What is it about Christmas that can bring out the worst in families? The other day, my brother Bob and I were discussing our Christmas experiences as children, and neither of us could recall a Merry Christmas. Not even a pleasant one. That was a time when family tensions seemed to be at their worst with resentments and grudges spilling out all over the place, usually at the dinner table. A good friend and former colleague once quipped it wasn’t until he got older that he realized a drunken father or relative knocking over the Christmas tree was not part of the holiday ritual.
Certainly part of the reason for the increased family tensions are the burdensome expectations -- the commercial aspects of the Christmas season that begin ratcheting up even before Thanksgiving nowadays, with retailers trying to get a jump on the most important shopping season of the year. For others, Christmas is simply a time that dredges up bad memories of Christmas past.
For decades, I remember priests and nuns telling us that the key to countering the pressures and tensions of the season was to bring Christ back into Christmas. A lovely thought and impeccable in its logic. But, easier said than done. How to do that?
Here’s my unorthodox, perhaps even heretical thought. First, let’s go straight to the nativity scene in the manger at Bethlehem and imagine ourselves as part of that scenario. Angels are singing, shepherds are watching, and wise men from East, after following a star, bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn King.
There we stand mute and dumb as the sheep and oxen that are munching on the hay and straw nearby. What do we have to give to the newborn, we might wonder in embarrassment? Actually, we have a lot, something even more precious than gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But to understand what, we need to fast forward through Jesus’s life – through his public life in Canaan and Galilee that ended in Jerusalem and death on the cross. By doing that, we have an advantage of foresight that the kings and the shepherds didn’t have – an understanding that He came, not to be worshipped and adored. He came to save us poor weak, broken people from ourselves – from our worst habits and instincts and destructive behaviors, from our grudges, resentments, and deep-down anger.
Knowing that in faith, we can step forth boldly and confidently and lay these “gifts” at the feet of the Child because He knows how to deal with them. We don’t. Moreover, He is grateful that we are willing through faith to take Him at his word. Once we surrender and turn over these burdens, we can start living a life that He and we want us to live. A life lived more abundantly. One that allows us to get down to the business of forgiving and loving ourselves so that we can be free to love and forgive others in the joy of the season, which is the heart of the Christmas message.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, December 19, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
THE BURDEN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS
As the great philosopher Linus once wisely noted: "There's no heavier burden than a great potential." Or, as a corollary, perhaps the even heavier burden of others’ great expectations.
Recently, I was listening to a sports commentary on soccer in America, and the commentator was discussing David Beckham, the world renowned footballer (soccer player) who in 2007 joined the U.S. Major League Soccer team, Los Angeles Galaxy, after a brilliant career in Europe. He came to the M.L.S. with expectations so high that no mere mortal could come close to meeting them. And, then, of course, fans, like little children who don’t get the Christmas present they wanted, become disappointed and critical, even dismissive, when their expectations were not met.
Which brings me to Barack Obama. Has anyone ever come to the national public spotlight with such ridiculously high expectations that no mere mortal could meet? Let’s do a recap;
He came to the office with a 72 percent approval rating. He was going to unite the country and lead us to greatness. There would no longer be the Red States and the Blue States, he told us, but the United States of America. With degrees from Columbia and Harvard, and as former President of the Harvard Law Review and professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, he was probably the smartest man ever to occupy the presidency, proclaimed presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Not only that, but he had a first-class mind and a first-class temperament, a rare balance that was hard to recall any previous President possessing, many claimed. He had written a critically-acclaimed memoir and a blueprint for what he intended to accomplish in Washington. After less than a year in office, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was right out of Central Casting.
All this in the face of the worst recession since the Great Depression, a jobless rate in the double digits and getting worse by the month, the banking and automobile industries in free fall, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a political opposition pledged to thwart his every legislative proposal to right the situation.
Yet, despite these obstacles, the President has made remarkable progress. On the domestic front:
• He was able to achieve health care reform, a goal that eluded Presidents of both parties going all the way back to President Theodore Roosevelt.
• He pursued the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), initiated by the Bush Administration, which kept the banking industry from failing and plunging us into another Great Depression.
• He was able to push through a stimulus bill that most agree kept the recession from turning into a full-blown depression and the unemployment rate from rising to as high as 15 percent or higher.
• His bailout of the automobile industry kept that industry from going under, saving even more jobs.
• He has proposed a jobs bill that most economists agree would help create jobs, but the Republican-led House refuses to pass it.
• He has proposed the continuance of the tax cut for the middle class and higher taxes for the rich that most economists agree would help boost the economy, but the GOP controlled House has passed a separate bill loaded with extraneous measures and has stripped out any reference to increased taxes for the wealthiest of Americans.
• The economy is now growing, albeit slowly, and the jobless rate is now below 9 percent.
In foreign affairs:
• He convinced Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State and she has done an outstanding job in helping to improve U.S. relations overseas.
• He is winding down the costly wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has handled the flash points in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya with remarkable dexterity.
• He has forged a strong relationship with foreign leaders, including Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan to keep up the pressure on Iran and act as a stabilizing influence throughout the entire Middle East.
• And he has eliminated Osama bin Laden, an objective that eluded the Bush Administration for eight years.
By any fair standard of measurement, the President has done well considering the enormity of the fiscal and political challenges, and yet his approval rating is down in the low 40’s. Part of the reason is that his administration has done a frightfully poor job of touting its successes and challenging the lies and distortions being peddled by his opponents. As a former Government communications practitioner, I can’t believe how amateurish this effort has been. It wouldn’t pass Communications 101.
Still, if logic held sway in politics, as we know it doesn’t, Obama would be a shoo-in for reelection, especially considering the vulnerabilities of the current GOP presidential hopefuls. But, politics are more tribal than rational, and the outcome of an election is often decided by voters’ anger and resentment rather than a dispassionate assessment of an incumbent’s record of achievement.
As a result, the greatest hurdle for Barack Obama on the road to re-election may be the unrealistic public expectations he failed to meet.
Gerald E. Lavey
Recently, I was listening to a sports commentary on soccer in America, and the commentator was discussing David Beckham, the world renowned footballer (soccer player) who in 2007 joined the U.S. Major League Soccer team, Los Angeles Galaxy, after a brilliant career in Europe. He came to the M.L.S. with expectations so high that no mere mortal could come close to meeting them. And, then, of course, fans, like little children who don’t get the Christmas present they wanted, become disappointed and critical, even dismissive, when their expectations were not met.
Which brings me to Barack Obama. Has anyone ever come to the national public spotlight with such ridiculously high expectations that no mere mortal could meet? Let’s do a recap;
He came to the office with a 72 percent approval rating. He was going to unite the country and lead us to greatness. There would no longer be the Red States and the Blue States, he told us, but the United States of America. With degrees from Columbia and Harvard, and as former President of the Harvard Law Review and professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, he was probably the smartest man ever to occupy the presidency, proclaimed presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Not only that, but he had a first-class mind and a first-class temperament, a rare balance that was hard to recall any previous President possessing, many claimed. He had written a critically-acclaimed memoir and a blueprint for what he intended to accomplish in Washington. After less than a year in office, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was right out of Central Casting.
All this in the face of the worst recession since the Great Depression, a jobless rate in the double digits and getting worse by the month, the banking and automobile industries in free fall, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a political opposition pledged to thwart his every legislative proposal to right the situation.
Yet, despite these obstacles, the President has made remarkable progress. On the domestic front:
• He was able to achieve health care reform, a goal that eluded Presidents of both parties going all the way back to President Theodore Roosevelt.
• He pursued the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), initiated by the Bush Administration, which kept the banking industry from failing and plunging us into another Great Depression.
• He was able to push through a stimulus bill that most agree kept the recession from turning into a full-blown depression and the unemployment rate from rising to as high as 15 percent or higher.
• His bailout of the automobile industry kept that industry from going under, saving even more jobs.
• He has proposed a jobs bill that most economists agree would help create jobs, but the Republican-led House refuses to pass it.
• He has proposed the continuance of the tax cut for the middle class and higher taxes for the rich that most economists agree would help boost the economy, but the GOP controlled House has passed a separate bill loaded with extraneous measures and has stripped out any reference to increased taxes for the wealthiest of Americans.
• The economy is now growing, albeit slowly, and the jobless rate is now below 9 percent.
In foreign affairs:
• He convinced Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State and she has done an outstanding job in helping to improve U.S. relations overseas.
• He is winding down the costly wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has handled the flash points in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya with remarkable dexterity.
• He has forged a strong relationship with foreign leaders, including Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan to keep up the pressure on Iran and act as a stabilizing influence throughout the entire Middle East.
• And he has eliminated Osama bin Laden, an objective that eluded the Bush Administration for eight years.
By any fair standard of measurement, the President has done well considering the enormity of the fiscal and political challenges, and yet his approval rating is down in the low 40’s. Part of the reason is that his administration has done a frightfully poor job of touting its successes and challenging the lies and distortions being peddled by his opponents. As a former Government communications practitioner, I can’t believe how amateurish this effort has been. It wouldn’t pass Communications 101.
Still, if logic held sway in politics, as we know it doesn’t, Obama would be a shoo-in for reelection, especially considering the vulnerabilities of the current GOP presidential hopefuls. But, politics are more tribal than rational, and the outcome of an election is often decided by voters’ anger and resentment rather than a dispassionate assessment of an incumbent’s record of achievement.
As a result, the greatest hurdle for Barack Obama on the road to re-election may be the unrealistic public expectations he failed to meet.
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, November 14, 2011
THE VALUES DEBATE REVISITED
Recently, I caught the final segment of a CBS Evening News broadcast in which CBS anchor Scott Pelley was discussing the economic situation with a panel of business and community leaders and ordinary citizens.
Each of the panel members had a slightly different take of what was required to get the economy back on track and put people back to work. Nothing illuminating or novel in any of the observations, to be frank, but the comments of one business man, in particular, made me sit up and take notice. He said that one of the things Americans are not comfortable with is that capitalism involves “winners and losers,” intimating that that’s the way it is. End of story.
Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. And it isn’t in the best traditions of American capitalism, nor is it in the best traditions of the GOP before it was hijacked by the Tea Party and the extreme right, including the religious right.
Prophetic voices from organized religions and other sources, including politics, have usually been there to summon us to our better selves when the danger of unbridled capitalism has become acute, as it has now. The Vatican has long spoken out on this issue, as it has again recently, and religious voices are being raised today by the “Circle of Protection” campaign in this country, for example, involving evangelicals, Catholic bishops, and Protestant leaders.
As the Rev. Richard Cizik, an evangelical minister and president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, writes in a recent Washington Post opinion piece: these religious leaders are not buying into a narrow political agenda that “embraces radical individualism and rejects the ethic of collective responsibility” for the common good.
“At a time when our nation is plagued by the worst poverty rates in decades,” he writes, the Circle of Protection is defending “government programs that provide a basic measure of dignity and security to those struggling to make ends meet.” He also states that “data from Public Religion Research Institute and other polls consistently show that a majority of Christians care about a broad set of moral priorities” that include protecting the poor from harmful budget cuts.
And that’s where the dilemma of more budget cuts versus raising taxes on the wealthiest of Americans comes in. That’s what the 2012 election and Barack Obama’s reelection chances are all about. It’s about the role of government in the lives of ordinary people, a legitimate topic of debate in any election. But, with the rising poverty rate and the increasing gap between rich and poor, it takes on special urgency this time around. The President’s opponents can talk all they want about “class warfare,” but this is not just a fiscal or a social issue. It’s a moral issue as old as the Scriptures and rooted in the best traditions of care and compassion for the underdog that has always defined us as Americans.
Gerald E. Lavey
Each of the panel members had a slightly different take of what was required to get the economy back on track and put people back to work. Nothing illuminating or novel in any of the observations, to be frank, but the comments of one business man, in particular, made me sit up and take notice. He said that one of the things Americans are not comfortable with is that capitalism involves “winners and losers,” intimating that that’s the way it is. End of story.
Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. And it isn’t in the best traditions of American capitalism, nor is it in the best traditions of the GOP before it was hijacked by the Tea Party and the extreme right, including the religious right.
Prophetic voices from organized religions and other sources, including politics, have usually been there to summon us to our better selves when the danger of unbridled capitalism has become acute, as it has now. The Vatican has long spoken out on this issue, as it has again recently, and religious voices are being raised today by the “Circle of Protection” campaign in this country, for example, involving evangelicals, Catholic bishops, and Protestant leaders.
As the Rev. Richard Cizik, an evangelical minister and president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, writes in a recent Washington Post opinion piece: these religious leaders are not buying into a narrow political agenda that “embraces radical individualism and rejects the ethic of collective responsibility” for the common good.
“At a time when our nation is plagued by the worst poverty rates in decades,” he writes, the Circle of Protection is defending “government programs that provide a basic measure of dignity and security to those struggling to make ends meet.” He also states that “data from Public Religion Research Institute and other polls consistently show that a majority of Christians care about a broad set of moral priorities” that include protecting the poor from harmful budget cuts.
And that’s where the dilemma of more budget cuts versus raising taxes on the wealthiest of Americans comes in. That’s what the 2012 election and Barack Obama’s reelection chances are all about. It’s about the role of government in the lives of ordinary people, a legitimate topic of debate in any election. But, with the rising poverty rate and the increasing gap between rich and poor, it takes on special urgency this time around. The President’s opponents can talk all they want about “class warfare,” but this is not just a fiscal or a social issue. It’s a moral issue as old as the Scriptures and rooted in the best traditions of care and compassion for the underdog that has always defined us as Americans.
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Through the Lens of History
In addition to being “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” as Mark Twain famously observed, travel has a way of providing a sharper perspective on one’s own country.
Recently, as Brigitte and I spent three weeks traveling throughout western and central Turkey, from Istanbul, Ephesus, Pergamum, Assos, Troy, Gallipoli, and Cappadocia, I couldn’t help but think how young the U.S. is compared to this storied land and wonder how we will be viewed over time.
We visited ruins dating back to 1700 B.C. and beyond when the Hittites swept across the steppes of Asia Minor and ruled for more than 300 years, to be followed by a series of conquerors, including the Phrygians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Mongols, Seljuks, and finally the Ottoman Turks whose empire lasted from 1453 until the early part of the 20th century.
Contrast these with the 235-year history of the United States which only became a world power starting in the early 20th century, barely 100 years ago -- about the same time as the Turkish Republic was established after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.
Throughout the trip, whether it was gazing in wonder at the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul or the ruins at Ephesus or Cappadocia, I kept thinking to myself: What will happen when the U.S. “empire” falls and is superseded by another -- an eventuality that will almost certainly happen, if history is any reliable guide. Closer to our own time, just think of the British Empire, once so extensive that it was said the sun never set on it.
When our time comes, will the U.S. settle into a reduced world status, as did Great Britain and France, while trying to remain faithful to its core ideals? And centuries hence, when archeologists unearth the ruins of the U.S. Capitol, the White House, or the Statue of Liberty, will these be reminders that the United States was once a great world power, whose main source of power lay not in its might but in its ideals?
Will they remember us as the “shining city on a hill” that welcomed and embraced “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses” from other lands “yearning to breathe free?” Will they remember us as a country which established a social contract with its own people that went beyond the constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of worship to include freedom from fear and want in order to care for the least among us who cannot take care of themselves?
I would like to think so, but with our social contract under attack, the income gap between rich and poor increasing and with hunger and poverty on the rise, one has reason to doubt. This plus the mean-spirited immigration policies and measures being imposed by some states along our border to the south makes one wonder whether the lights in that shining city on the hill are not already beginning to dim.
Gerald E. Lavey
Recently, as Brigitte and I spent three weeks traveling throughout western and central Turkey, from Istanbul, Ephesus, Pergamum, Assos, Troy, Gallipoli, and Cappadocia, I couldn’t help but think how young the U.S. is compared to this storied land and wonder how we will be viewed over time.
We visited ruins dating back to 1700 B.C. and beyond when the Hittites swept across the steppes of Asia Minor and ruled for more than 300 years, to be followed by a series of conquerors, including the Phrygians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Mongols, Seljuks, and finally the Ottoman Turks whose empire lasted from 1453 until the early part of the 20th century.
Contrast these with the 235-year history of the United States which only became a world power starting in the early 20th century, barely 100 years ago -- about the same time as the Turkish Republic was established after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.
