The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

– Thomas Paine

Professor Bart Ehrman has done something that more than 99 percent of American Christians have failed to do. He has devoted much of his adult life to a serious study of the New Testament.

Ehrman commenced his studies at a fundamentalist Bible college, Moody Bible Institute, before completing his undergraduate education at Wheaton College. While at Wheaton, Ehrman did what every serious student of the New Testament must do; he studied Greek. As he explained in Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, “I took Greek, so that I could read the New Testament in its original language.” [p. 4]

After graduating from Wheaton, Ehrman went to Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under one of the world’s great experts on the Greek New Testament, the late Bruce Metzger. Among Metzger’s many scholarly contributions is his indispensible book, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, which identifies the three classes of sources available for ascertaining the text of the New Testament: Greek manuscripts, ancient translations into other languages and quotations from the New Testament made by early ecclesiastical writers, such as Augustine, Eusebius, Tertullian and Marcion. [p. 36-89]

Readers of that book would learn, for example, that the oldest known portion of a New Testament is a few verses from John that were written during the first half of the second century — or approximately a full century after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Readers also would learn that the two oldest surviving complete New Testaments are the codex Sinaiticus and codex Vaticanus. Sinaiticus is a fourth-century Greek Bible discovered in the middle of the nineteenth century that not only contains the complete New Testament, but also The Shepard of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, books that were considered to be part of the New Testament for several centuries. Vaticanus also is a fourth-century Greek Bible that has been housed in the Vatican Library at least since 1475.

Because approximately 5,000 Greek manuscripts containing all or part of the New Testament have been identified, textual criticism became a necessity. As Professor Metzger put it, “The necessity of applying textual criticism to the books of the New Testament arises from two circumstances: (a) none of the original documents is extant, and (b) the existing copies differ from one another.�”

(These are facts to keep in mind whenever some biblical literalist, presumably incapable of reading Greek, tells you that the New Testament is inerrant.)

Having studied under Metzger and reading all he could, Ehrman not only abandoned his early belief that the Bible was inerrant, he also was compelled to conclude: “the Bible not only contains untruths or accidental mistakes. It also contains what almost anyone today would call lies.” [p. 5] As he asserts in Forged, “Throughout this book it will become quite clear from the ancient writings themselves that even though forgery was widely practiced, it was also widely condemned and treated as a form of lying.” [p. 36].

Given that 84 percent of Americans believe the Bible to be a holy book, one would think that such people would be concerned to learn that many of the New Testament books are forgeries. Yet, whenever I have brought New Testament forgeries, mistakes or contradictions to the attention of a Bible-believing Christian, he or she invariably falls back to the excuse: “Well, it’s simply a matter of faith, isn’t it?”

Upon hearing this excuse, I always respond: “No, if it were simply a matter of faith, I could assert that my cell phone is my savior, and so could you. You obviously believe that your faith in Jesus Christ is superior to my faith in my cell phone because it is based on nearly two-thousand years of tradition that was legitimized by the stories told in the New Testament.” Protestants are even more focused on that book, because — ever since Martin Luther – they’ve been told, Sola scriptura, (by scripture alone).

What’s worse is the sad fact that few Christians even comprehend the disturbing paradox: Had Jesus returned as quickly as he predicted, nobody would need a New Testament.

Remember the biblical passages that suggest Jesus’ imminent return? “Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand here which shall not taste death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come to power.” (Mark 9:1)

Or, how about Paul’s expectation that he and some of the Thessalonians will be alive when the apocalypse occurs. Remember how he contrasts “those who have died” with “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord?” (1 Thessalonians 4:15, 17) [The New Testament, Bart D. Ehrman, p.314]

Obviously, either Jesus or Mark got it wrong — and so did Paul. According to Professor Ehrman, Paul “appears to have no idea that his words would be discussed after his death, let alone read and studied some nineteen centuries later.” [Ibid]

Nevertheless, “as hopes of Christ’s imminent return began to fade in the later first century,” Christians began to realize that they must create structures which might last at least for a generation or more amid a world of non-believers. [Diarmaid MacCullough, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, p. 118]

Structures? Yes, Christians attempted to create a universal faith based upon: (1) an agreed list of authoritative sacred texts, (2) the formation of creeds and (3) the establishment of an authoritative ministry (bishop, priest and deacon) [Ibid, p. 127-137]

Thus, as Ehrman notes, “Christians from the very beginning needed to appeal to authorities for what they believed.” [Forged, p.7] “The ultimate authority was God, of course. But the majority of Christians came to think that God did not speak the truth about what to believe directly to individuals. If he did, there would be enormous problems, as some would claim divine authority for what they taught and others would claim divine authority for the completely opposite teaching. Thus most Christians did not stress personal revelation to living individuals.” [Ibid]

Yet, it was precisely the need to establish authority that prompted Christians to forge parts of the New Testament books, as well as entire books of the New Testament, by falsely claiming that they were written, for example, by Peter, Paul or Mark.

Consider, for example, the fact that neither of the two oldest complete New Testaments (codex Sinaiticus and codex Vaticanus) contains the last twelve verses that we find in Mark today. According to Professor Metzger, “Since Mark was not responsible for the composition of the last twelve verses of the generally current form of his Gospel, and since they undoubtedly had been attached to the Gospel before the Church recognized the fourfold Gospels as canonical, it follows that the New Testament contains not four but five evangelic accounts of events subsequent to the Resurrection of Christ.” [p. 229]

Professor Ehrman is less diplomatic. He simply notes: “Whoever added the final twelve verses of Mark did not do so by a mere slip of the pen.” [p. 250] Somebody forged them so they would pass as being written by Mark.

Ehrman doubts that the letters of 1 Peter and 2 Peter were actually written by Peter. Through the examination of word usage that didn’t gain currency until after Peter’s death in 64 CE — such as the word “Babylon” which was a code word for Rome that came into use near the end of the first century; scholars have come to believe that the letters are forgeries. Moreover, “there are excellent grounds for thinking that Peter could not write.” [p. 70]

Now consider the thirteen letters in the New Testament that claim to have been written by Paul. According to Ehrman, “Virtually all scholars agree that seven of the Pauline letters are authentic: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.” Six, probably, are forgeries: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians. (Readers who are interested in the evidence used to categorize them as forgeries should turn to pages 95-114 of Forged.)

Thus, readers might now find it ironic that 2 Timothy 3:16 claims, “All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” After all, 2 Timothy, as noted above, is one of the Pauline letters now thought to have been forged.

Equally ironic, and more amusing, is the use of forged New Testament scripture by the leading proponent of Christian Economics, Gary North. As reported recently in the New York Times, Mr. North not only believes that “the Bible is opposed to organized labor, and especially to organized public employees,” he also believes that no form of government assistance “will escape the ethical limits” of the Apostle Paul’s dictum, in 2 Thessalonians, that “if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Being an evangelical Christian, the poor soul doesn’t even suspect that 2 Thessalonians is a forgery.

Unwittingly, Mr. North and all Christians who take the New Testament at face value commit a disastrous procedural mistake. They establish their Bible-based moral code of right and wrong before ascertaining the true and the false in that Bible. “Effective virtue, as Socrates pointed out long ago, is knowledge; and a code of right and wrong must await upon a perception of the true and the false.” [Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public, p. 20]

Now that Professor Bart Ehrman’s Forged has demonstrated, “from the first century to the twentieth century, people who have called themselves Christian have seen fit to fabricate, falsify, and forge documents, in most instances in order to authorize views that they wanted others to accept,” today’s Christians have no excuse for their procedural confusion.

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain a child always.

– Cicero

In 2008 Common Core published a study by Frederick M. Hess which examined the knowledge of history and literature possessed by 17 year-old high school students in the United States. The results were depressing. Less than half of the 1,200 students questioned were able to identify the Renaissance or even the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy. Only 50% could explain why the Federalist Papers were written and fewer than half could correctly identify the half century in which the Civil War was fought. More than one fourth of these students believed that Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World sometime after 1750.

As Mr. Hess notes, these questions are “basic,” by which he really means “simple.” Yet, these 17-year olds recorded an aggregate grade of 73 on the history questions and an aggregate grade of 57 on the literature questions for a cumulative overall grade of 67 percent — a grade of D.

“Seventeen-year olds with at least one college-educated parent (and by this they mean a parent who, at least, has received an associate’s degree) scored at least one full letter grade, and sometimes almost two, above those without a college-educated parent on over 40 percent of the history questions,” That information is testimony to the many historical illiterates who are raising America’s children these days. But was it ever any different?

I was one of those 17-year-old historical illiterates back in 1965. But, after four years of military service and maturation, I was fortunate to study history under the tutelage of Sergei Vasilievich Utechin at the Pennsylvania State University. Not only was he an extraordinarily warm human being and a “Renaissance man,” who seemed to have read everything under the sun — or at least everything written in the four, five or six languages at his command — he also was extremely demanding of graduate students aspiring to become historians.¹

Professor Utechin devoted much time to ensuring that his graduate students thoroughly understood the “scholarly method.” Not only did he insist that we understand the difference between secondary studies and primary sources, he also demanded that we demonstrate mastery in the treatment of such studies and sources. To that end, his graduate students were required to enroll in his seminar devoted to secondary studies (historiography) and then in a subsequent seminar devoted to source criticism (which he termed “fontology,” “istochnikovedenie,” in Russian).

A historiographical investigation is nothing more than the critical examination of virtually everything written about a subject. Of course that is an enormous task for someone who doesn’t read. But, if, for example, a person was really curious about a specific event during World War II and genuinely desired to know what actually happened, he would read everything historians had written about that event and then determine whether they satisfactorily answered his question.

If they did not, or if they disagreed, then that curious person would be obligated to undertake a critical examination of the actual sources used by those historians — diplomatic cables, memoirs, state documents, letters from statesmen, etc. Although different techniques might be employed to critique these sources, the objective always would be to assure that they really are what they purport to be. (I investigated the problems one counters with memoirs as sources and presented my findings to the seminar.)

If the sources were what they purported to be, then the budding historian had to decide whether these sources provided information or a perspective not properly handled by the so-called experts. Occasionally, new sources are discovered that color or challenge existing sources, In each of these circumstances, you — the curious and diligent person applying the scholarly method to answer to a specific question — would be justified in providing your own, presumably groundbreaking, interpretation of that event.

Some might ask: “Who has the time to do all of that?” My answer would be the same one Henry David Thoreau gave nearly 150 years ago: “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them”Actually the laboring man has not the leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine. How can he remember his ignorance – which his growth requires – who has so often to use his knowledge?”

Consider the question of whether there is any truth to the claim, made by to so-called “birthers,” that Barack Hussein Obama is an illegitimate President because he wasn’t born in the United States.

First, you would look at the claims and counter claims swirling around the issue in an attempt to weigh the evidence they present. Presumably you would find that the birthers actually have no serious evidence to support their allegations, just suspicions that the supposedly actual evidence proving President Obama’s birth in Hawaii — his birth certificate, the announcement of his birth in two newspapers — are fabrications.

Being a sane person, your first impulse might be to ask: “Aren’t these “birthers” the same low grade intellects who believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks on World Trade Center on 9/11? Didn’t these people vote for George W. Bush, the worst president in American history? Aren’t they the same lunkheads who — having never taken a modern college level course in biology –nevertheless feel competent to dispute the theory of evolution. In a word, aren’t these folks simply the dregs of the dregs in white America?

Fortunately, no sane historian would prematurely jump to such conclusions. Instead he would move past the swirling conjecture and name calling, in order to turn to the actual sources, in order to decide the issue.

When he does, he not only finds that, while Barack Obama’s birth certificate is confidential under Hawaii state law, the “certificate of live birth” put out by the state is considered a proof of citizenship by the State Department and, thus, sufficient for obtaining a passport. When the historian examines the microfilm of the August 13, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser (as well as the relevant edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin), he sees that the hospital notified each paper of baby Obama’s birth, just as hospitals do with local newspapers in every part of our country. Thus historians must demand that birthers explain precisely why those newspaper reports are not what they purport to be.

But the capable historian might also find additional sources — in this case, U.S. law, yes, U.S. law — that demonstrates that the debate about whether President Obama was born in Hawaii (which has been proven) or in Kenya (as some birthers contend) has been bogus and the hobgoblin of small (probably racist and hateful) minds from the outset.

Thanks to Donald Freedman, who looked at U.S. law, we know that the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1790 stipulated: “The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States.” Another U.S. law, passed in 1795, stipulates: “”the children of citizens of the United States born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States.”

Each of these laws applied only to foreign-born children whose father was a citizen of the United States. But in 1934, Congress changed the law to insure that citizenship automatically passed to children born to any mother who was a U.S. citizen.²

Barack Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen, thus Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen. End of story.

As with most Americans, our birthers are historical illiterates. But, beyond their gross stupidity — what historian Jacques Barzun labeled “the menace of the untaught” — I suspect that many also are poor human beings. Although Donald Trump belongs to this intellectually motley crowd of birthers, he is the exception, because, he qualifies as a “learned ignoramus.”

A learned ignoramus? Yes, in 1930, Jose Ortega y Gasset published his classic work, The Revolt of the Masses. Chapter 12 is titled “The Barbarism of “Specialisation,” and wickedly describes the “learned ignoramus,” and thus Mr. Trump.

According to Ortega, “Previously, men could be divided into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is ignorant of all that does not enter into his specialty; but neither is he ignorant, because he is “a scientist,’ and “knows” very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.”

Consequently, “In politics, in art, in social usages, in other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of — this is the paradox — specialists in those matters.”

I can’t think of a better description of the millionaire blowhard birther, Donald Trump.

Ortega’s classic also describes quite accurately the swamp of ignorance drowning America today: “Anyone who wishes can observe the stupidity of thought, judgment, and action shown to-day in politics, art, religion, and the general problems of life and the world by the “men of science,’ and of course, behind them, the doctors, engineers, financiers, teachers, and so on. That state of “not listening,’ of not submitting to higher courts of appeal which I have repeatedly put forward as characteristic of mass-man, reaches its height precisely in these partially qualified people.” (p. 112-113)

In his rambling and disordered new book published today, The Future of History, the esteemed historian, John Lukacs, credits Americans with a large and growing interest in history, but is suspicious of their capability to act like historians. “Will the current appetite for history eventually bring about a deepening of historical understanding — even when the actual teaching of history has been diminishing? Well — with all the somber evidences to the contrary — I at least hope so.” (p. 78)

When one pulls segments from different parts of his haphazard book and puts them in chronological order, he discovers a very powerful critique of America’s historical illiteracy. First, Mr. Lukacs notes Tocqueville’s observation — in his second volume of Democracy in America – that “the greatest defect in democratic character” is “the habit of inattention.” (p. 167)

Second, at the turn of the twentieth century, when high schools and colleges across the nation were beginning to teach history, American progressives turned history into a social science, which meant emphasizing its economic and practical aspects in support of current day problems. It wasn’t the genuine study of history.

Third, around 1920, advertising and propaganda were employed to manage the “publicity governing the opinions and the sentiments of majorities” (p. 32) Historically illiterate; Americans were powerless to think through such advertising and propaganda. Mr. Lukacs worries today about how publicity is manipulated by wealthy and powerful minorities to create or control majorities. Think of the Koch brothers and “Americans for Prosperity.”

Fourth, came the penetration of a pictorial rather than verbal “culture,” which undermined our ability to use our imaginations and reduced our attention spans. Both maladies have been abetted by the “fast-shrinking habit of reading among students.” (p. 54) Mr. Lukacs calls it “a new kind of barbarism” and in this observation he would find support from the great historian, Jacques Barzun, who suggested that we are entering a new Dark Age.

Fifth: beginning about 1970 the teaching of history in American high schools and universities was reduced. (p. 64)

Sixth: Soon after 1970, “the majority of students in American colleges were choosing economics or business as their professional specialty, or “major,’ despite the questionable value of the teaching and content of such courses.” (p. 66) As the New York Times recently reported, in “The Default Major: Skating B-School,” most business school educations are a joke. Consider this: “When business students take the GMAT, the entry examination for M.B.A. program, they score lower than students in every other major.” Is it an accident that our leading blowhard ignoramus, Donald Trump, learned such a “trade” in college?

Seventh: “men and women around 2000 began thinking otherwise than their forebears as century before. By this I mean not only the subjects of their thinking but the functioning of their minds.” (p. 67) Readers of Nicholas Carr’s recent book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, might sympathize. For as Carr writes: “If, knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Internet.”³

As a graduate student studying history under Professor Utechin, I was required to read the wonderful three-volume study of Russian intellectual history written by statesman, philosopher and historian, Thomas Masaryk. Titled The Spirit of Russia, it sprang from Masaryk’s belief that an analysis of the great novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “is a sound method of studying Russia.”

