Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

In 1971 the British rock band, The Who had a big hit with their song Won't Get Fooled Again. It reminds me of the words I sing in church every week, "put not your faith in princes or sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; In that very day his thoughts perish." Today Donald J. Trump took over as President of the United States.

I was in a meeting when he swore the oath and when one of the men in the meeting (he was listening to a device in his ear) announced that we had a new Prsident the other 60 people in the room began clapping and cheering. (About the meeting: I quit my job as a teacher after last semester and took a job a a salesman for a general contractor. I sell roofs, windows, doors, concrete, solar energy systems, and insulation now. Much more money than teaching.) I am glad Trump is our President but I don't for a minute think he is going to usher in an age of justice and prosperity. I think he'll do less damage to us that Biden did but that is all.

I haven't been excited about a presidential candidate since Ron Paul ran for President. Although, I must admit that the last time Trump was President he did appint good judges to the U.S. courts, but I think that is mainly because he didn't have strong opinions about judges, and just asked the Federalist Society who they want him to appoint. Admittedly, that is a pretty good way to pick people to be federal judges. Gosh, It was fun campaigning for Ron Paul. It's too bad he didn't win.

The Day Before Thanksgiving

This week I gave all my students an extra credit assignment: Read three Thanksgiving Proclamations: George Washington (1789), Abraham Lincoln (1864), and Ronald Reagan (1988) then write a 6-10 page Chicago Style essay comparing and contrasting the proclamations. I gave them until next Monday to turn it in. Some of them have submitted their essays early, and they are beautiful.

Today I expalined to my stuents how NPR broadcasts Mama Stamberg's cranberry relish recipe every year, let them hear some recordings of the broadcast from years past, then let them taste it. I've heard the recipe many times over the last thirty years but this was the first time I ever made it. It tasted good and most of my students liked it.

Now I am baking two cranberry walnut pies. I just put them in the oven. Once I finish writing this post I'll get to work on two peanut butter chocolate pies (recipe below), and then I'll make pheasant pate (we have lots of pheasants in the fridge!) for tomorrow. We are going to be at the cathedral in San Francisco.


Peanutbutter Pie Recipe
Use two Keebler chocolate pie crusts or two Graham cracker pie crusts. The filling is one cup of creamy peanut butter, 8 oz cream cheese, 1 1/4 cup powdered sugar beaten together, then fold in 8 oz of cool whip (refrigerated but not frozen). The filling is enough for two pies. Top with whipped cream. I like to whip 8 oz of heavy cream with 1/4 cup powdered sugar. That way it doesn't separate as quickly as it would otherwise.

So Excited!

For the past few days I've been writing syllabi and planning my classes. Tonight I made it up to Thanksgiving week in my U.S. History courses. And guess what I am going to do. I am going to have my students read Thanksgiving proclamations from Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan, and then write a comparitive essay. I can not begin to tell you how excited I am about this assignment!

The President's Favorite Philosopher

Do you remember when Geo. W. Bush was asked who his favorite philosopher was and he answered, "Jesus Christ"? I thought that was a pretty dumb answer.  Jesus is the the only true object of philosophy.  He is the Logos, the Giest, the All-Soul, the One, the Prime Mover the philosophers only had a vague idea about.  He is the one who holds all power and authority in Heaven and on earth.  He is an imperious King who accepts no rivals, who is busy battering down even the gates of Hell in order to expand his dominion.  He does not share space with Plato, Aquinas, Hume, or Kant.  He is the only wisdom the wise pursue.  In short, Jesus is the -sophy one must philo-.  So, it was pure dumbth that Bush said Jesus was his favorite philosopher.  Sure, there was a political reason he said it, and it paid off.  Nevertheless it was wrong.

I much preferred what Obama said about his favorite philosopher.  In the New York Times he said,"Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr? I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers".  Aside from the fact that this is the kind of thing you'd expect an undergrad liberal arts major to say, we can learn quite a bit about the President from Niebuhr.   Probably the most important thing is that symbol - not the Greek understanding of symbol, e.g. two to or more things being merged so that experiencing one is the same as experiencing all - is more important than reality.  For instance, Niebuhr denied the physical resurrection of Jesus, writing in 1938,"I have not the slightest interest in the empty tomb or physical resurrection." Yet claimed it as a an important symbol for people's moral action to make the world a better place.  The Resurrection of Jesus isn't for the salvation of individual men.  Rather, it is a symbol that gives people enough hope - and all he means by symbol in this context is mythical ideas that motivate people -  to take public action.

But what about evil?  What about the sin that corrupts every heart?  If Jesus does not heal us what is to be done?  How can I live if Jesus did not trample down death?  What hope do I have if, as Niebuhr says, "Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity."    The "world" is certainly loved by God, but I and you are the individual "whosoever" in needs Jesus.  For someone who denies the resurrection of Jesus, as Niebuhr did, who claims there is no such thing as immortal individuals this idea that salvation is really political action on the part of groups of people is probably the best answer possible.  

But the Church teaches that we are immortal individuals.  We are, each one of us, made in the image and likeness of God, and that we do, each one of us, live for ever.  Job said that though he die he, not some collective intellect, not a group of people making political actions, but Job himself would see his redeemer.


But Niebuhr, lake the serpent in the Garden, was partly right. There is a collective element to evil.  We see this in the Icon of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday)  The children ("and a little child shall lead them") in the icon are all distinct persons.  But the adults, the same people who later in the week would cry out, "crucify him" are merged into one mass.  Their hearts were not pure, even as they shouted "Hosanna", thus they are depicted as merely parts of a group.  The sinful can not relate to Jesus as individuals, only as a mob.   

Sin is like that.  It is all the same.  It is truly infinitely less than the variety God offers because it shuns His infinitude in favor or repetitive sin.  Sin is repetitive and boring and constraining.  Consider the man who can only see women as potential sex partners.  How many amazing people has he ignored because they were too old, or too young, or too skinny, or too fat.  Even those women he notices he regards very narrowly, the most important thing about them is that he can have sex with them.  Compared to that fact, all other aspects of their persons, no mater how wonderful, pale in the mind of the man who regards their sex as their most important feature.  How boring!  How repetitive!  How horrible!  This man has closed himself off from the revelation of Himself God has built into every individual human being. Individuals matter not to him.  They didn't matter to Niebuhr.  But when Orthodox Christians approach the chalice for Holy Communion we are called by our names: "The servant of God Matthew receives...."  Truly, we approach God as part of a community, but it is a community composed of individuals.


Niebuhr embraces the denial of individuals.  His belief in some sort of non-personal collective salvation went hand in hand with his recognition that coercive force has to be employed to fight evil within large groups of people.  That "social justice" requires the strong hand of government is not a problem because the individuals being coerced are not as important as the group.  Because individuals don't last, are not immortal, it is okay to force them to do whatever is necessary for the good of the group, which does last.  Or, as Rudyard Kippling wrote in his famous poem, plenty for all is achieved "by robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul".  In this we can see why Niebuhr would be Obama's favorite philosopher.  

  

FDR, 1942 State of the Union

“They know that victory for us means victory for religion, and they could not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate living room for both Hitler and God. In proof of this, the Nazis have now announced their plan for enforcing their new, German pagan religion all over the world, a plan by which the Holy Bible and the cross of mercy would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the naked sword.

“We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of Genesis: God created man in his own image. We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives. No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been, there never will be successful compromise between good and evil.”
F.D.R., State of the Union Addres, 1942