Open Letter to Bill O’Reilly

(Note to my Readers:   When I started writing this occasional blog earlier this year, I promised to keep each entry 300 words or fewer (thus its title, Short Takes).  And I have kept that promise.  But today is the exception that proves the rule, because Bill O’Reilly has written a book that strikes a deep, personal cord in me and today I just have to vent.  I’ll be back to my 300-word-maximum promise when I resume writing Short Takes in early January.   Thank you.  -Skip)  

TO: Bill O’Reilly

FROM: Skip Johnson

RE: Your book Killing Jesus, A History

Dear Bill,

I just finished reading your book Killing Jesus, and I must tell you, Bill, the part of your book that is about Jesus is just not true.  It is a blatantly false account of the real story, and it does a serious disservice to anyone who reads it and expects to gain an insight into Jesus’ life and death.  You should be ashamed of your book, and of yourself for writing it.     

You say your book is a “fact-based” telling of Jesus’ life, but it is not.

You say you base the part of your book about Jesus on the Bible’s four Gospels, but you do not.

You say your book is not a religious book, but it most certainly is! 

I’ll get to those complaints in a moment, but first I probably should state my qualifications for saying them. 

Beginning in 1977, I became almost obsessed with learning all I could about Jesus the man (the reasons why don’t matter here).  The deeper I looked, the more fascinated I became.  There was so much more to this man and his life than I had ever imagined.  

I couldn’t stop searching.  I studied the Gospels intensely, a section at a time, often a sentence at a time and sometimes even one word at a time (such as the word “Word”). I took notes.  I bought books.  I underlined  extensively.  I gathered all I could find of the knowledge that modern scientific research into Jesus’ era has produced.  

To make a long story short, I spent more than 20 years researching Jesus’ life up close and personal, for personal reasons.  My intention was never to write a book about what I learned, but I’m a nonfiction writer and that’s what nonfiction writers do, so eventually I did.  

The book (The Gospel of Yeshua;  A Fresh Look at the Life and Teaching of Jesus) drew high praise from religious and secular reviewers alike, as well as just plain readers. 

And that’s why I feel I can say with conviction and some authority, Bill, that you do not know what you are talking about.  And because of that, your book  has caused -- and is causing -- damage. 

Let’s get back to my first two specific complaints -- that your book is not, as you say it is, a “fact-based” telling of Jesus’ life; and that it is not, as you claim it is,  based on the Bible’s four Gospels.  

Bill, If you understood the Gospels at all you would understand why I say that.  But since you plainly do not understand, let me explain.

When Jesus died, his followers thought the world was about to end so there was no need for anyone to write a book about him.  But fifteen years later, when the world was still here,  they began to rethink.  

Within the next five or ten years (it’s impossible to be certain), three writers wrote accounts of Jesus’ life and death that eventually made it into the Bible as the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Each one wrote a factual account (by the standards of the time), and although they wrote for different reasons and for different audiences, they agreed so closely on most significant events in Jesus’ life that together they became known as the “Synoptic Gospels.”

And then came John. Twenty or so years after the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke were completed, John decided to write a fourth book.  He certainly was familiar with the first three books so he knew there was no need to reinvent the wheel.  Instead, he wrote his book specifically to persuade readers that Jesus was the Son of God.  He wrote a spiritual book, Bill, not a factual one.  He never intended it to be factual.    

And the result is that his book could not be any more different than the Synoptic Gospels.  Some examples:  

• John says Jesus’ ministry lasted three years and he cleansed the Temple at the beginning of it.  The Synoptic Gospels agree his ministry lasted one year and he cleansed the Temple at the end of it.  (I noticed you, Bill, say he cleansed the Temple at the beginning and the end of his ministry, although there is nothing in the Bible that even hints of that.) 

• John says Jesus performed such astounding acts as bringing a dead man back to life and turning water into wine.  The synoptics do not mention either of those events, although if they had known about them they surely would have mentioned them -- don’t you think? 

• John shows Jesus declaring his Messiahship at the beginning of his ministry and repeating the claim so often it almost becomes his mantra.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all show Jesus going to great lengths throughout his ministry to specifically avoid being identified as the Messiah.  (He did that for two reasons.  One, he could be executed if people started believing him; and two, if people started thinking he was the Messiah, they would pay more attention to who he was than what he was teaching, which was his real purpose.)