Thus, notwithstanding the organizational flaws in Mr. Lukacs’s book, The Future of History should be treasured, not only for its depressing observations about the state of history in the United States, but also for its persuasive demonstration that, if history is to endure, it must harness the facts and techniques found in literature and provide meaning like the world’s great novels.

1. See the obituary of this extraordinary man.
2. Daniel Freedman, “Romney to Trump: Obama Doesn’t Need a Birth Certificate.” Forbes, April 12, 2011.
3. “Gary Greenberg, “My Monster, My Self,” The Nation, April 4, 2011.

Consequently, as H. L. Mencken observed, the United States found itself in the grip of third-rate men. “Third-rate men, of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards.”² And third-rate men, as Cardinal Fleury observed nearly three centuries ago, need “very little history.”

Thus, today we have Tea Party know-nothings — supposedly concerned about America’s famous historical illiteracy — actually exposing their own historical illiteracy when they spout ideologically self-serving quotations, supposedly from the writings of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, that haven’t been found in those writings.³ Newt Gingrich, who professes to know some history, talks incoherently about President Obama’s, Kenyan world view. Mike Huckabee babbles nonsensically about Obama’s youth spent in Kenya while Michele Bachmann — who makes that flaming idiot, Sarah Plain, look like a rocket scientist — not only tells her supporters that our Founding Fathers worked hard to rid the country of slavery, but also asserts that the famous battles at Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire. When I hear these people speak, I’m ashamed for my country.

Instead of studying their history, most Americans cherish myths, especially the myth of American exceptionalism. Thus, even though most Americans still lead lives of “quiet desperation,” they take comfort in the myth that God chose America to be his new “City upon a Hill” (as John Winthrop put it) and, thus a beacon of Christian faith and liberty for the entire world.

The myth that George Washington could not lie about chopping down the cherry tree was eventually debunked. But it was no less ridiculous than the comforting myth propagated by Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, depicting “George Washington as none other than Joshua commanding the armies of the Children of Israel and leading them into the Promise Land.”⁴

Equally ridiculous was the myth propagated on March 20, 1908 by the Special Base Ball Commission on the game’s origins. It concluded that Civil War hero, Abner Doubleday, invented the game of baseball in Cooperstown, New York in 1839.

The Special Commission was the brainchild of A.G. Spalding — a former ball player who subsequently gained wealth by supplying baseball gear to countless teams — and it shaped its conclusions to fit Spalding’s fervent belief that baseball had to be an American invention, not English, because it was a vigorous, manly game befitting the people of this great country.

Applying the historical illiteracy that has made the U.S. famous, the Commission simply accepted the word of Abner Graves, who, as a five-year old living in Cooperstown, supposedly saw Doubleday “scratch out in the dust the diagram of a new game called baseball.” (Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, John Thorn, p.275.) Had anyone on the commission attempted to ascertain Mr. Doubleday’s whereabouts in 1839, as did journalist Will Rankin, they would have discovered that Doubleday was not in Cooperstown, but serving as a cadet at West Point.

But Rankin had credibility problems of his own. Although Duncan F. Curry (original president of the New York Knickerbocker baseball club) told him in 1877 that “a diagram, showing the ball field laid out substantially as it is today, was brought to the field one day by a Mr.[Louis] Wadsworth,” Rankin subsequently reversed himself and claimed that Mr. Curry actually said it was Alexander Cartwright.

But, according to baseball historian John Thorn, Cartwright deserves credit for nothing except proposing the establishment of “a regular organization” that in 1845 became the Knickerbockers. Nevertheless, because the Knickerbockers have been credited with formalizing many of the rules that eventually were adopted by Major League Baseball, many Doubleday doubters gave Cartwright undeserved credit as the inventor of baseball.

According to Mr. Thorn, who is a serious historian, “baseball” was first mentioned in a children’s book published in England in 1744. The first written reference in the U.S. was by a student at Princeton in 1786, which referred to playing “baste ball.” In fact, Princeton had banned ball playing near the president’s house in 1761.

The town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts banned playing baseball near its new meeting house in 1791. But, if one can believe George Stoddard — who played in the 1850s and claimed that his great-grandfather played roundball in Upton, MA — the Massachusetts game was played in Upton as early as 1735.

Stoddard’s assertions notwithstanding, Thorn is convinced that baseball’s origins are to be found in England. But, he’s also convinced that American baseball, as we know it today, owes much to the rules established in 1845 by the New York Knickerbockers.

Whereas the Massachusetts game had four bases, with the striker standing between first and fourth base, and the Philadelphia game had five stakes, each 30 feet apart that had to be circled before a run was scored, the New York game had a baseball diamond with a home plate and rules stipulating that the distance between first and third bases (as well as between home and second base) be 42 paces. At 2 and one half feet per pace back then, home to first was 75 feet, rather than 90. The pitcher’s position was 45 feet from home plate.

The Massachusetts game had no such thing a foul territory. Theoretically, a batter could decide to turn around as the ball came in and smash it past the catcher, which is why some teams played two catchers. Knickerbocker rules not only delineated foul lines but also foul territory. It stipulated: “A ball knocked out of the field or outside the range of first or third base, is foul.” Thus, out of the park home runs, back then, were foul! In fact, the Knickerbockers established “foul” territory because they had trouble getting all their players to show up for a contest. Thus, they established foul territory to delimit the space their understaffed team needed to cover in any game.

Foul tips? Knickerbocker rules stipulated: “Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught, is a hand-out; if not caught is considered fair, and the striker bound to run.” (Four balls, or a base on balls, did not go into effect until 1863.)

Whereas the Massachusetts rule stipulated that only a caught fly ball was an out, the Knickerbocker rules stipulated: “If a ball be struck, or tipped, and caught, either flying or on the first bounce, is a hand out.” Catch a ball on one bounce and it’s an out!

The nine inning game didn’t come into effect until 1857, but even then teams played the full nine innings, because Knickerbocker rules were established for gentlemen whose focus was exercise in the fresh air. In their rules of 1845, the first team to score 21 runs was the winner.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in Knickerbocker rules concerned the pitcher. He was only 45 feet away from the batter, but was forced to “pitch” the ball to the batter, which really meant throwing it underhand so the batter could hit it. The rule stipulated: “The ball must be pitched, and not thrown, for the bat.” As Thorn writes: “The early baseball pitch was like today’s softball pitch, only more restricted: no wrist snap, arm perpendicular to the ground at release, and below the waist. Furthermore, the pitcher was urged to pitch the ball “for the bat.” He was not regarded as an adversary to the batter, but merely as a server; the batter’s true opponents were the fielders.” (p. 74)

The Massachusetts rules of 1858 stipulated the ball must be thrown (overhand) and not pitched. Think about it, when Major League Baseball was established in 1871 it went by Knickerbocker rules — and pitchers still pitched underhanded or sidearm until 1884. Really, we should call today’s pitchers “throwers” rather than “pitchers.”

With the 1884 rule change permitting the throwing of the baseball, “batters struggled to keep up.” Thus, another rule change in 1893 extended the pitching distance by five and one half feet. According to Thorn, “This move boosted overall batting performance by degrees that make the so-called steroid era pale by comparison.” (p. 245) For example, in 1894 four members of the Philadelphia Phillies hit for a batting average over .400!

Perhaps most significantly, Thorn argues that the myth of the amateur, gentlemanly, and all-American origins of Knickerbocker baseball was propagated by A. G. Spalding and Major League Baseball for two reasons: (1) Being historical illiterates, they didn’t know that most of the Knickerbocker rules existed in one locale or another years before they were codified in 1845 and (2) they hoped their myth would bury the reality that “the national game had arisen from a gambling culture in the 1840s that was never free of corruption.” (p. 286)

Before bets could be placed, rules were required — in order to establish a consistent basis for deciding who won. But so was the publication of scores and statistics — so that bettors might make prognostications based upon current information.

As fans increasingly became invested in the outcome of the game, organizations worked to obtain the best players possible. Initially, covert “professionals were given jobs, in the business houses of the team’s backers — jobs where they reported every morning, were visible to callers or doubtful skeptics, and drew small salaries, although few of them ever did a stroke of work.” (p. 144) Thus the Cincinnati Red Stockings listed center fielder and manager Harry Wright as a jeweler. Pitcher Asa Brainard was an insurance salesman, catcher Doug Allison was a granite cutter and so on.

Covert professionalism gave way to overt professionalism in the late 1860s, just a couple years before the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players launched its inaugural season in 1871. Because fans came to see the players, and not the owners, many major league baseball players were in a position to “revolt,” sign with another, better paying team at the end of a season. To end such revolts, the owners established the obnoxious “reserve clause” in 1879 that soon bound each player to his team for life, but gave owners the right to dismiss players after a ten day notice.

Fortunately, the formation of new professional leagues, like the American Association and the Players League, gave players new opportunities to revolt. But with the evolution of the Western League into the American League by 1903, much of that freedom was lost.

Owners realized that the reserve clause allowed them to squeeze the salaries of players. Even more obnoxious, however, was the short-lived syndicate ball practiced by National League owners. “With interlocking ownerships in the bloated National League of 1892 through 1899, a club trailing in the pennant race might transfer a star to an allied club that was closer to the top. Another franchise, situated in a large market, might pool its players with its wholly owned mate in a smaller market, moving the top talent where the greater profit beckoned”Yet another club might exert less than its best effort in a head-to-head series to benefit an affiliated club that stood higher in the standings.” (p. 260) Because Americans hated cartels and felt cheated by such player shifts, baseball during the 1890s “was at real risk of demise.” (p. 255)

As the drinking, gambling, throwing of games and wars between management and labor demonstrate, baseball was never the healthy, vigorous, gentleman’s game its mythmakers foisted upon historically illiterate Americans. But myths have consequences.

Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton argue, in The Dominion of War, that the myth of American exceptionalism — linking the cause of the United States with the cause of freedom — absolved Americans “from the obligation to understand other peoples and places on their own terms and in their own contexts.” (p. 423) Thus, presidents as different as George W. Bush and Barack Obama could invoke America’s commitment to freedom, in order to justify respectively both the immoral invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya.

Similarly, the pristine myths surrounding the origins of baseball not only resulted in the construction of a Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and the placing of a plaque celebrating the contributions of Alexander Cartwright in that Hall, they also provided a permanent foundation for befuddlement and demoralization whenever the dark side of the game reared its ugly head.

It’s time for historically illiterate Americans to grow up.

1. John Lukacs, The Future of History, p.4.
2. On Being American, Library of America, pp. 308-09.
3. Thomas Frank, “Check it Yourself,” Harper’s, April 2011.
4. The War for Righteousness, Richard Gamble, p.11.

Single handedly, Democrats have guaranteed that Medicaid will expand to cover incomes up to 133 percent of the national poverty level ($29,327). Single handedly, Democrats have guaranteed that, beginning in 2014, small businesses, the self-employed and the uninsured can select a plan from state insurance pools. Single handedly, the Democrats have pulled off the astounding feat of this increased coverage while reducing our federal deficit by $138 billion over the next decade.

Single handedly? Yes! President Obama will sign into law a Health-Care bill that failed to win even one supporting vote from the Republicans. As the history of the past decade has demonstrated, rather than help less fortunate Americans obtain health insurance, Republicans preferred to give their “yes” votes to legislation giving tax cuts to the rich and to resolutions supporting illegal, immoral wars of aggression, such as the one they heartily supported in Iraq. With no sense of shame, Republicans put forth a health-care plan that extended coverage to a mere 3 million Americans.

Republicans would have you believe that their objections to the new Health-Care law were matters of principled disagreement – too costly, too much government interference, et cetera. However, anyone inclined to believe such assertions should not only recall their support for the expensive war in Iraq and the budget busting tax cuts for the rich, but also the question raised repeatedly by Chris Matthews: If Republicans are, indeed, genuinely concerned about getting near universal health care right, why didn’t they offer and pass health care reform, when they controlled the both houses of congress and the presidency? They had total control for most of 2001 to 2006.

Equally damaging to Republican assertions is recent reporting by the New York Times: “Before the health care fight, before the economic stimulus package, before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down, take advantage of the difficulties Democrats would have in governing and deny Democrats any Republican support on big legislation.” Applying that strategy to health care, Republican Senator Jim DeMint claimed: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo.” So much then, for Republicans’ claims about principled disagreements.

Even worse than the behavior of congressional Republicans was the ugly, crude and obnoxious behavior exhibited by libertarians and “Tea baggers.” We’ve all seen the raucous town hall meetings where the ignorance exhibited by health care opponents appeared to be directly related to their exaggerations, lies, hatred and racism. A word of warning: You might suspect you’re “white trash,” when you’ve resorted to calling civil rights icon, Rep. John Lewis, a “nigger.” You also might be viewed as “white trash,” if you’ve chosen to spit on an African-American congressman, simply because he plans to vote for health care.

The best book I’ve read about these ugly Americans is: America Right or Wrong by Anatol Lieven. Explaining the reasons for such ugliness, Lieven writes: “As a result of economic, cultural and demographic change, in America, the supremely victorious nation of the modern age, large numbers of Americans feel defeated…. Over the years, the hatred generated by this sense of defeat and alienation has been extended to both domestic and foreign enemies.”

The greatest recession since the Great Depression (caused by greedy Wall Street bankers), the election of an African-American President and his attempt to fulfill his promise to enact near universal health care — which an irresponsible writer for Investor’s Business Daily derided as “affirmative action on steroids” — have further exacerbated their sense of defeat and hatred.

Although I’ve been sidelined by injury and surgery, I have no personal stake in health care reform, because I have the same excellent federal employee insurance coverage enjoyed by the President and all members of Congress. Were the 32 million Americans added to my government plan, I suspect my annual costs would go down. But, I’d be willing to pay more, if that was the price of insuring 32 million more Americans.

But, then, I’m a “liberal” and a patriot — someone who cares about large groups of Americans I’ll never meet. I’m also my brother’s keeper. Nevertheless, I still recall the upbraiding I received in 1995 from a Finnish woman, while visiting Helsinki: “What’s wrong with you Americans? You’re the richest country in the world and, yet, are unable to provide the free universal health care and free universal educational opportunities that we Finns take for granted.”

(By the way, although a few Republicans attempted to conflate and deride Obama’s health care plan with those in European welfare states, his plan actually brings 32 million new customers to America’s private enterprise health care system. Moreover, those derisive Republicans badly need to be educated about European welfare states. Were they educated, they might learn that European welfare states actually provide greater opportunities for social mobility than found in the U.S. They might learn that European welfare states offer a higher quality of life than found in the U.S. — with no overall loss in individual liberties. They might even learn, as economist Jeffrey Sachs recently observed, that the steadily deteriorating U.S. already has the lowest taxes of all major Western nations — which suggests that even lower taxes would lead to further deterioration.)

The Senate bill single handedly approved yesterday by Democrats in the House of Representatives represents a singular historic accomplishment for the Obama administration and the American people. American Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt through Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton have attempted but failed to accomplish such a feat. It represents a triumph for “Yes, we can” and the “change” that candidate Obama promised.

But it also marks a disastrous defeat for Republicans. Former Bush administration speech writer, David Frum, hit the nail on the head when he recently wrote: “Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s… We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat… it’s Waterloo all right, ours.”

Perhaps now they’ll wake up and smell the coffee — and decide to support the American people, not just the military industrial complex and the rich. Just don’t bet on it.

My first and only meeting with Igor Sutyagin occurred on 7 September 1998, in what was then the Taiga Café of Moscow’s Aerostar Hotel. A senior scholar in the Department for Military-Political Studies at the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sutyagin was given the task of dining with an American “People to People” delegation — of which I was a member — and briefing its members on the economic crisis ravaging Russia since its catastrophic default just three weeks earlier.

Although we peppered Igor with questions about Russia’s economic collapse, his answers clearly demonstrated — to me, at least — that the Russian economy was not his area of expertise. Which is why, near the end of our dinner, I changed the subject by asking him a series of questions about the Russian military, my specialty. “What was Russia doing to capture the so-called “revolution in military affairs?” Was he familiar with the massive American study, Atomic Audit (which I reviewed in the July 13, 1998 edition of The Nation) especially its startling revelations about the high risk of accidental nuclear war that was hanging over our unwitting heads during the Cold War? What is Russia doing today to assure control over its nuclear arsenal?

