The Search for Meaning on 9/11: Missing the Wisdom of Abraham Joshua Heschel

I suggest that the most significant basis for meeting men of different religious traditions is the level of fear and trembling, of humility, of contrition, where our individual moments of faith are mere waves in the endless ocean of mankind’s reaching out for God, where all formulations and articulations appear as understatements, where our souls are swept away by the awareness of the urgency of answering God’s commandment. . . .
--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

As I write this, our nation prepares once again to commemorate the tragedy and loss experienced on September 11, 2001. During the past nine years, we have embarked on two wars, buried over 5,660 American soldiers, and we continue to deploy more than 150,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are embroiled in a national debate over the meaning of religious freedom and the limits of the First Amendment. Muslim-Americans throughout the country feel under attack, blamed unfairly for the atrocities of their most radical brethren. Plans to build mosques in several states are opposed by vocal mobs chanting anti-Islamic slogans, mirroring the controversy over the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero. A lunatic fringe, led by a fundamentalist “preacher” in Florida, disgracefully talks of burning the Koran (their plans canceled for now), thereby insulting and inflaming the world’s Muslims.

My oldest daughter, Jennifer, was born twenty years ago today. On her eleventh birthday, the meaning of September 11 was forever altered and serves now as a timely reminder that our lives are short, the search for meaning more urgent, as the world is so much grander than each of us. This year, as well, September 11 overlaps with the Jewish High Holy Days, starting with Rosh Hashanah, which calls upon Jews the world over to engage in further reflection and contemplation. What better time, then, to turn to Abraham Joshua Heschel – rabbi, theologian, social activist, and mystic, widely admired by Christians and Jews alike – for counsel and guidance in these troubled times.

Although he died in 1972, I believe we need Heschel’s prophetic voice now more than ever. So much of what he said in his lifetime is relevant today. For the families of those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and for others seeking to make sense of it all, Heschel’s experience in the Holocaust – he lost two sisters at Treblinka and his mother died of a heart attack when the Nazis came to her door – and his words of spiritual healing and enlightenment despite these experiences, speak deeply. Unlike many of his contemporaries following World War II, Heschel never blamed God for the Holocaust. God did not commit the evil perpetrated in the concentration camps and gas chambers, he argued. It was, rather, the depravity of human beings acting in defiance of God and of faith. Heschel contended that God suffered with the victims, and would today teach us that the atrocities and evil committed on 9/11 were inflicted not by God, nor by Islam, but by nineteen fanatics who misinterpreted their religion and blasphemed God.

If Islam committed any crime on 9/11, it was the same crime committed by Christianity during the Holocaust – that of silence, the failure of peace-loving Muslims to speak out with sufficient force against the misguided members of their faith, far too many of whom believe that the Koran requires acts of martyrdom and violence against perceived infidels. “The opposite of good is not evil,” Heschel declared often, “the opposite of good is indifference.” Heschel understood that only human beings could challenge injustice, that God needed humans to correct the wrongs in society. Having lived through the rise of Hitler in Germany, he was all too aware of the capacities of mass silence and indifference. “How many disasters do we have to go through in order to realize that all of humanity has a stake in the liberty of one person? . . . In a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible.”

Of course, Heschel was a man of action and not merely words. He fought all forms of anti-Semitism, campaigning for the rights of Soviet Jews and lobbying the Pope during the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960’s to renounce church teachings that demeaned Jews or anticipated their conversion. He fought racism and segregation, marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. If history were any guide, he would today have spoken forcefully against the rising tide of Islamophobia in the United States.

Heschel saw the divine in every person and emphasized the holiness and sanctity of every human being. “We are called upon to be an image of God . . . and the task of a human being is to represent the Divine, to be a reminder of the presence of God.” Heschel believed that what ailed modern society was the lack of a personal awareness of God. He spoke convincingly of encounters with the mystery of the “divine” that is both within each of us and beyond us; that “discloses unity where we see diversity; . . . peace where we are involved in discord.”

Heschel connected with the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and with King in particular because he believed, like King, that the God of the Bible struggles with us, suffers with us, and is affected by how human beings treat one another. “God stands in an intimate relationship to the world,” Heschel believed, and thus God “has a stake in the human situation.” Because God is “intimately affected” by the treatment human beings afford each other, “God is never neutral, never beyond good and evil.” The political implications of Heschel’s theology are clear: created in God’s image, we are each a reminder of God’s presence; when we engage in acts of violence and murder, we commit such acts against God’s divine likeness. “Whatever I do to man, I do to God,” Heschel explained. “When I hurt a human being, I injure God.”

In an age when religion divides people and nations, Heschel emphasized the common underpinnings of faith. Although profoundly devoted to his own tradition, he believed deeply that people of different faiths must talk to one another in a spirit of humility and respect, not to change or convert the other, but to better understand one another. “We must choose between interfaith and internihilism,” he often said, “No religion is an island.” Although most of Heschel’s ecumenical dealings were with Catholics and Protestants, shortly before his death he flew to Rome (against his doctor’s orders) to attend a conference of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders on the future of Jerusalem. “It is important to remember now,” Heschel said, “that, while I have prayed from the heart for Muslims all my life, I have never prayed with them before, or been face-to-face with them to talk about God . . . we must go further.”

Rabbi Arthur Green, a professor at Brandeis University and former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, has explained that Heschel

. . . [L]iked to tell the Hasidic tale of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad who invited a group of disciples to come share with him in a ride in his coach. “But there is not enough room!” a disciple cried out, “the rebbe will be crowded.” The master replied: “Then we shall have to love each other more. If we love each other more, there will be room for us all.” Heschel understood that all of humanity rides in that coach, one that can be either the divine chariot of God or the crowded, sealed railway car. The choice, he insisted, is a human one, and we who have escaped the terrors of hell are here to help all our fellow humans make that choice. [From the essay Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Memoir]

Heschel taught that God depended upon humanity to repair and heal the world. The God of the Bible was like the parent of all humanity, “who cannot stand to see the suffering of God’s children.” For Heschel, it was very simple. God needs his children to take care of each other.

For a society obsessed with non-stop consumerism and technologically driven noise, Heschel taught the value of the Sabbath as a sanctuary in time, when “we are called upon . . . to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation.” The concept of the Sabbath urges a day of rest, reflection, study and prayer that is essential to the dignity of human beings and the nourishment of the soul. “The modern man does not know how to stand still, how to appreciate a moment, an event for its own sake.”

Throughout his life, Heschel remained devoted and secure in his Jewish faith, though he openly acknowledged the depth and beauty of other faith traditions. He gave us the tools for religious dialogue, believing that no one possessed a monopoly on the truth. It was clear to Heschel that people of different faiths needed one another. His interfaith involvements extended beyond his alliance with King and the civil rights movement, and included his work with the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council, and a visiting professorship at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he developed a close kinship with the great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Heschel understood in all of these encounters that, although their religious beliefs and practices differed, all lived in the presence of God. “There is no human being,” Heschel said in 1961, “who does not carry a treasure in his soul; a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.”

