Watersblogged Archives

A reminder

2021-07-25T14:53:00.001-05:00

While I'm doing my best to import my subscriber list to the new site, for some reason it's tough going. To ensure that you continue to get new posts, please sign up again at https://robertwaters.wordpress.com.

My apologies for the inconvenience, but the Feedburner email subscriptions may only work for another week or so, and I have no idea why MailChimp is turning out to be so hard to integrate at the new site.

One MORE note

2021-07-15T20:11:00.002-05:00

Switching to a new mailing manager is proving to be an insurmountable obstacle. I have no idea if this is even going out by mail anymore, but if it is please sign up for my mail feed AND my RSS feed at https://robertwaters.wordpress.com.

Thanks, and my apologies for the inconvenience.

One last note

2021-07-05T22:24:00.004-05:00

Email subscriptions should continue without any problems. But it seems that people who have subscribed to my Atom and RSS feeds using a reader will have to resubscribe at the new site.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

This blog's new home

2021-07-05T20:13:00.000-05:00

This blog has MOVED to robertwaters.wordpress.com.

See you there!

Change of plans

2021-06-29T21:27:00.002-05:00

The new address for this blog will be robertwaters.wordpress.com. I decided that as nice as having a domain of my own might be, at this point it really isn't worth $96 a year. Maybe if I strike oil or gold or something.

Still working on the email subscription thing. I'm set up so that people can sign up to receive my posts by mail if they register at the site. I'm working on getting things set up so that my RSS feed can be picked up on a reader. The hurdle I'm trying to overcome right now is how to import this blog's current subscribers to the new site. I'm optimistic, but if worse comes to worst. you can always sign up again over at robertwaters.wordpress.com

In either case, once again, it's been a great run these 21 years at Blogspot, and I look forward to seeing you over at WordPress!

Moving day for this blog: July 1

2021-06-28T10:25:00.002-05:00

After 21 years here at Blogspot, Watersblogged is moving. As of July 1, the URL of this blog will be robertwaters.wordpress.com.

Blogger is intuitive, and for a guy who is more interested in content than in web geekery, that was compelling. But the options here are limited. The deciding factor was the decision by Feedburner, the Blogger utility that supplies the add-ons, to eliminate the option to subscribe by email was the deciding factor. Most of my subscribers subscribe by email. The rigamarole involved in integrating MailChimp or some similar service into Blogger pretty much eliminated the advantage of Blogger being more straightforward and more intuitive.

Moving a blog is a hassle, especially after 21 years. It won't be a smooth transition. There's a learning curve with WordPress, and it's going to take a while for me to figure things out. There may be an interruption in emails from Watersblogged. I'm hoping to just download my Feedburner subscriptions, but it may be more complicated than that. Please check in at robertwaters.wordpress.com if you notice a lapse- which, I acknowledge, might be difficult since I haven't been blogging much of late.

It's been a great run. I started this blog in 2000 after the networks used a flawed new system for projecting states to declare Al Gore in effect the winner early enough to suppress the Bush vote in Florida and elsewhere, throwing the popular vote to Gore and casting the result into doubt.,

I continued through my support of President Bush during his re-election campaign against John Kerry, and of John McCain, one of the finest men nominated by either party in my lifetime, and of Mitt Romney. Their competence and integrity stand in such sharp contrast to Donald Trump. I made the mistake of supporting the Second Gulf War and am still angered by the malicious chorus of "Bush lied!" when he acted based on the best information available to him, including the unanimous opinion of every Western intelligence service. But it was a mistake and a tragic one.

Then came the takeover of the Republican Party by an incompetent, mentally unstable authoritarian and conspiracy theorist, Donald Trump. He won the White House by an electoral fluke. Tens of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily because Trump allied himself with the virus. He spread massive and catastrophic misinformation and distrust of the medical experts. Trump set the Republican Party on an ugly course of malice, prejudice, and egotism that I believe has ruined it for all time as a serious option for sensible people. He alienated our allies and weakened America's position in the world. Trump subordinated America's interests to those of Russia and placing his own ego above every other consideration. He couldn't stand being a "loser," so he lied about the result of last year's election.

He joined Jefferson Davis in becoming the only president ever to lead an insurrection against the American government and constitution, egging on a mob to assault the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the votes of the Electoral College from being counted and his defeat being made official. And incredibly, thirty to forty percent of the American people believe him, as they've uncritically accepted all his other transparent and even murderous lies.

Donald Trump is beyond question the most unfit president we've ever had and the worst. It will take us decades to recover from the disaster of his four years in a position for which he was wholly and radically unsuited.

In 2016, this blog and I were firmly in the corner of Ey van McMullin, the former CIA officer and advisor to the House Republican caucus who answered the call of history and gave decent conservatives somebody to vote for other than Trump and Hillary Clinton. The effort was doomed from the outset, but I have never been as proud of any vote I've ever cast in my life as I am of my vote for Evan.

Then came COVID, the incredible support of Trump by so many American Christians (primarily based on his court appointments and professed opposition to abortion), and the revelation of how shallow and transparent the "pro-life" sentiment of so many of them actually was. They believed and supported his misinformation and outright lies about the pandemic. They brazenly valued the economy above the lives of their fellow Americans. They resisted obvious, common-sense public health precautions like lockdowns, wearing masks in public, and social distancing. And now, many not only refuse to be vaccinated but try to convince others not to be. Thanks to the availability of vaccines facilitated by the election of a competent new president, we stand on the brink of herd immunity. I'm forced to wonder how many more unnecessary deaths will we see because of the ignorance, prejudice, and misinformation let loose by an incompetent and mentally unstable president.

The Republican Party is dead as a serious political party. Our democracy can't survive without a viable second party, a center-right party, to provide sane opposition to the Democrats. It will probably be many years before the Republican Party completes its death spiral and a successor can be born. In the meantime, this blog and I will continue to speak out for the principles the Republican Party once stood for, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower and, yes, Ronald Reagan.

Whether that means staying in the political wilderness as independents or becoming "Red Dog Democrats" in practice, if not, in fact, a great many of us are still trying to work out. But there's no escaping the fact that a great deal has changed in the last 21 years.

Pro-life, indeed!

I've made plenty of mistakes during the past 21 years besides supporting the Gulf War. Like many others, I bought into the lie that abortion could be dealt with by political means when the real battle must be in the hearts and minds of the large majority of Americans whose attitude toward abortion is more permissive than my own. We now have a pro-life super-majority on the Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned by that majority. It may be modified to some extent. But the real battle is a battle of ideas and human hearts, not of laws and political power. They will follow in due course when the true struggle has been won.

My beliefs about abortion have not changed. But I will no longer allow them to override Christian charity and basic humanity in other areas when deciding how to vote. And I will no longer put the cart before the horse.

I opposed same-sex marriage. I continue to believe not only as a religious matter but as a matter of history and common sense that the purpose of marriage is the begetting and raising of children. Gay and lesbian couples can do the second, but they cannot do the first without outside help. Marriage has been vastly weakened by changing sexual mores. I continue to fear that separating marriage from a large part of its rationale may further undermine it. But I have given too little attention to the right of gay and lesbian couples to have their relationships treated with dignity and respect.

And I make no apologies for having voted for Joe Biden last November. I had no alternative. Neither did any other American who was thinking straight and who valued our most basic American values. Donald Trump had to be beaten, and the imperative continues to defeat the monstrous, anti-democratic thing he has made of the Republican Party. I passionately disagree with Mr. Biden about many things. But he is a decent and reasonable man. The same cannot be said of his opponents either on the right or the left.

Yes, I'm in a different place than I was 21 years ago. So are we all. After thinking matters over, I've decided to leave this blog up and not import its content to WordPress. I'll start over fresh there. It's time for a fresh start.

I haven't changed, really. But the nation has. The party for whose success I once worked has. It's time for a fresh start in many ways. The battle continues, but it has evolved. New issues have arisen; old alliances have fallen apart, and new ones have taken their place. I expect American politics to remain in a state of flux for a long time, possibly for the rest of my life.

