I took a day off from bookwriting today to run in the Charlottesville Women’s Four-miler. Nowadays, they have these snazzy little chips you tie into your shoelaces that record something near to your actual time– I think they trigger as you cross the Start line and as you cross the Finish line. This annual race has grown so large I didn’t even cross the Start line till the clock showed 0:55.
So here are the results. I came in #802 out of 2,240 women who finished the race. My chip-time was 41:24. In the 50-54 age group I came in 68th out of 217 women (i.e., just at the one-third point.)
Since I am 54 this year, that means I’m in the oldest age-cohort in the group. It also means next year I’ll be in the 55-59’s.
So here are two slightly depressing aspects of this:
(1) I am definitely slowing down. In 2005 I clocked 40:13— and they didn’t have the chip-timing system in place then! (So I still fondly hang onto the idea that “actually”, I came in under 40 minutes??)
(2) My feet hurt horribly after today’s race. They’ve been hurting quite a lot recently, especially at the start of my usual three-mile run. But today, for much of the day since the early morning race I’ve been hobbling around like an old lady.
Okay, no more whining. I am still incredibly lucky to have great health and mobility. I’ve sometimes thought how unprecedented it is to have such huge cohorts of older– and generally wiser?– women still surviving in the rich countries these days, as opposed to the proportion (or, of course, number) of women who would have survived in good health to these ages in earlier centuries.
I delivered and raised three incredible children. I didn’t die in childbirth. And though raising them while working was extremely tiring and stressful at times, I survived that with health and sanity more or less intact. (A huge bouquet to fellow-parent Bill-the-spouse for that.)
… And then, going out this morning to the stunning beauty of sunrise over the Virginia Piedmont and seeing 2,200 other healthy women all out there too– huge numbers of them my age or older, and many of them with supportive spouses and kids in tow– that was a great experience.
I had my own little dream there. Wouldn’t it have been great if we could have taken all that sheer womanpower running on up to DC to encircle the Pentagon and tell the Bush people to just bring the soldiers home?
Well, my experience in life has taught me that not all women are as antiwar as we might like. (Condi Rice!!! Maggie Thatcher!!! Jeane Kirkpatrick!!! etc.) But still, I really do think there is a gender tilt in bellophilia/bellophobia. I think that having large numbers of healthy, well-educated older women is going to be good for US democracy and for the restoration of US values of fairness and caring, over the years ahead.
Okay, back to the book. (And an Advil or two?)
Category: Hometown Charlottesville
Bush vs. JAG (w/ help from TJ)
Today’s Boston Globe reported startling dissent at the top ranks of America’s military lawyers toward the Bush Administration’s recent rule-making on CIA interrogations of prisoners. Read the whole report here. The crux of their concern, as delivered to three top US Republican Senators:
“The Judge Advocates General of all branches of the military told the senators that a July 20 executive order establishing rules for the treatment of CIA prisoners appeared to be carefully worded to allow humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques when the interrogators’ objective is to protect national security rather than to satisfy sadistic impulses.“
Here’s how the new get-out-jail-free card works for the CIA interrogators
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions outlaws “cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment….” As the US Supreme Court ruled last year, “in all circumstances,” detained prisoners are “to be treated humanely.”
Never mind vague, lame Bush spokesperson claims to the contrary, the “tortured language” in the President’s executive order fudges the Geneva prohibition’s clarity by adding a critical caveat. According to the military JAG’s,
CIA interrogators may not use “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual.” As an example, it lists “sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation.”
In short, in the view of the US military’s own top lawyers, the “for the purpose” escape clause means an interrogator can be as sadistic, cruel and humiliating as they wish, provided they didn’t do it “for the purpose” of being sadistic, cruel, or humiliating. Put crassly, if you mistreat a prisoner, your best defense is to say you did it for America’s “national security.”
Amazingly, the Army’s top JAG officer, Major General Scott C. Black, felt compelled to send a memo to lower ranking officers and soldiers,
“reminding them that Bush’s executive order applies only to the CIA, not to military interrogations. Black told soldiers they must follow Army regulations, which “make clear that [the Geneva Conventions are] the minimum humane treatment standard” for prisoners.