John and the Synoptic Gospels even differ on matters of emphasis and style.

• The Synoptic Gospels place extreme importance on Jesus’ baptism, temptations, transfiguration and the events in the Garden of Gethsemane.  John doesn’t even mention any of them.

• The Synoptic Gospels depict Jesus as using parables and short proverbs as his primary teaching tools, but they never show him speaking in long allegories.  John depicts Jesus as never using parables and rarely using short proverbs, but often speaking in long and complicated allegories.

Therefore, Bill, getting back to my original point, with all the wild differences between John and the Synoptic Gospels, how could you possibly claim it is both “fact-based” and follows all four Gospels?  It cannot be done.    

But actually, Bill, you don’t really follow the four Gospels at all.  You base your “fact-based” story about Jesus almost entirely on the Book of John, with rare cherry-picking dips into the Synoptic Gospels.  Every story you tell is either unique to the Book of John or, when the four Gospels tell the same story, you follow the Book of John’s version.  And yet -- again, Bill -- the Book of John was written as a spiritual book and was never intended to be taken as factual.

So, fact-based?  Based on the four Gospels?

Not even close, Bill.    

Which brings me to another complaint.  You say repeatedly, both in your book and in subsequent interviews, that your book is not religious.  Well, yes, Bill, it most certainly is religious.  Since you base virtually all of your book on John, and John says he wrote his book “so you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (John 30:31, NRSV), how could any book based on John not  be religious?

How could any book about Jesus not be religious, for that matter? 

Those are my major objections, Bill, but there are other little inaccuracies -- minor by themselves, perhaps, but put together they bolster my argument that you don’t know what you’re talking about.  

In one place you say the Court of the Gentiles is separate from the Temple, and  another place you say Jesus “leaves the Court of Gentiles and walks toward the Temple itself.”  Bill, the Court of Gentiles is a part of the Temple.  It is not  separate from it.  

You say Mary Magdalen was a prostitute, although the Bible never says that. 

You refer to Jesus as the Christ and also as the messiah.  Why do you capitalize one and not the other?  They are the same word in different languages, Bill.  They both mean “the chosen one.”  Why do you discriminate?

Perhaps the most revealing part of Killing Jesus , though, is your “Note to Readers,” in which you say the four Gospels “sometimes appear to be contradictory” (sometimes?  appear to be?); or “we will tell you when we don’t know what happened or if we believe the evidence we are writing is not set in stone” (you rarely do); and, of course, that it is a fact-based, non-religious book.

But for sheer arrogance, your closing line in your “Note to Readers” takes the cake.  You say that “the incredible story behind that lethal struggle between good and evil has not been fully told.  Until now.”

Until now?  Bill, thousands of us have told that story (in varying degrees of accuracy) for nearly 2,000 years.  Yours was not the first by any stretch of the imagination.  You just joined a long, long line of us who have tried.

I could go on, Bill, but I hope you get the point -- which is, in essence, that you have spread significant falsehoods to millions of readers about “the most beautiful story ever told,” and by so doing you have greatly damaged the understanding of who Jesus was and what he actually did on earth. 

You should stick to politics, Bill.  Or better yet, entertainment.

Sincerely,

-Skip

PS -- If you want to read my book, The Gospel of Yeshua; A Fresh Look at the Life and Teaching of Jesus (Corinthian Books, 2001),  you can find it at Amazon.com or at any eBook source.  I suggest you begin at Chapter 5 where the narrative of Jesus’ public life begins.  The rest is background.

###  

A Horror Story for Parents

A parent told me this story.  It should horrify you. 

It involves the social media website ask.fm.com, which lets people say anything they want to while remaining anonymous and untraceable.  

The problem with that is that it allows adult perverts to say anything they like to your children without any chance they’ll ever be identified and caught.

It also allows teen-aged bullies to verbally batter their peers anonymously.  And  that can be just as bad.  Nine teen suicides have been linked to the site in the last year alone, and it’s because they’re hit with anonymous messages like...

“Why don’t you just die?”

“No one likes you.”

“Fucking die, why don’t you?”

“I dream of you at night and what I want to do to you while you are on top of me.”

“Do you like c*m in your mouth?”

As a veteran of 30 years in newspaper work, I know that people who write things like that anonymously are cowards.  Newspapers get letters like that all the time, but rarely if ever does the perp show his face.  They’re just harmless cowards.