Regardless of one’s age, race, religion, or ethnicity, Heschel believed we must never lose sight of our humanity, for we all possess a soul, a spirit, a heart, and a mind, and it is imperative that we use them. His wisdom transcended generations, cultures, and religions, and the quest for common ground inspired his theology. “Oceans divide us, God’s presence unites us,” he said. “God is present wherever man is afflicted, and all of humanity is embroiled in every agony wherever it may be.”

Because Heschel spoke so eloquently on Christian-Jewish relations and the need for dialogue, I am certain that, were he alive today, he would have spoken with equal passion about Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations. To Heschel, each and every person was sacred. “To meet a human being is an opportunity to sense the image of God, the presence of God.” His voice is sorely missed in today’s world; if only the power of his words could be felt by the likes of radical jihadists, intolerant fundamentalist preachers, and others who remain closed to sharing, learning, and listening to people of different cultures and faiths. “Unless we learn how to help one another, we will only weaken each other.”

He opposed religious parochialism. “Should we refuse to be on speaking terms with one another and hope for each other’s failure? Or should we pray for each other’s health, and help one another in preserving our respective legacies, in preserving a common legacy?” For Heschel, as for us all, the answer is obvious: “The world is too small for anything but mutual care and deep respect; the world is too great for anything but responsibility for one another.”

Turning the Page on a Tragic Mistake

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
--Andre Gide

On Sunday, February 23, 2003, less than one month before U.S. military forces invaded Iraq, I stood before the congregation of Reformation Lutheran Church in Philadelphia and asked everyone present to pray for peace. The war with Iraq was a near certainty, I said, and “while all of us are patriotic Americans who oppose the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, as Christians we are also called to be peacemakers and justice-seekers. We have a responsibility to weigh the ethical concerns raised by this impending war and to make a faithful response.” I asked everyone there that morning to join in a collective petition for peace urging the President to “Drop Rice, Not Bombs” on the people of Iraq. “This is a symbolic gesture, of course, as rice is a symbol of life and sustenance, but it is an important gesture, to let the President know that there are many patriotic Americans (and people of faith) that are not convinced that this war is being conducted as a last resort or that all possible alternatives to war have been pursued.” Following the service, over 100 congregants signed the petition for peace and it, along with a hundred packets of rice, were delivered directly to the White House.

I am certain that President Bush never saw our petition or our packets of rice, and I am under no illusions that our symbolic action had the slightest affect on U.S. policy. But I am proud of the stance that we took that Sunday and I continue to believe that we were right to oppose the war. For me, it was not an easy gesture to make, for I love my country and I feel nothing but honor and respect for the men and women of our armed forces. No one knew for certain how things would turn out. But in the words of the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., former Chaplain of Yale University and Senior Pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, “There are two kinds of patriots, two bad and one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.” And while my brand of Christianity may be heretical to the likes of Glenn Beck and many conservative Christians, I am drawn to the words of Dietrich Bonheoffer, who in the end sacrificed his own life in resisting Hitler: “The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . . And they must not only have peace but make it. To that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods.”

From the oval office this past Tuesday, President Obama formally announced that the “American combat mission in Iraq has ended” and that “the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.” The president acknowledged that he was opposed to the War in Iraq from the start – it was a key reason I supported him over Hilary Clinton during the primaries in 2008 – but he said this week, rightfully, that it was “time to turn the page.” Our efforts must now be on helping Iraq to secure a future of stability, peace, and self-rule that permits a nation of extremely divergent sects to achieve a semblance of democracy.

The future of Iraq remains volatile and uncertain; disenchantment is rife and its various factions of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds remain deadlocked over forming a government. It may be decades before a full accounting of the war may truly occur, but an interim reckoning seems appropriate before we as a nation, once and for all, can truly “turn the page.”

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the stirrings of democracy in Iraq, however feeble at present, are the two positive outcomes of the war. But do the ends justify the means? And at what cost?

The human cost of the war has been tragic. So far, over 4,400 Americans have died in the Iraq War. This is not just a number, but a heartbreaking reality for the families and friends of loved ones who paid the ultimate price. All were the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters of loving families; many also were husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, who have left a lifetime of heartbreak in their wake; most were children themselves, so young and vibrant, with decades of life and potential taken from them, often in an instant. The pictures and dates of those who died can be viewed on a Washington Post website, which helps to personalize, in a small way, the tragedy of war and the profound nature of our losses in this conflict.

Not to be forgotten are the more than 35,000 Americans who were wounded during the Iraq War. Many lost arms and legs or were forever disabled or scarred, physically and mentally, their young bodies broken, their emotional and mental health damaged. They return to the “normality” of life in the United States suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, a sense of lost purpose, and uncertainty as to their self-worth. The Army Times reported in April that there are 18 suicides each day among returning veterans, which should constitute a call to action in itself.

Often overlooked is the human tragedy and devastation that we inflicted, directly or, in the nuance of military jargon, as “collateral damage.” Conservative estimates report that we killed more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians in the past seven years. You won’t find a website with their individual pictures and, for most of us, it is just a number. But allow your conscience to imagine the tragic truth, that each person killed by us was a mother, father, brother, and sister. And how many people did we maim and injure that survived our carnage?

We have spent, to date, nearly $800 billion on the Iraq War (well over $1 trillion counting Afghanistan) and we did so without requiring any sacrifice of non-military families. We not only spent the money without paying for the war, we combined the heightened military spending with huge tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens and turned what was a budget surplus into the largest deficits in U.S. history.

The Iraq war disastrously shifted attention away from the more important fight in Afghanistan and cost us years in our fight against those who attacked us on 9/11. Whatever successes and gains we made in the search for bin Laden and the destruction of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan following the tragedy of 9/11 was lost for several years once we shifted attention to Iraq in March 2003.

Our intervention in Iraq made Americans less safe. It left Iran, a far more dangerous threat to American interests, free to pursue its nuclear program, to finance extremist groups, and to meddle and wreak havoc in Iraq and elsewhere. Moreover, only after we invaded Iraq did it become a hotbed of Islamic terrorism, something it was not before Saddam was ousted. Iraq is a Muslim country in a region steeped in deep resentment of western occupation. Throughout the Muslim world, leading Islamic clerics, such as those at Al Azhar University in Cairo and the Lebanese Shiite scholar, Sheikh Fadlullah, each of whom condemned what happened on 9/11, gave their blessing to fight against the occupation of Iraq, which they believed was justified by the Koran’s prescriptions of “defensive” jihad, when a Muslim land is under attack by non-Muslims. Essentially, a growing global movement was energized by the war in Iraq, with jihadists flocking to the country from places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Yemen. As U.S. forces violently bombed and destroyed much of Baghdad, the entire world watched on CNN, Al Jazeera, and the Internet. A less effective counter to terrorism could hardly be imagined.

Much damage was caused to U.S. credibility by the Bush Administration’s attempted oversell of the war and its embellishment of the Iraqi weapons’ threat (with the complicity and silence of most Democrats). On March 16, 2003, Vice President Cheney said, “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly. . . [in] weeks rather than months.” On February 7, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld predicted that the war “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” Bush’s Budget Director, Mitch Daniels, told media outlets in early 2003 that the war and post-war reconstruction would be an “affordable endeavor” not likely to cost more than $50 to $60 billion.

