Comments from a Veteran on the 4th of July
By Jim Ramelis
The 4th of July is here and it is time for patriotism, flag waving, parades and fireworks. The 4th is about picnics, fun, sunburns, baseball games and a celebration of America. It has always been one of my favorite holidays, probably because I have spent most of my life in Michigan, and the 4th is a holiday that usually is a warm sunny day. It is a day of bands and color and pageantry and community.

President Obama, Do The Right Thing in Honduras!
As those of you who follow the news may know, Honduran President Manuel Zalaya was ousted in a military coup. He was flown to Costa Rica and Roberto Michelettti was sworn in as interim President until January 27, 2010, the end of Zelaya’s term.
Obama called the action a “coup”, and said “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras”.
Later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration was not formally designating the ouster as a military coup. If the administration were to call the “coup”, a “coup”, it would demand by law that the U.S. cut off military aid to Honduras. We heavily finance the Honduran military and have trained many of its leaders at the infamous School of the Americas in Georgia. The State Department will ask for $68 million in aid for the Honduran military in the upcoming fiscal year.
It doesn’t take the proverbial “rocket scientist” to figure a few things out here very quickly. The first is of course, it was a military coup. The whole world and the President Obama are calling it a military coup. But in a very obvious spin, Secretary Clinton is not calling it a coup, so military funding won’t be cut off.

This week's issue of Newsweek has an article entitled "Reagan was wrong; to conservative Cassandra Henry Fairlie, Republicans sowed their present-day destruction from the start." A conservative English Tory who emigrated to the US in 1966, Fairlie was "the first of the Angry Young Men", who coined the phrase "the establishment". He witnessed the fallout of the Goldwater defeat and the rise of Reagan; who saw from the very start of the Reagan era how badly it was going to end.

He saw "government's role was to preserve tradition and social order; not to speed the accumulation of power and wealth among the elites or to enact sudden or overreacting reforms." He thought that by excessively embracing the free market philosophy the Republican party had gone calamitously awry. "The conservative can all too easily drift into a morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made and those who were on the make," that without the humanizing Tory influence, conservatives were apt to forget "the ugly face of capitalism". Hmmm - sounds like to me the sage warning of Paul to the early Christians, "For the love on money is the root of all evil--. 1 Timothy 6: 9-10 Read verse 9 and see if it does not describe the actions of Fairlie's false conservatives, and, in verse 10, the predictable result of their actions.

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The go to guy at CBS News for all-things Catholic is one Father Thomas D. Williams.  Never heard of him?  Well, if you watch The Morning Show's Maggie Rodriguez or the CBS Evening News's Katie Couric you may very well see Fr. Williams appear live via satellite from Vatican City. But "the Tiffany Network" will also probably fail to disclose that Fr. Williams is also a member of the Legion of Christ, a reactionary order that is squarely aligned with American movement conservatism and that espouses the most conservative of Catholic views on bioethical issues such as LGBT equality, abortion and stem cell research.

Yesterday as we all heard Gov. Mark Sanford, (R) South Carolina, publically admitted to having an extra-marital affair. In his statement he made reference to a house on "C Street" (in the SouthEast section of the District of Columbia, very near the nations Capitol Bldg.) where some congressmen come to face "hard questions". At least 5 members of the House and Senate live there. They, and others, engage in bible study classes. For more details I refer you to today's Washington Post article, "The Political Enclave That Dare Not Speak Its Name". www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article

If it is a place of refuge, a place for some harried members of the Congress and Senate to recharge depleted batteries, I have no problem with the idea. Even if they do conduct bible study classes, that's their private business. The article refers to efforts by one resident to persuade Senator John Ensign (R) Nevada (who also admitted to the same 8 days ago) and Gov. Sanford (a former congressman) to end their affairs. Sen. Tom Colburn (R) Oklahoma, who lives there apparently tried to be a peacemaker by pursing the topic of forgiveness with the husband of Sen. Ensign's mistress. Good Christian behavior.

Betrayal
If the public option for health insurance is thrown out, I will have to admit I will feel a bit betrayed by the Democrats.

However, I shouldn't be surprised as I know that the real divide in Congress is not Democrat/Republican, it is Conservative v Progressive/Liberal. There a lot more conservatives than Progressives/Liberals. There are a lot of Conservative Democrats, bought and sold by the same corporations and people that have the Republicans bought and sold.

I was reading the July edition of "Science of the Mind", a monthly put out by the Religious Science folks that I have subscribed to for years, and came across a great article by Donna Mosher,"Invitation to Awakening".It is an article about mystic Andrew Harvey and the spiritual shift that seems to be going on in the world now. Some call it "the great awakening".

Harvey uses the term "sacred activism" in a very interesting way that I find very appealing.

Mosher writes(begin Science of Mind quote) "Sacred activism brings together the fire of the mystics passion for God with the fire of the activist's passion for justice", says Harvey. It is a holy marriage that is absolutely essential."

"Without the union of the two fires, he says,one can find themselves either blissed out or burned out. The mystic can become addicted to the pursuit of transcendence, in danger of ignoring the problems of he world. The activist is threatened by an obsession with "doing", resulting in exhaustion and burnout. The marriage of the two fires, Harvey says, is purifying and clarifying. It is the authentic Christ Consciousness, the force of divine passion in action that will birth the new humanity."(end quote from Science of the Mind)

Being both a mystic and an activist, I was quite impressed with Harvey's analysis.

to all the happily married fathers, devoted to wife and children in a happy home –
to all the single fathers, striving alone to meet the needs of their children –
to all the remarried fathers, parenting as best they can in the tumult of modern divorce law –
to all the widowed fathers, raising their children in the midst of loss –
to all the gay fathers, dedicated to their children despite a culture that questions the legitimacy of their parenthood –
to all the adoptive fathers, fostering a love no different from any other –
to all the fathers by marriage, navigating with love the uncertainty of step-parenthood –
to all fathers, of all kinds, in places –

Happy Father’s Day.

As Flag Day and July 4 approach, it is wise to consider the Founding Fathers and their accomplishments and failures. One of the things that these men have been criticized for in recent years, and one that many in the Left make about them, is that many of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders and that they did not eradicate slavery. Though I agree that the existence of slavery is one of the great stains in this nation's history, I think it is wrong to stereotyp the Founding Fathers as being uncaring towards slaves. I wrote a previous blog about the Founding Fathers grappling with the issue of slavery and thought I'd write a followup. Though I am to the left of the political spectrum, the criticisms of many of the Left towards the Founding Fathers has bothered me. The early leaders did try to abolish slavery, but their fears of Southern secession eventually doomed those efforts.