After Igor gave lengthy answers to each question, I asked him what he thought of President Clinton’s recent decision to permit the expansion of NATO. Much to my surprise, Igor’s face turned crimson as he reached into his wallet to withdraw a folded newspaper article that described a deal struck between former Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

According to the article, Baker assured Gorbachev that, in return for the Soviet leader’s assistance in accomplishing the peaceful unification of Germany, the United States would not pursue any further expansion of NATO. (Gorbachev reiterated Baker’s promise as recently as March 2009) Having read Baker’s promise, Igor characterized Clinton’s decision to expand NATO as a “stab in the back.” He quickly added: “Why should Russians trust the United States to honor any of its agreements?”

After dinner, I invited Igor to my room, where we spent two hours discussing the collapse of the Russian military, the consolidations currently occurring in defense industries of both countries, FIGS (financial industrial groups) and Gorbachev’s role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like most Russians I’ve met, Igor didn’t share my high esteem for Gorbachev.

But, he seemed quite interested in my soon-to-be-published review of Gary Hart’s book, The Minuteman: Restoring and Army of the People, which called for a sharp reduction in active-duty forces and increased reliance on arguably less competent reserves, because “a permanent standing military seeks causes for its continued existence and resources to maintain itself.”

In fact, the smiling Sutyagin suggested the world would be better off, were the American military compelled to rely more on arguably less competent reserves. There would be much less “adventurism” around the world, he said.

After giving him a few of my recent articles, including my review of Atomic Audit, we ended our conversation by agreeing to remain in touch. Most importantly, Igor agreed to serve as my point of contact in Moscow (to coordinate visits and meetings) for the People to People delegation of defense experts I planned to bring to Russia in 1999.

In fact, People to People approved and advertised my proposed delegation for 1999, but it never got off the ground. It became a casualty of the widespread and widely broadcast protests by angry Russians against NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia that year. (One of the few individuals who expressed interest in the delegation was a man who claimed to be with the CIA. He called me to ask whether CIA analysts could participate. Although I doubted the caller’s motives and bona fides, I told him that transparency and information in the public domain would be the rules for our delegation. Under those conditions, if People to People and the Russians didn’t mind CIA participation, neither did I.)

Igor, himself, sent me a blistering email about the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. After listing the international laws violated by NATO’s unprovoked attack, he once again asked why Russia should trust the U.S. to honor its international obligations. Notwithstanding this outburst, we continued to exchange emails (and I mailed a few books to him, including one containing Vasili Mitrokhin’s archival revelations about the KGB) up until his arrest.

His arrest? Yes, you might imagine my surprise and dismay when I learned that Igor Sutyagin had been arrested in late October 1999 and, in November, charged with high treason under Article 275 of the Criminal Code. The charge? Passing Russia’s nuclear secrets to the West.

Having personally witnessed examples attesting to Igor’s unwavering Russian patriotism, I concluded that he had been set up — especially after I learned that Igor’s boss, the Director the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies, asserted that Igor did not have access to classified information. In fact, the Director asserted that none of his employees has access to secret documents.

As part of Igor’s persecution, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) staged a bogus TV news story on December 26, 2000, in which Igor supposedly confessed to his crime. (Yet, years later, when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution urging Russia to release Sutyagin, Russia’s Presidential Pardon Commission declined to pardon Sutyagin because he had not admitted guilt.)

In 2004 Igor was sentenced to 15 years for his “crime,” notwithstanding the fact that the prosecutors never established that Igor ever possessed classified information. Prior to his conviction, the charade got so bad that the Federal Security Service even attempted to persuade the Director of the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies that “the Criminal Code says that if you pass information to foreigners and get paid for it, then it doesn’t matter…[whether or not] the information contains state secrets.”

The international outcry was enormous. As the U.S. State Department’s 2007 Report on Human Rights noted: “Sutyagin and human rights groups claimed that he had no access to classified information, and that the government sought a severe sentence to discourage others from sharing sensitive information with other countries. Amnesty International has deemed Sutyagin a political prisoner, and other domestic and international human rights groups raised concerns that the charges were politically motivated and that there were problems in the conduct of the trial and the lengthy sentence.”

Yet, if political considerations led to the unwarranted arrest, conviction and incarceration of Igor Sutyagin, how different are the political considerations that appear to guide the decision by the authors of Spies to smear I.F. Stone posthumously as a spy for the Soviet Union. The authors’ case against Stone can be found in the chapter titled “The Journalist Spies.”

Like Sutyagin, Stone had no access to classified information. And, like Sutyagin’s patriotic outbursts against the United States, Stone was known to have uttered harsh words against the Soviet Union. Moreover, as D.D. Guttenplan notes in “Red Harvest,” The FBI “opened his mail, tapped his phone, rifled his garbage and subjected him and his family to daily surveillance — without finding a scrap of evidence that Stone was anything other than an unrepentant, and independent, American radical he seemed.” [Guttenplan, p. 28]

So, what’s the evidence for labeling Stone a “Soviet spy?” Little but the May 1936 claim from the KGB New York station that “Relations with Pancake [Stone] have entered that channel of normal operational work” [Spies, p. 150] and subsequent reports concerning two inconsequential services supposedly supplied by Stone (gossip about William Randolph Hearst and contact with William Dodd, Jr., see Guttenplan, p. 30)

Moreover, Messrs. Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev undermine even this threadbare evidence when they conclude: “Espionage is a secretive business. It is rare that the agents engaged in it or the agencies they serve speak honestly and openly about what they’ve done because the incentives to lie, dissemble, and continue to deceive are so strong for all concerned” [p. 541]

More to the point, “Spies never explains why we should believe KGB officers [note the FSB and Sutyagin, above], pushed to justify their existence (and expense accounts), when they claim information comes from an elaborately recruited ‘agent’ rather than merely a source or a contact.” [Guttenplan, p. 27]

Notwithstanding the errors concerning Stone and the reckless use of the word “spy,” the book contains many new revelations. New spies are identified and the book devotes nearly twenty pages to demonstrating that Robert Oppenheimer did not assist Soviet espionage. Unfortunately, the new information from Vassiliev’s notebooks must be placed in their proper context, which often requires the inclusion of much previously known information that, in turn, often makes the book tedious to read.

Finally, even when one puts aside the mistreatment of I. F. Stone, ignores the indiscriminate use of “spy” and overcomes the tedium of reading so much well-worn information, there’s still the critical issue of the harm done to the United States.

The authors, themselves, ask the question: “How much damage did these spies do?” And although their answer shouldn’t be dismissed, it is underwhelming: Mainly, they believe that “the scientific and technical data they transmitted to Moscow saved the Soviet Union untold amounts of money and resources by transferring American technology, which enabled it to build an atomic bomb and deploy jet planes, radar, sonar, artillery proximity fuses, and many other military advances long before its own industry, strained by rapid growth and immense wartime damage, could have developed and fielded them independently.” [p. 545] In a word, the Soviet Union acquired certain weapons sooner that it normally would have. Yet, such a conclusion raises anew the question of the damage done by “spies” who had no access to weapons technology.

Moreover, I just lived through eight years in which a cabal of right-wing ideologues, led by an evil Vice President, seized political power in the United States and immediately plotted to attack Iraq while ignoring dire warnings about an impending al Qaeda attack. Having enhanced the probability of successful al Qaeda attacks by their Iraq-obsessed lack of preparation, the cabal then proceeded to manipulate the fear and anger aroused by the successful attacks by lying to the American public about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (mushroom clouds) and ties to al Qaeda — in order to carry out the invasion they had been planning all along. After the lies came torture and the illegal wiretaps of innocent Americans.

As a consequence, tens of thousands of American soldiers were killed or seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis were killed and some 5 million were displaced. Billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted, contributing to the great recession of 2008. The cabal’s illegal, immoral invasion and decision to authorize torture blackened America’s reputation and undermined its security around the world, in part by serving as recruitment tools for jihadists worldwide.

Thus, the treason evidenced in Spies seems like so much small potatoes when compared with the damage caused by the real thing.

Which is to say that Mr. Lukacs sees signs of America’s decadence all around: academics who neither buy nor read books, the widespread decline of serious reading, “the rapid deterioration of attention, the nervous constriction of its span,” an “unwillingness to think,” the rise of pictorial culture (a new “Dark Ages of symbols, pictures, images, abstractions”), and, most ominously, the emergence of a militaristic political conservatism in the United States.

He notes: “In 1950 there was not one American public or political or academic or intellectual figure who declared himself a ‘conservative.’ By 1980 more Americans declared themselves ‘conservatives’ than ‘liberals.’” Accompanying this rise of political conservatism was a “militarization of the popular imagination” that abetted the replacement of normal patriotism with aggressive nationalism.

Relying upon such ugly nationalism, the President and Vice President who occupied the White House prior to the Obama administration believed “that going in Iraq and crushing its miserable dictator in a quick war would be popular, resounding to the great and enduring advantage to…[their] reputation and to the Republican Party’s dominance in the foreseeable future. There have been many American presidents who had chosen to go to war for different reasons: but I know of no [other] one who chose to go to war to enhance his popularity.”

Sick, but widespread, American nationalism also goes far to explain why the opinion elite, the mainstream news media and the misinformed public would lend their support to an unprovoked, illegal, and thus evil, war of aggression. It wasn’t the behavior one would expect from a civilized people.

(Writing about the fate of liberalism in the United States, Mr. Lukacs asserts, “Ten years after the 1960s it was just about dead. It belonged to the past; it had nothing more to achieve; it was exhausted. Its tasks had been done.” Unfortunately, Last Rites is silent about America’s recent economic collapse and the overwhelming decision by America’s voters to elect a liberal, Barack Obama, to direct its recovery and, perhaps, its transformation.)

Nevertheless, Last Rights leaves much to be desired, especially when compared with two recent and exceptionally thoughtful books by Mr. Lukacs — Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred and George Kennan: A Study in Character. Beyond the swan songs, it’s a watered-down goulash containing sketches of his life in Chester County, Pennsylvania, tender memories of his native Hungary and brief vignettes capturing the loving and lovely essence of each of his three wives. It also is weakly seasoned by Mr. Lukacs’ poorly reasoned epistemological “grand truth,” which he presents in Chapter One: “A Bad Fifteen Minutes.”

Knowledge, according to Mr. Lukacs, is neither objective nor subjective, but always personal and participant. “Every person has four relationships: with God, with himself, with other human beings, and with other living beings.” Moreover, our knowledge is participant, because there cannot be “a separation of the knower from the known.”

Although Mr. Lukacs acknowledges that matter existed before the human mind, its preexistence is meaningless, because “without the human mind we cannot think of its ‘existence’ at all. In this sense it may be argued that Mind preceded and may precede Matter (or: what we see and then call matter).”

Going further, Mr. Lukacs concludes: (1) “What happens is what people think happens.” Thus, he denies the possibility of “objective” history. Yet, inconsistently, he objects to those who define history as “the narration of actions worth remembering.” Worse, he insists, “every person is a historical person.” (How about the millions of persons over the ages, who have died without leaving a trace?)

Mr. Lukacs also insists, “The human mind intrudes into causality, into the relation of causes and effects.” For Mr. Lukacs, this conclusion — famously demonstrated by Heisenberg – leads to another: science is little more than a “probabilistic kind of knowledge with its own limits.”

Now, I also have doubts about science, and not only about quantum physics. We’ve yet to satisfactorily explain how life originated on earth. Moreover, my mind reels when I read that within the first one-thousandth of a second after the big bang, a particle smaller than an atom expanded instantaneously to the size of a galaxy.

Yet, “uncertainty” with regard to quantum physics, the origin of life or even the scientific working backward from the expanding universe to the big bang hardly justifies doubt about whether water is H2O and it certainly does not support Mr. Lukacs, when he asserts: “When I, a frail and fallible man, say that every morning the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west, I am not lying. I do not say that a Copernican or post-Copernican astronomer, stating the opposite, that the earth goes around the sun, is lying…But my commonsense experience about the sun and the earth is both prior to and more basic than any astronomer’s formula.”

Thus, when Mr. Lukacs further asserts, “the known and visible and measurable conditions of the universe are not anterior but consequent to our existence and to our consciousness,” he believes that he has eviscerated the “Copernican/Keplerian/Galilean/Cartesian/Newtonian discovery” that removed both man and the earth from the center of the universe. Yet, he’s accomplished no such thing. Newton’s law of universal gravitation continues to bring to earth every consciousness convinced that it can remain aloft forever. Moreover, the brick wall will have its say, notwithstanding the fearless consciousness of every man determined to run through it. In a word, the “known” demands due respect from the “knower.”

This has enormous implications for man’s freedom, a matter Mr. Lukacs barely mentions. Ask any technophobe who has suffered through the upgrade of a computer program and subsequently found himself compelled to learn new ways to accomplish the same old tasks. He’ll tell you that he felt like a helpless slave, subject to a new program (and, thus, the whims or insights of some distant technician). Yet, as the Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev observed, virtually every type of “objectivized” knowledge poses such a threat to man’s freedom.

In his book, Slavery and Freedom, Berdyaev defined objectivized knowledge as “the most ‘objective’ in the sense of verified truth.” Thus, “the most objectivized knowledge is mathematical. It is the most universally binding and it is the concern of the whole of civilized mankind. But it is the most remote of all from human existence, from knowledge of the meaning and value of human existence.”

Before Mr. Lukacs, it was Berdyaev (following Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky) who asserted the primacy of the conscious subject over the created object. But, unlike Mr. Lukacs, Berdyaev also explained how the conscious subject often enslaves himself by falling “into the power of the exteriorization” — the objectivized knowledge — he has created.

(It was Dostoevsky’s famously rebellious “Underground man,” who boldly asserted man’s freedom, when he observed: “Consciousness…is infinitely higher than two times two.”)

Finally, Mr. Lukacs’ epistemological grand truth must be faulted for failing to subject his own Christian faith to the same “crucible of doubt” (as Dostoyevsky called it) that he employs to attack the claims made by science.

Crucible of doubt? Yes. Consider the work of Harold Bloom who asserts, in his book, Jesus and Yahweh: “There is not a sentence concerning Jesus in the entire New Testament composed by anyone who ever had met the unwilling King of the Jews, unless (and it is unlikely) the General Epistle of James truly is by James his brother, rather than one of James’s followers.”

Crucible of doubt? Yes. Consider the story of the “virgin birth” found in Matthew and Luke. According to biblical scholar, Paula Fredriksen, “The tradition that Jesus’ mother was a virgin…draws on a prophecy available only in the Greek version of Isaiah 7:14: In the original Hebrew, the word that stands behind the Septuagint’s parthenos, “virgin,” is aalmah, “young girl.” [Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, p. 27].

Crucible of doubt? Yes. Consider the world’s foremost New Testament scholar, the late Thomas Metzger, who examined virtually all of the New Testament witnesses (sources) and tells us that “the last twelve verses of Mark (xvi. 9-20) are lacking in the two earliest parchment codices.” Thus, he concluded, “Mark was not responsible for the composition of the last twelve verses of the generally current form of the Gospel.” Yet, it is those twelve verses that tell us about the risen Jesus first appearing to Mary Magdalene and, subsequently, to the eleven – to whom he said “go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Crucible of doubt? Yes. Consider the exceptional work of America’s foremost Jesus historian, John Dominic Crossan. Writing in his book, The Birth of Christianity, Crossan informs us that that it was not at all unusual in the Greco-Roman world for humans to believe that a holy spirit or god could join with a human to produce offspring. Thus, back then, the story of the Holy Spirit and Mary had nothing on The Aeneid (the epic story in which the union of the Trojan, Anchises, with the goddess Aphrodite results in the birth of Aeneas), or the birth of the historical figure, Augustus, whose mother, Atia, supposedly was impregnated by Apollo. (Does anyone, today, actually believe that Apollo impregnated Atia?)

Concerning Jesus’ resurrection, Crossan notes that, even today, it’s not all uncommon for those grieving a recent death to feel an “intuitive, sometimes overwhelming ‘presence’ or ‘spirit’ of the lost person.” Thus, when one considers the fact that people crucified around Jerusalem were rarely buried in private tombs — because “it was actually nonburial that made being crucified alive one of the three supreme penalties of Roman punishment” — there’s good reason to question pseudo-Mark’s claim that Mary Magdalene saw an empty tomb and was the first to see the risen Jesus. (Crossan even goes so far as to assert that Mark “created” the story of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea.)

