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Today's
Stories
June 19 / 20, 2004
Diane Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on
Bush and Blake
Josh Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Col. Dan
Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| June
19 / 20, 2004
A Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Morality
and Death
By
DIANE CHRISTIAN
Morality
and mortality are almost identical words in English. The words in the
Latin roots are similar too—mores (customs) and mors (death).
And they are linked concepts in biblical myth. The fruit of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil is death in the Genesis story. Adam
and Eve were warned not to eat of that tree of the knowledge of good
and evil; they should have eaten of the tree of life. Death in much
religious thinking is not just biology, it’s moral punishment.
Some
Christian thinking reserves the power of death solely to God—life
is not to be tampered with from zygote conception through to life’s
end. The Catholic Church in the last thirty years opposed the death
penalty largely in support of its anti-abortion position. Abortion,
execution, euthanasia are proscribed in this view as life is deemed
‘a seamless garment,’ not to be torn by man. Life and death
belong to God.
This
is not the view of President Bush who espouses a warrior Christianity
eager to slay evildoers. Nor is it the view of jihadist religious warriors
like Osama bin Laden who espouse a warrior Islam eager to slay infidels.
They both proscribe abortion as violating the sanctity of life but they
embrace execution as holy in the name of the moral destruction of evil.
‘Evil’
is the label that renders others killable. Figuring out evil and controlling
it is what social ‘mores’ (‘customs, affairs, situations’
from the Latin) or morals are about. But religious warriors like Bush
and bin Laden see morals not as human customs but as divine commissions.
They believe in their righteousness and the evil of the other. They
believe they are a higher law.
Both
Bush and bin Laden argue that they have a right to the power of death—not
because they have great wealth and weaponry, but because they are good
and others evil.
Many
blame religion for this kind of thinking despite the Alexanders &
Caesars and Stalins who conquered for glory and empire and power not
for God.
Blake,
a great religious thinker during the Enlightenment, thought it was morality
not religion that was the problem. He said “If Morality was Christianity
Socrates was the Saviour.”
*
* *
Dividing
people into good and evil abstracts humans into entities worthy or unworthy
of life; it licenses a kill. For Blake good and evil apply to acts.
Humans are capable of both. For Blake Christ was the Saviour because
he championed not abstract purity or goodness but a humanity which mastered
its own evil and did not return that of others. “The Religion
of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin,” he wrote, “can never be the
cause of a War or of a single Martyrdom.” It wasn’t that
Blake didn’t know about the Crusades or the Inquisition but he
understood that invoking god and being godly weren’t equal. He
thought religions that preached vengeance for sin were false, of Satan—a
word that means not ‘the evil one’ but ‘the accuser.’
He
took the God principle back to the distinction between life and death.
And he thought that basically man will have a religion—either
of Jesus or of Satan, either a human face or an avenger. He saw Christ
not as accuser-warrior, but as lover-savior. God is not the killing
principle.
Judge
a tree by its fruits.
Diane
Christian is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at University
at Buffalo and author of the new book Blood Sacrifice. She can be reached
at: engdc@acsu.buffalo.edu
Weekend
Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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