Sitting Down and Shutting Up

I want to invite you all into a conversation I’ve been having with my mom. This all starts with a message that she forwarded to her entire address book Monday morning. It’s the jumping-off point for this conversation, so it’s important to start here. What follows is the record of our e-mail conversation. Hopefully, others among you also recognize the need for broad, respectful conversations about the topics we address and will join us as we stake our claims, clarify and explain our opinions, and ask questions that will help us to know each other better. Thanks for taking a look.

So here’s the message that started it all:

This is by a daughter of a murdered couple in Raytown, Missouri who had a Bible and Bookstore on 63rd Street. Just one more example:

When I had to testify at the murder trial of my parents a week ago, I was asked to raise my right hand. The bailiff started out "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"
I stood there and waited but she said nothing. She said "Do you?" I was so stunned I blurted out "What happened to "so help me God'?" She came back with "Do you?" I replied yes, but I was perplexed. Then the judge said "you can say that if you want to." I stopped, raised my right hand, and finished with "So help me God!"

I told my son and daughter that when it came time for them to testify, they should do the same. It's no wonder we have so many problems in this country. If I'd had my wits about me I'd have told them that taking God out of the courtroom is only going to result in more criminals and murderers like him being in there! I don't know what can be done about it, but it's time we stepped up and did something.

CNBC this morning had a poll on this question. They had the highest number of responses that they have ever had for one of their polls and the percentage was the same as this: 86% to keep the words, 14% against. That is a pretty commanding public response. - I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't. Now it is your turn... It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!

If you agree, pass this on, if not simply delete.

To which I responded:

We don’t tell the other 14%, like me and my friends, to shut up and sit down because we live in the United States, and we are governed by a set of propositions—the Constitution, the highest authority in the Union—that ensures that no majority, no matter how large or extreme, has the authority to tread on the rights—the inalienable rights of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—to believe and to practice as we see fit.

I have never been so angry and offended by anything you’ve done in recent history. Why the hell did you send this to me?!

I cannot believe that you hold to this position, and I cannot understand how you thought I would appreciate seeing this.

And later:

I apologize. I flew off the handle, but stuff like this just bespeaks a complete lack of respect for the ideas and values of other persons, and really gets my goat, especially when it comes from people whom I love and respect.

Just imagine, though, if somebody tried to tell you to sit down and shut up because you were in the minority.

So she comes back with:

I would expect them to tell me to sit down and shut up if I knew I was causing a huge controversy. That's what happens - minority or majority - and then things are totally blown out of proportion.

So I finally responded with:

I think it’s especially important to speak up when the topic is controversial—that means it’s important to a lot of persons for a lot of different reasons and that I just might learn something that will cause me to reconsider my opinion. I don’t get to learn anything, I don’t have the opportunity to grow, if I’m told to sit down, shut up, and keep to my place. The only way I have ever learned anything is by asking questions, and now I’m coming to find that asking questions, holding an opinion, asking people questions about theirs and inviting them to ask questions about mine and their own is getting me shoved into a corner. I’m just standing up to be heard, just like those guys on the commons back in Lexington 229 years ago, like those men in the convention hall in Philadelphia later that same year when they told George III and his government in London that would no longer be governed by a system that they felt was trampling on their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, like those other men who met in Philadelphia again eleven years later and framed a document that describes itself as the highest law in the land and created a government in three branches that had the power to balance against each other, like another group of men who met in New York in 1789 and suggested that certain rights in particular, like the rights to speak one’s mind, to ask questions and to express opinion in a public forum, and the right to believe and to act—and not to believe or to act—are so important that they needed to be named out loud for the whole world to see and for all persons to hear, and like those folks in Selma forty years ago, and maybe even like those people in the arenas all across the Mediterranean basin 1800 years ago who thought that their ideas about God and religion deserved to be heard in the open forum of the Roman world.

This country has been grounded in a commitment to freedom and justice for all, and while I admit that the breadth and applicability of that freedom has changed, I think it has expanded in important and valuable ways because people have had the courage to stand up and speak truth to power. They’ve also respected their neighbors enough to stand up and meet them in open conversation. It’s not God that offends me, quite the contrary. It’s my faith in God that helps me write this message. It’s not an open and forthright conversation about religions that worries me. I’m worried that my family and neighbors do not respect me enough to have those conversations with me, that it seems to be easier for them to tell me to sit down and shut up, that I should just close my eyes and my mouth and let the government do as it pleases and reform the very fabric of its history of dissent into a straightjacket of conformity.

