http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/22525

So far I've mentioned four books from my youth. I'm going to give you one more of those, then I'm going to get more contemporary.

Stranger In a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, is a story about a human male, Valentine Michael Smith, who was born on a spaceship in transit to Mars and was raised by Martians after the ship crash landed, killing his parents and the rest of the crew.

Twenty years later a second ship reaches Mars, expecting to find the wreckage of the first ship, and maybe the bones of the first crew. Instead they discover that there are Martians, very advanced and not especially interested in Earth, and the one survivor, whom they bring back to Earth.

A power struggle ensues, (Smith is filthy, stinkin' rich, it turns out, due to some rather arcane inheritance laws which say that he essentially "owns" Mars, among other property) and a nurse gets wise to the plot to kill him and gets him out of there just in time.

Smith winds up in a safe place and finds a mentor in Jubal Harshaw, a cranky, cynical old coot who just happens to be a physician and lawyer, and who keeps himself in comfortable seclusion by churning out shameless pieces of pulp fiction for the masses under various pseudonyms.

Smith, it turns out, has learned much in his twenty years with Martians and can do things which amaze his new friends; in fact, it develops that he has enormous power. He is also completely ignorant of human customs and is absolutely trusting of anyone and everyone, especially if he has "shared water" with someone, a ritual that he learned on Mars, where water is scarce (and so, precious).

Smith becomes a Christ-like figure and attempts to show humans how they can live together in peace and harmony, as the Martians do.

Guess how it ends. Better yet, read it. I think you'll find Heinlein's depiction of religion in the 21st Century amusing; I believe that the story will captivate you.

I wrote this for a class (it's due in the morning). Read it here first:

In Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Barton Gellman gives us an in depth, behind the scenes look at the “administration” of Richard Bruce Cheney, forty-sixth Vice President of the United States. While it may seem odd to think of a Vice President as having his own administration, Gellman’s narrative leads the reader to see the Cheney vice presidency as something apart from the administration of which it was ostensibly a part, that of President George W. Bush. Gellman accomplishes this by taking the reader through the key events and the crucial policy decisions of the Bush/Cheney years. Gellman shows how Cheney either maneuvered his way onto the Republican presidential ticket, or found himself there; how he controlled the information that the President received on a daily basis; and how he made the Office of the Vice President important in the policy process, something that it had never been before. This review will focus on Gellman’s portrayal of how the events of September 11, 2001, shaped the Bush/Cheney years, reinforcing Cheney’s notions of a “unitary executive” and the idea that the President should have virtually limitless power, especially in times of national emergency.

Gellman begins with describing Cheney’s role in the process of selecting a running mate for Republican nominee George W. Bush, which took place in the spring and summer of 2000. Cheney, “chairman of a Fortune 500 company” at the time, was a former Congressman and Secretary of Defense with deep roots in the Republican Party. He was charged with putting together a “very short list” from which the nominee would select. Whether by design or by serendipity, the list of qualifications sought by Cheney for the perfect candidate resembled no one as much as it did Cheney himself. Ultimately, of course, Cheney came to see himself as the only candidate who satisfactorily met all search criteria. As Gellman points out, whether Cheney had set out to “find himself” or not, he had placed himself in the one position that gave him a clear vantage point from which to view and to judge the competition.

Gellman foreshadows the event which was to become central to the Bush/Cheney administration when he twice refers to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the book’s first chapter. While it could appear that this is merely mentioned as background to one of the prospective running mates, Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, and his relationships with Cheney and with Bush, Gellman is also preparing the reader for what is to come. As the reader can mistakenly accept these two references as merely background on the selection process, so too did Cheney and Bush casually receive warnings in the summer of 2001 that a terrorist attack was imminent. In chapter five, Very Hard and Very Quick, Gellman begins to lay out his case that Cheney, who had been “given the lead White House roles on both terrorism and intelligence,” failed to take seriously warnings that the intelligence community presented him with, and then overreacted after the attacks of September 11th. This overreaction began on September 11th, as Cheney and his chief legal counsel David Addington began to ask themselves “what extraordinary powers” the President would require in the months ahead.