But to teen-agers, they are fearful. 

The good news is that there is something you can do about it. 

Look on your child’s iphone or itouch and go to their Instagram page, and from there to their bio.  If they are involved with ask.fm.com, you’ll see a little blue link.  If there is no link, breathe a sigh of relief. 

You also might consider not allowing snapchat and kik, which bullies also like to use.

For more, Google ask.fm and teen suicides.

And please, pass this on to other parents.

Thank you.

-Skip

The Tea Party’s Mad, Mad, Mad World

The Tea Party is trying to force uninsured people to force the rest of us to pay their medical bills.

In other words, they want to derail Obamacare, which would leave millions of  Americans without medical insurance, which would mean they could not pay for their medical care and would dodge medical care until forced to an emergency room (expensive!), for which they could not pay, which would mean you and I would have have to.

There are only three choices here:  Either we (1) require all of us pay our own medial bills out of pocket (impossible);  (2) require all of us to have insurance to pay our medical bills (a result of Obamacare);  or (3) force you and me to pay the bills of those who cannot or will not pay their own bills (a result of Tea Party efforts). 

Given those choices, why wouldn’t it be best to force all of us to insure ourselves?

Tea Partiers even want to  destroy Medicare and Medicaid as we know it, as if to make absolutely certain you and I can’t escape paying the un-insureds’ bills. 

But medical insurance is just one item.  Another is the Tea Party’s cavalier attitude toward the looming Oct. 1 deadline for Congress to agree on a spending plan or the government will shut down.  

Many Tea Party leaders want to let the deadline pass, saying it would be good for the country -- save some money and all that.  They blithely ignore the well-documented and well-reported devastation that would result if America could not pay its bills.

Instead of governing, the Tea Party-led Congress passed 40 useless bills to stop Obamacare, then left town for a month-long vacation.  

That’s downright un-American. 

-Skip

Trayvon Did Not Die in Vain

Trayvon Martin did not die in vain.

His death was important.  It has touched something deep inside us all, both  black and white.  It is something that will last.

Technically, racism had nothing to do with Trayvon’s death.  Racism did not come up in the trial, and neither the judge nor any of the jurors has been shown to be a racist.

Still, we all know that racism was deeply involved, if only somehow.

Black people see the trial as just another in the never-ending line of injustices that have been committed against them since their ancestors were slaves. 

But it has touched white people, too, in new ways.  Many white people are being forced for the first time to really see -- and hopefully take responsibility for -- the many indignities we force on black people every day. 

Unlike the riots of yesteryear that resulted from perceived injustices, the Black response to Trayvon’s death has been calm, purposeful, focused, and persistent. 

One of the movement’s primary demands, especially by Trayvon’s family, is that all states vacate their so-called Stand Your Ground laws.  

Let’s hope they win.  Stand Your Ground  is a stupid law.  Civilized societies have forever been based on the principle that it’s better to retreat from a death threat than to “stand your ground.” 

White gun-totin’ racists who like these laws need to remember that black people have many more opportunities to use them against whites than whites do against blacks, and courts these days are trending toward listening to minorities with more respect. 

The movement’s leaders could be demanding the Stand Your Ground principle be strengthened so they could use it as a defense in court. Instead, they are demanding its end.  Power to them.

-Skip

Zimmerman Jury Had No Choice

Like most everyone else I know, I was shocked and disheartened when the Zimmerman jury returned its not-guilty verdict.  

I felt certain that Zimmerman would be -- and should be -- convicted of manslaughter, at the very least. 

But the more I read about the trial, the more I realize the jury really had no other choice.  The prosecution didn’t prove its case.  

Under our constitution,  a person is innocent until proven guilty.   Many of us who followed the trial on television saw what we thought was proof.

But therein lies the problem.  Actual jurors see trials differently than armchair jurors do.  A judge can order actual jurors to ignore a witness’s testimony,  but that doesn’t stop us armchair types from giving the testimony full weight.  

Add that to the fact that the jurors had to deal with some very specific and complicated law, they did all they could. 

CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed one of the jurors, known only as juror B37, and her explanation of what went on in the jury room rings true.

She said that, based on an early survey, three of the jurors wanted acquittal, two wanted manslaughter, and one supported second-degree murder. 

