The Israel Project Conference Call: Jonathan Miller Wednesday, June 20, 2012 @ 12:00 P.M. EDT
Author, public servant and Huffington Post contributor Jonathan Miller spent nearly two decades in politics before joining the private sector last year.
A former two-term elected Kentucky State Treasurer, he is the author of the recently released book “The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State,” in which he highlights deep factual misunderstandings, media disinformation, and the perpetuation of “Eight Crazy Lies” by those who seek the Jewish State’s total destruction.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 19, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
My friend, Chuck Gutenson, a Christian scholar at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, has authored an outstanding new book on the political misuse of Jesus’ image and teachings. In Hijacked: Responding to the Partisan Church Divide, Gutenson argues that all Americans should join in efforts to stop the unhealthy alliance of religious faith and political partisanship.
Here’s an excerpt:
Click here to review/purchase
It really gets old, doesn’t it? Every election cycle, the story is the same. This Christian says that Christian is not really a Christian. And why is that? Is it because they differ on critical issues relating to the content of the Christian faith? Is it because of doctrinal or ecclesial disputes? No, the reason for this inability to recognize and respect each other as Christian sisters and brothers is because those Christians belong to a different political party and support different political candidates than we do. Oh, don’t get me wrong, they may have doctrinal or ecclesial disputes. We just don’t ever get to find out because the wedge issue that lies at the surface is our political differences.
One of the most common critiques of Christians in our contemporary culture is that we are “too political.” This has been borne out by study after study, and it’s a huge turnoff to younger folks. In fact, it is such a turnoff that in droves they are leaving churches that cannot properly distinguish their political positions from their Christian faith. And, frankly, who can blame them? Why continue to be a tarred by the rancorous debates over politics? Interestingly, it was Barry Goldwater who presciently said: “Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise.” And, therein lies the crux of the problem: because we are sure God is on our side, any attempt to compromise with those who disagree with us is judged to be a betrayal. The outcome? Rather than Christian faith being a thing that unites us, it becomes distorted and used for partisan gain. It seems that being political power brokers has become too seductive for us to resist.
But, you know what? Those who attempt to hijack religious faith for partisan gain do so because, well, because it works. And, as long as it works, they will continue to do it, election cycle after election cycle after election cycle. It will continue to divide, rather than unite, and with each cycle, more folks will throw up their hands in desperation and walk away. It can be stopped, though. In fact, we can stop it anytime we want. All we have to do is make it clear that we have had enough and will no longer tolerate it. And that’s exactly what we’d like to have you help us do. How? Join our campaign, pledge not to use religious faith for partisan gain and to do all you can to resist those who do.
Gutenson has also launched a Web site — DontLetThemHijackJesus.com — where citizens can share video messages with their friends.
Interestingly, Hajnal and Lee don’t view it as distressing. They speculate that there is actually a virtue in this kind of politics, in that it would supplant the alternative of one racialized party matched against one white, homogeneous one. It is also striking that they describe their approach of “tightly packaged appeals to targeted [minority] electorates” as a strategic novelty, when it is anything but: even a cursory glance of modern politics yields, on the right, Richard Nixon’s cultivation of Catholics and white ethics, George W. Bush’s deploying of an anti gay marriage initiative to shift black votes in Ohio in 2004; and of course, what Hajnal and Lee describe is a fair rendition of the current Democratic pattern of wedge politics from the left: courting Hispanics with opposition to restrictive local immigration laws, blacks with protective rhetoric about voter ID requirements and, increasingly, with defenses of affirmative action in higher education (an issue the conservative dominated Supreme Court has committed to revisit in the next term).
Click here to review/purchase book
I can cite any number of arguments from both ends of the spectrum why more of the above is hardly a political panacea. From the liberal perspective, there is a quality of cheap symbolism that is really studied avoidance of more contentious ground like African American poverty or citizenship status for illegal immigrants. On the right, policy minded conservatives might lament that the temptation for the GOP to wield gay marriage and perhaps abortion to offset the Democrats’ advantage with blacks and Latinos is at the expense of more substantive initiatives on education and entrepreneurship.
