Darkness Amidst the Light: Light Beating the Darkness

Dec. 28- Liturgical Calendar date of The Slaughter of the Innocents

 It is now 14 days since the tragedy at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School. Two weeks of mourning, questions, fears, and a seemingly endless news cycle broken only momentarily by Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Time to make real what President Obama said at the vigil on that Sunday evening: This has to end.

That means some sensible gun control discussions and debate. Let's forget the hysteria. You know it well. I know it well. We need assault weapons in private ownership like we need to return to using quill pens and oil lamps. NO, it is not a way to protect ourselves from the government, as I heard one legislator say. Are you freakin' insane, I wanted to ask? Having hoardes of private citizens own assault weapons to "protect from our own government" is not a constitutional right. That is NOT a "well-regulated militia." That is anarchy, which by definition is not well-regulated. Arm the principals of the schools? You may very well lose a lot of good principals who don't want to be part of a gun-culture. Put armed guards in every school? Columbine and Virgina Tech had those.

And will we put armed guards at every mall, place of worship or beauty spa in the country? Will we become an armed camp with guns in the hands of every Tom, Dick, and Harry? How scary!

Cars don't kill people, drunk drivers do. That is just insane to even post as a reasonable thought. It is why we have laws ABOUT drunken driving, what you could call "Drunken Driving Control." When Minnesota got tough on drunken driving, for example, DUI arrests shot up AND deaths from drunk driving dropped. Note that no one outlawed cars- or even drinking. Just putting the two together.

Why should it be harder to get good mental health care than to buy an assault rifle? Why are background checks for gun ownership so difficult? We do it for teachers and counselors. Is owning a gun so much of a right? Freedom of the press is just as constitutionally protected, yet we say there are times and places when there is such a thing as privacy and confidentiality limiting some of that. Why are firearms so sacred?

Perhaps in that last word is part of the problem. They have become sacred- a holy grail- inviolable- more important than human lives. They have become a god. There is the real, profound issue that no one can talk about. We have set up a false god that controls us. The power of the gun. No, not the gun lobby. The power of the gun. It is devouring our nation in its primal scream to survive.

I am not a gun owner. I don't believe I would ever own one. Protection? I wouldn't be able to use it for that. I would be so afraid of over-reacting and shooting someone I love by mistake. It happened locally here just a few weeks ago. Accidental deaths by guns may be more than were killed at Newtown.

I am not against gun ownership any more than I am against people owning cars or driving cars. Let's not over-react in either direction. But let's be sensible and reasonable about it. High-capacity weapons and clips controlled or banned; assault rifles made for the single purpose of killing people banned; background checks required. These are reasonable.

Is this politicizing the deaths on Connecticut? Yes. It was politicized the minute the shooter walked into the school. It is an issue of how resolute we can be to both protect lives and rights. We have to be able to do both. We remember the freedom of speech measurement- you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That limits free speech just as libel laws limit it and the freedom of the press. Democracy is a delicate balance between rights and protection; freedom and life.

We can do it. We are a bright and caring nation. Let's use our ability to overcome the barriers to discussion and sane legislation. Too many ore people will die if we don't.

Still the Cradle of Freedom

John F. Kennedy said it 51 years ago in his Inaugural Address:

And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

I was reminded of that again this past weekend when we spent two days in the deep history of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. First at Valley Forge where the troops with General Washington endured a winter of great tribulation and then at the Independence Mall in historic downtown Philadelphia we were steeped in that great American Creation Story.

Human rights, we said in 1776 are not something that a government hands down to its people. They are God-given and natural.

Democracy, in 1776 was an untried ideal. Would it work? Can it work? What an experiment. It remains an experiment that seems often to teeter on the edge of uncertainty. (That is for a different post, though.)

What I saw in Valley Forge and Philadelphia was the ongoing magnetic draw of this first democratic revolution. We heard languages from around the world. We saw tourists from Japan and Germany stand in awe of a cracked bell with the home of the Declaration of Independence visible behind it across the street.

I was speechless myself. I have never been to the historic sites of Philly before. It was a moment of awe and deep gratitude. From that spot we did "proclaim liberty" to more than just all the land. It went forth around the world.

May that always be the case.

[Note: A number of picture posts will be coming in a few weeks. I have been having fun taking photos. Watch for them so I can share my fun and experiences.]

On Not Taking a Vote

When you put rights to a vote, the minority always loses.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey earlier this year vetoed a same-sex marriage act saying it should go to a vote. Just like, he said, many people would have preferred a referendum in the south in the 50s and 60s instead of the violence that went along with winning the civil rights of African-Americans.

Come again?

Yes, it might have avoided violence, at that time, but if that were the only way for minorities to win their rights, we would still be living in the Jim Crow era. BY DEFINITION, the minority would not have enough votes to pass such a law without a law that allowed them to vote in the first place. Such a law would be tough to pass without a fight. Like we had in the 50s and 60s.

With a same-sex marriage vote, the number of the minority is even less than the minority number of African-Americans 60 years ago. Of course it will lose.

Another commentator I heard say that the same-sex marriage debate has shifted faster than any major issue he has seen in modern times. Republican pollsters and some commentators are even saying that this is an issue that may find the GOP on the wrong side of history if they don't see what is happening. It would be very sad to see the anti-same-sex side take to the ballot box to force the minority to comply when it may very well be that these state constitutional amendments may turn out to be as relevant as the anti-intermarriage laws of 100 years ago are today.

Freedom of Pictures- A Primer

Thanks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt for this fun video on taking pictures. There are times I fear that we must be ever vigilant about these kinds of rights!



HT to Wired.com

Wow. I'm Grateful. And Wary.

Got a call the other day, late afternoon, from our credit card company. They told us they spotted a possible fraudulent transaction coming through the system and wanted us to verify.

What impressed me was that the call came within minutes of the time it was posted. When I called back I learned that bit of information. It does appear that this was a fraudulent transaction and the people at the credit card company caught it. I couldn't identify the transaction and neither my wife or I remembered any transaction like that. We could still find out that it was real- some delayed posting or something- but it was good to know that the credit card company was on the ball.

Of course the more paranoid side of me realized that this was discovered by a computer program that looks for anomalies in transactions and that it is always scanning my records. I know that this would allow all kinds of surveillance to look at my records and learn some things about me. Like we preachers used to say in our stewardship sermons- you can judge what's important to a person by looking at their check register.

This is the downside of the technology that may have saved me money and headaches. Which is why some of what goes on in the name of "national security" scares me. When we turn things around and allow uncontrolled abuse of privacy and constitutional rights to proptect ourselves we are on dangerous ground. I know the standard answer. I have used it myself. If you are not doing something illegal- why worry?

Because humans are humans and power corrupts. It is a small step for a person in power to use information for all kinds of things. It is a small step for a government founded on fear to name all kinds of things as dangerous to the national security. We have moved a long way from the technology of Nixon and Watergate. We have only made it easier.

So I am grateful that the credit card industry is able to police my account and let me know what is happening. I hope they will let me know when someone is also trying to use that information for other purposes made "legal" by an "opinion" from a "lawyer" in the government.