Throughout the trip, whether it was gazing in wonder at the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul or the ruins at Ephesus or Cappadocia, I kept thinking to myself: What will happen when the U.S. “empire” falls and is superseded by another -- an eventuality that will almost certainly happen, if history is any reliable guide. Closer to our own time, just think of the British Empire, once so extensive that it was said the sun never set on it.
When our time comes, will the U.S. settle into a reduced world status, as did Great Britain and France, while trying to remain faithful to its core ideals? And centuries hence, when archeologists unearth the ruins of the U.S. Capitol, the White House, or the Statue of Liberty, will these be reminders that the United States was once a great world power, whose main source of power lay not in its might but in its ideals?
Will they remember us as the “shining city on a hill” that welcomed and embraced “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses” from other lands “yearning to breathe free?” Will they remember us as a country which established a social contract with its own people that went beyond the constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of worship to include freedom from fear and want in order to care for the least among us who cannot take care of themselves?
I would like to think so, but with our social contract under attack, the income gap between rich and poor increasing and with hunger and poverty on the rise, one has reason to doubt. This plus the mean-spirited immigration policies and measures being imposed by some states along our border to the south makes one wonder whether the lights in that shining city on the hill are not already beginning to dim.
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Come On, Man!
NFL Monday Night Football fans will recognize that title from the pre-game show which highlights bonehead plays or stupid calls from games the day or week before. It’s not a highlight you want to be featured on.
If politics were football, the pre-game show on Monday night would have a field day. The biggest problem would be which boneheads to feature, given the time constraints. Neither of the two major political parties would be exempt, but the GOP has dominated bonehead plays for the past couple of months starting with the emergence of Gov. Rick Perry as the leading GOP candidate for President.
Come on, man!
But the most recent bonehead call was the GOP reaction to the President’s jobs proposal which calls on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share in reducing the deficit while investing money in programs that create jobs. Immediately, House Speaker John and other GOP leaders called the measure “class warfare.”
What about the point that billionaire Warren Buffett made that his workers – middle income wage earners – pay higher tax rates than he does? Or what about the fact that the income gap between the rich and the poor in this country widens every year? Or that in 2010, median household income declined, the poverty rate increased and the number of Americans without health insurance coverage has topped 50 million? Are we expected to ask these already overburdened Americans to pay more to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest?
Come on, man!
Foreign affairs is not exempt from GOP bonehead plays either. It used to be that politics ended at the water’s edge, but that was a long time ago and both parties have contributed to that unfortunate decline. So, now, while the President and Secretary of State Clinton are engaged in intensive negotiations to deal with the looming vote on statehood of Palestine in the U.N., some GOP leaders, including Governor Perry, are accusing the President of throwing Israel under the bus in these negotiations in the hopes the GOP can gain some Jewish American votes in the next election.
Fortunately, most Jewish Americans are smart enough to realize it is not in the short term or long term interest of the U.S., or Israel, to encourage the isolation of Israel in that part of the world.
As NYT columnist Tom Friedman wrote recently, “I’ve never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.
“This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/opinion/sunday/friedman-israel-adrift-at-sea-alone.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman
So, if the GOP were really earnest in its support of Israel, it would not be encouraging the intransigence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu and the Likud Party. But, emboldened by the Republican win in the recent election in New York’s 9th District which is heavily Jewish and traditionally Democrat, the GOP sees an opportunity to peel off some of the traditional Jewish American vote in the next election.
Come on, man!
Gerald E. Lavey
If politics were football, the pre-game show on Monday night would have a field day. The biggest problem would be which boneheads to feature, given the time constraints. Neither of the two major political parties would be exempt, but the GOP has dominated bonehead plays for the past couple of months starting with the emergence of Gov. Rick Perry as the leading GOP candidate for President.
Come on, man!
But the most recent bonehead call was the GOP reaction to the President’s jobs proposal which calls on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share in reducing the deficit while investing money in programs that create jobs. Immediately, House Speaker John and other GOP leaders called the measure “class warfare.”
What about the point that billionaire Warren Buffett made that his workers – middle income wage earners – pay higher tax rates than he does? Or what about the fact that the income gap between the rich and the poor in this country widens every year? Or that in 2010, median household income declined, the poverty rate increased and the number of Americans without health insurance coverage has topped 50 million? Are we expected to ask these already overburdened Americans to pay more to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest?
Come on, man!
Foreign affairs is not exempt from GOP bonehead plays either. It used to be that politics ended at the water’s edge, but that was a long time ago and both parties have contributed to that unfortunate decline. So, now, while the President and Secretary of State Clinton are engaged in intensive negotiations to deal with the looming vote on statehood of Palestine in the U.N., some GOP leaders, including Governor Perry, are accusing the President of throwing Israel under the bus in these negotiations in the hopes the GOP can gain some Jewish American votes in the next election.
Fortunately, most Jewish Americans are smart enough to realize it is not in the short term or long term interest of the U.S., or Israel, to encourage the isolation of Israel in that part of the world.
As NYT columnist Tom Friedman wrote recently, “I’ve never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.
“This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/opinion/sunday/friedman-israel-adrift-at-sea-alone.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman
So, if the GOP were really earnest in its support of Israel, it would not be encouraging the intransigence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu and the Likud Party. But, emboldened by the Republican win in the recent election in New York’s 9th District which is heavily Jewish and traditionally Democrat, the GOP sees an opportunity to peel off some of the traditional Jewish American vote in the next election.
Come on, man!
Gerald E. Lavey
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Finding Joy in Small Things
Someone once quipped: The first sign of insanity is when you wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and then fire off an angry letter to the editor. On a more personal basis, it might be when a person starts a blog and regularly posts cranky denunciations on the subjects of politics and religion.
So, in order to give both you and me a break, I decided to post something more positive. But, first, let me go back several weeks to set the stage.
In the midst of all this unremitting bad news over the past several months, there appeared an article in The Washington Post in July that showed up like a gentle breeze on a hot, summer day and snapped my perspective back in place, if only momentarily. It was titled “Debt crisis, sure, but a good day for life’s tiny joys.”
The author Monica Hesse wrote: “The world appears to have hit a particular nexus of awful: debt ceilings, credit ratings, London riots. One is tempted to go searching, full of hope, for pinpricks of light that poke holes through the black… If one is willing to look hard enough, to go small enough, to recognize that people often don’t measure life in Dow points but in tiny pleasures — extra cream, friendly dogs, pumpkin curry — then Tuesday was an extremely good news day in Washington.”
The ability to downshift is what Andrew Shatté, a professor at the University of Arizona calls resilience. The resilient among us “sort through the muck and find the things we can control,” he says, according to the Post article. “It’s not ignoring the larger problems of the world; it’s finding a way to see them, then see beyond them.”
The poet Mary Oliver wrote: “[What] I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world."
And in another place she observed: "I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart."
When one enjoys the benefits of health and an adequate income, it is easy to rhapsodize about the small joys of life. But, ironically, in my experience, it is often those who are struggling the most with health and other life challenges who seem most attuned to the blessings of life, large and small.
Whatever the case, on this 10th anniversary of 9/11, divided as we are politically, I suspect all of us Americans, as we look back at that awful day, are of one mind in our gratitude to the first responders and other heroes of New York, Washington, and Shankesville whose memories remind us of what is best about America and us as a people.
Gerald E. Lavey
So, in order to give both you and me a break, I decided to post something more positive. But, first, let me go back several weeks to set the stage.
In the midst of all this unremitting bad news over the past several months, there appeared an article in The Washington Post in July that showed up like a gentle breeze on a hot, summer day and snapped my perspective back in place, if only momentarily. It was titled “Debt crisis, sure, but a good day for life’s tiny joys.”
The author Monica Hesse wrote: “The world appears to have hit a particular nexus of awful: debt ceilings, credit ratings, London riots. One is tempted to go searching, full of hope, for pinpricks of light that poke holes through the black… If one is willing to look hard enough, to go small enough, to recognize that people often don’t measure life in Dow points but in tiny pleasures — extra cream, friendly dogs, pumpkin curry — then Tuesday was an extremely good news day in Washington.”
The ability to downshift is what Andrew Shatté, a professor at the University of Arizona calls resilience. The resilient among us “sort through the muck and find the things we can control,” he says, according to the Post article. “It’s not ignoring the larger problems of the world; it’s finding a way to see them, then see beyond them.”
The poet Mary Oliver wrote: “[What] I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world."
And in another place she observed: "I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart."
When one enjoys the benefits of health and an adequate income, it is easy to rhapsodize about the small joys of life. But, ironically, in my experience, it is often those who are struggling the most with health and other life challenges who seem most attuned to the blessings of life, large and small.
Whatever the case, on this 10th anniversary of 9/11, divided as we are politically, I suspect all of us Americans, as we look back at that awful day, are of one mind in our gratitude to the first responders and other heroes of New York, Washington, and Shankesville whose memories remind us of what is best about America and us as a people.
Gerald E. Lavey
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Flirting with Lunacy
Maybe it’s just a part of the wider human condition, but the American electorate seems to have a particularly alarming taste for the bizarre and outlandish from time to time. With the rising influence of the Tea Party in the Republican Party, I fear we are entering one of these phases again.
In the 60’s, Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author Richard Hofstadter wrote a book I recall reading at the time and recently re-read parts of again, THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. Among other works, he also wrote ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE, which I also picked up again. I suggest that the theses of both books are most pertinent today.
In THE PARANOID STYLE, Hofstadter chronicles radical movements in this country dating back to our beginnings: the anti-Masonic movement, anti-Catholicism, and the always convenient anti-Semitism as spewed by Father Coughlin and others, for example. At the time of the book’s publication, the U.S. was just emerging from the McCarthy era but the John Birch Society was still going strong and Barry Goldwater was about to capture the Republican presidential nomination. Goldwater lost in a landslide in the 1964 election but he paved the way for Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980.
As many will remember, Goldwater attacked America’s liberal Democrats with the standard charges from the conservative Right, characterizing them as Socialists/Communist sympathizers and the source of American’s moral decay. Goldwater went so far as to suggest that the liberal backed Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not really a law that citizens needed to follow. In foreign policy, he attacked the bipartisan approach to containing the Soviet Union, initiated during the Truman administration, and called for nothing less than all-out war against the Soviet Union.
Although his image was softened by later developments, Goldwater was scary -- the master of the simple answer to the country’s challenges, famously proclaiming that “just as extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
In supporting Goldwater, Governor Ronald Reagan declared: “They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer – not an easy answer but simple: if you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts as morally right.”
Reagan won the Presidency in 1980 on a platform of building up the military, cutting taxes, and balancing the budget, a patently absurd formula on its face, but it worked politically because he sang a tune Americans wanted to hear. Besides, the country was tired of Jimmy Carter and Reagan promised “a new morning in America” in contrast to Carter’s gloomy assessment of a national malaise.
George W. Bush, who adopted Reagan’s simple approach in contrast to his own father’s nuanced approach, was again the master of the simple answer, as was his Vice President Dick Cheney, and this country paid a severe price. We’re still trying to dig out of a hole that they created and are looking around for a simple answer, forgetting who got us into that mess in the first place.
And now we have President Obama, a highly intelligent, educated, balanced personality, who inherited this mess. He sees the world whole, rejects the simple answer, is willing to reach across the aisle, and as a result he is in deep trouble politically. Standing in the wings and heading up the slate of GOP presidential hopefuls are Governor Rick Perry and Rep. Michelle Bachman, two masters of the simple answer. Just cut spending and reduce the tax burden on the job creators, they say, and all will be well. (By the way, they fail to mention that these “so called” job creators -- millionaires and billionaires -- are already creating millions of jobs, but they are jobs overseas where they have to pay workers a fraction of what they would have to pay U.S. workers here.) And, if this simple solution means cutting liberal, socialist New Deal programs like Social Security, Medicare, and certainly Obamacare, so be it.
Of course, as we have seen, the GOP leadership has caved in to this simplistic approach, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor even opposing disaster relief for states and counties devastated by Hurricane Irene unless commensurate cuts are made in other discretionary programs. Earlier, to cite another example, the tentative agreement on the debt ceiling reached by President Obama and Speaker Boehner would have been a no-brainer in ordinary times and considered a victory for good government. But, not now when the country has gone mad and reason and common sense have taken a hike. The simple-answer, anti-intellectual crowd doesn't want to hear about compromise and balance, especially when they are offered by liberal intellectuals from Ivy Leagues schools who think they’re smarter than anyone else. This country needs to be put back in the hands of freedom-loving, God-fearing patriots, they say, good Christian folks who are real Americans and don’t need all that book learning to know what’s right for America. They know in their hearts what’s morally right.
An unfair caricature? Maybe, but Hofstadter’s books reminded me once again that paranoia and anti-intellectualism have strong, deep roots in American culture and from what I see they are in full bloom once again.
Gerald E. Lavey
In the 60’s, Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author Richard Hofstadter wrote a book I recall reading at the time and recently re-read parts of again, THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. Among other works, he also wrote ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE, which I also picked up again. I suggest that the theses of both books are most pertinent today.
In THE PARANOID STYLE, Hofstadter chronicles radical movements in this country dating back to our beginnings: the anti-Masonic movement, anti-Catholicism, and the always convenient anti-Semitism as spewed by Father Coughlin and others, for example. At the time of the book’s publication, the U.S. was just emerging from the McCarthy era but the John Birch Society was still going strong and Barry Goldwater was about to capture the Republican presidential nomination. Goldwater lost in a landslide in the 1964 election but he paved the way for Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980.
As many will remember, Goldwater attacked America’s liberal Democrats with the standard charges from the conservative Right, characterizing them as Socialists/Communist sympathizers and the source of American’s moral decay. Goldwater went so far as to suggest that the liberal backed Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not really a law that citizens needed to follow. In foreign policy, he attacked the bipartisan approach to containing the Soviet Union, initiated during the Truman administration, and called for nothing less than all-out war against the Soviet Union.
Although his image was softened by later developments, Goldwater was scary -- the master of the simple answer to the country’s challenges, famously proclaiming that “just as extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
In supporting Goldwater, Governor Ronald Reagan declared: “They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer – not an easy answer but simple: if you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts as morally right.”
Reagan won the Presidency in 1980 on a platform of building up the military, cutting taxes, and balancing the budget, a patently absurd formula on its face, but it worked politically because he sang a tune Americans wanted to hear. Besides, the country was tired of Jimmy Carter and Reagan promised “a new morning in America” in contrast to Carter’s gloomy assessment of a national malaise.
George W. Bush, who adopted Reagan’s simple approach in contrast to his own father’s nuanced approach, was again the master of the simple answer, as was his Vice President Dick Cheney, and this country paid a severe price. We’re still trying to dig out of a hole that they created and are looking around for a simple answer, forgetting who got us into that mess in the first place.
And now we have President Obama, a highly intelligent, educated, balanced personality, who inherited this mess. He sees the world whole, rejects the simple answer, is willing to reach across the aisle, and as a result he is in deep trouble politically. Standing in the wings and heading up the slate of GOP presidential hopefuls are Governor Rick Perry and Rep. Michelle Bachman, two masters of the simple answer. Just cut spending and reduce the tax burden on the job creators, they say, and all will be well. (By the way, they fail to mention that these “so called” job creators -- millionaires and billionaires -- are already creating millions of jobs, but they are jobs overseas where they have to pay workers a fraction of what they would have to pay U.S. workers here.) And, if this simple solution means cutting liberal, socialist New Deal programs like Social Security, Medicare, and certainly Obamacare, so be it.
Of course, as we have seen, the GOP leadership has caved in to this simplistic approach, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor even opposing disaster relief for states and counties devastated by Hurricane Irene unless commensurate cuts are made in other discretionary programs. Earlier, to cite another example, the tentative agreement on the debt ceiling reached by President Obama and Speaker Boehner would have been a no-brainer in ordinary times and considered a victory for good government. But, not now when the country has gone mad and reason and common sense have taken a hike. The simple-answer, anti-intellectual crowd doesn't want to hear about compromise and balance, especially when they are offered by liberal intellectuals from Ivy Leagues schools who think they’re smarter than anyone else. This country needs to be put back in the hands of freedom-loving, God-fearing patriots, they say, good Christian folks who are real Americans and don’t need all that book learning to know what’s right for America. They know in their hearts what’s morally right.
An unfair caricature? Maybe, but Hofstadter’s books reminded me once again that paranoia and anti-intellectualism have strong, deep roots in American culture and from what I see they are in full bloom once again.