No doubt General Black is worried about much confusion in the ranks, even among officers. After all, what’s a soldier to think? (especially the ones who for the past several years have gotten their moral compasses from “24” and had Faux News piped in round-the-clock to their mess halls) How is it, they might wonder, that the CIA can “do it” but we can’t? Wink, wink… Besides, as a certain relative of mine would reason, he’s my “duly elected commander-in-chief.”
I hope I can get a copy of General Black’s memo. (If anybody has it, please post.)
Before readers start waving the “liberal” bogey about the Boston Globe, consider that several quotes in today’s report come from an oped published last month in the Washington Post by former Marine Commandant P.X. Kelley and distinguished University of Virginia Law Professor, Robert F. Turner.
These two-tour Vietnam veterans are, shall we say, not easily branded as “liberal.” Bob Turner, a former Reagan Administration player, happens to be a friend from the past (don’t hold that against him); we even shared an office for a year. Turner lately has been carrying a lot of water for President Bush and the imperial Presidency – as it takes so much of Bob’s previous energetic scholarship to its most extreme breaking point. (including defending executive privilege and Presidential signing statements.)
It’s all the more noteworthy then that Kelley & Turner came out squarely opposed to the President’s end-run around the Geneva Accords for the CIA. They write,
“It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in “good faith” in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America’s clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.”
(As a recent Jefferson fellow,) I’m especially interested that they twice invoke Thomas Jefferson:
In April of 1793, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to President George Washington that nations were to interpret treaty obligations for themselves but that “the tribunal of our consciences remains, and that also of the opinion of the world.” He added that “as we respect these, we must see that in judging ourselves we have honestly done the part of impartial and rigorous judges.”
(This is part of Jefferson’s intense policy debate with Alexander Hamilton before the President Washington, regarding whether or not the treaty with France was still in force, amid France’s own revolutionary tumult. Of special note, both Jefferson & Hamilton quoted extensively from international legal texts – Vattel especially – in making their cases. Wonder when the last time anything similar happened in Washington?)
In a letter to President James Madison in March 1809, Jefferson observed: “It has a great effect on the opinion of our people and the world to have the moral right on our side.” Our leaders must never lose sight of that wisdom.
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I’m overdue to publish an essay on Jefferson and the Treatment of Prisoners of War. (Jefferson had considerable experience with some of the same thorny issues faced today — and at times, he was tempted to err on the side of “harsh retribution”….)
Yet for the moment, here’s one favorite Jefferson quote regarding the treatment of 4,000+ British & Hessian Prisoner’s of War detained here in Charlottesville. (out “Barrack’s Road”) Writing in 1779 to then Governor Patrick Henry, Jefferson is defending expenditures for the care of the detained:
“Treating captive enemies with politeness and generosity” was “for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war.”
Jefferson reasoned the experience would be a good example to be seen by what he referred to in the Declaration of Independence as “a Candid World.”
Contrary to the American founders, the Bushists, yet again, have demonstrated they have anything but a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”
Sam Waterston: Commencent Address for America
Actor Sam Waterston, known to the nation as Jack McCoy on the long running TV series Law & Order, recently delivered one of the best commencement speeches anywhere — at Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, on July 4th, as part of the annual ceremony for new citizens.
With wit, history, and splendid twists of phrase, Waterston earned what may have been the only standing ovation in 25 years of Monticello Independence Day speeches.
You can read the full text here, or listen to an audio podcast here.
(Technical note: Visitors presently need to click on the “streaming audio” link on the right, as the mp3 version on the “left” mysteriously cuts off 4 sentences from the end…. I’m hoping Monticello may yet place the full 22 minute streaming video of this speech on its web too.)
The entire speech is worth the effort to read/hear/view in full. Savor it. With one of the most recognizable voices in all of America (his past roles include Abraham Lincoln and yes, Thomas Jefferson), “old guy” Waterston breathes new life into the art of citizenship. He alerts citizens, new and old, that citizenship in a democracy requires not mere passive “pursuit of happiness” but “active interference” in how our politicians protect our “lives and liberty.”