Crucible of doubt? Yes. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, writing in Lost Christianities, notes the following contradictions within the Gospels: “Did Jesus die during the afternoon before the Passover meal was eaten, as in John (see 19:14), or during the morning afterwards, as in Mark (see 14:12, 22; 15:25)? Did Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt after Jesus’ birth as in Matthew (2:13-23), or did they return to Nazareth as in Luke (2:39)? Was Jairus’s daughter sick and dying when he came to ask Jesus for help as in Mark (6:23, 25), or had she already died, as in Matthew (9:18)? After Jesus’ resurrection, did the disciples stay in Jerusalem until he had ascended into heaven, as in Luke (24:1 – 52), or did they straightaway go to Galilee, as in Matthew (28:1 – 20)?”

If Mr. Lukacs is aware of such evidence, it hasn’t prevented him from asserting that “the coming of Christ to earth may have been the central event of the universe: that the most consequential event in the entire universe occurred here, on this earth two thousand years ago.”

Yet, beyond his failure to subject his Christian faith to the crucible of doubt he employs against the claims of science, Mr. Lukacs also knows that he is vulnerable to being hoisted by his own “grand truth” petard — which is why he feebly asserts: “But God is more than our invention. And to those who think that God is nothing but our invention my question is: Why? What makes human being s want such an invention? Is it not that a spark of God may exist within us?”

Such flaws in Last Rites render it a disappointing valedictory from such an erudite and accomplished gentleman.

As such, Mr. Auth’s cartoon serves as a one-stop reminder of the catastrophic Bush/Cheney “Time of Troubles” at the very moment when these swine give interviews designed to spread a final round of self-serving lies — in a futile attempt to salvage their legacy of evil. Therefore, you might want to keep Auth’s cartoon by your side, especially if you plan to watch Bush’s prime time farewell address tonight.

(Unfortunately, many within America’s servile mainstream news media remain all too eager to spread such lies. These sycophants seem to have learned nothing from their grossly erroneous “news” reporting (actually, cheerleading) in support of Bush’s illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. Thus, they are probably beyond redemption.)

Mr. Auth’s cartoon does not include the obligatory “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq banner. Which is unfortunate, because, as David E. Sanger concludes in his new book, The Inheritance, “the long-term cost of the Iraq war goes beyond the tragic loss of more than 4,000 of America’s finest young men and women, tens of thousands of Iraqis, countless casualties, and the roughly $800 billion spent since the invasion. There were also huge opportunity costs. We squandered many opportunities to project American influence around the globe and lost the credibility we needed to rally the world to confront far more imminent threats to our security than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq ever posed.”

Finally, one might ask why Mr. Auth portrays Bush as a hapless idiot, rather than a swaggering narcissist. Surely, Bush’s narcissism was the source of his hapless idiocy. Columnist Frank Rich certainly was correct when he observed: “The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step.” Let’s face it, George Herbert Walker and Barbara Bush raised a smart-assed punk and gullible Americans twice elected him President of the United States.

But, ponder this. Twenty-seven percent of Americans still think Bush has done a good job. Who are these people? Most appear to come from one of three cohorts: the “white males,” the “poorly educated,” or the crackpot “biblical literalists.” Presumably, many of Bush’s true believers distinguish themselves by belonging to all three. (Have the religious nuts, who believed that God sanctioned Bush’s invasion of Iraq, also asked themselves why God permitted such an interminable, indecisive war? Have they asked themselves why God would permit Bush to be shamed — to the delight of most of the world — by an Iraqi journalist who hurled shoes at him?) Perhaps, Hendrik Hertzberg captured this true-believing 27 percent best, as living proof “that you can fool some of the people all of the time.”

If the hurled shoes represent the world’s token rebuke of Bush/Cheney war crimes, the decisive electoral victory by Barack Obama constitutes the most significant rebuke of President Bush and Vice President Cheney that Americans seem capable of delivering. God knows these swine deserve much worse: impeachment, conviction, eviction from office followed by criminal indictments resulting in guilty verdicts and years of incarceration.

Nevertheless, most Americans can take solace from the thought that, in a recent poll of historians, 81 percent considered the Bush/Cheney regime a failure. Many consider Bush to be America’s worst President. Moreover, when future historians judge the 43rd President and his evil co-conspirator, they’ll not be able to evade the fact that something about the Bush/Cheney regime prompted millions of Americans to shatter the taboo against electing an African-American to the most powerful position in the country — rather than risk electing a Bush/Cheney clone.

Senator Obama’s landslide victory, which I predicted months before the vote, was the happiest political moment in my life. Not only because it delivered a well-deserved rebuke to Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin and not only because it constituted a partial payment to African-Americans for the enormous injustices they’ve suffered since the 17th century. It also was my happiest political moment because it validated Winston Churchill’s famous observation: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.”

From this moment forward, I bid good riddance to Bush and Cheney. I’m consigning them to the trash heap of history. You’ll not see me mention their names again, until steps are taken to bring them to justice. Instead, I’ll simply insert the term “swine”, whenever I need to refer to these two criminals.

Dear Mr. Schafer:

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer contains a news article alleging that U.S. Department of Agriculture intends to kill Philadelphia’s “Universal Feeding Program,” which provides some 121,000 students with free or reduced-priced school meals. According to the Inquirer, “the participation rate in the Philadelphia Universal Feeding sites has been nearly twice the rate as in non-Universal sites — 80 percent vs. 45 percent.” Perhaps, that explains why U.S. Senator Tom Harkin –Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry — recommended that Philadelphia’s program serve as the model for other school districts throughout the country.

Instead, USDA sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Education announcing the program’s termination. According to the news article, USDA is killing the 17-year old program now because it seeks greater accuracy (by demanding individual application forms that had not been required in the past), when accounting for the children in the program. (Cynics suspect that USDA decided to drop Philadelphia’s program — as too expensive — after New York and Los Angeles sought something similar.)

The demand for individual applications assures fewer children will be fed. Why? Because, according to Jonathan Stein, general counsel of Community Legal Services, “Children forget, and poor parents already beset with outsized difficulties are unwilling or unable to deal with the forms.”

Although I do not necessarily sympathize with the “outsized difficulties” of irresponsible parents, I do believe their children should be fed. After all, the appeal issued by Pennsylvania’s Department of Education noted that the termination of the program would hurt “the children who depend upon the school district as the source, and sometimes the only source, of one of the basic necessities of life, which is food.”

Finally, USDA’s demand for individual application forms, which will deprive some children of food in Philadelphia and cost the Philadelphia school district at least $800,000 annually, surfaces at the very moment when the Bush administration has put in place a program to lavish $700 billion on equally irresponsible and unaccountable Wall Street bankers and financiers.

As a taxpayer living in Philadelphia — who has no children in the program — I find it outrageous that USDA would decide to end Philadelphia’s “Universal Feeding Program.” But I’m not surprised. Republican administrations almost always choose to protect profits over people. Which is why a gathering political tsunami will soon sweep Republicans out of office.

Sincerely,

Walter C. Uhler

Why publish the words of a liar and alleged war criminal? Who takes her seriously? Was her article accepted for publication because of her high position in the thoroughly discredited and morally bankrupt Bush administration? Or was publication a “no brainer,” simply because the foreign policy elite at the Council on Foreign Relations actually shares Ms. Rice’s smug interventionist conceit?

Whatever the excuse, it doesn’t pass the smell test. Why? Because Rice’s unimaginative, evasive and euphemism-riddled whitewash of Bush’s disastrous “Time of Troubles” would barely merit a grade of “C” in any freshman course devoted to U.S. foreign policy.

Ms. Rice’s case is not a matter of affirmative action encountering the Peter Principle. Instead, it’s a matter of compensating for the Peter Principle with poorly disguised moral turpitude. For example, during the propaganda run up to the invasion of Iraq, Ms Rice lied when she said that the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq could “only” be used in nuclear weapons. We know she lied, because her assertion came after she learned of the disagreements within the intelligence community about how such tubes might be used.

Ms Rice also attempted to deceive members of the House of Representatives. She told them that, after 9/11, the U.S. had no choice, but to engage in what the September 2002 National Security Strategy euphemistically called “preemptive” wars. As we now know, the euphemism of preemption was a fig leaf for the “preventive” wars — otherwise known as wars of aggression — which the Bush administration actually intended to launch.

Unabashed by such deception, Ms. Rice was in the process of making her pitch for preemptive war when she was confronted by a Democrat, who asked her whether America should have invaded the Soviet Union in 1948 in order to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Rice responded, “In light of 50 years of bondage of Eastern Europe, that was probably a reasonable thing to do.” Her response not only revealed her moral turpitude, but also cost her the right to be considered a serious Russia scholar. Nobody but a hack or a fraud would have said such a thing.

Thus, it’s no surprise to find her “C” paper in Foreign Affairs riddled with hypocrisy, deceitful evasions and blatant propaganda. Not only does she project America’s worst sins onto others, she also refuses to accept any responsibility for the many ills that the Bush administration has inflicted upon the U.S., Iraq and the rest of the world.

Consider Ms. Rice’s disappointment over Russia’s failure to move “closer to us in terms of values.” Perhaps, if Messrs. Medvedev and Putin ordered the unprovoked invasion of Georgia, that would bring Russia’s values closer to America’s.

According to Rice, the U.S. has nothing to fear from China’s rising power, provided such “power is used responsibly.” Perhaps, China could demonstrate American-style responsibility by falsely accusing Japan of building weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for an invasion.

According to Rice, “the Iranian regime,” not the Bush regime, “seeks to subvert states and extend its influence throughout the Persian Gulf region.” According to Rice, it is Iran (not the American invasion and occupation) that “is destabilizing Iraq, endangering U.S. forces and killing innocent Iraqis.” And, according to Rice, Iran — not the U.S. — is “a state fundamentally out of step with the norms and values of the international community.”

Rice fails to connect the dots linking the Bush administration’s crimes and blunders in Iraq with Iran’s geopolitical gains in the Middle East. Thus, when I read Rice’s psychological projections of America’s sins onto Iran, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she’s become the American version of Baghdad Bob. Makes you wonder why Foreign Affairs would published such blatant propaganda, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, Rice goes from bad to worse, when she attempts to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. First, there’s not a word in her “C” paper about the Bush administration’s exaggerations, lies and intelligence blunders concerning Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (which, we now know, didn’t exist). Second, there’s not a word acknowledging that the threat posed by these (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction — recall Rice’s warning about a “mushroom cloud” — was trumpeted repeatedly as the primary justification for war. Like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ms Rice simply has tossed such inconvenient facts down America’s memory hole.

Instead, Rice dishonestly justifies invading Iraq — after the fact — by alluding to Saddam’s intention to “reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction programs as soon as international pressure had dissipated.” In a word, she’s learned nothing.

Listen carefully, Ms. Rice. Country A does not have the right, under international law, to attack Country B, simply because Country B “intends,” at some future date, to do something potentially harmful to Country A. Country B’s threat must be imminent — something Saddam’s threat never was!

Predictably, Ms. Rice is at her despicable, immoral worst, when she perpetuates the BIG LIE about Iraq: “The war on terror�[was] linked to Iraq.” No, it was not. Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Moreover, as Rice unabashedly admits, the Bush administration actually fabricated such a link as the pretext for invading Iraq: “Our goal after September 11 was to address the deeper malignancies of the Middle East� It is very hard to imagine how a more just and democratic Middle East could ever have emerged with Saddam still at the center of the region.” (This is the point where every decent human being should be screaming: “Who made you God?”)

Even worse, Ms. Rice’s admission — damning though it be — is but another limited-hangout half-truth designed to deceive. She’s conveniently overlooked the fact that she convened National Security Council meetings, beginning in January 2001, which riveted on regime change in Iraq as a way to “address the deeper malignancies of the Middle East.” In reality, the events of September 11 were simply used to provide a patina of legitimacy to Bush’s long-planned evil war of aggression.

Given Bush’s interminable, evil war of aggression and, now, Condoleezza Rice’s infantile and dishonest whitewash of it in Foreign Affairs, perhaps the most critical question is this: When will the rest of the world unite to “address the deeper malignancies” of the United States — malignancies that make wars of choice appear necessary to a large segment of America’s population and especially attractive to its foreign policy elite?

Nevertheless, McClellan deserves credit for his focus on the terrible downside of the “permanent campaign” mentality that afflicts politics in Washington. It goes far to explain why the Bush administration could win elections, but govern so disastrously.

However, McClellan’s most banal allegation is his charge that “Bush was a leader unable to acknowledge that he got it wrong, unwilling to grow in office by learning from his mistakes–too stubborn to change and grow.” More than a decade ago, Americans who were paying attention (and, indeed, that’s the catch!) knew Bush was America’s version of Oskar Matzerath (in Gunter Grass’s novel, The Tin Drum) – a petulant child who banged his drum and shrieked while refusing to grow up.

But, whereas fictional Oskar’s refusal to grow up was a precocious response to the injustice and hypocrisy he found among adults in Nazi Germany, Bush’s inability to grow was the consequence of having everything in life handed to him — including the presidency — and of having every mistake mitigated by his parents, business associates or Republican party sycophants. As Ann Richards famously observed: Bush “was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.” Spared serious opportunities to struggle and the serious consequences of his many failures, Bush had little reason to change and grow.

Given Bush’s life of coddling and impairment, one shouldn’t be surprised to learn that he still held fast to the possibility of achieving greatness. McClellan confirms it with his assertion: “As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness.”

Bush’s observation does not appear to have been innocuous. Instead, it appears to be self-referential and psychopathic, a possibility that escapes McClellan’s scrutiny. Simply ask yourself: “Who else, other than a psychopath, would believe that the al Qaeda attacks during his presidency were not evidence of personal failure, but a sign that God had chosen him specifically to conduct the ‘war on terror.’ Who else, but a psychopath, would confide to a foreign leader that God told him to attack Iraq. And who else, but a psychopath, would assure Rev. Pat Robertson that ‘we’re not going to have any casualties in Iraq?’” I suspect it’s the very same psychopath who, in his gut, believes that “only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness.”

McClellan’s assertion bolsters those made earlier by Mickey Herskowitz, a Bush family friend, who claimed that, in 1999, Bush was “thinking about invading Iraq.” Why? Because, in Bush’s view, “one of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as commander in chief.” Thus, some four years before giving the order to invade Iraq, Bush believed: “Start a small war, pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” [See Helen Thomas, "Light Shed on Questions About War," Nov. 5, 2004]

Granted, in McClellan’s interpretation, reshaping the Middle East — not war per se — is the key to Bush’s goal of achieving personal greatness. But, Bush and his advisers eventually concluded that such reshaping could only be accomplished through war. Moreover, because “Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitious purpose of transforming the Middle East,” they commenced “shading the truth” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to al Qaeda while intentionally “ignoring…intelligence to the contrary.” All of which leads McClellan to conclude that Bush “managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.”

Even worse, we know that Bush compelled his National Security Council to plan regime change in Iraq from the very first days of his presidency. As Treasury Secretary and NSC member Paul O’Neill put it: “From the start, we were building a case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country…It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying, ‘Fine. Go find me a way to do this.’” [Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, p. 86]

Moreover, McClellan’s words square precisely with the British government’s secret “Downing Street Memo” of 23 July 2002, which asserted: “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Although McClellan doesn’t make such an assertion, Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq, under the cover of deception and lies, was an illegal, immoral preventive war — naked aggression — that, in a just U.S. and world, would lead to the impeachment and subsequent incarceration of both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. Conservative Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld, got it right when he wrote: “For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men. If convicted, they’ll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.”

Tens of thousands of Americans have been killed or severely wounded, as have hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. Iran is ascendant in the Middle East, terrorist attacks have proliferated, Osama bin Laden remains at large and the U.S. is despised around much of the world. Were all of these events set in motion simply because a psychopathic president proved incapable of asking himself whether the coupling of “George W. Bush” with “greatness” yielded an indisputable oxymoron?

Yes, notwithstanding the many serious problems afflicting “Bushed” America, we got four nit-picking calumnious questions: (1) Did Obama’s characterization of working-class voters as “bitter” indicate he’s an out-of-touch elitist? (2) Does Obama believe in the American flag? (After all, he seldom wears an American flag pin.) (3) Can you tell us again, Senator Obama about your ties to the Rev. Wright we know from four controversial out-of-context quotes? And, thanks to question allegedly supplied to former Clinton administration spokesman Stephanopoulos by right-wing hate monger Sean Hannity, (4) What about Obama’s association with former Weather Underground terrorist, William Ayers?

