Robert Engelman: What a Population of 7 Billion People Means for the Planet

With global population expected to surpass 7 billion people this year, the staggering impact on the environment is hard to ignore.

What a Population of 7 Billion People Means for the Planet

by Robert Engelman article link article link

July 20, 2011 | CommonDreams | Yale Environment 360

Demographers aren't known for their sense of humor, but the ones who work for the United Nations recently announced that the world's human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year. Since censuses and other surveys can scarcely justify such a precise calculation, it's tempting to imagine that the UN Population Division, the data shop that pinpointed the Day of 7 Billion, is hinting that we should all be afraid, be very afraid.

We have reason to be. The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world's population has gained yet another 4.5 billion. Never before have so many animals of one species anything like our size inhabited the planet.

And this species interacts with its surroundings far more intensely than any other ever has. Planet Earth has become Planet Humanity, as we co-opt its carbon, water, and nitrogen cycles so completely that no other force can compare. For the first time in life's 3-billion-plus-year history, one form of life — ours — condemns to extinction significant proportions of the plants and animals that are our only known companions in the universe.

Did someone just remark that these impacts don't stem from our population, but from our consumption? Probably, as this assertion emerges often from journals, books, and the blogosphere. It's as though a geometry text were to propound the axiom that it is not length that determines the area of a rectangle, but width. Would we worry about our individual consumption of energy and natural resources if humanity still had the stable population of roughly 300 million people — less than today's U.S. number — that the species maintained throughout the first millennium of the current era?

It is precisely because our population is so large and growing so fast that we must care, ever more with each generation, how much we as individuals are out of sync with environmental sustainability. Our diets, our modes of moving, and our urge to keep interior temperatures close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit no matter what is happening outside — none of these make us awful people. It's just that collectively, these behaviors are moving basic planetary systems into danger zones.

Yet another argument often advanced to wave off population is the assertion that all of us could fit into Los Angeles with room to wiggle our shoulders. The image may comfort some. But space, of course, has never been the issue. The impacts of our needs, greeds, and wants are. We should bemoan — and aggressively address — the gross inequity that characterizes individual consumption around the world. But we should also acknowledge that over the decades-long span of most human lifetimes, most of us are likely to consume a fair amount, regardless of where and how we live; no human being, no matter how poor, can escape interacting with the environment, which is one reason population matters so much. And given the global economic system and the development optimistically anticipated in all regions of the world, we each have a tendency to consume more as that lifetime proceeds. A parent of seven poor children may be the grandparent of 10 to 15 much more affluent ones climbing up the ladder of middle-class consumption.

This, in fact, is the story of China, often seen not as an example of population's impact on the environment but that of rapid industrialization alone. Yet this one country, having grown demographically for millennia, is home to 1.34 billion people. One reason the growth even of low-consuming populations is hazardous is that bursts of per-capita consumption have typically followed decades of rapid demographic growth that occurred while per-capita consumption rates were low. Examples include the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, China at the turn of the 21st, and India possibly in the coming decade. More immediately worrisome from an environmental perspective, of course, is that the United States and the industrialized world as a whole still have growing populations, despite recent slowdowns in the growth rate, while already living high up on the per-capita consumption ladder.

Many of the impacts of this ubiquitous multiplication of per-capita resource consumption by the number of individuals are by now well documented. Humanity started to overwhelm the atmosphere with greenhouse gases not long after the Industrial Revolution began, a process that accelerated along with population and consumption growth in the 20th century. Fresh water is now shared so thinly that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) projects that in just 14 years two thirds of the world's population will be living in countries facing water scarcity or stress. Half of the world's original forests have been cleared for human land use, and UNEP warns that the world's fisheries will be effectively depleted by mid-century. The world's area of cultivated land has expanded by about 13 percent since its measurement began in 1961, but the doubling of world population since then means that each of us can count on just half as much land as in 1961 to produce the food we eat.

For the rest of life on Earth, the implications of all this are obvious. Where we go, nature retreats. We are entering an epoch scientists have begun calling the Anthropocene, a break with the geologic past marked by humanity's long-term alteration of the natural world and its biota. We are inadvertently bringing on the sixth mass extinction not just because our appetites are vast and our technologies powerful, but because we occupy or manipulate most of the land in every continent except Antarctica. We appropriate anywhere from 24 percent to nearly 40 percent of the photosynthetic output of the planet for our food and other purposes, and more than half of its accessible renewable freshwater runoff.

Given these facts, it's hardly surprising that wildlife conservation faces an uphill battle globally and in every nation, while ambitious concepts like the creation of wildlife corridors to help species escape the ravages of development and climate change proliferate despite their impracticality in a world of growing human impacts.

So should we be afraid on the day we gain a 7 billionth living human being, especially considering UN demographers are now projecting anywhere between 6.2 billion and 15.8 billion people at the end of the century? Fear is not a particularly productive response — courage and a determination to act in the face of risk are the answer. And in this case, there is so much to be done to heal and make sustainable a world of 7 billion breathing human beings that cowering would be not just fatalistic but stupid.

Action means doing a lot of different things right now. We can't stop the growth of our numbers in any acceptable way immediately. But we can put in place conditions that will support an early end to growth, possibly making this year's the last billion-population day we ever mark. We can elevate the autonomy of women to make life-changing decisions for themselves. We can lower birth rates by assuring that women become pregnant only when they themselves decide to bear a child.

Simultaneously, we need a swift transformation of energy, water, and materials consumption through conservation, efficiency, and green technologies. We shouldn't think of these as a sequence of efforts — dealing with consumption first, because population dynamics take time to turn around — but as simultaneous work on multiple fronts. It would be naïve to believe we will arrive at sustainability by wrestling shifting technologies and lifestyles while human population grows indefinitely and most people strive to live as comfortably as Americans do. Nor should we take comfort in the illusion that population growth is already on a path to end soon. Demographers can no more tell us when that will happen (or through what combination of lower birth rates or higher death rates) than economists can predict when robust global economic growth will resume. Both expert groups are mocked by the many surprises the future holds in store.

Rather than forecast the future, we should work to secure it. More than two in five pregnancies worldwide are unintended by the women who experience them, and half or more of these pregnancies result in births that spur continued population growth. Clearly there is vast potential to slow that growth through something women want and need: the capacity to decide for themselves when to become pregnant. If all women had this capacity, survey data affirm, average global childbearing would immediately fall below the "replacement fertility" value of slightly more than two children per woman. Population would immediately move onto a path leading to a peak followed by a gradual decline, possibly well before 2050.

Despite the obvious barriers to women's rights in today's world, such a vision rests on a set of straightforward and achievable conditions: Women must be able to make their own decisions free from fear of coercion or pressure from partners, family, and society. They must not depend on prolific motherhood for social approval and self-esteem. And they must have easy access to a range of safe, effective, and affordable contraceptive methods and the information and counseling needed to use them.

For those who care about the environment, the future of human civilization, or both, the Day of 7 Billion should prod us to face and address the risks of continued population growth. By the sheer scale of our presence and activity we are putting ourselves and all life at risk. No human being has the right to consume forever more than any other. Yet if we could somehow close the global consumption gap, the importance of our numbers would be even more obvious as the limits of natural systems were crossed. It scarcely lessens the importance of reducing both consumption and inequity to celebrate the fact that population growth can end without policies that restrict births, without coercion of any kind, without judgments on those who choose large families. We are not far from a world in which the number of births roughly balances the number of deaths, based on pregnancies universally welcomed by women and their partners.

The transition to this world may not be entirely painless. Nations will have to adjust to rising average ages as birth rates descend further. In China and India, smaller families may contribute to artificially high ratios of baby boys, with possible risks to future social stability. But these problems are the kind that societies and institutions are generally good at handling. Stopping climate change, reducing water scarcity, or keeping ecosystems intact, by contrast, don't yet seem to be in our skill set. Working now to bring population growth to an end through intentional childbearing won't solve such problems by itself, but it will help — a lot. And such an effort, based on human rights and the dignity and freedom of the world's childbearers, is in the interest of all who care about a truly sustainable environment and human future.

© 2011 Yale Environment 360

Robert Engelman is executive director of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C. The Population Institute awarded his book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, the Global Media Award for Individual Reporting in 2008. A former newspaper reporter who covered science and politics, Engelman served on the faculty of Yale University as a visiting lecturer in the early 2000s and was founding secretary of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

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Christian Parenti: Soaring Food Prices, Wild Weather, Upheaval, and a Planetful of Trouble

Soaring Food Prices, Wild Weather, Upheaval, and a Planetful of Trouble

Reading the World In a Loaf of Bread

by Christian Parenti article link article link article link article link

July 19, 2011 | CommonDreams | TomDispatch | OpEdNews | Truthout

What can a humble loaf of bread tell us about the world?

The answer is: far more than you might imagine. For one thing, that loaf can be “read” as if it were a core sample extracted from the heart of a grim global economy. Looked at another way, it reveals some of the crucial fault lines of world politics, including the origins of the Arab spring that has now become a summer of discontent.

Consider this: between June 2010 and June 2011, world grain prices almost doubled. In many places on this planet, that proved an unmitigated catastrophe. In those same months, several governments fell, rioting broke out in cities from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to Nairobi, Kenya, and most disturbingly three new wars began in Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Even on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Bedouin tribes are now in revolt against the country’s interim government and manning their own armed roadblocks.