But I believe that God is in control. His purposes will prevail. Our role is the one Lincoln outlined in his Second Inaugural Address:

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations

...and leave the rest to Him.

See you over at robertelartwaters.com.

The radical right's lies about those Fauci emails

2021-06-14T16:43:00.017-05:00

Every far-right zealot from Tucker Carlson to your local anti-vax tinfoil-hatter has been calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci's head recently because of emails released under the Freedom of Information Act. The emails were made public because of applications from the Washington Post and BuzzFeed News. They covered January through June of 2020, during the earliest period of the COVID outbreak in the United States.

There's nothing new about the lunatic fringe gunning for Dr. Fauci. After all, he's the guy who stood in the breach during Donald Trump's long reign of error and misinformation about COVID-19. It was Dr. Fauci who made sure that the truth was available to us despite the Former Guy's lurid fantasies and self-serving (and self-defeating) campaign to keep the economy open no matter how many human lives it cost. But as Josef Goebbels knew so very well, if you repeat a lie often enough and loudly enough, people are going to believe it. Such is the case with the Fauci emails. The lies being spread about them are whoppers, but they have been repeated so often that they are widely accepted as established facts.

Here are the actual facts, which have been rather severely obscured by the innuendos and outright fabrications of those determined to discredit Dr. Fauci. Unfortunately, this group includes several U.S. senators.

The most widely repeated (and believed) lie being spread by the tinfoil-hatters is that this email from Dr. Kristian Anderson somehow indicates that Fauci "knew" that the virus was, or at least "looked," genetically engineered rather than occurring naturally through the evolutionary process. It is an article of faith on the far right that the email is a "smoking gun," proving that Dr. Fauci "knew" that the virus was, or at least "looked," bioengineered.

True, Dr. Anderson said in the email was that he and several other scientists "find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory." But that is where the extremists stop reading. He immediately goes on to say, "But we have to look at this much more closely, and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change."

And after further analysis, they did change. Anderson and others published an article in Nature Medicine on St. Patrick's Day, which unequivocally stated that "Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin... However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible." Apparently, the aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 genome which initially struck Dr. Anderson and others as evidence of genetic manipulation turned out to be shared by naturally occurring coronaviruses!

In fact, Dr. Anderson states that his opinion and that of his colleagues changed "within days" of his email to Dr. Fauci due to further examination of the data. And no wonder! Far-right columnist Laura Ingram explains all this by claiming that Dr. Anderson and the others were "influenced" somehow by Dr. Fauci. In fact, they were "influenced" by professional caution and strict adherence to the scientific method.

But conspiracy theorists gonna conspiracy theorize.

Nobody has ever wholly excluded the possibility that the virus could have been manufactured. But the conclusion finally reached by Dr. Anderson and by the consensus of scientists studying the matter was exactly what Dr. Fauci said all along. Dr. Anderson tweeted on June 1, "As I have said many times, we seriously considered a lab leak a possibility. However, significant new data, extensive analyses, and many discussions led to the conclusions in our paper."

In short, what Dr. Fauci is actually being criticized for is not immediately going public with a sensational (and, as it turned out, baseless) claim that the virus was bioengineered and escaped from a lab even though those who had noticed a "suspicious" part of the COVID genome comprising less than 0.1% of the genome emphasized that it was far too early to draw such a conclusion! And in fact, they reversed their position within days of Dr. Anderson's email upon comparing the SARS-CoV-2 genome with that of other coronaviruses that occurred in nature! Dr. Fauci is among the overwhelming majority of epidemiologists who have consistently stated that the virus's origin is unknown and needs further investigation. But the overwhelming consensus in the field remains that an origin in the laboratory is unlikely.

Gateway Pundit has claimed that Dr. Fauci "knew" that hydroxychloroquine- an anti-malarial drug since conclusively demonstrated to be useless against COVID-19 despite being heavily touted by former President Trump- actually worked. The claim is based on the fact that Dr. Fauci passed emails singing the praises of hydroxychloroquine on an anecdotal basis on to others for "further study."

That's it. Nothing more. And Dr. Fauci's public position had always been that such anecdotal claims should be investigated.

And then, there's the matter of the masks.

Somehow the anti-mask crowd never got the memo that masks were never intended primarily to protect people from getting COVID themselves, despite several studies showing that they have done a pretty good job of it. In fact, a recent study shows that those who regularly wore masks in public came down with COVID half as often as those who never wore them. The primary purpose of masks was always to prevent those who were, or might be, infected from infecting others.

This email from Dr. Fauci early in the pandemic is consistent with the advice that he, the CDC, and others gave early in the pandemic and which anti-maskers themselves have consistently repeated, though missing the critical point that masks have always been known to be effective in preventing an infected person from infecting others. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is small enough to penetrate the pores in a standard cloth or paper mask, though as Dr. Fauci notes in the email, masks are pretty effective in blocking the droplets which contain the virus. As the pandemic wore on, we learned more and more about the virus, including the fact that it is almost always transmitted through airborne droplets. From what we know now, it makes sense that masks would be more effective in actually preventing a person from getting COVID than Dr. Fauci and pretty much everyone else thought at the time.

No, Dr. Fauci did not "lie" about masks. But unlike the anti-maskers and others on #TeamVirus, he, the CDC, and others did learn. His detractors should try it once in a while!

It is not true, as Rep. Lauren Boebert infamously tweeted, that "Fauci lied." Sadly, the unwillingness of the blind followers of our COVID-denying former president to heed the evidence and learn as Dr. Fauci did has undoubtedly cost the lives of tens of thousands of Americans who listened to them and failed to take an effective and straightforward step like wearing a mask or were infected by asymptomatic carriers who thought they knew better than the experts.

In short, the claims being made by the likes of Tucker Carlson and others that Dr. Fauci was in any way deceptive or inaccurate in his advice are distortions of the facts every bit as egregious as those perpetrated by Donald Trump and his followers during this pandemic. They, and not Dr. Fauci, have blood on their hands.

Picking on Mollie some more

2021-06-01T12:22:00.006-05:00

As I've noted before, Mollie Hemingway- the scourge of the dishonest and inaccurate liberal media- has gone on and on for the past year about how the Lafayette Square demonstration that was broken up a year ago so that our crazy former president could pose in front of an Episcopal church awkwardly holding an unfamiliar book- the Bible- wasn't really peaceful (and in fact there were minor and isolated incidents of violence) and was not, in fact, dispersed by the use of tear gas. She has seemed quite certain about that and has ruthlessly savaged said liberal media for continuing to say otherwise.

The problem is that the DC police have now admitted in open court that tear gas was, in fact, used. Violence by that particular crowd on that particular day was not used as a justification.

I am hopeful that Mollie, senior editor of the once-respectable conservative publication known as The Federalist that has long since degenerated into the status of extremist crackpot publication, will once again display her passion for journalistic accuracy by publicly retracting her claim.

Yikes! Mollie Hemingway and the Big Lie

2021-05-14T16:05:00.004-05:00

Back in 2004 and 2005, I lived for about a year in the Washington, D.C., area. It was a tough time in my life, and I can't say that I enjoyed it as much as I would have otherwise, but in most ways, it was a wonderful experience for a political junkie and history buff like me.

Not least among the good things was my membership at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Va. A good church home is a helpful thing to have in rough times, and Immanuel fits the bill. It has a great pastor, Rev. Christopher Esget, one of the best preachers I've ever heard. And it's hands down the most thoughtfully liturgical church I've ever attended. I agree with a comment a congressional staffer who went there made one Sunday about Immanuel's combination of sound, biblical preaching- evangelical, in the best sense of the world- and intentionally meaningful adherence to the historic liturgical tradition of the Western Church: "It's a shame more people don't realize that they have this option." A Sunday morning at Immanuel was a rich spiritual experience that provided a lot of sustenance and support.