Viewers not already repulsed by ABC’s journalistic travesty also saw Hillary Clinton savaged for being untrustworthy and forced to explain again why she misspoke about the sniper fire she supposedly encountered when entering Bosnia. Nevertheless, blowtorching Senator Obama with calumny designed to prove he is a dangerous out-of-touch left-wing elitist appears to have been ABC’s main objective. And Senator Clinton was quite willing to pour gasoline on his flames, even if the major beneficiary was a distinct minority of Americans — elitist John McCain and his “Bushed” Republicans.

One can expect more smears of “elitism” from the Republicans this fall. Simply recall how they despicably “swift boated” John Kerry and added salt to the wounds with photos of his elitist windsurfing.

In fact, the smears of “elitism” are almost as old as the United States itself. Moreover, one also can argue that such attacks go far to explain why the United States has never achieved the goals set by the Founding Fathers — self-proclaimed elitists and gentlemen who mistakenly believed that ordinary citizens readily recognized their superior qualities and, thus, would naturally look to them to lead the country. For, as readers of Gordon Wood’s wonderful book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution already know, those Founding Fathers came under attack as unsuitably “elitist” soon after they had startled the world with their enlightened principles and successful American Revolution.

What were the marks of such gentlemen? According to John Adams, “By gentlemen are not meant the rich or the poor, the high-born or the low-born, the industrious or the idle: but all those who have received a liberal education, an ordinary degree of erudition in liberal arts and sciences.” [p. 195] Benjamin Franklin could think of no greater rebuke than to say someone “thought like a shopkeeper.” [p. 200] George Washington “realized he was an extraordinary man, and he was not ashamed of it. He took for granted the differences between himself and more ordinary men.” [p. 206] Thomas Jefferson was the epitome of the eighteenth century gentleman. By 1782, he was “at once a musician, a draftsman, an astronomer, a geometer, a physicist, a jurist and a statesman.” [p. 203]

Thanks to such unapologetic elitism, “no generation in American history has ever been so self-conscious about the moral and social values necessary for public leadership.” [p. 197]

Yet, by the 1790s these unapologetic elitists would come under attack by “tradesmen, mechanics, and the industrious classes of society,” who organized themselves into “mechanics’ associations and Democratic-Republican societies” in order to demand that “people do their ‘utmost at election to prevent all men of talents, lawyers, rich men from being elected.’” [Wood, p. 276]

They were led by people like Abraham Bishop, a liberally educated gentleman but notorious demagogue, who acknowledged the superiority of such gentlemen — “in wealth, in birth, in private character, in intellect, in education” [p. 273] — but who also believed (prefiguring Andrew Jackson) that “ordinary people ought not to be ruled by men greater, wiser or richer than they.” [p. 273]

And, thus, “For a half century following the Revolution these common ordinary men striped the northern gentry of their pretensions, charged them at every turn with being fakes and shams, and relentlessly undermined their capacity to rule�Here in this destruction of aristocracy, including Jefferson’s ‘natural aristocracy,’ was the real American Revolution — a radical revolution in the nature of American society whose effects are still being felt today.” [Ibid]

Radical revolution? Yes, America’s eighteenth century gentlemen (whatever their flaws) were shunted aside by ordinary men who extolled the comparatively debased values of commerce and personal gain. Radical revolution? Consider Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 description of commerce in America: [T]he general system of our trade�is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature; is not measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage�.”

Moreover, “confident of their ability to determine all by themselves the truth and validity of any idea or thing presented to them, but mistrustful of anything outside of ‘the narrow limits of their own observation,’ plain, ordinary Americans were thoroughly prepared to be the prey for all the hoaxers, confidence men, and tricksters�who soon popped up everywhere.” [p. 362] Any reader of Mark Twain knows this to be true.

Today, Americans are debating whether Barack Obama’s use of the term “bitter’ constitutes condescending elitism, but they are in a state of blissful ignorance about the bitterness of many of America’s Founding Fathers. “At the end of his life, George Washington had lost all hope for democracy.” [p. 366] John Adams “spent much of his old age bewailing the results of the Revolution, including democracy, religious revivals, and Bible societies.” [pp. 366-67]. And Thomas Jefferson “hated the new democratic world he saw emerging in America — a world of speculation, banks, paper money, and evangelical Christianity that he thought he had laid to rest.” [p. 367]

Having taken the lower road, today we find ourselves buried in a crass culture of consumerism and gripped at the throat by unaccountable corporate elites whose boots are licked repeatedly by the Republican Party and such incompetent political hucksters as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Moreover, bashing intellectual, cultural and political “elites” (but not the business elite) is a time-honored “divide and conquer” technique employed by Republicans, conservatives and the media they own, in order to deflect the anger caused by corporate capitalism’s “creative destruction” and grand theft of both jobs and long-held cultural traditions.

Thus, the criticism of Senator Obama’s supposed elitism by the McCain campaign is not news, but more gross hypocrisy on behalf of a man known to have contempt for the little people, a man who reportedly owns eight houses and has a net worth of some $100 million and a hypocrite who now seeks to preserve the tax cuts for the rich that he once opposed.

And neither should we be surprised to see two of America’s media elites, Stephanopoulos and Gibson, hypocritically blowtorch Obama for his elitism. Nevertheless, shilling for ABC’s corporate strategy of divide and conquer — especially in light of Senator Obama’s demonstrated ability to inspire new voters and transcend partisan bickering — left a bad taste in the mouths of many American viewers.

Thoughtful Americans, however, might have expected more from Senator Clinton. A political elite herself — a Senator and wife of a former President, whose joint tax return reported $109.2 million in income over seven years — Clinton had no such grand theft or divide and conquer motives for criticizing Obama’s elitism, just shameful political opportunism.

Presumably, she is smart enough to know the damage done to the United States when ordinary men of commerce refused to allow themselves to be led by eighteenth century gentlemen. And, presumably, she realizes that virtually every American, today, aspires to be an elite in something or other.

As one who has been greatly influenced by the writings of conservative historian, Jacques Barzun — especially his warnings against “the menace of the untaught — the menace to themselves and to us” — it seems appropriate here to mention a few of his observations about America’s elites.

“There are in the United States at least 57 elites, and they are not playing their part: they are not ruining the country. They should be undermining our democratic way of life as predicted by the horrified who shout ‘Elitism!’ But apparently the bugbear has no teeth: it is only a menace; it does no more than keep the watchdogs hoarse.

Probably the rest of us do not quite know what elites and elitism are. To find out, let us take a look at those fifty-seven. At the top are the athletes, the pop singers, and the movie stars, who occupy most of the news alongside wars and economic crises. These men and women are so few in number that their names, nicknames, marital affairs, and salaries are known to all, their health and deeds a matter of daily concern.

Next come the notables who broadcast the news, also daily intimates, and so sure of their place in our hearts that they are called anchors. Close in importance are the famed dress designers, whose slightest whim affects half the population, and after them the leading politicians. Their influence is hard to prove, thought their words can cause intense excitement. Then there are a few of the wealthy on the Fortune roster, who for one reason or another are movers and shakers outside the market�

Beyond this point, steady elites are either local or professional, and though conspicuous in their domain, hardly known to the general public; for example, the members of the National Academy of Sciences and the soldiers of a named corps such as the Green Berets. No need to list them here. The foregoing are enough to define the character of an elite. What is it?

It consists of a relatively small group of persons who get singled out and thereby take or are given some sort of privilege.” Noting that only “a licensed electrician may install wiring,” and “Indians in Vermont may fish without a license,” Barzun concludes, “The country is a mass of elites.”

Which prompts him to ask: “Why then the outcry against elitism?” To which he answers: “One thing only — that an elite member will make us feel inferior with respect to a talent which we have.” [Barzun, Begin Here, pp. 203-204]

In American politics, that “talent” is the vote. Which is why William Safire was correct to observe that it’s political suicide for a candidate “to make people think you are smarter than they are.” Safire’s axiom explains why Barack Obama’s so-called elitism is the object of such great attention from people possessing less than noble motives. They are attempting to assist his political suicide — notwithstanding the damage caused to America by such an earlier assault and notwithstanding the near universal aspiration by Americans to become a member of some elite, themselves.

Well, it’s one thing to insist that blacks take responsibility for their own lives, even in the face of past and present racism. In fact, a November 2007 Pew Research Center poll found that 53 percent of America’s blacks believe: “blacks who don’t get ahead are mainly responsible for their own condition.” But, it’s quite another thing to close one’s eyes to the impact of past and present racism.

When discussing the current indifference of whites to the cumulative impact of past racism, perhaps political scientist Roy L. Brooks put it best: “Two persons — one white and the other black — are playing a game of poker. The game has been in progress for some 300 years. One player — the white one — has been cheating during much of this time, but now announces: ‘from this day forward, there will be a new game with new players and no more cheating.’ Hopeful, but suspicious, the black player responds, ‘that’s great. I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for 300 years. Let me ask you, what are you going to do with all those poker chips that you stacked up on your side of the table all these years?’ ‘Well,’ said the white player, somewhat bewildered by the question, ‘they are going to stay right here, of course.’ ‘That’s unfair,’ snaps the black player. ‘The new white player will benefit from your past cheating. Where’s the equality in that?’ ‘But you can’t realistically expect me to redistribute the poker chips along racial lines when we are trying to move away from considerations of race and when the future offers no guarantees to anyone,’ insists the white player. ‘And surely,’ he continues, ‘redistributing the poker chips would punish individuals for something they did not do. Punish me, not the innocents!’ Emotionally exhausted, the black player answers, ‘but the innocents will reap a racial windfall.’”

Commenting on this “racial windfall,” Paul L. Street concludes, “there is something significantly racist about the widespread mainstream white assumption that the broader white majority society owes African Americans nothing in the way of special, ongoing compensation for singular black disadvantages resulting from overt and explicit past racism.” [Paul L. Street, Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis, p. 23]

Americans familiar with the work of sociologist Dalton Conley know that that slavery and Jim Crow sharecropping have been curses that keep on cursing, especially by preventing most African-Americans from accumulating the wealth they should have gathered otherwise. As Professor Conley sees it, “wealth accumulation depends heavily on intergenerational support issues such as gifts, informal loans, and inheritances.” [Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, p. 6] “Wealth is much more stable within families and across generations than is income, occupation, or education. In short,” says Conley, “we are less likely to have earned it and more likely to have inherited it or received it as a gift.” [Ibid, p. 14]

“In 1865, at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans owned 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States…However, by 1990, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, black Americans owned only a meager 1 percent of total wealth.” [Ibid, p. 25] According to Professor Conley, “In 1994, the median White family held assets worth seven times more than those of the median nonwhite family.” [Ibid, p. 1] In a word, the deliberate impoverishment of slaves and Jim Crow sharecroppers played a major role in preventing blacks from passing significant wealth to their descendants.

(Much in the spirit of Barack Obama and, perhaps, Hillary Clinton, Professor Conley believes that the racial gap in wealth can be remedied by an “aggressive wealth-accrual policy” that would benefit both whites and blacks, who are “asset-poor.” Class, rather than race.)

Moreover, it wasn’t merely the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow sharecropping that retarded the creation of wealth by African-Americans. During the 1930s and 1940s, African-Americans suffered yet more discrimination and abuse — this time from “Crackers” in the U.S. Congress who conspired with office-holding and administrative racists in Southern states to assure, to the best of their ability, that only whites benefited from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” social welfare programs. It gave an insidious new meaning to the South’s insistence on “States Rights!

As Ira Katznelson has written in When Affirmative Action Was White: During the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s “the southern wing of the Democratic Party was in a position to dictate the contours of Social Security, key labor legislation, the GI Bill, and other landmark laws that helped create a modern white middle class in a manner that also protected what these legislators routinely called ‘the southern way of life.’” [p. 17]

Thus, “at the very moment when a wide array of public policies was providing most white Americans with valuable tools to advance their social welfare — insure their old age, get good jobs, acquire economic security, build assets, and gain middle-class status — most black Americans were left behind or left out.” [p. 23]

How could such a thing happen? It happened because a Cracker in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Rankin of Mississippi, “led the drafting of a law that left responsibility for implementation mainly to the states and localities, including, of course, those that practiced official racism without compromise.” [p. 123] According to Katznelson, Rankin “keenly grasped that black veterans would attempt to use their new status, based upon service and sacrifice, along with a new body of federal funds, to shift the balance against segregation.” [p. 126]

Take the case of the GI Bill. “Between 1944 and 1971, federal spending on former soldiers in this ‘model welfare system’ totaled over $95 billion.” [p. 113] As Katznelson notes, “with the help of the GI Bill, millions [of veterans] bought homes, attended college, started business ventures, and found jobs commensurate with their skills.” [p. 113] Yes, it helped many blacks and should be credited “for developing a tiny group of professionals into the large, stable, and growing ‘black bourgeoisie’ that exists today, composed of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and mid-level civil servants.” [p. 120]

But, “on balance, despite the assistance that black soldiers received, there was no greater instrument for widening an already huge racial gap in postwar America than the GI Bill.” [p. 121] Soon after the law’s enactment, a delegation “told the Veterans Administration that discharged Negro soldiers in the South are discouraged from enjoying the benefits of the ‘GI Bill of Rights.” [p. 122]

One consequence of this discrimination wouldn’t be seen until 1984, when GI Bill mortgages had largely matured. In 1984, “the median white household had a net worth of $39,135; the comparable figure for black households was only $3,397. Most of this difference was accounted for by the absence of homeownership.” [p. 164]

Whites, especially in the South, made a last ditch attempt defend “the southern way of life,” when they engaged in violence to prevent the integration of schools, as required by the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. As Mark M. Smith has observed, in his book, How Race is Made, “In years to come, civil rights activists let such men and women lay bare their visceral fury to the world, their glowering faces, punching fists, and kicking raw feet, frightening testimony to their determination to protect their society. It was a wise strategy. Seeing segregationists spew their hatred with such ferocity on national television shocked many.” [p. 138]

Fury and violence weren’t the only tools available to whites, who wanted to keep blacks “in their place.” Until the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, most southern voting districts “employed literacy tests as a condition for entitlement to vote. The tests were employed in an explicitly racially discriminatory manner, with blacks given lower scores than whites regardless of their actual performance on the tests.” [Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But�” The Moral Quandary of Race, p.24]

Fortunately, the enactment of Civil Rights legislation greatly diminished the most overt forms of racism. Unfortunately, overt racism has been replaced by what scholars call “symbolic racism” — “a coherent set of beliefs including the sense that discrimination is no longer an obstacle for blacks, that their current lack of upward social mobility is caused by their unwillingness to work hard, that they demand too much of government, and that they have received more than they deserve.” [Hutchings and Valentino, p. 390]

Symbolic racism, which is deeper and more widespread in the South than elsewhere in the United States, has become the bedrock upon which the Republican Party bases its “Southern strategy.” Lee Atwater (who worked with both Bush’s) put it this way: “You start out in 1954 by saying ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.” [Bob Herbert, "Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant," New York Times, Oct. 6, 2005]

Thus, even if we put aside the issue of a final reckoning for past injustices, there’s still the matter of the willful blind eye that symbolic racists and other ignorant Americans turn to stark evidence of present-day racism.

Present-day racism? Yes, “in June 2000, American General Life and Accident Insurance Co., one of the nation’s largest life insurance companies, agreed to pay $206 million to settle allegations that it had overcharged millions of mostly poor, black customers for burial insurance because of their race.” Consider that, “in November 2000, Coca-Cola agreed to pay more than $156 million to current and former employees of color alleging racial discrimination.” [Blum, p. 25]

Present-day racism? As professors Maria Kyrsan and Amanda Lewis note, in “Racial Discrimination Is Alive and Well” [Challenge, May-June 2005], “No matter what the employment rate generally is, African Americans are unemployed at twice the rate of whites.” [p. 38] Fine, but how does racism enter in?

First, from the findings of researchers, who sent out resumes to a wide sample of potential employers. “The resumes were identical except for the name at the top. Some had black-sounding names like Tamika or Tyrone. Others had white-sounding names. But the resumes were identical. It turned out in this well-controlled study that the person with the white-sounding name was much more likely to get a call back than the one with the African American name.” [Ibid, p, 40]

Second, “Kathryn Neckerman and Joleen Kirschenman did a study where they interviewed employers in-depth. They found widespread evidence of a racial hierarchy and belief in stereotypes. These views were quite readily verbalized by employers, who admitted that they, for example, selectively recruited in some communities. They preferred to hire white ethnics or Hispanics and had negative stereotypes of black inner-city applicants in particular.” [Ibid, p. 41]

Thus, it’s perhaps no accident that the huge expansion of the black middle class since the 1960s is due largely to jobs obtained in the government sector.

