The Declaration of Independence: And You Are There

it got to be this time of year, the 232nd anniversary of the “posting date” of the American Declaration of Independence, I promised myself I’d lay down some thoughts about it, and why I admire it as a political document (and you should too), not just for the oft-quoted Age of Enlightenment philosophy, but for the whole structure, and the diplomatic and political logic behind it; the hidden drama and adventure in the spirit of the words, which become clear when you immerse yourself in the times that produced it; and why we could use some more of this kind of Enlightenment today in Washington.

Obama Cherrypicks in Church, and So Do You

Christians, to the extent that they believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and are forbidden to distinguish between Old and New Testaments when it comes to the edicts of God (even when they conflict), are technically violating these edicts whenever they see a homosexual, a Jew or an adulterer and fail to kill them.

Are you a good Christian? I hope not.

I hope you use the intellect God gave you to parse the biblical advice that made sense at the time — that was used to justify slavery, subjugation of women, and violence of all kinds — from the eternal truths of life, that all religions and even extra-religious morality systems throughout modern civilization have in common.

Much of modern religious activity consists of separating the wheat from the chaff. That’s not a bad thing. We worry a lot about groups of worshipers who haven’t learned this art, because they not only believe the primitive and obsolete aspects of their religion, but act on those beliefs. We call them fundamentalists. Christian, Muslim or Jew, people who can’t pare away orthodoxy to get to the core of a belief are more of a liability in society than an asset.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright gave Barack Obama and his family a lot of racism orthodoxy every Sunday that they attended their church. From listening to Obama in speeches, I conclude he has his head screwed on straight with regard to race — or he’s an incredibly cunning liar, but I tend to suspect the former. (I mean, he is a politician.) This means that his opinion of race is formed from input from other places besides Rev. Wright. And during the sermons, assuming he’s not daydreaming, he mentally puts his thumb up or down, depending on what he can stomach from the preacher. The good he gets from being a member of the congregation may outweigh the elements with which he disagrees. Maybe he puts the racism in the same category I always put all the supernatural aspects of Christianity: into a mental “circular file.”

Is that really so hard to fathom?

Does this mean we don’t need to hear a full explanation from Mr. Obama soon? No. I’m just putting myself in his position for a few moments. Something we all should be doing a little more often, especially the “churched” among us. And I’m recognizing that being in the same room as a speaker and buying everything he says are two different matters. That’s the case whether the speaker speaks from a pulpit or a debate podium.

Cranes and Codes

Stick a pushpin into New York City on any standard desk globe, and my home would teeter on the precipice of the hole you made. So that gives me the right to have an opinion about the nearest Big City and some of its goings-on.

A large crane, the kind that’s assembled on-site to work on skyscrapers, collapsed yesterday, with four fatalities as far as we know.

News reported that there were 13 safety code violations. A few gave some perspective on that figure, saying that most similar operations actually have more violations.

What can we take from that? Every day, there are operations of all kinds by construction firms, operating in violation of one code or another, or perhaps dozens. And the work gets finished, and the owners are oblivious and happy.

So year after year, the legislators are seeing to it that code after code gets stuffed into the city charter, even while understanding that the more there are, the more likely a wink and a nod will be necessary for anything to get done in this city. The more there are, the less good they do. And this isn’t even considering the temptation to grease the wheels of progress by greasing certain palms.

I’d sooner have about 20 rules, clear and obvious and enforced by men with guns, than what we’ve got now.

And by “we”, I mean they. In the City.

Elliot “Client-9″ Spitzer; or, Vice as a Political Weapon

Here it is, the second day in the news cycle of the big revelation by The New York Times that my state’s governor, Elliot Spitzer, was another satisfied customer of an elite callgirl service, sufficiently bigwig that his client number could fit into speed dial. (9? Who was 8?) On Day 2, microphones are thrust into the faces of famous talkers of both political persuasions. There’s the Republican who points out the long record of cantankerousness and snarliness throughout this governor’s short term, with the tone that he saw this coming a mile away, and it was only a matter of time before he’d take a spill, like a Shakespearean tragedy. (News 12 from Cablevision last night: you have to be a subscriber to see the page, so no sense linking it. [!]) Then there’s the nominal Democrat, Scott Horton in Harpers, who observes that the Public Integrity Section of the Federal Department of Justice, who may have been on the trail of a money-laundering scheme and arrived unwittingly at this callgirl operation (“Well, looky-looky!”), has a reputation of political motivation.

In the middle are the few who believed, before, during and after this media Spitz-up, that the hallmark of an advanced civilization would be the shedding of laws that make sex for money illegal. It’s particularly disheartening today, since our minority opinion must circle the rhetorical wagons as defenders of the law point to Albany for support of their argument. Even as I do the same for mine.

What makes a good candidate for high office? We know what we wish it took, what it once took: notoriety as a learned person, who had the modesty to delegate to friends and supporters the job of singing of your praises to voters. That citizen-statesman now gets his butt waxed by the professional politician—who does whatever it takes, makes conflicting promises not only with a straight face but with actual conviction, and reacts to seeming downturns with ever greater stamina and determination. In other words (and I only speak here as a representative of my gender here), he’s got testosterone.

Now, I’m not saying this is a good thing. A leader with testosterone, say, a president, now has a button, which can be located and pressed by an enemy, foreign or domestic, who benefits from reactionary White House chaos. (And no, I’m not singling out any administration.)

Back to the issue of the legal status of sex for money. The writers of such laws gave up their seats to new lawmakers who hold the power to repeal those laws tomorrow, but won’t. The existence of the law, or of the practice of prostitution, among the general population isn’t the real issue. It’s the knowledge that people on the other side of that aisle, those whom they target as the enemy every working day, might get caught doing it. And when that happens, they’ve got him!

To observe that this exact strategy is deployed in incoming volleys as well is to miss the point. They’ve both assembled a series of pre-conceived contingency actions in the event the “whore bomb” takes out a few of the faithful, and even, depending on the megatonnage, the target legislator himself, if he’s grown adept at the techniques from term after term of testosterone baths. Each side is trained in the defense drill, as well as the offense when a revelation hits (hey, I didn’t start calling it a “bombshell”).

Yes, if you legalized prostitution, the incoming fire of allegations would cease. But you’d also take that weapon away from your side, too. And that’s a bigger downside. At least it is in the mind of a testosterone-deluded male legislator. You and I may see the symmetry of the effect. But there is no symmetry in Washington.