Rites of Tribal Initiation: 2011

Jews, have for millennia, circumcised their male offspring as a ticket to entry into the
Tribe.  Hitler’s minions, as a means of identification of male Jews, caused men to drop their pants in order to determine who should live and who should be gassed, tortured, or otherwise exterminated.Under those circumstances, it became more difficult for male Jews to escape doom and certainly argued against the procedure.

A friend of mine, a Rabbi, recently wrote an incensed article about what he termed an anti-Semitic tract, “Foreskin Man,” (www.kurtstone.typepad.com) which condemned circumcision and seeks to introduce a law criminalizing the practice. Aside from all the medical controversy, the differentiation between male circumcision and female genital mutilation seems, for me, a difficult distinction to make.   Both procedures attack the genitalia of the victim.

Arguments that males benefit from the procedure and are less susceptible to sexually
transmitted diseases do not really address the moral issues of the rights of an infant who is unable to consent to the procedure and must suffer the consequences of the decision of his parents who are usually religiously, not medically, motivated. On the other hand, waiting until one is 16 or even 18 renders the procedure painful and usually not done. This even though there is evidence that there is a reduction in urinary tract infections as well as a reduction in the incidence in penile cancer.

Recently the British Medical Association pointed to medical and psychological risks of
the procedure, including anxieties, anger and even attempts of those circumcised to restore their foreskins.  Some courts in Europe have declared the procedure illegal.

There has also been evidence that sexual sensation is diminished because the glans of
the penis is desensitized.  However, there is evidence to the contrary that no loss of sexual sensation occurs.  There is no doubt, however, that there can be medical complications, including, among other consequences, fistulas, cysts, necrosis, and ulceration.

One thing is sure: there is little doubt that circumcision arose as a tribal rite and a methodology, according to Maimonides, to control male sexuality.   There seems to be an increasing consensus among medical societies that male circumcision “should not be routinely performed.”

What is clear is that it is a primitive practice, and rationales by religious people
have been carefully crafted to justify its perpetuation.  Many Jewish parents decide to do it so that their children are not singled out for having a “different penis” in the locker
room. (With no disrespect intended to recently tweeting Jewish congressmen.)

I have no answer to this conundrum.  On the one hand, it is an accepted and routinely practiced custom.  On the other, it is a form of genital mutilation, and when practiced on females, universally and rightly abhorred.

Whether the group currently promoting Elders of Zion caricatures of Jews who circumcise and Aryan looking anti circumcision claques who oppose it are evilly motivated are marginal to the issues of whether the practice remains morally or medically justifiable.  The growing professional opinion seems to be against it.

And, if one is religious, even devoutly so, and believes that Man is created in God’s
image, why the necessity to improve on God’s creation?  If one is not religious, would not Darwinian natural selection have eliminated foreskins by now anyway?

Is Religion the bête noir of Humanity?

I just finished a book by Sam Harris, “The End of Faith.”

 

 

A disturbing analysis of religion and theology, the book’s focus carries forth a recurring theme of the intolerance generated by all religions, and even sharply criticizes religious moderates.  Traditional thinking had always been that religious moderation is an acceptable alternative to religious extremism.  Not so, avers Harris, reasoning that religious moderation fosters a climate of acceptance of religious extremism.  The acceptance of any religion, ergo, a priori allows an implicit acceptance of the most extreme forms of faith.

 

In a coolly rational discourse, Harris especially derides Islam, the conversion from which carries the penalty of death. Islam also tolerates the subjugation of women, honor killings, beheadings and suicide
bombers; the idea that so sexually repressive a religion offers however many virgins in paradise as a reward for acts of grotesque terrorism speak to its ultimate abandonment of goodness.  The idea that in the 21^st century such a belief system can be food for any serious rational thought befuddles him.

 

He is no less forgiving of Catholicism, and refers to the Lateran council of 1252 which punished the Jews by removing them from society’s grace, promulgating thousands of years of anti-Semitism, including the blood libel, exploring a gruesome litany of disembowelments, heretic-burnings, rakings,
witch-huntings and other nauseating acts of religious fervor, ultimately leading to the Holocaust.  Fortunately, he says, the church abandoned such procedures, but not until the early 18^th century and not before the seeds of the whirlwind had been sown.

 

Jews receive little less effusive acid pen treatment.   Jewish fundamentalists cling to the anachronistic, bronze-age railings of the book of Leviticus, which Harris maintains is an exercise in the misogynistic demands of a paranoid God, who demands complete thoughtless subservience. He calls rigid adherence to primitive dietary laws and circumcision a paradigm of tribalism.  Differences among the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine/Israel are still fueled by cultural differences and religious dichotomy, with fundamentalists on both sides stirring a witch’s brew of racism, terrorism, hatred and death.

