Phony Patriots
Fr. Andrew Greeley has posted a new article just in time for the Holiday Weekend at the Chicago Sun-Times , suntimes.com , and on his website , agreeley.com , which also hosts his new Blog. In this article he decries the exploitation of the desire for revenge by the Republicans to win elections. He compares this to the excesses of WWII in the Firebombing devastation of 50 Japanese cities, and the Nuclear Holocaust visited upon two more of them. WWII was a just war , but we tend to make ourselves no better than our opponents, as with the RAF firebombing of German cities right at the war's end. Our Phony Patriots lied about Iraqi weapons to enable them to justify the taking of Iraq for Western advantage in the region even though the attackers of 9/11 were of Saudi extraction whose leaders had excellent relations with US Oil Companies. This is what Greeley calls a lethal combination that the GOP continues to use to win elections. It looks like McCain's only hope for winning is an Iran invasion riding on the same formula of fear and revenge. What a sorry lot. Greeley also characterizes our President as an opportunist. He cheerfully embraced a war option to get minds off of the Florida voting situation and the Antonin Scalia theft of said election. Greeley has just published a collection of his articles about this war , ' A Stupid , Immoral and Unjust War '. It is available from his website trough a link to Amazon. I read them every week to sustain me through this period. He has some choice words for the Press too as they rolled over for the Phony Patriotism scam without the slightest professional curiosity.
I think questioning
I think questioning someone's patriotism is akin to trying to figure out who is the best Christian.
And I think "real" patriotism can morph and change with our age. People can have nearly identical experiences and come to opposite conclusions. In our local peace group one of our strongest leaders is a career military guy. He goes to the School of the AMerica's annually to protest.
All of us, at best, can only seek to think about what it means to be a patriot and indeed a child of God. The journey may be more important than the conclusion.
Still, I cannot help but echo some of these sentiments though I sense myself close to the sin of pride. Still an awful lot of dime-store patriotism pervades our culture while we watch our freedoms melt away.
I'm going to refer you to Juan Cole's essay:
http://www.juancole.com/ You'll need to scroll down to his 4th of July post.
Your Fourth of July is blood for oil.
My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.
Yours is the imperial presidency and "so what?" to public opinion.
Mine is "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
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It goes on; go to the link if you want more.
I think it just challenges all of us to have the conversations that question power and right and might. But we should always pray for the grace of humility lest we sin in pride.
Greeley posts an article
Greeley posts an article today asking why there are no noises about a war on Saudi Arabia who is our real enemy. They promote a society that hates American values. The 9/11 bombers were from Saudi Arabia. Duplicity doesn't bother Republicans, though. Fr. Greeley has often remarked that there are always different rules for them. On top of that , it is always all about the rules for Republicans.
Beauty is not opposed to truth. It is simply truth in its most attractive form.
We live in the greatest
We live in the greatest country on earth.
I wear a flag lapel pin.
I fought in this or that war.
I sing America the Beautiful.
All questionable values
The people who pay their taxes without complaining, respect their environment,conserve energy, don't try to pollute the political system and talk peace are THE REAL PATRIOTS
To me it seems to go back to
To me it seems to go back to the beginning of our Country. If I keep in mind the risks our forefathers and mothers really took, their "lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor", against much of the Country who were afraid of taking these risks for freedom from "the Mother Country" (called Tories)it all comes vividly to life, and makes today's decisions about "Faith and Freedom" (remember that old reader in parochial schools of the forties?) rather uncomplicated.
I loved the series on John Adams, and the book about George Washington's amazing difficulties in 1776, but then, I spent a lot of my childhood around places where history was vividly alive, a block down the street from where James Madison wrote for a time, and near where George Washington went to Church (when he went.) I was a kid during WWII, when war was still fought for a worthy cause (sorry to those of you who think this Iraqi War means something--I don't.)
Even so, as our technological capabilities have given us horrible destructive power, is it not clear that our abilities for PEACE----MUST CATCH UP? We see these more hopeful signs happening in some quarters, but not in other places. It seems that until we heed the words of Jesus to nurture the "least of these", they never really will take hold.
Today the exchange of the Lebanese prisoner who killed the Father and Daughter in Israel was written up in the NY Times. That brutal crime was NOT so much an "act of war" but the behavior of an abandoned, neglected boy who needed a father, and instead found a "Cause" for his "Family" instead. Is this how in some poor countries, "the least of these" need to make their heroes? Of course, this is not true of every brutal war killing, but most people don't bash in the heads of little girls--yet war is crazy, and people do crazy things when they see crazy things. War sometimes miraculously produces angels-of-conscience, but more often, it makes numbed-out, uncaring monsters-of-the-convenient-moment.
It's hard to remember that Jesus is present in even the world's ugliness, but we need His help to inch our way towards Peace.