Happy Wednesday

GO ON FOLKS, TEAR INTO YOUR DAY!

       And in the meantime, this blog is under construction but I'll get back to you soon....

Have fun!

A Mother's Day Special

It's Mother's Day and all over the country people are probably reading saccharine-infused fantasies about motherhood. Well, guess what? Sometimes motherhood sucks. Like when it screws with your mind, rips out your heart and just about kills ya'...

Meet Louise Farrell. Her husband, Frank, was a Chicago cop wounded in the line of duty over twenty years ago. His partner's in a grave and Frank's in a wheelchair. They have two daughters and one, Evelyn, is bat-shit crazy; the other is a college professor who teaches history (OK, so maybe Jess is nuts too). Jess is in love with Del Carter, a Chicago homicide dick... in the following scene, she and Del have informed Frank and Louise, who now live in Wisconsin, that the grandchild they adore and raised (Evelyn's daughter) is dead.

Sunny was thirteen. She was taken away from her grandparents a year earlier by the courts and returned to her biological mother, Evelyn. Evelyn, crazy as ever, took Sunny to live with her inside a bizarre religious cult somewhere in central Illinois; the cult is run by a charismastic but emotionally damaged leader and his horrifying sister, Rae Harte. Sunny ran away, was found dead inside a truck on an Illinois interstate and her autopsy revealed she slowly bled to death after she was mutilated... genitally.

The procedure, known as female genital mutilation, has arrived in the middle of the Heartland.

This is Chapter Twenty-Four. Del is up early and Louise Farrell is waiting for him. Louise is a mother who knows her children. The police are focusing on the cult's leaders and Rae Harte but Louise Farrell has her own ideas about who murdered Sunny: Sunny's own mother.

Could it be true?

###

 

Twenty-four

December 17th

            Del woke about the same time Brownmiller was sneaking back to bed. He quickly shit, showered and shaved and walked into the kitchen about 5:30 to brew coffee, fill his small thermos and hit the road. He was surprised to find Wolf eating a bowl of oatmeal and Louise sipping coffee.  

            “What’s this?”

            “Welcome to the Early Risers Club.” Louise nodded to Wolf who was happily slurping mush out of a large bowl on the floor, “Maple-flavored oatmeal; he loves the stuff.  That’s his second bowl.”

            “I know he likes bacon and eggs. Never saw him eat hot cereal before.”

            “Too bad.  This is much better for his cholesterol.”

            Del didn’t know dogs had cholesterol. Interesting.  

            He poured a cup of coffee and explained he was heading back to Illinois and didn’t know if he’d be back for a few days. She understood, Frank told her last night.  

            “Want some oatmeal?”

            “Is there any left? Or did Spoiled Monster Dog get it all?”

            She laughed. “I put some aside special for you; thought I’d send you off with a warm breakfast.” She plunked a large bowl of oatmeal in front of him, piping hot, before he could blink an eye. Then she poured him OJ.

            “You want a glass of milk, too?”

            “No, this is fine. Just great,” he said, adding teasingly, “you’re a really great mom, Louise.”  

            Del regretted his words the minute they came out of his mouth; Louise visibly flinched, as if he’d slapped her.   

            “I tried.  God knows I tried.  We both tried.”

            “Louise, forgive me.  I didn’t mean anything by that remark.  And you were – you are -- a very good mother.  My God, look at Jess.”

            “Oh I know. Jess is almost perfect. Ironically, we don’t deserve her either,” Louise laughed ruefully, “she’s the other extreme. Thank God she doesn’t hate us.  She doesn’t hate us, does she?” Louise eyed Del with a concerned eye.

            “God, no, of course not!  She loves you both. And Evelyn loves you too, she’s just very troubled.”

            “Evelyn always hated us. Right from the beginning. She said so enough anyway.”

             “Louise, she’s troubled, probably very sick, but she doesn’t hate you.” He didn’t know what the hell else to say.  

            “Well, that’s nice of you to say but I know better.” She sipped her coffee. “She was as hard to raise as Jess was easy. Polar opposites.  I never left them alone together. Evelyn always hated Jess, just like she hated her father and me. She did mean little things to her. Hell, she did mean big things, too. It was so odd, so unnatural.”

            “Jealousy?  New kid in the house?  That’s normal.”  Del was struggling to be comforting.  