Waterston puts “the participation back into ‘participatory democracy’.”
Rejecting the misplaced hope that “America is the all-time greatest self-correcting nation” or that ordinary citizen mistakes will “gum up” the magical functioning of our government, Waterston instead cites Jefferson’s ultimate faith in the people:
“The evils flowing from the duperies of the people [— that is, the ignorant errors of folks like you and me —] are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents [ — that is, the arrogant errors of those who speak and act for us].”
Rather than relying on agents, lobbyists, or any opinion dictator:
“America has been marvelously able to correct its course in the past because the founding idea — of individual freedom expressed through direct representation — has stirred its citizens to participate, and interfere. Information from the people makes the government smarter. Insufficient information from us makes it dumber….
In our country, things are ‘normal’ only when your voices are clearly heard. The old model of our citizenly relation to politics was of a group of people under a tree, taking turns on the stump all day, discussing the issues of the time. The old model was the town meeting where every citizen can have their say. Old citizens like me hope that between you and the Internet the old model will get a new lease on life.”
I especially appreciate Waterston’s rebuke of the God-like status being given to mind-numbing public opinion polls:
“We can’t let ourselves become mere units of statistical analysis. It appears to be so, that if you ask any 1000 Americans their views on anything, you’ll have a pretty good idea what all Americans think. You might almost conclude that individuals didn’t matter at all anymore.
Yet individuals can prove the opposite, that we’re potentially more than the “mere grain of sand in a vast statistical ocean.”
“Men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master,” as Jefferson predicted. But will we, by our silence, indifference, or inaction, give the trust away, cede it to the wealthy, present it to the entrenched, hand it off to the government, entrust it to any process or procedure that excludes our voices? It could happen.”
Waterston then spins his own quote for the ages:
“As graduating citizens, you will know how the government is set up: the justly familiar separation of powers, the well-known system of checks and balances, and the famous three branches of government: the executive branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch.
If these are the branches, what is the tree? Do not think it’s the government.
We are the tree from which the government springs and spreads into its three branches. Every citizen is part of the root system, part of the trunk, no mere twig or leaf. Help our government never to forget it.”
The conclusion then follows for the new citizens at Monticello and for us all:
“So it turns out citizenship isn’t just a great privilege and opportunity, though it is all that, it’s also a job. I’m sorry to be the one to bring you this news, so late in the process. But don’t worry, it’s a great job. Everything that happens within this country politically, and everywhere in the world its influence is felt, falls within its province. It’s a job with a lot of scope. You’ll never be able to complain again about being bored at work. As we multiply our individual voices, we multiply the chances for our country’s success.”
Just what did “The Declaration” Declare?
Here in the United States, it’s July 4th, a day we commemorate with fireworks, cook-outs, concerts, and speeches. So what exactly is it that we celebrate?
Nominally, today marks the 231st anniversary of revolutionary America formally declaring its separation from Great Britain. The primary author of the famous document was, of course, Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson’s Monticello home, here in Charlottesville, has become a living educational memorial to Jefferson. I recently was honored to be a “Jefferson Fellow” at the adjoining Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, (ICJS) where scholars, in part, explore the ongoing legacy of Jefferson for our world today.
Despite the ready association of Jefferson with today’s date, do we understand what the core purpose of Jefferson’s Declaration was?
Easy, right? If so, and at the risk of turning this into NPR’s “wait, wait,… don’t tell me” quiz show, then let’s try this question: how did America’s famous Declaration begin? Was it:
a. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”
b. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…”
c. ” When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station….”
d. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.”
e. “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”
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If you the reader are like the vast majority of Americans, you will be inclined to answer “b,” but sorry, that is the Declaration’s second paragraph, not the first.
Answer “e” is also incorrect; that’s the opening to the 1945 Vietnamese Declaration (among dozens of Declarations in world history that emulated America’s in one form or another.)
Answer “d” also is incorrect, as this is Article 1 from the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man.
With answer “a” of course being the preamble to the 1789 US Constitution, then you surely knew the answer to be “c.”
Lest we get too confident in our history IQ, how many of us can readily recall just what the 1776 American Declaration… well… “declared?”
