IRS Presides over Marriage of Church & State

What church is being threatened by the IRS for making political statements? Did you guess the Catholic Church, for notoriously telling its parishioners not to vote for John Kerry last year? Or perhaps you're thinking of the many fundamentalist Protestant churches that blatantly told their members how to vote in the same election, even going so far as to issue voters guides in praise of George Bush.

Well, you'd be wrong. No, the IRS is threatening to revoke the tax free status of a small Episcopal Church in California whose rector gave a fiery sermon before the last election against poverty and the War in Iraq. Now let's get this straight. The IRS is saying that war and poverty are political, not spiritual matters? This is most fascinating. A number of years ago it was the IRS that "sanctified" the Church of Scientology by granting it tax free status.

One has to ask if our elected leaders in Congress are aware that the Internal Revenue Service has become the self-appointed arbiter of religion in this nation, which foolishly prides itself on having separated matters of church and state. If they weren't, then let them know. Perhaps they don't have time to read papers, poor things, since they're so busy being "educated" by lobbyists for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Sounds to me like the IRS is a hotbed of politicized bureaucrats. It was an out-of-control bureaucrat by the name of Henry Anslinger (read my former post on Anslinger), that unleashed the disastrous Trillion Dollar Drug War on America, after America righteously demanded an end to prohibition. Bureaucrats demand work. Especially nonsensical make-work.

So there are two issues involved in the IRS's thuggery toward liberal leaning churches: 1) Since they are not going after the Catholic Bishops who tried to bully their parishioners into voting Republican, the purportedly non-partisan IRS now stands naked as a Republican lapdog. 2) Partisan or not, the IRS should have no mandate whatsoever in stamping "approved" or "not approved" on churches. If Congress has given them that authority, then Congress should take it back--especially now that are abusing it so flagrantly.

Gay Friendly Jesus

Though not an avid Bible reader, I was once motivated to peruse the New Testament looking for evidence that Jesus disdained homosexuals. Since the words of Christ were printed in red, this was a relatively easy task. I found nothing, and quickly forgot about it, satisfied that fundamentalist bible thumpers were "having their way" with the great book, inventing and imposing homophobia were none existed. Now, thanks to a friend whose interest in the Bible far exceeds my own, I've been directed to a chapter and verse of St Matthew in which Christ appears to actually "justify" homosexuality. My friend refers to this as one of the many "eunuch" parables in the Bible. Here it is:

Chapter 19, verse 8 thru 12: He saith unto them, "Moses because of the harness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery."
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them:
"All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."

In Biblical times there was no word for homosexual. Clearly "eunuch" in Christ's text refers to men who do not sleep, or are not disposed to sleep, with women. Why else would he assert that there are men who "have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." What else could he be referring to here other than priests? Did men have to undergo "actual" castration in order to become priests? Of course not. Eunuch is clearly used in a figurative fashion, except in the middle example: "some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men." And the first example, those "so born from their mother's womb?" What else could these be but natural born homosexuals?

I am not posing here as a Bible expert. But when the Bible is used as a weapon for the unfair treatment of whole groups of people, then all people--both those being judged, and those being herded into mass judgement against others-- have a right to go to the Book and cite chapter and verse against those who play so recklessly with human spirituality.

A Patriarch's Curse

This just in, on the nightly news: Pat Robertson warns the citizens of Dover, Pa that when calamity befalls their community, don't ask God for help, because they've just turned their backs on him by voting to keep Intelligent Design out of their schools. Don't anyone be confused about the true significance of Robertson's warning. It's a curse. It's a biblical curse, in the same vein as centuries and millennia of spiritual violence that suurounds the dominant religions.

In a similar vein, we learned a few weeks ago that certain rabbis in Israel were putting curses on the heads of people like Arial Sharon and other Israelies who weren't following the fundamentalist line. Oh yes, said one on television. "We pray for their death. "

The truly spiritual can only look upon these violent patriarchs with horror. But they are all around us. In fact, they are the ones who get most of the "spiritual attention" in the media, which loves a good blood fight. Blood, death, guts, fire, brimstone, agonizing death--or better yet, an agonizing eternity in that mythological place called Hell, which the patriarchs invented as "God's Prison," since worldly prisons could never inflict enough pain and suffering upon their fellow man to satisy the patriarchs' insatiable blood thirst. Sic 'em Pat! Send those heathens from Dover straight to Hell.

NeoCons Against the Drug War?

Once there was a time when libertarian and conservative were not mutually exclusive words. Think of conservative eminence William F. Buckley, for example, who argued valiantly against the drug war back in the '80s. In the last decade, however, only leftist libertarians have been fighting the good fight to end America's senseless war against its own people.

So imagine our surprise to pick up the New York Times this morning, and learn that John Tierney, the Times' newest conservative pundit, is on the side of the angels, vis-a-vis this subject. Probably not wanting to make too many waves, he backed into the subject, by tacking it onto the tail end of a piece entitled "The Idiots Abroad...", in which he lambasts doctrinaire Latin American socialists. After suggesting that the best way for the American government to deal with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is to "ignore him," he conceds that there's some idiocy right here at home:

"And instead of fighting a drug war in South America," he writes, "surrender. The war has been utterly ineffectual at stopping the flow of cocaine, which has actually gotten cheaper on American streets. " Noting that our drug war is only inflaming anti-Americanism south of the border, he declares that leaders like Chavez may be "economic dunces, but in this case the perfect idiots are the drug warriors in Washington helping to elect them."

