Political gamesmanship and the culture war

Last week, as the result of the pounding he's taken as the result of his remarks condemning Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh admitted that he may have fallen into a trap.

I rarely have reason to agree with him, but he may be right this time.

While I have no way to know for sure right now, I suspect that the recent controversy surrounding the health insurance mandate for contraception, which has a lot of "culture warriors" aflame, may very well have been instigated by the White House -- a deliberate strategy to keep the Republican Party at war with itself. (Of course it could be just dumb luck, but that seems unlikely.)

The reason is simple: The "culture war" is at bottom a losing proposition for the GOP.

Two things to consider: The folks who support "traditional morality," including anti-abortion activists and opponents of same-gender matrimony, generally aren't interested in the political process in that they see compromising -- the "art of politics" -- on their positions as tantamount to ultimate defeat. These are the people who are driving the candidacy of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who has always run on those themes and is currently second in Republican primaries and caucuses.

However, they don't seem to understand just how relatively few of them there are; indeed, candidates rarely run campaign ads on such issues, whether for or against, because voters as a rule just don't care. The now-nearly-invisible tea-party movement understood that, which is why it as a whole was silent despite its supporters' likely commitment to traditional morality.

Moreover, with the "religious right" practically defunct since 2006 and U.S. Catholic bishops regarded cynically by many Catholics because of a number of sex-abuse scandals in that church, neither group can provide the prophetic leadership needed to rally the troops. And let's not forget Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which many believe caused even many Republicans to vote for Bill Clinton that year. Bottom line, by taking what many consider to be hard-and-fast stances, such folks manage to make people vote against them.

Which is just what the Democratic Party wants. (Getting Limbaugh, who has inordinate power in the GOP these days, off his game and possibly off the air certainly won't hurt the cause.)

Clearly, this is a problem for whomever the Republicans finally nominate this summer. While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, now in the lead, would probably be the strongest Republican to run against Obama when it comes to political positions, many conservatives see him as "Obama-lite" and won't commit to endorsing him. But GOP honchos also probably understand that a Santorum victory might drive away even more voters because of what they might consider his extremist rhetoric.

Assuming that this represents a Clintonian set-up, the birth-control flap is certainly cynical and divisive politics. But it will probably work -- and that's the bottom line.

Tit for tat?

The ongoing imbroglio concerning Rush Limbaugh's remarks last week have created yet another side issue. And it is a side issue which deflects from his overall modus operandi, which created the problem in the first place.

I've noticed that some conservatives, while properly disavowing his reference to a Georgetown University law student seeking health insurance for birth control medication as a "slut" and "prostitute," have in turn noticed that liberal commentators have made similar remarks toward conservatives. In one instance Bill Maher supposedly referred to former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin with a word I will not use here, and because I have a lot of left-wing activist friends on Facebook I see the kind of language that they use -- and certainly don't condone it.

There's a difference, however: When liberals slam conservatives, it's always based on what conservatives say and do, not what they believe. A distinction without a difference? I don't think so. Every single liberal broadside against a conservative I've ever seen or heard, without exception, is in response to either an arrogant pronouncement or a punitive policy that says to the rest of the world, "Screw you." That kind of attitude cannot but create an atmosphere of animosity, and since 2004 the left has decided to fight fire with fire.

More to the point, I see a lack of self-awareness on the part of the right on just how it regularly insults people not of its party, as though if you question it on anything its reaction is "Yo' Mama!" or an equivalent taunt. In my experience it accepts no criticism, even constructive, and considers any challenge as a personal attack. (One example: Former president George W. Bush referring to "the politics of personal destruction" when someone questioned his policies.) You wonder if it's really secure in what it believes if it has to eliminate or browbeat any opposition.

I don't listen to talk radio or watch cable news at all, largely due to time constraints but also because I don't want to participate in the sludgefest. However, it's not enough to call for "civility" -- those who create an atmosphere of divisiveness in the first place must be identified, confronted and repudiated. Immediately.