Even if you had a solid American history education, don’t feel too bad if you’re a bit confused by the question. Assuming you went to an American school that still taught “civics” in some form, your lessons on “The Declaration” likely included much contemplation of the meaning, the “codes,” of Jefferson’s second paragraph. Just what fundamental “truths” did the new American nation “hold” to be “self-evident?” And what about all that seeming hypocrisy regarding all persons (“men”) being created equal, even as so many of them were then in tolerated bondage?
Until quite recently, very little in the vast scholarship on Jefferson and the Declaration addresses the “simple” question of just what was the Declaration’s purpose? The curious state of such learned discourse is neatly illustrated in a short 1999 text, edited by Joseph Ellis and entitled, “What Did the Declaration Declare?” This book provides splendid examples of the great scholarly debates over the last half of the 20th Century about how the Declaration was written, about the merits or exaggerations in the list of grievances against George III, and just which intellectual current influenced Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration’s second paragraph. Was it John Locke? Or was it the Scottish Enlightenment? Or was it some Saxon mythology that only Jefferson could fathom?
Whatever Jefferson’s intellectual parentage, Abraham Lincoln’s 1859 tribute to Jefferson’s “second paragraph” still nicely sidesteps such inquiry:
“All honor to Jefferson… who had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
Yet from Lincoln to the present, few scholars or pundits have provided much substantive comment about the Declaration’s first sentence, which in full reads:
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Parenthetically, my own work focuses on just what Jefferson and his colleagues meant by a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” (I have much to publish on this rarely-considered clause, and yes, it has a rather compelling contemporary ring…. Imagine — American leaders once caring about world opinion.)
I am pleased though to acknowledge that the two-century-old intellectual logjam blocking inquiry into the Declaration’s first sentence has been nicely broken by Harvard’s David Armitage, an historian and “English School” international relations scholar.
In a brilliant 2002 William & Mary Quarterly article and in a slender new book, entitled “The Declaration of Independence: A Global History,” Armitage contends directly that the fundamental purpose of the American Declaration was to…
(drum roll…. turn the page…. whoosh, poof, boom, zing, crackle,sizzle…, bang!….)
“Charlottesville Goes to War”…
Over the past two months, our Charlottesville TV and print media have given extensive coverage to the pending deployments of locally based Army Guard units to Iraq. As I (Scott) mentioned here recently, my own oldest son is a young officer in the Virginia Army Guard.
While my son lives and works nearby, his particular engineering unit is based in another part of Virginia, and it hasn’t yet been ticketed for a return visit to Iraq. It could happen on short notice, and younger officers are vulnerable to being re-assigned and deployed with units for which they haven’t trained.
By contrast, one of our Guard companies here in Charlottesville will soon make its first deployment to Iraq, after training in the Mississippi delta heat. (Much of this same unit served a year in “Gitmo,” Cuba in 2002.) Most of the reporting has focused on the understandable anxiety facing those to be deployed and their families being left behind. Heart-strings indeed.
Bryan McKenzie, our “upbeat” columnist/reporter for The Daily Progress has at least twice characterized the pending deployment as “Charlottesville Goes to War,” yesterday, and on May 16th.
This provocative characterization grates on several levels.
First, like everywhere else in America, few outside of the deployed and their families are really sacrificing for this war — unless you admit that high gas prices are indeed correlated directly with military operations in Iraq and the ongoing saber rattling with Iran. (Most war supporters strain to deny connections between the Iraq War and high energy prices – but that’s another post!)
Geographically, McKenzie has a point, when he quotes local troop booster Mary Ellen Wooten:
“We’ve had a lot of troops from Charlottesville already deployed but this is the first group that’s primarily from here.”
McKenzie also rightly remembers that,
“We’ve… lost a couple. Cpl. Adam Fargo, U.S. Army, of Greene County and Cpl. Bradley T. Arms, USMC Reserve, of Charlottesville immediately come to mind. With those exceptions, and some in the Shenandoah Valley, Charlottesville seems to have escaped the War on Terror unscathed.”