An interesting sidelight was that Tim Goeglein, President Bush's liaison to the Evangelical community, was a deacon at Immanuel. Another member was a heroine of mine, Mollie Ziegler. Mollie was an incredibly bright, forceful, insightful journalist whose writings on the intersection of faith and public life were terrific, and of whom I was a particular fan because she is a fellow confessional Lutheran. She did the best piece on the argument against LCMS participation in the Yankee Stadium interfaith service following 9/11, I read.

Not that there were many of them. Americans, in general, just don't "get" the idea that joining in a public worship service with members of another religion is effectively saying that the differences between the two faiths don't matter and even see the idea as somewhat intolerant. In fact, they tend to be rather intolerant of the historic Christian position themselves. Bill O'Reilly couldn't find a Lutheran to defend the decision of the LCMS to discipline one of its bishops for participating in the service. He would have done well to have asked Mollie Ziegler.

Mollie subsequently married fellow conservative columnist Mark Hemingway and became a mom several times. I can't say I knew Mollie well, but we talked on Sunday mornings and exchanged emails several times after I moved back to Iowa. She was nice enough to compliment me on a few items in this blog, including my report of the doings in my precinct in the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses.

As I recall, she was appropriately squeamish about Donald Trump in 2016. I was disappointed but not surprised when she became one of his supporters once he took office. We Americans, after all, are quick to choose sides between right and left, Democrat and Republican, and in some ways to see the people who make the opposite choice as "the enemy." Many of my friends and relatives judged that Trump was less of a threat to the country than the liberals were and sooner or later fell into line despite his obvious unfitness to hold the office. I knew enough about Trump and his personality and history to recognize him from the beginning as a far greater threat to the country than even Hillary, whom I had disliked and feared ever since she emerged on the national scene, or even somebody like Bernie Sanders. Bernie, after all, was sane, though eccentric, and would likely have faced so much opposition to his radical ideas even within his own party that he would never have gotten most of his program adopted.

Not that I would have relished a President Sanders, either.

My dismay over the degree that my fellow LCMS Lutherans have fallen in line behind Trump has always been profound. Again, on the one hand, I was not surprised. Lutherans, and Missouri Lutherans in particular, are overwhelmingly Republican and very conservative. It didn't register at the time, but there is also a deep authoritarian streak in LCMS Lutherans. I'm a social conservative raised a Republican by a man whose middle name was McKinley but was not so profoundly ideological that he let philosophy totally outweigh character and even his beliefs on specific items of policy. He was definitely not an authoritarian.

I don't watch Fox News. I no longer rely on television for my new coverage at all. My source is the Internet. I get all sorts of newsletters in my email, and I listen to podcasts and consult various websites. I heard that Mollie had become a regular on Fox News. While I disagreed with the positions I heard she was taking, I was glad to see her career prospering.

Mollie and I were Facebook friends and followed each other on Twitter. I often found myself defending her on the latter from attacks by people I frankly agreed with on the issues. But I became increasingly disturbed by the degree to which Mollie's pro-Trump partisanship seemed to me to overcome her objectivity. I didn't hesitate to tell her that.

Eventually, it got to the point where it was hard for me to reconcile Mollie's intelligence and common sense with the things she was tweeting. It seemed evident that her ideological blinders were adversely affecting her judgment. It finally got so bad that I confronted her on Twitter about my perception that her intellectual integrity was suffering.

The issue came to a head on a matter- I don't remember precisely which- on which she not only espoused what struck me as a wrong-headed position but misstated the facts- in the context of attacking the mainstream media for not telling the truth!

I was blunt, perhaps blunter than I should have been. I frankly raised the question of Mollie's intellectual integrity. "Yikes!" she replied and accused me of lacking charity toward those with whom I disagreed politically.

I pointed out that this was a strange reaction from someone who was not only a supporter of Donald Trump but who had just accused most of her colleagues in the media of lying!

I absolutely agree with Mollie about the bias of the liberal media. But I think I'm a bit more charitable than she is. I don't believe that they deliberately lie any more than I believe that Mollie does- except to herself. As I see it, the problem is that the media consists mainly of people with similar backgrounds and beliefs who live in an echo chamber. Their reporting reflects a distorted reality, but not because they're lying. They simply share the same prejudices with pretty much everyone they associate with, and as a result, don't recognize them as prejudices.

I don't think Mollie consciously lies, either- even in her support of the most prolific liar in the history of American politics. But I firmly believe that, like a whole lot of people on the right (and the left as well, for that matter), she has let partisanship badly warp her perception of reality.

I've emailed Mollie about the degree to which it seems to me that she has changed. She hasn't responded. I've long since unfriended her on Facebook and stopped following her on Twitter. Reading the things she was tweeting was just too depressing.

Her coverage of the COVID pandemic and that of The Federalist, of which she is senior editor, has been horrific. Mollie and her publication are prime examples of how people who make much of their pro-life stance on abortion seem in practice to value the economy more highly than human life. Early in the pandemic, The Federalist ran an article that advocated in effect letting the virus run wild to save the economy (and parenthetically, preserve the re-election prospects of an unpopular president whose main talking point was prosperity). It was an incredibly irresponsible article. If put into effect, epidemiologists suggested that the policy it advocated would have resulted in at least a million COVID deaths in America alone. The article caused Twitter to temporarily suspend its account.

Mollie and The Federalist have continued, along with Trump himself, to effectively ally themselves with the virus ever since. This is a serious matter. Possibly tens of thousands of Americans have died unnecessarily because of the attitude toward the pandemic Trump, Mollie, and her publication have promoted. COVID-19 is not, as The Federalist has insisted on calling it, "the Wuhan Flu," or flu of any kind. We've sustained half a million American deaths as it is. COVID may not be among the deadliest viruses in history, but it is one of the most contagious. The misinformation spread by COVID deniers has been massively lethal.

And now, the other shoe has dropped. Mollie has a new book coming out on Sept. 21. Its title is Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections. I feel obligated, somehow, to read it, although I'm not going to pay for the privilege. Having defended Trump's previous lies, it seems that Mollie is now supporting the biggest of his whoppers: the lie that a massively unpopular, unfit, and mentally ill president was cheated out of a second term.

It makes me very, very sad.

The Party of Lies and a champion of the truth

2021-05-12T14:31:00.009-05:00

Liz Cheney is not willing to tolerate the lie that Joe Biden stole last year's election, and she lost her position in the Republican leadership as a result.

She could have lobbied her colleagues in an attempt to save her job. But she didn't. She knew that it wouldn't have helped.

Cheney understands where the Republican Party is right now. I doubt that she's under any illusions about changing that. But she has decided to stand on her principles and go down fighting for what she knows to be right rather than surrender her conscience to the Orange God-Emperor at Mar-a-Lago.

It will be interesting to see whether she's re-elected. I personally have my doubts. This is Profiles in Courage stuff.

Win or lose next year, she might very well run for President as a Republican in 2024. It would be a hopeless crusade. The party is not likely to be any more rational in 2024 than it is right now. It would almost be worth re-registering as a Republican just to stand with her in the fight, though. Of course, the Republican Party is doomed. It's beyond fixing. But any way you look at it, today's vote by the House Republican caucus to oust its chair for insisting on the truth is a critical step in the inevitable process of replacing it.

It's too early for a conservative third party to succeed. There is always the danger that it might split the votes of the "coalition of the decent" with Joe Biden and get a more intelligent version of Trump elected next time. As the birth pangs of the Republican Party showed, the gestation period for a new party takes decades even if, like the Whigs in their day and the Know-Nothing Republicans in ours, one of the two major parties is moribund. But especially if President Biden doesn't seek re-election and the Democrats nominate someone further to the left, the danger is also there that decent conservatives might find themselves unable to vote for either major party's nominee. We could be back in the same soup we were stewing in in 2016.

This time, having somebody of Liz Cheney's stature to fill the role Evan McMullin and Gary Johnson did back then would doubtless have a greater impact. It's hard to know how it all will play out. But it's clear that the orphans of the sane and decent right no longer have merely champions here and there like Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and Larry Hogan and Jeff Flake. We have a leader.