Why Rush needs and deserves to be shunned

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

-- John the Baptist, Matthew 3:8

Rush Limbaugh is probably in more trouble right now than he's ever been in.

Of course, last week the radio commentator lambasted as a "slut" -- and worse -- a Georgetown University law student who was asking for insurance coverage for contraception. Limbaugh's intemperate remarks caused a firestorm across the country, with folks (especially on the political left) calling for a boycott of firms who advertise on his show.

Seeing the threat of perhaps being a liability, Limbaugh issued a tepid apology, saying that he didn't mean it to be taken personally.

Sorry, but that's not enough. Keep in mind that he has made his nearly quarter-century career, let alone millions of dollars, making insults and personal attacks on people he doesn't like. He, as much as anyone, is responsible for the political and ideological polarization in this country, and I have yet to see any signs that he will change his ways.

I am not going to tell people not to listen to Limbaugh's show because they can make that decision for themselves. However, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, Who demands a change in attitude and lifestyle to follow Him, you listen to him at your own risk because his on-air conduct mocks the kind of character that we Christians should strive to maintain.

"But he's witty," you may protest. Big deal -- the devil can be witty, too. Really, the kind of hate-filled resentment demonstrated regularly on Limbaugh's show should never be part of any Christian's diet, if for no other reason than it's "worldly." I personally will not be impressed with any "apology" he makes until he also shows remorse for trashing people on a regular basis and renounces that way of doing business.

The legacy of Malcolm X — one Christian's perspective

If you didn't already know, today is the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, best known as the foremost spokesman for "black nationalism" during the 1950s and '60s and who built the Nation of Islam into a major cultural force in the African-American community of that day. Needless to say, in many households he is still revered.

The truth be told, I truly wonder just what he accomplished throughout his just under 40 years of life.

Born in Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb. in 1925 to a pastor who was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, he eventually found himself in prison, I'm not sure why. But while there he fell under the spell of Nation of Islam teachings and, upon his release, became a major force not only in NOI but also in the black community. That is, outside the South.

That last item is important, as Malcolm, who used the letter X to replace his "slave name," once admitted, "I don't know nothing about the South."

I'm sure he felt that, with his extremely angry rhetoric, he was speaking out for the powerless in the 'hood, but the NOI's references to whites as "devils" put a lot of people off. (They certainly would have put me off had I heard them back then.) And those kind of pronouncements kept Martin Luther King Jr. from meeting with him during the Southern civil-rights movement; while King was firmly committed to nonviolence, Malcolm never was and King felt  — correctly, in my view  — that Malcolm would cause unnecessary bloodshed.

Now, Malcolm, as a Muslim, would have maintained that strict Islamic moral code -- no alcohol or tobacco, and he certainly refrained from eating pork  — and to this day NOI members are quite disciplined, but sometimes these things have nothing to do with truth. I can't even think of any legislation he had passed, what kind of positive effects he had as far as economic empowerment or anything else. Moreover, according to Dinesh D'Souza's book "The End of Racism," he even met with Klan leaders in 1961.

And here's another irony: He died in part because he repudiated racism.

In 1964 he took the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca and was shocked to see  — white Muslims. He would eventually leave the NOI in part because he said that it wasn't teaching true Islam (and in fact, orthodox Muslims consider the NOI a "cult"). For the rest of his life Malcolm — who took the name al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz  — dedicated himself to Islam, taking much of the African-American community with him. (The NOI eventually collapsed, being revitalized only a couple of decades ago under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan but having only a fraction of the membership that it had at its peak.)

I think the lesson for us Christians is that we need to be aware and militant about social injustice  — because God certainly tells us to be so. Otherwise, we risk having folks outside the faith remind us of our failures. And let me leave no doubt: In the final analysis, Malcolm does represent a failure of the church.

