Culture
Few 'Degrees of Separation' from Massacre Victims
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… we need to chip away at the mistaken notion that the Second Amendment to the Constitution is about the private ownership of firearms….
Politics & Society
Beyond Gun Control: Other Issues Raised by the Unspeakable Events at Newtown
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The Unspeakable, that is to say, evil acts of murdering twenty children and six of their defenders has left me–like everyone else, the president included–speechless. Evil does that. Awe does that. As poet Adrianne Rich put it, “Language cannot do everything—chalk it on the walls where the dead poets lie in their mausoleums.”
Empathy
Bridging the Divide Between Tragedy and Grace
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The tragic events Friday in Connecticut bring with them a panoply of emotions; everything from grief to anger to fear to shock. As humans we want to understand and we often think that means dissecting the life of the shooter to either find some shred of humanity and some emotional resonance so that we can relate in some small way or find something defective in his chemical makeup that makes him so far from us that we don’t have to imagine someone like him sitting on our continuum of humanity.
Non-Violent Communication (NVC)
Grief is Not Enough: Reflections on the Connecticut Shooting
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Our hearts have been broken over and over — at Columbine, in Denver, in Colorado, just a week ago in Portland; yet the litany goes on. According to a study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, the gun murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined. Evidently the ‘copycat’ effect of mass murders that have lead up to this great tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School — elementary school! — is stronger than the grief those of us who are not simply benumbed endure. What will keep this from happening again?
Non-Violent Communication (NVC)
Banning All Guns Is Necessary But Not Sufficient: We Need a Transformation of Consciousness
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Some thoughts and a prayer after the latest mass killings, this time of elementary school students: Banning all guns is necessary but not sufficient in light of the increasing violence in our society. We need a fundamental transformation as well as banning guns. Otherwise, we will now revert to the normal debate between liberals wanting more gun control and conservatives saying that it’s not guns that kill but people. Both are right.
Non-Violent Communication (NVC)
Myths of Power-with # 2: The Either/Or of Decision-Making
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To me this sentence sums up the crux of the issue I am exploring today. This response assumes something I myself question: why would change have to be slow in a democracy? I know the answer, because I think I know what she and others mean by a democracy. I think they mean a certain version of participatory democracy in which everyone participates in all decisions. I used to share the belief that this was the only possible path. In this understanding, we either compromise on the possibility of making things happen, or we compromise on the ideal of power-with, the value at the heart of this version of democracy: no one has anything imposed on them in any way, shape, or form.
Judaism
Israeli Settlement Expansion: The Silence Of The Lambs
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The bottom line is that Feinstein was alone in criticizing Israel’s action. Although the Europeans spoke out vehemently about the sheer destructiveness of Netanyahu’s scheme, the Obama administration barely uttered a peep and Congress (stifled by the lobby) didn’t even go that far.
That silence is now being defended not just by the lobby (which proudly enforces the silence) but by those who actually believe that Israel’s policies are suicidal but don’t care enough about Israelis or Palestinians to complain about them.
Politics & Society
Going Over the Cliff? The Voters Speak
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The “fiscal cliff” and fixing the deficit are all the rage these days. No sooner is the election over than Washington insiders and media pundits start talking about a so-called inevitable “grand bargain” that would cut Social Security, Medicare and other public programs we all depend on in exchange for modest tax increases on very high incomes.
Christianity
Religion Failure
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The Middle East is the cradle of monotheistic religion. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all born there. All three of these religions, at their best, speak about reconciliation and living with your neighbor in peace. And yet last month Israel and Gaza were at war again in what has become a repetitious pattern of military confrontation.
What has gone so terribly wrong? Why have these three religions failed so miserably in inspiring their adherents to act in terms of their highest values of peace and reconciliation?
Healing Israel/Palestine
Congressman Berman's Last Gasp At Punishing Palestinians
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At first glance, the only thing surprising about the Congressional letter demanding that the Palestinians be punished for taking their case to the United Nations is that AIPAC’s role in producing it is stated openly.The cover letter to House members asking for their signatures (from a staffer working for House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) reads as follows:
I wanted to draw your attention to a bipartisan letter(supported by AIPAC)to President Obama from Chairman Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member [Howard] Berman, Chairman-designate [Ed] Royce, and Ranking Member-designate [Elliot] Engel. The letter calls on the President to impose strong, specified consequences on the Palestinian leadership and the United Nations for the UN General Assembly move to upgrade the status of the mission of “Palestine” (the PLO) to “Non-Member Observer” state.