            Louise looked at him long and hard.  “It’s a nice thing to say but it’s not true. A mother knows.  It was frightening.  It was there, long before her father was shot.  I’m not sure if Jess even remembers.  Better she doesn’t.  Sunny took after Jess.  Resilient, forgiving.  Thank God.  If Jess wasn’t that way, well, we’d probably have two screwed up daughters I guess.”

            She poured herself more coffee.  “I never told anyone this except the doctors, not even Frank.  Evelyn was four years old when she set Jess’ crib on fire.  Jess was still young enough to be sleeping in a crib, nine months old.”

            “Christ.”

            “Yeah.  Christ is right. We had a Border collie, Dixie Belle, and she alerted me.  Came running, barking, and almost knock me over, then she grabbed my pant leg and tried to drag me out of the kitchen, up the upstairs. I got the hint immediately and went running.”

            Del was speechless. 

             “It was a slow smoldering fire; lots of acrid smoke, but no flames. I had a plastic bumper guard around the inside of the crib to protect the baby’s head.  I can still see it. All Disney characters.  Real cute.  Anyway, it burned slow but the smoke could have been as deadly as the flames, of course.”

            Del was chilled to the bone. “Of course, sure. Smoke is very, very toxic.”

            Louise sighed. “So-called ‘accidents’ like that were a way of life for us. We lived with an elephant in the living room and tried to act like everyone had one too.  Funny what you can get used to; just amazing, really. Frank never came into the house with his gun. Can you believe that?  A cop afraid to have a gun in his house. He never mentioned where he kept it and I never asked.  When I got the call about Frank and Jimmy my first two thoughts were: one, did Frank forget to take his gun with him and is that why he was shot? And then two, and more chilling, I wondered if Evelyn shot her father and Jimmy.”

            Del could hear his own heart beating. Good sweet Jesus.

            “Honest to God, Del, that’s true.  I thought she killed her father and Jimmy because I knew she was mad as hell at him. Frank grounded her the day before and she screamed she wanted him dead. Do you know what she said?”

            Del shook his head and in a whisper said, “No, what?”

            “She told her father that if she had any money she’d pay someone to kill him.”

            “Jesus, how old was she?”

            “Twelve.  Twelve years old and three months. Can you believe it?”

            “Damn, Louise, I’m so sorry.” The oatmeal was going down like sour milk and Del pushed his bowl aside. Louise stirred her coffee and buttered cold toast.   

            “Did you ever get a diagnosis on her? Anyone ever tell you what was wrong with her?”

            She laughed bitterly.  “Oh, we had plenty of those. The doctors were all big on diagnoses, short on hope. They ranged from the ordinary to the extreme.  I heard them all: schizoid, borderline, sociopath, narcissist, hedonist, bipolar, passive-aggressive, the whole megillah. A few said it was hard to diagnose children and refused to even try. ‘Don’t want to label’ they said. I asked everyone in the family, both sides, Frank’s and mine.  I begged for answers, some explanation why, but there were no hidden skeletons, no weird uncles or cousins, no Lizzie Bordens or Sybils, no bad seeds.  Not even much of the usual garden variety neuroses or eccentricities. There was mean Uncle Ted but he wasn’t blood so he didn’t count and we never dropped her on her head or caused any trauma that we could figure out.”  She handed him a piece of toast and passed the jelly.

            He waived it off.  “No, I’m fine.  The oatmeal’s enough.”

            “I told one doctor that when she was two and a half she saw our beloved cat, Tigger, get run over by a car and, oh boy, he really keyed on that.  He sure was disappointed when I explained Evelyn laughed.  Up until then I’d never heard my little baby girl laugh but she sure found humor in my sweet little dead cat.  I worried about Dixie Belle but she was smart; that dog wouldn’t let my daughter near her. She slept on Jess’s bed and Evelyn couldn’t get near either one of them. Wolf reminds me of Dixie Belle,” she said fondly. “Sometimes I even think Dixie’s come back to us in him, sort of reincarnated.” 

            She felt a little embarrassed to say it and added, “I know that’s weird.  You think I’m crazy.”

            “No, no I don’t.  Wolf’s an old soul, as they say.  My Grandmother talked like that too about people, about animals. She’d understand what you meant.”

            “I kind of feel it sometimes, the way he looks at me, the way he looks at Jess. Particularly the way he looks at Jess.”

            “She saved his life.”

            “Yes, and he knows it. And Dixie saved hers once, too.”

            “Karma.”

