012-01-16T02:02:00.005-05:00

In this post is the entire text of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," penned on scraps of paper on April 16, 1963, while confined in Birmingham Jail for practicing his non-violent civil rights activism. He wrote this in response to a group of eight white Southern clergymen who had written in favor of civil rights for blacks, but against King's activist methods. I know that this is somewhat longer than a typical blog post, but I ask that everyone who reads this blog read this letter slowly and carefully. Its importance both as a historical document and in the message that it contains cannot and should not be underestimated.

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.
Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants --- for example, to remove the stores humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.
As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.
Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-off we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken .in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor. will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may want to ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to ace the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.
If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides--and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some---such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle---have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.
But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative .critics who can always find. something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of Rio shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leader era; an too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious. irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.
Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Par from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it vi lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, ham and all over the nation, because the goal of America k freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.
It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. There will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." There will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Death of a King

2012-01-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

On the evening of April 4 (Thursday) one hundred and twenty-five American cities began erupting in flame: a prophet had fallen. Pronounced dead at 7:05 P.M. The electrifying, awful report that a metal-jacketed .30-06 bullet brought down the man who was the nation's moral conscience, ripping away the right side of his jaw and neck, severing his spine on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, spread through this splintered world like a declaration of war. There came a confusion of tongues in a house divided against itself. "Nonviolence is a dead philosophy," proclaimed Floyd McKissick, "and it was not the black people that killed it. It was the white people that killed nonviolence, and the white racists at that." So many agreed with McKissick. "Get your gun," shouted Stokely Carmichael. "When white America killed Dr. King, she declared war on us!" The rioting and looting that Citizen King had loathed lasted for ten days in a blood-drenched decade that left everyone perpetually short of breath. In Texas, white students cheered when they heard he was dead. (I am not ashamed to say I hated them.) In Washington, D.C., seven hundred blazes blackened the sky. Tendrils of smoke drifted through windows in the White House, where Lyndon Johnson designated Sunday, April 7, a day of national mourning. Flags were lowered to half-staff. Schools closed. The baseball season was postponed. Three networks broadcast his funeral for six hours. Docks were shut down. Pope Paul VI cried out that this "cowardly and atrocious" killing of our better brother "weighed on the conscience of mankind." It was four and a half years since JFK's murder. Four years since Malcolm X's. Robert Kennedy (only two months away from the bullet that would end his life in Los Angeles) had three extra telephones installed in Coretta's home and chartered an Electra jet to bring the body of Atlanta's finest son -- now dwelling in a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens -- home to lie in state in the Sisters' CHapel of Spelman College. We had never, I knew, been equal to him, or to the transcendent tasks he called us to perform. He was destined for vaticide.

Charles Johnson, Dreamer (ch. 13), from Ann Charters, The Portable Sixties Reader, pp. 93-4

Who do you say that I am?

2012-01-15T07:59:00.002-05:00

What's the problem with Darwinism?

2012-01-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

Short book review: The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon I (Volume 2) (Great Books of the Western World) - Mortimer J. Adler (ed.)

2012-01-13T21:31:00.001-05:00

I'm probably one of a very few people who has sat and read the Synopticon from front to back. Though it might seem like a strange practice, nearly like reading the dictionary or an encyclopedia, I can't recommend the practice enough. The wealth of knowledge contained in these pages is enormous, and you will be shocked at how quickly you can read 1100 pages because it is so absorbing and difficult to put down.

History of the Church from Creation to Incarnation

2012-01-13T19:30:00.002-05:00

Reverent awe or profound loneliness?

2012-01-13T11:36:00.002-05:00

What is usually supposed to be revolutionary about [Copernicus's] hypothesis is its effect on man's estimate of himself and his place or rank in the universe. On either of the rival hypotheses, the apparent motions of the heavens remain unaltered, but not man's conception of himself, of his earth, or of the universe in which the earth's orbit cuts so small a figure. As Kant suggests, man's stature seems to shrink. He becomes "a mere speck in the universe" which has been enlarged to infinity, or at least to an unimaginable immensity. He is displaced from its center to become a wanderer with his planet. Humanity's self-esteem, according to Freud, was thus for the first time deeply wounded; he refers to the theory that "is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus" as the "first great outrage" which humanity "had to endure from the hands of science."

