Cynicism and Hope

Tonight my friend and former pastor Sally Schreiner Youngquist, now community leader of Reba Place Fellowship, showed me some pictures and documents that belonged to her father, C. Bryson Schreiner, a Pittsburgh-area attorney who passed away earlier this year at the age of 96.

One of the treasures she shared is a statement that he and two other members of a peace committee submitted to their congregation before the U.S. entered World War II. They warned about the “imperceptible poisons of propaganda, prejudice and passion” that make can us act contrary to our better judgment about the effects of war. The statement appeared in the Pittsburgh Press on November 12, 1939, as a letter to the editor from the peace committee’s chair, Daniel R. Carroll.

Read on …

WHY WE DO NOT WANT WAR

No one wants War. But in addition everyone owes it to himself, his country and his fellowmen to think out clearly why he does not want War before the imperceptible poisons of propaganda, prejudice and passion make it difficult or impossible to do so. To help in this task your Christian Peace Committee has prepared the following brief list of reasons why we are convinced that the United States should not engage in any war except as a very last resort and in self-defense only. For these reasons also we should constantly thank God for thus far sparing our country and implore his mercy upon all of the unfortunate belligerents.

WE DO NOT WANT WAR BECAUSE:

ECONOMICALLY -

1. War is a non-productive use of capital and labor.

2. War destroys property and man-power.

3. War is expensive to wage.

4. War dislocates the economic system, stifles initiative and competition.

5. War creates future burdens; debts, taxes, disabled veterans, widows and orphans.

6. War is followed by economic depression, unemployment, poverty.

BIOLOGICALLY -

1. War kills human beings.

2. War produces starvation and malnutrition.

3. War wounds and disables, often for life.

4. War spawns new plagues and increases the virulence of diseases.

5. War throws off balance the ratio of the sexes.

6. War causes deterioration of the human race by leaving the less fit to survive and propagate.

POLITICALLY -

1. War results in confusion of loyalties and shifting of boundaries.

2. War disturbs international and domestic law and order.

3. War creates subject nationalities and oppressed minorities.

4. War sows the seeds of future rebellion and revenge.

5. War requires centralized regimentation which is the death of individual liberty.

6. War subordinates democratic processes to military despotism.

CULTURALLY -

1. War distorts the reason and warps the mind with passion and prejudice.

2. War debauches science into an agency of destruction.

3. War stifles the arts, and destroys works of art.

4. War perverts institutions of learning into bureaus of propaganda.

5. War sidetracks education from pursuit of the true and useful.

6. War interrupts cultural progress.

MORALLY -

1. War cheapens the value of the human individual.

2. War breaks down moral standards and right inhibitions.

3. War brings out and inflames the worst in human nature.

4. War deepens the grooves of national and racial egotism and selfishness.

5. War breeds crime waves and trains gangsters.

6. War is an incompatible means for attaining the goal of moral perfection.

RELIGIOUSLY -

1. War disobeys the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”

2. War usurps the judgment seat of God to whom alone vengeance belongs.

3. War violates Christ’s command: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. ”

4. War transgresses the Golden Rule.

5. War contradicts the Brotherhood of Man, and Fatherhood of God.

6. War exalts the national state above the Kingdom of Heaven.

Respectfully submitted,
Christian Peace Committee of the Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Young Peoples’ Forum

Daniel R. Carroll, Chairman; C. Bryson Schreiner, Frances E. Mayne.

9:54 Obama on businesses laying off or not able to hire because of health care costs. And this is only going to get worse as costs go up.

9:57 This will be interesting, having a moderator (Obama) who is the chief representative of one side …

9:58 We have included a lot of Republican ideas in the Senate bill.

9:59 “We have tried to take every single cost containment idea that’s out there” and tried to include them in this bill. I’d like to find out which of your cost containment ideas are not in the bill and see whether we can include them. Alexander, you named some ideas you’d like in a bill that are already there.

10:02 McConnell points to poll numbers unfavorable to reform. (Of course, he doesn’t say is that a lot of the opposition is from people who think the bills are not strong enough.)

10:05 Coburn-R: Get rid of fraud. Tort reform.

10:07 Coburn-R says we can incentive healthy eating for users of food stamps and make school lunches healthier because right now food stamps and school lunches are causing diabetes. He forgot to mention massive subsidies for corn-growing.

10:10 Obama: Every good idea we’ve heard about eliminating fraud and abuse in government health care we’ve incorporated. So that’s an area where we agree. But that doesn’t account for rising costs in private marketplace. Sebelius is working on tort reform. There are a lot of preventive measures in the bill already.

10:12 Hoyer-D: Americans hope we’re here talking about them, not about us.

