Friday, May 14, 2010

Will UUs stand up in the face of fascism?


The more I have read and thought about the Arizona anti-immigrant law the more outraged I become.

Supposing Arizona passed a law that all Jews had to wear a yellow star of David on their outer clothing to identify themselves as Jewish and they would be subject to detainment, interrogation, possible arrest, and deportation to Israel. Would you support such a law? Would you want to go visit in Arizona? Would you want to go visit in Arizona if you were Jewish? Would you want to do business there and support the businesses based in Arizona?

If you were a member of a UUA church would you debate whether the GA should hold its meeting there in 2012? Supposing there were already deposits on hotels and catering and you were worried that if you canceled you wouldn't get your money back?

Supposing Mississippi decided to re institute its segregation laws and African Americans couldn't eat in the white section of restaurants, and had to ride in the back of the bus, and could only live in certain areas of the state? Supposing African Americans in Mississippi were subject to being detained, interrogated, arrested, and deported back to Africa because the white majority voted in a law that said that they didn't want African Americans in Mississippi. Suppose people said that it should be an individual choice and that people shouldn't boycott Mississippi businesses or not visit there especially when they treat whites like gold?

Let me be blunt - there is sick shit going on in America these days. We have been slipping down the slippery slope for some time now with the Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity's, and Michael Savage's, and Bill O'Reily's, and Rush Limbaugh's pumping hate messages into our public consciousnesses. Given the high unemployment, lack of health care, deplorable government schools, corruption of once revered institutions like the Catholic church, we are on the fault line of fascism in this country. One of the few things between sanity and irrational delusional dictatorship is Unitarian Universalism.

Unitarian Universalism provides the values, the history, the traditions of social institution which values the inherent worth and dignity of all people, social justice and compassion, the interdependent web of all existence, and the promotion of democratic processes in our social institutions. But we are a small voice of only 150,000 out of 300 million. Our voice can be considered anemic and feeble and yet we are the salt of the earth, the yeast in the dough, the conscience of the world.

Will UUs stand strong and assertively in the face of fascistic, demagoguery?

It is my prayer.

4 comments:

  1. "One of the few things between sanity and irrational delusional dictatorship is Unitarian Universalism."

    Really?

    Do you have any idea just how many irrational delusional Totalitarian Unitarians are *out there* in the U*U World David?

    Here's a U*UTube video of just one Totalitarian Unitarian "Citizens' Police Officer".

    There are more irrational delusional U*U tin pot dick-tators where he came from. . .

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  2. Speaking of "fascistic demagoguery" how does this strike you?

    "The President of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, having been elected by that community, is not to be publicly criticized."

    It is just a minimal reworking of rather questionable words that former UUA President Rev. Dr. John A. Buehrens once committed to writing in response to my politely informing him that I had shared my concerns about a certain irrational (if not delusional) Totalitarian Unitarian minister with the congregation of the Unitarian Church of Montreal.

    It might interest you to know that UU theologian James Luther Adams once expressed dismay at how ever so "liberal" German Unitarians fell into goose-step with the Nazis prior to WWII.

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  3. To be clear before I start, I completely oppose the Arizona legislation in question.

    Now my response: you use a false analogy when you compare hypothetical Arizona laws against Jews to his real Arizona law against illegal immigrants. In the case of Jews, there is no mutual exclusivity between citizenship or other right to be in the US, on the one hand, and Jewishness, on the other, while in the case of the illegal immigrant, by definition, 100% of them do not have a legal right to be in the US.

    Jewishness does not give any indication of legal status. Illegal alien status does.

    The law does not aim to make a legal group illegal but to "handle" in a certain way those whose presence in this country is already legally defined as illegal. I agree that the law is negative in a lot of ways and should be repealed. But there is nothing here at this time that warrants the Nazi comparison.

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  4. It's important to remember why so many Mexicans are illegal. Their survival is at stake. Legality, in the face of life and death issues, is not so great an issue--to us.

    I grew up in Mexico, growing corn, peppers, onions, and other crops on my family's land. But after NAFTA passed, the corn in the grocery store became cheap. So cheap that it was cheaper than the corn my family produced. I couldn't sell my corn anymore, unless I sold it at a loss. Without a way to support my family, I came to America to work.

    Others, went to the cities in Mexico to work. But there, in the factories and sweatshops (often owned by foreign corporations), they still couldn't make enough to support their families. So they came to the United States too. None of them wanted to. They didn't want to leave their families, their friends, their culture, their way of life, and everything they knew. They had no choice.

    The United States caused the problem of economic migration through its trade policies. Changing those policies so families in Mexico can survive at home ought to be part of immigration reform.

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