But the more they sifted the evidence and considered the judge’s instructions, the more they realized that, legally, there was no proof, so they had no choice but to find him not guilty.  Some of the jurors wanted to convict him of something, she said, but legally there was nothing.

And so a 16-year-old boy who was doing nothing wrong is shot to death and no one is held responsible.

The NAACP is pushing the Justice Department to file wrongful death charges against Zimmerman.  I was among the first to sign its petition.

-Skip

HATE, HATE, HATE 

For the last six years or more, a Tea Party friend of mine has been inundating me almost daily with hate-Obama emails. 

Some of his diatribes are legitimate.  Many are exaggerations, ranging from mild to gross.  Others are bald-faced lies, which he admits when I call him on them.  

He used to send along racist jokes too until I threatened to block all his emails if he didn’t stop.  I’m sure he still sends them to others on his list.

The one thing all of these missives have in common is that they all grow out of hatred.  Whether these folks hate Obama because he’s a Democrat or because he’s black is hard to tell, but it is plain there’s a lot of both involved.  If you doubt that, I have an ocean-front house in Kansas I’d like to sell you.

If it were just one person doing this, it wouldn’t bother me.  But none of what he sends is original.   All of it is just Tea Party stuff he picks up off the Internet and mindlessly passes along.  Six years of this endless drumbeat has to originate somewhere, and that tells me there are a lot of people out there filled with hatred. 

Let me make clear here that I draw a very distinct line between Tea Party Republicans and real Republicans.  Real Republicans, like real Democrats,  can sit down and talk about their differences and find compromise solutions.  That’s the history of our nation.  It’s part of what made us great.

But Tea Partiers will not even consider an idea if Obama likes it, even if they originated the idea themselves.  If Obama likes it, they hate it.  

Hate, Hate, Hate it.

It’s hard not to grow intolerant of their intolerance.

-Skip

Questions for Atheists

I don’t understand atheists.

In the first place, very few atheists call themselves atheists anymore.  There used to be atheists who wore the name proudly -- Ayn Rand and Madelyn Murray O’Hair come to mind.  But today most atheists use words like humanist, freethinker, agnostic.  Why?  I’ve never met a humanist, etc., who wasn’t an atheist.

(Incidentally, many self-described agnostics say they don’t take sides as to whether  God exists, and therefore they’re not atheists.   But they are.  The word “atheist” means “without belief”, so anyone who does not actively believe God exists -- and that includes people who don’t take sides -- is “without belief”.)    

Also, atheists like to say, “In Reason We Trust", which is a rather sarcastic slap at the motto, “In God We Trust.”  They use the phrase as though reason cannot lead to any conclusion other than theirs.  I ask, is that reasonable?  

But the granddaddy of all my questions for atheists, one I’ve asked many atheists and  have yet to hear a reasonable answer, is this:  

If my life ends at death, then ultimately my life is meaningless.  So how can something meaningless have any meaning?  

And if life has no meaning, what would be wrong with with my killing you and taking everything you have.  Or you me?  Or they us?   

And how does one define words like wrong and right and bad and good in terms of life’s having no meaning? 

I should say here that I have nothing against atheists.  Ultimately, atheists and theists alike base their choices on faith.  Nobody knows, so everybody has the right to believe what she or he chooses.   

Still, the questions persist. 

I hope an atheist will answer.

-Skip

Kill the Shield Laws

As a retired newspaperman and present-day blogger on current events, I have to say I hate the idea of shield laws for journalists.   

My first problem is, how do you define journalist?  A reporter for The New York Times obviously would qualify, but how about a retired newspaperman?  Or a blogger on current events?  Would Al Jareeza qualify?  How about high school or middle school newspapers?  If someone asks a government official a question and publishes the answer, might she qualify?  Where do you draw the line?

Trying to define journalist for legal purposes is too much like trying to define pornography.  We all know it when we see it, but our best lawyers can’t define it.

And even if we could define it, government has no business licensing journalists -- which is exactly what shield laws do. They give to journalists (or those the government defines as journalists) rights that no one else can have.  That strikes me as bordering on being unAmerican, if not blatantly unconstitutional. 

In order for Democracy to work the press must be free, but a press licensed by the government is not free.  It is beholden to the government under laws that the government, and only the government, can change, anytime and anyhow it wishes.  And that is wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Journalists should retch at the idea of shield laws.