The justification for war was never convincingly made, and all subsequent rationalizations still fall short morally and ethically. President Bush initially attempted to use Iraq as a test case for the administration’s doctrine of pre-emption, which called for early unilateral action against enemies suspected of posing a threat to the United States. The administration implied that Iraq had some undefined connection to 9/11 – something that was not true, which President Bush himself later acknowledged – yet at the time of our invasion, nearly two-thirds of Americans believed that Iraq had been complicit with Al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. The administration also pushed hard the notion that Iraq possessed a large number of weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s), that it was attempting to develop nuclear weapons, and that Saddam was likely to hand off such weapons to terrorists. Yet the evidence is now clear that Iraq’s weapons’ threat was not urgent, if one even existed. In March 2003, the only possible danger lay in the distant future, when U.N. sanctions against Saddam would eventually be removed. But this was hardly justification for seven-and-a-half years of war, as less forceful alternatives were always present. Unlike some on the left, I believe President Bush acted in good faith and was convinced that Saddam possessed WMD’s – indeed, most all of us did at the time – but it is now well established that the intelligence data was manipulated and inconvenient truths selectively discarded.

It was not a just war. We attacked a country that posed no imminent threat to the United States. This was not a defensive war or even a legitimately pre-emptive war. While deposing Saddam was a worthwhile objective, it was contrary to all standards and norms of international law to invade a country solely because we thought its leader a brutal dictator or violator of human rights. If one country can justifiably attack another simply because it believes the other country’s leadership immoral, or evil, or worthy of removal, there would be no reliable notion of sovereignty, chaos would ensue, and many countries throughout the world would be legitimate targets of hostile aggression. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the War in Iraq, suggested in late July 2003 on Meet the Press that the lesson of 9/11 is “that you can’t wait until proof after the fact.” But as Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “According to this logic, it didn’t matter if there were proof of Saddam’s imminent danger. Follow that logic further and the White House could remove any foreign leader without proof of imminent threat.”

Our actions also fell short of just war theory because they were disproportional to the perceived harm. Deposing Saddam was one thing; killing more than 100,000 civilians, wounding and maiming hundreds of thousands more, causing widespread destruction, and occupying the nation for seven plus years, was far beyond what anyone anticipated or could ever have been justified. The global faith community was right for opposing this war from the outset and the government of the United States was wrong for fighting it.

But it is time to move forward and to take lessons from the past. As the President said in his oval office address last Tuesday, one such lesson “is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power – including our diplomacy, our economic strength, and the power of America’s example – to secure our interests and stand by our allies.” We should honor and take pride in the service provided by our men and women in uniform. Long gone are the days of Vietnam, when blameless soldiers were derided and scorned for the unwise decisions of misguided politicians. “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state,” the President reminded us, “And though our nation may be travelling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the predawn darkness, better days lie ahead.”

Wars are sometimes necessary, but they must always be a last resort, for the costs of war are astronomical, the burdens of war often too great to bear. In the words of Dwight Eisenhower, we must in the end always “seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.”

Don't Let the Terrorists Win

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws. . . . – President George Washington, January 27, 1793.

America was founded on the principle of religious liberty and has become a sanctuary to millions who have fled religious persecution. The Statue of Liberty proudly bearing its torch in New York Harbor, we remain a symbol to the world of religious freedom for all. From our humble beginnings, we embodied a multiplicity of religious beliefs and divergent sects. The varied religious backgrounds of the original colonists helped to ensure that religious diversity, church-state separation, and the free exercise of religious worship would be a part of our national identity. Although the vast majority of American citizens are Christians, it is no accident that the Constitution makes no mention of Jesus Christ, contains no references to God, and discusses religion only in the context of prohibiting governmental intrusion. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” declares our Constitution, and “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” References to “our Creator” and “Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence were specifically formulated to apply to the followers of all religions, not just Christian ones. The men most important to this nation’s founding – Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, and Hamilton – each were products of the Enlightenment, skeptical of organized religion, and disdainful of religious fundamentalists.

It is thus with deep sadness that I have watched the vitriolic ignorance and bigotry unfolding against the proposed Islamic Center and mosque two blocks from where the World Trade Centers were decimated on 9/11. Intended as a symbol of the resilience of the American melting pot, the 15-story structure is to house an Islamic Community Center with a board comprised of members of different faiths. The center’s visionary and leader, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, has worked for decades to promote understanding and tolerance among people of different faith traditions, and has done much to promote interfaith relations. Originally named the Cordoba House, according to The New York Times, after the city in Spain, where "Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together centuries ago in the midst of religious foment," the project faces opposition from a variety of sources. There are the usual suspects – Sarah Palin, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and other right-wing Republicans – who have repeatedly proved willing to exploit ignorance and fear. Most of their opposition is unabashedly on religious grounds, with little attempt made to disguise their collective disdain for Islam. More disturbing, however, is the public position of the Anti-Defamation League, which under Abraham Foxman has perhaps, finally, lost its soul.

Some opposition comes from the likes of extremists and blowhards, such as the former head of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams, who referred to Allah as a “monkey God” (he later apologized), and Ed Rodgers, author of Islam and the Last Days, who hallucinates that President Obama is a Muslim who secretly supports Islam’s goal of world domination. Rodgers absurdly argues that those who support building a mosque near the site of Ground Zero are committing treason. As far as I can tell, Rodgers’ religious illiteracy, unfortunately, is shared by millions of Americans and this ignorance is exploited for political gain by the likes of Palin, Gingrich, and Tennessee’s lieutenant governor, Ron Ramsey, who has suggested that Muslim Americans do not have a constitutionally protected right to worship in the United States, because Islam, in his view, is a cult, not a religion.

That most of the opposition to the proposed Islamic Center is based on Islamophobia -- namely, hostility and fear of Muslims generally -- is confirmed by protests in other parts of the United States. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for example, hundreds of protesters, urged on by Ramsey and other Republican candidates, are fighting plans for a large Muslim center near a residential subdivision, not exactly the “sacred ground” of the 9/11 attacks. In Temecula, California, a local Tea Party group picketed Friday prayers at a mosque that plans to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby. In an attempt to offend the prayerful worshipers, some protestors brought dogs with them, because Islam considers dogs ritually unclean. And in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, some so-called “Christian” ministers have been leading a fight to prevent a mosque from opening in a former health food store that had been purchased by a Muslim doctor.

This does not sound like the America I know and love, the one that preaches acceptance of all religions and that respects the rights of its citizens to worship wherever they find spiritual fulfillment and sustenance. The America revealed in the comments and opposition to the mosques throughout the country is an America of intolerance and religious bigotry. To oppose the Cordoba House, or Park51 as it is now being called (from its address), because it would house an Islamic Community Center and a mosque two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks is not only mean spirited and wrong, it’s un-American.

To disallow the Islamic Center solely on the grounds that it will house a mosque suggests unfairly and inaccurately that all Muslims are terrorists or covert supporters of terrorism; that Muslims are incapable of generosity, compassion, and universal love. If anyone opposing the center had evidence that the backers of the project are radical Muslims who support jihad against the West and wish to glorify 9/11, I will join their efforts to shut it down. I have instead heard only that it would be offensive to build a mosque near the “sacred ground” of the 9/11 attacks. By that logic, it would be offensive to allow a Christian church to stand near the memorial honoring the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing because Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators were self-proclaimed Christians.

