T. T. T.

13 November 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Ask all veterans to stand, thank them for serving

Prayer

We who send soldiers to die, let us remember what they are like alive. For they do not begin as young dead soldiers. They begin vibrant and alive, with their whole lives ahead of them. They are full of hope and full of future. Their marriages, children and families are still ahead of them. All the challenges life brings, the successes and failures, life’s unpredictable array of comedies and tragedies – all are still ahead of them. The whole hope and promise of life beckon them.

When we send them into war, we are promising them that this cause will be worth it – worth cutting off their lives for, worth dying for.

Yet looking back just over our own lifetimes, how few wars there have been that rose to the height of actually being preferable to all those young dead and wounded soldiers?

Just the pull of a trigger can end so many young lives. But the most powerful trigger isn’t on a gun. It’s the trigger we pull when we send them into the meat-grinder of wars that are not worthy of them, not worthy of our own or America’s highest and most honest ideals.

We too pull the triggers that send the young to die.

Let us remember the look and feel of alive young soldiers. And let us not be trigger-happy.

Amen.

SERMON: T.T.T.

The odd title comes from a poem and drawing by Piet Hein. The picture was of what looked like a section of Stonehenge: three large upright blocks, with three large horizontal blocks across their tops, looking like three capital “T’s” in a row. The poem, titled “T.T.T.” read:

Put up in a place where it’s easy to see,

The cryptic admonishment: T.T.T.

When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb,

It’s well to remember: Things Take Time.

This fits many occasions, and certainly fits the mood many have after the resounding defeat of Proposition 2 in the election this past Tuesday. (Proposition 2 was an amendment to the Texas constitution defining “marriage” as existing only “between one man and one woman,” and prohibiting the state from setting up any comparable set of rights and entitlements for non-heterosexual couples. While only a little over 15% of Texas voters turned out, the amendment passed by over 76% to 24%, making Texas the 19th state to pass such an amendment.)

But the amendment, which passed with 76% of the vote, makes it clear that voters are not likely to endorse such a request framed in this way. Rather than focusing on that amendment, I want to back off and talk about the idea of reframing liberal issues in terms that can fit the atmosphere of American fascism within which we’re now living.

It has been just over a year since I sat here and delivered the sermon titled “Living under Fascism” (7 November 2004). As that sermon took on a life of its own on the Internet, it spread to what are now thousands of sites. It also brought a book contract, a lot of radio interviews, the recent interview in the online version of the UU World (http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/2222.shtml), and the recent award from the Austin Chronicle (“Best Minister/Spiritual Leader” in the 2005 Best of Austin awards). And I just learned yesterday that the sermon was quoted at length by a political writer in the Sydney, Australia Morning Herald – not writing about America, but using the sermon to diagnose what the writer saw as Australia’s slide into fascism.

Looking back a year later, I think that sermon’s diagnosis was on the mark, and that we are increasingly living under an American style of fascism. That American fascism involves plutocracy, imperialism and fundamentalism, and it has changed some of the most important rules of life, both here and abroad. Those new rules must be taken into account when planning any new social or political endeavor.

While these comments are political, they’re not partisan; our slide into the American style of fascism grew continuously through the past four presidential administrations, both Republican and Democrat. President Clinton’s selling of both American and world workers through defending and passing both the WTO and NAFTA played key roles in bringing about the New World Order that has now wreaked such havoc at home and abroad. And while we are justly concerned about the more than 100,000 Iraqi deaths we have caused since invading their country, the embargoes Bill Clinton applied to Iraq caused the deaths of five to ten times as many. Neither political party seems to have any clear or good answers.

So today, a year after offering critiques in the sermon on fascism, I want to begin offering some suggestions for operating in this Brave New World Order that looks more and more like 1984. If we are living under an American fascism, then our tactics have to work under the conditions of this new world order.