And today, Liz Cheney paid the price for being a leader. It might end her political career, but it could very well be the making of an enviable role in our nation's history.

That's not exactly egg on Des Moines' face

2021-05-06T11:30:00.006-05:00

The name "Chicago" probably comes from a Native American word meaning "skunk cabbages," "wild onions," or in any case, some form of foul-smelling plant that grew in profusion on the banks of Lake Michigan long ago. But it seems that the name of my adopted hometown has an even more embarrassing origin.

Officially, Des Moines gets its name from the French for "of the monks," supposedly derived from the river's name. It is claimed that some monks once lived on its banks. Another story says that the river and the city get their name from the French word for "average." According to the secondary origin story, some Frenchman described the waterway as "an average river," and the name stuck.

But linguistic research has revealed another rather embarrassing origin story for our fair city's name. Turns out it might derive from a 330-year-old practical joke.

In 1673 Father Jacques Marquette met some representatives of the Peoria tribe near the mouth of the modern-day Des Moines River. He asked them the name of the rival tribe that lived near the confluence of that river and another one, known today as the Raccoon. The Peoria told him that tribe was called the Moingoana, which became the root for the word 'Moines.' Add the French article, of course, and the name becomes "Des Moingoana," and ultimately (or so the story goes), "Des Moines."

Researcher Michael McCafferty of Indiana University, while studying the now extinct Miami-Illinois language, discovered that Moingoana, translated literally, is a rather crude insult suggesting a close association between excrement and one's visage. Evidently, the Peoria were having a little fun at their rival's expense.

The city of Des Moines has not yet acknowledged the true meaning of its name for some reason. Of course, it would leave us with something more pungent than egg on our faces.

Liz Cheney is in trouble with the crazies again

2021-05-01T10:39:00.001-05:00

House Republican Caucus Chair Liz Cheney is facing renewed criticism from the ranks for her insistence that it's time for the GOP to move on from the Orange Toddler. Despite turning back a challenge to her leadership position recently, some House Republicans suggest that she'll be ousted from it within a month.

Cheney, who refuses to rule out a run for the White House in 2024, certainly has courage and integrity. Between her and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, traditional Republican conservatives are almost sure to have a candidate to head up an attempt to re-take the party three years hence. The problem is that the party's rank-and-file- voters as well as members of Congress- have so completely lost touch with reality that it's hard to see how anybody sane could have even an outside chance of winning the nomination.

Perhaps she (and maybe Gov. Hogan) think that the Trumpified candidates will split the crazy vote among them and open up a path for a minority viewpoint to win out just as it did with Trump himself in 2016. That would almost certainly lead to a breakaway movement by the goofy, nativist, racist, authoritarian majority, leaving Cheney or Hogan with a nomination but no party to go with it. Polls indicate that a substantial percentage of the Republican electorate already think that the GOP isn't Trumpy enough. If our utterly unfit former president says the word, a MAGA party would be a done deal.

That would be one way to save the GOP, of course. Whether there would be anything more worth saving left of it than there is now is another matter.

Still, it's worth celebrating people like Liz Cheney and Larry Hogan (as well as sane Republicans like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and a few others) who have the intelligence, the patriotism, and the integrity to stand against the intellectual and moral darkness. I continue to firmly believe that one way or another, sane conservatives are going to have to separate themselves from the bigots and nut jobs and form a different party. The survival of the movement and the well-being of the Republic both demand it. Maybe if the nativists and authoritarians start their own party, eventually the GOP can not only become the party of Lincoln and Reagan again, but a respectable thing a person with a mind and a conscience can be a part of without embarrassment or compromise

This blog is moving

2021-04-15T21:54:00.002-05:00

Since Feedburner has decided to eliminate the option of offering email subscriptions to this blog, and since I am now unable to even activate the service with this template despite the service not being terminated until July, after sixteen years, Watersblogged will be leaving Blogger and Blogspot shortly, probably for WordPress.com. This blog will remain up, however, and prominently feature a notice redirecting people to its new location.

Watch the blog for further announcements. The move will probably happen in the very near future.

Leaving Afghanistan is a tragic blunder

2021-04-15T21:16:00.012-05:00

If you haven't seen Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson's War, I recommend it. It's a true story about how an obscure and not necessarily all that ethical congressman got the fedayeen in Afghanistan American aid sufficient for them to kick the Russians out and, arguably, played a significant role in bringing down the Soviet Union.

At the end of the film, there's a sad postscript pointing out that once the Russians were out, we lost interest- and the Taliban took over.

Then came 9/1l, and the decision by the Taliban to shield Osama bin Laden. We responded by going to war and kicking the Taliban out, putting in power a regime that, though imperfectly democratic in many ways, wasn't corrupt and wasn't run by militant Islamic terrorists. The "forever war" in Afghanistan- the longest in our history- has been an effort to keep the Taliban terrorists out of power in Afghanistan, 2,352 Americans have died in this "endless war." By contrast, some 57,000 died in Vietnam. 128,650 Americans died in Korea. 116,516 killed in World War I, and 670,846 died in World War II. As wars go, while Afghanistan's conflict has been long, it has not been terribly costly.

But General Giap, the North Vietnamese army leader, once explained his country's victory over the United States very simply. Democracies, he said, lack the patience and staying power to continue conflicts for the long haul. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong defeated the United States in Vietnam simply by waiting us out. We lost interest. They did not.

We're doing it again in Afghanistan. Donald Trump buys into the same idiotic isolationism as do the Pauls, Pat Buchanan, and others on the goofiest fringes of the American right. As a result, he decided to throw in the towel in a war that it's very much in America's interest to win, that we are winning- and which has been waged at a cost that has been relatively low as the butcher's bill in our wars has historically gone.

Obviously, a Gold Star mother or widow whose son or husband died in Afghanistan would see the price we paid in a different light. But the bottom line is that we're throwing in the towel because we're tired of being at war in Afghanistan. It has nothing to do with casualties. It has everything to do with Gen. Giap's insight about the short attention span of democracies and their lack of appetite for prolonged struggles.

President Biden has been critical of our involvement in Afghanistan for a long time. He has decided to follow through on the Trump administration's decision to give up. The consequences of our throwing in the towel are easily predictable. Without the United States in the fight, the people who shielded Osama bin Laden will be running things once again and be actively involved in terrorism against the United States and the West.

Yes, the war in Afghanistan has gone on for a long time. Yes, if we stayed the course, it would have gone on for a long time to come, But the decision to leave Afghanistan is a geopolitical blunder of the first magnitude. The consequences are inevitable.

American heads will roll- literally, having been severed by Taliban or al Quaeda knives- because of this decision. And it's frustrating as hell that even though there are people like Gen. Petraeus who warn us of what we're letting ourselves in for, both of our major political parties are showing the white flag- and the white feather.

If only nations could be put on Ritalin.

ADDENDUM: Here is an excellent article on the likely consequences of our abandoning our allies in Afghanistan. We seem to be developing a reputation for abandoning our partners. That is not a good thing. Makes people less than enthused about being our allies, for one thing.

ADDENDUM II: Thomas Joscelyn of Vital Interests thinks that Mr. Biden is right about leaving Afghanistan, though for psychological rather than geopolitical reasons. Yet his article in The Dispatch demolishes the president's argument for withdrawing and draws a realistic scenario of the likely consequences.

The Good Friday (and Easter?) of the American Church

2021-04-07T14:43:00.009-05:00

America is "losing its religion." For the first time in modern America's history, only a minority of us belong to a church or synagogue.

This is a trend that's been underway since the turn of the Millenium- and actually, I would argue, long before. Traditional Christian values and ethical beliefs have been held by an ever-shrinking number even of church members for a very long time. I was dealing with it as a parish pastor back in the 'Eighties. And large majorities of the American people- including whole Christian denominations- have completely rejected biblical sexual ethics and convictions regarding the sanctity of human life.