Present-day racism? In October 2005, Van Jones wrote about the disproportionate rate of arrests and convictions of blacks and cited an analysis conducted by two researchers for Justice Department: “Two-thirds of the studies of state and local juvenile justice systems they analyzed found that there was a ‘race effect’ at some stage of the juvenile justice process that affected minorities for the worse.” [Van Jones, "ARE Blacks A Criminal Race? Surprising Statistics," Huffington Post, Oct. 5, 2005]

Using data about drug use and incarcerations from four studies written between 1999 and 2005, Jones concludes: “The Monitoring the Future Survey of high school seniors shows that white students annually use cocaine at 4.6 times the rate of African American students, use crack cocaine at 1.5 times the rate of African American students, and use heroin at the same rate of African Americans students [sic], and that white youth report annual use of marijuana at a rate 46% higher than African American youth. However, African American youth are arrested for drug offenses at about twice the rate (African American 314 per 100,000, white 175 per 1000,000) times [sic] that of whites, and African American youth represent nearly half (48%) of all youth incarcerated for drug offense in the juvenile justice system.”

Such racism in America’s juvenile justice system is but part of a larger pattern of racial discrimination that recently prompted the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to urge the United States to rectify the “stark racial disparities” in criminal justice systems throughout the country. ["UN Faults US on Racism," Human Rights Watch, March 7, 2008]

Present-day racism? With reports that America’s schools are experiencing a new wave of re-segregation, it became national news when 16-year-old Kiri Davis recreated “the famous 1940s experiment conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark that studied the psychological effects of segregation on black children.” ["What Dolls Can Tell Us About Race in America," ABC News, Oct. 11, 2006]

“In Clark’s test, [black] children were given a black doll and a white doll, and then asked which one they thought was better.”

“Overwhelmingly, they chose the white doll.”

The results from Clark’s experiment led him to conclude that “prejudice, discrimination and segregation” caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred; a conclusion that influenced the Brown v. Board of Education decision to end segregation in the nation’s schools. [Ibid]

In the test administered by Kiri Davis some sixty years later, Davis asks a little girl, “‘Can you show me the doll that looks bad?’ The girl immediately chooses the black doll. Why does that look bad,” asks Kiri. “Because it’s black,” the girl answers.

In fact, 15 of 21 children (ages 4 and 5) “said that the white doll was good and pretty, and that the black doll was bad.” [Ibid] How’s that for the impact of present-day racism?

Symbolic racists also would do well to consider the deadly present-day impact of previous racism. For example, when you think about hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on the lives of African-Americans living in New Orleans, think racial segregation. As Richard Thompson Ford writes, in recent book, The Race Card, “Racism didn’t flood the black neighborhoods of New Orleans, but racism established and enforced the residential patterns that made those neighborhoods black.” [p. 55]

And New Orleans wasn’t alone. “Many American cities were segregated by force of law until the Supreme Court invalidated racial zoning in 1917. Those cities and many others replaced racial zoning with an almost equally effective private substitute — racially restricted real estate covenants — until those too were invalidated in 1948. Banks, real estate agents, residents, and in some cases the federal government conspired to enforce segregation informally until Congress prohibited housing discrimination in 1968.” [Ibid]

Yet, although the evidence of present-day racism is overwhelming, such widespread and continuing racial discrimination does not justify the growth of a very troubling, self-destructive black “oppositional culture” in inner-city ghettos (See Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street.)

On the other hand, when a white Department of Defense colleague asked me to comment on a speech by Bill Cosby — in which Mr. Cosby tore into blacks, especially black parents, for the poor upbringing and resulting social pathologies of so many black children — I not only recommended Elijah Anderson’s sobering book, but also asked why white Americans weren’t equally outraged by the social pathologies of low-class whites — a much larger American sub-group, often called “white trash” by mean-spirited folks. I suggested to my colleague that the double standard, itself, constituted evidence of widespread racism in this country.

But, beyond this racial double standard, symbolic racists do their country a double disservice. Not only do they belittle the existence of present-day racism, thereby turning a deaf ear to potential remedies, they also provide fertile soil for the reemergence of overt racism.

As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” (a sentiment that was shared by Thomas Jefferson, see part one), Sean Hannity and FOX News also has heaped scorn upon Rev. Wright’s reference to the “US of KKK A.” Again, Hannity’s racial hypocrisy was astounding!

Simply consider that on November 14, 2007, Hannity’s former co-conspirator to fill WABC’s airwaves with hate, Hal Turner, went on the Warren Ballentine radio show and asserted: “We are going to begin lynching blacks in this country again next year!” He followed that assertion with a suggestion that we must return to what worked in the past, a rope. ["Hate Groups: Mainstreaming the Far Right," The Center for Democratic Renewal, February 2008]

Turner made his assertion in the wake of the huge September 2007, “Jena 6″ rally against racial discrimination and hate in Jena, Louisiana that sparked a flurry of some 50 to 60 “noose incidents.” The flurry marked a spike in noose-specific offenses that, according to a Justice Department report in 2000, have been increasing in professional environments. In fact, in October 2007, “seven black workers employed by an Oklahoma-based drilling company won a $290,000 settlement in a discrimination lawsuit which claimed they felt threatened by the display of a noose on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig.” ['Noose incidents; Foolish pranks or pure hate?" CNN.com, Nov. 1, 2007]

In fact, the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) had put out a call: “All across the country, white people are spontaneously hanging nooses from trees to say that white people will not be intimidated by nigger mob rule and to show support four our ‘Lynch the Jena 6′ campaign.”

The NSM appears to have picked up where the KKK left off. As the authors of Hate Groups: Mainstreaming the Far Right have written: “The practice of lynching exploded following the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 as the organization used lynching to promote the concept of white supremacy. It has been estimated that between 1880 and 1920 an average of two African Americans per week were lynched in the United States.”

“Lynchings weren’t just murders — there were, in many cases, sanctioned murders: casually reported in the newspapers, ignored by law enforcement; celebrated with family picnics; photos of hanging victims turned into postcards, and ‘souvenirs’ were taken from the scene of the crime.” [Ibid]

Mr. Turner’s prediction of more lynchings came just last year, when the number of hate groups operating in America rose to 888. That number represents an increase of 48% increase since 2000. ["The Year in Hate," Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2008] And it came just a year after law enforcement agencies reported that 4,737 single-bias hate crime offenses were racially motivated. Of these offenses 66.2 percent were motivated by anti-black bias.

Thus, although it might be a bit of a stretch today (but certainly not during the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century) to refer to the United States of America as the “US of KKK A,” Rev. Wright’s assertion did not merit the outrage it received across white America, especially in light of the “noose incidents” that have increased since 2000 and spiked in 2007. Are we a nation of amnesiacs?

My closest African American friend, Stanley Brown, gave me his considered opinion about the outrage, which I publish here with his permission: “They finally found Barack’s swift boat issue. It will probably never stop. Politics is a dirty business and Americans are easily led around like sheep (sheep are dumb). This issue of Rev. Wright allowed race to become the issue, to which white America can assert their sense of superiority making white (thought) right. The media disguises the whiteness as patriotism because most Americans have little knowledge of world events unless provide[d] by our fair and balanced media. It’s as if the sons and daughters of slaves and victims of a Jim Crow society, now James Crow, Esq., should have the same perspective of America. It would actually mean that African Americans [were] insane, if they did. We are all a sum of our experiences. It’s a testament to how far we haven’t come and our lack of desire for real intelligence.”

“Symbolic racism” and the “US of KKK A.” My brief, two-part, introduction to “Racism 101″ should persuade you that Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s utterance about present-day racism is no more outrageous than are the smug, self-serving beliefs of symbolic racists who maintain that “discrimination is no longer an obstacle for blacks, that their current lack of upward social mobility is caused by their unwillingness to work hard, that they demand too much of government, and that they have received more than they deserve.” And nothing said by FOX’s Sean “Lee Atwater” Hannity will make it so.

And, now, a desperate Hillary Clinton is piling on. Not only has she said that Jeremiah Wright “would not have been my pastor,” she also mistakenly compared Rev. Wright’s statements with those of Don Imus — which is something nobody familiar the moral asymmetries in racism would ever do.

But, first, to Mr. Hannity’s ties to Mr. Turner. It was Turner, you’ll recall, who said on the air that, except for the graciousness of white people, “black people would still be swinging on trees in Africa.” In fact, Mr. Turner, were it not for the black people originating in Africa, the earth would have no white people. Moreover, bipedalism preceded white skin by millions of years. “Swinging on trees,” indeed!

We wouldn’t be addressing Turner’s racist rants, however, had Hannity not exhibited traits of a recidivist racist by taking seemingly inflammatory comments by Rev. Wright out of context in order to smear Senator Obama. In fact (as I’ll demonstrate below), only by pulling Rev. Wright’s comments out of context, could Mr. Hannity issue his insidious warning: If Barack Obama “agreed with Wright�that would mean a racist and an anti-Semite would be president of the United States.”

Hannity’s recidivist racism goes back at least as far as March 1, 2007, when he interviewed Rev. Wright and took great pains to paint Wright’s Trinity Unity Church of Christ as a black separatist church. Here’s Hannity’s line of argument: “Commitment to the black community, commitment to the black family, adherence to the black work ethic. It goes on, pledge, you know, acquired skills available to the black community, strengthening and supporting black institutions, pledging allegiance to all black leadership who have embraced the black value system, personal commitment to the embracement of the black value system.”

“Now Reverend,” Hannity continued, “if every time we said black, if there was a church and those words were white, wouldn’t we call that church racist?”

In fact, the correct answer is: “Yes, we would.” And then, of course, we’d explain why it would be racist for whites, but not racist for blacks. Unfortunately, Rev. Wright’s answer lacked clarity: “We don’t have to say the word ‘white.’ We just have to live in white America, the United States of white America.”

Fortunately, a clue about why the answer would be, “Yes, we would,” can be found in professor Lawrence Blum’s book, “I’m Not a Racist, But�” The Moral Quandary of Race. On page 63, professor Blum writes about his encounters with white students who, like Hannity, ask “why it is regarded as legitimate for students of color to have their own organizations and activities, but not them.”

In every instance, Blum reminds them: “Within a white-dominated institution, white students do not need special support for their identity. They are much less likely to experience objectionable stereotyping and racial discrimination.” [p. 63]

Such impeccable logic, Mr. Hannity, also holds for white churches in white-dominated America.

However, why so many whites feel the need to raise such a question is, itself, an interesting question. And two students of racial attitudes appear to have the answer: “In contrast to much of the literature focusing on whites, African Americans’ racial attitudes and policy preferences seem to be driven more by their in-group bias than out-group animus.” [Vincent L. Hutchings and Nicholas A. Valentino The Centrality of Race in American Politics, p. 395] “Black’s history of slavery and discrimination has encouraged them to evaluate policies [and, presumably, give sermons about them] based on their perceived impact on the racial group.” [Ibid]

Thus, Mr. Hannity, it appears that you and many other whites have misconstrued the “in-group bias” of Rev. Wright’s church to be “out-group animus.” Could it be that “out-group animus” is the only racial attitude you understand?

As most of us know, African-Americans suffered the abomination of slavery for nearly 250 years. And, in order to justify that abomination, slave-owning whites fabricated and spread the BIG LIE about the innate inferiority of blacks. The BIG LIE even gained the support of respectable scientists, such as the polygenist, Louis Agassiz. (“Indeed, the Nazis were distinctly influenced by American racial thought.” [Blum, p. 4]) But, more significantly, “No respectable scientist challenged the idea of race and its corollary, white supremacy, until the early decades of the twentieth century.” [Blum, p. 126]

Thus, blacks were widely viewed to be senseless brutes and often abused as such, especially in the South. Consequently, nothing prohibited America’s slaves from being ruthlessly exploited to generate enormous excess wealth for undeserving white Americans.

But even worse than such antebellum suffering and exploitation was the totalitarian system of racism that gripped the South for nearly another century. Called Jim Crow, it was a system of segregation, continued economic exploitation, KKK ascendance, lynch mob terrorism and racial cleansings “that emptied entire counties” of black residents.

For example, during 1912 in Forsyth County, Georgia, “more than a thousand people – 97 percent of the county’s black population — were driven out over a period of about two months. They owned 1,900 acres of farmland, nearly all of which they were forced to sell or abandon. The county’s five black churches were burned.” [Elliot Jaspin, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America, p. 4]. Such racial cleansings occurred repeatedly from the period of Reconstruction up to the 1920s.

Thus, as you can see Mr. Hannity, even this brief introduction to “Racism 101″ — which has yet to address the Cracker-inspired Affirmative Action for whites and “symbolic racism” that would prevail in America during the second half of the twentieth century — would provide solid justification for Rev. Wright’s words: “God Damn America.”

Moreover, were Americans to watch the actual sermon containing Rev. Wright’s seemingly unpatriotic and inflammatory words, they would find that he was contrasting the unwavering love and justice of God against the immorality of governments – governments from the days of the Roman Empire to the present-day United States of America. What Christian would dispute that?

Thus, Rev. Wright talked about the injustices suffered by African-American slaves prior to Abraham Lincoln. Then, he added: “But I stop by to tell you tonight that governments change.”

Rev. Wright then contrasted the good U.S governments of Harry Truman and Bill Clinton with the poor government of George W. Bush, but only to deliver his main point: “Where governments change, God doesn’t change.”

At that point, Rev. Wright asked his congregation to turn to Malachi 3:6, which reads: “For I am the Lord, and I change not.” He then proceeded to interpret that passage as follows: “God was against slavery on yesterday, and God, who does not change, is still against slavery today. God was a God of love yesterday, and God who does not change is still a God of love today. God was a God of justice on yesterday, and God who does not change, is still a God of justice today.”

Noting, “governments fail,” Rev. Wright then proclaimed the failures of the Roman, British, Russian, Japanese and German empires — before returning his attention to America’s failures:

“And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian [Native American] descent, she failed. She put them on reservations.”

“When it came to putting her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps.”

“When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them in scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.”

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.”

“The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.”

So, Mr. Hannity, does Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon sound more reasonable to you, now that you’ve read Part One of my “Racism 101,” and now that you’ve read his words in context?

I must confess that I doubt God gives a damn about the fate of any country. But most Christians, including the Christians in Rev. Wright’s church and all of America’s Christian Zionists, believe God does. In fact, many Christians believe that God will damn America if it fails to defend Israel. Thus, applying these widespread Christian beliefs, I fail to see what’s so objectionable about Rev. Wright’s sermon?

That being the case, I suggest, Mr. Hannity, that you dispense with your hate mongering against Rev. Wright and, by extension, Senator Obama.

And you, Senator Clinton, should know better than to equate Rev. Wright’s comments with those of Don Imus. I suggest you read Lawrence Blum’s book, “I’m Not a Racist, But�”, especially his thoughts about the “moral asymmetries in racism.”

Although Blum discusses four specific moral asymmetries, you would be well advised to memorize the following: “Some forms of racism are central and paradigmatic, others are secondary. The former have defined for us what racism is. They are tied to the rationale�for the intense moral opprobrium carried by the term ‘racism.’ That rationale involved oppression, hatred, and discrimination against people of color, and most especially blacks and Native Americans, by whites, not the reverse. Everything else being equal, greater moral opprobrium rightly attaches to racism by whites against people of color than the reverse. This is the most important moral asymmetry in racism.” [pp. 43-44]

Finally, Senator Obama, you need to dispense with your politically motivated distancing from Rev, Wright’s forthright condemnation of American racism. Instead, recall the wise words of Mark Twain: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” Or, better yet, consider that, just days prior to his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called his mother to tell her that his next sermon would be titled: “Why America May Go to Hell.”

Finally, before the three of you persist in your respective hate-mongering, racial triangulation and political retreat, consider the immortal words that Thomas Jefferson wrote about the morally debilitating impact of slavery: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . ..”

Wasn’t Thomas Jefferson suggesting that a just God would damn America?

Dear Mr. Keller:

I was one of the individuals who canceled my [sic] subscription (of more than thirty years), when the Times decided to hire William Kristol as a columnist. Not a dime of my money will go to the Times as long as it pays that scoundrel, who I call the “effete warmonger,” to write his neocon trash.

But I take great delight in the knowledge that the effete warmonger committed an egregious error in his Times‘ column today, an “error” reminiscent of those committed by Jayson Blair. While waxing accusatory about Barack Obama, the Times‘ effete warmonger incorrectly placed Senator Obama in Reverend Wright’s church on July 22, 2007, the date when Wright gave one of his more incendiary sermons. According to Keith Olbermann, your effete warmonger obtained his incorrect information from the disreputable right-wing news source: Newsmax.