It has been questioned whether this interpretation of the Copernican revolution fits all the documents in the case. Freud may be accurately reporting a popular feeling which, since the 18th century, has become a widespread consequence of Copernican and post-Copernican astronomy. But in earlier centuries when the Ptolemaic system prevailed, or even after Copernicus, the appraisal of man's rank seems to depend more upon the position he occupies in the hierarchy of God's creatures -- below the angels and above the brutes -- than upon the place or motion of the earth, or the size of the world.

Boethius, for example, finds the Ptolemaic universe large enough to remind man of the infinitesimal space he occupies. Dante, too, comments on the smallness of the earth in the scheme of things. When in his visionary travel Dante reaches the Empyrean, he looks down upon the earth and "with my sight," he tells us, "I returned through all and each of the seven spheres, and saw this globe, such that I smiled at its mean semblance; and that counsel I approve as best which holds it of least account."

Kepler, a passionate Copernican deeply concerned with the human significance of astronomy, can be found arguing that the new hypothesis involves something more fitting for man than the old. In his last argument in defense of the Copernican view against that of Tycho Brahe as well as that of Ptolemy, he declares, "it was not fitting that man, who was going to be the dweller in this world and its contemplator, should reside in one place as in a closed cubicle. ... It was his office to move around in this very spacious edifice by means of the transportation of the Earth his home." In order properly to view and measure the parts of his world, the astronomer "needed to have the Earth a ship and its annual voyage around the sun."

Yet the very fact that Kepler argues in this manner may be interpreted as indicating his sense of the drastic implications for man of the altered structure of the universe. Kepler may even be thought to announce the problem of the so-called "Copernican revolution" when, in denying that the earth can any longer "be reckoned among the primary parts of the great world," since it is only a part of a part, i.e., the planetary region, he deliberately adds the qualification: "But I am speaking now of the Earth in so far as it is a part of the edifice of the world, and not of the dignity of the governing creatures which inhabit it."

Whether or not it was the traumatic blow to the human ego which Freud conjectures, there can be little doubt that the shift from Ptolemy to Copernicus involved a real shock to the imagination. The Ptolemaic system conforms to the look of the world, which is indeed the reason why it is still the one used in practical courses in navigation. Here again Kepler defends Copernicus by explaining why "our uncultivated eyesight" cannot be other than deceived and why it "should learn from reason" to understand that things are really different from the way they appear.

A certain disillusionment may result from this affirmation -- repeated by every schoolboy who is taught the Copernican system -- that, despite what we see, the sun does not move around the earth, and the earth both rotates and revolves. It undermines the trust men placed in their senses and the belief that science would describe the world as they saw it. In order to "save the appearances," that is, to account for this phenomena, science might henceforward be expected to destroy any naive acceptance of them as the reality.

Furthermore, though the Ptolemaic world was very large, the Copernican universe was much larger. Whereas in the former the radius of the earth was deemed negligible in relation to the radius of the sphere of the fixed stars, in the new universe the radius of the earth's orbit around the sun was negligible in relation to the same radius of the sphere of the fixed stars. It can hardly be doubted that this intensified some men's snese of almost being lost in an abyss of infinity. "I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me," Pascal writes, "and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another." When he regards the world's immensity as "the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God," Pascal experiences an awe which for him is qualified by reverence. Other men may experience the same feeling, but less with reverence than with a gnawing loneliness, born of the doubt that so vast a cosmos -- if cosmos it is rather than chaos -- can have been beneficently designed as man's habitation.