The most shameful episodes of American history revolve around discrimination against groups who simply share the same race, religion or national origin – slavery, the Jim Crow South, the internment of Japanese-Americans. Since 9/11, many American Muslims have experienced discrimination and worse simply because they practice their faith. When no distinctions are made between moderate and radical religious practitioners, blame and derision are hurled upon an entire people. This is indecent, immoral, and contrary to American values, American justice, and the American way.

Abe Foxman of the ADL may be correct in declaring that family members of the 9/11 victims are entitled to irrational feelings, but promoting intolerance and caving in to popular sentiment does nothing to help us heal and it gravely betrays our values. The families of those who died on 9/11 deserve our sympathy and respect but, as the editors of The New York Times noted, “it would be a greater disservice to the memories of their loved ones to give into the very fear that the terrorists wanted to create and, thus, to abandon the principles of freedom and tolerance.” Victims’ families are entitled to their feelings, and I do not for a minute suggest how one should feel or grieve in their circumstances. But for the ADL to rationalize religious discrimination and intolerance by tying it to the pain felt by the victims’ families is shameful and inexcusable. Something is terribly wrong when the very organization that, historically, has battled discrimination of all kinds – from racist venom during the worst days of the Ku Klux Klan to more subtle forms of anti-Semitism advanced by university quota systems and the discriminatory policies of exclusive country clubs – tacitly supports prejudice against Muslims.

Even worse is the ADL’s short-sightedness. As Fareed Zakaria recently explained after returning a humanitarian award received five years ago from the ADL, “If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the proposed institute. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it.” A two-year study of the relationship between American Muslims and terrorism, conducted by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina, found that contemporary mosques act as a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism, and that many leaders of American mosques put great effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring anti-violence programs, and scrutinizing teachers and texts. The Islamic Community Center and mosque planned for 51 Park Place would include a 500-seat auditorium, a swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores, restaurants, and a range of programs modeled on the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan. As a broad-based attempt to give voice to moderate Islam, its proximity to Ground Zero is its strength – a symbol of American religious freedom to counter the intolerant extremism that victimized Americans on 9/11.

I would expect resistance to religious diversity and displays of intolerance in places like Saudi Arabia, where it is illegal even to build a one-room church. Part of what makes the United States great is that we are a nation that could welcome a mosque near the site of 9/11, a powerfully symbolic act that resonates inclusion and openness. To resist the planned center, which is dedicated to span the divide between Muslim and non-Muslim and to create a national model of moderate Islam, is not only un-American, it is counter-productive. We need to build bridges among faiths, not widen gaps.

In 1790, President Washington attempted to ease the anxieties of a Newport, Rhode Island, synagogue by declaring that even historically persecuted religious minorities were entitled to equal protection of the law. The United States, said Washington, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” We need to be reminded of our unique American history, for if bigotry and ignorance are allowed to prevail, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 will have won the final battle.

Conversations With My Cab Driver

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down. – Mary Pickford

“I’ll get you there in plenty of time,” the cab driver said, sensing my urgency. I just left a meeting at a Pittsburgh law firm and was in jeopardy of missing my scheduled flight home. “My name is Darryl,” he added politely.

Darryl was an African American man with short-cropped hair, slightly balding with patches of gray, who looked to be in his mid-40’s. Outgoing and personable, he possessed a touch of street and appeared to be in his second or third phase of a life lived on the harder edges of town.

“Oh, damn,” he said, “I must have left my phone back at the cab station. Would you mind if we stopped by the station to get it?”

I warily asked if it was on the way, reminding him I was in a hurry and concerned about missing my flight – “you know, with security and all.” He said he knew a shortcut, and then relented, sensing my concern about the time. He gestured with his hand, as if throwing an invisible object. “I’ll get it tomorrow. I don’t want you to miss your flight.”

He drove a block or two, but I could see he was distracted. I told him that it was okay to get his phone. “If it’s on the way, it shouldn’t be a problem,” I said.

Darryl appreciated my self-sacrificing gesture. “Ahh, man, thank you. I promise it will only take a minute. I’ll run right in and we’ll slip out the back and bypass all this traffic.” He said his co-workers would laugh at him again, and he wondered whether he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. “I forget stuff all the time now.”

I assured him not to worry. “I can’t remember what I had for lunch,” I said. “But it’s only short-term memory loss. It’s natural, not Alzheimer’s. It affects everybody as they get older.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Darryl said. Me too, I thought.

Darryl sped around corners and cut through side streets. We passed a middle-aged Hispanic man walking under a bridge on the side of the road, limping with a cane. Darryl waved to him and shouted apologetically, “Sorry, man, I don’t have time to stop.”

“I would normally pick him up and give him a ride. He works at the cab station. I’ll explain later we were in a hurry.” Darryl looked worried and his concern for the man seemed sincere and genuine, a compassionate gesture amidst the cold realities of urban hacking.

A minute later, Darryl turned into the parking lot of the cab station. “I’ll be right back.” He got out of the cab and ran, or tried to; he had the familiar gait of a once limber man, now full of stiffness and aching joints. He was dressed in shorts and a tee shirt, with white socks and black sneakers. He’s old school, I thought to myself.

Darryl returned to the cab and thanked me. “I don’t know how we ever got along without these things.” He drove off and weaved his way in and out of traffic, explaining all of the shortcuts and tricks of the trade that he has learned over the years, bypassing the rush hour congestion, which on the west side of Pittsburgh is caused by the traffic converging on the Fort Pitt tunnel beneath Mt. Washington.

I commented on the area’s scenic beauty. The rolling green hills of western Pennsylvania surround Pittsburgh’s triangular skyline, which is situated at the meeting place of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers, each peppered by historic steel-framed bridges. The city of Pittsburgh has come a long way from its soot-filled history of steel mills and smokestacks and now boasts of a renewed downtown business district with parks, shops, and sports stadiums, a performing arts center and two major universities.

“I love this city,” Darryl said. “I’m here for good.” Thinking he had come to Pittsburgh from elsewhere, I asked Darryl where he was originally from. “I’m from Pittsburgh,” he said.

“Oh,” I replied, “I thought maybe you had moved here from somewhere else. So you were born and raised in Pittsburgh?”

“Yeah,” he said, though I sensed a slight hesitation.

I mentioned that one of my daughters almost went to the University of Pittsburgh. In learning that I had a daughter – “Actually, I have two,” I corrected him – he wanted to know what I thought of Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers accused in March of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old college student. I was no fan of Roethlisberger, I assured him. Darryl noted that Roethlisberger has a reputation for being arrogant and rude, and that he expected restaurants to comp him on meals and treat him like the spoiled, pampered athlete he is. We discussed how celebrities and sports figures too often let their fame take control of their lives and affect how they treat other people.

Darryl asked me about the OJ Simpson case, wanting my honest opinion. “He was guilty,” I said. “The evidence was overwhelming. One of the strongest murder cases I have ever seen.” Darryl agreed. He offered that Ray Lewis, another pro football player gone bad, also was guilty of murder, even though he, too, evaded the charges. “All black people know he’s guilty," he offered, "he’s a murderer.”