The primary rule of fascism is that it is the state that matters, not the individual. We may not like the rules, but they have won the day, control both political parties, a majority of Congress, the Senate, high courts, more and more laws, and the media.

This means that continuing to frame arguments in terms of individual rights is suicide, even when it is individual rights that are under attack, as they will be more and more often in coming months and perhaps years.

Arguments for gay rights that can be presented in ways that suggest sex will fail overwhelmingly, which is what happened to the gay marriage issue.

Arguments for individual rights that can be framed as selfish and indifferent to or destructive of the soul of America will fail.

Arguments that can be framed as a plea for a weaker America will fail.

Arguments against our rapacious capitalism will fail as long as that capitalism can be successfully framed as a synonym for what is best about America.

Arguments now need to be framed in terms of what is best for the state, for the good of the majority of Americans of all religious and political persuasions. We need to be people who want to serve the interests of our country, and who try to persuade a majority of our fellow citizens to join us. I don’t think we can convince either political party or the media. I think we have to focus on persuading the huge majority of Americans who have been disenfranchised.

Now the truth is that not many people here are really interested, or going to become active in, politics. I doubt that more than 5-10% of our church members really plan to invest much time in this. And I’m one of that majority who don’t see political action as very compelling.

But each of us has something positive to offer, even if it is as undramatic as simply living a healthy, vibrant and loving life of integrity.

There must be a new plan of action; and its center must be moral and ethical, concerned with what is best for the country, for the common good of the vast majority of our citizens..

The religious right is correct when they say we need to operate out of deep moral and ethical values. They call these values “religious,” though the literalistic style of religion they sell is too narrow and disingenuous to serve us.

Furthermore – media hype notwithstanding – we’re not a Christian nation. We’re the most pluralistic nation on earth. The largest Hindu temple in North America is just south of Austin, and Los Angeles has the world’s largest array of Buddhisms. And the best studies of church attendance say that only about 21% of Americans of all faiths attend any religious services regularly. Nearly four out of five Americans don’t think religion is interesting enough to get out of bed for on the weekends very often.

So this morning, while there are a hundred topics that need to be addressed, I want to talk and think with you about just three: the economy, politics – and the solution to our problems, which I would define as saving our souls, reclaiming a noble soul for America, and helping to reconstitute the world. Let’s begin.

1. The Economy. Since President Reagan, we have moved resolutely into an economy of greed, designed to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, disempower worker unions, remove the social welfare net and increase the gap between the rich and the rest. None of this is news. But the question would be how we might make the case than an economy of greed is bad for human life, America and the world.

The assumption since 1980, now simply taken as true, is that it is a dog-eat-dog world, and the government should help the biggest dogs. With a few exceptions – like the first president Bush’s raising taxes – these rules have governed Reagan, the Clintons, and both Bushes. It’s bi-partisan, established in the assumptions of both parties, and it’s wrong.

Why is it wrong? Not because of its logic, but because of its fundamental misunderstanding of what an economy is supposed to do. We think it’s about numbers and profits, especially profits for stockholders. But that’s not what the word “economy” means. The Greek word “nomos” means laws, rules for doing something. And the root, those letters “Eco,” mean “home.” Economics means “home-making,” how we can make a society a home for its people. Defining it as merely being concerned with making profits for owners and stockholders is as wrong as defining democracy as being concerned only with the whims of the rulers. And the problems we’ve created follow absolutely logically from that bad definition of what an economy is supposed to do. Bad assumptions plus good logic equals logical but bad conclusions.

When profits count more than people, we will turn people into things to serve profits rather than seeing profits as serving the lives of all our people.

Then it is perfectly logical to cut worker’s pay and benefits, logical to ship jobs overseas to the cheapest markets, logical to coerce poor areas of the world to get their people to make our goods for pennies an hour, in inhumane working conditions that can not buy them enough food. And it’s logical to support tyrannical regimes who can control their people as we milk them for cheap labor, if profits for the few are more important than high standards of living for the many. Because they have ceased to be people, and have become merely things, whose only use is making profits for others, and who can and should be discarded when something or someone else can do it cheaper.