While McKenzie may think he’s above politics, equating the “war on terror” with the invasion & occupation of Iraq reflects a loaded political judgment — hard to sustain when laid out for examination.
McKenzie gets in a different political point while making a call to support the troops and their families:
“We haven’t had to question our stance of not supporting the war while giving lip service to supporting the troops. Now, whether we support the war or not, we have a vested interest. Our Guardsmen—about 40 of which are based in our own Monticello Guard Armory on Avon Street Extended—are going into Harm’s Way.”
Our neighbors, brothers, friends and co-workers will be going to war, doing their duty whether or not they approve of the politics behind it….
They leave us two options: We can go with them, backing them up and supporting them regardless of our political views or we can self-righteously ignore them and hang their morale out to die. The choice is ours.” (emphasis added)
Kimberly Dozier: A Year Later
It has been just over a year since Kimberly Dozier, CBS News correspondent, was critically wounded in Iraq. JWN regulars may recall a tribute here, reflecting on her University of Virginia graduate studies and her extraordinary 3 year coverage of the Iraq war.
I am happy to pass along that CBS News aired a one hour program on May 29th, featuring Kimberly Dozier, with fellow UVA product Katie Couric. Title of the program is Flashpoint: Kimberly Dozier and the Army’s Fourth ID, A Story of Bravery, Recovery, and Lives Forever Changed. CBSNews now provides transcripts and the full video at its website.
At least for me, much of this is difficult to watch. Yet characteristically Kim, brief accounts of her own painful story transition into longer reflections on the lives lost that day and the families left behind. There’s little overt “political analysis.”
In the list of related videos (and sub-sections) on the right of the link noted above, check the interview given to Harry Smith. Therein, Kimberly hints at getting back to “her” story; if not Baghdad, then surely the Middle East.
The candle is burning brightly for Kimberly Dozier’s recovery and return. Our best wishes stay with her.
Footnote: (as of 6/17/07)
As I watched the program and the support clips at the CBS web site, I couldn’t help but think of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. Today’s WaPo & LATimes both have cover stories regarding the Pentagon’s apparent “compulsion” (pun intended) to deny support for vets so suffering.
Back in 1996, I learned of the subject first hand via work for a year with Amb. Nathaniel Howell and trained PTSD professionals on a sensitive project to evaluate how Kuwaiti society was being rocked by unresolved traumas from the Iraqi invasion and occupation. I confess to having been a bit doubtful at the outset — until I personally witnessed horrendous manifestations of wounds of a different sort.
As the right-wingers so often say, war is hell. (particularly when they wish to dismiss concerns about JIB violations….) But apart from the physical carnage, the chaos of war wreaks its own “hell” on the minds and families of those who “return.”
Supporting the troops means more than just giving them more destructive arms and armour for “the mission.” It also means taking care of them, their whole persons, afterwards.
My mother’s eldest brother recently passed away. He was a kindly man; think Bing Crosby. Yet as far as I know, he never was able to talk in the least about his WWII service…. He had been an ambulance driver for over 3 years in North Africa & Europe. He never resolved the inward horror of what he saw. Rest in peace Uncle Bill.
Broadband updates (haves vs. have-nots)
JWN readers might remember my lament here last July about the “digitial divide” in Central Virginia (and beyond) between those who can get broadband and those who cannot.
Alas, I’m still stuck with Wildblue Satellite. It’s better than dial-up, when it works, and when it’s not raining. Embarq’s DSL is still about 900 yards to my east and 1200 yards to my west.
Comcast has bought up the bankrupt Adelphia cable/broadband assets. When I called them, a representative (sitting at a computer in Toronto) assured me I could now get Comcast – but that was six months ago.
Meanwhile, progressive states like Oregon and Vermont are moving ahead with creative initiatives to bring broadband to their entire populations. But here in vuhGinyah, well, gosh, why would governmnent of, by and for something other than the people want to interfere in the miraculous chaos of the free market?