The rest of the book provides the details of the new policies implemented by Cheney and Addington, with the consent of President Bush. Three crucial changes are mentioned: a secret program to surveil American citizens and track their phone calls and e-mails, a new policy regarding the treatment of detainees in American custody and the methods that would henceforth be used to interrogate them, and the secrecy that would become official policy, keeping Congress, the Judicial Branch and the American people (and in one instance the President himself) “out of the loop.” Gellman takes the reader through the elaborate machinations engaged in by Vice President Cheney as he uses his Executive Branch experience and his contacts in the various offices and agencies of the Federal Government to push his policies through, to squash dissent, and to attempt to realize his vision of an Executive-dominated National Government.

With Angler, Gellman succeeds in giving the reader a detailed look behind the curtain at the Cheney Vice Presidency, the events that shaped it, the policies that were crafted, the role played by Cheney in crafting those policies and the way in which Cheney reinterpreted the office of Vice President. Gellman’s style is that of an investigative reporter, just giving us the facts. If he shows any bias it is that he believes that Cheney over-stepped his Constitutional authority and at times usurped some of the powers of the Presidency, and that he believes that the American people, if they knew the full story, would insist on a rollback of this extra-constitutional power. This is likely his motivation for writing the book. Gellman conducted “hundreds of interviews” during the course of conducting his research for Angler, including members of Cheney’s inner circle. Mr. Cheney himself declined to be interviewed.

The book’s value is as a window onto the Bush/Cheney administration, an administration which began with an election the result of which was not known for five weeks after the polls closed. President Bush, the reader is reminded, campaigned as a “compassionate conservative” who was going to be a uniter, not a divider, who would not engage in “nation-building” and who would restore integrity to the White House after the “scandalous” Clinton administration. Gellman asks the reader to imagine a Bush presidency sans Dick Cheney. He presents George Bush as a “care-taker” President, content to let underlings handle the details of day-to-day government while he exercised oversight as the “Decider.” Gellman asserts that it was Cheney and his closest confidants who crafted the post 9/11 response and who presented (created?) the case for invading Iraq. Furthermore, it was Cheney and Addington, along with the Office of Legal Counsel, who crafted the detainment and interrogation policies which led to scandal at Abu Ghraib and embarrassment at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Also it was out of the Office of the Vice President that the leak came that blew the cover of a CIA covert agent, leading to the conviction of the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and right hand man, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on charges including obstruction of justice. Further, Gellman wonders, how might the Hurricane Katrina reaction have been different with someone in the Vice President’s chair who took a more traditional approach to the office, someone like Al Gore, for example? We can never know, of course, but Gellman invites us to ask whether perhaps Dick Cheney did more harm than good to the Bush presidency. We are invited to ask, even, if there was any good at all arising from the Cheney Vice Presidency. The answer depends upon one’s interpretation of the Constitution, upon whether one sees separation of powers and the idea of checks and balances as being valuable, or as being inconvenient.
Ultimately, Gellman tells a story of a Vice President who was much more successful at implementing his agenda than was the President that he putatively served. Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency is an excellent book for anyone interested in the subject, meticulously researched, well crafted, thoughtfully presented and informative throughout. Read it!

It has come to my attention that Newt Gingrich wants us all to know that he is not a “citizen of the world.” How about if we say to him, “sorry Newt, citizens only allowed. You’re going to have to leave”? Seriously though, the idea begs for clarification. He does not consider himself to be a citizen of the world. Is it possible to not be? Isn’t that a bit like claiming that one is a citizen of Texas, but not of the United States? It’s risky for me to try to guess what he means since he and I most certainly do not think alike, but I suppose he means that he thinks of the United States as somehow separate from “the World.” He’s a citizen of the United States, not of the rest of the world. He sees this position of his as a refutation of President Obama’s recent overtures to the Arab world and I gather that he further sees this as not just his position, but as representative of his “party,” the ever-shrinking Republican “base.”