It’s perfectly logical to say that people don’t deserve anything they can’t afford to pay for – as large corporations have been claiming, and selling even water to poor people in South America. And it’s logical to say that those who own the country should run it – as John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, said over two centuries ago. The idea may be wrong, but it is not new; it has a long history in our society.

And, since the masses won’t like this new and degraded, subhuman role, it’s also logical to use public relations, advertising and the media – and the police when necessary – to manipulate them, to lead them in the direction needed to keep using them as things.

Noam Chomsky has a book out about “manufacturing consent”; but that phrase was actually coined more than half a century ago by the American psychologist Edward Bernays. Bernays played a key role in the development of internal American propaganda during the 1940s, and he described the science of manufacturing consent as a good thing, as the way the masses need to be manipulated in a large country, so they will follow the agenda of those who rule them. By now, the manipulation of us masses to manufacture our consent has grown into a high and fine art and science, having been perfected by advertisers, politicians and the media.

It’s why both political parties have agreed, with the eager cooperation of the media, to avoid dealing with significant issues at all during presidential and many other elections, and just to distract the masses with attack ads, personalities, scandals and sensationalism. These things draw crowds, draw audiences to TV programs, and the companies that pay for the news shows want the biggest crowds they can get to hawk their products to.

And as those who control the money control the laws, presidents and judges on major courts, it’s logical to say democracy is working, no matter what a real majority of the people think or feel, no matter that we have the highest percentage of our people – about 40% – without health care. They don’t deserve health care if they can’t afford it, according to the logic of an “economics” that sees its role as rewarding the rich while disempowering the rest. And the estimated 18,000 Americans who die each year due to inadequate health care deserve it because they can’t afford – well, the price of life.

All of this is logical. I think it’s evil, but it’s logical.

The task is to persuade – not the owners, not the politicians, not the media, but the majority of citizens – that this is a bad definition of people, a bad understanding of the proper relationship of people and money, and a mortal enemy of democracy and the greater good for the greater number.

Our media keep telling us that what’s driving our economy is the concern that we have an increasingly better standard of living. But that’s not true. Since 1980, with few exceptions, the vast majority of us have had increasingly worse standards of living. We have no savings, credit card debts of over $10,000, fewer benefits, less job security, less health care, and less of a voice in the laws that are passed. And I read yesterday that this president has now borrowed more money, has put the United States into deeper debt, than all previous 42 presidents combined. No matter how you try to spin it, that is not an economy that is working, let alone making a safe and comfortable home for our citizens.

These things are not the inevitable result of Progress. They came from valuing profits for the few over life for the many. That was both an unwise and greedy decision, and an evil one if human life has something intrinsic that must be honored and valued.

So, since economics is supposed to be – not the art of profit-taking, but the art of home-making, we can argue that for the sake of the vast majority of our brothers and sisters in this great country, we have been subjected to a terrible definition of economics: an economics of greed. And those terribl assumptions have harmed, even killed, people of all religious and political persuasions. For the greatest good of the greatest number of Americans, we need to redefine economic priorities to make profits serve and empower the many rather than the few.

No, politicians and the media will not support this. I don’t think either major political party can be converted from their allegiance to those with the most money – at least not any time soon. And the Christian Coalition will probably keep saying that the rich shouldn’t be taxed, and that social programs and health care should be taken away from all who can’t pay for them.

But the voices that might change these rules will have to convince the vast majority of our fellow citizens that the role of money is to serve them, not the other way around. That would be a revolution of the highest order.

2. Politics

I want to use one recent experience I had here in Austin as a way to frame the whole huge subject of politics. It was a rally on November 2nd, when I was asked to speak from the Capital steps for a group working nationally for the impeachment of our president. I agreed to speak, though I don’t like political rallies, because I think our president is guilty – ironically – of the same two charges used to impeach President Clinton: lying and obstruction of justice.