Gerald E. Lavey
Thursday, August 25, 2011
THE ELUSIVE PRESIDENT (PART 2)
Reading all the tributes and commentaries on Martin Luther King, Jr., leading up to the formal dedication of his memorial this weekend, I recalled once again my own memories of King and the glorious cause he led.
When King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial 48 years ago this month, the outcome of his nonviolent approach was anything but certain. The Civil Rights law was still a distant dream – despite being only a year from passage -- and the brutality against Freedom Riders, with its ugly footage playing out in living rooms all across America and around the world, was a daily staple of the evening news.
Yet, even in the darkest times, King resisted the call to violence, even from some of his own supporters, tired of seeing men and women in the movement getting beaten up and killed. He had a dream that nonviolence would eventually carry the day and he was right. In the end, he was so right. And for that reason alone he deserves a special memorial on the Mall.
In a different context, the thought recently occurred to me that maybe President Obama has that same dream -- that his reasoned, balanced, nonviolent approach to governing will prevail in the end. Maybe that’s why he is not heeding the calls of his supporters, including this one, urging him to get tough and fight back against his political adversaries.
Maybe he thinks that those advocating an uncompromising “my way or the highway” approach will be the source of their own undoing in the end. As a good friend recently reminded me, relax, “just give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.” And, if the continued disclosures about GOP front-runners Michelle Bachman and Texas Governor Rick Perry are any indication, I think my friend and the President may be on to something.
Maybe that’s why the President insisted on going on vacation and not calling the members of Congress back from theirs. Maybe he is hoping that Americans in Congressional districts and states all across America will deliver the message he has been trying to deliver all along: that in the end a balanced approach and a spirit of true compromise is the only reasonable way to govern, despite our differences.
On reducing the deficit, for example, there is ample evidence that Americans want a balanced approach, which includes increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a position taken by multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. Moreover, polls show that the majority of ordinary Americans favor increased taxes on the rich, depending, of course, on what is meant by rich and where the line is drawn.
Just as importantly, if not more so, religious leaders of all stripes are protesting the tax breaks for millionaires because that would mean cutting funds for programs that help the poor and disadvantaged. Just this week, The National Catholic Reporter, reported that “almost no U.S. Catholic leaders (sic) have aligned themselves with the adamant Republican insistence on no tax increases for the very wealthy.”
If U.S. Catholic leaders continue to appeal to the Catholic Church’s time-honored allegiance to social justice, the Republicans – especially the Tea Party – are in for a world of hurt. Their position on abortion and gay marriage have pushed Catholics into the Republican ranks in recent elections, but now more and more Catholics whose position on abortion is unyielding realize there is such a thing as “life outside the womb” and that life deserves saving, too.
Does this mean that the President doesn’t need to pick up his game, as we and so many other fervent supporters have suggested? No, he definitely needs to pick up his game. He can’t continue to play “not to lose,” as Tom Friedman cautioned him in a recent New York Times column.
So, let’s hope the President spent his vacation getting his groove back and “goes big” in his jobs speech after Labor Day — the foremost concern of most Americans anyway — and goes to the country to fight for it. Let’s also hope that the August recess gives members of Congress a chance to listen to real Americans and not just the sound of their own voices in that echo chamber called the U.S. Capitol. Will enough Americans speak out? Will members of Congress heed the message? That remains to be seen.
Can the President pick up his game and rise to the challenge? Yes, he can — and I, for one, think he must because the alternative is unthinkable.
Gerald E. Lavey
When King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial 48 years ago this month, the outcome of his nonviolent approach was anything but certain. The Civil Rights law was still a distant dream – despite being only a year from passage -- and the brutality against Freedom Riders, with its ugly footage playing out in living rooms all across America and around the world, was a daily staple of the evening news.
Yet, even in the darkest times, King resisted the call to violence, even from some of his own supporters, tired of seeing men and women in the movement getting beaten up and killed. He had a dream that nonviolence would eventually carry the day and he was right. In the end, he was so right. And for that reason alone he deserves a special memorial on the Mall.
In a different context, the thought recently occurred to me that maybe President Obama has that same dream -- that his reasoned, balanced, nonviolent approach to governing will prevail in the end. Maybe that’s why he is not heeding the calls of his supporters, including this one, urging him to get tough and fight back against his political adversaries.
Maybe he thinks that those advocating an uncompromising “my way or the highway” approach will be the source of their own undoing in the end. As a good friend recently reminded me, relax, “just give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.” And, if the continued disclosures about GOP front-runners Michelle Bachman and Texas Governor Rick Perry are any indication, I think my friend and the President may be on to something.
Maybe that’s why the President insisted on going on vacation and not calling the members of Congress back from theirs. Maybe he is hoping that Americans in Congressional districts and states all across America will deliver the message he has been trying to deliver all along: that in the end a balanced approach and a spirit of true compromise is the only reasonable way to govern, despite our differences.
On reducing the deficit, for example, there is ample evidence that Americans want a balanced approach, which includes increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a position taken by multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. Moreover, polls show that the majority of ordinary Americans favor increased taxes on the rich, depending, of course, on what is meant by rich and where the line is drawn.
Just as importantly, if not more so, religious leaders of all stripes are protesting the tax breaks for millionaires because that would mean cutting funds for programs that help the poor and disadvantaged. Just this week, The National Catholic Reporter, reported that “almost no U.S. Catholic leaders (sic) have aligned themselves with the adamant Republican insistence on no tax increases for the very wealthy.”
If U.S. Catholic leaders continue to appeal to the Catholic Church’s time-honored allegiance to social justice, the Republicans – especially the Tea Party – are in for a world of hurt. Their position on abortion and gay marriage have pushed Catholics into the Republican ranks in recent elections, but now more and more Catholics whose position on abortion is unyielding realize there is such a thing as “life outside the womb” and that life deserves saving, too.
Does this mean that the President doesn’t need to pick up his game, as we and so many other fervent supporters have suggested? No, he definitely needs to pick up his game. He can’t continue to play “not to lose,” as Tom Friedman cautioned him in a recent New York Times column.
So, let’s hope the President spent his vacation getting his groove back and “goes big” in his jobs speech after Labor Day — the foremost concern of most Americans anyway — and goes to the country to fight for it. Let’s also hope that the August recess gives members of Congress a chance to listen to real Americans and not just the sound of their own voices in that echo chamber called the U.S. Capitol. Will enough Americans speak out? Will members of Congress heed the message? That remains to be seen.
Can the President pick up his game and rise to the challenge? Yes, he can — and I, for one, think he must because the alternative is unthinkable.
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Elusive President
When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008 and then won, I was more excited than I had been since 1960 when John F. Kennedy captured the White House.
Even more than JFK, here was a man who embodied all the qualities I wanted in a President: high intelligence, coolness under pressure, a mesmerizing speaker and communicator, a strong moral character, a family man; he appeared to have it all. In contrast to Walter Lippmann’s comment about FDR having a first-class temperament but a second-class mind, Obama was said to have both. Author, President of the Harvard Law Review, professor of constitutional law, Barack Obama is arguably the smartest man ever to hold the office of President.
On top of that, he was an African-American, a dream come true for those of us who came of political age in the 60’s and were inspired and forever marked by the Civil Rights Movement and the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. Barack Obama was right out of Central Casting: The perfect man for the times, especially following the experience of the previous eight years.
Yet, shortly after Obama was inaugurated, a neighbor said of him: He’s too smart to be President. Taken aback at the time by that assessment, I did however recall Plato’s warning about philosopher-kings. A philosopher-king was the best type of person to lead a democratic state, according to Plato, but a person, he warned, who had the disabling tendency to ruminate endlessly about issues and not be resolute enough in action.
That same thought cropped up again in recent months as I struggled with my admiration and respect for the President and my assessment of his skills as leader. Equally disturbing was the thought: Maybe Barack Obama is too nice to be President.
Yet, we got in Barack Obama exactly what many of us said we wanted and now we are dissatisfied. We keep hearing in the news media and in our own heads: I wish he were tougher, willing to do the bare-knuckles fighting that successful politicians have always been able to do when necessary. His political opponents roll him time after time because they can, we fear.
Still, one year can be an eternity in politics, I realize, so there’s no telling what can happen by next November or in between. Maybe the President will demonstrate that patience and a continuing belief in centrist politics, balanced approaches, and compromise will carry the day in the end. After all, despite their giddiness over the debt ceiling “triumph,” the Republicans woke up the next day to find out that Congress had earned an 82 percent disapproval rating from the public. Which makes me wonder what planet the other 18 percent live on, but that’s another issue.
The President always talks about believing in the basic common sense and essential goodness of the American people. If so, they will wake up from this nightmare of savage divisiveness that has captured our political stage for the past couple of years and do the right thing in the end. That represents a leap of faith on my part rather than a conviction.
In the final analysis, how we respond politically over the next year will say much more about we as a people than it will ever say about Barack Obama. Yet, we are who we are, with the brawling, divisive, money-driven political system that’s been around for more than two hundred years. That’s not going to change. The President knew what he was getting into and the jury is still out on whether he is a fighter willing to mix it up for causes he believes in. It’s time for him to quit trying to be all things to all men and demonstrate that he’s up to the challenge to lead us where he and the better angels of our nature want to take us.
Gerald E. Lavey
Even more than JFK, here was a man who embodied all the qualities I wanted in a President: high intelligence, coolness under pressure, a mesmerizing speaker and communicator, a strong moral character, a family man; he appeared to have it all. In contrast to Walter Lippmann’s comment about FDR having a first-class temperament but a second-class mind, Obama was said to have both. Author, President of the Harvard Law Review, professor of constitutional law, Barack Obama is arguably the smartest man ever to hold the office of President.
On top of that, he was an African-American, a dream come true for those of us who came of political age in the 60’s and were inspired and forever marked by the Civil Rights Movement and the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. Barack Obama was right out of Central Casting: The perfect man for the times, especially following the experience of the previous eight years.
Yet, shortly after Obama was inaugurated, a neighbor said of him: He’s too smart to be President. Taken aback at the time by that assessment, I did however recall Plato’s warning about philosopher-kings. A philosopher-king was the best type of person to lead a democratic state, according to Plato, but a person, he warned, who had the disabling tendency to ruminate endlessly about issues and not be resolute enough in action.
That same thought cropped up again in recent months as I struggled with my admiration and respect for the President and my assessment of his skills as leader. Equally disturbing was the thought: Maybe Barack Obama is too nice to be President.
Yet, we got in Barack Obama exactly what many of us said we wanted and now we are dissatisfied. We keep hearing in the news media and in our own heads: I wish he were tougher, willing to do the bare-knuckles fighting that successful politicians have always been able to do when necessary. His political opponents roll him time after time because they can, we fear.
Still, one year can be an eternity in politics, I realize, so there’s no telling what can happen by next November or in between. Maybe the President will demonstrate that patience and a continuing belief in centrist politics, balanced approaches, and compromise will carry the day in the end. After all, despite their giddiness over the debt ceiling “triumph,” the Republicans woke up the next day to find out that Congress had earned an 82 percent disapproval rating from the public. Which makes me wonder what planet the other 18 percent live on, but that’s another issue.
The President always talks about believing in the basic common sense and essential goodness of the American people. If so, they will wake up from this nightmare of savage divisiveness that has captured our political stage for the past couple of years and do the right thing in the end. That represents a leap of faith on my part rather than a conviction.
In the final analysis, how we respond politically over the next year will say much more about we as a people than it will ever say about Barack Obama. Yet, we are who we are, with the brawling, divisive, money-driven political system that’s been around for more than two hundred years. That’s not going to change. The President knew what he was getting into and the jury is still out on whether he is a fighter willing to mix it up for causes he believes in. It’s time for him to quit trying to be all things to all men and demonstrate that he’s up to the challenge to lead us where he and the better angels of our nature want to take us.
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Much Ado about Not Much
We may have dodged a bullet in terms of the debt limit, but we certainly defaulted once again on responsible governance. The agreement on the debt ceiling was a paper tiger, if not a sham, and the stock market immediately reflected how feckless the agreement was to improve the economy and create jobs.
Again, it was all about politics, and in that respect, the Republicans, driven by the Tea Party zealots, carried the day. Speaker Boehner said he was happy with the results because he got “98 percent of what I wanted.” While the President, hoping to reach a balanced, grand compromise that would have helped reduce the deficit and promote economic growth, comes across as a dupe and a failed leader.
On top of that, this embarrassing spectacle between the Congress and the White House is not finished. We’re just getting a short reprieve while the Congress is on its five-week break. Then it’s back to business as usual. Although some optimists have suggested the agreement was a good first step, the 12-member so-called Super Committee that was created to find additional ways to reduce the deficit is not likely to achieve much, if anything. And the legislative triggers that would go into effect if no agreements are reached are a joke. Been there, done that.
Besides, the Republicans have already made it clear that its six members will be chosen for their adamant opposition to tax increases, and chances are the Democrats will stock the committee with those equally opposed to any changes in Social Security and Medicare. This despite most economists maintaining that we can’t just cut ourselves out of this problem, that we need to raise revenues and we need to put everything on the table, including sacred cow entitlement programs.
So, it looks to me like continuing stalemate and gridlock for the foreseeable future because what’s not on the table is compromise. The Tea Party, in particular, is not willing to budge in the slightest. They’re a scary bunch which gives them a decided edge in negotiating with sane, responsible people. Senator James Webb of Virginia, who served under President Reagan, hopes that the Republican Party, which is riding the Tea Party wave, doesn’t look back one day and realize, in the words of the infantry officer in Vietnam, they tried to “destroy the village in order to save it.”
Whatever happened to the concept of “compromise?”
Once considered “the genius of American politics,” in the words of the late historian Shelby Foote, compromise is now considered a dirty word, to quote President Obama, and a sign of weakness.
American greats such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay were lauded for their ability to forge compromises. Our very Constitution is a paragon of compromise and our Civil War a tragic reminder of what can happen when compromise fails. In our time, President George H.W. Bush believed in prudence and balance, and paid the price for it politically when he agreed, despite his “read my lips” pledge, to raise taxes that helped pave the way for the prosperity of the 90s and a budget surplus that his son inherited and squandered.
Warren Buffett said he could solve the deficit problem in five minutes; “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.” Cute thought, but removing politics from the legislative process is the stuff of fantasy.
However, there are faint glimmers of hope, with the emergence of The Coffee Party www.coffeepartyusa.com on the right side of the political spectrum that aims to restore the balance that the Republican Party once enjoyed, and a third-party movement http://www.americanselect.org/, -- recently cited by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman -- of unhappy Republicans, Democrats, and Independents fed up with the two-party system who want a third choice.
So, once again, hope springs eternal, even though these movements show the level of national discontent rather than any hope of relief for the immediate future.
Meantime, thank God, the NFL owners and players have reached a settlement and we’ll at least have football to distract us.
Gerald E. Lavey
Again, it was all about politics, and in that respect, the Republicans, driven by the Tea Party zealots, carried the day. Speaker Boehner said he was happy with the results because he got “98 percent of what I wanted.” While the President, hoping to reach a balanced, grand compromise that would have helped reduce the deficit and promote economic growth, comes across as a dupe and a failed leader.
On top of that, this embarrassing spectacle between the Congress and the White House is not finished. We’re just getting a short reprieve while the Congress is on its five-week break. Then it’s back to business as usual. Although some optimists have suggested the agreement was a good first step, the 12-member so-called Super Committee that was created to find additional ways to reduce the deficit is not likely to achieve much, if anything. And the legislative triggers that would go into effect if no agreements are reached are a joke. Been there, done that.
Besides, the Republicans have already made it clear that its six members will be chosen for their adamant opposition to tax increases, and chances are the Democrats will stock the committee with those equally opposed to any changes in Social Security and Medicare. This despite most economists maintaining that we can’t just cut ourselves out of this problem, that we need to raise revenues and we need to put everything on the table, including sacred cow entitlement programs.
So, it looks to me like continuing stalemate and gridlock for the foreseeable future because what’s not on the table is compromise. The Tea Party, in particular, is not willing to budge in the slightest. They’re a scary bunch which gives them a decided edge in negotiating with sane, responsible people. Senator James Webb of Virginia, who served under President Reagan, hopes that the Republican Party, which is riding the Tea Party wave, doesn’t look back one day and realize, in the words of the infantry officer in Vietnam, they tried to “destroy the village in order to save it.”
Whatever happened to the concept of “compromise?”
Once considered “the genius of American politics,” in the words of the late historian Shelby Foote, compromise is now considered a dirty word, to quote President Obama, and a sign of weakness.