I’m sure he’s right, too, in thinking that there are others, members of this base, who share his sentiments. We just recently survived eight years of an administration which essentially said the same thing; you’re with us or you’re against us. And if you’re with us, it’s on our terms; no negotiating, no compromising, whatever we say goes. The United Nations is to be seen as our tool. We’ll use them to create legitimacy for actions that we wish to take, such as invading Iraq because they are in violation of U.N. imposed sanctions, but we will be free to ignore their disapproval of our actions. The United States, under the Bush administration, was essentially saying, like Newt, that we are not “citizens” of the world.

There is just one, big, problem, of course. We are. All we were really saying, all Newt is really saying now, is that we refuse to be good ones. “We might be stuck on the same planet as the rest of you but we refuse to acknowledge that we have to get along with you. After all, we have nuclear superiority. We spend as much on “defense” as the rest of you combined. You have to accommodate us.” This is, of course, a very belligerent, very naïve notion. Naïve in that it ignores the fact that there is just one world after all, and that we are a part of it. Kennedy and Khrushchev realized this, that one side could ruin everybody’s world, and agreed to an atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Nixon, Kissinger, Brezhnev, Carter, Reagan, Gorbachev, all realized that there is just one world and that we are all citizens of it. The only question is if one is going to be a good citizen or a bad one. President Obama recognizes this and he’s telling the world. No longer will the United States of America insist that it is not bound by any rules, except those of its own making. We are part of the world; we do recognize that; we want to be your fellow citizens, not your rulers.

Newt is essentially taking a position similar to the position taken by Osama bin Laden. We hate you (cuz you hate us). We will destroy you. We will do whatever we deem necessary to accomplish our goal and we will justify it by assuring the rest of the world that you are evil and that we are just doing that which is necessary for our survival. President Obama, backed by the majority of us, who elected him last November, sees a better way, a way that doesn’t let them pull us down to their level. We are part of the world, he is saying. We are the majority. It is Al Qaeda, and other similar groups that are the bad citizens, that have chosen to be lawless, to renounce their world citizenship.

So, Newt, what about it? Are you with us or against us? You are a citizen of the world. Will you be a good one?

I wrote the following for my History of Germany in the Long 19th Century class. I was hoping for some feedback from the instructor but I think he's gone for the summer, maybe forever. So I post it here. Please feel free to comment.

Antisemitism existed in Germany in the nineteenth Century. This was not a unique situation. Antisemitism existed in every part of Europe in the 19th Century and before. This paper will examine several primary source documents from the late 18th and 19th Century Germany and offer an explanation of the reasons and origins. The documents that will be discussed are Christian Wilhelm von Dohm’s Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews, 1781; Johann David Michaelis’s response to Dohm, 1782; Moses Mendelssohn’s response to Dohm, 1782 and to Michaelis, 1783; and Mark Twain’s Concerning the Jews, first published in Harper’s Magazine, March, 1898.

Dohm advances the idea that antisemitism arises from differences of religion. “Each one boasts,” he says
of being the only, or at last the safest and straightest, way to please God, to reach the goal of a blissful life in the hereafter.
In theory, different religions should be able to exist, side-by-side, in peace. In practice, however, this is often not the case. While all religions preach some version of “live and let live,” very often people practice something along the lines of “hate (or fear) the other.” Nevertheless, while wars have been fought over religion, for the most part these differences are lived with. Also, if these differences were to be the focus of relations between people of different religions, there would be widespread discrimination of every single group against every other, which was decidedly not the case. As Dohm says, it could not “be a valid reason for withholding the rights of citizenship from the adherents of any one faith.” Clearly, then, there is more to it.

Dohm goes on to assert that Jews are perceived as being “morally corrupt.” He is even willing to concede this point. But, he says, this is simply a consequence of their being put into a disadvantageous position by society. Give them full rights, he says, open all professions to them, and they will prove to be as morally uncorrupt as any other group.

Michaelis, then, disputes the notion that the Jews could assimilate into German society if they were just given the chance. Michaelis believes that the “Law of Moses” sets the Jews apart too much, that the purpose of this law is to “maintain the Jews as a people almost completely separate from other peoples.” Michaelis claims that the body of Jewish law, including dietary restrictions, is the reason that the Jews have lived as self-exiles for 1700 years.