Mortimer J. Adler (ed.), "Astronomy," in The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon I (Volume 2) (Great Books of the Western World), pp. 90-1

Biblical interpretation, the great Protestant blunder

2012-01-13T08:23:00.000-05:00

λόγος from Heraclitus to Christianity

2012-01-11T18:59:00.002-05:00

Why I can't remember what I can't remember

2012-01-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

When Platoon was first released, a number of people asked me, 'Was the war really like that?' I never found an answer, in part because, no matter how graphic and realistic, a movie is after all a movie, and war is only like itself. But I also failed to find an answer because what 'really' happened is now so thoroughly mixed up in my mind with what has been said about what happened that the pure experience is no longer there. This is odd, even painful, in some ways. But it is also testimony to the way our memories work. The Vietnam War is no longer a definite event so much as it is a collective and mobile script in which we continue to scrawl, erase, rewrite our conflicting and changing views of ourselves.

William Adams, quoted in John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (5th Edition), p. 178

Christianity as humanism

2012-01-11T07:35:00.035-05:00

The notion that Christianity is in fact a humanism, and the original and greatest humanism at that, has become of much of my own religious and philosophical thinking. I found this passage by Paul Tillich on St. Irenaeus of Lyons to do a particularly good job of explaining why this is so. [emphasis mine]

In Christ the new mankind has started. That which mankind was supposed to become, once disrupted by Adam, has finally reached its fulfillment in Christ. However, not only mankind but the whole cosmos finds its fulfillment in the appearance of the Christ. In order to accomplish this, Christ had to participate in the nature of Adam. Thus Christ is the beginning of the living as Adam is the beginning of the dead. Adam is fulfilled in Christ; this means that Christ is the essential man, the man Adam was to become but did not actually become. Adam was not in a state of fulfillment from the beginning; he lived in childish innocence. Here we have a profound doctrine of what I call a transcendent humanism, a humanism which says that Christ is the fulfillment of essential man, of the Adamic nature. Such a fulfillment became necessary because a break occurred in the development of man; Adam fell away from what he was to be come. The childish innocence of Adam has been lost; but the second Adam can become what he was to become, fully human. And we can become fully human through participation in this full humanity which has appeared in Christ. This includes eternal life, similitude with God with respect to participation in infinity.

Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism, p. 45

War in Popular Music

2012-01-10T20:19:00.001-05:00

War is an experience that has shaped societies for all of written history. Many of the oldest surviving stories of mankind, such as the epic works of Homer and the narratives of the opening books of the Bible, relate tales of men at war and the impact that war has had on civilizations and on individuals. Recent decades have been no exception to this rule, as the experience of two world wars, the Vietnam War, and, most recently, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have worked to shape the culture of the United States and other countries involved in these conflicts. The popular culture of the United States is steeped in the experiences of its citizens at war, and, vice versa, the various mediums of popular culture have shaped the American experience of war, including both shaping the events as they occurred and, after the events, crystallizing the collective memory of the experience (Naddaff-Hafrey and Trodd, 2010, p. 257). Music, as one of the most popular and powerful of these mediums of popular culture, has served as one of the primary means by which opinions on war have been voiced and has had an especially significant influence on Americans’ perceptions of war.

When approaching representations of war in American popular music, one of the most noticeable features of the content of the songs is that remarkably few feature pro-war themes. On the contrary, the vast majority of songs are overtly antiwar while a significant minority are not incontestably antiwar but focus on topics which tend to inspire and reflect antiwar sentiments, such as the untimely deaths of young men.

Although such antiwar themes and views have come to dominant popular music, this has not always been the case. Some of the earliest popular songs about war enthusiastically express support for the wars to which they pertain. In fact, songs were often specifically created and distributed for the purpose of pro-war propaganda during World War I (Wells, 2004). The popular song “Over There,” written by George M. Cohan about World War I and recorded by Billy Murray in 1917, for instance, is exuberantly patriotic and encouraging toward the war effort, and was designed both to encourage recruitment and to raise funds for the war effort (Cohan, 1917). “Johnny,” the fictional subject of the song acts as a stand-in for all American soldiers and, by extension, for all American males as potential soldiers. In the course of the song, he is urged to “get your gun,” to “hurry right away, no delay, go today” to win the war “over there,” and “make your mother proud of you / and the old red, white, and blue.”