I didn’t know much about Lewis’s case, I said, only that two people were stabbed to death after getting into a brawl with Lewis and two companions following a Super Bowl party ten years ago. We identified other apparent injustices and discovered that we had more in common than our different backgrounds and appearances at first might suggest. Darryl volunteered, “Black people have to stop using the race card. I mean, man, we have a black President.”

Darryl asked what type of car I owned and if I had ever used jet skis on the water (I had not). “Oh, man, you got to do it.” He had rented them on a trip to Aruba once. "Man, it was a trip.” I told him I would try to go there someday.

Although we had dropped the topic of where he was from several miles back, Darryl sought to re-visit it. “Actually, there was a period of time I lived in Washington, D.C. Back in the 1980’s”

“Oh yeah? So did I,” I said, excited about our common history. I had spent thirteen years in Washington, I told him, “In the eighties and nineties. Where in Washington did you live?”

“Well, I used to be involved in some bad things,” Darryl acknowledged. He glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “I worked for a big drug lord when I was there.”

“You mean Rayful Edmond?” Who else could it be? I thought. Rayful Edmond was The Drug Lord in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. He was responsible for the epidemic of crack cocaine that hit the streets of the nation’s capital during the 1980’s and caused its reputation as the murder capital of the United States. His drug organization allegedly is tied to over 400 murders.

“Yeah, man, how’d you know?”

I told him about my days as a prosecutor in D.C., when I tried drug dealers, murderers and rapists. I said I knew the prosecutors who tried Rayful Edmond, which at the time was a daily front-page story in the Washington Post. “I know all about Rayful Edmond.” I said.

“I worked as muscle for Rayful,” Darryl volunteered. “He used to have me collect drug debts for him. And if someone didn’t pay, he had me beat ‘em.”

“No, shit,” I said, as in, what a small world.

“I probably wouldn’t have told you if I knew you were a prosecutor,” he said, a smile and nervous laugh betraying his glaze through the rear view mirror. “Good thing I didn’t run into you back then.” It was as if we discovered we once played for opposing teams, division rivals back in the day; as if he played for the Red Sox and I for the Yankees, former adversaries reflecting on our overlapping pasts.

Darryl explained how Rayful moved thousands of kilos of cocaine and ruthlessly enforced his code of silence; how they supplied Mayor Barry with crack and women, and how the fast life had grabbed hold of him for a few regretful years. Darryl never knew his father, and he had dropped out of school at sixteen. He fell in with the wrong crowd and followed some of them to the streets of DC, where Rayful took them under his wing.

Darryl assured me that he is a changed man, ashamed of his past. “I’ve turned my life over to Him,” Darryl said, pointing up. “I am a different person than I was back then. My life is good now. I have no interest in ever going back.”

Whatever his past transgressions, Darryl now was a man with a conscience, a working man who worried about his customers and co-workers. I did not ask if he had spent time in prison, and he made no mention of it, but I sensed he had, that his time away from Pittsburgh had been significant, his return a time of renewal and a fresh start.

Although we occupied the same space for only 45 minutes, I sensed that Darryl was a man who had truly reformed his life in remarkably positive ways.

As a prosecutor for nearly two decades, I accumulated many tales of redemption and second chances, stories that paint the world in multiple shades of gray, complexity and nuance, not the simplistic black and white, good versus evil world portrayed by Hollywood. Most criminal defendants, I discovered, are young men who have taken wrong turns in life; who lack valid role models, or any role models, certainly not a father. Often raised by a grandmother responsible for the lives of several other children, they live in a sub-culture that devalues education, responsibility and conventional means of success, all of which takes a back seat to fast money, flashy cars, and the lure of the underworld. Drugs and gangs are the ticket to the good life. But when the glitz and the easy life fade from view, when accountability takes root, they are just young men with the same hopes and dreams as everyone else; the desire to have people love and respect them, a chance to live life with legitimacy and respect. And like the rest of us, they need to find their way and for someone to give them a chance.

Somewhere along the way, Darryl got a second chance and grasped it. He now is a proud man who has embraced the American dream, works hard, and performs his job with professionalism, care and courtesy.

Twenty years ago, Darryl and I were on different sides of the drug war; he could have been any one of the thousands of young black men who came to court charged with drug dealing, or gun possession, or worse, violence, part of the cycle of mostly black-on-black crime that has plagued every city in America. Today, Darryl is a man redeemed, a living example of the triumph of the human spirit. He uplifted my spirits and, I think in a small way, I uplifted his, vindicating his choices later in life that have led him to a safer, more secure place.

The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

We reached the airport in plenty of time. I thanked Darryl, shook his hand, and wished him the best. “This was a fun ride,” he said. “I enjoyed meeting you. Come back to Pittsburgh soon.” He told me where to go once inside the airport. I stood momentarily on the walkway and waved goodbye, then watched as he drove his cab into the sunset, back toward Pittsburgh and a renewed life.

In Search of Wisdom and Simplicity: Life as if People Mattered

[For] too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product . . . if we should judge America by that, counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead . . . and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage . . . it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
--Robert F. Kennedy (presidential campaign speech, University of Kansas, 1968).

It has been nearly four years since I gave up a career as a federal prosecutor to join the private sector. Unlike many of my former colleagues who left the U.S. Attorney’s Office to work for large law firms, I chose to work in a small regional office of a worldwide corporate investigations firm, where I often am asked to assess and investigate corporate malfeasance, fraud, and other forms of business misconduct. My work is interesting and I like my colleagues, many of whom had prior careers in government, academia, law enforcement, and journalism. In making the transition, however, I quickly discovered that the day-to-day operations of the profit-driven world of the private sector are, philosophically and operationally, worlds apart from a life in government. No longer is the primary or only objective of my work to do the best I can on all of my assigned cases. The concerns now are with billable hours, generated revenues, business development, and gross profits. As I work for a subsidiary of a large, multinational financial services and risk management conglomerate that fills the ranks of the Fortune 500, my value to the company and our regional office’s value to the larger operation are measured in strictly quantitative terms – key performance indicators, gross margins, originated revenue and utilization. I understand the need for such systems of measurement, seemingly objective considerations of productivity and output which help direct the company’s strategic investments and resource allocations. The bottom line, however, is profit, and the need to maximize profits is the company’s raison d’être.

The pressures of competition add another, impersonal dimension to the workings of private enterprise. The large corporate law firms of Philadelphia, New York, and Washington are a great example of this. These firms consist of hundreds of extremely bright and talented individuals who make a lot of money, live in nice houses, drive fancy cars, and send their kids to Ivy League colleges. But many of the professionals employed in these firms seem lifeless and unhappy. When I speak with them, I can often sense their underlying distress and impending pressures. My work has provided me a window into their world, in which many of the most highly compensated employees are miserable, overworked and intensely pressured, or on the opposite end, bored and uninspired. And in certain corporate environments, employees often toil in sterile, spiritually-debased, cubicle-filled environments five days a week, 50 weeks a year, simply to make enough money to support their affluent lifestyles.

In the modern day corporation, the spiritual and soulful needs of the human beings that make up the workforce are often ignored. Overlooked is the human toll that impersonal, strictly monetary measurements of success or failure have on those who choose to work in profit driven enterprises. The demands of the marketplace rule, everything has a price and nothing is sacred outside of its market value. For practical reasons, the things that matter to the inner lives of human beings – non-economic values such as beauty, compassion, thoughtfulness, and creativity – are not allowed to surface.