And in each of these situations, the initial trouble was traceable, at least in part, to the price of that loaf of bread. If these upheavals were not “resource conflicts” in the formal sense of the term, think of them at least as bread-triggered upheavals.

Growing Climate Change in a Wheat Field

Bread has classically been known as the staff of life. In much of the world, you can’t get more basic, since that daily loaf often stands between the mass of humanity and starvation. Still, to read present world politics from a loaf of bread, you first have to ask: of what exactly is that loaf made? Water, salt, and yeast, of course, but mainly wheat, which means when wheat prices increase globally, so does the price of that loaf -- and so does trouble.

To imagine that there’s nothing else in bread, however, is to misunderstand modern global agriculture. Another key ingredient in our loaf -- call it a “factor of production” -- is petroleum. Yes, crude oil, which appears in our bread as fertilizer and tractor fuel. Without it, wheat wouldn’t be produced, processed, or moved across continents and oceans.

And don’t forget labor. It’s an ingredient in our loaf, too, but not perhaps in the way you might imagine. After all, mechanization has largely displaced workers from the field to the factory. Instead of untold thousands of peasants planting and harvesting wheat by hand, industrial workers now make tractors and threshers, produce fuel, chemical pesticides, and nitrogen fertilizer, all rendered from petroleum and all crucial to modern wheat growing. If the labor power of those workers is transferred to the wheat field, it happens in the form of technology. Today, a single person driving a huge $400,000 combine, burning 200 gallons of fuel daily, guided by computers and GPS satellite navigation, can cover 20 acres an hour, and harvest 8,000 to 10,000 bushels of wheat in a single day.

Next, without financial capital -- money -- our loaf of bread wouldn’t exist. It’s necessary to purchase the oil, the fertilizer, that combine, and so on. But financial capital may indirectly affect the price of our loaf even more powerfully. When there is too much liquid capital moving through the global financial system, speculators start to bid-up the price of various assets, including all the ingredients in bread. This sort of speculation naturally contributes to rising fuel and grain prices.

The final ingredients come from nature: sunlight, oxygen, water, and nutritious soil, all in just the correct amounts and at just the right time. And there’s one more input that can’t be ignored, a different kind of contribution from nature: climate change, just now really kicking in, and increasingly the key destabilizing element in bringing that loaf of bread disastrously to market.

Marketing Disaster

When these ingredients mix in a way that sends the price of bread soaring, politics enters the picture. Consider this, for instance: the upheavals in Egypt lay at the heart of the Arab Spring. Egypt is also the world’s single largest wheat importer, followed closely by Algeria and Morocco. Keep in mind as well that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia when rising food prices, high unemployment, and a widening gap between rich and poor triggered deadly riots and finally the flight of the country’s autocratic ruler Zine Ben Ali. His last act was a vow to reduce the price of sugar, milk, and bread -- and it was too little too late.

With that, protests began in Egypt and the Algerian government ordered increased wheat imports to stave off growing unrest over food prices. As global wheat prices surged by 70% between June and December 2010, bread consumption in Egypt started to decline under what economists termed “price rationing.” And that price kept rising all through the spring of 2011. By June, wheat cost 83% more than it had a year before. During the same time frame, corn prices surged by a staggering 91%. Egypt is the world’s fourth largest corn importer. When not used to make bread, corn is often employed as a food additive and to feed poultry and livestock. Algeria, Syria, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia are among the top 15 corn importers. As those wheat and corn prices surged, it was not just the standard of living of the Egyptian poor that was threatened, but their very lives as climate-change driven food prices triggered political violence.

In Egypt, food is a volatile political issue. After all, one in five Egyptians live on less than $1 a day and the government provides subsidized bread to 14.2 million people in a population of 83 million. Last year, overall food-price inflation in Egypt was running at more than 20%. This had an instant and devastating impact on Egyptian families, who spend on average 40% of their often exceedingly meager monthly incomes simply feeding themselves.

Against this backdrop, World Bank President Robert Zoellick fretted that the global food system was "one shock away from a full-fledged crisis." And if you want to trace that near full-fledged crisis back to its environmental roots, the place to look is climate change, the increasingly extreme and devastating weather being experienced across this planet.

When it comes to bread, it went like this: In the summer of 2010, Russia, one of the world’s leading wheat exporters, suffered its worst drought in 100 years. Known as the Black Sea Drought, this extreme weather triggered fires that burnt down vast swathes of Russian forests, bleached farmlands, and damaged the country’s breadbasket wheat crop so badly that its leaders (urged on by western grain speculators) imposed a year-long ban on wheat exports. As Russia is among the top four wheat exporters in any year, this caused prices to surge upward.

At the same time, massive flooding occurred in Australia, another significant wheat exporter, while excessive rains in the American Midwest and Canada damaged corn production. Freakishly massive flooding in Pakistan, which put some 20% of that country under water, also spooked markets and spurred on the speculators.

And that’s when those climate-driven prices began to soar in Egypt. The ensuing crisis, triggered in part by that rise in the price of our loaf of bread, led to upheaval and finally the fall of the country’s reigning autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia and Egypt helped trigger a crisis that led to an incipient civil war and then western intervention in neighboring Libya, which meant most of that country’s production of 1.4 million barrels of oil a day went off-line. That, in turn, caused the price of crude oil to surge, at its height hitting $125 a barrel, which set off yet more speculation in food markets, further driving up grain prices.

And recent months haven't brought much relief. Once again, significant, in some cases record, flooding has damaged crops in Canada, the United States, and Australia. Meanwhile, an unexpected spring drought in northern Europe has hurt grain crops as well. The global food system is visibly straining, if not snapping, under the intense pressure of rising demand, rising energy prices, growing water shortages, and most of all the onset of climate chaos.

And this, the experts tell us, is only the beginning. The price of our loaf of bread is forecast to increase by up to 90% over the next 20 years. That will mean yet more upheavals, more protest, greater desperation, heightened conflicts over water, increased migration, roiling ethnic and religious violence, banditry, civil war, and (if past history is any judge) possibly a raft of new interventions by imperial and possibly regional powers.

And how are we responding to this gathering crisis? Has there been a broad new international initiative focused on ensuring food security for the global poor -- that is to say, a stable, affordable price for our loaf of bread? You already know the sad answer to that question.

Instead, massive corporations like Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trading company, and the privately held and secretive Cargill, the world’s biggest trader of agricultural commodities, are moving to further consolidate their control of world grain markets and vertically integrate their global supply chains in a new form of food imperialism designed to profit off global misery. While bread triggered war and revolution in the Middle East, Glencore made windfall profits on the surge in grain prices. And the more expensive our loaf of bread becomes the more money firms like Glencore and Cargill stand to make. Consider that just about the worst possible form of “adaptation” to the climate crisis.

So what text should flash through our brains when reading our loaf of bread? A warning, obviously. But so far, it seems, a warning ignored.

To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Parenti discusses the origins of his latest book and how climate change contributes to global violence, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

© 2011 Christian Parenti

Christian Parenti, a Nation contributing editor, fellow at The Nation Institute and visiting scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center. His most recent book is Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Previous books include The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (New Press) and Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis.

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East Africa's Drought: 11 Million Lives At Risk

by Tristan McConnell article link article link article link

July 18, 2011 | CommonDreams | Countercurrents | GlobalPost

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Post Apocalyptic America -- NOW!

by Rob Kall article link

July 18, 2011 | OpEdNews

Alex Henderson: Fighting the Culture Wars With Hate, Violence and Even Bullets

From the Army of God to the Hutaree Militia to Gary North and his Christian reconstructionists, radical Christianity is alive and well in the United States.

Fighting the Culture Wars With Hate, Violence and Even Bullets:

Meet the Most Extreme of the Radical Christians

by Alex Henderson article link

June 27, 2011 | AlterNet

If there is one name some residents of Amarillo, Texas wish they could forget, it’s Repent Amarillo. Based in that North Texas city, Repent Amarillo is a militant Christian fundamentalist group whose antics have ranged from staging a mock execution of Santa Claus by firing squad to posting a “spiritual warfare” map on its Web site that cited a Buddhist temple, an Islamic center, gay bars, strip clubs and sex shops as places of demonic activity.

Repent Amarillo is also infamous for mercilessly harassing a local swingers club called Route 66. Throughout 2009, members of Repent Amarillo made a point of showing up at Route 66’s events, where they would typically wear military fatigues, shout at Route 66 members through bullhorns and write down the license plate numbers of people attending the events. After finding out who the swingers were, Repent Amarillo’s members would find out where they worked and try to get them fired from their jobs (according to Route 66 coordinator Mac Mead, at least two members of the club lost their jobs because of Repent Amarillo).

None of that has kept Repent Amarillo founder David H. Grisham from dabbling in local politics; earlier this year, he ran for mayor of Amarillo and lost to former city commissioner Paul Harpole.

But Repent Amarillo is hardly alone when it comes to promoting a decidedly radical and militant brand of Christianity. From the Army of God to the Hutaree Militia to Gary North and his Christian reconstructionists, radical Christianity is alive and well in the United States—and Christianists aren’t shy about turning up the heat when it comes to fighting the "culture war." Some radical Christianists have employed bully tactics and hate-mongering rhetoric without resorting to actual violence (Repent Amarillo, the Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church), while others have committed acts of terrorism and said the culture war will have to be won with bombs and bullets.