There is little deviation from this decidedly pro-war stance of the music of World War I when the music of World War II is examined. There is, however, a discernable change in style which may reflect the greater awareness of the costs of war which Americans had gained during their experiences in World War I. One of the most popular songs of World War II, for example, “This is the Army, Mister Jones,” by Irving Berlin, lists the hardships men entering the military will encounter in transitioning from civilian life (Berlin, 1943). The hardships listed, however, do not include physical injury, psychology trauma, or death, but cleaning the barracks and lacking common luxuries like personal rooms, and the overall mood of the song is playful. It seems, indeed, that the realities of war are actively avoided in the lyrics of the song.

The first popular song about war which I encountered in my research that mentions a soldier dying is Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” (Sadler, 1966). This song is also unique in that it is the only song which I could find that appeared actively supportive of the American war effort in Vietnam and the only one I could find that was written by a soldier who had fought in the war. Sadler, with Robin Moore, wrote the song while recovering from a wound incurred in combat in Vietnam. Sadler, in the final verses of the song, sings that “back at home a young wife waits” but her husband, a member of the Green Berets, “has died for those oppressed.” He quickly transforms what might otherwise have led naturally to an expression of antiwar opinions into pro-war bravado, however, going on to say that the dying Green Beret left a final request that his wife direct his son to also become a Green Beret. The effect is somewhat muffled and the final stanza, expressing the Green Beret’s wishes concerning his son, is a bit awkward in the light of the preceding verses. The end of the song seems naturally to make the listener wonder why a man would want his son to “win the Green Beret” given that it means he’ll be one of the “men who fight by night and day,” as the singer describes the Green Berets, and could very likely meet a fate similar to his father’s.

Nonetheless, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” is the last overtly pro-war popular song I encountered. From that point on, popular songs about war take a clearly antiwar stance and frequently express pessimism and disillusionment with the motivations and establishments that lead to wars. This is probably reflective of the unpopularity and imminence, the latter caused by the institution of the draft and more pervasive news media, of the Vietnam War. The war in Vietnam came, especially for young Americans, to symbolize war in general and displeasure with that war translated into sentiments against war in general.

For example, following “The Ballad of the Green Berets” in 1966, the next song explicitly about war that made it into the top ten most popular songs for its year of release was Edwin Starr’s “War” in 1970 (Whitfield and Strong, 1970). In the song, Starr asks repeatedly “war / what is it good for?” to which a chorus of singers replies emphatically “absolutely nothing.” Throughout the song, Starr details the evils of war, including “tears to thousands of mothers’ eyes” and the fact that a “young man” could be “disabled” or die. He tells us that “the point of war blows my mind” and questions the methods and motivations of those who “say we must fight to keep our freedom.” The disaffection expressed by Starr pervades nearly all popular songs about war which were created during or after the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War, in fact, inspired such overwhelmingly negative impressions among Americans that songs continued to be made about it and against it well after it had ended. Alice in Chain’s grunge rock song “Rooster,” for instance, released in 1993, nearly 20 years after the end of the Vietnam War, discusses the horrors of war in vivid detail and with a great deal of emotion in the lyrics, enhanced by the hard-driving guitars of the band (Cantrell, 1993, track 6). The singer, for instance, tells us all at once that he’s “got my pills against mosquito death / my buddy’s breathing his dying breath / oh God please won’t you help me make it through.” “Rooster” goes even further than most of the songs about the Vietnam War made at the time of the Vietnam War in not only its exploration of war itself but of the treatment of war veterans upon their return home to the United States. He tells us, for instance, that ‘they spit on me in my homeland.”

What is remarkable about the circumstances surrounding the production of “Rooster” is that the writer, Jerry Cantrell, wrote the song about his father’s experiences during the Vietnam War. The song is about an experience of the previous generation, yet the writer is able to make the experiences of that generation present and relevant through his lyrics. According to Rick Berg (1986), “the music industry sings its sad song of Vietnam to a generation that … knows little more about Vietnam and its victims than the media’s revised images” (p. 94).