Business success is driven by monetary and financial measurements and little else. It is why the majority of corporate CEO’s have backgrounds in finance – men and women who have produced virtually nothing in their lives, but who understand how to maximize the important statistics that drive the modern economy – short-term profits, stock prices, and earnings-to-assets ratios. On a national scale, we are driven by key economic indicators, measures of gross domestic production, the Dow Jones industrial average, and the consumer price index. The national economic policies of most Western democracies are based on the assumption that unlimited economic growth is possible, and indeed necessary to sustain employment, productivity, and ever expanding wealth. In the United States, it is how we hope to eventually balance the federal budget, re-build our infrastructure, and reduce unemployment as we continue to allow gross inequities in the distribution of wealth; as long as the pie continues to get bigger for all, no one is particularly concerned that the largest pieces are cut for a small few, leaving the crumbs to be divided among the masses.

During my senior year in college I read a book by E.F. Schumacher, a German-born economist who authored the seminal work, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (Harper & Row, 1973), widely considered one of the 100 most influential works published since World War II. I recently took a second look at this admittedly out-dated treatise and found that, surprisingly, its perspective remains fresh and relevant. Schumacher notes that, according to traditional economic theory, unlimited economic growth is “obtainable only if we employ those powerful human drives of selfishness, which religion and traditional wisdom universally call upon us to resist.” Indeed, for most economists, it is essentially greed and envy that drive the modern economy and contribute to its success. Schumacher suggests an alternative view:

If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence. The Gross National Product may rise rapidly: as measured by statisticians but not as experienced by actual people, who find themselves oppressed by increasing frustration, alienation, [and] insecurity. . . .

What if the assumptions and preconceptions which form the foundation of modern economics are obsolete, or were never correct? As history professor Theodore Roszak, author of The Making of a Counter-Culture, asked in his introduction to Small Is Beautiful, “What if there stir, in all those expertly quantified millions of living souls beneath the statistical surface, aspirations for creativity, generosity, brotherly and sisterly cooperation, natural harmony, and self-transcendence which conventional economics . . . only works to destroy? . . . And what sort of science is it that must, for the sake of its predictive success, hope and pray that people will never be their better selves, but always be greedy social idiots with nothing finer to do than getting and spending, getting and spending?”

There is an interesting essay in Small Is Beautiful entitled, “Buddhist Economics”, in which Schumacher, a Roman Catholic, explains the purpose of work from the Buddhist point of view: “to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.” Buddhist economics is thus very different from the economics of modern materialism, which preaches that the most efficient and productive economies are ones that maximize production of material goods at the lowest possible cost in labor and capital, resulting in a high degree of specialization, assembly lines and cubicles, in which employees are given pre-defined tasks with little room for creativity and individual thought. By contrast, for the Buddhist:

To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

That we could structure our economic systems and businesses in ways that do not rely on the motives of self-interest and greed, that instead embrace the complexity of the human condition, is for most of us who grew up conditioned on Western thought, very difficult to understand. We are used to measuring our standard of living by the amount of money we make and the quantity of goods we consume, always assuming that one who acquires more is “better off” than one who acquires less. As Schumacher notes, “A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”

Take, for example, our approach to renewable and non-renewable resources. We evaluate the viability of coal, oil, gas, solar, nuclear, and wind power based on its relative cost per equivalent unit, its monetary price. The cheapest form of fuel is automatically to be preferred, for any other conclusion is inefficient and irrational. The effects on the environment, the degradation of our ecological systems, the violence committed to our land, air, water, and wildlife when we extract natural resources for human and technological consumption, are either not considered or are quantified as merely added costs. To the Buddhist, which values simplicity and non-violence, basing one’s economic life on non-renewable resources is justified only by short-term expedient thinking. “As the world’s resources of non-renewable fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity,” Schumacher writes, “it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men.” Or as Ghandi said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not for every man’s greed.

As Robert Kennedy articulated in a campaign speech (quoted at the beginning of this essay) that is unique to any I have heard from an American politician in my lifetime, while money forms our system of measurement for economic success, it cannot buy the things that matter, such non-material values as justice, harmony, inner peace and love. "[W]hen the available ‘spiritual space’ is not filled by some higher motivations," according to Schumacher, "then it will necessarily be filled by something lower – by the small, mean, calculating attitude to life which is rationalized in the economic calculus.” Although merely food for thought, Small Is Beautiful and the principles of Buddhist economics are helpful reminders that unquestioned assumptions upon which we base our way of life are often but weak alternatives to the less conventional wisdom of humankind.

Random Thoughts at the All-Star Break

The extended heat wave of early July has finally subsided in eastern Pennsylvania, at least for a brief moment, so I exhale a sigh of relief, comforted by the thought that for three days the baseball season begins a short hiatus to accommodate the annual All-Star game. Although the season is already several games into the second half, the All-Star Break is baseball’s unofficial halfway point. The Cardinals enter the break in second place in the National League’s Central Division, only one game behind the surprisingly strong Cincinnati Reds. The dreams of a glorious season that enraptured Cardinal Nation on Opening Day are tempered by the long grinding struggle that is, in reality, the 162-game baseball season. Cardinals’ fans remain cautiously optimistic, hoping for a second half surge that will end in ninth-inning walk-off celebrations, home plate mob scenes and ticket-tape parades. But nagging injuries – Ludwick’s calf, Freese’s ankle, Rasmus’s hamstring, Penny’s lateral quad muscle, and Lohse’s forearm, among others – transform our imagined glory into anxiety-ridden, inning-by-inning, nail biting misery. Such is the life of a baseball fan.

It is during these brief moments of sanity, in the quiet solitude of an off day, when I understand why those closest to me may mistakenly believe that my life during baseball season falls into an abyss of warped priorities. Waking up early each day, I catch the train into town and work in the office, often not returning until 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. Arriving home at the edge of dusk, I feed my daughter’s guinea pig, make dinner, and watch that night’s Cardinals’ game, which monopolizes my time until after eleven, sometimes approaching midnight. This of course adds severely to my cumulative sleep deprivations, which are particularly magnified when the Cardinals play on the West Coast. When I explain that “my team” needs me, that I am certain Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan rely on my telepathic instructions to Schumaker and Pujols to lay off breaking balls in the dirt; to Holliday and Rasmus to hit the cut-off man on throws from the outfield; and to Suppan and Hawksworth to keep the ball down, I am met with the cynicism of rolling eyes and shakes of the head. “Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder,” Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post has said. “You can be a truly dedicated, state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick.”

Adding to my “managerial” obligations are my many parental responsibilities – teaching Hannah to drive (which makes a hair curling, extra-inning drama seem like a relaxing weekend in Stone Harbor) and offering Dad-like advice to two skeptical, independent-minded teenage daughters neither of whom are much impressed with the demands of my unremunerated (and officially unacknowledged) internship with the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Club. In my remaining spare time, when not cutting the grass or running errands, I agonize over the final touches of “Ehlers on Everything” and respond to the right-wing rants of my critic-in-chief and ideological nemesis, the infamous “Rich R.”, who tenders unsavory disputations on every word, phrase, or grammatical deviation that hints of liberalism.