When religion is discussed, it is important to make a distinction between radical and non-radical practitioners. Radical Christianity is not representative of Christianity any more than al-Qaeda is representative of Islam. The average Lutheran or Episcopalian minister is no more a threat to public safety than the average member of Islam’s Sufi sect, who are arguably the Hare Krishnas of Islam. Not all Christians are Christianists; not all Muslims are Islamists. But an abundance of disturbing events bear out the fact that radical Christianity, like radical Islam, is quite capable of violence—and contrary to what Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would have us believe, the examples are numerous.

Active since the early 1980s, the Army of God is a loose network of radical anti-abortionists with a long history of promoting terrorism and premeditated murder in the name of Christianity. The Army of God has published an anti-abortion training manual that offers instructions on bomb-making, arson and other ways to attack clinics.

The group’s Web site praises a long list of Christian terrorists who have been convicted of violent crimes, including Paul Jennings Hill (who was executed by lethal injection in 2003 for the murders of abortion provider John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett), Scott Roeder (who was convicted of first-degree murder for the 2009 shooting of George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions), Michael Frederick Griffin (who was sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn, an ob/gyn based in Pensacola, Florida), James Charles Kopp (who shot and killed Barnett Slepian, a physician who performed abortions, in 1998), Matthew Lee Derosia (who, in 2009, rammed his SUV into the front entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul and told police that Jesus ordered him to carry out that attack) and John C. Salvi (who attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1994, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others).

The Web site describes Tiller’s murder as “justifiable homicide” and describes Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as women who got exactly what they deserved; Salvi, who died in prison in 1996 and may have committed suicide, is hailed as a hero for killing them. The Army of God exalts Hill, Rudolph, Roeder, Griffin, Derosia and Salvi as martyrs for Christianity in much the same way al-Qaeda consider Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers martyrs for Islam.

The Army of God has also been a vocal supporter of Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph’s crimes include bombing an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, a suburb of Atlanta, in 1997; bombing the Otherwise Lounge (a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in 1997; and bombing an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998. The Birmingham bombing caused the death of Robert Sanderson, a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard, and resulted in serious injuries for nurse Emily Lyons, who lost an eye. Rudolph is best known, however, for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics; that blast killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others.

Another Christian terrorist who has been associated with the Army of God is Shelley Shannon, who shot Tiller in 1993 but didn’t kill him; in addition to being convicted of attempted murder for her attack on Tiller, Shannon was involved in a series of arson attacks on abortion clinics in different states. One person who considered Shannon a good friend was fellow Army of God terrorist Scott Roeder, who visited her frequently in prison and finished what she started when he murdered Tiller in 2009. The Army of God Web site calls Shannon “a warrior soldier in the Army of God.”

In 2010, a North Carolina-based Christianist named Justin Carl Moose was arrested by the FBI for plotting to help blow up an abortion clinic; Moose, the FBI said, considers himself an Army of God member and an organizer of a terrorist cell for that group. According to the FBI, Moose described himself as a Christian equivalent of Osama bin Laden on his Facebook page but openly advocated violence against Muslims; he also praised Timothy McVeigh (mastermind of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing of 1995, which killed 168 people and injured 450 others).

The FBI said that Moose wrote on his Facebook page: “If a mosque is built on Ground Zero, it will be removed Oklahoma City style. Tim’s not the only man out there that knows how to do it....I have learned a lot from the Muslim terrorists and have no problem using their tactics.” Moose, according to the FBI, met with an FBI informant and offered advice on how to make TATP, the explosive used in the London subway bombings of 2005. Earlier this year, Moose was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

The Army of God’s Web site has, in the past, been managed by the Rev. Donald Spitz, who is so extreme that even the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue disowned him for promoting violence. The Virginia-based Spitz has publicly argued that killing abortion doctors is justifiable homicide, and Spitz has published the writings of Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph, Shelley Shannon and other Christian terrorists on the Army of God’s Web site. Spitz, who considered himself Hill’s “spiritual adviser” during the final months of Hill’s life, heads his own Christianist group, Pro-Life Virginia, and has said that Muslims “should not be allowed to live in the United States.”

In the U.S., the far-right militia movement has often been secular in nature; Timothy McVeigh, for example, was raised Catholic but described himself as an agnostic. But occasionally, the militia movement and radical Christianity have overlapped. A perfect example is the Hutaree Militia, a Michigan-based group with extreme Christianist views. In 2010, nine members of Hutaree were arrested for an alleged plot to assassinate police officers using firearms and explosives; allegedly, Hutaree saw that plot as part of a battle with forces of the "Antichrist."

Christian reconstructionism is one of the most disturbing schools of radical Christianist ideology. Founded by the late Calvinist theologian Rousas John Rushdoony (who died in 2001), the Christian reconstructionist movement believes in abolishing any separation of church and state and establishing a government that adheres to a rigid approach to Mosaic Old Testament law; adultery, homosexuality and blasphemy would be punishable by death under a Christian reconstructionist government.

Even on the Christian Right, Rushdoony (who was a defender of slavery and considered democracy incompatible with Christianity) is controversial. The type of government Christian reconstructionists long for would, in many respects, mirror the Taliban of radical Islam. Rushdoony’s teachings have a following that includes his son, the Rev. Mark Rushdoony (who now heads the Chalcedon Foundation, the organization his father founded) and Gary North (who was R.J. Rushdoony’s son-in-law and now heads his own Christian reconstructionist organization, the Institute for Christian Economics). According to David Holthouse (formerly of the Southern Poverty Law Center and now with Media Matters), Mark Rushdoony “now leads a small army of true believers whose fundamentalism is so hardcore they make garden-variety right-wing evangelicals seem like Unitarians at a Peter, Paul and Mary sing-along.”

North has written that under a Christian reconstructionist government, stoning should be the method of execution for gay men, adulterers and women who have had abortions. North has said that stoning (which is still practiced by radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and other countries) is preferable to other methods of execution because it is more economical; he has also said that a stoning can be a community event for Christian families.

Of course, not everyone on the Christian Right is guilty of committing or promoting violence. But even without actual violence, Christianists often resort to bully tactics and violent rhetoric. After the January 8, 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona that killed six people and left Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords seriously wounded, Fred Phelps praised the shooter and said that he was doing God’s work. Phelps, who ran for political office several times as a Democrat in the 1990s, said, “Congresswoman Giffords, an avid supporter of sin and baby killing, was shot for that mischief…Westboro Baptist Church prays for more shooters...and more dead.”

Journalist Chris Hedges has often said that actual violence is preceded by the "language of violence,” and the language of violence is quite common among Christianists. In 2007, when Hindu minister Rajan Zed was asked to deliver an opening prayer for the Senate, Christianist groups like the American Family Association, Operation Rescue/Operation Save America and Faith2Action angrily protested and made it clear that they had no use for Hinduism. And Repent Amarillo isn't shy about trying to bully its victims into accepting the group's extremist view of Christianity. Certainly, the language and rhetoric of violence is a part of “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” a video game that deals with holy war in the name of Christianity and is part of the Rev. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ apocalypse-obsessed Left Behind series. Author Frank Schaeffer, who used to be part of the Christian Right but has since renounced it, has said that the Left Behind novels and games “represents everything that is most deranged about religion.”

But despite all the extremist views, hate-mongering and terrorist violence associated with Christianists, radical Christianity typically gets a pass from Republican politicians and the Republican talk radio hosts who support them. When, in 2009, Janet Napolitano warned of the threat of violence coming from the far right (including anti-abortion extremists), she was called anti-Christian by many people on the Christian Right. But when Rep. Peter King of New York called for Congressional hearings on radical Islamic activity in the U.S., he was applauded by neocons and many of his fellow Republicans.

Far-right talk show hosts have spent a considerable amount of time talking about radical Islam, but they seldom, if ever, have anything to say about radical Christianity. They have no problem with a group like Repent Amarillo, which hasn't actually resorted to physical violence even though it has employed an abundance of violent, militaristic imagery. It’s safe to say that if an Islamist group held a mock execution of Santa Claus and harassed people at work, it wouldn’t be taken lightly in GOP circles. And if an Islamist group released a video game as twisted as “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” it wouldn’t get a pass from Republican talk radio.

One person who has been outspoken about the Republican/far-right double standard when it comes to radical Christianity vs. radical Islam is Rob Boston, senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and author of three books on the Christian Right. “From where I’m sitting, the main organizations that are trying to impose religion on other people in this country are fundamentalist Christian in nature,” Boston said:

“I can’t remember the last time, for example, that a Muslim group tried to get Islamic doctrine posted in a courthouse or attempted to ban same-sex marriage by pointing to passages in the Koran, or tried to force Islamic prayers in the public schools. But fundamentalist Christian groups do these things all the time. So if anybody is trying to impose religion on Americans, it’s not Muslims; it’s extreme fundamentalist Christian groups.”

Boston added that just as it is wrong for atheists to make broad generalizations about people of faith, it is equally wrong to automatically associate terrorism and extremism with Islam:

“Christian groups will complain if they are painted with too broad a brush—and rightly so. Christianity in America is diverse. There are Christian groups that are theologically very moderate, and there are Christian groups that are very, very conservative. Not everyone who is a Christian in America is a fundamentalist or an evangelical. We always have to remember that there is a lot of diversity out there. Yet, the same conservative Christian groups that complain about being caricatured will do the same thing to Islam; they portray the one billion Muslims in the world as if they are exactly the same. But anybody who has spent any time talking to Muslims quickly learns that there is just as much diversity in that community as there is in the Christian community about how holy books are to be interpreted and how society is to be ordered.”