American greats such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay were lauded for their ability to forge compromises. Our very Constitution is a paragon of compromise and our Civil War a tragic reminder of what can happen when compromise fails. In our time, President George H.W. Bush believed in prudence and balance, and paid the price for it politically when he agreed, despite his “read my lips” pledge, to raise taxes that helped pave the way for the prosperity of the 90s and a budget surplus that his son inherited and squandered.
Warren Buffett said he could solve the deficit problem in five minutes; “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.” Cute thought, but removing politics from the legislative process is the stuff of fantasy.
However, there are faint glimmers of hope, with the emergence of The Coffee Party www.coffeepartyusa.com on the right side of the political spectrum that aims to restore the balance that the Republican Party once enjoyed, and a third-party movement http://www.americanselect.org/, -- recently cited by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman -- of unhappy Republicans, Democrats, and Independents fed up with the two-party system who want a third choice.
So, once again, hope springs eternal, even though these movements show the level of national discontent rather than any hope of relief for the immediate future.
Meantime, thank God, the NFL owners and players have reached a settlement and we’ll at least have football to distract us.
Gerald E. Lavey
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Playing Chicken with the Debt Ceiling
Watching the impasse between the Republicans and Democrats over the debt ceiling as the August 2 deadline looms brings to mind the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause,” starring James Dean. If you’re old enough to remember the movie, teenager Dean and his antagonist Buzz, decided that the way to prove who was tougher was to race their cars towards a cliff and whoever jumped out first was a “chicken.”
Predictably, of course, it ended in tragedy as Buzz’s sleeve gets caught when he tries to jump free. Teenagers do silly, dangerous things like that because they don’t think of the possible consequences, but we should expect Washington politicians to act differently, shouldn’t we? On second thought, that might be presumptuous in light of what the late Meg Greenfield once observed about the Washington culture.
In her wonderfully insightful book, called simply “Washington,” the late Washington Post’s editorial board editor wrote that the Washington political culture is just like high school, and she makes a scarily compelling case for her argument.
Acting like an adolescent in high school is one thing, but acting like that when a national priority is at stake is quite another. Yet, here we are once again watching the two sides rev up their engines and head toward the cliff. Make no mistake, the cliff is not a default on the debt. No matter what happens in the next couple of days or weeks, neither side will let the U.S. default, and you can bet Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has a contingency plan in his back pocket that will give us more time if the first deadline is missed.
This is a political cliff and the aim of both sides is to make sure the other side jumps first. The interesting thing is that the majority of those who now oppose raising the limit voted to raise it eight times during the Bush years when spending and the national debt were soaring into the stratosphere. But, now strictly because of partisan politics they’re willing to play brinksmanship and elevate this issue to a national and international crisis.
The President seems to be the only one publicly willing to compromise, but, to be fair, he has a lot more political wiggle room than the conservatives whose Tea Party base has them locked in to a no tax increase position. No thinking person believes we can get ourselves out of this hideous deficit situation mess simply by cutting spending and that’s why Obama is in a better position to deal, although he has had to keep his far left liberal base at arms’ length in the process.
It was encouraging to read that Speaker John Boehner met privately with the President to discuss increased tax revenues as part of an overall package, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell got him back in line once he left the White House, reminding him that the ultimate goal of all this is to make sure Obama doesn’t get a second term.
It’s hard to believe I am saying this because I remember when “politics as the art of compromise” was a sign of strength and maturity. But, no longer. Now it’s a sign of weakness, just as it was in high school, and a sign of the times, not just in politics but elsewhere. In both the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, owners and players are apparently willing to give up the next season rather than give in – regardless of what this would mean to the fans, the concessionaires, and others whose livelihood depends on games.
We’ve got a whole lot of growing up to do around this town and around this country and we’re still mired in high school at about the sophomore level. And it’s not just the politicians who need to grow up – it’s primarily we who made them possible.
Gerald E. Lavey
Predictably, of course, it ended in tragedy as Buzz’s sleeve gets caught when he tries to jump free. Teenagers do silly, dangerous things like that because they don’t think of the possible consequences, but we should expect Washington politicians to act differently, shouldn’t we? On second thought, that might be presumptuous in light of what the late Meg Greenfield once observed about the Washington culture.
In her wonderfully insightful book, called simply “Washington,” the late Washington Post’s editorial board editor wrote that the Washington political culture is just like high school, and she makes a scarily compelling case for her argument.
Acting like an adolescent in high school is one thing, but acting like that when a national priority is at stake is quite another. Yet, here we are once again watching the two sides rev up their engines and head toward the cliff. Make no mistake, the cliff is not a default on the debt. No matter what happens in the next couple of days or weeks, neither side will let the U.S. default, and you can bet Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has a contingency plan in his back pocket that will give us more time if the first deadline is missed.
This is a political cliff and the aim of both sides is to make sure the other side jumps first. The interesting thing is that the majority of those who now oppose raising the limit voted to raise it eight times during the Bush years when spending and the national debt were soaring into the stratosphere. But, now strictly because of partisan politics they’re willing to play brinksmanship and elevate this issue to a national and international crisis.
The President seems to be the only one publicly willing to compromise, but, to be fair, he has a lot more political wiggle room than the conservatives whose Tea Party base has them locked in to a no tax increase position. No thinking person believes we can get ourselves out of this hideous deficit situation mess simply by cutting spending and that’s why Obama is in a better position to deal, although he has had to keep his far left liberal base at arms’ length in the process.
It was encouraging to read that Speaker John Boehner met privately with the President to discuss increased tax revenues as part of an overall package, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell got him back in line once he left the White House, reminding him that the ultimate goal of all this is to make sure Obama doesn’t get a second term.
It’s hard to believe I am saying this because I remember when “politics as the art of compromise” was a sign of strength and maturity. But, no longer. Now it’s a sign of weakness, just as it was in high school, and a sign of the times, not just in politics but elsewhere. In both the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, owners and players are apparently willing to give up the next season rather than give in – regardless of what this would mean to the fans, the concessionaires, and others whose livelihood depends on games.
We’ve got a whole lot of growing up to do around this town and around this country and we’re still mired in high school at about the sophomore level. And it’s not just the politicians who need to grow up – it’s primarily we who made them possible.
Gerald E. Lavey
Friday, June 17, 2011
Making a Difference
If you ask people who their favorite teacher was, they can usually come up with one name, sometimes even two or three, but rarely more than that. And often these are people who have graduate degrees, so they’ve have a lot of teachers to choose from. In my case, three teachers stand out from the time I started Kindergarten in 1943 until the time I finished graduate school in 1967
Not that I didn’t have more than three good, competent teachers along the way. But, the kind of teacher I am referring to are the ones whom you remember after you have forgotten all they taught you. Who inspired you, gave you confidence, saw qualities in you that you never saw in yourself, and who changed the course of your life.
Having taught high school myself and seeing the impact she has had, I have no hesitancy in asserting that my wife Brigitte is one of those teachers. She is retiring at the end of the school year after 38 years in Fairfax County Virginia, the last 36 at Langley High School in McLean, VA. She has taught English and virtually every History course imaginable, in both the regular and A.P. curricula.
The list of her teaching-related accomplishments is long. Among others, she’s had summer fellowships at Georgetown and Harvard, spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union as part of a program sponsored by the University of Richmond, participated in a group Fulbright program that took her to China and Tibet. And, she was named Fairfax County Teacher of the Year for 2009-2010.
Impressive, sure, but what has made her truly special is the lasting impact she has had on literally hundreds and hundreds of students for almost four decades. If we had kept all the cards and letters she has received over the years from former students they would fill up several drawers. Not just testimonials from graduating students flush with the joy of just finishing high school or her class, but from students who graduated years, even decades, ago.
Two years ago, a former Langley student from the early 1980s, and now a businessman from Minneapolis, returned to the McLean area for a Langley High School reunion. As he and his former classmates sat around talking about their high school days, the name of Mrs. Lavey came up time and time again as their favorite teacher, he said, and the one who made the most difference in their lives. He delayed his return to Minneapolis to stop by Langley to tell Brigitte that.
A former Langley principal wrote recently that “Brigitte was the single best teacher I saw in action during my years in education.” His career included forty years in public education, 25 years as a high school principal in five different communities, twenty years as the chair of committees that accredited high schools for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in the US and Europe, and six years at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education planning and implementing professional development institutes for practitioners.
When Brigitte told her current principal that she was retiring, but assuring him that someone else would quickly fill her shoes, he said, “Brigitte, please. Michael Jordans come along very rarely in life”
She’s going to be a tough act to follow indeed. And, now out of self-preservation, my challenge is to help her channel all that dedication and passion and energy into meaningful activities in retirement. Otherwise, we’ll both go crazy. She has a wide range of personal interests, including art, photography, and writing, along with teaching, so it’s a matter of finding the right fit.
Wish me luck.
Gerald E. Lavey
Not that I didn’t have more than three good, competent teachers along the way. But, the kind of teacher I am referring to are the ones whom you remember after you have forgotten all they taught you. Who inspired you, gave you confidence, saw qualities in you that you never saw in yourself, and who changed the course of your life.
Having taught high school myself and seeing the impact she has had, I have no hesitancy in asserting that my wife Brigitte is one of those teachers. She is retiring at the end of the school year after 38 years in Fairfax County Virginia, the last 36 at Langley High School in McLean, VA. She has taught English and virtually every History course imaginable, in both the regular and A.P. curricula.
The list of her teaching-related accomplishments is long. Among others, she’s had summer fellowships at Georgetown and Harvard, spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union as part of a program sponsored by the University of Richmond, participated in a group Fulbright program that took her to China and Tibet. And, she was named Fairfax County Teacher of the Year for 2009-2010.
Impressive, sure, but what has made her truly special is the lasting impact she has had on literally hundreds and hundreds of students for almost four decades. If we had kept all the cards and letters she has received over the years from former students they would fill up several drawers. Not just testimonials from graduating students flush with the joy of just finishing high school or her class, but from students who graduated years, even decades, ago.
Two years ago, a former Langley student from the early 1980s, and now a businessman from Minneapolis, returned to the McLean area for a Langley High School reunion. As he and his former classmates sat around talking about their high school days, the name of Mrs. Lavey came up time and time again as their favorite teacher, he said, and the one who made the most difference in their lives. He delayed his return to Minneapolis to stop by Langley to tell Brigitte that.
A former Langley principal wrote recently that “Brigitte was the single best teacher I saw in action during my years in education.” His career included forty years in public education, 25 years as a high school principal in five different communities, twenty years as the chair of committees that accredited high schools for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in the US and Europe, and six years at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education planning and implementing professional development institutes for practitioners.
When Brigitte told her current principal that she was retiring, but assuring him that someone else would quickly fill her shoes, he said, “Brigitte, please. Michael Jordans come along very rarely in life”
She’s going to be a tough act to follow indeed. And, now out of self-preservation, my challenge is to help her channel all that dedication and passion and energy into meaningful activities in retirement. Otherwise, we’ll both go crazy. She has a wide range of personal interests, including art, photography, and writing, along with teaching, so it’s a matter of finding the right fit.
Wish me luck.
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, June 6, 2011
Sex in the City
What are the chances of a U.S. representative by the name of “Weiner” being caught for allegedly twittering a photo of his … ah, “wiener?” Couldn’t happen, right? It would have to be a creation of The Onion. But, it did happen, showing once again that our nation’s capital provides an endless supply of material that “trumps” fiction any day. It wouldn't have been so bad if the Congressman's name had been, say, Johnson.... oops, that doesn't work either....
Once asked where he got his material, syndicated Washington Post humorist Art Buchwald, all he had to do is read the morning paper, dash off his column, then head to lunch at the San Souci. With the treasure trove of material now available, he would have his column finished by breakfast.
For instance, there is Sarah Palin showing a little political “leg” on her bus tour, with the news media panting behind her, hoping she’ll show a little more, when all she’ll show is how dumb the news media is for treating her as a serious candidate. She’s not going to run; she’s having fun teasing the news media and making a bundle of dough with her Fox platform and side shows. If she ran, she would be fully exposed as an empty dress, as she was in the 2008 campaign.
Then, there is Mitt Romney, the one serious candidate to emerge thus far from the loyal opposition, who is impersonating Harry Houdini, contorting himself in an impossible effort to escape the signature accomplishment he had as Governor of Massachusetts – health care reform.
One thing you’ve got to give Rep. Weiner, though, is that we know he has – shall we say, the required physical manly equipment? But, I would suggest to him and to the other members of Congress that there’s a better way to show that one has “the right stuff” – and that is to have the proverbial balls to stand up and show a little political courage. And they wouldn’t have to twitter a crotch shot photo of that. It would be there for all to see and admire.
But, that will not likely happen and the failure of “members” of Congress and other politicians to do so is the greatest obscenity of all.
Gerald E. Lavey
Once asked where he got his material, syndicated Washington Post humorist Art Buchwald, all he had to do is read the morning paper, dash off his column, then head to lunch at the San Souci. With the treasure trove of material now available, he would have his column finished by breakfast.
For instance, there is Sarah Palin showing a little political “leg” on her bus tour, with the news media panting behind her, hoping she’ll show a little more, when all she’ll show is how dumb the news media is for treating her as a serious candidate. She’s not going to run; she’s having fun teasing the news media and making a bundle of dough with her Fox platform and side shows. If she ran, she would be fully exposed as an empty dress, as she was in the 2008 campaign.
Then, there is Mitt Romney, the one serious candidate to emerge thus far from the loyal opposition, who is impersonating Harry Houdini, contorting himself in an impossible effort to escape the signature accomplishment he had as Governor of Massachusetts – health care reform.
One thing you’ve got to give Rep. Weiner, though, is that we know he has – shall we say, the required physical manly equipment? But, I would suggest to him and to the other members of Congress that there’s a better way to show that one has “the right stuff” – and that is to have the proverbial balls to stand up and show a little political courage. And they wouldn’t have to twitter a crotch shot photo of that. It would be there for all to see and admire.
But, that will not likely happen and the failure of “members” of Congress and other politicians to do so is the greatest obscenity of all.
Gerald E. Lavey
Friday, June 3, 2011
Profiles in Courage – Or Maybe Not
Shortly after posting the tribute for Memorial Day(“No Greater Love”)on my blog, I thought to myself: What if politicians were willing to give up their political lives for a cause greater than themselves — the good of the country, in other words — as our young men and women are willing to do with their real lives when they volunteer for military service?
Silly thought, I know, but what if? The thought lingered and teased. Then, just this morning, in today’s Washington Post, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, had an Op-Ed piece to that effect, calling on “members of both parties and both houses [to] publicly support the work of the Gang of Six,” the bipartisan group of Senators who have been meeting in an effort to deal with our national debt. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has taken a break from the talks but reportedly has not left the group.
While it’s admirable that members of the Senate are even talking to one another on a serious subject these days – indicating how low our expectations have sunk for the “world’s greatest deliberative body” – their efforts will go nowhere unless substantial numbers from both parties and both houses are willing to step forward. What do you think are the chances of that happening? Slim to none? A snowball’s chance in hell?”
Just think about it. Members of Congress are not being expected to surrender their lives, fortunes, or sacred honor. In fact, all three aspects of their lives would probably be immeasurably improved if they were only willing to work up a little spine, stand up to their political bases, and be willing to be defeated in the next election, if it even came to that. But, to do that, as Simpson and Bowles suggest, it would take the courage “to prod their own sacred cows into the cattle chute, and everyone give up something they like to protect the country they love.”
Sounds like a reasonable, honorable expectation, but the bogeyman of the next looming election has a way of shrinking politicians’ souls. As A.J. Rowling wrote in one of her Harry Potter books, “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies; but a great deal more to stand up to your friends....”
Gerald E. Lavey
Silly thought, I know, but what if? The thought lingered and teased. Then, just this morning, in today’s Washington Post, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, had an Op-Ed piece to that effect, calling on “members of both parties and both houses [to] publicly support the work of the Gang of Six,” the bipartisan group of Senators who have been meeting in an effort to deal with our national debt. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has taken a break from the talks but reportedly has not left the group.
While it’s admirable that members of the Senate are even talking to one another on a serious subject these days – indicating how low our expectations have sunk for the “world’s greatest deliberative body” – their efforts will go nowhere unless substantial numbers from both parties and both houses are willing to step forward. What do you think are the chances of that happening? Slim to none? A snowball’s chance in hell?”