The stamp of the Vietnam War and the tragedies that accompanied it on the American consciousness are evident even today in popular music. The ghost of the Vietnam War pervades the 2010 country song “Raymond” by Brett Eldredge, for instance, in spite of the song’s subject matter not being war (Eldredge, 2010). In the song, “Catherine Davis,” an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, mistakenly refers to the singer, one of her caretakers, by the name “Raymond.” We find out near the end of the song that “there’s a small white cross in Arlington / reads Raymond Davis, ‘71.” The implication, which is allowed to go unstated because of its obviousness to an American living in the post-Vietnam War era, is that her son was a soldier who had been killed in Vietnam in 1971.

The Vietnam War’s effect on the American consciousness is also evident in the treatment of the United States’ most recent wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in popular music. It is worth noting here that I could not find any popular songs which overtly expressed support for either of these wars. There are some that appear to do so, such as Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American),” often thought to be a pro-war anthem and frequently played as such (Keith, 2002, track 1). Keith himself has stated on several occasions, however, that he has never supported the war in Iraq and intended “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” and other songs he has made in a similar vein to be expressions of support for American soldiers rather than the wars they are currently engaged in fighting (Morales, 2009).

This differentiation between the soldier and the war the soldier is fighting has become a staple of recent antiwar music, whereas many earlier songs and other expressions of antiwar sentiments did not make such a distinction, or at least did not make it clearly. This new awareness of and focus on that distinction is largely the result of the abuse, such as that mentioned in the song “Rooster,” directed at returning veterans by antiwar individuals.

Some recent songs have even gone so far as to couch their antiwar message in a description of the thoughts of soldiers. One such song is Everlast’s 2008 folk/hip-hop song “Letters Home from the Garden of Stone” (Schrody, 2008, track 10). In the song, the singer explores themes that include fear, confusion, and patriotism in warfare, all expressed through the façade of a letter home written by a soldier at war in Iraq. Near the end of the song, Everlast seems to turn the patriotic pro-war bravado of George M. Cohan’s popular World War I song “Over There” on its head. Where Cohan tells his soldier to “make your mother proud of you / and the old red, white, and blue,” as cited previously, Everlast’s soldier seems to answer directly back to this charge when he asks his mother, “Do you think I should be fighting? / Ma, are you proud? Are you ashamed? / Really I’m trying to do the right thing / I hope my government can say the same.”

The gung-ho “Johnny” of “Over There” and the Green Beret who wants his son to grow up to be a Green Beret as well of “The Ballad of the Green Berets” has become the reluctant but good-intentioned doubter questioning his own participation in the war in “Letters Home from the Garden of Stone.” This new, somewhat ambivalent approach to songs about war is reflective of a generation of young men who have become soldiers but have been raised in the shadow of the Vietnam War. As a result, they view all war through the lens of the Vietnam War, including its tragedies and its ultimate failure in the eyes of the American public, which view permeates popular culture. The unpopularity and loss of the Vietnam War seems to have permanently altered the approach taken to war in popular music and popular culture in general to such a point that it is no longer possible to make a clearly pro-war song at all. The pro-war must instead be cast as pro-soldier while only the antiwar is allowed to be explicit. The experience of the realities of war has informed popular culture, which has in turn redefined perceptions of war among the public at large. This process by which events shape popular culture and popular culture then shapes perceptions and events has permanently altered the way that Americans view and engage in war in the modern world.

References

Berg, R. (Spring, 1986). Losing Vietnam: Covering the war in an age of technology Cultural critique, 3, 92-125.

Berlin, Irving. (1941). This is the army, mister jones [Recorded by Irving Berlin].

Cantrell, J. (1993). Rooster [Recorded by Alice in Chains]. On Dirt [CD]. New York, New York: Columbia Records.

Cohan, G. (1917). Over there [Recorded by B. Murray].

Eldredge, B. (2010). Raymond [Recorded by B. Eldredge]. On One way ticket [CD]. Nashville, Tenn.: Atlantic Nashville.