            “I don’t really know what that is,” she said, “but I sometimes think animals are our angels.  They’ve come here to keep tabs on us, report on us. God help those who abuse them.  That’s going to get back to St. Peter one day, big time.”

            Del laughed. “Yeah, can’t you just see it now, the Golden retriever sitting next to St. Peter, giving him the thumbs up or the thumbs down, all these cats and birds and other animals sitting around watching justice being doled out. Can’t you see it?”

            Wolf walked over and rested his massive head in her lap; Louise stroked his muzzle tenderly. “I like it.  It’s a nice thought.” They sat in silence for a few minutes, each in their own thoughts. Louise ate a little more toast and topped off the coffee in their cups. Her mind was still on Evelyn.

             “Del, I used to think we took the wrong kid home from the hospital but she’s a dead ringer for a Farrell and you can see plenty of O’Reilly and Smith in her. She had a horrible fever once, only eight months old, scarletina, and I used to think that’s what harmed her poor little mind. The doctors said no.  I wracked my brain for reasons, clues, anything.  I was a health nut when I was pregnant, ate great, took vitamins.  Didn’t smoke or drink.  Frank and I were never into drugs.  We didn’t have venereal infections. Beats the hell out of me.”

            She stood up with her coffee and walked to the sink and stared out the window, into the yard.  “I’ll say this: if children are a gift from God, then a kid who’s mentally ill is the Gift that Keeps on Giving.”

            She sighed deeply. “We should have fought harder to keep Sunny. We made a horrible, dreadful mistake.  I will never forgive myself.”

            “Louise, even knowing what you learned from Benson about Rae Harte wouldn’t have prevented the court from awarding Evelyn custody, even if you’d been able to get it into evidence, which you weren’t.”

            Louise returned to the table and sat across from Del. She stared at Del with a puzzled look.  “You don’t get it, honey. Rae Harte? I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about Evelyn. I don’t know that other woman from Adam and no file could ever tell me anything near what I already know about my own daughter.”

            The light suddenly went on and Del understood but Louise continued, “Del, it’s Sunny’s mother who’s the real monster; Evelyn’s the monster. You understand?  Unless you can tell me my Evelyn’s dead, that’s what I’m gonna’ think because if she’s still alive and living inside that goddamn cult after what happened to her daughter then I know she agreed to what they did to Sunny. She would have had to and I’m telling you, as God is my judge, that if someone tried to take a razor or a knife or a scissors, or even a belt or raised a hand one way or another, to one of my children that sonofabitch would be dead or I’d be dead because, by all that’s holy, I’m telling you I’d goddamn die trying to save my kids and no one better get in my way.” Louise slammed her fist on the table so hard the dishes and cups jumped. “I swear to Jesus, that’s a fact.” 

            Tears streamed down her stricken, tortured face and Del flew to the other side of the table and wrapped his arms around the trembling, devastated woman as she rocked piteously back and forth, crying over and over again in heart wrenching anguish, “Oh God why?” and “Sunny, baby, baby, forgive me.” An alarmed Wolf searched Del’s face for clues about what to do and then tried to nuzzle his way into Louise’s lap.

            Del whispered “Shhhsh, shhhsh,” and “it’s not your fault,” and let his strong sheltering body sway back and forth rhythmically with hers, his chest and arms willing to absorb some of the shock waves of her incomprehensible pain.  

            “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I have to be strong. I have to be strong for Frank. For Jess. I’m so sorry, Del, so sorry. I don’t want you to see me this way. Forgive me.”

            “Shhhsh, shhhsh… it’s fine to sometimes let it all out but don’t go so far you can’t come back, OK?  We all love you, we need you Louise.”     

            He looked up, surprised to see Jess in the doorway.  She was rocking back and forth too, arms wrapped tightly around her body, tears burning rivers down her face.  Her heart was broken, smashed like fine china thrown against a cement wall, but at the same time it was stronger than ever, expanding to the point of bursting, filling to overflowing with unbridled, unconditional, infinite love for the greatest man in the world -- a man so strong he could cry and grieve with a broken soul like her mother and it only made him look more powerful, more extraordinary, more masculine. The kind of man who should have children, lots of children. Jess knew the world needed more people like Del.

___

            Frank showed up thirty minutes later, surprised to see everyone quietly sitting around the kitchen table.  He spotted the box of tissues on the counter, the used tissues littering the table, several dirty cereal dishes, and a quarter cup of strong cold mud at the bottom of the glass coffee pot. “What did I miss?”

