Faith and Good Works

Yesterday on NPR, they interviewed a young woman who was volunteering to help clean up houses in New Orleans. Apparently, you can rip our floors and walls by hand and try to salvage parts of the house, or you can just bulldoze them. The young lady being interviewed was ripping out a wall in this water-damaged house, when money started to fall from the wall.

Kind of like an episode of Scooby-Doo.

They gathered up $30,000 and gave it to the homeowner (who will now probably no longer qualify for disaster relief, oh wait that won't ever make it there!)

Wow. It was a beautiful act. The volunteer could have pocketed the money. No one would have known, but she didn't.

The interviewer (here's the web page to an audio link of the story) on All Things Considered asked if she was tempted to take the money.

"Oh no ma'am, if I had stole the money, it would have been a temporary happiness, but in the long run, my soul would have regretted it."

Which begs the question of motivation. Did she do it out of fear for her immortal soul, or because it was, quite simply, the right thing to do.

I have argued that religion is the use of fear to coerce people to do what is right, and that if people read and understood Plato and Aristotle, we wouldn't need religion, at least not for the "Punishment and Reward" aspect. (Red2 will ask what other aspect there is!)

The desire to do good for the sake of the Good is a morally higher motivation than fear of punishment, even when the result is the same.

Still, the Big JC will likely pat her on the head when she reaches Heaven and give her a Scooby Snack before turning her around and sending her to Purgatory for cleansing of her soul of the hatred of homosexuals, abortionists and war protesters.

Civil War

It is only a matter of time before the unrest in Iraq is called a civil war.

I predict it will take on the label of civil war after the elections. Then, suddenly, the Republicans (who will gain seats in both houses) will rediscover their (selectively) isolationist roots and use the Prime Directive to say we should let "them" fight their own civil war. (If I'm wrong, and the Republicans lose either house, then they'll criticize the Dems for not financing the war properly or berate them for some other perceived injustice. In response the Dems will flop around spinelessly.)

In a sad bit of foresight, I asked my pre-invasion roommate at Yale, "What's the plan going to be after we kick Sadaam's ass?"

He didn't know (despite the PhD in Biochemistry.) Apparently, neither did the administration.

I asked, "What about Afghanistan? Won't we be stretching ourselves too thin to adequately rebuild that country?"

I asked, "What about North Korea? They already have nuclear weapons! Shouldn't we figure out a strategy for dealing with them first before we commit troops to Iraq?"

And then the sad attack of ESP:I asked, "How do you expect to hold Iraq together? The Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds don't exactly want to live together."

My then roommate told me I was arrogant.

I guess he would have said, "Support the Troops" but that silencer of dissent hadn't been coined yet.

United Nations Prostitution Corps

NPR had a segment on prostitution today. The guest speaker was revealing the ugliness of the sex trade and how women from poor countries are lured into leaving home where they are drugged and beaten into submission. He made the claim that many of the Ukrainian prostitutes in Istanbul are originally lured there to work in hotels. They are then kept in a basement where they are forcibly given heroin until they are addicted and will do anything to get their drug.

It's a pretty wild claim. It would be a diabolical way to force the young women into submission, then keep them under control.

But whether or not there is heroin involved, no one can deny that there are several evil men running brothels filled with trafficked women who are de facto sex slaves.

So, the guest today on NPR was shocked and upset when he went to Kosovo and discovered that the UN peacekeepers there solicit the prostitutes that the pimps have abducted from their homelands or nearby villages. He was enraged and shocked by the behavior of the UN troops. He was angry that they were supposed to be maintaining the peace and protecting civilians but instead there they were exploiting the poverty of the locals.

Well, there is a simple solution to UN peacekeepers visiting civilian prostitutes: establish a UN prostitution corps. (In fact, establishing such a prostitution corps for US soldiers would also have the same benefits. There's a questionable liaison between US soldiers and Okinawan women every now and then.)

And why not? Is it a terrible idea? Soldiers, like most people, desire sex, and the chances are quite high that someone is going to make sex available to those interested soldiers. If one assumes that men and women of sound mind and body enter prostitution as a career choice, then it would be logical to have a group of these prostitutes available to UN soldiers. It would be important to recruit these women from all countries to avoid repeating the institutionalized sexual exploitation of non-Japanese women by Japanese soldiers in WWII. The UN prostitutes would have the same rights as other members of the UN mission and would travel as a group to areas of need. Forbidding sexual liaisons between soldiers and local civilians would be much better tolerated and accepted if there was a legal outlet for the troops' sexual tension.

I'm sure that while a United Nations Prostitute Corps (UNPC) (imagine the insignia!) would decrease the likelihood that the USA will ever pay it's debt of membership dues to the UNO, it would encourage US soldiers to join UN peacekeeping missions.

Our Dear Leader

GWB's approval ratings in the general public are quite low... Lower than they were before 9/11.

Before 9/11 everyone thought GWB was an idiot. Then, some Saudi Arabians fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the sudden he's a leader? Then he invades Iraq on false pretenses and he's a leader? Then he gets reelected, and ignores warnings about Hurricane Katrina and gets caught with his pants down. (Metaphorically, of course. He's not Clinton after all.)

W is not a leader and I can only believe that his father is ashamed of his son's presidency.

I hope W isn't as misguided on the Switchgrass fuel concept. Makes you wonder who owns the Switchgrass industry... I'd start by looking in Cheney's portfolio...

Lent

Yesterday, several coworkers were walking around with black smudges on their foreheads. "Is it Ash Wednesday already?" I asked.
"You're a bad Catholic," was the reply. She then offered to butt heads.

So, I started thinking about Lent and sacrifice and Jesus Christ, with predictable results.

Catholic theology teaches that Jesus sacrificed Himself to open the Gates of Hell so we could all go to Heaven. Self-sacrifice. Martyrdom. Dying for a higher ideal.

GWB would do well to do the same for us. I'm sure there'll be a line of volunteers to crucify him. I'll be the first in line to buy a cross bearing GWB's crucified likeness. Crown of Thorns optional.

Honestly, to believe in something so strongly that one is willing to die for it? What is GWB willing to die for? Ask yourself that. He is apparently not willing to die for the United States of America. While his peers, John Kerry, John McCain, and thousands of unnamed veterans put themselves in harms way during the Vietnam War, GWB was in the Air National Guard, safe. I would never say that flying fighter planes is without risk, but it is certainly less risky to fly those same planes over the cotton fields of Alabama than the rice patties of Vietnam.

GWB was not ready to risk death for America, but is happy to send thousands of brave American soldiers to Iraq. Instead of contemplating the Mystery of the Rosary this Lent, I shall contemplate the Mystery of the American People's Willingness to Elect a Fraud