Just think about it. Members of Congress are not being expected to surrender their lives, fortunes, or sacred honor. In fact, all three aspects of their lives would probably be immeasurably improved if they were only willing to work up a little spine, stand up to their political bases, and be willing to be defeated in the next election, if it even came to that. But, to do that, as Simpson and Bowles suggest, it would take the courage “to prod their own sacred cows into the cattle chute, and everyone give up something they like to protect the country they love.”
Sounds like a reasonable, honorable expectation, but the bogeyman of the next looming election has a way of shrinking politicians’ souls. As A.J. Rowling wrote in one of her Harry Potter books, “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies; but a great deal more to stand up to your friends....”
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, May 30, 2011
No Greater Love
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” - Horace
That may have stirred hearts in the time of the Roman poet Horace but war has lost its glamor, and these days it would be a hard sell to convince many that dying in Iraq and Afghanistan is “dulce et decorum.”
Even a century ago, in World War I, when soldiers still marched off to war midst pomp and drum beat, British poet Wilfred Owens put lie to Horace’s quote with his famous poem by the same name describing the horrible realities of trench warfare and mustard gas.
Yet, the amazing thing is that today’s young men and women, with the luster of war long stripped away, still volunteer to go off and fight in increasingly unpopular wars – knowing there is a real chance they may be killed. And because of that – regardless of how I may feel about the wisdom of this or that conflict - they have my deepest respect and gratitude, especially those whom we honor this weekend for having paid the ultimate sacrifice.
It is aching to see their photos in the newspapers or marched across the television screen against a backdrop of mournful music. So young and fresh and full of life, they could be our children – or grandchildren. And now they are gone. If the true measure of life were its length and not its depth, it would be an unspeakable and unbearable tragedy for families and loved ones. But, we know – and I pray their families know - that their sons and daughters were involved in something deeply honorable and greater than themselves. And that is the true measure of a life’s value and worth, not just the accumulation of days and years.
As in so many other areas of life, poets capture these sentiments best of all, as did British poet Laurence Binyon in this excerpt from one of my all time favorite poems, “For the Fallen” about those who died in World War I.
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end they remain."
Gerald E. Lavey
That may have stirred hearts in the time of the Roman poet Horace but war has lost its glamor, and these days it would be a hard sell to convince many that dying in Iraq and Afghanistan is “dulce et decorum.”
Even a century ago, in World War I, when soldiers still marched off to war midst pomp and drum beat, British poet Wilfred Owens put lie to Horace’s quote with his famous poem by the same name describing the horrible realities of trench warfare and mustard gas.
Yet, the amazing thing is that today’s young men and women, with the luster of war long stripped away, still volunteer to go off and fight in increasingly unpopular wars – knowing there is a real chance they may be killed. And because of that – regardless of how I may feel about the wisdom of this or that conflict - they have my deepest respect and gratitude, especially those whom we honor this weekend for having paid the ultimate sacrifice.
It is aching to see their photos in the newspapers or marched across the television screen against a backdrop of mournful music. So young and fresh and full of life, they could be our children – or grandchildren. And now they are gone. If the true measure of life were its length and not its depth, it would be an unspeakable and unbearable tragedy for families and loved ones. But, we know – and I pray their families know - that their sons and daughters were involved in something deeply honorable and greater than themselves. And that is the true measure of a life’s value and worth, not just the accumulation of days and years.
As in so many other areas of life, poets capture these sentiments best of all, as did British poet Laurence Binyon in this excerpt from one of my all time favorite poems, “For the Fallen” about those who died in World War I.
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end they remain."
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Getting My Groove Back
Ranting is like any contact sport, I suppose. If you don’t practice it regularly, you get flabby and lose your edge. It appears that’s what’s happened to me over the past few weeks. I haven’t posted anything on my blog since May 5, a period of almost three weeks, a virtual eternity in the blog and rant business.
It’s not that there hasn’t been enough material — political or ecclesiastical. Just Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump alone provide an endless supply. And, of course, there is never any dearth of material on the ecclesiastical side either. For example, long-time friend John Vezeau sent me a stinging critique of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice report on the Catholic clergy abuse scandal, which you can read for yourselves.
I was as flabbergasted as John was when I read the news reports on the study, suggesting the moral climate of the 60s and 70’s may have been a major factor in the pedophile scandal. I couldn’t help but think of comedian Flip Wilson’s line which he used to explain his errant behavior: “The devil made me do it.”
On the other hand, I was heartened recently by the actions of theologians at Catholic University, where House Speaker John Boehner, a Catholic and graduate of a Jesuit university, was the commencement speaker. The theologians sent a letter to the Speaker beforehand reminding him that there is life outside the womb and being “pro life” means more than being opposed to abortion. They suggested that supporting a budget that would seriously harm the poor and the disadvantaged is not “pro-life” and is contrary to Catholic social teaching.
I use this example, not to beat up on John Boehner because I happen to like him and realize he is captive to the extremists in his own party as the President is, to a lesser extent, in his. Once again, my piñata of choice is the U.S. Catholic Bishops organization, which supplies me no end of material.
Contrast what happened at Catholic U. to what happened when President Obama was invited to be the commencement speaker at Notre Dame. Remember the reaction from the Catholic hierarchy, including several U.S. bishops, who expressed outrage that a Catholic university would invite someone so at odds with fundamental Church teaching on such a key moral issue as abortion?
And, yet when a Catholic politician is invited to be the commencement speaker at the United States’ signature Catholic university, and his public stance is at odds with the absolutely number one moral imperative of the Bible as well as Catholic teaching and the Church's social justice policy, the bishops are silent. Not a peep.
Need I say more?
Gerald E. Lavey
It’s not that there hasn’t been enough material — political or ecclesiastical. Just Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump alone provide an endless supply. And, of course, there is never any dearth of material on the ecclesiastical side either. For example, long-time friend John Vezeau sent me a stinging critique of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice report on the Catholic clergy abuse scandal, which you can read for yourselves.
I was as flabbergasted as John was when I read the news reports on the study, suggesting the moral climate of the 60s and 70’s may have been a major factor in the pedophile scandal. I couldn’t help but think of comedian Flip Wilson’s line which he used to explain his errant behavior: “The devil made me do it.”
On the other hand, I was heartened recently by the actions of theologians at Catholic University, where House Speaker John Boehner, a Catholic and graduate of a Jesuit university, was the commencement speaker. The theologians sent a letter to the Speaker beforehand reminding him that there is life outside the womb and being “pro life” means more than being opposed to abortion. They suggested that supporting a budget that would seriously harm the poor and the disadvantaged is not “pro-life” and is contrary to Catholic social teaching.
I use this example, not to beat up on John Boehner because I happen to like him and realize he is captive to the extremists in his own party as the President is, to a lesser extent, in his. Once again, my piñata of choice is the U.S. Catholic Bishops organization, which supplies me no end of material.
Contrast what happened at Catholic U. to what happened when President Obama was invited to be the commencement speaker at Notre Dame. Remember the reaction from the Catholic hierarchy, including several U.S. bishops, who expressed outrage that a Catholic university would invite someone so at odds with fundamental Church teaching on such a key moral issue as abortion?
And, yet when a Catholic politician is invited to be the commencement speaker at the United States’ signature Catholic university, and his public stance is at odds with the absolutely number one moral imperative of the Bible as well as Catholic teaching and the Church's social justice policy, the bishops are silent. Not a peep.
Need I say more?
Gerald E. Lavey
Thursday, May 5, 2011
True or False?
(The following was written by a long-time friend, Ron Miller, who posted this on his blog site recently and sent it to my Facebook site on Tuesday of this week. Sadly, I got the news this morning that Ron died suddenly yesterday from an apparent heart attack while in New York for a speech. When he sent me this, I quipped that I would steal it and pass it off as my own. I won't do that, but I think it deserves a wider audience so I am posting it here.
Ron was Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College; Co-Founder of Common Ground; author and lecturer on various theological topics including interreligious dialogue, early Christianity and spirituality. An absolutely brilliant guy. RIP.)
"Ever since the western world fell in love with the scientific method in the 17th century, a fundamental confusion began working its way into how we think. Truth came to be identified with facts; myths came to be thought of as lies; and the methods of the hard sciences came to be regarded as the only paths to our knowledge of reality.
"And yet, to understand what religion is all about, all of these presuppositions need to be challenged. Let’s start with what we mean by true.
"Truth comes from the old English treowe, which indicates something that can be trusted. The German cognate of our word true is treu. But treu does not mean factual; this German word refers to something you can rely on, or someone who is trustworthy, faithful, or loyal. Ein treuer Freund is a loyal friend, not someone who really exists.
"The wise people in the ancient Celtic world were called Druids. The two elements of the name, dru and id, go back to the old Indo-European language, meaning “oak-seer”. The Gaelic word for oak is dara; the Greek word for oak is drus. And (w)id is the root of see, as in the Latin word vid-eo.
"What the Druids saw, what they knew, were not facts but reliable truths about reality’s deepest secrets. And these truths were true because they could be trusted. They were as reliable as the strong oak trees in their forests.
"So in the thought world of these ancient people, the fact that my office has one window is not true; it’s merely factual. But my trust that Jesus reveals the divine reality is true.
"When Jews affirm that the Torah reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true. When Muslims affirm that the Qur’an reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true.
"When Jews celebrate Passover, they are showing their trust in the most important myth in the Hebrew Bible, the exodus event and Sinai. This is the myth of being freed up from slavery and being freed up for a covenantal relationship with God. And whether or not these events as described in the Torah are factual, they are nonetheless true.
"When Christians celebrate Easter, they are demonstrating their trust in the most important myth in Christianity, the death and resurrection of Jesus. And whether or not the body of Jesus came out of a tomb or lives now only in the earthly elements into which it has been transformed, the myth is nonetheless true.
"A myth is not true because it once factually happened. A myth is true because it always happens. This is why the rabbis said that truly to celebrate Passover, Jews must understand themselves as escaping from slavery and standing at Sinai. And truly to celebrate Easter, Christians must experience in themselves the transition from death to life.
"As I heard one biblical scholar say: 'All of the Bible is true and some of it happened.' In other words, the basic spiritual message of the biblical texts, to love God and our neighbor, is always and forever true.
"Ironically, this is where atheists and fundamentalists make the same mistake. They both confuse truth with factuality--the atheists claiming that the facts are false, while the fundamentalists claim that the facts are true.
"But they are both wrong, because they both fail to see the nature of religious language, whose purpose is not to communicate fact but to communicate truth.
"And since the truth communicated by the sacred traditions is beyond the world of facts, it must use the language of myth. And a myth puts a metaphor in narrative form, like the Passover/Sinai myth or the Good Friday/Easter Sunday myth or the central Muslim myth of Abraham walking around the Ka’ba, the myth celebrated by Muslims when they make the Haj.
"The Hebrew word mashal can refer to a proverb, a parable, an anecdote, or an allegory. In each case, however, we find a metaphor. Something is like something else. God is like a shepherd, a father, a king, a rock, or a mighty fortress. And these metaphors bring us as close to the mysteries as we can come. They bring us closer than any definition can.
"But the secret of understanding a metaphor is to handle it lightly. God is not really smelly and dirty like a shepherd; nor is he male like our fathers; nor does he generate offspring like our parents; nor does he sit on a throne like a king; nor is he made of granite like a rock; nor does he have a drawbridge like a fortress.
"I was at a conference where Dominic Crossan was asked if he believed that Jesus was the Son of God. 'Yes', he responded, 'and I also believe he’s the Lamb of God—but I don’t believe he’s white and wooly.'
"Not to understand metaphor, not to understand poetic language, means being barred forever from the realm of truths taught by the great religions. And it is sad to realize that both fundamentalists and atheists stand side by side outside the gates of that transcendent realm.
"If you’re telling a joke that begins with the words: 'These two guys went into a bar..' and someone interrupts to ask the name of the bar, not only should you not bother to finish the joke but you should take out paper and pen and ask the person to sign a statement promising that they will never open the Bible.
"Why? Because the person asking where the bar is will also ask where the Garden of Eden is, where Noah’s ark is, where the Tower of Babel is, where Jesus’s empty tomb is, where Muhammad’s footprint is, where the Buddha’s tree of enlightenment is, and where Arjuna’s chariot is.
"But asking those questions can never lead us to the truths that religion can teach us. They are based on the false assumption, so natural for so many of us, that the true and the factual are the same.
"And once we understand that they are not the same, we will also understand that the evidence for these truths is not at all like the proofs derived from the methods employed by the hard sciences.
"One of my faculty colleagues told me that he was an atheist. I asked him what it would take to change his mind. He said that he would need a scientific proof. I explained the confusion behind that kind of expectation. I suggested that if he wanted to know the truth of the divine reality he should take a sabbatical and spend some time in a monastery where he can walk in the woods, sing sacred chants, read sacred texts, meditate, and marinate in silence. He must listen to the admonition in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still and know that I am God.”
"And to know in ancient Hebrew did not mean to know facts. The word was a synonym for sexual intimacy. So we read in the words of the King James Bible (Genesis 2:1) “And Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain.” The biblical phrase Daat Elohim (the knowledge of God) does not mean knowing facts about God but experiencing intimacy with God. And that’s who a mystic is, one who experiences the divine.
"So to know anything about the real nature of religion, one has to understand all those 'm' words—mysteries that are not problems; methods that are not those of the hard sciences; meaning that is not factual; metaphors that disclose meaning; myths that are true; and mystical ways of knowing that are not scientific."
Ron was Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College; Co-Founder of Common Ground; author and lecturer on various theological topics including interreligious dialogue, early Christianity and spirituality. An absolutely brilliant guy. RIP.)
"Ever since the western world fell in love with the scientific method in the 17th century, a fundamental confusion began working its way into how we think. Truth came to be identified with facts; myths came to be thought of as lies; and the methods of the hard sciences came to be regarded as the only paths to our knowledge of reality.
"And yet, to understand what religion is all about, all of these presuppositions need to be challenged. Let’s start with what we mean by true.
"Truth comes from the old English treowe, which indicates something that can be trusted. The German cognate of our word true is treu. But treu does not mean factual; this German word refers to something you can rely on, or someone who is trustworthy, faithful, or loyal. Ein treuer Freund is a loyal friend, not someone who really exists.
"The wise people in the ancient Celtic world were called Druids. The two elements of the name, dru and id, go back to the old Indo-European language, meaning “oak-seer”. The Gaelic word for oak is dara; the Greek word for oak is drus. And (w)id is the root of see, as in the Latin word vid-eo.
"What the Druids saw, what they knew, were not facts but reliable truths about reality’s deepest secrets. And these truths were true because they could be trusted. They were as reliable as the strong oak trees in their forests.
"So in the thought world of these ancient people, the fact that my office has one window is not true; it’s merely factual. But my trust that Jesus reveals the divine reality is true.
"When Jews affirm that the Torah reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true. When Muslims affirm that the Qur’an reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true.
"When Jews celebrate Passover, they are showing their trust in the most important myth in the Hebrew Bible, the exodus event and Sinai. This is the myth of being freed up from slavery and being freed up for a covenantal relationship with God. And whether or not these events as described in the Torah are factual, they are nonetheless true.
"When Christians celebrate Easter, they are demonstrating their trust in the most important myth in Christianity, the death and resurrection of Jesus. And whether or not the body of Jesus came out of a tomb or lives now only in the earthly elements into which it has been transformed, the myth is nonetheless true.
"A myth is not true because it once factually happened. A myth is true because it always happens. This is why the rabbis said that truly to celebrate Passover, Jews must understand themselves as escaping from slavery and standing at Sinai. And truly to celebrate Easter, Christians must experience in themselves the transition from death to life.
"As I heard one biblical scholar say: 'All of the Bible is true and some of it happened.' In other words, the basic spiritual message of the biblical texts, to love God and our neighbor, is always and forever true.
"Ironically, this is where atheists and fundamentalists make the same mistake. They both confuse truth with factuality--the atheists claiming that the facts are false, while the fundamentalists claim that the facts are true.
"But they are both wrong, because they both fail to see the nature of religious language, whose purpose is not to communicate fact but to communicate truth.
"And since the truth communicated by the sacred traditions is beyond the world of facts, it must use the language of myth. And a myth puts a metaphor in narrative form, like the Passover/Sinai myth or the Good Friday/Easter Sunday myth or the central Muslim myth of Abraham walking around the Ka’ba, the myth celebrated by Muslims when they make the Haj.
