Charles Dickens, Liberation Theologian

I suspect we'll be coming back to this perhaps epochal article again and again. Thomas B. Edsall argues that the United States is going through a period unlike any that its citizens, except for the very old, have experienced before. If economic growth remains anemic, tax revenues will as well, and deficits will continue to balloon. At the federal and especially state and local levels in an "age of austerity" and of rediscovered fiscal probity, Edsall argues, competition for scarce government largess will increase. Those with special influence and leverage (such as unions and large corporations) will have an even greater advantage than usual over constituencies, such as illegal immigrants and the poor, who can be easily scapegoated for gobbling up precious taxpayer resources (no matter how small a piece of the budget pie may actually have been set at the table for them).

We can hope that the mighty engine of U.S. productivity and growth (the last best hope of the material world, at least) will reignite and put the lie, as they say, to the doom-and-gloomers. Whether it does or not, it's important for everyone, from the humblest voter to the most exalted legislator, judge, pundit, and policy maker, to remember what the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ proclaimed and the liberation theologians reaffirmed beginning in the 1960s: That God has a special place in his heart for the poor.

So I gave thanks when this passage from Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop came up on my iPod this morning as I drove between pastoral appointments. Those who were amazed a half-century ago to find such powerful faith burning in the darkest slums of Santiago said it no more powerfully. Nor has anyone ever written more beautifully about the roots of true patriotism:

[I]f ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven. The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as part of himself: as trophies of his birth and power; his associations with them are associations of pride and wealth and triumph; the poor man's attachment to the tenements he holds, which strangers have held before, and may to-morrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a purer soil. His household gods are of flesh and blood, with no alloy of silver, gold, or precious stone; he has no property but in the affections of his own heart; and when they endear bare floors and walls, despite of rags and toil and scanty fare, that man has his love of home from God, and his rude hut becomes a solemn place.

Oh! if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember this -- if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or rather never found -- if they would but turn aside from the wide thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to improve the wretched dwellings in bye-ways where only Poverty may walk -- many low roofs would point more truly to the sky, than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible disease, to mock them by its contrast. In hollow voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and jail, this truth is preached from day to day, and has been proclaimed for years. It is no light matter -- no outcry from the working vulgar -- no mere question of the people's health and comforts that may be whistled down on Wednesday nights. In love of home, the love of country has its rise; and who are the truer patriots or the better in time of need -- those who venerate the land, owning its wood, and stream, and earth, and all that they produce? or those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain!

I'm listening to the novel. You can read it on-line here thanks to the University of Virginia.

Call Me Crazy

"The New Republic" presents a "comprehensive guide to the craziest statements Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell has made in public" and includes this:

Sex is a covenant between a man and a woman and God. … Your job is to satisfy the other, the giving of oneself to another. Porn turns that around.

Overtly theological, yes. Heterosexist, perhaps. But crazy? I'd say truthful. Covenantal servanthood (or mutuality, if you prefer a secular term) is one of the keys to a joyful human life. It's little evidences such as this of the divide between elites and, if I may, everyday Americans that has me thinking not only that the GOP is going to run the table in November but that Christine O'Donnell's probably going to win in Delaware.

End The "Diabolization" Of Imam Rauf

The peerless Leon Wieseltier on the lower Manhattan community center and mosque:

In matters of principle...polling is beside the point, or an alibi for the tyranny of the majority, or an invitation to demagogues to make divisiveness into a strategy, so that their targets come to seem like they are the ones standing in the way of social peace, and the “decent” thing is for them to fold. Why doesn’t Rauf just move the mosque? That would bring the ugliness to an end. But why don’t Palin and Gingrich just shut up? That, too, would bring the ugliness to an end. Certainly the diabolization of Rauf, an imam who has publicly recited the Shema as an act of solidarity and argued that the Declaration of Independence “embodies and restates the core values of the Abrahamic, and thus also the Islamic, ethic,” must cease. In a time when an alarming number of Muslims wish to imitate Osama bin Laden, here is a Muslim who wishes to imitate Mordecai Kaplan.

Read the whole column.