Even denominations that pride themselves on being "pro-life" tolerate and even promote COVID skepticism and the refusal of professing Christians to personally take responsible actions to prevent becoming vectors of the virus, like wearing a mask or practicing social distancing.

Christians need to give up the corrupting and false sense of themselves as embodying and even dictating cultural norms. We are called to be outsiders, to be marginalized eccentrics. We need to rid ourselves of the insidious drive to "re-Christianize" society through legislation and political power. It has caused the Church to be increasingly mean-spirited, self-righteous, and dishonest. I've been warning for at least the past five years that it was driving people away from the Church and Christ in droves and making Christianity seen more and more by people outside and on the fringes of the Church as a repellant exercise in hypocrisy.

"Christ against culture" thinking runs counter to the historical Lutheran impulse and my own preferences. Still, it's becoming more evident and more apparent to me that we have no choice but to embrace "the Benedict Option."

We need to embrace political weakness and social marginalization and foster a tightly-knit, well-catechized, closely disciplined and committed community of weirdos that's hard to join and expects its teachings to be embraced and practiced by its members. We need to do what the first Christians did and attract outsiders not so much by evangelism programs as by our evident conviction and personal example.

We are called to make disciples, not members. We need to be willing to shrink if that's what it means to be faithful. We need to stop defining success by numbers. Remember how John 6 ends? "After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, 'Do you want to go away as well?' Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.'”

The Roman emperor who did the most damage to the Church wasn't Nero or Diocletian. It was Constantine. It's becoming more evident and more apparent that embracing a role as a small, militant, and committed- though politically powerless- group of eccentrics is our only course. And we need to stop being such damned hypocrites. If we're going to treat human life as sacred, we need to be consistent about it, the way the Early Church was. If we're going to preach love, we need to stop being transparently motivated by prejudice and hate. We're going to need more Dietrich Bonhoeffer and less Eric Metaxas, to say nothing of Joel Osteen.

And we need to ponder Paul's observation that when we are weak, it is then that we are strong. The way things are going, we have no choice but to become a marginalized minority again.

The question is whether we're going to see God's hand in what's going on and embrace what we're being called to with increasing clarity. The only other choice is to continue to be salt without savor, fit for nothing but to be thrown on the ground and trodden underfoot- and increasingly seen to be such by everyone but ourselves.

Wanted: nuanced, thoughtful, well-reasoned reactions to stuff

2021-04-05T10:33:00.002-05:00

The new Georgia election law is pretty awful- even though, as no less a source than the Washington Post points out, it isn't quite as bad as President Biden and many others to the left of dead-center claim. I have no problem with Georgia-based companies like Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola condemning it.

And it's hard to resist the urge to cheer Major League Baseball for moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to the passage of a law whose primary effect (intent?) is to disenfranchise people. Except for one thing: the Georgia legislature isn't going to be hurt by that decision. If anything, it gives the loony right politicians responsible for the new law a useful issue to feed their poor, persecuted, white constituents about how picked on they are.

The people it will hurt are the ordinary Georgians who work in the restaurants and hotels that will lose anticipated business because of the MLB decision, or who would have sold souvenirs, or benefited in other ways from the increased tourism the All-Star Game would have brought to Atlanta. Many of them are the very African-American voters the new law is intended to discriminate against.

Ok. I grant that due to COVID, all that is less true this year than it would be in ordinary years. But in principle, the point still stands. I am not a fan of politically-inspired boycotts precisely because the people they end up hurting the most are not the people whose behavior inspires them but innocent folks who haven't done anything wrong. I grant, however, that it makes those who engage in those boycotts feel righteous and smug.

Occasionally- not always- they may also, I grant, generate sufficient economic pressure to actually achieve results. But they always hurt innocent people who are just trying to make a living the most. Such boycotts are generally the tools of the left. However, the hypocritical Trumpian counter-cancel-culture exemplified by our disgraced former president's attempts to start boycotts of Delta and Coke proves that conservatives and reactionaries, too, are prone to engage in them at times. Still, it would be a wonderful thing if "progressives" would react to situations like this with as much concern for the damage boycotts do to innocent people, including many of the very people the Georgia law discriminates against, as they have for virtue-signaling and smug if ultimately impotent self-righteousness.

Predictably, the Trumpist right is treating the whole matter at something like a second-grade intellectual level. I really don't think Donald Trump realized- or cared- that his proposal to make journalists and news media subject to lawsuits for "intentionally false" stories would effectively eliminate freedom of the press. After all, it would require judges or juries or somebody to rule not only on whether a story was false but whether it was intentionally so. As a practical matter, that would give them the power to penalize and even bankrupt any writer or publication they disagreed with!

On the other hand, maybe Trump did realize that. Given the authoritarian values he has displayed throughout his public career, that may even have been the point- if one grants the questionable premise that he's smart enough to have even thought of that.

Now Trump sycophant Josh Hawley has mooted the similarly hare-brained idea of requiring the government to pass on the impartiality of social media moderation and to revoke the legal immunity of platforms that fail that inherently biased test for the things people who use them say. In fact, Hawley has actually introduced a bill to do that. The same question applies here as with Trump's idea: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ("Who guards the guards themselves?" or "Who watches the watchmen?").

Not that Trump and Hawley and the right are engaged in promoting a "cancel culture," or anything.

Like many (most?) political controversies these days, everybody is wrong on this one. Yeah, President Biden and the left are probably less wrong than the folks who want to disenfranchise people who are unlikely to vote for them and want the power to legally penalize people who criticize or disagree with them. But one of the many serious consequences of our political polarization is that nuanced positions are out of style, and nobody bothers to think things through anymore.

In Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy told the story of a congressman who walked onto the House one day to find it enmeshed in a credentials battle between two men who each claimed to be the duly-elected representative from the same district. Being unfamiliar with the details, he asked a trusted colleague about it.

"It's a case of two damned scoundrels," the other congressman replied. "Yes," the first one rejoined. "But which one is our damned scoundrel?"

Yeah, I chuckled, too, when I read that story. But at the same time, I can't help but think that there ought to be more substantial and carefully considered reactions to political events. And when our response to pretty much any issue that comes up is to ask not what is intelligent or just or reasonable but what constitutes a win for our side, we as a nation are in big, big trouble.

"...And yours shall be like victory..."

2021-04-03T22:59:00.001-05:00

"With High Delight Let Us Unite," Lutheran Service Book #483

1. With high delight, let us unite

In songs of sweet jubilation.

You pure in heart, each take your part,

Sing Jesus Christ, our salvation.

To set us free forever, he

Is risen and sends to all earth's ends

Good news to save every nation.

2. True God, He first from death has burst

Forth into life, all subduing.

His enemy shall vanquished lie;

His death has been death's undoing.

"And yours shall be like victory

O'er death and grave," said He, who gave

His life for us, life renewing.

3. Let praises ring; give thanks, and bring

To Christ our Lord adoration!

His honor speed by word and deed

To every land, every nation.

So shall his love give us above,

From misery and death set free,

All joy and full consolation.

On this day in 33 A.D...

2021-04-03T21:30:00.006-05:00

A very strange passage in 1 Peter 3 says, " For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him."

The pseudepigraphical Gospel of Nicodemus says that Jesus entered hell in order to liberate Adam and Eve and the patriarchs, a problematic interpretation not only because it would be surprising for people like Noah and Abraham to have gone to hell in the first place but because in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus Jesus has Abraham himself speak of a vast gulf between heaven and hell that cannot be crossed.

Seems a stretch. I very, very big stretch.

The Apostle's Creed mentions Christ's descent "into hell-¨or ¨to the dead,¨ since the Greek word "hades," like the Hebrew ¨sheol,´ can simply mean the realm of the dead. Some Reformed theologians understand the phrase to be a poetic reference to His intense suffering. Lutherans, however, point out that Jesus called out ¨It is finished!¨ or ¨It is accomplished!¨ from the cross, and are inclined to see the reference being to a victorious descent into the realm of Old Nick to proclaim His victory on the Enemy´s home turf, much in the manner of a conqueror entering the capital of a defeated enemy in triumph.