"The Hebrew word mashal can refer to a proverb, a parable, an anecdote, or an allegory. In each case, however, we find a metaphor. Something is like something else. God is like a shepherd, a father, a king, a rock, or a mighty fortress. And these metaphors bring us as close to the mysteries as we can come. They bring us closer than any definition can.
"But the secret of understanding a metaphor is to handle it lightly. God is not really smelly and dirty like a shepherd; nor is he male like our fathers; nor does he generate offspring like our parents; nor does he sit on a throne like a king; nor is he made of granite like a rock; nor does he have a drawbridge like a fortress.
"I was at a conference where Dominic Crossan was asked if he believed that Jesus was the Son of God. 'Yes', he responded, 'and I also believe he’s the Lamb of God—but I don’t believe he’s white and wooly.'
"Not to understand metaphor, not to understand poetic language, means being barred forever from the realm of truths taught by the great religions. And it is sad to realize that both fundamentalists and atheists stand side by side outside the gates of that transcendent realm.
"If you’re telling a joke that begins with the words: 'These two guys went into a bar..' and someone interrupts to ask the name of the bar, not only should you not bother to finish the joke but you should take out paper and pen and ask the person to sign a statement promising that they will never open the Bible.
"Why? Because the person asking where the bar is will also ask where the Garden of Eden is, where Noah’s ark is, where the Tower of Babel is, where Jesus’s empty tomb is, where Muhammad’s footprint is, where the Buddha’s tree of enlightenment is, and where Arjuna’s chariot is.
"But asking those questions can never lead us to the truths that religion can teach us. They are based on the false assumption, so natural for so many of us, that the true and the factual are the same.
"And once we understand that they are not the same, we will also understand that the evidence for these truths is not at all like the proofs derived from the methods employed by the hard sciences.
"One of my faculty colleagues told me that he was an atheist. I asked him what it would take to change his mind. He said that he would need a scientific proof. I explained the confusion behind that kind of expectation. I suggested that if he wanted to know the truth of the divine reality he should take a sabbatical and spend some time in a monastery where he can walk in the woods, sing sacred chants, read sacred texts, meditate, and marinate in silence. He must listen to the admonition in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still and know that I am God.”
"And to know in ancient Hebrew did not mean to know facts. The word was a synonym for sexual intimacy. So we read in the words of the King James Bible (Genesis 2:1) “And Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain.” The biblical phrase Daat Elohim (the knowledge of God) does not mean knowing facts about God but experiencing intimacy with God. And that’s who a mystic is, one who experiences the divine.
"So to know anything about the real nature of religion, one has to understand all those 'm' words—mysteries that are not problems; methods that are not those of the hard sciences; meaning that is not factual; metaphors that disclose meaning; myths that are true; and mystical ways of knowing that are not scientific."
Monday, May 2, 2011
It’s not about the Birth Certificate After All
For months, I have been puzzled by the “birthers,” unwilling to believe there were that many gullible fellow citizens who believed the President was not born in the U.S. According to one poll, more than 40 percent of Republicans held that view. I thought to myself: Why go out on a limb for such an extreme view when all the President has to do is to release a copy of his birth certificate? It made no sense.
Then, all of a sudden last week, things began to click. It’s not really about the birth certificate at all because even when the President announced the release of his birth certificate – long form, no less — showing he was born in Hawaii, some “birthers” didn’t back down. Comedienne Paula Poundstone quipped that now they were demanding the placenta. Some claimed that the certificate was a forgery, but others, led by Donald Trump, just shifted ground: They are now questioning the President’s intelligence and academic qualifications.
Trump reportedly alleged that Obama was not a good student and, if so, then how did he get into Columbia and Harvard, he asks? And how did he become President of the Harvard Law Review? Hard to believe that Trump could come up with something so bizarre, but attack politics has always played out in the twilight zone. And I would bet anything there are a sizeable number of people who are now going to jump on that bandwagon.
In case that doesn’t work, though, there’s always the Muslim card to play. Case in point: Fox News recently reported that the President failed to issue an Easter Proclamation although he did issue statements on major Islamic holidays during 2010. Fox failed to note that no President over the past 20 years has issued an Easter Proclamation. Nor did they mention that the President had a Prayer Breakfast at the White House on Easter, and he and his family attended Easter services at a local Baptist Church.
Do you think this line of questioning would be happening if the President were not African-American? I think we all know the answer to that. What this campaign of vilification is all about is de-legitimatizing Obama’s right to be President of the United States. Social etiquette no longer allows us to say he is not qualified because he is African American. So, the racists have to come up with other reasons for accomplishing that same goal: Questioning his citizenship, his academic credentials, his religion, for example.
While at the FAA, I remember listening to a Civil Rights champion of the 1960s — whose name I have forgotten — speaking at a Black History Month celebration. She said racism was still very much with us. It had just gone underground and gussied itself up with the exterior trappings of social correctness and thus was harder to spot. It’s almost easier to face the fire hoses and Bull Connor’s police dogs, she said; at least you knew who your enemies were.
Still, they’re not that hard to spot — especially the extreme cases — if you’re paying attention at all. But, it’s one thing for opponents to question the President’s birthplace, but when they now shift ground and question the intelligence of arguably the most intellectual President we have ever had, certainly in recent memory, they’ve let their mask down and revealed who they really are.
As heavyweight champion Joe Louis once famously said, “They can run but they can’t hide.”
Gerald E. Lavey
Then, all of a sudden last week, things began to click. It’s not really about the birth certificate at all because even when the President announced the release of his birth certificate – long form, no less — showing he was born in Hawaii, some “birthers” didn’t back down. Comedienne Paula Poundstone quipped that now they were demanding the placenta. Some claimed that the certificate was a forgery, but others, led by Donald Trump, just shifted ground: They are now questioning the President’s intelligence and academic qualifications.
Trump reportedly alleged that Obama was not a good student and, if so, then how did he get into Columbia and Harvard, he asks? And how did he become President of the Harvard Law Review? Hard to believe that Trump could come up with something so bizarre, but attack politics has always played out in the twilight zone. And I would bet anything there are a sizeable number of people who are now going to jump on that bandwagon.
In case that doesn’t work, though, there’s always the Muslim card to play. Case in point: Fox News recently reported that the President failed to issue an Easter Proclamation although he did issue statements on major Islamic holidays during 2010. Fox failed to note that no President over the past 20 years has issued an Easter Proclamation. Nor did they mention that the President had a Prayer Breakfast at the White House on Easter, and he and his family attended Easter services at a local Baptist Church.
Do you think this line of questioning would be happening if the President were not African-American? I think we all know the answer to that. What this campaign of vilification is all about is de-legitimatizing Obama’s right to be President of the United States. Social etiquette no longer allows us to say he is not qualified because he is African American. So, the racists have to come up with other reasons for accomplishing that same goal: Questioning his citizenship, his academic credentials, his religion, for example.
While at the FAA, I remember listening to a Civil Rights champion of the 1960s — whose name I have forgotten — speaking at a Black History Month celebration. She said racism was still very much with us. It had just gone underground and gussied itself up with the exterior trappings of social correctness and thus was harder to spot. It’s almost easier to face the fire hoses and Bull Connor’s police dogs, she said; at least you knew who your enemies were.
Still, they’re not that hard to spot — especially the extreme cases — if you’re paying attention at all. But, it’s one thing for opponents to question the President’s birthplace, but when they now shift ground and question the intelligence of arguably the most intellectual President we have ever had, certainly in recent memory, they’ve let their mask down and revealed who they really are.
As heavyweight champion Joe Louis once famously said, “They can run but they can’t hide.”
Gerald E. Lavey
Thursday, April 28, 2011
It’s All about the Journey
Recently, seven of us senior citizens, all friends in our 70’s or close to it, and most of us retired or partially retired, met for our periodic meeting of the aptly named “Old Farts” group for a discussion of anything and everything.
This time, over dinner and wine, the discussion quickly centered on the void we all felt came with our retirements. While everyone agreed they didn’t miss the hassle of the 9-5 routine – the traffic, the pointless meetings, dealing with personnel problems – they did miss “being in the game.” Most of us had been successful — or at least thought we were. We counted, we made a difference, plus we had the titles and authority that made us feel important – and needed.
Now that is gone.
For me it was that, plus missing the daily interaction with people. People I liked, loved, was responsible for, and saw on a regular basis, if only in the hallway or on the elevator. And they seemed to reciprocate those feelings. That’s largely gone as well, and that may be the biggest hurdle of all. While still working, some of us imagine that the strongest and closest work friendships will endure no matter what. And in fact most don’t. Not because people are calloused or insincere or shallow. People just move on with their lives. They must. It’s all part of their journey and so must it be with ours.
Most of us are not sure what the next stage of our journey will bring, but life’s journey continues no matter what. When we plan a regular trip, we have a lot to say about the various stages of the journey and what happens next. We can even stop at a certain juncture and go back. Life’s journey is different: We can shape the next stage only up to a point but at the same time we must be prepared for long delays, quick detours, and sudden stops. There’s no going back.
Sounds grim and deterministic, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a big difference between”giving in” and “giving up.” And that crucial difference leaves us a great deal of latitude for shaping the next stage, for finding our passion, for doing volunteer work or just doing what we have always wanted to do but had neither the time nor resources. At the same time, there must be a graceful “letting go” at the back of one’s mind, an attitude of graceful surrender to life’s inevitabilities that must be at the core of every happy life, every happy journey. The alternative is to hold on and cling stubbornly to a familiar place or stage or person, hoping it will last indefinitely and refuse to open ourselves to the next stage of the journey. That’s a recipe for unhappiness. Besides, we don’t have that option with life’s journey; that continues whether we’re fully on board or not.
I always thought C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka,” captured this attitude so well:
“As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
“Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
“Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
“And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”
Gerald E. Lavey
This time, over dinner and wine, the discussion quickly centered on the void we all felt came with our retirements. While everyone agreed they didn’t miss the hassle of the 9-5 routine – the traffic, the pointless meetings, dealing with personnel problems – they did miss “being in the game.” Most of us had been successful — or at least thought we were. We counted, we made a difference, plus we had the titles and authority that made us feel important – and needed.
Now that is gone.
For me it was that, plus missing the daily interaction with people. People I liked, loved, was responsible for, and saw on a regular basis, if only in the hallway or on the elevator. And they seemed to reciprocate those feelings. That’s largely gone as well, and that may be the biggest hurdle of all. While still working, some of us imagine that the strongest and closest work friendships will endure no matter what. And in fact most don’t. Not because people are calloused or insincere or shallow. People just move on with their lives. They must. It’s all part of their journey and so must it be with ours.
Most of us are not sure what the next stage of our journey will bring, but life’s journey continues no matter what. When we plan a regular trip, we have a lot to say about the various stages of the journey and what happens next. We can even stop at a certain juncture and go back. Life’s journey is different: We can shape the next stage only up to a point but at the same time we must be prepared for long delays, quick detours, and sudden stops. There’s no going back.
Sounds grim and deterministic, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a big difference between”giving in” and “giving up.” And that crucial difference leaves us a great deal of latitude for shaping the next stage, for finding our passion, for doing volunteer work or just doing what we have always wanted to do but had neither the time nor resources. At the same time, there must be a graceful “letting go” at the back of one’s mind, an attitude of graceful surrender to life’s inevitabilities that must be at the core of every happy life, every happy journey. The alternative is to hold on and cling stubbornly to a familiar place or stage or person, hoping it will last indefinitely and refuse to open ourselves to the next stage of the journey. That’s a recipe for unhappiness. Besides, we don’t have that option with life’s journey; that continues whether we’re fully on board or not.
I always thought C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka,” captured this attitude so well:
“As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
“Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
“Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
“And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”
Gerald E. Lavey
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Buck Starts There
The phrase “The Buck Stops Here,” first popularized by President Truman, has achieved virtual iconic status in America politics ever since. After the Bay of Pigs disaster, for example, President Kennedy invoked the phrase, earning plaudits for his leadership, despite the debacle.
Sometimes, but rarely, leaders will not only step up but resign, as was the case this week with Hank Krakowski, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO). Krakowski either resigned voluntarily or was forced to resign after a spate of reported incidents of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job.
The problem is, no matter how it happened, voluntarily or forced, serving up a sacrificial lamb does nothing but paper over the core problem and temporarily satisfy the blood lust of the political wolves on Capitol Hill and across town in the Secretary’s office or perhaps even the White House — and quiet, even charm, the news media. (See Washington Post column: “FAA official deserves a statue for stepping down.”)
To be fair to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, he probably had no choice but to request and/or accept Hank’s resignation — and he probably needs to watch his own back — because the political pressures are still enormous. He knows that the real problem was not Hank, but a failure of professionalism and accountability at the point of the spear — by the very small number of controllers who fell asleep on the job.
Virtually from the day he arrived at the FAA, Randy Babbitt has been preaching the importance of developing a culture of professionalism throughout the organization, down to the grass roots level. As a former pilot, he knew first hand that his performance and professional conduct on the flight deck did not depend on the airline’s Vice President of Operations, the Safety Officer, or his line boss, but on him. Hank Krakowski, a former pilot himself, believed and preached exactly the same message.
Leaders several layers above the airport tower cab – or even one or two layers removed – can only set the right tone, the right rules of conduct and responsibility, and follow up appropriately. But, ultimately, the people in the trenches must step up and hold themselves accountable.
In sports, when a team is struggling, the teams with genuine potential for improving and becoming winners are not those who expect just the perfect coach or manager to come through the turnstile before they start playing like professionals. They’re the teams with players who police themselves and hold themselves accountable and with player/leaders in their midst who will get in the faces of those who don’t.
The chances of that happening in air traffic are probably not strong because of the tendency of its union, often with strong political backing, to circle the wagons and blame management whenever one of its own gets in trouble. That’s unfortunate because the conduct of a very small number of controllers is darkening the reputation of the overwhelming majority of controllers who hold themselves accountable for the highest standard of professional conduct.
Frankly, that’s where the real damage is being done – to public trust in the safety of the aviation system. Despite some breathless news reporting, the danger to the airline passengers in the planes involved in the recent sleeping incidents was fortunately not nearly as great as reported. Airline pilots have their own on-board resources and contingency plans for dealing with such a situation. But, the loss of public confidence in the safety of the air traffic control system — which is incredibly safe by any standard of measurement — is being gradually eroded. And paying for another controller to staff the midnight shift or bringing in a fresh COO, no matter how qualified, is mere window dressing and won’t address the core issue.
Ultimately, the buck should stop where it starts.
Gerald E. Lavey
Sometimes, but rarely, leaders will not only step up but resign, as was the case this week with Hank Krakowski, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO). Krakowski either resigned voluntarily or was forced to resign after a spate of reported incidents of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job.
The problem is, no matter how it happened, voluntarily or forced, serving up a sacrificial lamb does nothing but paper over the core problem and temporarily satisfy the blood lust of the political wolves on Capitol Hill and across town in the Secretary’s office or perhaps even the White House — and quiet, even charm, the news media. (See Washington Post column: “FAA official deserves a statue for stepping down.”)
To be fair to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, he probably had no choice but to request and/or accept Hank’s resignation — and he probably needs to watch his own back — because the political pressures are still enormous. He knows that the real problem was not Hank, but a failure of professionalism and accountability at the point of the spear — by the very small number of controllers who fell asleep on the job.
Virtually from the day he arrived at the FAA, Randy Babbitt has been preaching the importance of developing a culture of professionalism throughout the organization, down to the grass roots level. As a former pilot, he knew first hand that his performance and professional conduct on the flight deck did not depend on the airline’s Vice President of Operations, the Safety Officer, or his line boss, but on him. Hank Krakowski, a former pilot himself, believed and preached exactly the same message.
Leaders several layers above the airport tower cab – or even one or two layers removed – can only set the right tone, the right rules of conduct and responsibility, and follow up appropriately. But, ultimately, the people in the trenches must step up and hold themselves accountable.
In sports, when a team is struggling, the teams with genuine potential for improving and becoming winners are not those who expect just the perfect coach or manager to come through the turnstile before they start playing like professionals. They’re the teams with players who police themselves and hold themselves accountable and with player/leaders in their midst who will get in the faces of those who don’t.
The chances of that happening in air traffic are probably not strong because of the tendency of its union, often with strong political backing, to circle the wagons and blame management whenever one of its own gets in trouble. That’s unfortunate because the conduct of a very small number of controllers is darkening the reputation of the overwhelming majority of controllers who hold themselves accountable for the highest standard of professional conduct.