Bravo, Mr. Tierney! Though we disagree with much of your politics, it is thrilling to see that some libertarian light is getting through to your side.

The Ghost of Henry Anslinger at the DEA

A Modest Proposal
by A Drug Warrior
Channeling the Ghost of Henry Anslinger


Wake up America! A cancer is eating away at our great nation, sapping our substance, destroying our will, and rotting our moral fiber. We all, each and every one of us, know this disease: it is the plague known as "drugs." No disease afflicting the human race is more insidious than this. Not only does it destroy the will of those who are caught in its spiral of addiction, but it actually spreads a moral contagion among many well-meaning but misguided non-addicts who would solve the "drug problem" (as they so dismissingly call it) by turning their backs on it. By actually legalizing these cursed substances, they would open the floodgates wide, allowing a sea of misery to wash over our children, turning our playgrounds into needle parks. "The Drug War has failed," they complain, citing statistics as if the whole issue of drug control could be boiled down to a cost-benefit analysis. America, our children deserve better than this. They deserve, and the future of our great country demands, that we grit our teeth and address this matter headlong with the utmost urgency. In one respect, the legalizers are right: we have not been winning this war. But, America, it can be won. You know it can be won. To do so, however, we must first recognize the enemy for what he is: a destroyer of young minds, a threat to children more alarming than even the pedophiles who haunt the internet--a threat, in fact, to the world as we know it. Like a cancer in its advanced stages, the malignancy is spreading at a quantum rate, its tentacles reaching, grasping, strangling, the throat of an entire generation. America, it is time to act!

Once there was a time, in our world, when the punishment fit the crime. The Bible, in fact, records these righteous punishments in courageous detail. Over and over again the Bible tells us of how "God slew…" our tormentors. America, God still recognizes human iniquity for what it is: a blot on His divine creation. So why can’t we? Is it because we have lost our way in the humanist wilderness of psychology and sociology? Wake up America! We must face our tormentors with at least half the fierceness that they daily unleash upon our children. You know, America, what the price of our deliverance will need to be. It is the price of iniquitous blood shed by a righteous wrath. The rubber is hitting the road, America. We must act now, or the Drug War is lost.

Capital punishment. Can there be any other way? Several states already impose this righteous remedy for far lesser crimes, such as the premeditated murder of one person by another. The drug pusher, America, is a premeditated serial killer. And yet his only punishment is free rent in our prison system--usually for just a few years. Should we toil, Americans, to raise our surviving young while the drug pusher who destroyed, or tried to destroy, so many other young lives pumps iron in the prison gym and reads law books in the prison library? Wake up America!

But capital punishment for whom? Because drug abuse is largely a young person's crime, we must hold the young accountable. Allowing a grace period for the first teen year, I suggest that this ultimate punishment should be meted out to all individuals over the age of 14 who have been found guilty of offering for sale a quantity of illegal drugs sufficient for more than one "high." In the case of marijuana, for example, this would be more than one gram, which is about the quantity needed to produce one so-called "joint." Why so young, some may ask? Unfortunately, the international drug cartel has become so dependent upon inner-city teenage males to peddle their filth, that it would be a dereliction of moral duty not set the marker at a realistic age. Once there was a time, we should all remember, when 14-year-olds began moving into adulthood, holding down jobs and, by the age of 16, fighting in wars. Perhaps the artificial prolongation of human adolescence is part of the great moral problem now facing America. In a Holy War such as that which we are fighting against illegal drugs, the ancient principles of triage may have to be resurrected. Some of the infected may have to die in order that the uninfected may live. We must concentrate our sympathies upon the truly young. These would include not only the grade schoolers, whose playgrounds are turning into drug parks, but--most egregiously--the unborn, whose innocent bloodstreams are being corrupted daily by their drug-doing heathen moms. This is a scourge the likes of which Mankind has never known. Only drastic measures will save us from this devouring beast.

Wake up America! God waits upon your wisdom.

--As heard by a Fly on the Wall at the Drug Enforcement Agency, and then reported to Dorian Grayson.

Memo to Bloomberg from The City of Night

Hey Mike. Why’d ya’ let your boys in blue close the Roxy last week? We weren’t doin’ anything wrong. We were just dancing the night away, like tens of thousands of other spirited New Yorkers were doing on Halloween weekend. We weren’t keeping anyone awake. The Roxy’s located in an industrial part of town, with virtually no residents to be bothered by the noise of a late-night club. Like other dance clubs, the Roxy stops serving booze at 4 am, then allows its patrons to keep dancing until the really wee hours. We’ve been doing this for years. Mike, we felt like little kids who were being sent to their rooms! Mike (I can call you that since I’m older than you), we’re adults! We’re people who work hard, pay taxes, vote, and expect to be treated like adults. Mike, a lot of us don’t want to go home at 4 am. Some of us are still trying to find a date. Others are just grooving on the spiritual experience of House Music, which is a very appropriate thing to do on Sunday morning. Mike, do you have a problem with that?