So as I ruminate at the All-Star Break, confronted with three nights and no Cardinals games, I have a moment to reflect. Here, then, in no particular order, are some random musings and thoughts on the state of the world as seen through the eyes of a sleep-deprived and unpaid writer, political philosopher, amateur theologian, and baseball manager:

On Politics:

· Has America always been a house divided? As splintered and rancorous as America at times appears to be, is it really any worse than the state of affairs during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when as a nation we were so intensely divided over the Vietnam War and civil rights that students were gunned down by the National Guard and our nation’s cities were the scenes of repeated rioting? It was a time when entire generations spoke past each other and our youth experimented to excess with newfound sexual freedom and drug use, when an anything-goes culture clashed with the staid conformity and repressed instincts of the fifties. By comparison, today’s blue state - red state divisions do not look that bad. Yes, we have Tea Party protests and disruptive town hall meetings, but there is an element of healthy debate in some of this. Compared to the early seventies, when the Weather Underground was blowing up public buildings and a segment of our youth was turning on and dropping out, there are some aspects of today’s political culture that, however screwed up, are an improvement upon forty years ago. A little less interesting, mind you, but distinctly healthier.

· Has anyone figured out what the Russian spy scandal was actually about? From what I can tell, the closest thing to a state secret revealed was the new menu offering from Wendy’s.

· Does Nicholas Kristof have a point? The liberal New York Times columnist has been on a pro-Palestinian kick lately; a thoughtful one, offered with his typical humanitarian flair, but in this instance I worry he has lost balance and, as is often the case with perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a sense of recent history. I agree that the Israelis mishandled the Turkish flotilla raid that led to nine deaths, and they were right to ease the blockade of goods being imported into the Gaza strip, but the bad guys remain the leaders and members of Hamas. Until its leaders speak and act differently – acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and stop lobbing unprovoked missiles into the suburbs of Tel Aviv – I cannot generate much sympathy for them. It is unfortunate that the more reliable defender these days of the only democracy and glimmer of hope in the Middle East is not the liberal establishment but, rather, conservatives and evangelical Christians.

· Where is the outrage? Oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico at alarming rates, killing fish and wildlife and upsetting ecosystems, disrupting the lives and destroying the livelihoods of tens of thousands of residents on the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. If the Deepwater Horizon disaster does not cause us to hesitate with further offshore drilling ventures, reconsider our energy policies, and recommit to green energy solutions, we are destined for a future of continued dependence on foreign oil, irreversible climate change, and economic troubles. As Gretel Ehrlich, writing for Sojourners, recently said: “We’ve forgotten that when we step down on the earth we are walking on a living membrane. Now we are wounded people recklessly pimping a wounded planet. We’ve turned away from a sacred view of the world, a deep openness in which we accept that all living things have value. We’ve drilled recklessly under the ocean floor for economic gain, and in the process exchanged a sense of well-being, beauty, hope, and wonder for the myopia of profit.”

· Is Rush Limbaugh serious, merely delusional, or a complete fraud? Limbaugh has repeatedly portrayed President Obama as an “angry black man” who is intentionally tanking the American economy in order to obtain “economic reparations” for minorities. Not only does this make no sense, it is so disingenuous that I find it impossible that the fat windbag actually believes most of the verbal trash he spews on the airwaves.

· Should we be worried? Chris Matthews warned last week that the Democrats should take Sarah Palin seriously, that she could actually make a credible run for the White House in 2012. Her unfavorable ratings still seem too high, in my opinion, for her to be a serious threat, and I do not believe she can withstand the intense media scrutiny that presidential elections impose. But Matthews knows a thing or two about American politics, so if he says she could win, it is a matter of concern for sane, rational Americans.

On Law:

· What’s in a lawsuit? The Department of Justice was correct to enjoin Arizona from enforcing its new immigration law. The doctrine of federal preemption renders the state law unconstitutional. This is a non-political, legally correct position that even the Bush administration would have had no choice but to assert as well. Federal immigration policy has national and foreign policy implications, it affects our relations with sovereign nations, international aid groups, and it requires substantial coordination of federal law enforcement resources. We cannot realistically have 50 different immigration policies scattered among the states, particularly when the federal government (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is required to implement the deportations and detentions that would result from laws like that in Arizona. That said, it is long past time for Congress and the President to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

On Life:

· Is the United States in the midst of a tattoo epidemic? Or is it only Philadelphia? The many and varied forms of displayed body art that I observe on my walks through center city remind me of building graffiti and subway art, except that the tattoos are less aesthetically pleasing.

· Why did I join the private sector? A recent survey of the federal workforce showed that 8 in 10 federal employees like the work that they do, and more than 90% think that what they do is important. This is how I felt for the nearly 20 years I worked in government, when I possessed a heightened sense of self-worth and the feeling that what I did mattered, that I was contributing, if only in a small way, to an effective criminal justice system and a functioning Constitution. Oh, yeah, the money.

On the Cult of Celebrity:

· Why should we care about the fate of Lindsay Lohan? Don’t misunderstand, I feel sorry for her in the way I feel sorry for any anorexic, drugged out, over-partied, spoiled brat with a bad father, but do we really need to devote that much air and print time to such a trivial story? Is she not just one more of the hundreds of examples, from Judy Garland to Gary Coleman, of child stars being consumed, exploited, chopped up and discarded by a narcissistic Hollywood culture of breast implants, glorified drug use, money and superficial glitz?

· Speaking of role models, is Cleveland really such a bad place to live? I am not sure whose idea it was for LeBron James to waste sixty minutes of national television time announcing that he has chosen “South Beach” (not Miami mind you) in which to spend the next several years of his NBA career, but he could have more easily and tactfully humiliated the fans of Cleveland with a press release.

I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. --Crash Davis in “Bull Durham”

As with changes to baseball’s grand traditions, social and political progress often advances gradually and in small increments. Just as with the elimination of artificial surfaces in most major league ballparks, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will eventually be repealed and John Edwards’ ego will eventually deflate. So, as you continue on your life’s journey, remember always the immortal words of former Yankees manager Bob Lemon, “The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bullpen.”

Notes on Patriotism and Celebrating America

If we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress . . . those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. --President John F. Kennedy

Each year on the Fourth of July, we join as a people to celebrate the birth of a nation, unified not by a common culture but by a set of founding principles, that all men are created equal, possessed of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When I was in law school in Washington, D.C., in the early 1980’s, I made it a point to attend the free outdoor concerts on the Mall, courtesy of the National Symphony Orchestra in celebration of national holidays. With fireworks lighting up the night sky, the sounds of America the Beautiful emanating from the reflecting pool, and the great memorials to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln glowing in the background, a mass of humanity gathered in front of the beautifully lighted U.S. Capitol building as American flags waved and patriotic spirit filled the air. It was easy, in such a setting, to feel overwhelming pride as an American citizen, lucky and blessed I am to live and work in a land endowed with such a rich and glorious history, one founded on the ideals of democracy, liberty and human rights.