 

He relegates theology to a non-science and does not even accord it philosophical heft, since he views religion as an evil in the world which denies people the essence of their humanity, the understanding that people do good things because of their own ethical code, giving the example of monkeys
and other species protecting their young.  Religion is not at all needed to produce morality.   He defines love as a concern for other’s happiness and the placement of those values on a level with one’s own well being, without the necessity of priestly or clerical intercession.

 

This, says Harris, is the new ethic to which we should all aspire, an ethic that needs no class of priests to stand between ourselves and our reason or our humanity.  In discounting the belief of others by virtue of “faith,” we automatically discount the “faith” of others.

In my discussions with others about these undertakings, I have always encountered resistance and reluctance for the faithful to not abandon their sense of reason.  The reaction is “I am not educated enough to talk to you about this,” or “I do not wish to discuss it.”

People who are content to use reason during the week somehow feel free to abandon their sense of reason on Sunday, or Saturday.  

 

Why?

The Mideast in Turmoil II

“All War represents a failure of diplomacy.” Tony Benn

Now that the Middle East has been rocked by the latest wave of freedom-seeking, it is interesting to speculate about how little influence we have over what may happen to us. Hosni Mubarak certainly did not. Surely he did not expect to leave office under the circumstances he did. Muammar Gaddafi, the murderous, insane leader of Libya is killing with impunity as the West looks on in a state of befuddlement, the punditry voicing a confused mixture of morality, pragmatism, and logistical analysis.

Nothing has really changed in our western, oil-addicted psyche. Washington politicians are ringing their hands about the “potential slaughter” of innocents, but what they are really thinking about is the same conundrum that has plagued them all along. Will pubescent Arab freedom choke off the world’s supply of oil and will the countries not yet in crisis be able to sustain the increased production necessary to alleviate the strangulating effect of oil shortages on the economic recovery in America and in the rest of its energy-seeking competitors?

Jeff Greenfield, the political analyst and former Presidential speechwriter, has a new book out that hypothesizes about how twists of fate turn the tide of history. The assassination of JFK, for example. Or the fact that a plot to truck dynamite the new President was foiled in December of 1960 because the assassin did not want his family to be involved when Jackie came to the door of their residence. Not wanting to kill the young President’s family led to a delay in the plot allowing the FBI time to foil it. This little known fact reveals how tenuous political and human fortunes are. A slight change of circumstance, a different leader here and there, matters over which even the most prescient leader has little or no control. The randomness of events, play out at the highest levels of government, potentially plunging the world into ever deepening chaos.

Should we do no fly zones in Libya ? Should we have fought in Viet-Nam? Was the removal of Saddam Hussein, empowering the Iranians helpful? Do nations enter wars with inadequate information and are decisions made with poor information, and impulsively misguided leaders? Of course. Decisions rendered in haste are often wrong, but sometimes they are correct. How can so imperfect an operation as government and its leadership really be trusted? Well, in fact, it cannot. Nathan Detroit is rolling the dice.

It is very easy to forget the threat of the Soviet Union, an imploded, decrepit economic house of cards, despite having projected enormous military power perpetuating its own empire, threatening Europe, Asia and the United States. How, in retrospect, could we have considered the threat so daunting? During the post World War II years and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, we lived in fear of a Communist takeover of the world. As schoolchildren we hid under our wooden desks, to protect us from a nuclear Armageddon. Others averred: had we not stood up to the nightmarish Leviathan, we would all be Russian vassals.

What really are the lessons of history? What can impel us to make the right decisions? Thoughtfulness, prudence, and reflection? The very qualities the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has have caused those critical of him to say he is vacillating, indecisive, and too cautious.  George W. Bush was the contrary, embroiling us in two wars, killing thousands, neither of which bloody conflict has really proven its value. Mr. Truman, on the other hand, through courage and decisiveness, prevented North Korean domination of the South, allowing democracy and economic independence to thrive.

The questions of which wars are good wars and which are not remain unanswered.

They probably never will be.

The Mideast in Turmoil.

Events in Egypt still bode uncertain for the West. The fluidity of the situation, now partially determined, has the scent of a youthful, computer-generated revolution, its forces young, vigorous and dynamic, the scenes in the streets of Cairo evoking tableaux of freedom-loving birds learning to fly.