Slipshod sourcing in the service neocon ideology has long been a distinguishing trait of your effete warmonger. But, according to Keith Olbermann, you, Mr. Keller, knew or should have known that the Obama campaign had already established that the Senator was in Miami, Florida on July 22nd. Moreover, the Obama campaign made this information available a day BEFORE you permitted the effete warmonger to publish his column.

This is not the first such error by your effete warmonger. Thus, the question: “How many more such errors before you sack him?” Or are you simply exporting Judith Miller’s disdain for the facts from the newsroom to the opinion page?

Beyond such mangling of facts is the unfortunate bias you brought to the subject of Iraq after five years. Should you desire to pursue honest, forthright journalism sometime in the future you might want to read David Bromwich’s March 17, 2008, Huffington Post article about the Times‘ abysmally poor (if ideologically revealing) choice of “experts.” Did it ever occur to you to consider assigning an “expert,” who opposed the war before it began? How about an “expert,” who would have addressed the illegality and immorality of Bush’s preventive war?

In September 2002, writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I opposed Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy extolling preemptive war — as well as his determination to give his strategy a try in Iraq. Moreover, I’ve spent much of the past five years attempting to uncover the criminality and incompetence that describes the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I would have been glad to write about Iraq after five years. I would have given you paper a breath of fresh air.

Better yet, you might have asked Jonathan Steele. Writing in his new book, Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq, Steele asserts: “I accept as a given that the war was illegal, since it had no UN backing. No other UN Security Council members shared the US and British governments’ line that UN resolutions going back to 1990 provided sufficient authorization for an invasion in 2003. I also accept that the war was unnecessary.” But Steele’s book focuses on the American occupation of Iraq, not its invasion. And, here, his point is quite blunt: “The occupation had created the resistance and there was no way to end it without ending the occupation.”

Writing in 2004, Anatol Lieven certainly got it right when he observed: “Left-wing intellectuals are almost completely excluded from the American mainstream media and from the branches of academia with close government dealings. Their only role in these fields is to act as convenient whipping boys for the Right . . . It might indeed seem natural that the radical Left should be excluded from the ‘mainstream,’ except for one thing: the radical Right is not so excluded. Even in the comment pages of newspapers widely viewed as liberal, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, hard-line, right-wing nationalists such as George Will, William Kristol, Robert Novak, William Safire and Charles Krauthammer are to be found day after day.” [America Right Or Wrong, p. 65]

In a word: What’s wrong with you?

– Walter C Uhler

Predictably, this self-proclaimed peacemaker’s hermetically sealed mind conveniently ignored a fact that has smacked the rest of the world across the face: Bush’s illegal, immoral, unprovoked invasion (akin to Hitler’s invasion of Poland) has lasted some 1,762 days — or more than a full year longer than it took U.S. forces (with the indispensable assistance of the Soviet Union and Great Britain) to win World War II. Indeed, quite the peacemaker!

Bush’s prediction of victory is even more Orwellian. How can a needless war predicated upon lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda ever yield a victory? How can anyone claim victory when almost 4,000 American soldiers have been killed – and at least another 10,000 severely wounded — for a needless war?

Victory? How can a needless war yield victory when it precipitated widespread ethnic cleansing – of as many as 600,000 to 700,000 residents in Baghdad alone – caused the needless death of at least 250,000 (if not more than a million) Iraqi civilians and chased some 4.5 million Iraqis from their homes and neighborhoods?

Middle East scholar Juan Cole got it right when he observed: “I am often struck by how clueless the American public is to the vast destruction we have wrought on Iraq and its people, directly or indirectly. It strikes me as a bitter joke that four million are displaced, often facing hunger and disease, and rightwing periodicals and presidential candidates are talking about how the ‘surge’ has ‘turned things around.’”

Of course, Bush must claim the surge is working. He needs to continue his bluff until he can safely get out of Dodge. Yet, Americans should seize upon the suggestion of James Reston Jr., who urges an “extensive set of interviews with the ex-president.” “Let Bush profess to be another Harry S. Truman and argue that history will vindicate him. To watch him flounder with that weak argument in the face of serious scrutiny would be part of our collective catharsis.” [Reston, "Iraq, Anyone?" USA Today, Jan. 15, 2008]

Unfortunately the Republican presidential candidates, except for Ron Paul, have placed Bush’s Iraq war albatross around their necks, notwithstanding widespread public support for expeditiously terminating America’s involvement there.

Perhaps no candidate has embraced Bush’s surge as enthusiastically as John McCain. In fact, he doesn’t care whether American forces stay in Iraq for “a hundred years.” Like Bush, McCain was seduced by neoconservatives — according to columnist John Judis, McCain and neocon warmonger William Kristol “are exceptionally, exceptionally close” [New Republic, Oct. 16, 2006] – and, thus, exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (he’s “on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon”) while asserting that “regime change in Iraq” could result in a “demand for self-determination” throughout the Middle East [Judis].

Were that not bad enough, in May 2003, a cheerleading McCain proclaimed, “the war in Iraq succeeded beyond the most optimistic expectations” [Judis]. Mind you, this is the same man who now says the surge is working.

For perspective, simply consider the cautions thrown out by Anthony Cordesman, a renowned military analyst who gives some credit to the surge: (1) “Very real progress is anything but stable victory even in the area where the US and Iraqi surge has been most effective” and (2) “US ability to secure Sunni and Shi’ite zones, and some mixed areas, in Baghdad has not brought lasting stability and security to [the] city.” [Cordesman, "The Patterns in Violence and Casualties in Iraq 2007: The Need for Strategic Patience," Jan. 8, 2008, p. 9]

In fact, Iran’s cooperation, the six-month freeze on hostilities by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the rise of anti-al Qaeda Sunni groups (which preceded the surge) are more responsible than the surge for bringing increased security to Iraq.

As retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor sees it, during the first six months of 2007, “the surge was simply providing more targets for insurgents to shoot at.” In May, 126 U.S. troops died, the second deadliest month for U.S. forces during the war.” Thus “[General] Petraeus seems to have concluded that it was essential to cut deals with the Sunni insurgents if he was going to succeed in reducing U.S. casualties.”

As a result some 80,000 former insurgents are now being paid $10 a day by the U.S. military. But, according to Col. MacGregor, “We are creating new militias out of Sunni insurgents. We’re calling them concerned citizens and guardians. These people are not our friends. They do not like us. They do not want us in the country.” All of which prompts Col. MacGregor to ask: “Are we not actually setting Iraq up for a worse civil war than the one we’ve already seen?” ["Retired Military Officials Disagree on Impact of Surge," NPR, Morning Edition, Jan. 8, 2008]

In the meantime, as Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail have just reported, these “newly formed ‘Awakening’ forces set up by the U.S. military are bringing new conflict” to Iraq. Thus, they “have been widely criticized for corruption and brutal tactics. Many speak of them as ‘gangs,’ ‘criminals,’ ‘dogs of the Americans and ‘thieves.’” [Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail, "Iraqis 'Awake' to a New Danger," Antiwar.com, Jan. 15, 2008]

Thus, like the quislings in the Green Zone that the Bush administration installed via so-called “democratic elections,” the Awakening forces are coming to be seen as mere “ropes for American dirty laundry.” [[Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail, "Iraq Less Violent and Hellish Only in Numbers," antiwar.com, Jan. 12, 2008] Not just the dirty laundry of Bush’s sordid invasion and McCain’s myopic cheerleading, but also the dirty laundry of American Exceptionalism.

As Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton conclude, in their exceptionally thoughtful book, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000, “Victory over Indians and Mexicans and what became, in a purely contingent way, a revolutionary war against human slavery affirmed the notion that the United States was something new under the sun, the very model of a society of independent individuals who accepted the responsibility to liberate other peoples so that they, too, could choose to embrace a superior way of life. Americans, in short, constructed their conquest of North America as a collective sacrifice in the service of human liberty. Their romantic linking of the cause of the United States with the cause of freedom led citizens of the world’s greatest imperial republic to understand any rejection of their nation as a rejection of liberty itself. They thus freed themselves from any obligation to understand other peoples and places on their own terms and in their own contexts.” [p. 423]

Want proof? Simply consider the focus group surveys conducted by the U.S. military in November 2007, which found that “Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of “occupying forces” as the key to national reconciliation.” [Karen DeYoung, "All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows," Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2007]

So much, then, for the dirty laundry – extolled by Bush, McCain, the neocons and other warmongers — of imposing liberty at gunpoint in Iraq.

Massing attributes the reluctance of editors and producers to print and broadcast news about Bush’s butchery in Iraq to the fact that “most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name.” Or, as Scott Ritter has put it, “very few Americans function as citizens anymore.”

But, quoting from Generation Kill, by Evan Wright, Massing describes the initial American onslaught on Nasiryah: “During our thirty-six hours outside Nasiryah they [Marines] have already lobbed an estimated 2,000 [artillery] rounds into the city.”

“Entering the city with the Marines . . . we pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There’s a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She’s wearing a dress and has no legs.”

Describing another of the thousands of disasters that have been unleashed by America’s butcher of Baghdad, Massing writes about US soldiers who were manning a roadblock. As cars approached the roadblock, the soldiers would fire warning shots that, as often as not, caused scared Iraqis to speed up. After one such car had been shot at, “a Marine named Graves goes to help a little girl cowering in the back seat, her eyes wide open. As he goes to pick her up, ‘thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her…the top of her head slides off and her brains fall out.’”

Writing for the Daily Mirror (UK) from Fallujah in April 2003, Chris Hughes reported: “I watched in horror as American troops opened fire on a crowd of one thousand unarmed people here yesterday. Many, including children, were cut down by a twenty-second burst of automatic gunfire during a demonstration against the killing of thirteen protestors at the Al-Kaahd school on Monday.” [Dahr Jamail, Beyond the Green Zone, p. 132]

In that same Fallujah, approximately one year later, “one victim of the U.S. military aggression after another was brought into the clinic, nearly all of them women and children, carried by weeping family members. Those who had not been hit by bombs from warplanes had been shot by U.S. snipers.” [Ibid, p. 138]

Of the hundreds of civilians killed and wounded in Fallujah in 2004, reporter Dahr Jamail personally witnessed an “eighteen-year-old girl [who] had been shot through the neck. She was making breathy gurgling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amid her muffled moaning…Her younger brother, a small child of ten with a gunshot wound to his head from a marine sniper, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life.” [Ibid, p. 137] Both children died.

Similar atrocities in Iraq prompted Jeffery Carazales, a lance corporal from Texas, to rage: “I think it’s bullshit how these fucking civilians are dying!” “They are worse off than the guys that are shooting at us. They don’t even have a chance. Do you think the people at home are going to see this — all these women and children we’re killing? Fuck no. Back home they’re glorifying this motherfucker. I guarantee you. Saying our president is a fucking hero for getting us into this bitch. He ain’t even a real Texan.” [Massing]

Not even a “real” Texan? Hell, we first must question whether either Bush or Cheney are even “real” — by which I mean “decent” — human beings. After all, do you personally know anyone who could lie about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda in order to remove Saddam Hussein from power for the sake of oil and Israel — especially if he knew that his invasion would inevitably blow off the limbs of hundreds, if not thousands, of three-year-old girls and split open the skulls of hundreds, if not thousands more?

No, of course not. Unless, of course, you happen to know personally one of America’s despicable neoconservatives, one of America’ crackpot Christian Zionists or Bush’s latest press secretary, Dana Perino. It was Ms. Perino, who, on November 30th, placed her own humanity in a lock box when she offered journalist Helen Thomas the following lie: “To suggest that we, the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.”

Although such lies might still work with many loyal saps in the Republican Party and the many Americans who have jettisoned citizenship for shopping and television addictions, the rest of the world knows the truth. And it is not amused! Unfortunately, all Americans, not just the stupid and immoral ones, will have to pay for the world’s condemnation.

Even so, certain Americans either shrugged their shoulders or rationalized away the evil behavior of their president when, for example, on the eve of announcing the invasion of Iraq, he “pumped his fist as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. ‘Feels good,’ he said.” [Paul Waldman, Fraud, p. 8]

Certain Americans cheered him when he proclaimed “Mission Accomplished,” more than four years and thousands of lives ago. Certain Americans basked in his phony bravado, when, from the safety of his White House, their coward-in-chief said “Bring ‘em on” to the Iraqis just beginning to develop their deadly insurgency. And certain Americans raised few questions when, in 2007, their president falsely told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “We’re kicking ass” in Iraq.

We know roughly who these certain Americans are. Many are Southern whites, “62 percent of whom voted Republican in House races.” [Paul Krugman, "Politics in Black and White," New York Times, Sept. 24, 2007] Many are poorly educated and possess a stupidity fueled by racism. And that explains why the main G.O.P. candidates for president have refused to participate in “a long-scheduled, national debate focusing on issues important to minorities.” [Bob Herbert, "The Ugly Side of the GOP," New York Times, Sept. 25, 2007] They can’t get themselves elected without the electoral support of certain stupid racist white Southern Americans.

Certain Americans love Bill O’Reilly and don’t understand the outrage sparked by his observations about dining at Sylvia’s in Harlem. O’Reilly reported that he “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship꿚here wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’ ”

Certain Americans seem incapable of understanding how ridiculous Rush Limbaugh sounded when he asserted that service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq are “phony soldiers.” They never thought to ask: “How could he possibly know? He’s never served in the US military.”

Certain Americans found themselves more outraged by MoveOn.org’s ad about General Betray Us than by the illegal, immoral, murderous war that renders our country less secure and earns all Americans the well-deserved hatred of much of the world. Unfortunately, feckless congressional Democrats – put into office, in order to end the war – have found it easier to pander to the moral turpitude of certain Americans than achieve the goal for which they were elected. Moreover, when it comes to dealing thoughtfully with Iran, these feckless Democrats proved themselves no more judicious than certain xenophobic Americans.

I saw certain Americans during my jury duty two days ago. It wasn’t pretty. Yet, I took great delight in listening to Judge Defino call them to account for their sorry-ass lives.

While the District Attorney and Defense Attorney reviewed the paperwork submitted by prospective jurors, Judge Defino decried those who would attempt to shirk jury duty by providing false and outrageous answers to questions found on the questionnaire. He reminded the prospective jurors in his courtroom that serving on a jury was an honor. And he provided them with a crash course on the American Revolution and the Constitution’s separation of powers so wisely demanded by our Founding Fathers.

But, Judge Defino went further. He recalled a time in America’s history, when an imperial president subverted the Constitution and a judge, John J. Sirica, helped to reestablish the rule of law in the United States. Judge Defino than added his belief that the judicial branch would soon be called upon, again, to rein in another reckless and overreaching president. Yet, having observed certain Americans in Defino’s courtroom, I believe it’s fair to say that few understood the points he was attempting to make.

Thus, we had the spectacle of an Admissions Officer at a prominent liberal arts college, who asserted that she’d be more inclined to believe the testimony of a police officer than a civilian eyewitness. Which prompted Judge Defino to ask: “But, what if the officer was a block away from the crime and the civilian eyewitness just ten feet away?”

When an exasperated Defino asked one prospective juror, “Do you really believe that you are incapable of rendering an independent judgment about the guilt or innocence of the defendant?” she meekly responded, “I’m easily swayed.” Judge Defino told her to leave the courtroom.

Worst of all was the questionnaire submitted by a middle-aged white male, whose distended beer gut threatened to explode from his faded Iron Maiden t-shirt. After scanning the questionnaire, Judge Defino said, “I don’t have the time to waste on you. Get out of my courtroom. And think seriously about trying to get your life in order.”

Certain Americans remind me of the “proles” described by George Orwell in his novel, 1984. “Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they reverted to a style of life that appeared natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumors and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous꾿ll that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary? Consequently, “The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.” And, “as the Party slogan put it: ‘Proles and animals are free.’”

Meanwhile Oceania’s war without end raged on. So, too, in George W. Bush’s United States of America.

Yet, there are at least two reasons to suspect that MoveOn’s ad had merit and critics, like McCain, were wrong. First, we have Gareth Porter’s exceptional reporting that General Petraeus’ superior, Admiral Fallon, accused Petraeus of being “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” for serving as a “front man” for Bush’s surge. Second, we have Alexander Cockburn’s CounterPunch Diary report of September 15-16, 2007, in which he claims that Petraeus’ testimony had been “freshly vetted and re-written by Vice President Cheney.”