I will not simply delete this message. Simply deleting this message is sitting down and shutting up, and neither of my parents raised me to be so accommodating when so much is on the line. This is a big deal not least because it betrays a profound lack of respect for the minds of anyone with the courage to voice an opinion contrary to the dominant worldview, but also because such disrespect tramples on the rights of all persons to be religious as they choose. This right includes the ability to do no religion at all. When the government of the United States establishes through its currency, through its courts, and through its schools that a belief in one God is the necessary condition for full and complete citizenship in this country, every religious belief and practice is threatened because it would be at the whim of the majority. While a Christian majority might now—and might have always—prevailed in the United States, that does not give them the authority to assert their dominion over minorities, other Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Native Americans, and other non-Christians among them. To let religion—beliefs and practices—be a function of an electoral plurality or even a majority cuts at the very heart of the plural, democratic, respectful community we, the people of the United States, purport to value.

Cats

Cats are filthy, disgusting, repellant creatures that befoul the homes in which we live.

Why do people keep them around?

Things to Consider

My sister, whose husband is in the US Navy, sent this to me this morning. He forwarded it to her in an email message as a prayer wheel. There are supposed to be pictures to go with it. I didn't get them, so you can't either.

"The average age of the military man is 19 years. He is a short-haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country. He never really cared much for work and he would rather wax his own car than wash his father's; but he has never collected unemployment either.

"He's a recent high school graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten year old jalopy, and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away. He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz or swing and 155mm howizzitor. He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he was at home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk.

"He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him, but he can fieldstrip a rifle in 30 seconds and reassemble it in less time in the dark. He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must. He digs foxholes and
latrines and can apply first aid like a professional. He can march until he is told to stop or stop until he is told to march.

"He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient. He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry. He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts. If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.

"He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life - or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime.

"He has stood atop mountains of dead bodies, and helped to create them. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed. He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to 'square-away' those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking. In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from home, he defends their right to be disrespectful.

"Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over 200 years.

"He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding. Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood. And now we even have wom an over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to War when our nation calls us to do so. As you go to bed tonight, remember this shot: A short lull, little shade and a picture of loved ones in their helmets....... "

And so this is my response (which she's already seen):

Those are pretty heavy duty, and some good things to remember, but there are a lot of things that it doesn’t address—like why these guys have a tough time spelling and what circumstances at home led them to choose to join an armed service.

And I also think it’s appalling that “He has stood atop mountains of dead bodies, and helped to create them” tops the list of things of which they are proud and too easily dismisses honest dissent as disrespect.

So while these guys do have my respect, they haven’t paid for it with their blood. They have it because they are living, breathing human beings who have made difficult decisions—even if they’re not the choices I would have made. And they have my understanding, perhaps in ways that I can’t explain to them very well. And there are even some of them out there who have my love.

And you know I love you too!

Was I out of line? She hasn't said so, but I'm curious as to whether or not I'm doing this with enough sensitivity.

I Resolve

In the year 2005 I resolve to: Molest more hamsters. Get your resolution here

Lola

So, I've been away.

I rekindled a relationship with an old flame--still going, by the way--got a job that I tolerate while I prepare applications for law schools, saw my sister get married (even while I can't--at least not to whom I would choose in this state), mourned the election results (like the other 49% of the population), turned 30, survived the LSAT, and I'm pretty much no worse for the wear.

So I've got this cat, kitten really, that I'm not particularly inclined to care for. Sure, I consented to bring her home, but on a temporary basis. If my heart remains unchanged, she'll be going to live elsewhere within a week. I won't have her destroyed, mind you; I have enough veterinarian friends to see to that. But, like I said, I'm not particularly inclined to care for this kitten.

It's small, weak, unproductive and given to consuming resources I can scarcely afford to provide, among all the other crap that kittens do. Am I just a heartless bastard? She's cute enough, I just don't like her.

Yeah, and her name's Lola.