"As long as they refuse, for example, to eat together with us and to form sincere friendship at the table, they will never become fully integrated in the way that Catholics, Lutherans, Germans, Wends and French live together in one state."

Michaelis allows that the Jew could perhaps become useful to the state but “will never be a full citizen with respect to love for and pride in his country.” Also, Jews are intent on returning to Palestine, claims Michaelis, so they will never be fully committed to any other country, even if born there. Finally, Michaelis alleges that Jews will not serve, indeed, are not fit to serve, in the military. It is Michaelis’s belief that Jews will not fight on the Sabbath. Further, he concludes that as long as they insist on their special diets it will be impossible to integrate them into the ranks. He even makes the claim that most Jews are not of sufficient height to be able to conduct modern warfare.

So, which is it? Are the Jews a discriminated against minority who are every bit as capable of good citizenship as any other group or are they a self-segregating bunch disinclined to ever fully assimilate to “Christian” society? Perhaps a Jew could shed some light. In his response to Dohm, Mendelssohn takes exception to the argument that the Jews are “an unproductive people.” Dohm blames this non-productivity on the society that bars them from practicing the professions of production, from even owning land. Mendelssohn goes farther, claiming that the one profession open to Jews, commerce, is a boon to production, facilitating the production and exchange of agricultural and manufactured goods; it is therefore unfair and false to claim that the Jews do not produce.

In reference to Michaelis’s response to Dohm, Mendelssohn refutes the notion that the thought of returning to Palestine plays any part in the daily life of Jews. “This is confirmed,” he says,
by experience wherever Jews are tolerated. In part, human nature accounts for it--- only the enthusiast would not love the soil on which he thrives.

Also

"The Talmud forbids us even to think of a return (to Palestine) by force (i.e. to attempt to effect Redemption through human effort). Without the miracles and signs mentioned in the Scripture, we must not take the smallest step in the direction of forcing a return and a restoration of our nation."

Mendelssohn also challenges Michaelis’s notion that the Jews are unfit for service in the Army.

"Does he wish to say that religion should sanction wars of aggression? Let him name the one religion that is cursed enough to do so. Christianity, to be sure, does not. And are not Quakers and Mennonites tolerated and allowed many more privileges and rights than we are?"

Also, Mendelssohn points out, Michaelis speaks not of the differences between Christians and Jews, but rather Germans and Jews. So Michaelis, Mendelssohn contends, does not see the difference as being one of religion, but rather, one of foreignness.

Mark Twain, in his “Concerning the Jews,” in Harper’s Magazine, March, 1898, attributes antisemitism in general to “foreignness,” the fact that Jews are never considered natives of the countries in which they reside, and to the fact that Jews were successful in business, and that this success was seen as being detrimental to non-Jewish neighbors.

Twain, in fact, asserts that “The Jew is a well-behaved citizen.” This assertion runs directly counter to the opinions expressed by Michaelis and even Dohm (who attributes it to the discrimination to which they are subject). Can it be true? Twain claims several proofs.

"The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare – in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court’s long roll of “assaults” and “drunk and disorderlies” his name seldom appears."

"The Jew," he goes on to say,

"looks after his fellow Jew. Consequently, Jews are not a burden on the state. When the Jew is able, he works; when not, he is taken care of by his brethren."

Above all, Twain insists, the Jew is honest. For proof of this he offers that the Jew is successful in business; no business can thrive if the parties cannot trust each other. Twain does allow that the Jew has his “other side.” Chiefly, this other side involves cleverness in business. “He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating,” Twain says. He mentions usury, insurance fraud and cunningly constructing contracts to his own advantage. Still, on the balance, Twain concludes, that “the Christian can claim no superiority over the Jew in the matter of good citizenship.”

Can antisemitism, then, be attributed to fanaticism, Twain asks. By fanaticism he means persecution on religious grounds, mostly concerning the perceived role of the Jews in the crucifixion of Christ. Certainly not, is his answer. Twain points to an example of anti-Jewish sentiment which predates the crucifixion by some 1800 years, the story of Joseph in Egypt, and an example of some early Christians being persecuted by the Romans who mistook them for Jews, this at a time when no one as yet knew what a Christian was. So clearly, then, antisemitism predates the idea of the Jews as “killers of Christ.”