Boston continued:

“I just find the whole thing ironic because if you look at the agenda of the Islamic extremists, their agenda is anti-women’s rights and anti-gay rights, and it’s about religion controlling the government. Well, what other movement do you know of that believes in those things? The Christian Right. Culturally, those movements are very similar. And there’s a reason for that. It’s not religion that’s the problem; it’s fundamentalism that’s the problem. I always remind people of that when I’m giving speeches. Sometimes, I run across people who think that religion in general is bad and that religion is why we have all these problems. And I tell them, well, religion can persuade people to do a lot of good things in the world. It’s not religion that’s the problem—it’s fundamentalism."

Some people have described Timothy McVeigh as the ultimate Christian terrorist. This is inaccurate, because while McVeigh was raised Catholic, he appeared to be motivated by extreme anti-government/militia beliefs rather than religious motives. But there is no doubt that McVeigh was responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to 9/11.

American Muslim activist Haroon Moghul, who serves as executive director of the Maydan Institute and frequently lectures on Islam, said he sees a major disparity between the way radical Christianity and radical Islam are covered by the right-wing media. “I think the biggest difference in the way Islam and Christianity are covered by the right is that when it comes to Islam, the assumption has been that Islam is inherently violent or inherently political and that Islam has to prove otherwise,” the New York City-based Moghul said.

“When it comes to radical forms of Christianity or more extreme forms of Christianity, it’s always seen as an aberration by the right. But any sort of Muslim behavior that is violent or extreme or intolerant is assumed to be inherent to Islam. So the burden of proof is on a Muslim community or a Muslim individual to prove otherwise. If Osama bin Laden said something, it was assumed that it was inherent to Islam. If it’s Hutaree or something like that, it’s assumed that it is just a lone wolf or a fringe group—and it’s disconnected from the rest of what’s happening in America. Hutaree isn’t assumed to be the product of something bigger than themselves.”

Moghul views the Christianity good/Islam bad narrative of the far right as symptomatic of the soundbite culture that exists in America. “There really isn’t room for a lot of different opinions in our political discourse in the United States,” Moghul said. “Whether the two-party system makes that better or worse, I don’t really know. But you generally see that nuance disappears in our political discourse.”

Another voice of sanity on the subject of Islam and Christianity is journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr., author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood and a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald. In his columns, Pitts has had a lot to say about the way some people on the far right will try to paint Islam in general as a violent religion (as opposed to making a distinction between radical and non-radical Islam). And they get away with that double standard, according to Pitts, because it is easier to attack what is a minority religion in the U.S.

“Christianity is a known element in the United States, whereas Islam is a foreign faith,” Pitts explained. He continued:

“Most people of faith in the United States are Christian. Most Americans know a lot of Christians but don’t know any Muslims. So it’s easy to look at the craziest, most dangerous Muslims and assume that they are representative of Islam as a whole. Christians in the United States will look at the Army of God and say, ‘That has no relation to any Christianity I have ever known. That has absolutely nothing to do with any Christianity I have ever known,’ but moderate Muslims will say the same thing about Muslims who commit acts of violence.”

In one of his columns, Pitts pointed to four scriptural quotes that could be construed as violent—one from the Qu’ran, three from the Bible. His point was that cherry-picking parts of the Qu’ran in order to prove that Islam is an inherently violent or dangerous religion is as intellectually dishonest as cherry-picking parts of the Bible in order to depict Christianity as inherently violent.

The far right, according to Pitts, often neglects to mention the fact that Muslims themselves have been the victims of Muslim extremists, including the Muslims killed on 9/11. “People forget that a lot of Muslims died that day,” Pitts said. “You’re not going to attack Lower Manhattan that way and not kill Muslim people.” He added: “I don't fear Muslims, I don’t fear Christians. But I fear Muslim and Christian extremists. I fear extremists period.”

If stoning proponent Gary North is mentioned at all in the Republican media, he is painted as a harmless eccentric and not part of a radical Christianist movement. But if someone in a mosque in Detroit or Oakland promoted stoning, talk-radio Republicans would be screaming about it for days.

The bottom line is that extremism in the name of religion is cause for concern regardless of whether the extremists identify themselves as Christian or Muslim. Those who claim that Christian extremism is any less dangerous than Islamic extremism are being disingenuous.

“When people embrace any kind of extreme ideology, whether it’s religious or secular, and can tolerate no dissent,” Boston said, “we’re in for trouble."

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Alex Henderson's work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, and other publications.

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Wallowing In Our Filth

Spiritual Famine

Benjamin/Davis: Needed: An Antiwar Movement That Puts Peace Over Politicians

Needed: An Antiwar Movement That Puts Peace Over Politicians

by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis article link article link

June 15, 2011 | CommonDreams | AlterNet

After campaigning as the candidate of change, the man awarded a Nobel Prize for peace has given the world nothing but more war. Yet despite Barack Obama's continuation – nay, escalation – of the worst aspects of George W. Bush's foreign policy, including his very own illegal war in Libya, you’d be hard-pressed to find the large-scale protests and outrage from the liberal establishment that characterized his predecessor's reign (and only seems to pop up when a Republican's the one dropping the bombs).

That's not for a lack of things to protest. Since taking office, Obama has doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan and now looks set to break his pledge to begin a significant withdrawal in July. He has unilaterally committed the nation to an unapologetically illegal war in Libya and in two years has authorized more drone strikes in Pakistan than his predecessor authorized in two terms, with one in three of their victims reportedly civilians. In Yemen, he has targeted a U.S. citizen for assassination and approved a cluster bomb strike that, according to Amnesty International, killed 35 innocent women and children.

But these war crimes, which ought to shock the consciences of the president's liberal supporters, haven't spurred the sort of popular protest we witnessed under Bush the Lesser. At a recent congressional hearing on the bloated war budget, a handful of CODEPINK activists were the sole dissenters. Thousands poured into the streets to cheer Osama bin Laden's death, but no Americans were in the streets decrying the drone attack that killed dozens of Pakistani civilians weeks earlier.

While die-hard grassroots peace activists continue to bravely protest U.S. militarism, with 52 people arrested last month protesting outside a nuclear weapons factory in Kansas City – if they'd been Tea Partiers protesting Obamacare, you may have heard of them – there's no denying that the peace movement has taken a beating.

The question is, why? Part of the reason is the financial crisis. It's hard to protest war when the bank's foreclosing on your house. And it's hard to find money for a trip to Washington, DC, when, like 14 million Americans, you're unemployed.

War has also become normal – routine, boring – to many Americans, with U.S. troops stationed for nearly ten years in Afghanistan and eight in Iraq. And after the first volley of smart bombs, wars are barely covered by the media, eclipsed by the latest scandal involving a politician's privates. Beyond apathy, many who once took to the street may now no longer see the value of protest in the face of the enormous power of the military-industrial complex.

But a recent study suggests that a major reason why the antiwar movement has withered even as the warfare state has grown is simply that the party in charge has changed.

After surveying 5,398 demonstrators between 2007 to 2009, the University of Michigan's Michael T. Heaney and Indiana University's Fabio Rojas found that prior to Obama's election, up to 54 percent of antiwar protesters were self-described Democrats. After his inauguration, that number fell to less than a quarter.

“Democratic activists left the antiwar movement as the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, if not policy success,” the researchers write. That is, Democrats successfully “exploit[ed] the antiwar movement for their own electoral success,” and many of their supporters took that as a victory in and of itself.

Instead of continuing the hard work of organizing and protesting unjust wars, too many people took the election of politicians with “D”s after their name as their own Mission Accomplished. Instead of continuing direct action, too many were content voting for “their” team and calling it a day, never mind the policies those they voted into office continued once in power.

It's worth recounting just how Democrats have rewarded their antiwar supporters. In 2006, riding public anger over the war in Iraq to take back control of the House for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats had a mandate for change – and then turned around and consistently funded the war they claimed to oppose. The most congressional Democrats have done is offer a resolution requesting a “plan” for ending the war in Afghanistan, all the while dutifully approving the funds to fight it.

We know how Obama has governed after likewise cynically riding antiwar sentiment into the White House.

Once casting themselves as brave opponents of the warfare state, many Democrats have rejected their rhetorical support for peace just as thoroughly as their once-upon-a-time opposition to the Patriot Act. When Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich offered a measure condemning Obama's illegal, undeclared war in Libya and demanding a withdrawal of all U.S. forces within two weeks, he was joined by more Republicans than he was his fellow Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, channeling every right-winger during the Bush years, even claimed lawmakers who opposed the president's unilateral war policy would send the “wrong message” to the U.S.'s NATO allies. The former speaker of the House is seemingly more concerned about hurt feelings than dead civilians, taxpayer money or the Constitution.

Even the recent House vote to block the president from spending funds “in contravention of the War Powers Act” – meaning Libya – received more votes from Republicans than Democrats. Who says elections don't change anything?

Democratic voters who genuinely believe in peace should know that ending the U.S.'s addiction to war requires more than spending a few minutes in the ballot box. The only change voting has brought in recent years is the party approving the money for war and the name of the president requesting it.

If voting isn't changing things – and it's not – it's time we considered changing our tactics.

Obama, after all, whose campaign cast him as the most peaceful of the major party candidates, has committed acts of war in no less than half-a-dozen countries (that we know about): Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. Under Obama, the U.S. aids and abets Israeli war crimes to the tune of more than $3 billion a year in military aid, all while vigorously fighting international attempts to hold accountable those responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza. And Guantanamo Bay? Still open.