My gut reaction is that the two authors end up in such a curious place—treating old fashioned racial interest group politics as cutting edge and prescribing more of it despite the obvious costs—because they are trying to make sense of a not widely known phenomenon that their research uncovered: the surprisingly high levels of disengagement from among ethnic minorities from both parties. Their data suggests, for example, that among Asian Americans and Latinos, a majority don’t vote, and almost sixty percent of both groups are independent or don’t identify with either party; even within the monolithically Democratic black community, roughly a third express reservations that their interests are not adequately articulated by Democrats or Republicans.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Two Visions of the Multi-Racial Future
Remember the RP’s highly critical take on Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism? Apparently, the RP is not alone…on either side of the issue.
Here’s a brilliant piece by New York‘s Jason Zengerle on Beinart and the controversy surrounding his book:
“I’m really not a radical.”
It is late April, a month after his new book about American Jews, Israel, and their tangled, often tortured relationship has hit the shelves, and Peter Beinart is on the defensive. He’s sitting in his office at the City University of New York. Although he’s now worked at CUNY for two years, the small, windowless cube—more befitting a research assistant than a tenured journalism and political-science professor—is filled with unpacked cardboard boxes and little else. But more square footage, or a view, or some family photographs would do little to lift the sense of siege that pervades the room. “I’m trying to live as a critic of Israel’s policies, from a moral perspective, inside the Jewish community,” Beinart says, “and inside the fairly mainstream Jewish community, which is where I feel most at home.”
Now that home has become something of a war zone. At his shul—“It’s an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side,” he says, “but it’s probably better not to mention its name”—he is suddenly a controversial congregant. At the Jewish day school where he sends his young children, other parents now look at him askance. Even members of Beinart’s own family are furious at him. And yet it’s the impact his book has had on his professional home—namely the community of center-left American Jewish writer-intellectuals where Beinart has spent his career—that has been most painful.
From the moment it was published, The Crisis of Zionism has dominated the American Jewish political discourse. The book argues that Israeli policies—chief among them the occupation of Palestinian lands—threaten the democratic character of Israel and the Zionist project in general, and that it’s the responsibility of American Jews to help change those policies. Marc Tracy, who edits the Scroll, the blog of the Jewish online magazine Tablet, says, “There was definitely a period where the Scroll might as well have been renamed ‘the Peter Beinart Blog.’ Everything was about him.” Politically conservative Jews attacked the book—not unpredictably. “Why does [Beinart] hate Israel so?” Daniel Gordis asked in his review for the Jerusalem Post, before answering: “Beinart’s problem isn’t really with Israel. It’s with Judaism.” The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, writing for Tablet, branded The Crisis of Zionism “an act of moral solipsism.” But withering reviews have come from Beinart’s ideological allies on the Jewish center-left as well. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Rosen—a mild-mannered Jewish public intellectual whose most recent book was a meditation on bird-watching—savaged Beinart for his “Manichaean simplicities” and for “employ[ing] several formulations favored by anti-Semites.” Tablet editor Alana Newhouse panned the book in the Washington Post for introducing “its own repressive litmus test, this one to determine who can be considered both a liberal American and a Zionist.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed May 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Children’s books matter.
I love–LOVE–trying to take perceived problem and turning it into an unforeseen solution. Creating a new situation that is “better” than the condition before the problem.
I was wondering what my first exposure to this concept was and think I remember–at least in part.
A favorite book of mine as a very young boy involved a family of bears. The playful young boy bear was picking blackberries (so the story goes) and got blackberry juice stain on his plain-colored shirt. The mother bear–tempted to get angry and scold her son—had a better idea. She took blackberry juice and dyed the entire shirt a pretty blue-purple color. The “new” shirt was not only not stained– but better than before.
I can’t remember the name of the book…but I sure remember the story. I can’t imagine that I was over 5 years old when I read and re-read it.
And to this day when I’m surprised by a disappointment, I almost always quickly ask myself, can we make blackberry dye –figuratively speaking–to solve the problem
So, yes, children’s stories matter. That one either gave me an idea for a life philosophy or reinforced it. Or both.
But it started with a kids book about imaginary bears solving an ordinary problem. Differently and creatively. And successfully.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon May 14, 2012 at 11:00 AM ET
In recent years, I have been growing increasingly frustrated with the “Daily Dish” blogger, Andrew Sullivan.
His columns have become increasingly petty and personal — witness his never ending personal attack campaign against Sarah Palin. I’m not crazy about her either, but Sullivan obsessive treatment of Palin’s personal life and that of her children often crosses the line of decency.
I’m also quite disturbed at how the former Zionist has become one of the loudest, shrillest voices against the Jewish State.