The tired, corrupt government ministers who tried to blame “external influences” for their increasingly precarious grip had averred anarchy and chaos, the classically demagogic response to the change that threatened their grip on puissance.
This, of course, was the manipulative tool of corrupted political forces and is not a new phenomenon from a historical perspective. Every dictator has, to a greater or lesser extent, utilized this fear to perpetuate their own power. The difference is that this time, it failed. Fear and terror lost to a burgeoning aroma of freedom.

We do not now know how this situation will play out. Will the revolution in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East wind up in the hands of Islamic extremists? Will western-influenced youth attain power through some leader who will not become an autocrat? Will a military strongman or fundamentalist Islamists stifle the democratic instincts of the people? Will the reigns of power corrupt whomever it embraces? Will Israel be threatened or find itself at war with the newer forces which might dominate the Arab world? Many other questions still remain unanswered.

In the 1960s, the United Arab Republic was a brief, ill-fated union between Egypt and Syria, which only lasted 2½ years, a paradigm of Arab disunity, almost like the scene in the tent from Lawrence of Arabia when Anthony Quinn entered and demonstrated how the feuding tribes could not hook up, even under British rule. Western attempts to amalgamate Arab countries into one monolith have always been a huge mistake. Too many tribes and nationalities, many of which cannot even agree on who is the scion of Mohammed, offer very little unifying potential. The Egyptians do not now, it seems, wish to reject the 30-year peace treaty with Israel. Nor do they seem to be flying to an Iranian smoke signal, Shia-Sunni Arab-Persian discrepancies momentously militating against that frightful result.

Interestingly and to his credit, John Boehner, on “Meet the Press,” stated that the President had handled the crisis about as well as he could have. A very risky statement, indeed, from the man who must pacify his tea party minions. Governing is far more difficult and complicated than simply leading the opposition.

The lessons taught by attempting governance will face the naifs in the freedom-seeking throngs in Egypt and in whatever other country is next to join them in a quest for democracy. Without a constitutional heritage and institutional foundations of democracy, it will be arduous. Have Facebook and Twitter replaced Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and John Adams in Founding Fatherdom?

We are living in exciting, exhilarating times.

The Decline of Richesse.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961



A Republican friend of mine, whom I respect greatly for his intellect as well as his congeniality, recently opined that the Democratic propensity is to hate the military. This notion of a Democratic antipathy to the armed forces is supported by his assertion that the military vote ten to one for Republicans. Perhaps they do, although I have not checked the accuracy of that assertion, but it is a misconception that Democrats hate the soldiers, most of whom are volunteers for a duty others will not do. Today’s military is composed of an elite career officer corps and enlisted men who volunteer, often with the idea that service to their country is noble, sometimes because they are escaping poverty, and often for a secure, structured environment. Many of the volunteers are very young, and have not yet learned of the horror of war. George W. Bush, who himself avoided combat, had very little compunction in embroiling our country in two disastrous wars that still have not proven their value.

The fact that these gladiators are supported by war profiteers and legislators both from the Republican and Democratic parties, makes them no less victimized by the illusion that the United States is responsible for making the world safe from rogue governments that spring up around the globe or other threats from amorphous terrorists.

These “threats” supposedly justify a $700 billion defense budget, when we as a nation are struggling with underfunded schools, decrepit highways, and a 19th century rail system.
This idea of an American colossus, a dynamic hegemonic enterprise straddling the globe has vanished with our manufacturing base, a decaying rust belt of post industrial cities, inhabited by the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed.

The present Republican leadership believes that fewer taxes on their corporate benefactors will revive our flagging economy, and are busy selling the notion that all Americans will benefit from more jobs created by the effect of the long-discredited “trickle-down” theory. Democrats believe that the government should invest more, publicly fund research, invest in infrastructure and modestly raise taxes to do so. Somewhere between these two increasingly polarized positions should be a solution.

One thing is certain—the United States has neither the economic wherewithal nor the moral ability to police the world. Drunk on oil, hypocritically pious and in hoc, it now must co-exist in an increasingly hostile and threatening world. Faster jet planes and more expensive aircraft carriers are no longer the basis for projecting power. We need to turn inwardly strong. More education, better teachers, faster rail, better research, and energy independence—that is where we should be looking. Congressmen up for sale to defense contractors need to be put on notice that playing on the fears of their constituents will no longer get them reelected.

One would hope that the H.L. Mencken was wrong when he said that “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” So far, unfortunately, he has been right.

Religion in the 21st Century

“In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.”

Thomas Jefferson



Religion, it seems, has not done playing its hand in the affairs of mortals, who, despite accumulating scientific evidence, continue to believe in whatever divinities are comforting to their concept of human existence.