That’s not quite fair. Our “radical” experiment here with Broadband Over Powerline via our electric “cooperative”continues its four year tradition of going nowhere fast. In January, CVEC blamed the company providing the technology (IBEC) which in turn blamed the latest delays on a lowly chip company (DS2). With an alleged “line noise” problem solved, we were instructed to watch for a March update. Of course, it’s now April. If past pattern holds, we’ll see a new message shamelessly appear in about July, with yet another drumroll announcement to watch that space for a “full roll-out” by Christmas. Not. Even if we get it, the announced speeds for BPL (256 mbs) are half what I now limp along with via Satellite.
A solution!?
At long last, however, those of us on the wong side of the digital divide may have a solution, one oh so fitting for the frustrating *$%#^* that we’ve endured. It’s an amazingly simple, ecologically friendly, and almost “free” solution: Google’s TiSP DSL service, just announced on Sunday. If you haven’t read about this already, check it out.
The Mother of all Sermons
(Note: this is Scott Harrop writing.)
Four years ago this past week, 23 March 2003 to be exact, I heard what for me then was the “mother of all sermons.” Yet until now, I have resisted writing about it:
*First, I am not inclined to be too autobiographical in the blogosphere.
*Second, when I finally forced myself to re-listen to the digital recording of “the sermon,” it dawned on me that I’ve heard far worse since. (See John Hagee section below)
*Third, I have long resisted returning to the subject of “Christian Zionism.” Where I was raised in Pennsylvania, Hal Lindsey and his 1970’s bestseller “The Late Great Planet Earth” was widely read at churches my family attended. A bit later at a “Christian University,” I once wrote a paper on “Peace and Prophecy” with the edgy subtitle, “Are they Compatible?” I had the “nerve” to think they were. Still do.
*Lastly, I am also not too inclined to ridicule ministers in public, even when well “earned.“
But then I saw a bumper sticker on the family van of one of my daughter’s friends that proclaimed, “No Jesus, No Peace.” It convinced me that I needed to go back and “unpack” four years of pent-up angst over what “the sermon” signifies for me, then and now.
Besides, I have analyzed the Friday political sermons of Shia clerics for over two decades, so I shouldn’t be so abstemious about assessing what presumed “Gospel” ministers have to say on Middle East matters. I also lamely take some courage from how George Fox challenged ministers of his day.
THE Sermon:
The context of “the sermon” was just days after the US “shock and awe” bombs began raining down on Saddam’s Iraq in 2003, as the first stages of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The setting was one of the larger “evangelical” churches here in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had been “visiting” this church, in part as the Pastor had assured us that his “new covenant” church didn’t preach “Christian Zionism.”
The sermon that day four years ago was delivered by a visiting older minister, long a mentor, an “Apostle” to the local pastor, and now involved primarily in outreach efforts to drug-infested communities. Jesse Owens was his name – not to be confused with the famous Olympian.
Much of “the Apostle’s” sermon tone was blistering high-volume, classic fire-and-brimstone, text-less, “holy spirit” fury. At early points, Owens was nearly apoplectic, as his face turned deep red and purple and his neck veins bulged.
But his subject that day wasn’t about heaven or hell, sin, eternal damnation, or any of that.
Virgil Goode: “In Mohammed We Trust?”
Heee’s baaaack. No, not “Chuckie,” that ” sneering, mean-hearted, movie doll,” nor “Q” from Star Trek fame. But our “Q-ran” fearing Congressman Virgil Goode.
Goode has been the subject of several extended entries here at jwn. He’s the “gift” that keeps on giving – if you like satire. Goode is the Congressman who infamously made a name for himself by portraying incoming Congressman Larry Ellison’s use of {Jefferson’s} Koran for his swearing-in ceremony as a threat to America’s traditional “values and beliefs.”
Hat tip to Eric H. for the alert: our “goode-ole-boy” who represents some of Virginia’s 5th District citizenry is at it again, this time rationalizing his vote for Bush’s “surge” by spreading fear of a mean-green Islamic machine marching on Washington.
Only Virgil Goode could transform his allotted five-minute speech yesterday on whether or not to support President Bush’s “surge” plan for Iraq into another dark warning against a “sea of illegal immigrants” in which more terrorists will swim. That is, if we don’t support the President, a “calamity” will surely befall us in which more Muslim “jihadis” invade our shores.