I am proud of America for its many accomplishments; for its diversity of peoples, cultures and talent; its abundant natural resources and breathtaking landscapes; its immigrant heritage and vast opportunities. Most of all, I love what America stands for – freedom, equality, democracy, and the rule of law – concepts born during the Enlightenment and bred in a Revolution. Led by an exceptional group of wise statesmen and brave soldiers, intellectuals and leaders, men such as Adams and Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, Franklin and Washington guided us to independence and founded a new republic that remains a beacon of light and a symbol of hope to the world. America has remained faithful through the years to the ideals of governance and civic engagement embodied in the Constitution: the freedom of speech and of political and artistic expression; the freedom to vote and to peaceably assemble; the freedom to pray and worship (or not) without government direction or interference; the freedom to travel, study, work, and live where one chooses; and the freedom from arbitrary detention and unreasonable searches and seizures. To take such rights for granted is to ignore world history and fail to realize that these rights are not universally shared and were born of a courageous and violent revolution led by a brave and valiant people.

Although the United States remains a young nation in the annals of history, only 234 years into this grand experiment, we are old enough to have experienced growing pains from the tensions and contradictions between the ideals expressed in our founding documents and their implemented realities. Grand affirmations of equality and justice in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution notwithstanding, we are sobered by the reality that our forefathers formed a union less than perfect, one that disallowed the freedoms and privileges of citizenship to persons of color. The country at its birth sanctioned the historical injustice of slavery, an evil that would haunt the nation for eight more decades and lead to a prolonged and bloody civil war, followed by a century of further oppression in the forms of lynch mobs, Jim Crow laws, and government-enforced segregation.

To study American history is, in part, to chronicle the distance between the ideals of American democracy and the realities of American life. One cannot proclaim to love America, yet ignore its blemishes. A true patriot recognizes the glorious nature of America’s past, but strives constantly to achieve that which our founders hoped to achieve – “to form a more perfect Union” as stated in the preamble to the Constitution – and to narrow the distance between our ideals and our shortcomings. In 1852, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a speech entitled, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Refusing on that day to celebrate the anniversary of America's founding, Douglass told an audience in Rochester, New York, "Above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them." By holding the immoral vice of bondage up to the light of American tradition and culture, Douglass demonstrated a genuine form of patriotism. He so cared for and loved his country that he refused to remain silent while America fell short of its ideals. Eleven years later, in part due to the persistence of Douglass and the abolitionist movement, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, thus ending America’s acquiescence in the institution of slavery.

Too many Americans equate patriotism with flag-waving and “Support Our Troops” ribbons, secure in the belief that those who fail to so express themselves are insufficiently supportive of American institutions and of our men and women in uniform. President Obama was criticized (and never forgiven by some) for not wearing a U.S. flag lapel-pin on one occasion during the presidential campaign, and then for daring to suggest that wearing the right pin, or tie, or bumper sticker is not necessary to reflect one’s love of country. Some on the right confuse patriotism with nationalism, requiring blind loyalty to American institutions and believing that America is innately better than all other nations, that we are a nation chosen by God to fulfill a destiny to which others fall short.

Symbols, flags, and banners have their place, and some on the left are too quick to dismiss their importance. Monuments and memorials, statues and parks, songs and posters offer inspiration to the nation as it seeks to fulfill its promise. It is right and proper to celebrate, care for, and display the symbols of our democracy – tributes to Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln; the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell; the carvings of Mount Rushmore; and the many memorials to our fallen soldiers. It is important to our sense of national unity and common purpose that Americans of all races and backgrounds, faiths and political leanings share in civic pride and celebrate our history. The revolutionary spirit that became the Miracle of Philadelphia is indeed worthy of fireworks displays and symphony orchestras. But while traditions have their place, and celebrations of national identity are good for the American spirit, we must temper our pride with humility and the recognition of past failings.

In August 1963, when Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he was surrounded by the symbols of American democracy. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” King said, “they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” King’s words were spoken nearly a century after we had fought a Civil War and ended slavery, nearly 180 years after we had founded a republic on the promise of freedom and justice for all. But despite this passage of time, our nation had fallen short of the ideals espoused in those “magnificent words”. King believed in the promise of America and the moral virtue of its foundation. It was time, therefore, “to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children [and] to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”

America today is a better, more fair and just nation than the America that existed prior to King’s life and death. Shortly after King’s famous speech, the United States enacted landmark legislation that banned discrimination in all public accommodations (Civil Rights Act of 1964) and that made the right to vote a reality for millions of previously disenfranchised citizens (Voting Rights Act of 1965). By mobilizing a non-violent army of concerned citizens, who wished not to denigrate America but to make it better, King and his followers succeeded in convincing the country – and a majority of our elected representatives – that the moral promise of America had fallen short but that, through the moral force of equal justice under the law, American society could be transformed, the promise of its founding fulfilled.

Within a few years of the March on Washington, America was a deeply divided country, torn over the Vietnam War and the slow but advancing progress of civil rights. Political and social discontent, anti-war demonstrations, and criticism of American society’s treatment of blacks, women, and other minorities stirred resentment and cries of anti-Americanism. A growing nationalism took root in parts of the country. Bumper stickers and slogans expressed intolerance and an increasing impatience with political dissent: America: Right or Wrong and America: Love It or Leave It. Americans stopped listening; although we spoke the same language, we shouted past each other. Dissent became confused with anti-Americanism, nationalism with patriotism.

America at its best is a nation that welcomes immigrants to its shores, that opens its schools and universities to students of all colors, faiths, and cultures, that promotes and celebrates the diversity of its people and the genius of its civic governance. America at its best provides equal opportunities for all to succeed, free from discrimination and prejudice; cares for its land, air, and water; shows compassion for its less advantaged citizens; applies the rule of law without passion or prejudice to corporate CEO’s and sanitation workers alike; comes to the aid of friends and stands ready to defend liberty.

We should boldly celebrate and take pride in America at its best; we must constantly push and prod America when it falls short. A true patriot cares as much about correcting our shortcomings as honoring and celebrating our achievements. If we celebrate our past uncritically while ignoring our historic sins – slavery and segregation; our shameful treatment of Native Americans; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II – we risk descending from a nation of hope and promise to one of apathy and despair.

There are, of course, many ways to express one’s patriotism, and it matters not whether one is liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. Peter Beinart, in a thoughtful Time magazine essay in 2008, explained the essence and virtues of true patriotism:

When it comes to patriotism, conservatives and liberals need each other, because love of country requires both affirmation and criticism. It's a good thing that Americans fly the flag on July 4. In a country as diverse as ours, patriotic symbols are a powerful balm. And if people stopped flying the flag every time the government did something they didn't like, it would become an emblem not of national unity but of political division. On the other hand, waving a flag, like holding a Bible, is supposed to be a spur to action. When it becomes an end in itself, America needs people willing to follow in the footsteps of the prophets and remind us that complacent ritual can be the enemy of true devotion.

Patriotism should be proud but not blind, critical yet loving. And liberals and conservatives should agree that if patriotism entails no sacrifice, if it is all faith and no works, then something has gone wrong. The American who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience.

True patriotism encompasses love of country, but not blind loyalty; a willingness to die for one’s country if called to defend her, but not blanket acceptance of an unjust war. I do not frequently wave the flag or wear lapel pins, but I believe that America can someday achieve the greatness and near perfection its founders envisioned. Patriotism requires that we constantly strive to achieve “a more perfect Union”; and that, as was done to achieve the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we urge, push and prod America and its government to live up to the words espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the ideals of its founding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”