But Obama has done more than disappoint the antiwar movement: he's actively attacked it, using the power of the state to harass and intimidate peace activists, 23 of whom have had their homes and offices raided by the FBI. The pretense? That a group of pacifists may have provided “material support” to terrorists, a charge so slippery and ill-defined that the ACLU warns it can include a conversation on the need to embrace non-violence.

More war and the threat of prosecution to intimidate those who oppose these wars – or expose them, in the case of alleged WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning: that's what Obama's election has wrought. Was his rise to power really such a progressive victory?

Occasional rhetorical flourishes aside, Democrats and Republicans reliably back the killing of poor people on the other side of the globe in the name of “regional stability” and perceived U.S. national (read: corporate) interests. As they've made painstakingly clear over the years, neither is a friend of peace, especially when one of their own is making war.

If change is to come to U.S. foreign policy, it won't be thanks to any politician, but to direct action and organizing of the sort that won African Americans and other minorities their civil rights. We already have public opinion on our side -- 2/3 of Americans consistently say they want to get out of the wars. We now have to make the voice of the silent majority heard.

Rather than devoting time, money and energy into electing politicians who will betray the values of peace, we should organize and energize a new peace movement that values direct action over access to power; real and lasting peace over disingenuous politicians. Instead of waiting – and waiting – for politicians to buck party and power, we should make alliances with labor activists, environmentalists and advocates for the poor who have some pretty good ideas on protest and civil disobedience – and on what to do with the $2 billion the U.S. government wastes every week on the Afghan war alone. If we build a strong enough movement, politicians will figure out which way the wind is blowing.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org). She is author of Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.

Charles Davis has covered Congress for NPR and Pacifica stations across the country, and freelanced for the international news wire Inter Press Service, primarily covering U.S. policy toward Latin America and the war on drugs in particular. He has also worked as a researcher for Michael Moore on his movie Capitalism: A Love Story.

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Sowing the Seeds: Can Wisconsin Uprising Grow Nationwide Movement?

by Pat Schneider article link article link

June 15, 2011 | CommonDreams | The Capital Times (Wisconsin)

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The Revolution Will Not Be Deactualized

by Ted Rall article link

June 14, 2011 | OpEdNews

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Economic and Social Crisis in Canada: The Assault on Public Services

Will Unions Lament the Attacks or Lead a Fightback?

by Michael Hurley and Sam Gindin article link

June 14, 2011 | Global Research

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Spain’s ‘Indignant Ones’

by Pablo Ouziel article link

June 15, 2011 | CommonDreams

Greeks Strike, Clash with Police over Austerity

by Renee Maltezou and Ingrid Melander article link article link

June 15, 2011 | CommonDreams | Reuters

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SWAT Team Mania: The War Against the American Citizen

by John W. Whitehead article link article link article link

June 14, 2011 | ICH | LewRockwell | Rutherford

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Collapse: It's Coming! Are You Ready?

by Gerald Celente article link article link article link

June 15, 2011 | LewRockwell | SHTF Plan | Silver Bear Cafe

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What Are the Social Implications of Economic Collapse?

by Simon Black article link

June 14, 2011 | Sovereign Man

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History Is Knocking: Stop the Machine! Create a New World!

History Is Knocking: Stop the Machine! Create a New World!

by Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, Tarak Kauff, Elaine Brower article link

June 7, 2011 | CommonDreams

There comes a time when efforts to avoid the truth begin to fail, when one can no longer go about daily life and pretend that all is okay. If you are like most of us, you are experiencing this.

There comes a time when one can no longer shut out the atrocities of U.S. foreign and military policy: trade agreements that destroy farming; mass unemployment; especially among communities of color; illegal detention and torture; increasing drone attacks resulting in mass civilian deaths; and once again a President who lies the United States into another war for oil and bankers.

A time comes when one can no longer close one’s eyes to the atrocities of a U.S. domestic policy that steals from the people to add to the already hideously bursting pockets of the wealthy, that kicks people out of their homes, denies needed medical treatment and drives families into bankruptcy so that CEOs can dine on gold-lined plates in their personal jets as they travel from gated mansions to leather seats in penthouse offices.

A time comes when one cannot help but realize that the path is unsustainable and one must make a choice. History is knocking, and each of us must choose how we will answer. What do you want to say you did when history was at your door?

History is not a fairy tale you read to your children at night. It is not something someone else did in another place. History is right here and right now, in front of you. It happens before you realize what is going on. There are events that give hints, but nobody knows when the dam will burst and the flood that gushes forth will wipe clean what has gone before and create a new reality.

When the tipping point is reached, it seems at once both unexpected and completely obvious. We are nearing that tipping point in the United States. We have witnessed the Arab Spring and the blossoming of the European Summer. We ask ourselves if now we will experience the American Autumn.

People in America see that corporate power controls the political process and the media. The Forces of Greed steal our treasure and squander it on militarism and needless wars for empire. Forces of Greed render our White House, Congress and Supreme Court dysfunctional so that the denizens of these bodies regurgitate what their corporate paymasters feed them.

Our country faces crises on every front: the economy, education, jobs, the environment, health care, housing, the wealth divide, an empire stretched too thin and ready to shred. None of these crises has to exist. Just and sustainable solutions are available and known. What stands in the way of all these solutions is concentrated corporate power.

Corporatism is behind the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan in which thousands, including our own soldiers, but mostly innocent civilians—men, women and children—are maimed and killed.

Corporatism ignores majority support for improved Medicare for all and instead hands billions to the medical-industrial complex while tens of thousands suffer and die from preventable causes each year.

Corporatism prevents effective regulation of the finance industry, stands in the way of a more sustainable energy economy, resists real job creation and is at the root of the foreclosure crisis, while more families find themselves on the street with nothing.

Corporatism blocks effective action to decrease the known causes of climate chaos while the Arctic Cap melts and tornadoes rampage; some face record droughts while others face high-level flooding.

Corporatism exploits human beings and the planet for profit.

Somehow we need to realize that the situation has gone beyond critical and there is no alternative but to act and resist with resolve. Every day the runaway corporate machine moves closer to the precipice; every day, thousands more children needlessly starve or die from wars or disease. Every day, the earth itself is being raped, and all this death and destruction, for what? Bloody offerings at the altar of the god of profit! It has to stop and people of conscience and courage are the ones with the collective power to stop it.

None of us can do this alone. Even the organizations that advocate just and sustainable solutions cannot do it alone. Corporate power is tremendous. It misinforms, frightens and divides us. Our strength is in unity, in the connection that we share: our desire for a world in which humans can trust each other, can work together to create real solutions instead of hating and killing each other.

We are seeing the beauty of this unity in other parts of the world and at home. Across the country there is evidence of citizen revolt. Most only see the big demonstrations—Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, the immigrant marches—but in fact, people inAmerica are consistently in protest against austerity budgets, big business tax avoidance, rising tuition, cuts to education, foreclosures, insurance-based health care and the ongoing wars. On issue after issue there is evidence of peoplein revolt.

Now is the time to join together and unite our struggles in sustained acts of nonviolent resistance. Democracy literally means people power. Concentrated corporate capital and influence has changed the United States into a faux democracy where Americans only get to choose from two corporate-approved candidates, funded by millions in corporate donations.

The normal tools of democracy no longer work.

October 6 is the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, and the beginning of the new federal budget year—an austerity budget for everything except for war and the corporate security state. On this day, we are calling for sustained and nonviolent mass resistance in Washington, D.C. The action, Stop the Machine! Create a New World!, portends an American Tahrir Square at Freedom Plaza between the White House and Congress, a block away from the National Press Club and a few blocks from the Chamber of Commerce and K Street, the stomping ground of corporate lobbyists.

An impressive array of people have already signed on. Among them: Ann Wright, Baldemar Velasquez, Ben Manski, Brian Becker, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, David Swanson, Debra Sweet, Diane Wilson, Glen Ford, Jane Hamsher, Jodie Evans, Leah Bolger, Medea Benjamin, Mike Ferner, Larry Pinkney, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rosa Clemente, Steffie Woolhandler, Ted Rall, The YES Men. (Google them, if you don't know them, each is an impressive leader.)

We know however, that it is not leaders who make change, but people united who insist on change that will succeed!

We are at a turning point. History is knocking. It is time for each of us to decide whether we can remain silent and thus allow the destruction of our planet or join in solidarity to create the future we envision of peace, justice and equality.

Here are three steps you can take right now to create the momentum that leads to a historical breakthrough:

1. Sign the pledge at www.October2011.org and say why you’re coming.

2. Spread the word by forwarding this newsletter to everyone you know, postingwww.October2011.org on your Facebook page and sending it out on Twitter.

3. Reach out to organizations that should be involved and tell them to join the campaign.

It is time to turn the Arab Spring into the American Autumn and begin a movement to remove corporate power and militarism from control of our government.

Ending corporatism and militarism is the transformative issue of our era.

You can be part of a great moment in history—don’t miss the opportunity, answer the call.

Questions? Info@October2011.org.

Kevin Zeese is co-founder of Voters for Peace and directs Come Home America.

Dr. Margaret Flowers is a congressional fellow with Physicians for a National Health Programand a pediatrician based in Baltimore. She is also a board member of Healthcare-Now. She can reached by email at: margaret@pnhp.org

Tarak Kauff leads the Veterans For Peace direct action program.

Elaine Brower is a military mom and a leader of World Can't Wait.

