Day 10 Feb. 6, 2003
1. Names. Start Color Purple Tuesday; four days on that, again, revised response schedule. Roughly a quarter of the book for each time, though I encourage you to read ahead; your responses needn’t be limited to the pages for each day, though if you’re in C and D I will not be impressed by responses to the first ten pages.
Reminder of the ICPF conference Feb.
21-22, Juhnke speaking at
I got most of your placements/intentions last time—I’ll pass that around again if you were missed. Journal guidelines.
Collect topic statements.
Today, I want to take some time for questions, comments, responses. Here’s a slip, write whatever you want, anonymous or not.
2. On Ch. 13, and “peace with the land.” My little conversation with A.D. about rain and how it didn’t do him any good . . . The problem with ecology is that it seems so distant, doesn’t it? But as J/H suggest, the threats of military disaster and environmental exhaustion are not really separable. The military has just asked for exemptions from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, so that they can operate more freely on military reserves.
The awareness that nature is something we can use up is, historically, kind of a new idea. Much of American history is based in the assumption that development is good, that “wild” nature is there mainly as a resource for us.
The Rule of Unintended Consequences, and the Dust Bowl. The
steel plow made it possible to plant crops all across the
The rise of environmentalism, with Silent Spring and Earth
Day. Agent Orange and the devastation of
Environment
and Nuclear Issues: J. Schell’s The Fate of the Earth made phrases like
“nuclear winter” and “a republic of insects and grass” current. The movement
for controls of nuclear weapons, ending above-ground testing, and
non-proliferation went well into the 1980s, dissipated with the collapse of the
Now the issues are global warming, overpopulation, ozone depletion; do we despair, or hope? Many things have begun to change. It is possible. There’s continued resistance, and legitimate debate about just what actions make sense. But it’s still possible that there will be a planet left for you folks to wander around when you retire . . . Of course, it’s also possible that it’ll be a very different planet.
3. Epilogue, history and hope. The language of “master narratives” and “revisionist history.” Is there something between “triumphant nationalism and radical criticism,” kill-everything-that-moves violence and do-nothing passive pacifism? Well, as J/H have been trying to show all along, of course there is. Really none of us believe in always being violent nor in absolute nonresistance. And from there it’s really a matter of strategy and tactics. How important do we think the means we use are? Is it possible to “use” violence and then go back to being peaceful afterwards? What does war do even to those who are on the winning side? How much attention do we need to pay to the rest of the world, if we have the weapons to do whatever we want?
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,882459,00.html
And what about our other priorities?
H e a r t
s &
M i
n d s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Budgets are moral documents
by Jim Wallis
A budget is a moral
document. It clearly demonstrates the priorities of a family, a church, an
organization, or a government. A budget shows what we most care about. This
week, President Bush sent his budget to Congress - a budget he said reflected
his most important priorities. So it is worth paying close attention to.
The president's budget of
$2.23 trillion dollars proposes a record deficit of $300 billion, speeds up
billions of dollars of tax cuts that provide most of their benefits to the
wealthiest Americans, includes huge increases for the Pentagon, and slashes
domestic spending - including core government programs that create affordable
housing, curb juvenile delinquency, hire police officers, bring aid to rural
schools, help make child care available to low-income working mothers, and
guarantee children's health insurance. There are the Bush priorities.
The deficits increase each
year and run up to $1 trillion dollars over the next five years. The Pentagon
budget is increased by 4.2 percent to $380 billion, beyond what was already the
biggest military buildup since the height of the Cold War defense budgets under
Ronald Reagan. Most of the increases are not directed to counteracting the new
threats from terrorist cells all over the world, but for weapons systems
guaranteed to leave no defense contractor behind. And the cost of the impending
war with
There is no money in this
budget for the states, which are confronting huge deficits and the prospect of
draconian cuts in social services, mostly to the poor. In fact, the
administration suggests states could meet their budget challenges with the
"flexibility" to cut programs like health insurance for the nation's
poorest children.
George W. Bush now sees
himself as a war president. But in a time of war, there are no sacrifices for
those most able to make them. This budget is not a choice between "guns
and butter," as the traditional language goes, but is a budget full of
both "missiles and caviar," as commentator Mark Shields so aptly put
it. The rich get huge tax breaks, the military gets the big increases, and the
poor get left behind.
The president should be
commended for increasing the funding for combating AIDS in
The rest of the programs for
mentoring and volunteering laid out in the president's State of the Union speech,
while good, are relatively low-cost and ultimately more symbolic than
substantial. Without the crucial funding for programs that directly and
effectively reduce poverty, "compassionate conservatism" is now in
grave danger of becoming compassionless conservatism. And as far as the
much-heralded faith-based initiative of this administration (which I have
supported), equal access to funding for faith-based organizations (which I also
have supported) has now been seriously undercut. George Bush's faith-based
initiative has been reduced to equal access for religious organizations to the
crumbs falling from the table. What a tragic outcome to the promise and
rhetoric of the early days of the Bush administration.
Budgets are moral documents,
and this one reveals the administration's true priorities.
What
might it mean to make constructive nonviolence, rather than redemptive
violence, our master narrative? To make mutuality and interdependence, rather
than
To do so would not, surely, mean throwing all our weapons away tomorrow. It would take decades, maybe centuries, to come to pass. It’s a big job. Maybe it’s not ever going to be finished. But it won’t ever be finished if we don’t begin.
4. Collect questions, go from there . . .