Frankly, that’s where the real damage is being done – to public trust in the safety of the aviation system. Despite some breathless news reporting, the danger to the airline passengers in the planes involved in the recent sleeping incidents was fortunately not nearly as great as reported. Airline pilots have their own on-board resources and contingency plans for dealing with such a situation. But, the loss of public confidence in the safety of the air traffic control system — which is incredibly safe by any standard of measurement — is being gradually eroded. And paying for another controller to staff the midnight shift or bringing in a fresh COO, no matter how qualified, is mere window dressing and won’t address the core issue.
Ultimately, the buck should stop where it starts.
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Fiddling While Rome Burns
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry … but the U.S. Catholic bishops regularly provide ample reasons for both.
The latest has to do with the changes to the Roman missal – which includes the text and prayers used in the celebration of the Catholic Eucharist, or Mass, as it is commonly referred to. The new changes, the product of more than 30 years of labor, are “the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the Church permitted English in place of the Latin,” according to the New York Times.
You would think that an effort which took that long would produce a document that clarifies and smoothes over some of the admittedly rough spots of the texts and prayers translated in haste after Vatican II. Maybe even restore a bit of the poetry of the original. But, instead, the aim was to make the new translation closer to the Latin, which apparently Catholics who still haven’t gotten over the shocking changes of Vatican II are still yearning for.
Here is an example from the Nicene Creed, the profession of Christian faith, dating back to the early 4th century and used by several Christian denominations. Currently, the Catholic version of the following phrase now reads “Jesus Christ is…one in being with the Father.” But apparently that’s way too clear because it is being changed to “Jesus Christ is … consubstantial with the Father” to give it more of a Latinate flavor.
Similarly, the Confiteor, the public confession of sinfulness recited by the congregation at the beginning of Mass, now reads in part: “I confess … that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my deeds, in what I have done and what I failed to do.” Nicely said, and it covers the waterfront for us sinners. But apparently it didn’t lean heavily enough on guilt and evoke the original Latin. So, now it will read…. “In what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” picking up on the “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
Who — supposedly in God’s name — came up with such nonsense, you might reasonably ask? Catholic bishops, of course, along with bishops from other English-speaking countries, who set up the commission that produced the changes. It figures.
Weeping or laughing yet? But, wait there’s more…. In the same edition of the New York Times, there’s an article about the U.S. bishops attacking Sister Elizabeth A Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham and respected author of several books on theology. The bishops say she challenges Church teaching in ways that are “beyond the pale.”
Sounds serious. Did she deny the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, or the Trinity? No, but just as impertinently, she along with many other theologians have dared to suggest that the exclusive use of male images in the Scripture and in the Catholic liturgy betrays the cultural bias of biblical scribes at the time, and this has contributed to the diminished role of women in Christianity, particularly in Roman Catholicism, ever since. The bishops scoff at this, saying that what the scribes have written, they have written. End of argument.
They, of course, live in mortal fear that any concessions along these lines might lead to the more open discussion of women priests, and they have already slammed the door on that issue. In dismissing it, their logic goes something along these lines — and I’m not joking: Jesus was a man, the apostles were men, ergo, all priests must be men.
So, what about God the Father? Is he Mother, too? Obviously not. If He is consubstantial with Jesus, he is obviously male. So, then how does He dress? In the simple attire that Jesus wore? Pin stripe suits? Wrangler jeans? Togas? Jockey shorts? No distinguishable male parts, you say? Then what makes Him male? It does beg the question, doesn’t it?
Silly and ridiculous? Of course, but such clerical idiocies invite parody and satire. Some things are too deep for tears.
Gerald E. Lavey
The latest has to do with the changes to the Roman missal – which includes the text and prayers used in the celebration of the Catholic Eucharist, or Mass, as it is commonly referred to. The new changes, the product of more than 30 years of labor, are “the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the Church permitted English in place of the Latin,” according to the New York Times.
You would think that an effort which took that long would produce a document that clarifies and smoothes over some of the admittedly rough spots of the texts and prayers translated in haste after Vatican II. Maybe even restore a bit of the poetry of the original. But, instead, the aim was to make the new translation closer to the Latin, which apparently Catholics who still haven’t gotten over the shocking changes of Vatican II are still yearning for.
Here is an example from the Nicene Creed, the profession of Christian faith, dating back to the early 4th century and used by several Christian denominations. Currently, the Catholic version of the following phrase now reads “Jesus Christ is…one in being with the Father.” But apparently that’s way too clear because it is being changed to “Jesus Christ is … consubstantial with the Father” to give it more of a Latinate flavor.
Similarly, the Confiteor, the public confession of sinfulness recited by the congregation at the beginning of Mass, now reads in part: “I confess … that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my deeds, in what I have done and what I failed to do.” Nicely said, and it covers the waterfront for us sinners. But apparently it didn’t lean heavily enough on guilt and evoke the original Latin. So, now it will read…. “In what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” picking up on the “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
Who — supposedly in God’s name — came up with such nonsense, you might reasonably ask? Catholic bishops, of course, along with bishops from other English-speaking countries, who set up the commission that produced the changes. It figures.
Weeping or laughing yet? But, wait there’s more…. In the same edition of the New York Times, there’s an article about the U.S. bishops attacking Sister Elizabeth A Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham and respected author of several books on theology. The bishops say she challenges Church teaching in ways that are “beyond the pale.”
Sounds serious. Did she deny the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, or the Trinity? No, but just as impertinently, she along with many other theologians have dared to suggest that the exclusive use of male images in the Scripture and in the Catholic liturgy betrays the cultural bias of biblical scribes at the time, and this has contributed to the diminished role of women in Christianity, particularly in Roman Catholicism, ever since. The bishops scoff at this, saying that what the scribes have written, they have written. End of argument.
They, of course, live in mortal fear that any concessions along these lines might lead to the more open discussion of women priests, and they have already slammed the door on that issue. In dismissing it, their logic goes something along these lines — and I’m not joking: Jesus was a man, the apostles were men, ergo, all priests must be men.
So, what about God the Father? Is he Mother, too? Obviously not. If He is consubstantial with Jesus, he is obviously male. So, then how does He dress? In the simple attire that Jesus wore? Pin stripe suits? Wrangler jeans? Togas? Jockey shorts? No distinguishable male parts, you say? Then what makes Him male? It does beg the question, doesn’t it?
Silly and ridiculous? Of course, but such clerical idiocies invite parody and satire. Some things are too deep for tears.
Gerald E. Lavey
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
A Preferential Option for the Rich
One must admire its stark honesty at least, if not its greedy grab for more of the national pie. This is a reference, of course, to the long-term budget plan put forth yesterday by House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan which the House is expected to pass in the next few days and endorse as the GOP’s budget blueprint for the future.
In case you missed it, the GOP proposal would cut $5.8 trillion in spending over the next decade. Most of those cuts would come from Medicare, Medicaid, and from repeal of the health care law. At the same time, it would slash individual and corporate income taxes, reducing the top rate to 25 percent from the current 35 percent.
To be fair, any honest discussion of long-term budget reform must include changes to the health care system, including Medicare and Medicaid. It also must include changes in Social Security and reduced military spending, two issues that Ryan either ignores, as in the case of Social Security, or soft pedaled, in the case of military spending.
But to bludgeon programs that primarily help the poor and disadvantaged in our society while cutting taxes that will benefit mostly the wealthiest among us is stunning in its naked lust for more of the national pie. This at a time when the distribution of wealth and benefits is already overwhelming skewed in favor of the rich and the income disparity gap grows wider.
In WINNER TAKE ALL POLITICS, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, state that “from 1979 until the eve of the Great Recession [2005] the top one percent [of Americans] received 36 percent of all gains in household income – even after taking into account the value of employer-sponsored health insurance, federal taxes, and all government benefits.”
The top 0.1 percent had it even better, they say, gaining 20 percent of all after-tax income gains. “If the total income growth of these years were a pie,” they write, “the slice enjoyed by the roughly 300,000 people in the top tenth of 1 percent would be half again as large as the slice enjoyed by the roughly 180 million in the bottom 60 percent.” Meantime, the income growth of the people in between was modest, with their spending power remaining essentially stagnant.
This neatly sums up for me once again the reason I am still a liberal Democrat, with all its warts, its ugly racial past, its excesses, and its maddeningly self-destructive ways. At its core, the Democratic Party has maintained a steady preferential option for the poor, a phrase enshrined in Catholic social teaching since the dawn of the 20th century and the heart of liberal Democratic policies and administrations since the Roosevelt Administration.
Despite everything, that is one single factor that has kept me in the Democratic fold since I first voted in 1960. And, once again, as the 2012 election draws near, the choice for me could not be more clear — or more easy.
Gerald E. Lavey
In case you missed it, the GOP proposal would cut $5.8 trillion in spending over the next decade. Most of those cuts would come from Medicare, Medicaid, and from repeal of the health care law. At the same time, it would slash individual and corporate income taxes, reducing the top rate to 25 percent from the current 35 percent.
To be fair, any honest discussion of long-term budget reform must include changes to the health care system, including Medicare and Medicaid. It also must include changes in Social Security and reduced military spending, two issues that Ryan either ignores, as in the case of Social Security, or soft pedaled, in the case of military spending.
But to bludgeon programs that primarily help the poor and disadvantaged in our society while cutting taxes that will benefit mostly the wealthiest among us is stunning in its naked lust for more of the national pie. This at a time when the distribution of wealth and benefits is already overwhelming skewed in favor of the rich and the income disparity gap grows wider.
In WINNER TAKE ALL POLITICS, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, state that “from 1979 until the eve of the Great Recession [2005] the top one percent [of Americans] received 36 percent of all gains in household income – even after taking into account the value of employer-sponsored health insurance, federal taxes, and all government benefits.”
The top 0.1 percent had it even better, they say, gaining 20 percent of all after-tax income gains. “If the total income growth of these years were a pie,” they write, “the slice enjoyed by the roughly 300,000 people in the top tenth of 1 percent would be half again as large as the slice enjoyed by the roughly 180 million in the bottom 60 percent.” Meantime, the income growth of the people in between was modest, with their spending power remaining essentially stagnant.
This neatly sums up for me once again the reason I am still a liberal Democrat, with all its warts, its ugly racial past, its excesses, and its maddeningly self-destructive ways. At its core, the Democratic Party has maintained a steady preferential option for the poor, a phrase enshrined in Catholic social teaching since the dawn of the 20th century and the heart of liberal Democratic policies and administrations since the Roosevelt Administration.
Despite everything, that is one single factor that has kept me in the Democratic fold since I first voted in 1960. And, once again, as the 2012 election draws near, the choice for me could not be more clear — or more easy.
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, March 28, 2011
A Rock and a Hard Place
Like so many Americans, I am anxious to hear how President Obama is going to discuss our role in Libya in his address to the nation tonight. I applaud the step he took to prevent a slaughter of innocent people there. But, it’s not clear in my mind why Libya and not Syria, for example, or other countries in the region whose leaders will not hesitate to kill their own citizens to hold on to power.
What happens if the unrest in the Middle East spreads and citizens of Saudi Arabia rise up against their rulers? Do we intervene? And, if not, how do we decide? What is our policy? Is it based on strategic national interests, such as access to oil or the critical location of U.S. military bases in those countries? I think the President has to start addressing the situation from a broader perspective.
His task is made doubly difficult by the fact that we Americans are conflicted in own minds on how we should regard our role in the world. Are we the “go anywhere, pay any price” country described by President Kennedy or a more pragmatic country willing to venture forth only when we can afford it and it’s strictly in our national interest?
However stirring the call of JFK in 1961, we saw where that and President George W. Bush’s crusade for democracy in Iraq four decades later got us. Yet, our hearts are still tugged in that direction because this country has always stood as a beacon of freedom around the world and has gone to war time and time again to rid the world of dictators who would have stripped people of those freedoms.
And, because of that, we got ourselves in an untenable situation. In the aftermath of the Cold War where America emerged as the world’s only superpower, we stepped up and assumed that role. Meanwhile, other countries were more than willing to defer to America as “the world’s cop” who would come to their rescue if their liberty and freedoms were threatened and we built a military machine that enabled us to carry out that role. To the point that today America’s spending on military is greater than the next 14 countries combined.
Can we afford to continue that role while ignoring our nation’s vital future strength by reducing spending on education and research and ignoring decades-old repairs and replacements of our nation’s critical infrastructure, to cite just a few obvious examples? The current course is unsustainable, to use the favorite word in today’s political lexicon. That’s why I was heartened to see the President say to our partners in the U.N. that America was not going to take the lead in establishing a no-fly zone over Libya. While some saw it as dithering and indecisive, I saw it as pragmatic and far-sighted.
The President is caught between a rock and a hard place, but this is an opportunity for him to clarify our role in the world in the light of our obvious fiscal limitations and other competing national and international priorities. The partisan politics of this are daunting but I dearly hope he steps up and is willing to spend the political capital to sell such a policy and take the majority of Americans along with him.
Stay tuned.
Gerald E. Lavey
What happens if the unrest in the Middle East spreads and citizens of Saudi Arabia rise up against their rulers? Do we intervene? And, if not, how do we decide? What is our policy? Is it based on strategic national interests, such as access to oil or the critical location of U.S. military bases in those countries? I think the President has to start addressing the situation from a broader perspective.
His task is made doubly difficult by the fact that we Americans are conflicted in own minds on how we should regard our role in the world. Are we the “go anywhere, pay any price” country described by President Kennedy or a more pragmatic country willing to venture forth only when we can afford it and it’s strictly in our national interest?
However stirring the call of JFK in 1961, we saw where that and President George W. Bush’s crusade for democracy in Iraq four decades later got us. Yet, our hearts are still tugged in that direction because this country has always stood as a beacon of freedom around the world and has gone to war time and time again to rid the world of dictators who would have stripped people of those freedoms.
And, because of that, we got ourselves in an untenable situation. In the aftermath of the Cold War where America emerged as the world’s only superpower, we stepped up and assumed that role. Meanwhile, other countries were more than willing to defer to America as “the world’s cop” who would come to their rescue if their liberty and freedoms were threatened and we built a military machine that enabled us to carry out that role. To the point that today America’s spending on military is greater than the next 14 countries combined.
Can we afford to continue that role while ignoring our nation’s vital future strength by reducing spending on education and research and ignoring decades-old repairs and replacements of our nation’s critical infrastructure, to cite just a few obvious examples? The current course is unsustainable, to use the favorite word in today’s political lexicon. That’s why I was heartened to see the President say to our partners in the U.N. that America was not going to take the lead in establishing a no-fly zone over Libya. While some saw it as dithering and indecisive, I saw it as pragmatic and far-sighted.
The President is caught between a rock and a hard place, but this is an opportunity for him to clarify our role in the world in the light of our obvious fiscal limitations and other competing national and international priorities. The partisan politics of this are daunting but I dearly hope he steps up and is willing to spend the political capital to sell such a policy and take the majority of Americans along with him.
Stay tuned.
Gerald E. Lavey
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Building a Better Boss
The headline, “The Quest to Build a Better Boss,” jumped off the front page of the Business section as I was flipping through the Sunday New York Times this past weekend. Even though retired and no longer having to deal with such issues, the leadership/manager/boss concept still piques my interest.
The Times’ article has to do with a project that Google launched in 2009 called Project Oxygen. As reporter Adam Bryant writes,” Its mission was to devise something far more important to the future of Google, Inc. than its next search algorithm or app.” It deals with “building better bosses.”
Later in 2009, Bryant reports, the project team came up with “Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers.” A lot of déjà vu there, I know, but don’t hit the delete button yet. What I liked about Google’s approach, as reported by the Times, is that it is very simple and clear. Dead last in the hierarchy is “technical expertise.”
Heading the list, on the other hand, is “be a good coach,” followed by “empower your team and don’t micromanage,” “express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being,” “be a good communicator and listen to your team,” and so on. Technical expertise is important, but here is the context in which the Google team puts that role: “Roll up your sleeves and conduct work side by side with team, when needed (italics mine).” And, “understand the specific challenges of the work.”
Once, at an offsite for FAA executives, one of the speakers on the program was a Marine officer who was there to talk about leadership. He started off by saying he had distilled the essence of leadership down to one word, then paused while everyone was quietly wondering what he would say. He looked around the room and finally said, “Leadership is about love.” You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. This was not a long-haired guy wearing sandals and beads. He was a strong, experienced Marine who had been in combat and had led others into combat. When, he started talking on what love looks like in that context, many of the examples he cited were right in line with Google’s conclusions.