Below, I provide the transcript, from the Congressional Record, with my annotations inserted between paragraphs. Phonetic transliterations from the video version are kept to a minimum this time. Readers should view the “youtube” version themselves here. Goode’s “stie-ul” is rather unique. Render your own opinions in the discussion.
“We are in the middle of a 4-day marathon here. While I cannot say that I agree with all of the actions of the President in dealing with Iraq, I will not be supporting H. Con. Res. 63. The eyes of the world are upon this House, and there will be commentary from the Middle East to the streets of small-town America about what we do here over this 4-day period, even though this resolution does not carry the weight of law.”
“Eyes of the world?” Since when did Virgil care about what the world thought of “the Vuhgil Goode” position on anything? Instead, he’s with those who would characterize a resolution critical of Bush as giving “aide and comfort to the enemy.” (It occurs to me that for many neocons, the “eyes of the world” and “the enemy” are flip sides of the same coin.)
“When the commentary begins in the Middle East, in no way do I want to comfort and encourage the radical Muslims who want to destroy our country and who want to wipe the so-called infidels like myself and many of you from the face of the Earth. In no way do I want to aid and assist the Islamic jihadists who want the green flag of the crescent and star to wave over the Capitol of the United States and over the White House of this country. I fear that radical Muslims who want to control the Middle East and ultimately the world would love to see “In God We Trust” stricken from our money and replaced with “In Mohammed {“mooo-hahmat”} We Trust.” (emphasis added)
So much ripe material in this paragraph; where to begin?
About that Jefferson Koran
Yes, “Virgil,” it’s true: There is a Jefferson Koran.
When and why?
In the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library rests the original Virginia Gazette Daybook – a fascinating account book of that bookseller’s customers in the Virginia Colony capital town of Williamsburg.
For October 5th, 1765, the Gazette Daybook clearly records a purchase by the second customer of the day: a 22-year-old law student named Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson made a single purchase: George Sale’s two-volume translation and introduction to “The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed.”
In a recent article in Early American Literature, Kevin Hayes suggests that Jefferson had multiple reasons for buying a Koran, ranging from preparations for the bar exam, to his broader interests in natural law to the history of religion.
(As may pleasantly surprise some), the most frequently cited source in Jefferson’s legal writings was Pufendorf’s 1672 classic, Of the Law of Nature and Nations.
As Pufendorf cites multiple precedents from the Koran on various civil and international legal issues, It was quite “natural” for Jefferson as an advanced student of laws, not just of one nation but of the world, to study the Koran, especially one which included detailed comparative comment by a distinguished British lawyer, George Sale.
The following introductory passage from Sale no doubt was a selling point to Jefferson:
If the religious and civil Institutions of foreign nations are worth our knowledge, those of Mohammed, the lawgiver of the Arabians, and founder of an empire which in less than a century spread itself over a greater part of the world than the Romans were ever masters…. Since students of law study legal precedent from ancient Rome, they should also study precedent from a society with an even greater reach than Rome.
Flash Forward:
241 years and 3 months later from the day Jefferson first purchased it, Jefferson’s Koran was delivered from its current home at the Library of Congress to the House of Representatives. There, it served as the holy book upon which America’s first Congressperson of the Muslim faith, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, took his ceremonial oath of office.
I already wrote here about the controversy over Ellison’s desire to use a Koran for his ceremonial oath, and specifically about Virgil Goode’s bizarre letter and contentious press conference about Ellison’s wishes.
Among the press conference lowlights, Virgil Goode declared that he wouldn’t use the “Q-Ran” for his oath taking; denied he was a racist, characterized all Muslims as inherent threats to American values; ducked the core question of whether Ellison has the right to take an oath on whatever book he wishes, and refused to apologize to Ellison or anyone else.
In my annotated transcription of Virgil’s “bad” performance, I suggested that Congressman Goode might benefit from re-studying his basic Virginia civics, particularly the most famous person ever from his district – Thomas Jefferson.
On Jefferson’s tombstone at his Monticello home, Jefferson’s requested epitath cites three great accomplishments in his life:
Author of the Declartion of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.
That Jefferson was America’s third President is not mentioned.