10:15 Hoyer-D, to Coburn-R: We agree with you about cost containment, and a lot of what you suggest is in the bills. You may have a better way of doing it, but we do have wellness as a focus. We agree with your premise on food stamps and school lunches; let’s find a way to get there.

10:17 Hoyer-D: You agree with us on preexisting conditions and caps on coverage, but it’s not in your bill (I think I heard that right). We agree on coordination of care.

10:18 Hoyer-D: Public option! Would open competition. Our caucus didn’t all agree on that.

10:20 Obama: I’d like to hear Republican objections to allowing individuals and small businesses to be able to become part of a large group like government employees have so they’ll have negotiating power–which would drive down costs. (Is he talking about a public option?) Some have agreed in the past on this. Is there something about the way bills have been structured that makes you concerned?

10:22 Republican response doesn’t answer Obama’s question but suggests Republican proposal re allowing association health plans. This would be better than the exchange that’s in the “huge bill.”

10:25 Baucus: “Gaps, in my judgment, are not that great.” We allow buying and selling across state lines in exchange.

OK, I need to break for some work-work.

9:25 Mr. Alexander, how will taxes and mandates cause premiums to go up?

9:29 Mr. Alexander, passing components of health care reform via reconciliation is not the same as abolishing the filibuster. (I guess this is live-arguing on a blog, not live blogging, huh?)

9:31 The administration’s BATNA–best alternative to a negotiated agreement–is probably reconciliation. Alexander is suggesting that this summit will be fruitless unless the administration deep-sixes its BATNA from the get-go.

9:35 Pelosi: “They don’t have time for us to start over.” Amen, Sister.

9:39 Pelosi is talking about potential entrepreneurs being locked down because of their reliance on employer-provided health care for a family member with a pre-existing condition.

9:40 Pelosi: “Who can say ‘ram’?” We started this effort just a few days after the inauguration–with an effort to do it in a bipartisan manner.

9:43 Reid, to Lamar Alexander: “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” We need to talk about facts here.

9:45 Reid: Of course reconciliation is not the only way out. But reconciliation has been used for many things, especially by Republicans, for Contract with America and tax cuts for rich people.

9:45 Reid: Talking about many Republican amendments in Senate bill. “So let’s look at the facts a little more, ’cause they can be stubborn, y’know?”

9:49 Reid brings out the tired If you have a plan, let’s see it. That’s not going to help. Republicans will say, we gave you a plan!

9:51 Obama talking to Lamar Alexander about process: A lot of the elements you mention are in the Senate bill. So let’s talk about what we do agree on, then what we don’t agree on, and whether we can bridge differences. I don’t know if we can bridge differences, but I hope we can. Before we talk about legislative process, let’s talk about substance. Maybe we’ll surprise ourselves and find out we agree more than we disagree.

If your enemies are snowbound, shovel them out. If they are shivering, bring them hot chocolate. In doing this, you will heap freezing icicles on their heads.
      —a winterly paraphrase of Romans 12:20

My friend Cindy Wallace, one of the best writers I know, suggests I break my blogging drought (too much happening!) with a link to her reflections on a summer evening in Chicago.

A good suggestion. Enjoy and ponder.

One of my favorite authors, Edwidge Dandicat of Haiti, writes in the New Yorker about family members gone and still living.

“Adopt a tragic view of history and don’t place your hopes in temporal power. You’ll experience fewer disappointments.” —my colleague Richard Kauffman, of the Christian Century, on the morning after the Scott Brown Senate victory in Massachusetts

This from my friend Dave Lowitzki, on the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts:

Too bad Scott Brown didn’t need to get 60% of the State of Massachusetts to decide that the State was allowed to vote on whether Scott Brown could become the next Senator of MA.

(Too busy to blog; not too busy to pass on what my friends are saying.)

From Harold A. Penner, in The Mennonite:

If Obama is right, then Mahatma Gandhi and King were wrong. If Obama is right, then the nonviolent Jesus is wrong. But no, Obama’s stated support of war is wrong. Jesus’ followers must insist on the Way of nonviolence.We need to teach and practice love for enemies. We need to renounce the just war theory. Morally flimsy from the start, it is now absolutely inapplicable because its conditions cannot be met. The fire power of modern warfare has made the theory completely obsolete. More so, it is inadmissible because Jesus commanded otherwise.

A friend who was once homeless sends me this memory:

When my older daughter was little and my younger one was a baby, we went to the Haitian office on Lunt when other food pantries would not help us. They were only supposed to give assistance to Haitians. The old lady took one look at us and gave us diapers, formula, and food, and offered me money as well (which I did not take). She said we are all mothers. I have never forgotten her kindness.