Hijacked primaries?

This post is courtesy of Jon Shinn. The experience was his, and the letter below was sent to the National Voter Protection Center and the LA County Registrar of Voters. As an educated, influential bunch, I trust that all you Shinnfans will be aware of such cases, raise a stink with your registrars of voters, and try to keep our representative democracy on track. Please help raise awareness of this issue and take action! From Jon:

I feel very passionately about my right and duty to vote. In the weeks leading up to the election, I confirmed via phone (LA County Registrar of Voters), internet (www.lavote.net), and by way of receipt of a voter registration card received in the mail (voter ID ******708) that I was, in fact registered to vote. I verified my polling place via the same methods mentioned above. Upon appearing at my polling place, I was notified that I was not on the roster, and would need to fill out a provisional ballot. I have been left feeling disenfranchised and like my vote does not matter for tonight’s returns. The same was true for my wife. We are both registered as “Decline to State” voters (i.e. independents), and both of our votes were for Barack Obama. We are extremely upset, and feel that if we, as conscientious, meticulous, highly educated, highly aware voters were left out of the process, it stands to reason that there were many others who were excluded as well. The precinct worker mentioned that ours was the “story of the day.” This does NOT inspire confidence in our voting process. A confirmation or acknowledgment of this message would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely and Regretfully,
Jonathan Shinn
Long Beach, California

Did you have this same experience? Know someone who did? Want to suggest a course of action we can all take? Sound off in the comments.

Ed. note: The exact same scenario played out for Rachel Shinn, Ricky Newton, and Sarah Newton. 

Searching for our nation’s soul

Why is it that my thoughts are so oft drawn to the intersection between religion and politics? I’ve been reading (more accurately listening to) Joseph J. Ellis’s book on the post-revolutionary founding of the United States: Founding Brothers. As I scan the historic countenances of our national forefathers, I’m always watching for evidence in their writing to indicate their true religious convictions. Truly, men of such deep and far-reaching thought must occasionally turn their minds to their personal destinies beyond death. And I’m not disappointed:

John Adams was known to his contemporaries for his strong Christian convictions. Most of his peers appear, in the sheen of history, silently annoyed by the professions of faith and morality that sounded so much like the New England puritan that, in fact, he was.

George Washington hasn’t fully emerged from the mists of time to tell me of his deepest inclinations. Known to be a Mason, he displayed firm character in battle, reservation in politics, and a vexing willingness to hold his tongue in the 1790 debates on slavery. His faith appears to be deep. So deep, in fact, that remaining evidences of it emerge mostly from speculation, it seems.

Thomas Jefferson had a quirky, murky inner life. He seemed to hold very true to the deistic Masonic belief in a god. He was known to have edited the gospels (with scissors!) to bring them more into line with his own beliefs. He once said, “I tremble for my country when I consider that god is a just god, and that his justice cannot sleep forever.” He was referring to the coming blight of slavery, which he seemingly abhorred just slightly less than the idea of a rift in the Union, and it’s not clear whether he was referring to Virginia or the United States of America when he referred to his country. His approach to religion seems best summed up by the following quote from the 1995 movie, “The Usual Suspects“: “I don’t believe in God, but I fear him.”

Benjamin Franklin, though born in Boston to puritan parents, started his life as a committed Atheist. He seems to have lost his faith in Atheism as he matured and saw more of the world than most in his generation. But that doesn’t mean he actually converted wholesale to bible-believing Christianity. He, too, seems to line up more with Jeffersonian deism. At one point, he actually edited the Lord’s Prayer for grammar, brevity, and better adherence to his own views. Later in life, he would attend and listen to the preaching of George Whitefield. He appreciated the preacher’s effects on him to such an extent that his later visits to the man’s meetings saw him carrying only that sum of money he was willing to part with in the collection. But he stopped just short of a wholesale conversion, probably thinking himself too tempered and measured to let his emotions decide such matters for him.