BUT, I will never forget his passionate, influential, decades-long leadership on the issue of marriage equality. In fact, it was his 1989 New Republic cover story that introduced me — and many others — to the idea itself, helping launch it into the public arena. Sullivan will be long remembered as a forefather of the marriage equality movement.
Click here to read the 1989 article — “Here Comes the Groom: The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage” — and see how far we’ve come as a nation.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Facing up to major shortcomings in what you know. And don’t know.
I like to think of myself as what I’ll call a “Mark Twain American.” An American who understands our culture in common sense terms and isn’t a person who is especially impressed with pomp and circumstance –and someone who easily amused by those who are slaves to creating impossible public images for themselves and the things they value.
Sure part of that is a surly juvenilism….but part is surely authentic, too.
An example. I know a man about my age (who shall remain nameless) who was at Keeneland the other day and was served lunch. This friend of man (err..this man…who isn’t me), was searching for his eating utensils and unraveled his table napkin and out tumbled the silverware. As people nearby stared–part perturbed; part irritated with me.
I tried quickly to organize–properly set– the forks, knife and spoon in hopes of going unnoticed. I may have gotten it right. But even a “Mark Twain American” ought to know where silverware goes on a set table. I knew they eventually went in my hands and then the food. But will research tonight where they begin our next dinner.
Ira Shapiro’s recent work on the late seventies, “The Last Great Senate”, has the gift of good timing. It hits bookstands during a time when its thesis–that Washington was occupied by political giants, moderates, and thoughtful deal-makers until far-right Republicans dragged it into the mud–is the conventional wisdom du jour. As a narrative, the book also reads well, which is no small accomplishment, given its dive into the nuts and bolts of policy battles that are only dimly recalled: Jimmy Carter’s conservation initiatives and his failed stimulus are not exactly the stuff of lore. As Shapiro reminds, there actually was an ample amount of substance and rigor in many of those debates, and the quality of the fight seems, in Shapiro’s telling, richer than our current sound-bite clashes.
Click on the book cover to order
To be sure, there is much that is admirable about this book from one of the most credentialed public policy lawyers in DC. It’s worth asking though, whether Shapiro’s underlying theory of senatorial decline and right-wing liability really holds up as a description of the last thirty odd years. Two threshold criticisms: first, the supposed dark ages after 1980 contain a lot more bipartisan accomplishment than Shapiro acknowledges. While his epilogue makes a nod to a series of eighties era achievements, including a refinancing of Social Security, a work-over of Title VII, tax reform, immigration reform, and the patent protection that enabled the generic drug market, it’s a run of success that Shapiro seems to dramatically understate and which is at odds with his premise. If Shapiro is right about the sources of dysfunction, a Republican lurch to the right and the surge of cut and slash ad wars sponsored by conservative cash, the eighties should have been one long pattern of gridlock. The fact that they weren’t gives Shapiro’s case fits that he doesn’t really address.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Seventies Night on Capitol Hill
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Which part of speech best characterizes you?
A video by Grammar Rock got me thinking, each part of speech has a certain personality– verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
I would like to say I’m most like a verb—a person of action and activity.
I don’t want to be a preposition. They are sneaky trying to go over, under and around things. You can’t trust ’em.
Maybe I’m most like an conjunction today. I try to bring people together to do more than they can do separately.
OK, really I just want to post the video of Conjunction Junction. It was my favorite song by Grammar Rock. And is still pretty cool all these years later.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Mar 14, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
The real Shakespeare controversy.
For centuries, commentators have debated whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare’s literary works.
The recently released movie, Anonymous, which I saw last week, examines the evidence in depth and comes to some interesting conclusions.
Perhaps it was Christopher Marlowe.
Perhaps it was someone else.
But I’ve decided there is an even a bigger and more profound way of asking the question:
“Should it even matter if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare since most individuals who claim to have read Shakespeare, really haven’t read Shakespeare— and are only pretended to?”
When I was asked in college what Shakespeare plays I had read, I answered Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello.
But that wasn’t true. I had seen the movies for those plays with the exception of King Lear, which I read. But even with Lear much of my reading was done by relying on Cliff Notes.
So, until we get to the bottom of whether people who claim they have read Shakespeare are real people who have actually read Shakespeare (and aren’t just pretending to), we should hold off investigating the authorship question altogether.
The Israel Project Conference Call: Jonathan Miller Wednesday, June 20, 2012 @ 12:00 P.M. EDT