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James Gustave Speth: Creating A New Vision Of Economic Growth

The idea of economic growth as an unquestioned force for good is ingrained in the American psyche. But a longtime environmental leader argues it’s time for the U.S. to reinvent its economy into one that focuses on sustaining communities, family life, and the natural world.

Creating A New Vision Of Economic Growth

by James Gustave Speth article link article link

June 01, 2011 | Countercurrents | Yale Environment 360

Is anything in America more faithfully followed than economic growth? Its movements are constantly watched, measured to the decimal place, deplored or praised, diagnosed as weak or judged healthy and vigorous. Newspapers, magazines, and cable channels report endlessly on it. Promoting growth may be the most widely shared and robust cause in the United States today.

If the growth imperative dominates U.S. political and economic life, what happens when growth hits some serious stumbling blocks?

When I was in school in England, the dean of my college told us when we first arrived that we could walk on the grass in the courtyard — but not across it. That helped me love the English and their language. Here is another creative use of prepositions: there are limits to growth, and there are limits of growth.

Let’s first take up the limits of growth. Despite the constant claims that we need more growth, there are limits on what growth can do for us. The ecological economist Herman Daly has reminded us that if neo-classical economists were true to their trade, they would recognize that there are diminishing returns to growth. Most obviously, the value of income growth declines as one gets richer and richer. Similarly, growth at some point has increasing marginal costs. For example, workers have to put in too many hours, or the climate goes haywire. It follows that for the economy as a whole, we can reach a point where the extra costs of more growth exceed the extra benefits. One should stop growing at that point. Otherwise the country enters the realm of “uneconomic growth,” to use Daly’s delightful phrase, where the costs of growth exceed the benefits it produces.

There are some, myself included, who believe that the U.S. is now experiencing uneconomic growth. If one could measure and add up all the environmental, security, social and psychological costs that U.S. economic growth generates at this point in our history, they would exceed the benefits of further ramping up what is already the highest GDP per capita of any major economy.

Though not widely accepted, the case is strong that growth in the affluent U.S. is now doing more harm than good. Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. GDP, productivity, profits, the stock market, and consumption must all go up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It can undermine families, jobs, communities, the climate and environment, and a sense of place and continuity because it is confidently asserted and widely believed that growth is worth the price that must be paid for it.

But an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy is ruining the environment; it fuels a ruthless international search for energy and other resources; it fails at generating the needed jobs; it hollows out communities; and it rests on a manufactured consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs. Americans are substituting growth and consumption for dealing with the real issues — for doing things that would truly make us and the country better off.

It is time for America to move to post-growth society where the natural environment, working life, our communities and families, and the public sector are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth; where the illusory promises of ever-more growth no longer provide an excuse for neglecting to deal generously with our country’s compelling social needs; and where true citizen democracy is no longer held hostage to the growth imperative.

Another way of pointing out the limits of growth is to consider the long list of public policies that would slow GDP growth, thus sparing the environment, while simultaneously improving social and individual well-being. Such policies include: shorter workweeks and longer vacations, with more time for children and families; greater labor protections, job security and benefits, including generous parental leaves; guarantees to part-time workers and combining unemployment insurance with part-time work during recessions; restrictions on advertising; a new design for the twenty-first-century corporation, one that embraces re-chartering, new ownership patterns, and stakeholder primacy rather than shareholder primacy; incentives for local and locally-owned production and consumption; strong social and environmental provisions in trade agreements; rigorous environmental, health and consumer protection, including full incorporation of environmental and social costs in prices; greater economic and social equality, with genuinely progressive taxation of the rich (including a progressive consumption tax) and greater income support for the poor; heavy spending on neglected public services; and initiatives to address population growth at home and abroad. Taken together, these policies would undoubtedly slow GDP growth, but well-being and quality of life would improve, and that’s what matters.

Of course, it is clear that even in a post-growth America, many things do indeed need to grow: growth in good jobs and in the incomes of the poor and working Americans; growth in availability of health care and the efficiency of its delivery; growth in education, research and training; growth in security against the risks of illness, job loss, old age and disability; growth in investment in public infrastructure and in environmental protection and amenity; growth in the deployment of climate-friendly and other green technologies; growth in the restoration of both ecosystems and local communities; growth in non-military government spending at the expense of military; and growth in international assistance for sustainable, people-centered development for the half of humanity that live in poverty. These are all areas where public policy needs to ensure that growth occurs.

That’s one case against growth — the argument that we should no longer prioritize growth, much less fetishize it as we do now. I believe this case will be pressed with increasing urgency in the years ahead, and I doubt we’ll miss our growth fetish after we say good-bye to it. We’ve had tons of growth — growth while wages stagnated, jobs fled our borders, life satisfaction flatlined, social capital eroded, poverty mounted, and the environment declined.

The case that there are limits to growth — not that we shouldn’t grow but that we can’t grow — is based on the reality that we are entering a new age of scarcity and rising prices that will constrain growth. The world economy, having doubled in size three times since 1950, is now phenomenally large — large even in comparison with the planetary base that is the setting for economic activity. Today’s huge world economy is consuming the planet’s available resources on a scale that rivals their supply, and it is releasing almost all of those resources, often transformed and toxic, back to the environment on a scale that is beyond the environment’s assimilation capacities, thus greatly affecting the major biogeophysical cycles of the planet. Natural resources are becoming increasingly scarce, and the planet’s sinks for absorbing waste products are already exhausted in many contexts. According to the Ecological Footprint analysis, Earth would have to be 50 percent larger than it is for today’s economy to be environmentally sustainable.

In effect, humans have entered a new geological epoch — the anthropocene. As Paul Crutzen and Christian Schwägerl explained in an article on Yale Environment 360: “It’s a pity we’re still officially living in an age called the Holocene. The Anthropocene — human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth — is already an undeniable reality.”

If we now live in a world where the natural resources and environmental sinks needed for economic activity are becoming more scarce across a wide front, we should see prices rising. And indeed we do. Prices of many things are rising rather rapidly: oil, coal, food, and numerous non-fuel minerals. Lithium and rare earths are probably not far behind.

If these patterns hold, as seems likely, and one factors in the economic losses due to climate disruption and the higher energy prices due to climate protection policies, it’s hard to imagine that economic growth won’t be slowed. Moreover, as noted earlier, the increasing scarcity of the atmospheric sink for greenhouse gas emissions is going to challenge growth among the affluent countries. Reducing carbon emissions at required rates may not be possible in national economies that are stressing growth maximization.

Author Richard Heinberg and many others have been calling attention to the looming challenge of peak oil. After much controversy, the reality of peak oil is now widely accepted. Oil production did actually reach its all-time high in 2005 and has plateaued since. Peak oil, the point of maximum production after which production begins to decline, may thus have already happened, but, if not, a widely held view today is that oil will have peaked and begun to decline before 2030, perhaps a decade or so hence.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Energy released the now-famous “Hirsch Report,” Peaking of World Oil Production, which warned that “the problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past ‘energy crisis’ experience will provide relatively little guidance.” But the report recommended accelerating development of oil sands and coal liquefaction and other steps that would send the world rushing down a path that would exacerbate the already grave challenges of global warming. Clearly, it makes no sense to separate the two challenges: energy supply and climate change must be dealt with together — and soon. Clearly, today we are not prepared or preparing for either.

Many who have looked at the combined challenge of energy and climate change have concluded that our civilization, having completed its exuberant, flamboyant phase, is headed toward a dramatic simplification and re-localization of life and the end of economic growth as we have known it. Some even see the collapse of modern civilization as just a matter of time.

In The Transition Handbook, the bible of the fast-growing Transition Town movement, Rob Hopkins identifies three scenarios: adaptation, which assumes “we can somehow invent our way out of trouble”; evolution, which requires a collective change of mindset, but assumes that “society, albeit in a low-energy, more localized form, will retain its coherence”; or collapse, which assumes that “the inevitable outcome of peak oil and climate change will be the fracturing and disintegration, either sudden or gradual, of society as we know it.”

The eventual outcome will likely involve elements of all three of these scenarios, occurring at different times and different places. Hopefully, the “evolution” scenario will predominate.

“Within this century, environmental and resource constraints will likely bring global economic growth to a halt…,” Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this year, “We can’t live with growth, and we can’t live without it. This contradiction is humankind’s biggest challenge this century, but as long as conventional wisdom holds that growth can continue forever, it’s a challenge we can’t possibly address.”

So there we have it: the traditional solution that America has invoked for nearly every problem — more growth — is in big trouble. If we are going to move beyond growth, we will need to build a different kind of economy. We Americans need to reinvent our economy, not merely restore it. We will have to shift to a new economy, a sustaining economy based on new economic thinking and driven forward by a new politics. Sustaining people, communities and nature must henceforth be seen as the core goals of economic activity, not hoped for by-products of market success, growth for its own sake, and modest regulation. That is the paradigm shift we must now begin to pursue and promote.

James Gustave Speth is a professor at Vermont Law School and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan public policy research and advocacy organization. A former dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, he also co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, was founder and president of the World Resources Institute, and served as administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. He is the author of six books, including the award-winning The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability and Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment.

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Laurence M. Vance: Signs of the Times

Signs of the Times

by Laurence M. Vance article link

May 30, 2011 | LewRockwell

The Sunday before Memorial Day is not one of my favorites. The "patriotic" things that go on in churches in celebration or acknowledgment of Memorial Day are downright sickening.

