Fewer Broken Pieces

Sarah Palin says we shouldn’t “second-guess” Israel’s actions:

The Republican VP nominee recently said that she would never “second guess Israel if that country decided to attack Iran.” Speaking with Katie Couric of CBS News, she stood by that quote.

“We shouldn’t second guess Israel’s security efforts because we cannot ever afford to send a message that we would allow a second Holocaust, for one,” she said. “Israel has got to have the opportunity and the ability to protect itself. They are our closest ally in the Mideast. We need them. They need us. And we shouldn’t second guess their efforts.”

The Alaska governor said the United States should be free to relay its rights our concerns, but “we don’t have to second-guess what their efforts would be if they believe … that it is in their country and their allies, including us, all of our best interests to fight against a regime, especially Iran, who would seek to wipe them off the face of the earth,” said Palin. “It is obvious to me who the good guys are in this one and who the bad guys are.”

Emphasis mine.  Can it really be reduced to a matter of good guys against bad guys?  I am more than a little nervous about the prospect of Israel getting a free pass in its international conduct today because of the Holocaust.  It seems here that Palin is advocating for the “Bush doctrine” of preventative war.  Israel’s “opportunity and ability to protect itself” in the context would come in the form of an airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Should the US support an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program?  Some will argue so, but I am disinclined, since Israel’s own nuclear weapons program is an open secret.  Still, Iran’s current president has done more than his fair share of threatening Israel, and the recent launches of long-range missiles are disconcerting.  That being said, surely there is room for second-guessing, no matter which nations are involved.  As a matter of fact, the US protested when Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 (and this was when Ronald Reagan was in office).  Even the US under a Republican president has a history of second-guessing Israel’s military actions.  So Palin here espouses a more extreme position than many in US politics.

It is funny what makes for a crisis in America. We are not at war (at least not domestically).  Our nation is not experiencing civil unrest.  There isn’t mass starvation, nor a plague, and our nation’s infrastructure has not been crippled by natural disasters.  According to President Bush, we are in a crisis because our citizens cannot easily borrow money.

There is something about Governor Sarah Palin which stimulates discussion:

I grew up with those people.

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars.

They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.

That is nationalism. And, if anyone is keeping score, that is the exact opposite of what Jeremiah Wright expressed when he said “God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme.”

On September 28, about 50 American pastors organized by the Alliance Defense Fund will deliberately preach a political message:

For more than a half-century, federal law has restricted the right of most churches and pastors to speak out about candidates for office.  But on Sunday, Sept. 28, about 50 pastors nationwide . . . will deliberately challenge that law by speaking out politically from their pulpits.

. . .

Pastors long spoke out on great moral issues such as slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor and prostitution. Pastors also have spoken from the pulpit with great frequency for and against various candidates for government office.

All that changed in 1954 with the passage of the “Johnson amendment,” which restricted the right of churches and pastors to speak about candidates for office. The amendment . . . changed the Internal Revenue Code to prohibit churches and other non-profit organizations from supporting or opposing a candidate for office.

Did the amendment really restrict the right of free speech?  No:

Afer the amendment passed, churches faced a choice of either continuing their tradition of speaking out or silencing themselves in order to retain their church’s tax exemption.

Churches and pastors can preach whatever they want to preach.  Whether or not they have the privelege of tax-exempt status is a matter of the content of their message.  Therefore, if a church feels it cannot fulfill its proper role, perhaps tax-exempt status should be abandoned in favor of a prophetic witness.

The plan on the 28th is to draw the ire of the IRS and thereby file a lawsuit which can be appealed in hopes of ivalidating the Johnson amendment.  I have no idea if it will work, though it is not a bad strategy for affecting political change (I believe the Scopes monkey trials came about in a similar way).  What is disconcerting is that churches who felt political speech was an essential part of their mission were voluntarily silent for 50 years in order to avoid financial hardship.

Tax-exempt status is not everything.  Indeed, it might be better for churches to voluntarily renounce it, in the model of the rich young ruler selling all his possessions to follow Jesus.  In doing so they can reduce the power of the state over them.  But I am not convinced that true political preaching has anything to do with political candidates.  I’ll repeat part of the quote:

Pastors long spoke out on great moral issues such as slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor and prostitution. Pastors also have spoken from the pulpit with great frequency for and against various candidates for government office.

The portion in bold remains possible for the tax-exempt American church.  This, I think, is the essence of political preaching.  Anything that has to do with a specific candidate is too vulnerable to mere partisanship.

Anyone remember the good old days of the Dream Team in 1992?  I think basketball might be for me the most anticipated event in these 2008 Olympics, simply because I want to see the US returned to its former glory.  All indications are that there is a very strong chance of that happening.

Like I have said before, there is no better form of patriotism than sports.

The Pentagon says it has no indication that Iran has reduced what a spokesman calls its “meddling” in Iraq, even though attacks by Iranian-backed militias are down significantly.

So if Iran is “meddling” in Iraq, what should we call US involvement there?

The topic on Fresh Air today was religion in the formative years of the United States. The guest Steven Waldman brought up something I did not realize: Until the fourteenth amendment to the US constitution after the Civil War, the establishment clause of the first amendment only applied to the federal government. That is, states apparently had to option to have an established religion. So is the establishment clause more motivated by religious freedom or states’ rights?