More than 'Courageous'

On Sunday I finally got to see the film "Courageous," produced by the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. and released in September. I admit that I found myself rooting for the lead characters, a quartet, three white and one black, of sheriff's deputies in Dougherty County, Ga., which includes Albany; and a Hispanic man who started out as a laborer and, by the end of the film, had worked his way up to management of a textile mill. The film culminates in a shootout between some deputies and street gang members, including a leader, who end up being arrested for drug possession and distribution.

The underlying message of the film is that men need to step up and reclaim their rightful roles as fathers -- which, of course, is a worthy goal. That said, however, I detected a number of weaknesses in how that message was portrayed.

1) There were no grandfathers in the movie; indeed, the only reference to any of the men's own fathers that I recall was Deputy Hayes' biological father, whom he said he never knew or even met. As a result, you never got a sense of what their own dads may have or hadn't taught them, whether actively or passively; you best believe that their own upbringing would have a major impact on who they became. It seems to me that, in pledging more responsible fatherhood, the men in question should consult with some older men, perhaps their own fathers if they're available, to learn how to become not just fathers in particular but men in a general sense. It was good that the men committed themselves to Biblical principles; still, they needed to see them worked out in the lives of other men that they respected.

The larger issue is the lack of true community that's required for children to develop, in times past usually including extended family such as uncles, aunts and grandparents. Since the 1950s our culture has focused on the nuclear family as being the be-all and end-all of what we call "family," and I don't think that the dissolution of our culture, which began then, is a coincidence. The old African proverb still applies: "It takes a village to raise a child." (We Christians don't always realize this because almost all of us are involved in such a community -- the local church.)

2) The legitimate Biblical concept of economic justice was totally glossed over, most noticeably with the one deputy who, it turned out, had been stealing drugs that had been seized as evidence with the intent to sell them and ended up being arrested. I caught that he noted the difficulty of raising a family on an annual gross salary of just $36,000, which is a little less than what I make for a job that's far less demanding and has less prestige. (And I'm single and childless.)

In times past in the African-American community, in large part due to racism, men were often unable to find work that paid enough to feed, clothe and shelter their wives and children; to make ends meet, in many cases the wives had to get jobs, often as domestics. Needless to say, that caused friction in the home and the men, feeling useless, either left or ended up getting kicked out. Situations like that cause children to lose respect for Dad; as a result he can neither teach his sons to become men nor "cover" his daughters so that they don't fall for the charms of the lech up the street.

Bottom line, a man needs work that pays well enough so that not only his family can survive financially but also that he doesn't always have to take second or third jobs that would take him away from them. Indeed, the very concept of "sabbath" represents, really, a guard against workaholism.

At the end of the movie, Hayes asked one young man who had shown interest in his daughter but was caught up in the shootout with the gang why he got involved with it, and he responded, "I don't have anybody, man." Sorry, but that also is a tad simplistic -- drug-dealing has always been a lucrative business and many in some areas see it as the only way to make any money and thus gain status. "Family" has little to do with it.

3) Being that this was the Deep South I was stunned, for reasons I've already mentioned, that racism was completely ignored. Christianity Today reported that Sherwood Baptist Church has thankfully been involved in racial reconciliation efforts in that city and thus has the authority to speak about that but chose not to; however, Albany was one of the first cities after Montgomery, Ala. that Martin Luther King Jr. attempted to integrate during the civil-rights movement. Furthermore, according to that same article, some of those same racist attitudes from back then still exist today. (One of my roommates at Georgia Tech, who was white, came from that city; he told me over 30 years ago that it experienced "white flight.")

4) One scene that jarred me was the promotion of Javier, the Hispanic man, who was asked if he would fudge a shipment -- when he said he wouldn't, he was offered the position because management said was looking for someone with integrity. It's more likely that companies would look for someone who would lie to make more money and believers certainly aren't immune; let's remember that Bernie Ebbers and the late Ken Lay, both CEO's of their respective corporations and who were supposedly devout Christians, were busted for unethical behavior.