Because of this hope, men strive to gain some illusory reward after they die, including, but not limited to 73 virgins, floating upon a heavenly cloud, life in a virtual paradise, or whatever other notion they can conjure up. Because man is the only beast who knows that he will die, the other products of evolution are not beholding to a religious undertaking or to nature. Lions, for example, feel no remorse when they devour their prey. Snakes do not wilt when they poisonously bite their victims, porpoises do not tarry when they gulp their fish repast.



Man, obsessed with death, believes that if he lives according to the dogma of the church, mosque or synagogue that he will be somehow rewarded in perpetuity. He prays, fasts, renders beseechments, wails, moans, kneels prostrate and goes to confession. He does good turns not for the good in the deed itself, but for the promise of some unearthly reward. This actually diminishes the goodness of the deed, for the deed should, if honestly performed, should be reward enough in and of itself.



In the name of religion, men have killed, maimed, tortured, burned at the stake, and brutalized his fellows. In the name of religion, theocracies and true believers threaten the annihilation of other nations and seek nuclear bombs to do so. Only recently has religious dogma allowed for some toleration of the beliefs of others, mostly as a reaction to the information age and the holocaust. First, the holocaust erased institutional (but not all) anti-Semitism in the west, and second, the general diminution of misinformation that had been generated about contrary belief systems. People are exposed to the ways, in a global environment, of others. Ergo, they are less ignorant. Much of this has happened through the rise of television and of the movies, since many younger people do not read books or even newspapers. Even still, the institutional Church of Rome denies basic human sexuality and the need of men for love, fostering a class of prelate who is frustrated and unfulfilled, propelling them toward abuse and depredation.



Religious fundamentalists, including Hasidim, Islamists, Orthodox Jews, still indoctrinate their children with worthless, anachronistic dogma, dietary laws and fasts. They deny the right to marriage outside their respective faiths, they stone those who violate the Sabbath and who do not obey the precepts of their religion. Islamists execute adulterers and lop off the hands of petty thieves. They degrade and debase women as inferior beings. True believers inculcate in their children a credo that there is something worthwhile in praying to a god who has not the power to change anything on earth, and if he did, should shoulder the blame for the evil that men do, ostensibly in his name. The only thing that occurs as a result of this “educational” enterprise is hysteria and fear among those who have not been taught realistically to deal with the vicissitudes of life, other than doing dances, praying to the spirits, almost like the primitive souls lost and seeking comfort in the African Savannah, 50,000 years ago.

Not much Christmas spirit this year.

Recently, a Republican friend of mine (I do have Republican friends) sent me an email, recounting a tale of a Republican father and his hard-working student liberal Democrat daughter who, brainwashed by her profoundly elite college professors, berated her father for his selfishness. The father, giving as good as he got, reminded his prodigal child that Democrats were interested, through some ignorance of the Dickensian realities of life, to surrender all their freedoms; she simply did not understand that the progenitors of individual wealth should not be subjected to redistributionist taxation. Why did she not give part of her hard earned 4.0 GPA to her partying 2.0 GPA friend as a token of her undying friendship? When his daughter refused, he pronounced her a Republican.

The histoire continued in a vein of how Republicans benefited from hard work, self-reliance, control over the self, and how Democrats were willing to surrender all individual freedoms to the common good. Other included pronouncements were that conservatives who did not like guns did not buy them, homosexuals “quietly stayed at home,” (as if there were some shame to that), and how down-and-out conservatives lift themselves up by their bootstraps instead of looking for handouts.
Like all exaggerations the tale had some truth to it, but a little truth is as good as a prevarication. Democrats are hard working people, Democrats are not Socialists, and yes, they have social consciences, they believe that society has a duty to help care for those who cannot care for themselves. Is that not what America says in its constitutional preamble? “We the people…promote the general welfare…?” Do conservatives want to ensure the elimination of the middle class, transforming its persona into a 21st century version of 19th century England? In 1970, the top 1% controlled 9% of the wealth. Now the top 1% control 35% of the wealth. It is of these figures revolutions are born. Perhaps conservatives should think of social progressivism as a way of preserving the societal structure we are now fortunate enough to inhabit.
Lately, the political discourse in America has degenerated to an almost religious dichotomy of thought. The willingness of right wingers to denounce all efforts to help the unfortunate, and the condemnation of social progressives for trying to do so has become the underlying theme of present political reality. And by the same unfortunate token, the progressives depicting conservatives as social brutes stoke the fires of more polarization.