Clearly, Mike, you’re no libertarian. Well…okay, you’re an “economic libertarian.” You want to keep the government out of your pockets, so you can work on your next billion. But you’re not the good kind of libertarian, the kind most working Americans are. I’m talking about social libertarians. We’re the people who want to keep the government out of our bedrooms. We’re the people who don’t want the government telling us when to go to bed, or who to go to bed with. Or what to do when we get between the sheets. We’re the people who hate seeing our government held hostage by religious fundamentalists--you know, the American version of those guys who flew into the World Trade Center. Most of all, we’re the people who hate having the government tell us: Drink martinis, beer, and wine; Smoke cigarettes and take all the valium your doctor will give you. Eat all the cancer and fat inducing foods you can stuff down your throat, and then take all the “certified” big Pharma drugs you’ll need to cope with the damage. But don’t you dare ever smoke a joint! Or our cops and prosecutors and judges will send you straight to jail (thereby committing a million times more damage to your life and person than any drug could ever do.)

Many of us thought you were different, Mike. For a silly little minute I thought you just might be a humanist in wolf’s clothing. What a mistake. Turns out you’re just as much of a control freak as all your Republican buds. Mike, America has had enough with “economic” libertarians like you and your friends. You guys are running the country into the ground. You’ve even ruined the stock market, for God’s sake (read James Cramer, the Wall Street guru who tells us in the November 7th New York magazine that the U.S. has the worst performing stock market in the world. The WORLD, Mike! ) What Americans really needs is a radical shift to the proper kind libertarianism--the social kind. Our founding fathers were Social Libertarians, Mike. They’d never heard of laizze faire, let alone supply side economics.

Ah well. I guess we can always vote for Ferrer next week. But you’re counting on the disillusionment of us real freedom lovers to keep us from the polls, and that’s what probably will happen. But one of these days we’re all gonna’ wake up and discover that we have the power to nullify. If we’re disillusioned, Mike, it’s because the Democrats are control freaks too. But we have the power to nullify all of yuz’. Ever hear the slogan: “Throw the Bastards Out!” What New Yorkers and all Americans should start doing is nullifying all incumbents when they come up for reelection. Each November, we should vote for the opponent whoever he or she might be. Just keep rotating them out. And out. And out. Until finally, maybe, the politicians get the message that the people really do rule. That we are the true sovereigns of the United States of America. Unfortunately, we don't know that yet. But when despair follows cynicism, then we will all have to learn the true meaning of freedom--the hard way.

Who are the Real Highbrows?

In the October 30, 2005 NYT magazine, its neocon writer James Traub asks under the headline Their Highbrow Hatred of Us, "How did virulent anti-Americanism become so respectable?" He cites playwright Harold Pinter's statement "Mr Bush and his gang are determined...to control the world and the world's resources. And they don't give a damn how many people they murder on the way." to make his point. I've got the answer Mr Traub is looking for.

"They" hate us for the very same reason that about 1/2 of the American people hate the gang of Republican thugs who hijacked American democracy in countless voting districts throughout the land, but especially in Florida and Ohio. They hate us for waging an obscene war under the pious headline of "Freedom," when indeed the U.S. becomes less free by each Republican year. They hate us for claiming the moral highground of Democracy, when in fact American society becomes more Feudal with each passing Republican year. They hate us for the unbridled greed of our upper classes who deserve more than any group in the world to be branded "Highbrow."

What is a highbrow? My old Webster Seventh defines it thus: A person of superior learning or culture: intellectual." However, my newer American Heritage Dictionary defines it this way: One who has or affects superior learning or culture. When neocon critics like Traub use the word to skewer what they see as anti-Americanism, they are clearly talking about the affectation to superiority, not the real thing, for clearly superior learning is something we all aspire to.

By the affectation standard, there is no group of highbrows in the world like American neo-conservative. Little known to most people (and most journalists, unfortunately) the gang of neocons who are now running our country count as one of their intellectual lights the philosopher Leo Strauss, who espoused Plato's "Philosopher King" thesis. This has often been seen as one of Plato's most charming, if totally unrealistic, ideas. Most college graduates know of it: In a perfect society, all decisions of importance will be made by a small (very small) handful of scholars--philosopher kings, if you will. I alway smiled when I read about it. But not anymore. Not since Strauss' students started taking over the U.S. of A. We are now living in a country where a tiny handful of "philosopher kings" (don't laugh) are totally running the show. We the people of the United States are now ciphers. It's a joke that we even still bother to vote.

The subject of this little philosophy lesson was the question: what is a highbrow? Could there be any people in the world who hold more affectation to superiority than the American Neocon? Affectation is the operative word. The superiority of the Neocon is an utterly unfounded pretense to superiority, which makes it "highbrow" in the most perjoritive of senses. What could be more highbrow, after all, than the belief in "philosopher kings?" Too bad Plato's not around to see the mischief his little pipedream has spawned.