Several people from this church were there. I don’t know how all of you experienced it, but for me it was a very distasteful experience. The biggest signs I saw people carrying were simply vulgar and childish, and I left feeling dirty, and wanting to get away from those people. The woman who organized that rally and invited me to speak at it came to see me on Thursday, so we could talk about these things. I asked her if she really thought such vulgarity would persuade others to want to be associated with their cause, or wouldn’t it instead make it easy for people to say that, if this is the kind of behavior associated with people who dislike President Bush, then they would be glad they were for him.

She said that they couldn’t censor anyone, and didn’t want to exclude anyone, and besides, she knew their cause was right, so the rightness of it would, she hoped, attract many more people than the 200 or so who showed up at the little rally and march. I could not convince her that vulgar behavior automatically excludes all those who are repulsed by it, and don’t want to associate with people who define themselves through it.

So, without trying to pretend that one rally of about two hundred people really represents all grand political activities, I do think it points up some key errors the political left is still making, that the political right is no longer making.

One of the errors is thinking this is about being right. It isn’t. It’s about being persuasive to those who do not agree with you.

We need to go back and study some of the films of the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It stopped me short at the time, and is still inspiring to me today, to see the sight of so many black people in the South, marching in the summer heat and wearing white shirts and ties.

They didn’t stoop to the low and often vulgar levels of those who were calling them names, denying them rights, and sometimes beating or murdering them. They saw their mission as raising the level of civility and behavior, of presenting a better picture than the other side did.

They were presenting a picture of a more civil and decent America, and I think it was that picture, rather than their logical arguments, that won over the majority of Americans that passed the Voters’ Rights Act and won the unlikely victories for their just and noble cause. They didn’t win because they were right – though they were right. They won because they were persuasive. And they were persuasive because they presented an image, and acted in ways, that were morally superior to the image and the actions of those who opposed them with vulgar alternatives and vulgar language. (After I delivered this sermon, a member of our church came through the line to tell me the sermon had brought some tears to her eyes because she had marched in those civil rights demonstrations. And she said she well remembered how often they were told that “We had to be better than those who hated us; we had to be better.” They were, and they won the hearts and minds of enough other Americans that they could change the laws that had been stacked against them. But it was their behavior and their higher level of civility, I am convinced, that let them win their battle.)

If the civil rights marches had carried angry, vulgar, self-righteous signs and the people had dressed like slobs, that civil rights movement would have failed. That’s a lesson we need to reclaim today. People who watch marches and demonstrations look to the character of the demonstrators more than they look at their signs. They’re looking at the image, and deciding whether these are the sorts of people who their society should look like. It isn’t about being right. It’s about being persuasive. And the character we play plays a bigger role than our rhetoric.

3. The solution: winning our souls, the soul of America and reconstituting the world.

It’s clear to me that the tactics that can win under the rules of American fascism must behave in ways that those who disagree with us can respect. I’m also clear that arguments grounded in the “rights talk” of the 1970s will not work in this atmosphere. Fascism is about the primacy of the state, not the individual.

The battles are for the image of America and of the best kind of American that a majority want to identify with. The arguments are made more by image and behavior and role modeling than by rhetoric and logic.

And this becomes a religious issue, because the question is, “How then, shall we live and act toward those with whom we disagree?” Shall we call them idiots, carry vulgar signs about them? Is that noble? Is that the image of ourselves or our country that we could be proud of, and think would be persuasive to those who already think we’re wrong? How do we act in ways that can serve the highest notions of God rather than low ones? Or: what is the essence of being most fully human? How would we act if the noblest people of history and religion were watching? These are the questions that helped the civil rights movement of forty and fifty years ago to be persuasive. We need to remember and reclaim them.

So. In rallies or politics, under the current rules, if we want to win, we must realize it’s not about being right; it’s about being persuasive. And persuasion comes more through our image and behavior than through our logic or speeches. No majority wants to identify with angry or vulgar people. Nor will they want to identify with people who are perceived as hating America.