Keith, T. (2002). Courtesy of the red, white, and blue (The angry American) [Recorded by T. Keith]. On Unleashed [CD]. Nashville, Tenn.: DreamWorks Nashville.

Morales, T. (February 11, 2009). Toby Keith: Being Honest. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/05/earlyshow/leisure/music/main582006.shtml

Naddaff-Hafrey, N. and Trodd, Z. (2010). The turnaround point: Vietnam movies, protest literature, and the feedback-loop of contemporary American identity. In L. Wilson (Ed.), Americana: Readings in popular culture (2^nd ed.) (pp. 249-263). Hollywood: Press Americana.

Sadler, Barry and R. Moore. (1966). The ballad of the Green Berets [Recorded by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler]. On The ballads of the Green Berets [Vinyl record]. New York, New York: RCA.

Schrody, E. (2008). Letters home from the garden of stone [Recorded by Everlast]. On Love, war and the ghost of Whitey Ford [CD]. New York, New York: Martyr, Inc.

Wells, K.A. (2004). Music as war propaganda: Did music help win the first world war? Parlor Songs. Retrieved from: http://parlorsongs.com/issues/2004-4/thismonth/feature.php

Whitfield, N. and B. Strong. (1970). War [Recorded by E. Starr]. On War & peace [Vinyl record]. Detroit, Mich.: Gordy.

The end is near!

2012-01-10T16:38:00.005-05:00

From Fox News:

In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future, scientists today set the hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" forward one minute from two years ago.

"It is now five minutes to midnight," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) director Kennette Benedict announced today (Jan. 10) at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

That represents a symbolic step closer to doomsday, a change from the clock's previous mark of six minutes to midnight, set in January 2010.

The clock is a symbol of the threat of humanity's imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock's time, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focused on the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, disastrous events such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and biosecurity issues such as the creation of an airborne H5N1 flu strain.

The Doomsday Clock came into being in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. That year, the Bulletin set the time at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing humanity's destruction. By 1949, it was at three minutes to midnight as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated.

In 1953, after the first test of the hydrogen bomb, the doomsday clock ticked to two minutes until midnight.

The Bulletin — and the clock — were at their most optimistic in 1991, when the Cold War thawed and the United States and Russia began cutting their arsenals. That year, the Bulletin set the clock at 17 minutes to midnight.

From then until 2010, however, it was a gradual creep back toward destruction, as hopes of total nuclear disarmament vanished and threats of nuclear terrorism and climate change reared their heads. In 2010, the Bulletin found some hope in arms reduction treaties and international climate talks and nudged the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock back to six minutes from midnight from its previous post at five to midnight.

With today's decision, the Bulletin repudiated that optimism. The panel considers a mix of long-term trends and immediate events in the decision-making process, said Benedict. Trends might include factors like improved solar energy technology to combat climate change, she said, while political events such as the recent United Nations climate meeting in Durban play a role as well. This year, the Fukushima nuclear disaster made a big impression.

"We're trying to weight whether that was a wake-up call, whether it will make people take a closer look at this new and very powerful technology, or whether people will go on with business as usual," Benedict told LiveScience on Monday in an interview before the announcement of the "doomsday time" decision.

Other factors that played into the decision included the growing interest in nuclear power from countries such as Turkey, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, Benedict said.

The Bulletin panel found that despite hopes of global agreements about nuclear weapons, nuclear power and climate change in 2010, little progress has been made.

"The world still has approximately over 20,000 deployed nuclear weapons with enough power to destroy the world's inhabitants many times over," said Lawrence Krauss, an Arizona State University professor and the co-chair of the BAS Board of Sponsors. "We also have the prospect of nuclear weapons being used by terrorist non-state actors."

Likewise, talks on climate change have resulted in little progress, the panel found. In fact, politics seemed to trump science in discussions over the last two years, said Robert Socolow, a Princeton professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and a member of the Bulletin's Science and Security board.

"We need the political leadership to affirm the primacy of science as a way of knowing, or problems will be far worse than they are already," Socolow said.

And, for those who disagree with this move, here's why:

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