            “Nothing. I’ll make you a fresh pot,” Louise said.

            Frank looked at the clock and it was after eight.  “Del, you still here?  I thought you were hitting the road early.”

            Jess kissed her father good morning. “You snooze, you lose Dad,” she said playfully.

            “Jesus.  I guess so.”

###

You can read a larger sample of January Moon, as well as its 5-star reviews on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Please go to my WEBSITE and listen to my two radio interviews; you can also see a video trailer about January Moon and read print interviews. And here's another interview at Glenn Gamble's blog.

BTW: there are many maternal themes in January Moon. I never thought about it much until I spoke at a book club where its members pointed out all of the many mothers in the book and their impact on the lives of their children. Louise and Evelyn Farrell are just two mothers but there are many others... women who defend their children stoically and women who have destroyed their children, and even their grandchildren. There are women who are not technically mothers in the biological sense but who also act as mothers.

Please be sure to let me know your thoughts about how motherhood might be a central theme throughout January Moon. I'd love to hear from you!

Write me at windycityauthor@gmail.com.

Now have a nice Mother's Day!

Starve the Beast Theory – Part Two

In my previous column (“We are the beast that would be starved”) I described starve-the-beast theory and how this pernicious economic theory has become Republican ideology. I explained that President Kennedy’s tax cuts, passed after his assassination, reduced the highest rate of 94% to 70% and Americans were delighted with that reduction. I also wrote that the economist John Kenneth Galbraith warned, way back in the early 1960s, that deep tax cuts could become a permanent ceiling on government spending so let’s start this column by returning to Galbraith.

In 1965 Galbraith spoke before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and his words are amazing in retrospect:

“I was never as enthusiastic as many of my fellow economists over the tax reduction of last year. The case for it as an isolated action was undoubtedly good. But there was danger that conservatives, once introduced to the delights of tax reduction, would like it too much. Tax reduction would then become a substitute for increased outlays on urgent social needs.”

How prescient!

In 1981 Ronald Reagan reduced Kennedy’s tax cuts further, reducing the highest personal rate for the very wealthy from 70% to 50% and in 1986 he reduced it even further to a very low 28% so that in only six years personal income tax rates for the very wealthy plummeted from 70% to 28%. Reagan gave the head’s up about his strategy in the 1980 Presidential Debate: “John Anderson tells us that first we’ve got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you’ve got a kid that’s extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker.”

Reagan was brilliant at reducing complicated issues into irrelevant analogies and false equivalencies. Americans love this kind of brainless nonsense; we scarf up rhetorical inanities like salted fries at McDonalds. Clearly, Reagan’s analogy was junk food for the lazy mind; it was also condescending and paternalistic. Americans are not wayward, irresponsible teenagers and the national budget it not an allowance meted out to reward for good behavior.

Reagan’s analogy eventually became a more cogently developed theory when a Reagan staffer described “starving the beast” to a Wall Street Journal reporter and by 1985 Republicans were publicly embracing starve-the-beast theory as brilliant economic policy. George W. Bush supported it; under him there were three major tax cuts. The 2001 tax cut created a new 10% individual tax rate and phased in the lowering of individual tax rates. It also phased in an increase in the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief provisions, an increase of the estate tax exemption, an increase in the IRA contribution limit, and the repeal of limits on itemized deductions and personal exemptions. The 2002 tax cut was chiefly aimed at business, creating 30% expensing for certain capital asset purchases, extending the exception under Subpart F for active financing income, and increasing the carryback of net operating losses to 5 years. Finally, the 2003 tax cut lowered the top individual income tax rate on dividends and capital gains and accelerated most of the phased-in provisions of the 2001 tax cut.

George W. Bush boasted that Republicans created a “…a new kind [of] fiscal straightjacket for Congress.” Since then many other Republicans, including one of the greatest ninnies of our time, Sarah Palin, have openly embraced starve-the-beast theory. Palin said “please [Congress], starve the beast, don’t perpetuate the problem, don’t fund the largesse, we need to cut taxes.”

People like Palin are totally ignorant about how the current tax rates are the lowest in our history; but it doesn’t matter because their greed and self-aggrandizement are so pathological that they will not be happy until they can live in a country (which they profess to love so much) where they and the corporations they hold so dear have a free ride.