Anyway, the picture above of the Harrowing of Hell is from a Thirteenth or Fourteenth Century diptych from the region of Palermo in Italy. It has Jesus literally walking all over Old Scratch.

The "empty Easter cross" myth

2021-04-03T08:46:00.008-05:00

American Protestants often rationalize their aversion to the crucifix by claiming that the empty cross symbolizes the resurrection. That, of course, is nonsense. If Jesus had rotted away in the tomb, the cross would still have been empty.

Actually, the crucifix symbolizes the scandalous fact that this visible, touchable human being is truly God, with all the prerogatives of being God available to Him- and truly present in the Eucharist. That is why Reformed Protestantism originally objected to putting the corpus on the cross. In its bondage to Platonic categories, it can't finally handle the implications of the Incarnation.

There is no logic in insisting that His presence in the Supper is only symbolic unless one wants to deny the Incarnation itself. No, the human nature of Christ doesn't assume the attributes of the divine nature. It's just that Jesus Himself has the attributes of both. And you can't have one nature without also having the other.

This is why I, as a Lutheran, wear a crucifix around my neck and so many Lutheran churches have them on their altars. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with having an empty cross, either- as long as it isn't meant to symbolize the Nestorian heresy, that is.

It's just Chalcedon, folks. You shouldn't confuse or conflate the two natures, but neither can you separate them. Where the human is, there is the divine- and vice versa.

Two natures- but only one Jesus. Two natures always to be distinguished- but never to be separated.

With His wounds we are healed

2021-04-02T06:20:00.002-05:00

A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth, Lutheran Service Book #438

As Homer Simpson might say, "Dough!"

2021-04-01T09:52:00.006-05:00

Happy Atheist's Day (Psalm 14:1)!

Being a native Chicagoan, I'm something of a pizza fundamentalist.

Contrary to the hype, Chicago isn't really a "deep dish" town. I wouldn't go so far as to say that "Chicago-style" pizza is just a gimmick, but Chicagoans usually go either for a lesser-known local specialty- the thin-crusted, usually rectangular "tavern style-" or for what is generally known as "New York-style" pizza (when nobody is looking). And we're serious about it.

I've always loved Aurelio's, myself. But local, family-owned pizza parlors are the best.

Iowa, on the other hand, is... different. The most popular pizza here is what, to my taste, is the incredibly bland, tasteless stuff served by Casey's chain of convenience stores. Pizza Ranch has an edible product, I suppose. There is a chain called Pagliai's that has parlors in Grinnell and the Des Moines suburb of Johnston that actually puts out a pretty decent pizza. But Iowa is not, shall we say, a mecca for pizza connoisseurs.

I should say that "breakfast pizza," featuring scrambled eggs, sausage, sausage gravy, bacon, and even hash browns, is a big thing in Iowa and is often done okay here. But there is a legitimate question as to whether it's actually pizza, properly speaking.

There's a Domino's a block from me. But on the rare occasions when I disobey my cardiologist and indulge, the place I generally end up is Fong's. It's across the street from The Royal Mile and run by the same company.

Fong's has a great staff. Like the Mile, it has an interesting clientele, too. But alas, it specializes in the abomination known as "California-style" pizza.

Many of us have a problem with pineapple on pizza. But Fong's is way beyond pineapple. Anything edible is liable to end up on a Fong's pizza; its specialty is Crab Rangoon. There are a variety of sauces, too. Many are interesting. Some are regrettable.

On the whole, its more conventional efforts, while not great by Chicago standards, are certainly better than Casey's. But not long ago, they went too far. Putting Lucky Charms on a pizza to celebrate St. Patrick's Day was a crime against nature heinous enough to draw national media coverage- and well-deserved ridicule.

But The Dough Company, another Iowa pizza joint whose product I have yet to sample, has gone even farther. Little Caesar uses "Pizza Pizza" as an advertising slogan. But The Dough Company took the slogan literally. See the picture.

Fortunately, it's an April Fool joke. Photo by The Dough Company.

In case you wonder why the right is suspicious of the mainstream media...

2021-03-20T20:22:00.002-05:00

...consider the title of this article in the Washington Post: “A transgender girl struggles to find her voice as lawmakers attack her right to exist.”

Unless somebody in Congress is suggesting compulsory euthanasia for transgender folks (they're not), that's not merely an inaccurate headline, but an inflammatory, shrill, and hectoring example of how to destroy a publication's reputation for objectivity while convincing absolutely nobody. And it's the kind of thing that's been going on in most of our nation's great newspapers for decades.

We all view the world through the lens of our own backgrounds, experiences, and prejudices. But all of us- and perhaps professional journalists most of all- must try to be aware of and to transcend them to whatever degree we can. The mainstream media have miserably failed to make much of an attempt in that direction for a very long time, and it's not only legitimate but necessary that we, the consumers of the news, call them out on it.

I don't expect the MSM to clean up its own house any time soon, given our society's polarization. But its apparent lack of objectivity drives people into the arms of the wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth alternative media of the far-right, which has little if any grasp of reality at all.

The lurid title to that article only underscores all reasonable people's obligation, regardless of their politics and social attitudes, to consult media all across the political spectrum and do our best to escape the ideological echo chambers in which most of us are living. And it would be nice if, along the way, folks could make a gesture once in a while in the direction of at least aspiring to objectivity.

How Maewyn Succat became St. Patrick, and the shamrock became a heretical symbol of the Trinity

2021-03-17T01:09:00.009-05:00

My father used to say that there were two kinds of people in this world: the Irish and those who wished they were.

Today is the day when everybody pretends to be Irish. Well, not everybody; here and there, one spies a miscreant with nary a scrap o' the Green about his or her person. But St. Patrick's Day is the ethnic holiday most widely celebrated by the culture generally, even outside of the ethnic group for whom it is a special observance- and even those who forbear to wear the Green this day out of an honest though sad awareness that they, themselves, are not fortunate enough to have Irish blood still feel a touch of the magic.

St. Patrick (Padraig, auf Gaelic, meaning "noble") was born Maewyn Succat (Maewyn meaning "warlike"), son of a couple named Calphurnius and Conchessa, in Dunbarton, Scotland, in the year 387. His father, Calphurnius, seems to have been a Roman official from an important family (how he came to be exiled to the Empire's frontier with the only people- the Picts- ever to successfully and permanently repel the Romans, we do not know; Hadrian's Wall, the mighty tribute to Roman engineering which marks the boundary between Roman Britain and the main body of the realm of the Scots and the Ulster-Scots, was built by the Romans to keep the Picts out of their territory!).

Calphurnius seems to have been a pagan. His wife, Conchessa, however, was a relative of St. Martin of Tours, and it was apparently from her that Patrick learned the Christian faith that sustained him when, at the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in what is today County Antrim, in Ulster.

His captivity seems to have been a relatively mild one. His duties consisted mainly of tending sheep- an occupation that left him plenty of time for contemplation, meditation, and prayer. Nor surprisingly, Patrick was turned into something of a schwaermer by the long, solitary days and nights tending his master's flocks; nevertheless, this time of spiritual reflection stood him in good stead in the years to come.

So did the external circumstances of his captivity. Patrick quickly became fluent in Gaelic. And as it happened, his master, Milchu, was a Druid high priest. A better background in the pagan religion would be his life's work to combat would have been hard to obtain.

Six years into his captivity, Patrick had a mystical experience- described variously as a dream and as an actual visit from an angel- in which he was commanded (contra the general advice of St. Paul to those in his condition) to run away from his master and return to Britain. He did, and from there, he went to France, where he was ordained to the priesthood by St. Germain. When Germain was sent by Pope Celestine I on a mission back to Britain to combat Pelagianism, he took Patrick as one of his companions.