-Skip

Danger: Feds Fish in Journalists’ Files

We all should be deeply alarmed that federal agents recently fished in the emails and telephone records of an American-based international news organization. 

Not that the government didn’t have a good reason to look.  The Associated Press had published an article, based in part on information provided by an unnamed government source, that inadvertently revealed the identity of an American spy in Yemen.  

The feds called it a breach of national security and demanded to know the reporter’s source, but the AP refused on grounds that revealing the source would betray a trust.  So, the feds secretly searched through a number of the AP’s emails and telephone records to find it.  

The feds are absolutely right in wanting to know who leaked the information, but they are dead wrong in searching the AP’s files to get it. 

The danger is that if sources feel they cannot trust the news organizations to keep them anonymous -- if, for example, they think the feds might search the news organizations’ emails and phone records -- the sources will dry up, and our news media will become mere conduits through which government-written press releases would flow.  We the public would know only what the government wants to know, only what it spoon-feeds us. 

If that had been the case in recent times, we never would have known of such things as our government’s warrantless wiretappings, or its secret prisons, or that it tortured its prisoners.  All of those stories depended on confidential sources.

Yes, there will be some abuses, and that is sad.  But I’d rather face the news media’s abuses than the government’s.  

-Skip

Catholic School Fires Lesbian

For 19 years, Carla Hale had been the beloved physical education teacher and coach at a Catholic high school in Columbus, Ohio.  Everybody loved Carla --   her students, their parents, her faculty colleagues, her school’s administrators -- everybody. 

Then, a few weeks ago, Carla’s mother died, and Ms. Hale had the obituary include the name of her partner, whose name is Julie, and with whom she has shared a life for 10 years.  

But someone wrote an anonymous letter to the school informing it of the obituary -- and so the Catholic diocese fired her.

Why?

Diocese Bishop Frederick Campbell says it was because her “quasi-spousal relationship violates the moral laws of the Catholic Church.” 

Now it wasn’t because Carla is a homosexual.  It was because of the obit.

See, the Catholic Church does not condemn homosexuality, but it does condemn the  physical expression of homosexuality.  In the diocese’s view the obituary expressed that physicality by listing Julie’s name.  Thus, Carla was fired.

Columbus exploded in anger.  

Catholics, Protestants, gays, straights, atheists -- all marched on the school.  

Pro and con letters to the editor poured in to the Columbus Dispatch at a record or near-record volume.  

Hundreds of phone calls, some of them threatening, jammed the school’s telephone lines. 

More than 125,000 people signed an online petition to get her reinstated.  About 800 signed one that supported her firing.

But so far the ruling stands, and probably is headed to court.  

By the way, Ms. Hale is no floozie.  She is a 57-year-old Methodist whose daughter totally supports her mom’s lifestyle, which she never flouted but never hid.  She would very happily marry Julie if Ohio law allowed it.  

But it doesn’t, so she can’t, and therefore she stands convicted.   

Done in by an obit.

Amazing.   

-Skip

More Tea Party Nastiness

If it seems that Republicans spent all of last week trying to blame President Obama for everything except the weather, they didn’t.  Actually, their Tea Party congressmen were still trying to protect the rich while abandoning those who work for a living. 

First, House Republicans passed a bill that would blunt the impact of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law on banks and other financial services firms.  Democrats tried to at least protect the pensions of first responders and teachers, but the Republicans rejected the effort.

Democrats then tried to replace the GOP’s plan with a system that the Security and Exchange Commission already uses to regulate Wall Street, but the Republicans refused that, too.  

In short, Republicans once again protected the people who caused many of the problems that got our nation in the financial mess we’re in, and they left those who had nothing to do with causing the problems, specifically those who protect and educate us, swinging in the wind.   

And then, adding insult to injury, they passed a bill to repeal Obamacare.  It was the 37th time they have passed a bill to repeal or decimate Obamacare.  Thirty-seventh time!

None of these bills stands any chance of getting by the Senate, of course, and they stand even less a chance of getting by the president.  

So why do the Tea Party congresspersons insist on wasting time passing these useless bills while Americans everywhere wait with growing impatience for them to do what we elected them to do? 

I don’t know why.  I can’t even imagine why.  I wish that some Tea Party type would tell us why.

-Skip

Why I Am a Liberal

The older most people get, the more conservative they become.  With me, it’s the opposite.  The older I get, the more liberal I become.