Churches encourage their veterans to wear their military uniforms. Special recognition is given to those who "served." Prayers are offered on behalf of the troops, not that they would cease fighting foreign wars, but for God to keep them out of harm’s way and protect them. Mention is made of the troops defending our freedoms.

Churches decorate their grounds and the inside of their buildings with U.S. flags. Sometimes it is a few large flags hanging from the ceiling or adorning the walls. Sometimes it is many small flags stuck in the ground near the church entrance. Sometimes it is both. Some congregations are asked to recite the pledge of allegiance.

Churches sing hymns of worship to the state instead of hymns of worship about the person of Christ and his work. Songs like "My Country, ‘Tis of Thee," "America the Beautiful," "We Salute You, Land of Liberty," and "This Is My Country." Some churches go even farther and sing "God Bless the U.S.A." or "God Bless America." Too many churches sing the blasphemous "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

I know these practices are widespread because of the scores of people that have e-mailed me in disgust about what occurred in their churches on the Sunday before Memorial Day.

In most cases it is not even necessary to visit a church on the Sunday preceding Memorial Day to know what goes on inside. Just look at the sign outside of the church. Instead of a verse of Scripture or an announcement of an upcoming event, you are more likely to see some patriotic slogan, often with a Christian theme.

I have personally seen two signs this year that I find particularly offensive, not only to my Christian faith, but to reality:

Pray for the Troops,

God be with them.

The American soldier and Jesus Christ,

one gives his life for your freedom,

the other for your soul.

Yes, we should pray for the troops. The Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 2:1 that "supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men." But what should we pray? That God would bless the troops while they injure, maim, kill, and destroy property where they have no business being in the first place? That God would be with them while they wage unjust and immoral foreign wars? Since when does wearing a military uniform excuse killing someone you don’t know in his own territory that was no threat to any American until the U.S. military invaded and occupied his country? How about instead praying that the troops come home where they belong or that Christian families stop supplying cannon fodder to the military?

That Christ gave his life for our souls is indisputable, but do American soldiers give their lives for our freedoms? You know, the freedoms we have steadily lost since the troops starting defending our freedoms after 9/11? Has there been in American history any foreign war, military action, CIA covert action, or intervention of any kind in any country that was for the purpose of defending our freedoms mentioned in the Bill of Rights? Of course not. Not one Iraqi or Afghan killed by U.S. forces was ever a threat to our freedoms. The troops don’t defend our freedoms, and neither do they fight "over there" so we don’t have to fight "over here." And I can’t think of anything more blasphemous than mentioning Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Son of God, the Prince of Peace in the same breath as a U.S. soldier who unjustly bombs, maims, kills, and then dies in vain and for a lie.

It is time for Christians to slay the golden calf of the military. Christians should stop joining the military. They should stop encouraging their young men to enlist. They should stop being military chaplains and medics. American churches must be demilitarized.

It is a terrible blight on evangelical Christianity that our churches have sent more soldiers to the Middle East than missionaries. If Christians are so concerned about the threat of Islamofascism, then what better way to confront it than with the Gospel of Christ?

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com.

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Should a Christian Join the Military?

by Laurence M. Vance article link

October 11, 2004 | LewRockwell

Christian enthusiasm for war is at an all-time high.

Gullible Christians have not just tolerated the state's nebulous crusade against "evil," they have actively promoted both it and the overgrown U.S. Military establishment. Because the Republican Party is in control of the federal government instead of the "ungodly" Democrats, because President Bush is the commander in chief instead of the "immoral" Bill Clinton, and because the "enemy" is the easily-vilifiable Muslim infidel, many Christians, who certainly ought to know better given the history of state-sponsored persecution of Christians, "heretics," and other religious groups over the past two thousand years, have come to view the state, and in particular its coercive arm, the military, as sacrosanct.

For far too long Christians have turned a blind eye to the U.S. Global Empire of troops and bases that encircles the world. Many Christians have willingly served as cannon fodder for the state and its wars and military interventions. Christians who haven't died (wasted their life) for their country in some overseas desert or jungle increasingly perpetuate the myth that being a soldier in the U.S. Military is a noble occupation that one can wholeheartedly perform as a Christian.

The Question

The question of whether a Christian should join the military is a controversial one in some Christian circles. By a Christian I don't just mean someone who accepts the title by default because he was born in "Christian" America or "Christian" Europe. In this respect, everyone but Jews and atheists could be classified as Christians. The mention of a Christian in this article should be taken in the narrower sense of someone who professes to believe that Jesus Christ is the Saviour (Luke 2:11) and that the Bible is some kind of an authority (Acts 17:11). It is true that this may be too broad a definition for some Christians, and it is also true that many who profess to be Christians hold defective views on the person of Christ and the nature of the Atonement. But for the purposes of this article, the "broadness" of this definition and the permitting of these "defects" do not in any way affect the question: Should a Christian join the military? In fact, the narrower one's definition of what constitutes a real Christian, the stronger the case can be made against a Christian joining the military.

The idea that there are certain things Christians should not do is not only scriptural (1 Corinthians 6:9—11; Galatians 5:19—21), it is readily acknowledged by Christians and non-Christians alike. Christians have historically applied this idea to occupations as well. But it is not just unlawful occupations like pimp, prostitute, drug dealer, and hit man that Christians have shied away from. Most Americans — whether they be atheist or theist — would have a problem with those occupations as well. Everyone knows that there are also certain lawful occupations that Christians frown upon: bartender, exotic dancer, casino card dealer, etc. This prohibition is also usually extended to benign occupations in not so benign environments. Therefore, a clerk in a drug store or grocery store is acceptable, but a clerk in liquor store or an x-rated video store is not. Likewise, most Christians would not work for an abortion clinic, for any amount of money, whether in the capacity of a doctor or a secretary. In other places of employment, however, a Christian might have no problem with being employed, only with working in a certain capacity. This explains why some Christians might not wait tables in restaurants that forced them to serve alcohol, but would feel perfectly comfortable working for the same restaurant in some other capacity, like a bookkeeper or janitor.

The larger question of whether a Christian (or anyone opposed to the federal leviathan) should work for the state is not at issue. Someone employed by the state as a teacher, a mailman, a security guard, or a park ranger is providing a lawful, moral, non-aggressive, non-intrusive service that is in the same manner also provided by the free market. Thus, it might be argued that working for the BATF, the CIA, the FBI, or as a regulation-enforcing federal bureaucrat is off limits, whereas these other occupations are not. The question then is which of these two groups the U.S. Military belongs in. Given the actions of the U.S. Military since Sherman's state-sponsored "total war" against Southerners and Indians, the host of twentieth-century interventions, subjugations, and "liberations," and the current debacle in Iraq, it should be obvious.

The question before us then is whether a Christian should join the military. Although my remarks are primarily directed at the idea of Christian being a professional soldier (a hired assassin in some cases) for the state, they are also applicable to serving in the military in any capacity.

To save some people the trouble of e-mailing me to ask if I have ever been in the military, I will say now that, no, I have never been in the military. For some strange reason, many Americans think that if you have not "served" your country in the military then you have no right to criticize it. There are three problems with this attitude.

First of all, this is like saying that if you have not "served" in the Mafia then you have no right to criticize John Gotti. It reminds me of fellow travelers in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s saying that if you have not lived in the Soviet Union then you have no right to criticize it. So no, I am not a veteran, but I have family members who were in the military and have lived near military bases and been intimately associated with military personnel since I was ten years old. No, I am not a veteran, but I am a student of history ("Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" — George Santayana), and was born with enough common sense to know government propaganda when I see it. I can also read above a tenth-grade level, which is about all it takes to compare the wisdom of the Founding Fathers with the drivel from Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Rumsfeld.

Secondly, some of the most vocal critics of the military have been in the military, like USMC Major General Smedley Butler. So it is not just non-veterans who are critics of the military.

The third problem with the knee-jerk reaction to this article and me because I have never been in the military is that it is misplaced indignation. I am only examining the question of whether a Christian should join the military. Criticism of the military is not my direct purpose.

Another objection to an article of this nature is that if it were not for the U.S. Military then no one would have the freedom right now to write anything. But if the military exists to defend our freedoms, and does not just function as the force behind an aggressive, interventionist U.S. foreign policy, then why are our troops scattered across 150 different regions of the world? Why doesn't the military control our borders? Why do we need a Department of Homeland Security if we already have a Department of Defense? Why, with the biggest military budget ever do we have less freedom in America now than at any time in history? The U.S. Military could not even defend the Pentagon. The case could even be argued that U.S. Military intervention is the cause for much of the anti-American sentiment in the world. So, like Brad Edmonds, I don't owe and still do not owe the military anything. I trust in God Almighty to keep me safe from a nuclear attack, not the U.S. Military.

The Commandments

Using the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3—17) as a guide, it is my contention that the military is no place for a Christian. As a Christian under the authority of the New Testament, I am perfectly aware that the Ten Commandments are in the Old Testament and were originally given to the nation of Israel. But I am also cognizant that the Apostle Paul said: "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" (Romans 15:4) after he had just recited many of the Ten Commandments (Romans 13:8—9).

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:3).

The state has historically been the greatest enemy of Christianity. Yet, many Christians in the military have made the state their god. Members of the military are totally dependent on the state for their food, clothing, shelter, recreation, and medical care. They are conditioned to look to the state for their every need. But the state demands unconditional obedience. Shoot this person, bomb this city, blow up this building — don't ask why, just do it because the state tells you to. The soldier is conditioned to believe that whatever he does is right because it is done in the name of the state. The state's acts of aggression are regarded as acts of benevolence. Then, once the benevolent state is viewed as never doing anything wrong, it in essence becomes the all-seeing, all-knowing, omniscient state, since it would take absolute knowledge to know for certain that the person shot, the city bombed, or the building blown up "deserved" it.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image (Exodus 20:4).