It was there that Patrick once again had one of his visions: this time a group of Irish children, exhorting him, "O holy youth, come back to Erin, and walk once more among us." Entrusted by Pope Celestine with that very task- and given the name new name Patricius by the pope to replace his unseemly birth name- Patrick was consecrated a bishop by St. Maximus and returned to the land of his former captivity to begin a missionary career which would, in the space of 33 years, convert that nation from a stronghold of Druidical darkness into "the island of saints and poets."

Upon arriving back on Irish soil, his first act was to return to his former master and buy his own freedom. Sadly, as Patrick's fame spread and more and more Irishmen were won from his former master's Druid religion to Christianity, Milchu was said to be humiliated, and- to Patrick's horror- burned himself to death, along with his fort and all his possessions, his pride unable to bear "the thought of being vanquished by his former slave."

No, Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland; there were never any snakes there, to begin with. It's commonly believed that the snakes in the legend were, in fact, paganism and pagan values and attitudes. And the incident probably most associated with him- and which gave birth to this day's most familiar symbol- may also never actually have happened. Nevertheless, it's worth recounting.

The story is that Patrick was confronted by a sword-wielding Druid chieftain named Dichu- whom, unarmed except by his faith, Patrick simply faced down. Awed by his courage, Dichu asked for instruction and was baptized. Dichu told Patrick of a feast being given for all the Irish chieftains by the Ard Righ ("High King"), Laoghaire, at Tara, the traditional seat of the High Kings. Ireland in ancient days was divided into five kingdoms- Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, Meath, and Munster; each had its own king, who effectively ruled his own realm while owing titular fealty to the High King at Tara.

Patrick crashed the party, which supposedly began- auspiciously- on Easter Sunday, 433. However, the fun began the night before- symbolically interesting because it was the Vigil of Easter and the Feast of the Annunciation that year.

The Vigil of Easter is one of the oldest and most beautiful and significant Christian liturgies. I remember celebrating it as part of my liturgy class in seminary; it's a shame that in our age of "fast food" worship, few Christians would bother to attend if it was celebrated as widely as it should be. Traditionally, catechumens were baptized after a night spent in prayer, chant, and watchfulness until the risen Christ was greeted at daybreak.

The liturgy traditionally begins around the Paschal fire, usually kindled outside a church. In Patrick's case, of course, the vigil was held out in the open, on the hill of Slane, on the opposite side of the valley from Tara. When Patrick kindled the Paschal fire, it was in direct violation of a royal edict, that no fires were to be lit until the High King's own signal fire was kindled at Tara.

Patrick's reputation for miracles and for gaining converts had proceeded him. Laoghaire's Druid advisors told him, insightfully, "O King, live forever; this fire, which has been lighted in defiance of the royal edict, will blaze forever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished."

So they tried to put it out.

They couldn't. Nothing they could do would extinguish the flame. Neither- despite their best efforts- could they harm Patrick or his companions!

One thing about St. Patrick: he had style. The next morning- Easter Day- he traveled the length of the valley in full liturgical procession, wearing a miter, bearing a crozier, fully vested as a bishop, and proceeded by an acolyte bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels. Arriving at Tara, he soon found himself in full confrontation with the Druids. The story is that by their incantations they cast a deep cloud over Tara, enveloping the entire hill in darkness. Patrick defied them to remove the cloud. They tried and failed. Thereupon Patrick uttered a simple prayer. The cloud instantly vanished, and the hill was bathed in sunshine.

The Arch-Druid Lochru tried to impress everybody by flying. Patrick simply knelt and prayed that God would vindicate His truth- and Lochru fell to his death.

That pretty much settled matters. Though forbidden by the High King to show Patrick or any of his company the slightest sign of respect, the whole assembly rose to pay homage to Patrick and his God.

It was then that the incident supposedly occurred which gave this day- and the entire island- its most familiar symbol. Someone supposedly asked how it could be that the Christian God would be Three but at the same time only One. Patrick replied by leaning over and plucking from the grass at his feet a simple clover of a variety which -contrary to legend- grows not only in Ireland but in almost every country and half-way temperate climate on Earth. Holding the shamrock aloft, he asked, "Is this one leaf, or three?"

They couldn't answer. "If human wisdom cannot comprehend the mystery of a piece of clover," Patrick is said to have responded, "how can it hope to understand the mystery of God's very nature?" Actually, this story may be a pure legend; in any case, to use the shamrock as an illustration of the Trinity is an example of the Partialist heresy, which asserts that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the same God because that each of Them is part of God, Who is incomplete without all three.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of "shamrocks" one sees at this time of year which are, in fact, four-leaf clovers- which, of course, completely destroys the entire symbolism of the shamrock! In fact, symbolizing the pagan concept of "luck" as a substitute for God's will, it might be a better symbol of the metaphorical "snake" of godlessness which Patrick drove out of Ireland!

Patrick is said to have spent the balance of Easter week catechizing and baptizing the High King and his entire court. At its end, he was given the High King's own official patronage for the missionary endeavor which was to occupy the remainder of his life.

Patrick is also well known for his beautiful prayer known as "St. Patrick's Breastplate:" A literal translation is as follows:

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of the Invocation of the Trinity:
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism,
The virtue of His crucifixion with His burial,
The virtue of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
The virtue of His coming on the Judgement Day.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the love of seraphim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the hope of resurrection unto reward,
In prayers of Patriarchs,
In predictions of Prophets,
In preaching of Apostles,
In faith of Confessors,
In purity of holy Virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendor of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The compactness of rocks.

I bind to myself today
God's Power to guide me,
God's Might to uphold me,
God's Wisdom to teach me,
God's Eye to watch over me,
God's Ear to hear me,
God's Word to give me speech,
God's Hand to guide me,
God's Way to lie before me,
God's Shield to shelter me,
God's Host to secure me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the seductions of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against everyone who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
Whether few or with many.

I invoke today all these virtues
Against every hostile merciless power
Which may assail my body and my soul,
Against the incantations of false prophets,
Against the black laws of heathenism,
Against the false laws of heresy,
Against the deceits of idolatry,
Against the spells of women and smiths, and druids,
Against every knowledge that binds the soul of man.

Christ, protect me today
Against every poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against death-wound,
That I may receive abundant reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in the fort,
Christ in the chariot seat,
Christ in the poop [deck],
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

It is more familiar to us today in this translation, by Cecil Francis Humphreys Alexander:

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spiced tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Patrick died on March 17, 493 (some sources say 460, or 461) at Saul in what is now Downpatrick, County Down, where he is buried. Downpatrick, by the way, is the birthplace and childhood home of Grandmother Waters and the burial place not only of Patrick but also of Sts. Columba- interestingly, the native-born Irishman who brought the Gospel to Britain, and in particular to Scotland and the Picts!- and Brigid, who is often commemorated by a representation of the hand-woven cross, made from the reeds along the banks of the River Shannon, she once fashioned for a dying pagan to hold. At the same time, she told him the story of Christ.

On any account, Patrick was one of the greatest missionaries the Christian Faith has ever produced- and the honor he is due is too great to be confined to any single people (even the Irish!). All the faithful have cause to wear green this day in his honor, without fear of being accused of being full of blarney regardless of their ethnic origin.

HT: The Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic Community Forum

This is a job for the Church

2021-03-08T19:15:00.007-06:00

This article by Nicole Penn in today's Bulwark is solid gold. This is stuff the religious right and the secularist left both get wrong. And the article raises some important questions about the failure of the Church to confess its faith in the face of a burgeoning and destructive heresy.

Three takeaways: first, the Republic's founding philosophy in religious matters is not secularism but pluralism. These are not the same. The Founders' vision was of a nation in which a variety of religions and belief-systems (including secularism) flourished side-by-side, not one in which any were suppressed, discouraged, or banned from the public square.

"Separation of church and state" is no separation of religion and state, but rather a situation in which no belief-system is favored over another or is allowed as such to become a basis for public policy. It's worth noting that the abolitionist movement, the movement against child labor, the civil rights movement, and most of the significant social reform movements in our history have originated in religious conviction, though not in sectarian religious belief.