I thank Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for much of that.  I listen to both of them whenever possible because I want to test my beliefs against the best conservatives have to offer.  

And if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh represent today’s conservatism, then conservatives offer nothing (unless, of course, you consider negativism something.)

They hate Obamacare, but they offer nothing to replace it -- other than the system we had before, which denied coverage to millions of deserving people.  They hate his plans to stimulate the economy, but they offer nothing to replace it -- other than an austerity plan that has failed everywhere it has been tried and most economists say cannot work.  Look at Europe. 

But most of all they hate liberals.

And what have liberals done to cause all that hatred?

Lawrence O’Donnell Jr. answered that quite clearly when he pointed out that liberals got women the right to vote, got African-Americans the right to vote, created Social Security and thus lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty, ended racial segregation, passed the Civil Rights Act, passed the Voting Rights Act, created Medicare, passed the Clean Air Act, passed the Clean Water Act.

And what did conservatives do?   

They opposed every one of those things.  Every One!

O’Donnell adds:  “So when you try to hurl that label at my feet,  “Liberal,”  as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, IT WON’T WORK, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.”

Amen, brother O’Donnell.

-Skip

Another Bizarre Moment in South Carolina

South Carolina is known for bizarre politics, but tomorrow’s congressional election surely ranks among the bizarre-est. 

And the whole nation should pay attention, if not because of its national importance, then at least because of its bizarreness.   

Recapping: Voters in South Carolina’s First Congressional District will choose a congressman Tuesday to fill a vacancy.  Our heavily Republican legislature has skillfully gerrymandered the district into a bright crimson, and yet the polls show a political newcomer Democrat might win.

The race has national implications.  If a Democrat can win in this district, a Democrat can win anywhere.

The Republican choice is Mark Sanford, our disgraced former governor and a Tea Party darling.  He’s the one who told his staff, and his wife, that he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail, then flew to Argentina  to be with his “soul mate” -- paying for  some of his trip with my money.  

Sanford later divorced his wife, got engaged to his paramour, paid the biggest fine for ethics violations in South Carolina history, filed for Congress, asked his ex-wife to direct his campaign (she declined), and trespassed at least once into her home despite a court order telling him to stay away. 

The Democrat candidate is Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a political newcomer best known as comedian Stephen Colbert’s sister but an accomplished woman in her own right.  After a disastrous marriage that produced three children, she put herself through college and rose to the top levels of a male-dominated maritime corporation.  She preaches a traditional Democrat philosophy.  

It’s not a matter of forgiving Sanford. He’s forgiven,  just not forgotten.  After all, he confessed because he got caught, not because of a sensitive conscience.  It’s a matter of fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

I’ll vote for Busch.

-Skip

Cowardly Democrats Succumb to Tea Party 

People who know me know that I despise the Tea Party.  At best it’s misguided, and at worst it is greedy, insensitive and cruel.

It was bad enough when the Tea Party was just a bunch of angry old white people venting.  It got worse when the it became the tail that wags the dog in the Republican Party. 

But last week, when the Democrats in Congress kowtowed to Tea Party thinking to make life easier for moneyed people, it became disgusting.  

Some background:   The whole purpose of “sequestration” was to make things so uncomfortable for everyone -- repeat, everyone -- that Congress would be forced to do its job and pass a budget.

But when sequestration began delaying flights and thus inconveniencing business people and others with enough money to fly a lot, well, sequestration be damned.  Congress leaped to their defense by approving a plan  to put sequestrationed air controllers back to work and spare moneyed people their inconvenience.  Then the senators and representatives scurried out of town for a vacation. 

And what did Congress do for people who sequestration is truly hurting, not merely inconveniencing?   I’m talking about destitute mothers who are being denied milk for their children, children who have been locked out of Head Start, adults who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and have been forced to depend on rental vouchers and jobless benefits.  Et cetera ad infinitum.   What did Congress do for them? 

Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Why care about them?  Let them suffer. 

Ah, but don’t let moneyed people be inconvenienced.

A single Democratic senator could have stopped this cowardness.   None did.    

It’s disgusting. 

-Skip

A Personal Note to my Readers 

A couple of things: 

First, up until now I’ve been writing this blog on a sporadic schedule, whenever the mood struck.   But starting Monday, April 29, it will go online once a week  --  in early afternoon every Monday. 