The truth is that people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about have a vastly different opinion about starve-the-beast theory. Economist Bruce Bartlett called “starve the-beast” theory “the most pernicious fiscal doctrine in history.” Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has also criticized starve-the-beast theory and he has said the “…beast is starving, as planned…”

Remember: you and I and millions of other Americans are the beast.

Next week let’s look at how the states, including Maine, have embraced starve-the-beast theory and how Paul Ryan’s proposed Congressional budget brings this theory to full fruition. While we’re at it, I might throw in a few words about Hitler’s infamous phrase “useless eaters” because once you really understand starve-the-beast theory you’re going to start asking some hard questions about what’s going to happen to the “beasts” that some people seem so willing to starve.

_______________

Published in my OpEd column at the Journal Tribune May 2nd: 
 http://www.journaltribune.com/articles/2012/05/02/columnist/doc4fa13b6953b34960656558.txt

Starve the Beast Theory - Part One

Have you heard the expression “starve the beast” and, if so, do you know what it means? Originally, “starve-the-beast” was an economic theory reserved for arcane discussions in academia; however, over the last 30-plus years this theory morphed into a political fiscal strategy to create or increase budget deficits by drastically cutting taxes in order to justify a radical evisceration of American social programs that are anathema to social and fiscal conservatives.

Starve-the-beast theory zealots have made the “beast” their euphemistic word for the terrifying image of a ravenous out-of-control “big” government -- but the reality is that the “beast” is you, your parents, grandparents, kids and neighbors. (Yeah: you’re the beast and you’ve been pigging out at the American chow line. Shame on you.)

How do you starve something or someone? You cut off the food chain. In starve-the-beast theory the food chain contains all those social services funded by government tax revenues, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - “food stamps”) that Gingrich so shamefully demonized. Social Security, Medicare and even public education are also programs that feed the beast and need to be discontinued.

Starve-the-beast theory is an article of faith among Republican lawmakers. Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget is an excellent example of starve-the-beast policy at the federal level. It’s also prevalent across the country. Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Walker engineered a budget deficit by slashing taxes in order to justify his attack on labor and social programs. Many other Republican governors, such as Kasich (Ohio), Daniels (Indiana), Scott (Florida) and our own LePage, have embraced scorched-earth fiscal policies.

The extremely wealthy are immune from starve-the-beast policies because they’re not dependent on the social services the middle-class and poor desperately need. Their immunity is all the more secure because deep tax cuts for the very wealthy and an unfair Tax Code benefit them and their corporations in greatest measure and Republicans have vowed to do nothing that would alter their privileged tax status. Starve-the-beast adherents also fight cuts in the military budget or prison spending. 

As a metaphor “starving the beast” has been around for a long time but it was the economist John Kenneth Galbraith who unwittingly inserted this theory into political discourse during the Kennedy Administration. Kennedy and the nation wanted to reduce taxes but Galbraith warned policy wonks there might be a permanent downside to the belief tax reductions for the rich would benefit the economy.

Galbraith warned that tax cuts could become a heady habit that could create a “permanent ceiling on spending.” This wasn’t popular thinking in the early 1960′s because by the time Kennedy became president the Internal Revenue Code’s tax rates for the wealthiest Americans had been driven to exorbitant levels. Taxes had been rising for two decades in order to pay for WWII, the Korean War, and war recovery efforts.

When JFK took office in January 1961 the wealthy were being battered by a tax code that taxed personal income at a rate of 94% under some circumstances. Yep: 94%.

Clearly, a tax rate that could soar as high as 94% was outrageous and required adjustment. Further, the middle-to-upper middle class were also taxed at an onerous rate that was sometimes as high as 50%. Yep: 50%.

In a televised national address two months before his assassination, Kennedy said:

“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

Kennedy was looking for a reasonable adjustment across the boards -- not just tax reduction for the wealthiest and most privileged Americans – but a reasonable adjustment for everyone.

So when you hear Kennedy argued for one of the largest tax reductions in U.S. history you now know why. JFK knew that a rate that could soar as high as 94% for the wealthy and hovered at 50% for the middle-class was contrary to the best interests of the nation. Republicans and Kennedy-haters love to look back on the Kennedy era tax cuts and claim Kennedy was taking care of his own and no friend of the poor – which is an excellent example of how one can parrot the facts but be ignorant of the larger truths behind the facts. Congress passed Kennedy’s tax bill after his assassination and this lowered the highest tax rate to 70%.

That’s right: 70%. And do you know what? Americans were delighted. 

