from Roth's American Pastoral

And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that-- well, lucky you.

Towards Perpetual Peace

I am in the early stages of designing and proposing my own Rhetoric course here at UT. The standard convention is teaching a course named "The Rhetoric of..." fill in your topic here. It will come as no surprise to you that I am thinking of teaching the rhetoric of political violence. My interest will be pushing the concepts of peace, war, oppression, security, violence, retribution, resistance, revolution, protest and the like. (I am also thinking about the practices of war and peace, national security and civil rights, captial punishment and torture, peaceful protest and revolution.)

I have ulterior motives in telling you this. I want to exploit you as resources. I am wondering what kinds of texts-- poems, novels, songs, films, essays, etc-- you might recommend for giving undergraduates a conceptual vocabulary to think and write about violence in the political sphere-- particularly violence that is framed as necessary and/or instrumental. A text that justifies violence could be as useful as one that presents my own personal pacifist views (although I will, of course, appreciate that kind of suggestion). Particularly, does anyone know of fitting texts by MLK or Ghandi?

[My second choice might be a rhetoric of profit, so if you have any great ideas in that direction...]

Bonhoeffer's Ethical Imperative

Thought for the day:

"If we want to understand God's goodness in God's gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us." (From A Testament to Freedom, p 197.)

Hemingway: "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio"

"Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn't thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people, along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet. But what was the real one? What was the real, the actual, opium of the people? He knew it very well. It was gone just a little way around the corner in that well-lighted part of his mind that was there after two or more drinks in the evening; that he knew was there (it was not really there of course). What was it? He knew very well. What was it? Of course; bread was the opium of the people. Would he remember that and would it make sense in the daylight? Bread is the opium of the people."

YHWH

Since it is the season of lent, we said the decalogue during the liturgy this morning. The third commandment is translated like this: "Thou shalt not invoke with malice the name of the Lord thy God." (The answer, of course, is "Amen. Lord have mercy.") Now, my fundigelical upbringing ingrained it into my head that the third commandment (always given as not taking the Lord's name in vain) means essentially "don't curse, don't use profanity" (or, since I was raised in west Texas, "don't cuss" would be more verbatim). Invoking God's name with malice sounds like something quite different. It sounds more like, "We need to make sure that homosexuals can't get married in this country because God said marriage is a man and a woman." It sounds, in short, like using God's name as an excuse to follow your malicious heart and not welcome your neighbor. Less an arbitrary restriction of personal piety and more the royal law of love that commands love your enemy, welcome the alien, I have washed your feet (next Thursday) go and do likewise. Just a thought, but a hospitable thought.