A McCain Hanoi Hilton Story

Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.

Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complemented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

Read the whole article here. There are more good stories in the article that I did not post. I'll warn you that Karl Rove is the author of the article and I know he provokes strong feelings among some of you. As far as I can tell, there is no alterior motive in the article other than advising McCain to open up a little more about the specifics of his biography. Of course, he will be biased to the Republican candidate but all of these stories are well-documented. - DOB

The Faith of Stonewall Jackson

Man's Search for Meaning

"By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic 'the self-transcendence of human existence.' It demotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence."
- Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Auchwitz survivor

This is interesting to me for two reasons. First, it sounds an awful lot like Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Both believed that one could only become an individual if one is called up into something that transcends that person. In Kierkegaard, it is "higher immediacy" or "the religious" which calls the person out of the "ethical" (which is sort of the standard mode of existence). To use a Star Wars analogy, Luke Skywalker was in the "ethical" mode when he was helping his uncle harvest whatever they were harvesting in "Episode IV, A New Hope." He was called into "higher immediacy" or "the religious" when circumstances arose such that he had no other alternative than to help Obi-Wan Kenobi rescue Princess Leia. As the series progressed, one could see Luke passing more and more into "the religious." He was called into a vocation that transcended him personally. Only then did he become a true individual. Heidegger is similar when he calls this self-transcendence "Being."

Using this mode of thinking, most of us are situated in "the ethical." And we are bored. And unfulfilled. And bumping around aimlessly, hoping that something or someone will call us into "the religious" or "higher immediacy." Often, I will watch a movie like Red Dawn, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings and be envious. Envious of that sort of strife, conflict, danger, and hardship? Yes. And so are most of you.

The other reason I am interested in this portion of Frankl's book is due to its existential underlining of the bankruptcy of self-generated identity. It matches Martin Luther's suspicion of any progress that looks within one's own heart and soul for its juice. For Luther, the human being must look outside himself for any hope of peace, love, and joy. It can only do so if there is a benevolent Other that will enable this to happen. Thus, one looks to Christ who is the friend of sinners. One looks to Christ who comforts the sufferer and stands with the guilty. One looks to Christ who loves us even as we stand mired in the "ethical"; bored, unfulfilled, and repetitive. - DOB

Peggy Noonan is Awesome (she's also pretty dadgum attractive)

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

Read the whole article here.

More Immigration Hand-Wringing

Pope Benedict XVI called on U.S. bishops last week to "continue to welcome the immigrants who join your ranks today, to share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials and to help them flourish in their new home." Mr. Tancredo's response was to accuse the pontiff of "faith-based marketing" and claim that "the pope's immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church."
Mr. Tancredo – who sports T-shirts that read "America Is Full" – also cited a March 1 Wall Street Journal editorial to support his argument.

The editorial concerned a new Pew survey on religion in the U.S. and noted that in recent decades the Catholic Church has been losing members among the native born but gaining them among the foreign born. "We'd encourage our friends on the right who want to limit immigration to consider the health of our churches," we wrote.

Read the whole thing here. Somebody needs to wake up on the Right and realize that anti-immigration is inherently broken. With all waves of immigration, the old Know-Nothing Party just comes out of the woodwork. Despite their feverish warnings of Armegeddon, the immigrants always end up integrating into American culture, re-invigorating the society, enhancing the culture, and accelerating the economy.

I'm sorry, but this issue just sets me aflame and I'm embarassed that it comes primarily from my political Party. Count me with the pope on this one. - DOB

Paul Zahl Article on The Historical Jesus

The question of who Jesus was in world history and what he was really like can be unnerving for Christians. What if the view we have of him, as all-compassionate, universally and inclusively loving, embracing of every single sort of sufferer, the epitome of kindness and gentleness, were not a true one? What if the real Jesus, the "historical Jesus"-to use the common phrase-were different from the Christ of Tiny Tim and Mary Magdalene and "Away in a Manger," that essentially Christian picture of magnitude in meekness and power in weakness? What if the Jesus who really lived were different from the Christ-Child we love and revere? Even Saddam Hussein invoked Christ's all-compassionate character the day after he was condemned to death in Baghdad. And the president of Iran has called on President Bush to get in touch with the nonviolent and gentle Jesus of the New Testament. This is the Jesus "whom the world has gone after" (John 12:19), whose perfect mercy is the core of Christianity.

Read the whole article here.

If you are at all interested in the Jesus Seminar, New Perspective on Paul, Biblical Theology, Rudolph Bultmann, or Albert Schweitzer - pro or con - this article is a brilliant must-read. - DOB

Hiddenness

I believe in the sun
though it is late
in rising

I believe in love
though it is absent

I believe in God
though he is
silent …

– Anonymous

Mark Mattes Quote

Humans exist for God's good pleasure, not vice versa. In this truth, humans can find liberation from their self-imposed tutelage arising from the belief that their freedom could be secured in exercising their self-expression. The need to actualize this potential becomes a compulsion to authenticate and establish the self. In such self-expression, we become like Atlas, bearing the whole world on our shoulders, and in that way are doomed to be free...

- Mark Mattes The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology pp. 7-8

Little Feat