Next week we’ll look at Ronald Reagan’s tax record. 

_______________

Published in my OpEd column at the Journal Tribune April 24th: http://www.journaltribune.com/articles/2012/04/26/columnist/doc4f98165499f71776767446.txt

Note to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops

I posted this at the website of the Catholic Bishops, offering my services: (now the ball's in their court)

"I'm a historian (modern Europe & U.S.) with in-depth training in fascism, Holocaust studies, and communism and so I am offering my services as an educator in those areas (pro bono) to the Catholic Bishops because they have repeatedly demonstrated a colossal and breathtaking ignorance about the Church's persecution under both Hitler and Stalin.

The repeated comparison of President Obama to two of the most heinous dictators in modern history demonstrates either profound stupidity or craven disregard for responsible honest speech. If these idiotic comparisons are the result of legitimate ignorance, which is hard to believe when dealing with allegedly well educated people, then we can correct that ignorance by a course in historical truth. I am willing to work with the Bishops to that end. However, if the Bishops do not accept this offer to educate themselves and persist in making ludicrous comparisons then I will be forced to conclude that they have deliberately chosen to speak falsely and irresponsibly without any regard for the consequences of such sins.

I've conducted many educational seminars on The Holocaust and will gladly put one together specifically for the Catholic Bishops any time. Just let me know when and where. Thank you."

John Calvin and the American Cowboy

Between 1847 and 1860 nearly a million Irish Catholics arrived in the United States; they represented the first huge wave of poor refugees to immigrate. Until these Irish Famine survivors arrived, Catholics were an extreme minority in a Protestant dominated land. 

Culturally and politically America was hostile to Catholicism. This hostility had its roots in the Reformation which began when Luther nailed his complaints about Rome on a church door in Wittenberg in 1517. Before that there was only one Christian Church and it was Roman Catholic (there had been a schism before but the Reformation was a game changer like nothing that had come before).  

Soon more Reformation leaders emerged, creating new denominations and challenging Catholicism as well as each other. One of the most powerful of these was John Calvin and he became the intellectual and theological force behind the pietistic movement that shaped the Puritan movement – the same men who saw themselves as religious reformers and became a powerful force in America.  

Calvinist-Puritan thinking was centered in Biblical literalism (which Catholicism is not) and an ethic of austerity, frugality and hard work that stressed salvation rests in overcoming the flesh and glorifying God. This movement shaped the Anabaptists (Baptists), Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists and indeed all of the early colonies. At the time of the Revolution, all 13 colonies had established one or another of these churches as an arm of law in their territory.  

By the time Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams gathered to form a new union they had seen the choke hold Calvinism exerted on the colonies and also understood the disastrous history created by the marriage of church and monarchy in Europe. Being further influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment they embarked on creating a national government free of the reach (so they thought) of any religious power.  

Eventually, the entire nation shed these “state churches” and by the mid-to-late 1800s no state boasted a “state” church. However, the influence of Calvinism had been intricately woven into the cultural fabric and influenced the nation in other ways. 

One of the most profound tenets of Calvinism is “predestination,” a belief that God determines who is saved or damned. This created a deep psychological need for clues about whether one was saved and Calvinists found affirmation of their salvation in the outward signs of material success.  

Max Weber, in “The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism,” wrote about the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. Weber argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous so that worldly success is often seen as affirmation of God’s grace and pleasure. 

Couple this with the emergence of a frontier mentality about individual worth and you really begin to understand America’s culture wars. America’s early unlimited spaces and open opportunities suggested that anyone who was willing to work hard could be successful.

“Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” and “applying a little elbow grease” to life became snappy formulas for success. The iconic cowboy and Calvin merged and Americans became deeply infatuated with the idea that strength of character alone made a man successful and his success was then proof that he was in with the Lord. Alternatively, non-conformity, cultural aberration, conflicts with the prevailing mores, or even just bad luck suggested a lack of character and a fall from grace.  

Famine Irish came from an entirely different reality. They knew Grandma Rooney and a million others starved to death not because of personal lack of character or Divine displeasure but simply because some greedy bastard held the reins of power. They also came from a religious tradition richly nuanced by 1500 years of theological thought that had given rise to a vastly different world view than the one embraced by Protestantism. When Luther threw out the papacy and its many sins he also threw out Aquinas, Augustine, Benedict and Jerome and a much more contextualized understanding of scripture -- but the Irish brought even more than their church and its saints to America: Along with their strong backs and pugnacity they came with a historical tradition of resistance and defiance to oppression.  