A corollary: the problem with "evangelical" Trumpism is not that it is religious, but that it ignores that distinction and is based on badly-reasoned and historically aberrant theology. "Christian Nationalism" is, first and foremost, a heresy, and orthodox Christians not only must address it firmly and decisively but have no more choice about it than they had in dealing with Arianism or Pelagianism. The integrity of the Faith is at stake.

I'll be blunt about this: even the refusal to wear masks or practice proper social distancing is neither merely a political issue nor only a social one. It is a spiritual problem, and the Church has no choice but to treat it as such. While it is true that the evidence regarding the protection masks give their wearers from COVID is mixed, there is absolutely no doubt about their effectiveness in preventing the wearer from infecting others- and a majority of cases are non-symptomatic.

Leave aside the political point that there is no "right" to spread a potentially deadly virus. The most charitable thing that can be said about a selfish insistence on going maskless in public or refusing to cooperate with reasonable public health practices during a pandemic is that it is immoral and irresponsible. Not only are churches that flaunt public health measures and discourage masks in error, but no biblically faithful church has any choice but to confront this behavior as sinful and un-Christian.

If one is inclined to be franker and less charitable, one might call it depraved and perverse.

Secondly, Trump's support among professing Christians has always been most robust among those who don't go to church, read the Bible at home and are the least informed theologically. These folks are low-hanging fruit for crazy conspiracy theorists and quasi-religious politico-religious fanatics.

And third, religiously-driven conspiracy theories thrive most strongly in the absence of guidance and foul-lines drew by organized churches and historic theological traditions.

Trump-worship, theonomy (the idea that the Bible should be the source of civil law and that the state should be the servant of the Church), "Christian Nationalism," and the other manifestations of the false teaching endemic on the religious right can be fought most effectively from within the Church- and must be. Attempts to fight them in the political realm will only result in the distortion of the Founders' vision and the espousal of secularism as a de facto established belief system- as exactly what the Founders sought to prevent.

Red Dog vs. Red Fog vs. Blue Bog vs. Purple Haze: Where do we go now, Never Trumpers?

2021-03-05T15:38:00.014-06:00

As a Bulwark+ subscriber, I have access to the publication's weekly Thursday Night live stream. It's essentially a Zoom meeting typically featuring some combination of Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, Mona Charon, Sara Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan Last, and Amanda Carpenter discussing the week's political news from a center-right, Never Trump perspective.

I wish I could link to last night's video on YouTube because the show was a helpful one. It clarified some things which were ambiguous to me before. As I've mentioned previously, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol, and others at The Bulwark have seemed lately to embrace the notion of Never Trumpers becoming what Tim calls "Red Dog Democrats."

But maybe not. Tim maintains that as a practical matter, we're all "Red Dogs" already. Bill Kristol apparently only favors cooperation with the Democrats, a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. And Charlie Sykes came right out and said last night that he, for one, was not going to become a Democrat and felt no inclination to do so; he was reveling too much in the freedom of having escaped from one "tribe" to join a new one any time soon.

I'm glad that they cleared the air.

Kristol and the others seem to be addressing the question of whether we should go beyond merely "calling balls and strikes" and become active and committed allies of Joe Biden and the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, at least temporarily. After all, America is facing a historic crisis. The Trumpified Republican Party has become an active threat to the Constitution and democracy. It has attempted to overturn a fair and free election and has even attempted a coup! The danger posed by Trump and his supporters to our democracy, they maintain, is grave enough to override policy differences with President Biden and make a kind of "popular front" necessary.

Well, yeah. I absolutely concur. In fact, I thought we were President Biden's allies already! After all, I joined most Never Trumpers in voting for him! Nor do I completely dismiss the "Red Dog" idea. I'm just skeptical about how welcome we'd be in the Democratic Party and how open it would be, for example, to our suggestion that it be friendlier to freedom of religion while still upholding the principle of non-discrimination. And I believe that eventually, there is going to have to be a major center-right party again. The GOP will never resume that role, and a healthy democracy sort of requires such a party. And a two-party system certainly requires two credible parties; at the moment, the Democratic Party is the only one we have.

Seth Hill has an excellent article on that subject in the public portion of this morning's Bulwark. He has some useful insights from the experience of the last successful "third party" in America, the Republicans. The GOP, he observed, didn't form overnight. Instead, it waited until an aggregation of abolitionists, former Democrats, and former Whigs had developed regional working relationships and only then united as a national party prepared to pick up the Whigs' fallen mantle. He documents that process through a table showing the House of Representatives' makeup in the years leading up to Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860 and even after that.

The "Americans" listed in the table above were members of the nativist American Party, also known as the "Know-Nothings." They were a bigoted white, Protestant, anti-immigrant bunch that might be seen as the Trump movement of its day,

The lesson seems to me to be clear, and it's precisely what Bill Kristol has been arguing; I only wish that it had been distinguished from the "lets-all-run-out-and-join-the-Democrats" option sooner and more clearly. It will take time for a new party to develop, and the process can't be forced or rushed. In the meantime, we'll have to improvise. Charlie Sykes articulated the point well last night, and Sarah, JVL, and the others agreed: some of us will choose to remain independents; Charlie made it clear that he would go that route, and Sarah seemed to agree. Others- perhaps Tim- will formally become "Red Dogs." The important thing is to replicate the pattern that led up to the formation of the Republican Party: an issue-oriented coalition of generally like-minded Americans (namely, centrist Republicans, Democrats, and Independents opposed to authoritarianism, racism, Nativism, "Christian Nationalism," and the other -isms embodied by the Trumpist movement) that puts country ahead of the party and the Constitution above our disagreements over policy. A joint legislative program should be part of this. This might help everybody. We might convince the Democrats to re-write the HR 1 election reform act in such a way as to actually get it passed. A more focused bill- what Amanda Carpenter called a "skinny" version last night- would have a far better chance of attracting Republican support.

Maybe some version of the Equality Act might be forged that isn't a blatant attack on freedom of religion and actually tries to distinguish between discrimination against others and the freedom to conduct one's own life in harmony with the teachings of one's own faith. There could be no question that there are Republicans in the Senate who cannot support the current version of the bill but might be persuadable if it didn't go out of its way to antagonize them.

If we can influence the more partisan Democrats to follow President Biden's lead and be more inclined to seek support across the aisle, that in itself would be a good thing. And the conditions necessary for the formation of a new party would have time to develop. I'm glad the people at The Bulwark clarified their point. To me, what they suggest is a no-brainer. An uncomfortably large percentage of the American people remain in thrall to a lying demagogue, believing any ridiculous thing he tells them while dismissing any evidence that doesn't reinforce their not-particularly American prejudices. Trumpism is cancer in the body politic and potentially fatal to our freedom. It's the greatest threat to our system of government since at least the Civil War. We have no ethical or patriotic alternative but to work with Joe Biden.

But not everybody sees the danger. That's why those of us who do can't afford to remain aloof from the struggle to save the things about America we agree about despite our differences. I continue to see a third party as both inevitable and necessary. But not right now.

Some of us will become "Red Dog Democrats." Some will choose to remain politically homeless or even continue what I believe to be a hopeless struggle to somehow save a Republican Party that doesn't want to be saved. But a centrist president like Joe Biden needs and deserves our support. We should rally and get behind a legislative program that serves the democratic American values we agree on and frustrates the un-American agenda of Donald Trump and his cult.

Again, it's a no-brainer. Parties and labels don't matter right now. The Constitution matters a great deal. So does democracy. So do the values of tolerance and charity. And the stakes are simply too high for us not to unite behind President Biden and work with him. That does not mean that we shouldn't differ from him on matters on which our consciences demand it. Nor does it mean that we shouldn't criticize the ideological top-heaviness and overreach of HR 1 in its present form or the anti-religious prejudice that ruins the Equality Act as currently written. But it does mean that we need to work together with him to prevent the Trumpists from disenfranchising people in large numbers and the authoritarians from denying gay, lesbian, and transgender people the rights the Constitution guarantees them.