Disagreement And Courtesy

Writing in the "New Republic," Harold Pollack on abortion:

Serious arguments can be made [about abortion] from many sides. Reasonable people disagree for reasons that deserve mutual respect. Pro-choice liberals must honor--though certainly not defer to--the seriousness of those who hold pro-life views. I cannot begrudge religious conservatives who seek to persuade women not to have abortions. One can oppose Roe vs. Wade without being an evil person. One can picket an abortion clinic--though not get in the face of a frightened pregnant patient--in an honorable fashion.

It would be easier to graciously acknowledge the seriousness of social conservatives if they were to grant us the same courtesy.

"Come Home, America" Watch, Day 54

"The New Republic" helpfully graphs the experts' positions on Afghanistan policy. If you're not sure about your opinion, just borrow one of theirs!

Tall Order For Nobel Peace Prize Winner

In the "New Republic," Jeffrey Herf argues that economic sanctions won't work against Iran. Instead, only

a credible threat of military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities by the United States, perhaps joined by Britain and France, or Israel. If the Iranian leadership believed that such an attack was a real possibility, it, or some parts of it, might be persuaded to change course.

Israel Is Inherently Jewish

This sobering assessment of prospects for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestinians appeared in the New York Times during our St. John's pilgrimage to the Holy Land, during which it was impossible to walk in Jesus's footsteps without also traversing the avenues and byways of current events. The authors argued that many if not most Arabs still resist the concept of Israel as a Jewish state. This morning, Mary Peretz replies at the "New Republic":

The two-state solution is imperfect in that it won't fulfill all of the historic ambitions of the peoples in conflict. But, of course, the major impediment for the Arabs of Palestine and the Arabs outside Palestine is that Israel is and can only be a Jewish state. There is a certain insane chutzpah for the Arabs to object to the Jewish character of Israel. The fact is that its Jewish character was written into its very charter by the General Assembly 62 years ago. Indeed, the whole idea of peoplehood which informed the Wilsonian framework of the post-World War I formula for peace after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire is deeply enmeshed with Zionism.

A Few Things At A Time

In a "New Republic" article entitled "Barack's Too-Long Wish List," William Galston says that President Obama, by proffering an FDR-like flurry of projects and reforms, could end up being a Carter instead of a Reagan:

The core issue is the clarity and self-discipline needed to maintain control of the agenda. Consider the judgment that Erwin C. Hargrove, a respected scholar of the presidency, rendered after Reagan's first hundred days: "Reagan has demonstrated in a way that Jimmy Carter never did, that he understands how to be President. He knows that a President can deal with only a relatively small number of issues at a time." Hargrove might have added that the same is true of Congress, a fact every president must keep firmly in mind.

Government Is "A Jewel Of Human Association"

Leon Wieseltier at the "New Republic" is discouraged by President Obama's pragmatism and refusal to enunciate fundamental truths, including that conservatives only promote their stale, self-serving, hypocritical doctrines, whereas:

I want the president to tell the American people that, contrary to what they have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government; that strong government comports well with strong freedom...

Death Of Newspapers, Death Of Democracy?

In the "New Republic," Paul Starr on the frightening decline of print journalism:

News coverage is not all that newspapers have given us. They have lent the public a powerful means of leverage over the state, and this leverage is now at risk. If we take seriously the notion of newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself. Newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both government and business. If we are to avoid a new era of corruption, we are going to have to summon that power in other ways. Our new technologies do not retire our old responsibilities.

Media Should Be Abolished From Reporting

From the "New Republic," A glimpse of the high-quality information Americans will receive from the Hackosphere when newspapers die:

Earlier this month, Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher--last seen serving as the third wheel on John McCain and Sarah Palin's increasingly disastrous blind date--traded in his toilet jack for a handheld microphone and traveled to the Middle East to become a foreign correspondent covering the Israel-Hamas war for the conservative website Pajamas Media. Alas, he wasn't terribly impressed with his new colleagues. "I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting," Wurzelbacher said in the Israeli city of Sderot, where he was, from all appearances, reporting. "You know, war is hell. And if you're gonna sit there and say, 'Well, look at this atrocity,' well you don't know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it."

Getting Gilly With It

"The New Republic" has ten interesting things about New York's new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, including:

She's one of a few representatives to disclose her daily schedule online, so reporters and constituents can see who's got access to her. She also posts her earmark requests.