To use that old tired, trite, hackneyed line that grates on the nerves but occasionally serves a useful purpose: “It ain’t rocket science,” is it? Then, why is it that one doesn’t find more bosses like that? They’re clearly the exception. One very simple reason is that over time in many organizations, top people in the organization pick the managers reporting to them and they in turn pick those next in line, and this incestuous process goes on right down the line. A prime example is my own Catholic Church. John Paul II and the current Pope, Benedict XVI, have selected all the Cardinals in the College of Cardinals who will pick the successor to Benedict XVI. Think they’ll pick a reformist Pope like John XXIII? Hardly.
But, the Vatican is not unique. It happens to organizations, public and private, all over the world. And, sadly, many of these same organizations have a professed desire to change, but they keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. And that, as we all know, is the definition of insanity.
With the “grin and bear it” generation retiring and dying out, the new generation of workers has a far different outlook on the workplace and bosses. And, once the economy recovers, and workforce fluidity returns, they won’t simply stick around with organizations that don’t treat them right. Despite all its technical expertise and orientation, Google seems to understand that.
So, if organizations want “to win the future,” which the United States is trying to do writ large, they need to do what Google is trying to do. They don’t need to do more studies and establish commissions, etc. They need to break the mold and start hiring leaders with more and better soft skills in their managerial tool box. In other words, managers who understand in their heart and at a gut level The Golden Rule – that employees want to be treated the same way we all want to be treated.
It ain’t rocket science, is it?
Gerald E. Lavey
The Times’ article has to do with a project that Google launched in 2009 called Project Oxygen. As reporter Adam Bryant writes,” Its mission was to devise something far more important to the future of Google, Inc. than its next search algorithm or app.” It deals with “building better bosses.”
Later in 2009, Bryant reports, the project team came up with “Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers.” A lot of déjà vu there, I know, but don’t hit the delete button yet. What I liked about Google’s approach, as reported by the Times, is that it is very simple and clear. Dead last in the hierarchy is “technical expertise.”
Heading the list, on the other hand, is “be a good coach,” followed by “empower your team and don’t micromanage,” “express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being,” “be a good communicator and listen to your team,” and so on. Technical expertise is important, but here is the context in which the Google team puts that role: “Roll up your sleeves and conduct work side by side with team, when needed (italics mine).” And, “understand the specific challenges of the work.”
Once, at an offsite for FAA executives, one of the speakers on the program was a Marine officer who was there to talk about leadership. He started off by saying he had distilled the essence of leadership down to one word, then paused while everyone was quietly wondering what he would say. He looked around the room and finally said, “Leadership is about love.” You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. This was not a long-haired guy wearing sandals and beads. He was a strong, experienced Marine who had been in combat and had led others into combat. When, he started talking on what love looks like in that context, many of the examples he cited were right in line with Google’s conclusions.
To use that old tired, trite, hackneyed line that grates on the nerves but occasionally serves a useful purpose: “It ain’t rocket science,” is it? Then, why is it that one doesn’t find more bosses like that? They’re clearly the exception. One very simple reason is that over time in many organizations, top people in the organization pick the managers reporting to them and they in turn pick those next in line, and this incestuous process goes on right down the line. A prime example is my own Catholic Church. John Paul II and the current Pope, Benedict XVI, have selected all the Cardinals in the College of Cardinals who will pick the successor to Benedict XVI. Think they’ll pick a reformist Pope like John XXIII? Hardly.
But, the Vatican is not unique. It happens to organizations, public and private, all over the world. And, sadly, many of these same organizations have a professed desire to change, but they keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. And that, as we all know, is the definition of insanity.
With the “grin and bear it” generation retiring and dying out, the new generation of workers has a far different outlook on the workplace and bosses. And, once the economy recovers, and workforce fluidity returns, they won’t simply stick around with organizations that don’t treat them right. Despite all its technical expertise and orientation, Google seems to understand that.
So, if organizations want “to win the future,” which the United States is trying to do writ large, they need to do what Google is trying to do. They don’t need to do more studies and establish commissions, etc. They need to break the mold and start hiring leaders with more and better soft skills in their managerial tool box. In other words, managers who understand in their heart and at a gut level The Golden Rule – that employees want to be treated the same way we all want to be treated.
It ain’t rocket science, is it?
Gerald E. Lavey
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A Dissenting View on Public Unions
Among many others, an anonymous former colleague took exception to my recent posting ("All Politics are Local -- and Personal") on the battle between some state governors and public unions. This comment is particularly articulate, cogent, and reasoned. It deserves wider attention and consideration. – Gerald E. Lavey
"Jerry--
"I appreciate your efforts to look at this important public policy debate on a balanced basis, but I urge you to refresh your (our memories) of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). There the Secretary and the Administrator engaged PATCO President Bob Poli and his buddies in a sincere, arduous, lengthy negotiations. As I recall the bidding, those representatives of management put on the table a proposed increase of such historic proportions that they admitted that special legislation would be needed to deliver.
"PATCO rejected that historically generous offer in short shrift with the notation that the dollars were inadequate. Bob Poli called an illegal strike (several of his key players were convicted of the relevant felony). WHY-- because unlike the private sector, he knew (actually "bet") that he could take his "case" to the Congress. The process for public employees, according to the Bible of Poli made the bargaining process irrelevant.
"History showed that Bob was a bad bettor and the Reagan Administration was more able to manage the ATC than the PATCO cronies anticipated.
"This tale was recently repeated — different actors, same script. NATCA engaged in what must be called scorched earth tactics — casting egregious safety aspersions, attacking on a vituperative personal basis the Administrator and her staff, and placing media spots designed to terrify the average flyer. They played their ugly string out again, basically again dismissed the Administrator’s office and again (this time with statutory authority) went to the Congress to be their real negotiating party. Once again, the union bet lost and the contract was affirmed by Congress.
"Game over? Not hardly. NATCA has tried to hold up the FAA Reauthorization bill in an effort to reverse their loss.
"What’s the point of these long recitations—THAT PUBLIC UNIONS DO NOT FUNCTION LIKE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS. Yes, the idea of government employees being represented by professional union representatives sounds nice. But in practice (repeatedly, i.e. more than the cited examples), the statute that allows a union basically destroys the relationship between the public civil servant and her/his manager. The lesson of “we do not have to honor the negotiating process” translates to “if we do not agree with a manager’s action, let’s grieve it.”
"As you well remember the federal government (thank you OPM then) can devise processes with timelines approximating infinity. Public unions contribute to stagnation of important work. Your old office and mine now both have titular managers and shop bosses. The grinding of the FAA’s work makes a grist mill on our own Rock Creek appear to be working at warp speed.
"Sorry, Jerry, while we worked together well back in the 80’s, we have very differing views on this issue."
Anonymous
March 11, 2011 5:07 PM
"Jerry--
"I appreciate your efforts to look at this important public policy debate on a balanced basis, but I urge you to refresh your (our memories) of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). There the Secretary and the Administrator engaged PATCO President Bob Poli and his buddies in a sincere, arduous, lengthy negotiations. As I recall the bidding, those representatives of management put on the table a proposed increase of such historic proportions that they admitted that special legislation would be needed to deliver.
"PATCO rejected that historically generous offer in short shrift with the notation that the dollars were inadequate. Bob Poli called an illegal strike (several of his key players were convicted of the relevant felony). WHY-- because unlike the private sector, he knew (actually "bet") that he could take his "case" to the Congress. The process for public employees, according to the Bible of Poli made the bargaining process irrelevant.
"History showed that Bob was a bad bettor and the Reagan Administration was more able to manage the ATC than the PATCO cronies anticipated.
"This tale was recently repeated — different actors, same script. NATCA engaged in what must be called scorched earth tactics — casting egregious safety aspersions, attacking on a vituperative personal basis the Administrator and her staff, and placing media spots designed to terrify the average flyer. They played their ugly string out again, basically again dismissed the Administrator’s office and again (this time with statutory authority) went to the Congress to be their real negotiating party. Once again, the union bet lost and the contract was affirmed by Congress.
"Game over? Not hardly. NATCA has tried to hold up the FAA Reauthorization bill in an effort to reverse their loss.
"What’s the point of these long recitations—THAT PUBLIC UNIONS DO NOT FUNCTION LIKE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS. Yes, the idea of government employees being represented by professional union representatives sounds nice. But in practice (repeatedly, i.e. more than the cited examples), the statute that allows a union basically destroys the relationship between the public civil servant and her/his manager. The lesson of “we do not have to honor the negotiating process” translates to “if we do not agree with a manager’s action, let’s grieve it.”
"As you well remember the federal government (thank you OPM then) can devise processes with timelines approximating infinity. Public unions contribute to stagnation of important work. Your old office and mine now both have titular managers and shop bosses. The grinding of the FAA’s work makes a grist mill on our own Rock Creek appear to be working at warp speed.
"Sorry, Jerry, while we worked together well back in the 80’s, we have very differing views on this issue."
Anonymous
March 11, 2011 5:07 PM
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Know-Nothing Party Redux
I don’t know about you, but I’m uncomfortable — make that outraged — with a Congressman holding a hearing on Muslim extremism in America who’s on record as saying, “there are too many mosques in America.”
In case you missed it, that’s exactly what Rep. Peter King of New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a recent interview with Politico. And, he is the very same Congressman who has scheduled a hearing for this Thursday on the radicalization of Islam in this country.
With its exclusive focus on Islam, this hearing is unfair to Muslims in America and throughout the world. And, it will stir up already existing paranoia and bigotry about Muslims, particularly since 9/11, and play right into the hands of extremists, operating falsely under the banner of Islam, to make the case that America’s goal is really not to fight terrorism, but to eradicate Islam.
As an Irish Catholic, King ought to know better what bigotry can do because the same suspicions of Muslims that many Americans harbor today were directed against Catholics, and particularly Irish Catholics in places like New York and Boston, in the 19th century and well into the 20th century.
According to Charles R. Morris in “American Catholic,” the Know-Nothing Party, based strictly on a platform of nativism and anti-Catholicism, became a potent force in American politics in the mid-19th century. In 1854, one hundred and twenty-one congressmen counted themselves among the Know-Nothings.
Those of us of a certain age don’t have to consult the history books to recall experiences of anti-Catholicism in our own lives, with the case of JFK running for President in 1960 as the prime example. People actually believed in those days that people could not be loyal Americans and faithful Catholics, and Kennedy had to go before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to try to convince an audience of skeptical Protestant ministers that if elected his Catholic faith would not interfere with his duties as President.
In light of the continuing revelations of priestly pedophilia among Catholic clergy, I wonder what Rep. King and millions of my fellow Catholics would feel if a Muslim member of Congress were to call for a hearing on the contributions of Catholics to the rise of pedophilia in America?
Think about it.
Gerald E. Lavey
In case you missed it, that’s exactly what Rep. Peter King of New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a recent interview with Politico. And, he is the very same Congressman who has scheduled a hearing for this Thursday on the radicalization of Islam in this country.
With its exclusive focus on Islam, this hearing is unfair to Muslims in America and throughout the world. And, it will stir up already existing paranoia and bigotry about Muslims, particularly since 9/11, and play right into the hands of extremists, operating falsely under the banner of Islam, to make the case that America’s goal is really not to fight terrorism, but to eradicate Islam.
As an Irish Catholic, King ought to know better what bigotry can do because the same suspicions of Muslims that many Americans harbor today were directed against Catholics, and particularly Irish Catholics in places like New York and Boston, in the 19th century and well into the 20th century.
According to Charles R. Morris in “American Catholic,” the Know-Nothing Party, based strictly on a platform of nativism and anti-Catholicism, became a potent force in American politics in the mid-19th century. In 1854, one hundred and twenty-one congressmen counted themselves among the Know-Nothings.
Those of us of a certain age don’t have to consult the history books to recall experiences of anti-Catholicism in our own lives, with the case of JFK running for President in 1960 as the prime example. People actually believed in those days that people could not be loyal Americans and faithful Catholics, and Kennedy had to go before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to try to convince an audience of skeptical Protestant ministers that if elected his Catholic faith would not interfere with his duties as President.
In light of the continuing revelations of priestly pedophilia among Catholic clergy, I wonder what Rep. King and millions of my fellow Catholics would feel if a Muslim member of Congress were to call for a hearing on the contributions of Catholics to the rise of pedophilia in America?
Think about it.
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, March 7, 2011
All Politics are Local… and Personal
Tip O’Neill’s famous line about “all politics are local” came to mind as I was pondering the situation in Wisconsin where the Governor is trying to strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights.
As a liberal Democrat and former Government employee, the unions should have me in their pockets, out picketing in the streets and firing off letters to Congress. But, for the last couple of weeks, I have been conflicted, based in large part on my unpleasant experience at the FAA dealing with agency’s largest and most powerful union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
In the words of 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes in a totally different context, that experience was “short, nasty, and brutish,” but unfortunately in my case not “short.” That aside, it’s time for me to look at the union position from a larger perspective. And, through that lens, what the Governor is trying to do in Wisconsin comes into sharp relief as a cheap political ploy masquerading as a deficit reduction measure. It is thinnest of fig leafs because the public unions had already agreed to the Governor’s cuts.
But, with the nation in the throes of a slow economic recovery and hundreds of thousands in the private sector still out of work, it’s a convenient time for the Republicans to paint public unions as the bogeyman. It plays well throughout the country, particularly in the heartland and in the South. Everyone needs a scapegoat. The Republican Governor of Indiana has already gotten rid of collective bargaining rights for public employees in his State and the Republican Governor of Ohio aims to do the same.
Once, public unions hardly came up as a blip on the national labor screen but as private sector unions have declined precipitously over the last five decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that now “more union members are government workers, not private sector employees,” according to a recent New Yorker article. That’s what helped put public unions in the Republican crosshairs. If the power of the public unions can be reduced, their role as a major donor to Democratic causes can be sharply curtailed as well.
We can’t let that happen because with the income disparity between the rich and the poor increasingly widening in this country and the median income of the middle class remaining essentially stagnant, we need unions to help redress the balance. But, both unions in the private and public sectors need to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of building broad political support, mainly by showing they care about the economy as a whole and the financial well-being of the agencies and organizations they work for, and not just about increasing the salaries and benefits of their own union workers, the rest of the country be damned.
If the U.S. is to continue to lead the world’s economy, we need the unions to help us maintain our leadership role but they must realize that for us to get there we can’t keep doing more of the same and expecting a different result.
Gerald E. Lavey
As a liberal Democrat and former Government employee, the unions should have me in their pockets, out picketing in the streets and firing off letters to Congress. But, for the last couple of weeks, I have been conflicted, based in large part on my unpleasant experience at the FAA dealing with agency’s largest and most powerful union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
In the words of 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes in a totally different context, that experience was “short, nasty, and brutish,” but unfortunately in my case not “short.” That aside, it’s time for me to look at the union position from a larger perspective. And, through that lens, what the Governor is trying to do in Wisconsin comes into sharp relief as a cheap political ploy masquerading as a deficit reduction measure. It is thinnest of fig leafs because the public unions had already agreed to the Governor’s cuts.
But, with the nation in the throes of a slow economic recovery and hundreds of thousands in the private sector still out of work, it’s a convenient time for the Republicans to paint public unions as the bogeyman. It plays well throughout the country, particularly in the heartland and in the South. Everyone needs a scapegoat. The Republican Governor of Indiana has already gotten rid of collective bargaining rights for public employees in his State and the Republican Governor of Ohio aims to do the same.
Once, public unions hardly came up as a blip on the national labor screen but as private sector unions have declined precipitously over the last five decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that now “more union members are government workers, not private sector employees,” according to a recent New Yorker article. That’s what helped put public unions in the Republican crosshairs. If the power of the public unions can be reduced, their role as a major donor to Democratic causes can be sharply curtailed as well.
We can’t let that happen because with the income disparity between the rich and the poor increasingly widening in this country and the median income of the middle class remaining essentially stagnant, we need unions to help redress the balance. But, both unions in the private and public sectors need to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of building broad political support, mainly by showing they care about the economy as a whole and the financial well-being of the agencies and organizations they work for, and not just about increasing the salaries and benefits of their own union workers, the rest of the country be damned.
If the U.S. is to continue to lead the world’s economy, we need the unions to help us maintain our leadership role but they must realize that for us to get there we can’t keep doing more of the same and expecting a different result.
Gerald E. Lavey
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