5) There was virtually no mention about the men's marriages in "Courageous," a problem because a strong marriage is virtually a must to raise Godly children; I recall the saying: "The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother." The deputy who was caught with the contraband was divorced; another, who had just finished his rookie year on the force, had fathered a child out of wedlock. (In fairness, the same church also produced the movie "Fireproof," which focused on marriage but which I haven't seen.)

Basically, the producers of the film tried to make things as black-and-white -- no pun intended -- as possible. But in the process they isolated fatherhood from issues that surround it and thus, I believe, ultimately sabotaged the message they were trying to convey.

Some thoughts on persecution

"You let them cut you? You let them hurt you?"

I heard those words in 1996 from a then-retired, now-deceased African-American pastor who was attending my largely-white church. He was infuriated when I told him that, when I was a student at a mostly-white Catholic prep school, the N-word was directed toward me on a daily basis and I didn't react. Part of that was because I acted as though I was one of them and simply didn't cower the way other African-Americans likely might.

In light of the recent celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it's important to remember that, when you stick your neck out for the sake of truth, you might very well pay a price. And it was one I -- and he -- was willing to pay for the sake of racial reconciliation.

In his case, in the South it meant being arrested on trumped-up charges, irritants such as the cancellation of insurance and, ultimately, threats to his life. In mine, in the North it also meant rejection by "my side" of the relational fence -- being considered an "Oreo," a "race traitor."

The bigger picture, however, is not about the abuse we had to take; rather, we both kept our eyes on the prize in that we truly believed that reconciliation was the right way to go. Dr. King has not lived to see the fruit of his labors; I'm blessed in that I have -- today I'm even friendly with some of the people who tormented me in those days because I think they finally understood what I was about.

I would say that we American evangelical Christians who complain about "persecution" at the drop of a hat really should chill out. For openers, Jesus said that such would happen -- "if they hate you, remember that that hated Me first" -- and we don't want to make Jesus into a liar, don't we? That said, we need to ask ourselves if we're deliberately picking fights to make ourselves look like martyrs; trouble is, the only thing we do in the process is look codependent. Lose friends, families and jobs? That's what you signed up for when you began following Him. There is a time to fight, but there is also a time to suffer. I understood the difference.

It was in understanding that larger picture that I was able to respond to the minister: "They didn't hurt me!"

Just another holiday ....

Another Martin Luther King Jr. Day has come and gone, and I admit I was stunned to notice that a number of retail establishments used the day to promote sales. Or perhaps I shouldn't have been, because that seems to be the American way.

This may surprise many of you, but despite my longtime admiration for him I was never enthused about making his birthday -- he would have been 83 yesterday -- into the holiday that it has become for just that reason. I feared that it would be just another day off and another reason for people to sell stuff. And I find that a tad sacrilegious.

For openers, what was Dr. King's occupation? That's right -- a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is not for sale at any price. Moreover, he helped to lead a great social movement ignored by many of the Christians of his day and reviled by others but nevertheless was used by God to destroy Jim Crow in the southeastern United States.

And while I understand that God used Dr. King to transform an entire region of the country, let us never forget that God did it. Yes, he had help -- from churches, secular organizations, Congress, the Supreme Court, helpful Northerners and Jews -- but let's keep in mind that the miracle that the civil-rights movement tried to enact represented the pulling down of a spiritual stronghold. Because racial segregation, simply put, was sin and ought to have been considered as such.

So even though much of the church was late on the scene, we Christians ought to remember him as an influential Christian leader. (To its credit, the Episcopal Church has long recognized him as one of its "martyrs.") Indeed, this is one day which fills me with the desire to worship God -- after all, it was through the movement that I first understood the Gospel.

That's why I'm disappointed that even Dr. King's memory has been sold out for the sake of trinkets. Rather, the churches should be packed in gratitude for what God did through him.