From what, then does the sentiment arise? For answer, Twain offers an analogy to his Missouri boyhood. At that time, in that place, the “Yankee” (a person from New England) was hated “with a splendid energy.” This had nothing to do with religion, but rather, with the fact that “in a trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the Westerner.” Shortly thereafter, in the Southern states, after the Civil War, the Jew made his presence felt, loaning money to the newly freed slaves, sharecroppers now to the white planters, at terms much favorable to the lender. “Before long,” Twain says, “the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the Negro loved him.” This sort of thing happened in Russia, in England, in Spain and in Austria, causing the banishment of Jews from these countries. “I am persuaded,” says Twain

"that in Russia, Austria and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian’s inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business --- either straight business or the questionable sort."

Twain then goes on to describe a speech that he read in Germany which called for the expulsion of the Jews from Germany. The reason: they were too successful. So, the Jews being a minority, the German speechwriter felt that the Christian majority would be justified in banishing the lot of them from the country, not because they were cheating the poor, honest Christians, but because they were outperforming them. For the good of the majority, a minority group must be banished. This is as close as I can come to a definition of discriminatory bigotry.

The other reason cited by Twain for this persecution of Jews is their perceived “foreignness” in every country on Earth. No matter how hard they try they are never seen as “one of us.” This can, to some extent, be laid at their own feet. Jewish culture goes back many centuries; their religion precedes all other “Western” religions. When Jews settle in a country they are seen, unsurprisingly, as immigrants. The surprising part is that they never lose their immigrant status, no matter how many generations ensue. This is largely because they have this centuries old culture of their own. They do not adopt the culture of their new home country. At least, they never do sufficiently so in the eyes of their neighbors, largely because they don’t drop their old practices. Also, they practice a different, distinctly minority religion, which further separates them from the mainstream.
Virtually all of Europe was Christian in the 19th Century and while Christianity rose out of Judaism, the two groups quickly became separate. Christians saw themselves as “perfected” Jews, the message of Jesus having been that God’s chosen people had strayed from the path set before them by God, getting bogged down in dietary laws &c. Jesus, then, came not just as their “redeemer,” purging them of original sin with his ultimate sacrifice, but also, through his teachings and by his example, to set them back onto the true path to their promised reward. Christians, then, saw Jews as being not “with it,” as being un-evolved practitioners of the true faith who were ignoring the teachings of Jesus, whom they saw as not just a great man but God in the flesh. Strike one.

Christianity, then, began to spread. While the Jews saw themselves as God’s chosen people, a select group of elites by birth, the Christians were charged by Jesus with spreading the word and converting anyone they could to the new one, true faith. They were initially successful on a small scale. Then, however, a big thing happened: the Roman Empire decided to cease persecution of Christians, begun soon after they took notice of them, and instead co-opt the new religion for their own ends. Once Christianity became the official Church of the Empire it spread wide and fast. Soon the Jews, once a proud band of chosen people practicing a monotheistic religion more modern than the paganism all around them, were a small band of outcasts practicing a centuries old religion which was seen by everyone around them as being false, and indeed, hostile to the one true faith. Strike two.

Nevertheless the Jews persevered, it being part of their creed to keep the faith in the face of even the harshest persecution. Having long ago been driven from their middle-eastern ancestral homeland they settled where they could, in various places, and made do as best they could. Being a persecuted minority, banned from most professions and from accumulating land, they worked hard at obtaining some power, some control over their circumstances, in the only manner open to them: finance. They accumulated money, they loaned money at interest, sometimes being accused even of usury, and eventually became wealthy enough that they were seen as controlling the finances of most countries, indeed of the entire continent, to the detriment of the non-Jewish masses. Strike three.

Will antisemitism at some point cease? Perhaps. Maybe someday humans will learn to see past each other’s differences and focus on the commonalities shared by all of us. Or maybe decide that being different is not a sin. But if history is an accurate predictor of the future then the answer has to be no.