If Cockburn’s report is accurate, then Petraeus not only lied when he asserted, “I wrote this testimony myself,” he also failed to present the independent report he promised. And THAT failure should be considered a betrayal.

McCain’s outburst also brings to mind the words uttered by counterterrorism expert, Michael Scheuer, during testimony to the House of Representatives on April 17, 2007. When Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt told Scheuer, “You know, you are really tough on Senator McCain. You said he is ‘a little man with mediocre intelligence, a taste for bullying, and an appalling temper who thinks the presidency is his birthright,’” Scheuer responded by asserting, “Sir, he is a perfect example of a man who is tremendously courageous and patriotic, but that does not necessarily correlate with brain power.”

Moreover, now that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe this deadly and horrible war is lost and should never have been undertaken, were the hypothetical and illiberal question of who “ought to be thrown out of this country” ever seriously entertained (which I don’t recommend), shouldn’t we recommend deporting a handful of our warmongering neoconservatives to Israel, but only after shipping members of our executive branch, such as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, to a current-day equivalent of Elba?

More seriously, both the feckless response to the Petraeus testimony by congressional Democrats and the misplaced outrage over MoveOn among America’s rightwing demonstrate that Americans must take matters into their own hands, before the war expands into Iran. After all, we still claim to be a free people, living in a democracy.

To that end, we might follow the suggestion of Harper’s Garret Keizer and begin to prepare for executing a nation-wide strike. Sound impractical? Consider Keizer’s October 2007 Harper’s account of Danes saving Jews during World War II: “In 1943 the Danes managed to save 7,200 of their 7,800 Jewish neighbors from the Gestapo. They had no blogs, no television, no text messaging – and very little time to prepare. They passed their apartment keys to the hunted on the streets. They formed convoys to the coast. An ambulance driver set out with a phone book, stopping at any address with a Jewish-sounding name. No GPS for directions. No excuse not to try.”

Although Keizer proposes a general strike for the first Tuesday in November (Election Day) to halt the slaughter in Iraq, a nation-wide shutdown in response to the invasion or bombardment of Iran seems more appropriate. Preparations for such a shutdown just might persuade the Bush administration to attempt serious, comprehensive negotiations with Tehran before expanding its war in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, Keizer’s absolutely correct to ask: “Are we willing to wait until the next presidential election, or for some interim congressional conversion experience, knowing that if we do wait, hundreds of our sons and daughters will be needlessly destroyed?”

Let’s demonstrate to both the war’s supporters in the Bush administration and congress, as well as their feckless congressional opponents, precisely where sovereignty resides in this country.

“Character” implies steadfast adherence to a moral code. But, as Walter Lippmann so cogently expressed it: “No moral code, as such, will enable [a person] to know whether he is exercising his moral faculties on a real and an important event. For effective virtue, as Socrates pointed out long ago, is knowledge; and a code of right and wrong must wait upon a perception of the true and false.” (Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public, p. 20)

By disdaining knowledge unless it’s practical (mainly in the service of business), technological (in the service of business) or biblically based — most Americans have proven themselves incapable of distinguishing between the true and the false throughout our history. Such willful ignorance has produced a culture of conformism (lending itself to manipulation) that was observed as early as the mid-19th century by Alexis de Tocqueville: “I know of no country where there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.”

In 1984, two scholars revalidated Tocqueville’s observations in their book, The American Ethos. They concluded: “Most public debate in America takes place within a relatively restricted segment of the ideological spectrum.” Yet, more than 150 years ago, both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau thought they knew why.

Long before business was centralized by dehumanizing corporate power, Emerson could assert in 1841: [T]he general system of our trade is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature; is not measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage�.”

And Thoreau, writing in Walden would complain: “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them�Actually the laboring man has not the leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine. How can he remember his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge?”

Troubled by a culture based upon such “ignorance” and “taking advantage,” civic and religious leaders, dating back to Puritan New England, “emphasized literacy, especially sufficient literacy to read the Bible, as a means to bring civilization to their country.

“But, as Lee Soltow and Edward Stevens conclude, this push for literacy ‘was never more than a utilitarian value to serve greater spiritual and social ends.’ [Soltow and Stevens, The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States, p. 18] It was a ‘particular’ sort of literacy; certainly not designed to ‘open vistas of imagination.’” [Ibid, p. 22, quoted in Walter C. Uhler, "Democracy or dominion," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 2004]

Because such “education” actually was designed to “instill proper beliefs and codes of conduct” [Soltow and Stevens, p. 22] rather than rigorous thinking in the minds of coarse, laboring Americans, one shouldn’t be surprised that the mere ability to read the Bible didn’t prevent the widespread propagation of the bogus “Curse of Ham” as the “most authoritative justification for ‘Negro slavery.’” [David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, p. 66]

As actual readers of Genesis 9:18-27 should have known, Noah did not curse Ham, but Ham’s son, Canaan. Moreover, Genesis 9:18-27 contains nothing to hint of race or color. That hardly mattered, however, because, as David Brion Davis has concluded, “it was not an originally racist biblical script that led to the enslavement of ‘Ham’s black descendents,’ but rather the increasing enslavement of blacks that transformed biblical interpretation.” [Ibid, pp. 66-67] Moral rot!

Professor Davis offers a devastating comparison of the immorality of late 19th century Southern Christians, still embracing the bogus “Curse of Ham,” and the barbarian Tupinamba slaveholders in 16th century Brazil. According to Davis, the Tupinamba took great delight in humiliating their male slaves, before eventually murdering them and eating them — even saving specific bodily organs for honored guests. According to Davis, “[T]his freedom to degrade, dishonor, enslave, and even kill and eat gave the Tupinamba not only solidarity but a sense of superiority and transcendence.” [Ibid, p. 29]

Although late 19th century American lynch mobs did not eat the blacks they murdered, a rotten superiority and solidarity were served as “Southern whites eagerly gathered as souvenirs the lynched victims’ fingers, toes, bones, ears and teeth.” They called them “nigger buttons.” [Ibid]

Unfortunately, as Anatol Lieven has pointed out, “for a century and a half�the desire to preserve first slavery and then absolute Black separation and subordination had contributed enormously to the closing of the Southern mind, with consequences for America as a whole which has lasted down to our own day.” [Lieven, America Right or Wrong p. 112]

For example, as Stephen R. Haynes has written, in Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery, the Rev. Benjamin Palmer delivered a 1901 New Year’s Day, “Century Sermon” in New Orleans, in which he “utilized Noah’s prophecy as an ex post facto rationale for his government’s removal of Native Americans ‘from the earth.’” And, as Haynes also notes, “when legal segregation came under concerted attack in the 1950s, the first impulse for many white Christians was to revive the curse to serve as a biblical defense of racial separation.” [p. 103].

Keep in mind, (1) the Greater South extends beyond the borders of the former Confederacy, perhaps as far north as Route 40, which cuts across the middle of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois [Lieven, p. 107], (2) Southern evangelical Protestant religion has spread to other parts of the country [Ibid.] and (3) there are many Southerners and other Americans to whom these generalizations do not apply.

Nevertheless, says Lieven, “a process may have been at work in the United States which could be called the ‘principle of the Claymore mine.’

“A Claymore is essentially a shaped plastic case packed with explosives and steel balls. The explosion, blocked at the rear and sides, hurls shrapnel in the direction of the enemy. Politicians and even media and business figures who express racist hostility to domestic minorities in public now often pay a very heavy price, even though everyone is well aware that, in private, such attitudes continue to stream through much of White American society.

“But as with a Claymore mine, the suppression of feelings at home may have only increased the force with which they are directed against foreigners, who remain a legitimate and publicly accepted target of hatred.” [Ibid, p. 46] It’s called bellicose nationalism.

And it’s easy to tap into such moral rot. Take the candid 1989 admission by first generation neoconservative, Irving Kristol, the all-too-deserving father of the despicable “thug,” William Kristol. It was the father who boasted: “If the president goes to the American people and wraps himself in the American flag and lets Congress wrap itself in the white flag of surrender, the president will win� The American people had never heard of Grenada. There is no reason they should have. The reason we gave for intervention — the risk to American medical students there – was phony but the reaction of the American people was absolutely and overwhelmingly favorable. They had no idea what was going on but they backed the president. They always will.” [Ibid, p. 166]

Such moral rot explains why, when presidential candidate George W. Bush smugly asserted, “I may not know where Kosovo is, but I know what I believe,” he was not judged to be a dimwit, but a man of character. Such moral rot also explains the ease with which an evil president and vice president — with the cynical aid of America’s neocons — could manipulate the ignorant fears and blind rage of Americans into support for an illegal, immoral unprovoked war against Iraq.

Moreover, such moral rot explains why, even in the disastrous wake of the evil invasion he inspired, Darth Cheney could send out Christmas cards containing Benjamin Franklin’s words: “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” And, alas, such moral rot explains why President Bush — who, until two months before ordering his evil invasion of Iraq didn’t even know that the country was populated by Sunnis and Shiites — could feel sufficiently confident about the collective stupidity of Americans to erroneously compare Iraq to Vietnam (a war that the moral coward supported, but worked so mightily to dodge).

Moral rot also explains American’s current inability to see through Bush’s “surge” propaganda. Simply consider two incontestable truths: (1) “As of late-August, no progress had been made in achieving the key objective of the “surge” — to provide safe space for political progress at the national level.” [Anthony Cordesman, "Iraq's Insurgency and Civil Violence: Developments through Late August 2007," p. ii] and (2) such political progress, in the form of national reconciliation, cannot occur because the Shiites now in power consider their permanent political ascendancy to be predicated upon their ability to outlast the American occupation.

As the New York Times correctly noted: Mr. Maliki’s government “is the logical product of the system the United States created, one that deliberately empowered the long-persecuted Shiite majority and deliberately marginalized the long-dominant Sunni Arab minority. It was all but sure to produce someone very like Mr. Maliki, a sectarian Shiite far more interested in settling scores than in reconciling all Iraqis to share power in a unified and peaceful democracy.” ["The Problem Isn't Mr. Maliki," New York Times, August 24, 2007] Of course, it’s difficult to foresee such problems, if you’re a president who did not even know that the country he was preparing to invade contained such Shiites and Sunnis. Moral rot!

Finally, moral rot now explains what appears to be the inevitable march to war against Iran, or at least the bombing of its nuclear energy facilities. Having supported an illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq, which has inflicted untold suffering upon its people, most Americans — including Americans currently sitting in congress and running for president — find themselves incapable of thinking through just how to deal peacefully with Iran, the sole regional power to emerge preeminent from the debacle we initiated.

And, yet, we still consider ourselves an exceptional people!

Thus, he recommends — presumably tongue-in-cheek — against “invading large hostile countries on the basis of faulty intelligence and with the support of narrow, unrepresentative coalitions.” Yet, Dobbins is too subtle by half when he observes, “other nations will never be prepared to exempt the United States from internationally recognized restraints on the unprovoked use of force.” Indeed, naked aggression is the worst of war crimes.

More troubling, however, is Dobbins’ willingness to dismiss the evil wrought by America’s neoconservatives. If their warmongering was merely a matter of “excess,” then so was the similarly despicable warmongering practiced by their predecessors — the Nazi propagandists.

Nevertheless, Dobbins is quite constructive when he recommends: (1) electing leaders willing to encourage “disciplined dissent,” (2) the “better use of existing structures for policy formulation and implementation,” which means the avoidance of future cabals of the Rumsfeld-Cheney type, (3) the retiring of “‘preemption’ . . . from the lexicon of declared policy” and (4) the reevaluation of nation building and democratization.

He also recommends that the “war on terror” be “reconceived and renamed.” For although “the Bush administration’s rhetoric since 9/11 has accentuated the warlike character of the terrorist threat . . . most of the tangible successes in the ‘war on terror’ have come as a result of police, intelligence and diplomatic activity.”

But, Dobbins’ constructive recommendations go astray when he concludes: “Above all, Americans should accept that the entire nation has, to one degree or another, failed in Iraq.” This astonishing recommendation is based upon two seemingly indisputable facts: (1) “the United States went into Iraq with a higher level of domestic support for war than at almost anytime in its history and (2) Congress authorized the invasion by an overwhelming bipartisan majority.”

Yet, to refuse to acknowledge the efforts of experts, politicians (mostly liberal) and the millions of Americans who either argued against the war or protested the invasion before it occurred is to engage in a whitewash of the evil committed by the scoundrels and dupes who wanted war.

Granted, in addition to the scoundrels calling themselves neoconservatives and the criminals occupying the White House, many feckless congressmen — Democrats and Republicans — merit blame for fostering Bush’s war. Democrats merit blame, because many ducked their responsibility to challenge the warmongers. Thus, they violated a norm of American political life: “Regardless of which party holds a majority of seats in Congresses, it is almost always the opposition party that creates the most trouble for a president intent on waging war.” (William G. Howell and Jon C. Pevehouse, “When Congress Stops Wars,” Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct. 2007)

Two additional observations by Professors Howell and Pevehouse also point to the pre-invasion political irresponsibility of many congressional Democrats: (1) the “media regularly follow official debates about war in Washington, adjusting their coverage to the scope of the discussions among the nation’s political elite” and (2) “the airing of more critical viewpoints led to greater public disapproval of the proposed war.”

Thus, all three observations by Howell and Pevehouse support Dobbins assertion that “primary responsibility for opposing or at least critically examining the case for war falls on the opposition party.” It’s not only a responsibility that many Democrats ducked during the run-up to war in Iraq; it’s also a responsibility they should keep in mind, when Bush/Cheney push for war against Iran.

Nevertheless, Dobbins’ attempt to blame the “entire nation” still doesn’t wash. Although hardly alone, I was not among those who, “to one degree or another, failed in Iraq.” In fact, on 24 September 2002, I went on record — in an op-ed published by the Philadelphia Inquirer — opposing Bush’s just-released National Security Strategy enshrining preemptive war as national policy.

Immediately after Bush’s mad invasion, I called it “murderous and illegal,” and wrote that the world was now confronted with the phenomenon of “an arrogant, willful, and, arguably unconquerable hegemon capable of breaking things around the world to the enthusiastic applause of its ‘famously ill-informed’ citizenry.” (Walter C. Uhler, “Undone by current events,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2003)

By the summer of 2004 I was quoting Gen. Richard Myers, Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who on May 12, 2004 told a Senate committee, “there is no way to militarily win in Iraq.” I did so, because I took seriously the observation made by renowned military historian, Williamson Murray and (Ret.) Major General Robert H. Scales: “As has become apparent over the past two decades, intelligence gathered by thinking human beings, with their ability to interpret local languages, customs, and cultures, is a depressingly weak link in America’s attempt to grasp the nature of its opponents and their capabilities.” [The Iraq War: A Military History, p. 182]

While quoting Gen. Myers, I publicly endorsed the sobering admonition of Murray and Scales, writing that unless the technological superiority of America’s military “is soon coupled with intelligent thinking, ‘improved technologies will ensure only that political and military defeats will come later, and at greater cost.’” (Walter C. Uhler, “Preempting the truth,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2004)

The expert insights of Murray and Scales found support two days ago, when the New York Times published the collective observations of six U.S. Army sergeants and one specialist from the 82nd Airborne Division, just returning home from a 15-month deployment in Iraq. They claim “we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear.” [Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, et al, "The War as We See It," New York Times, August 19, 2007]

Consequently, when the criminals and liars in the Bush administration (aided by politicized Generals) try to persuade you and the Congress, in September, that the surge is working, keep in mind the words of these seven combat-tested grunts: “We are skeptical of the recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day.” [Ibid]

Bush’s illegal, immoral war against Iraq should never have been fought. But it was quickly lost in the wake of his “Mission Accomplished” speech. Credit the defeat to his administration’s gross strategic incompetence — which allowed the insurgency to develop — and (to quote Murray and Scales) its inability “to grasp the nature of its opponents and their capabilities.”

Finally, if we genuinely seek to assure that the current debate over the United States’ failure in Iraq yields constructive results, we must ignore the advice of James Dobbins to blame all Americans and begin the painful and potentially disruptive process of racking and stacking. After all, in America’s so-called meritocracy, the people who got it wrong should pay a price. Public humiliations, remedial training, demotions, resignations, dismissals, newsroom shakeups, think-tank purges, criminal indictments, congressional investigations and impeachments, where warranted, would mark the beginning of genuine accountability.

What better way to yield constructive results for future administrations than to expose the arguments of, and render justice to, the ideologues, pundits and politicians who either mongered for an unprovoked war or acquiesced in it?