If you are receiving the blog via email, I suggest you click on the bar at the top of the page that says in big letters “Short Takes by Skip Johnson.”  That will take you to the official blog page, which not only is more readable, but also allows you to do such things as write replies and buy books.

If you have earmarked the page and check it occasionally, you might want to scroll down a bit on the right, click the email box, and you won’t have to check for it ever again. 

Second, I just wanted to let you know that, as of yesterday, both of my books are now available as eBooks, each at about half the price of the physical books.

The Gospel of Yeshua is a highly detailed, fictionalized chronology of the life and teaching of Jesus the man.  Paperback version is $19.95, and eBook version is $9.95.  (Hint:  The real drama of Jesus’ last year on earth begins at Chapter 5, when he begins his ministry.  The rest is background matter.)

A Charleston Primer for Yankees is a 68-page straightforward telling of this little city’s remarkable but largely forgotten history.  I wrote it specifically to give Charleston’s visitors an easy way to learn that history in one or two sittings. Softcover book is about $10.  The eBook version is $5.

Finally, thank you for reading my blog.  And feel free to comment. I do not screen comments. 

See you Monday. 

-Skip

Socialism/Capitalism:  Either/Or?

We know that socialism doesn’t work.  Witness the old U.S.S.R.

But we also should know that capitalism doesn’t work either.  Witness the mess the capitalist-driven world is in right now.  

So why not try something new?  

Why don’t both sides admit they don’t have all the answers,  accept that the other side might have some good ideas, and build a new form of government based on both?

It can happen.  It’s very possible for opposite ideals to work together and create something new.  America itself is an example.  

Take justice and mercy.  They are opposites that cannot exist side-by-side, and cannot be bridged.  If we based our courts system on justice alone we would have eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth justice.  But if we based our courts on mercy alone we’d live in pandemonium. Yet we base our court system on both, and it works.  

Or take freedom and order.  Freedom lets you do anything you want to,  and order makes you a prisoner.   They cannot exist together.  But in our society, they do.

How?  

As E.F.Schumacher wrote in his classic book, A Guide for the Perplexed, instead of bridging differences, we transcend them.  We admit our weaknesses, appreciate each other’s strengths, work together, and give birth to something new.   It’s called transcending problems that cannot be bridged.  It’s called love.

Actually, we’ve been moving in that direction for a long time although neither side likes to admit it.  Capitalists love their police forces, their  fire departments, their libraries -- all of them socialist organizations. And in recent years communist China has discovered the beauties of capitalism. 

My dream is that capitalists and socialists will someday admit they are moving toward each other, hang up their pride, and move faster.

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South Carolina: Here We Go Again!

If you follow South Carolina politics at all, you know they can be bizarre.  We’re famous for it.

Well, here we go again.

For my non-South Carolina readers, a quick recap:  I live in the congressional district (gerrymandered to a bright red) where the governor recently appointed our Rep. Tim Scott to fill a vacant Senate seat.

That left Scott’s seat open, and 16 people filed for the job, 14 of them Republicans.  When the Republican primary’s vote was counted, the leading candidate had 37 percent of the vote, and his closest opponent only had about a  third as many -- 13 percent.  

That’s where the here-we-go-again comes in. The leading candidate was our former governor, Mark Sanford -- yes, that Mark Sanford, the one who told us he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail when in fact he was flying to Argentina to see his girlfriend.  He even tried to send us taxpayers the bill. 

He betrayed his wife, his family, his friends, his office and his constituents -- including me.  And although he wasn’t charged with a crime, he was forced to pay the highest fine for ethical violations in the history of South Carolina.

He has apologized, but his apology rings hollow, as if he’s sorry he got caught, not sorry he cheated us.  For instance, after he decided to run for Congress, he had the gall to ask his ex-wife -- the one he had just divorced so he could marry his Argentine woman --  to run his campaign.  (She declined.) 

And yet, more than a third of those who voted in the Republican primary trust him to be their congressman.

Amazing.

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Did Nostradamus Nail It?

In 1990, when I was religion editor of The (Charleston, S.C.) News and Courier, I wrote a column about a researcher who compared Nostradamus’ quatrains with history and wrote what he thought Nostradamus saw coming. 

The researcher, Rene Noorbergan, foresaw the future from the time Nostradamus wrote, around 1550, until Noorbergan wrote, in 1982, with astonishing accuracy. 