Irish Catholicism more than any other form of Catholicism was starkly different than Protestant Calvinism and the tragedy of America may well be that both the Irish and the other Catholics who came to America have forgotten these differences. For a time Irish Catholicism modified the least compassionate pietistic influences of Calvinism in our national policies.  

I suggest America would do well to ditch the national motto “In God We Trust” for those wise words of my Irish grandmothers: “There But For The Grace of God Go You.”

___
First published 4/18/12 in my OpEd column in the Journal Tribune  http://www.journaltribune.com/articles/2012/04/19/columnist/doc4f8edc00e6456871289579.txt

Health Care and its Very Strange Bedfellows

Seldom discussed in conversations about the health care law (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA) is the fact that the insurance industry has a significant stake in the law’s individual mandate provision. Insurance companies understand the ACA’s importance to their own salvation and have invested untold millions incorporating relevant provisions of the law into their own policies and practices.

To understand how the insurance industry came to embrace Obama’s health care law after it fought so hard sixteen years ago to derail the Clinton Administration’s efforts at reform, it’s helpful to understand what’s happened in the intervening years.

During the merger and acquisition days of the 1990s insurance companies were in a shark feeding frenzy to hunt and subsume smaller companies. Companies like Aetna and Cigna emerged as voracious giants able to churn out fat quarterly profits for their shareholders. These companies never played any legitimate role in holding down health care costs as they promised they would when they waged war against the Clinton Administration’s attempt to reform health care. There really was no need: As long as they were able to pump up shareholder profits by aggressively excluding an ever growing number of Americans from insurance coverage and forcing policyholders to shoulder ever larger percentages of their own medical costs all conversations about holding down health care costs were specious at best.

Eventually new economic realities reshaped the insurance marketplace as an increasing number of Americans simply chose to opt out of purchasing any health insurance. Very often, even when insurance was made available through employment, Americans found the spiraling cost of insurance premiums and ever higher deductibles totally untenable. In an era of stagnant wages, decreasing benefits and increasing inflation, more and more Americans simply could not afford health insurance.

Soon insurance carriers realized squeezing policyholders ever more dry in order to increase the bottom line only strangled the geese laying all those golden eggs.

Insurance companies created new strategies to offset their losses in the sales of insurance products. They diversified by acquiring hospitals, physician groups and other related medical care management and delivery systems. How Aetna and Cigna rebranded themselves with new mission statements is instructive. Cigna identifies itself as a “global health service company” and Aetna claims it’s one of the “leading health care benefits companies.” Did you get that? They are now health “service” and health care “benefits” companies. The word “insurance” is barely in their corporate vocabularies. The fact that insurers are also health care providers is of growing concern to medical ethicists, health care professionals and consumer advocate groups – but that’s a story for another day.

So it’s logical that insurance companies played a dominant role in assuring that Congress chose the individual mandate option as a cornerstone of the ACA. There would be no better way for the large insurance companies to not only survive but thrive than to have an expansion of health care via the mandate that all Americans must purchase insurance coverage.

The other option, of course, was a single-payer system which is essentially a vastly enlarged version of Medicare and would be run by the government. A single-payer system would have the benefit of being clearly constitutional and is also the model most employed by other nations. However, it would leave the health insurance industry out in the cold.

But the issue impacts all of us. Without the individual mandate the ACA may still stand but the number of people willing and able to purchase health insurance will continue to shrink as has happened for a decade. The remaining pool of insured individuals will age and become sicker while younger people and families will become increasingly less likely to buy insurance. This gap will cause premiums to soar, Medicare will become ever more strained, and the number of uninsured will continue to create stress on the economy in catastrophic ways. All people well versed in the crisis in health care realize America has to do something to make health care accessible and affordable for all and unless the government takes over healthcare the only way an alternative system can survive is if it requires the participation of all Americans. The individual mandate was a compromise Obama was forced to make but if the ACA unravels under the judicial scalpels of the Supreme Court single-payer may yet be the way we go.

Which brings me to the grand irony of this battle: devotees of free market capitalism created the constitutional test about the individual mandate in an effort to destroy the ACA (and let’s admit it: also Obama) but the mandate they attack is a safety net for the largest for-profit free market industry in the nation.

Proving rather brilliantly how political interests can sometimes murder their own strange bedfellows.