The state has an image that it expects its citizens to reverence and pledge allegiance to. This is especially true of people serving in the military. Perhaps the most famous picture of the flag is the raising of the flag by U.S. troops at Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945. But there is another picture of the flag that has occurred thousands of times that the state does its best to suppress: the picture of the flag-draped coffin of a life wasted in the service of one of the state's needless wars. Foreigners who object to our intervention in their country and our military presence across the globe burn American flags in protest. But they are not protesting because we are capitalists who believe in liberty, freedom, and democracy and they do not share our values. Christians in the military must reverence what has often justly come to be viewed by most of the world as a symbol of oppression. They must also pledge their allegiance to it. Christians blindly recite the Pledge of Allegiance without even bothering to find out where it came from, what its author intended, and how the state uses it to instill loyalty to the state in the minds of its youth. Never mind that the author was a socialist Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy (1855—1932), who was forced to resign from his church in Boston because of his socialist ideas (like preaching on "Jesus the Socialist"). Never mind that the idea for Bellamy's pledge of allegiance was taken from Lincoln's oath of allegiance imposed on Southerners after the successful Northern invasion of the Southern states. Never mind that "republic for which" the flag "stands" was, in Bellamy's eyes, "the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove." The Pledge is an allegiance oath to the omnipotent, omniscient state. There is nothing inherently wrong with the United States having a flag, but it has been made into a graven image that no Christian, in the military or otherwise, should bow down to.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain (Exodus 20:7).

The state will tolerate God and religion as long as He and it can be used to legitimize the state. God's name is taken in vain when it is used to justify the state's wars and military interventions. Some Christians in the military envision themselves as modern-day crusaders warring against the Muslim infidel. Indeed, the president even termed his war on terrorism "this crusade." Others, all the way up to the commander in chief, invoke the name of God or His words in Scripture to give authority to their unconstitutional, unscriptural, and immoral military adventures. When a young Christian man (or woman, unfortunately) leaves home and joins the military he often learns to take God's name in vain in ways that he never could have imagined. There is a reason the old expression is "cuss like a sailor," not cuss like a mechanic, an accountant, or a fireman. Singing "God Bless America" while cognizant of the abortions, promiscuity, and pornography that curse America is taking God's name in vain. Likewise, military chaplains asking God to bless troops on their missions of death and destruction are taking God's name in vain. Many Christians were upset a few years ago when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) tried to strike out the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance (which was only added in 1954). They should have cheered instead, for even though the two federal judges (the decision was 2-1) who made the ridiculous ruling that the inclusion of the phrase "under God" was an unconstitutional "endorsement of religion" ought to have their heads examined, America is not a nation "under God," and to say that it is (as when one recites the Pledge of Allegiance), is the epitome of using God's name in vain.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8).

Although the sabbath day is technically the Jewish seventh day (Saturday) and not the Christian first day (Sunday), the basic principle is still the same. Christians the world over set aside the first day of the week to attend church services. Christians in the military are often deployed to some strange city or remote country for months at a time and are therefore forced to violate the precept of "not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together" (Hebrews 10:25). Defense consultant Josh Pollack, in his "Saudi Arabia and the United States, 1931—2002," has documented that during the early decades of the American troop presence in Saudi Arabia, Air Force chaplains were forbidden to wear Christian insignia or hold formal services. During the First Gulf War of Bush the Elder, the importation of Bibles for Christian troops was discouraged, and no alcohol was permitted to U.S. troops in accordance with Islamic Law.

5. Honour thy father and thy mother (Exodus 20:12).

It used to be thought that following one's father into the military was a noble thing that honored him. Thankfully, this is not so much the case anymore. Is it honoring to one's father and mother for a Christian to accept the state's amoral values that are taught in the military and reject the values learned from a Christian upbringing? The temptations in the military for a Christian young person away from home for the first time are very great. Joining the military is one of the surest ways for a Christian to dishonor his parents by associating with bad company and picking up bad habits. This is not to deny that some Christians who are well grounded in the Scriptures live an exemplary life while in the military and are a positive force for good. But see the next point.

6. Thou shalt not kill (Exodus 20:13).

This is perhaps the greatest reason for a Christian not to join the military. But there is a difference between killing and murdering. Under certain conditions, a Christian would be entirely justified in taking up arms to defend himself, his family, and his property against an aggressor. If America was attacked, Christians could in good conscience kill and maim enemy invaders. However, when was the United States ever in danger from Guatemala, Vietnam, Indonesia, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, Cuba, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, or any of the other places where the United States has intervened militarily? How then can a Christian justify killing any of them on their own soil? The old adage, "Join the army, meet interesting people, kill them," is now just "join the army and kill them" since you can't meet anyone at 10,000 feet before you release your load of bombs. The U.S. Military turns men into callous killers. The D.C. sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Timothy McVey all learned how to kill in the military. When a Christian in the military is faced with an order to kill, bomb, or destroy someone or something halfway around the world that he has never met or seen, and is no real threat to him, his family, or his country, there is really only one option: "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 4:29).

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14).

Human nature being what it is, the forcing of men and women together, especially for extended periods on Navy ships, has been the source of many broken marriages and unwanted pregnancies. Christians in the military also face incredible temptations when they are deployed overseas. In his seminal work Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Chalmers Johnson has described the network of bars, strip clubs, whorehouses, and VD clinics that surround U.S. bases overseas. The former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines "had no industry nearby except for the ‘entertainment' business, which supported approximately 55,000 prostitutes and a total of 2,182 registered establishments offering ‘rest and recreation' to American servicemen." At the annual Cobra Gold joint military exercise in Thailand: "Some three thousand prostitutes wait for sailors and marines at the South Pattaya waterfront, close to Utapao air base." The prohibition in this commandment applies equally as well to men who are not married, for "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matthew 5:28).

8. Thou shalt not steal (Exodus 20:15).

Through its system of forced revenue collection (the income tax), the state is guilty of stealing untold trillions of dollars from working Americans. Very little of that money is spent for constitutionally authorized purposes. One of the largest expenditures of the state is its bloated military budget. Training, feeding, housing, transporting, paying, and arming thousands of troops all over the planet is a very expensive undertaking. Robert Higgs has estimated the true military budget in fiscal year 2004 to be about $695 billion. Besides being the recipient of stolen money, a Christian in the military may have to steal the lives of the sons and daughters of parents he has never met. He may have to steal land in foreign countries to build bases on. He certainly steals the resources of the countries he bombs. Christians in the military should heed the words of the Apostle Paul: "Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth" (Ephesians 4:28).

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour (Exodus 20:16).

The state is the greatest bearer of false witness that there has ever been. The latest round of lies concerns the war in Iraq. Continual government lies about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, aluminum tubes, chemical and biological weapons, threat to the United States, tie to al Qaeda, and link to the September 11th attacks are the rule rather than the exception. The Christian in the military is supporting a lie and living a lie when he devotes his time and energy to supporting a U.S. war machine based on deception, disinformation, falsehood, and lies.

10. Thou shalt not covet (Exodus 20:17).

Young people generally join the military for the wrong motive. Bored, indecisive, in trouble, unemployed, seeking to get away from home — these are some of the reasons why young men and women join the military. But perhaps the greatest reason young people join the military today is because of covetousness. Recruitment slogans all emphasize how much money an enlistee can earn towards his college education. Then there are enlistment bonuses, free medical care, commissary and exchange shopping privileges, the lucrative retirement program, and the future "veterans preference" to help get that government job after retirement. But aside from money, some people covet an increase in prestige ("The few, the proud, the Marines"). Others covet the power that powerful weapons bring. Some Christian young people join the military because they are patriotic, loyal Americans who have been conditioned to think that they owe the state something ("Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"). Their patriotism is noble, but misdirected.

The Conclusion

Should a Christian join the military? Should anyone join the military? The U.S. Military, although officially called the Department of Defense, is the state's arm of aggression. If it limited itself to controlling our borders, patrolling our coasts, and protecting our citizens instead of intervening around the globe and leaving death and destruction in its wake then perhaps it might be a noble occupation for a Christian. But as it is now, the military is no place for a Christian.

The argument that you have to become one of them to win them is fallacious. No one would think of becoming a pimp or a prostitute in order to convert them to Christianity. The fact that a Christian is compared to a soldier (2 Timothy 2:3) is no more a scriptural endorsement of Christians in the military than God being compared to "a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine" (Psalm 78:65) is an endorsement of drunkenness.

When the nation of Israel rejected the LORD and desired a king "like all the nations" (1 Samuel 8:5), God described "the manner of the king that shall reign over them" (1 Samuel 8:9):

And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.

And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;

That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles (1 Samuel 8:11—20).

Christians should remember that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal" (2 Corinthians 10:4), and that we wield "the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6:17).

That criticizing the military or recommending that Christians don't join it is seen as being un-American or traitorous shows just how effective the state has been with its propaganda. The United States is the greatest country on earth for a Christian to live in, but in spite of its military, not because of it.

Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com

Laurence M. Vance writes from central Florida. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, The Revolution that Wasn't, and Rethinking the Good War. His latest book is The Quatercentenary of the King James Bible. Visit his website.

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