But matching the quatrains with history is easy when you have 20-20 hindsight.  My column was based on how accurately Noorbergan’s interpretations matched history from the time Noorbergan wrote until the time I wrote -- eight years. 

The result:  He nailed it again.  He foresaw distinguished advances in communications and travel in air, on land, on sea and under the sea. 

But what about his accuracy for the period between that 1990 column and today? 

You judge.  But as you read, remember that Nostradamus wrote long before the United States, the Soviet Union or Communism even existed; and that Noorbergen wrote at a time when Communism was rising, and the United States and the USSR were locked in a cold war.  Here’s Nostradamus’ final predictions, written 460 years ago and interpreted 30 years ago:   

In the 1990s, rising demands for consumer goods, combined with a resurgence of nationalism among minorities, will force the Stalinist dictators from power.  A new form of government will evolve that will be Communist in name only.

The West, led by the United States, will align itself with that new government, which will unbalance the world politically.  Soon China will align itself with Middle Eastern governments, thus splitting the world into two alliances.  

Those two alliances will meet in World War III, which Nostradamus refers to as Armageddon, the final war between Good and Evil. 

The quatrains end after the 21st Century begins.   

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Prejudice Blocks Scientific Research

The great majority of scientists  (including Dr. Richard Dawkins, of whom I wrote yesterday)  say they are skeptics.  They are not.   It’s true they are skeptical, and often downright hostile, about anything that smacks of religion, mysticism or spirituality.  But they will readily accept as fact almost any unproven materialistic explanation. 

They won’t even look at evidence that challenges their prejudices.  Like Dr. Dawkins, whose knowledge of Christianity seems to go only fundamentalist deep, it’s easier to ridicule than to research.    

One scientist who is willing to look is Dr. Mario Beauregard, a world-renowned neuroscientist at the University of Montreal.  

In his book “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul,”
Beauregard writes:  “Humans, it turns out, can communicate with others without contacting them (telepathy) and move matter without touching it (telekinesis), such as influencing the diffraction pattern of a beam of light -- consistently above statistical chance. ... (This) pattern has persisted for decades.”  

He also writes that there is plenty of evidence that shows near-death experiences are exactly what they appear to be. 

So why won’t scientists like Dawkins look at the evidence -- including the evidence that God is real -- before they reject it?

Beauregard’s answer is that most scientists are materialists, not skeptics at all, and so anything that indicates humans might be more than biological automatons (“meat puppets”), or that otherworld explanations of some phenomena might be real, could shatter some of their most cherished dogmas.  

And so, because of their prejudices, some of humanity’s most important questions go unanswered -- even unstudied.  Is there a God? Is there a soul? Are the brain and mind separate or are they one?

Progress will be made only when scientists examine all evidence honestly, even when it points to conclusions they abhor.  

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Atheist Star Shows His Ignorance  

My hometown of Charleston was treated recently to a public conversation between Dr. Richard Dawkins, arguably the world’s most famous atheist, and Dr. Herb Silverman, inarguably South Carolina’s most famous atheist.    

Dr. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist who has authored 11 best-selling books on atheism, and Dr. Silverman is a retired mathematics professor who founded the Secular Coalition for America.

I could not attend the interview with Dawkins because I was with my grandsons that night, but from what I read in the newspaper account -- and it mirrored what I have read in his books -- the man does not know what he’s talking about.

I feel qualified to say that because I spent 20 years researching Jesus of Nazareth up close up and personal before I wrote The Gospel of Yeshua, and the Jesus I found was nothing like the Jesus Dawkins ridiculed. 

For example, Dawkins found it “an astonishing idea that the only reason you are good is because you’re frightened of the great camera in the sky.”   That would astonish most Christians, too (fundamentalists excepted).  Jesus spent his entire career teaching people to love, never to fear, and I defy Dawkins to show otherwise.

Dawkins also wondered how anybody could believe Jesus actually turned water into wine.  Well, Dick, most Christians would agree with you. They don’t believe that either. That story only occurs in the Book of John, which was never intended to be taken as fact.  Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the facts of Jesus’ life; John focuses on truth, and as a result most scholars agree it is a classic of spiritual writing.  The fact that Dawkins apparently doesn’t know that displays his ignorance. 

I promised to keep this blog under 300 words, so I’ll continue this tomorrow.

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