“A Head of Our Times” —Terry Kruger

Yesterday, Barack Obama appeared with Indiana Senator (and veep prospect) Birch Bayh at a forum at Purdue University where he continued to articulate his national security vision. As The Indiana Star reported it:

… Obama argued that the Bush administration has not stayed “one step ahead of the threats of the 21st century.”

Naturally, this line caught my attention as it reflects the second line in my “About” Bio here at US:

“My first editorial column (mid ’70s) was called ‘Staying One Step Ahead of the Future,’ a mantram which I try to follow to this day.”

I’m by no means a big Bible reader, but I was probably influenced by the line in Proverbs 29:18 (perhaps Barack was too):

Where there is no vision, the people perish. . .

Not that vision, or at least the claim to one, is always a good thing. As Bob Woodward writes in “Bush at War”:

[T]he president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God’s master plan.

This is the same Bush who told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that God had told him to strike down Saddam. And we all know how that turned out. So in discussing vision in a political context it is imperative to distinguish between process and content, between means and ends. George Bush Senior admitted he wasn’t particularly good at “the vision thing,” but at least he had enough foresight not to invade Iraq when he had the opportunity.

As for oedipally challenged Junior, he too was likely influenced by the Proverb, but decided that the phrase immediately following “the people perish— ” “but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” wasn’t to his liking.

Launching a preventive war, which the Nuremberg Tribunal designated as the supreme war crime, violated the very international laws that the US did so much to champion in the ruinous wake of World War II.

As for a ‘vision’ of what awaits George and his cohorts after they leave office, I refer the reader to former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s new book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” And this quote from H.G. Wells:

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be. . . surer of the noose than a private homicide.

As readers of The Urantia Book, you’d think we might occasionally search “teh internets” to see what’s out there that speaks of it. Well we do— occasionally. Recently we found a segment on The UB from a TV series called “Strange Universe,” circa 1996. The mildly galactic, silly-subliminal strobe-fest, complete with a shot of the alien autopsy stuffed in for good measure, topped off with the “alien bible” tag all smothered in tacky music— still isn’t too campy and overbearing. Best of all, nobody really tells any inexcusable whoppers about the book; always a plus.

As indifferent observers, the media insists “no one knows who wrote the book”; generally, real readers say they accept the authors as given. But the “keeping it under the pillows” nonsense probably didn’t impress anyone other than the copywriter.

I hadn’t heard the rumor a book was spotted in the white house, but if there is, it’s clear that it hasn’t been opened by Chimpy. Bush’s confession that Jesus is his “favorite philosopher” is more than telling, in that Jesus was not, of course, a philosopher, but a savior; a Divine Redeemer, and the Son of God.

It is also not surprising teh TV wanted to focus on the supposed “angry backlash” by the percentage of Christians who can’t abide any sort of updating, or even a divinely expanded historical retelling of the entire life and teachings of the very being they claim to know, love, and follow.

I’m sure some defenders of the infallible Bible sent a strongly-worded letter regarding the retelling of Christ’s life that essentially invalidates all the hatred, ignorance, and fear that has seeped into their religion and belief. But then, most rational Christian denominations already dismiss such doctrines. It’s teh few who do not that will tend to never loosen their death grip on the dogma and doctrines of traditional, evolutionary religion. After all, “the faith once delivered to the saints” must, in theory, be both final and infallible. I don’t think they’d even let Jesus mess with it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the entire “strange” universe keeps plunging majestically through space to the music of the meter of the infinite thought and the eternal purpose of the First Great Source and Center of all things and beings. The Urantia teachings, the most recent revelation of truth propounded in the spiritual realm, has barely begun to trickle into the present-day cultural stream. The advent of greatly improved global communications may eventually create a planet-wide mutational awakening that captures the imagination of entire nations.

Here’s hoping it’s ours.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Back in the day in America, we lived in a free country. In America, you could, if you wanted to, rake up a bunch of leaves and burn them, if you felt like it. Or you could burn trash and garbage in your very own trash barrel. You could fire up a chain saw and cut down a tree on your property if you had the urge to. You could shoot a bird or a squirrel with a gun; you could buy fireworks, or other dangerous chemicals, and blow things up in the yard, at your leisure.

So you might well imagine when the press reported that on May 9th, an American soldier took a Quran— the “Holy Bible” of the Muslim religion— to a shooting range and used it for target practice, that many Americans just yawned. Or laughed. Or muttered self righteously, “Fuck yeah”— echoing the two words found written in English on the Quran that was used for target practice. After all, wasn’t that U.S. soldier just exercising his freedumb to do whatever the hell he pleased? Uh, no.

And that was not the public reaction of President George Bush. In a regularly scheduled phone conversation with Prime minister Niouri al-Malaki, Bush quickly apologized for the incident.

One Sunni Arab lawmaker said: “It is a dangerous case. We had been silent and accepted the killing of our sons, the destruction of our homes and the theft of our money, but we do not accept insults to the holy Quran,” he said at a news conference.

And there it is. It is one thing for the Iraqis to be understandably insulted, humiliated, and angered by such a stunt; but why is it more outrageous than all the senseless slaughter of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children during the seven year invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Perhaps their culture places more value on the Holy Quran than Americans might on the Holy Bible, if the circumstances were reversed. But ask yourself: what kind of man recognizes and apologizes for the childish insult against the Quran a little more than ten days after it happens, but has yet to say a public word about the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings killed by our military and mercenary forces in Iraq??

There are good reasons why we as free Americans have evolved in our understanding of what constitutes the exercise of moral and ethically-sound freedom. Communities recognized that the freedom of every citizen to burn plastic and other garbage would produce enough toxic smoke and air pollution to quickly make their little slice of heaven uninhabitable. So too, the freedom to discharge a firearm whenever you wanted to get rid of a rodent in the yard, or let your child blow their hands off with dangerous fireworks.

Sound morals and ethics are essential to the responsible exercise of freedom— freedom that respects the rights of every human being. But the sacredness of every single human life cannot compare with the ignorant and thoughtless destruction of a religious symbol, even if it contains the revelatory word of God. Our Creator wants each of us to LIVE the truth; not treat it as a sacred symbol that is more important than the gift of life itself.