This was a mistake the Left made during the Vietnam War, from which they have never recovered. They burned American flags, rather than waving them and demanding that the country live up to the noble values symbolized by that great flag. To reclaim the soul of America, we must love our country – love the highest and noblest and most just and compassionate kind of nation that it could be. The whole enterprise needs to be grounded in love rather than anger or hatred. We must be better than those who dislike us and have disempowered the vast majority of our brothers and sisters.

How, then, shall we live and act? The best answers to this are still found in the greatest prophets and sages of history:

We must be people of high character. No matter how those around us behave, we must behave nobly. We must not do to others what we wouldn’t want them to do to us. This includes calling them names, treating them like moral inferiors or morons, or flinging vulgarities at them. We must act in ways we could be proud of if the noblest people of history and all of our own personal heroes were watching – as if God were watching.

It isn’t about being right; it’s about being persuasive. It isn’t about being self-righteous; it’s about acting like a person others want to be near and hear. It isn’t about hating what America has become under the misguidance of bad values; it’s about loving what America has been, and can again become, for the empowerment of the vast majority of her citizens.

And these are not just lessons for winning political battles. They are lessons to live by. They are lessons for living more wisely and well, for becoming the kind of person we can be most proud of, for blessing our little part of the world as we pass through it.

Is this guaranteed to win dirty and dishonest political battles? No. But it’s guaranteed to help you become a person you can be proud of, and guide you toward behavior that is a credit to people of good character and good will. You may lose the battle, but you will gain your soul. This thought comes to me from the saying attributed to Jesus, when he asked what a man gained if he gained the whole world but lost his soul. “Soul” here doesn’t mean a little metaphysical bag of air; it means the core of what makes you admirable. If you lose that, you don’t have a lot left. And without this, winning the battle can lose your soul, by lowering you to the level of the shadow side of those who disgust you.

Life isn’t about being right. Everyone thinks they’re right! It’s about being decent, noble, civil, respectful, compassionate, and persuasive. No matter how low others may drag the standards of behavior, we must not follow them there. First, we save our souls. Then we save the soul of the ideals, the picture of America that we care about. Then we reach out to those who disagree with us to offer them both understanding and arguments, always being more civil and more respectful than they might be. We model what we want America to become.

This is the Buddhist teaching that if we want a peaceful world, we must become peaceful. If we want a compassionate and just world where everyone is heard, we must become compassionate and just and strive more to understand than to be understood. These are moral and ethical teachings, and among the highest religious teachings. They trump political tactics. They can let us wade through vile fights without becoming vile, through angry and dishonest fights without becoming angry or dishonest; through hateful fights without becoming hateful. This has always been the teaching of the best prophets and sages. And it has always been the high moral path, the only path worth taking.

Our society, and the world we are abusing, invading and robbing, is in need of deep reform. This reform transcends political parties, because it runs counter to the basic behaviors of both political parties of the past twenty five years.

You don’t have to be political activists, which is good news because the vast majority of you don’t want to be. You are improving the world if you can love one another, love your children, play fair, treat those you love with compassion and those you meet with civility, and always act in such a way that you have improved the level of both civility and humanity, understanding and compassion, that you find around you. It can save your soul. It can save the soul of our society and perhaps of our world. It may be the only thing that can.

This won’t be quick: things take time. But during that time, whether we are fighters, talkers, thinkers or lovers, we face the same challenge that decent and noble people have always faced. That is the challenge of becoming people of character and compassion who seek more to understand than to be understood, where there is hatred, we must seek to spread love; where there is vulgarity of speech and action, we must spread a higher civility, and invite others to join us at that more compassionate place.

Things take time. They also require intelligent, aware and loving people of good character, living in ways that bring blessings to them and the world around them. It’s our world. Let us reclaim it with diligence and dignity.