When I admiringly examine these men, who have become heroes to me for various reasons, I am sometimes tempted to despair. Taken collectively, their views seem to merge into the sort of ‘publick religion’ argued for by John Meacham in his fascinating book, “American Gospel“. They don’t seem at all the sort of Christian men I’ve heard described in debates on school prayer and abortion law. Some have told me that linguistic differences account for this phenomenon. They say that when these men use words like ‘Providence’, they were obliquely referencing such concepts as ‘a saving knowledge of and personal relationship with Jesus Christ’. I’m willing to partially concede this point, as linguistics have changed. But not fully.

My reasoning stems from the words and example of another man, their contemporary. He was a little-known Quaker who never signed the declaration of independence or graced the world’s stage in any meaningful way. But he did keep a journal, his version of a blog, if you will.

John Woolman died in 1774, before the American States earned their independence with blood, cleverness, and some darn good diplomacy. He started his working life as a shop clerk and eventually became a traveling speaker amongst the Society of the Friends, or the Quakers. His message was that of emancipation of slaves, and his appeal (like his journal) was entirely spiritual. He refers directly to Christ as his saviour and God as his heavenly Father. His understanding of his own sin is very personal, unlike Jefferson’s references to god’s wrath against his nation’s injustices. A man of such humility that he seems to intentionally play down his own importance in world events around him, he stands in this regard in direct comparison with Franklin, who, for all his wisdom, seldom denied his ego or his libido. Woolman’s faith seems to resonate through the pages of history with the mystical faith of Paul of Tarsus (who wrote several letters with which you may be familiar).

The Quakers were pacifists who largely sat out the American revolution. It’s worth noting that they brought the issue of slavery to the forefront of the national consciousness in 1790, three years after the U.S. Constitution was signed, by petitioning congress for the end of the detestable practice. Congress’s first reaction? In so many words, “What credibility have these pacifists who refused to shed their own blood to the secure the freedom with which they now speak?” That’s a refrain that echoes still today, even in my neighborhood. But their message against slavery was a clarion call that emanated from their own consciences, and in the back of their minds they surely heard the unadulterated voice of John Woolman urging them to obey their God.

References:

Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis

The First American, The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brands

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (unfinished work)

1776 by David McCullough

John Adams by David McCullough

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by John Meacham

The Journal of John Woolman taken from the Harvard Classics (my copy published 1909)

The Depths of My Own Murky Mind by Andrew Shinn

What to do about Immigration?

Note on the text: This is an old post that I never finished. The deficit of my attention-economy makes it likely that I never will. I’m publishing it for what little it’s worth. – AJS

Someone was talking generally about politics Sunday and complaining that many people are willing to criticize without offering solutions. I certainly don’t want to fall into that camp with regard to immigration. Thus far I’ve only pointed to both sides and delcared what we shouldn’t be doing. You can read those posts here and here. I’d like to start discussing solutions with you, my fair readers. But first, a few words about tone and context:

The immigration debates have fallen victim to one of the chief ills of our political system today: polarization. Any issue seems to be reduced to two sides that have positions of sound-byte depth. Each side will establish their position, then proceed to fill the air with the shouting of the aforementioned sound-bytes, never stopping to listen to dissenting voices. Those who do stop to listen hear nothing but their opponents shouting with vigor equal to their own, albeit with different talking points. Our challenge as those who seek to be informed citizens and change agents is to take a position that falls into neither of the poles, but with a depth of analysis and a solution set that will appeal to both of them.

The factor that separates this debate is the drawing of the lines between those two poles. The immigration debate is producing unlikely bed-fellows, like Big Business and the ACLU. The uncertainty over where the lines are drawn allows us a great opportunity to be the signal in the noise that breaks the polarization cycle.

Moral Failure and National Security

In reading The 9/11 Commission Report, I’ve come to realize what a huge political distraction the Monica Lewinsky scandal was from the U.S.’s pre-9/11 efforts against Usama Bin Laden. At the time, many in America decried the president’s actions based on their immorality. Little could any of us have realized that those actions, far from staying confined to the president’s conscience or oval office, harmed U.S. and global security and may well have prevented counter-terrorism operations against Al Qaeda.

Colonial Bloggers and the Founding Fathers

I was reading A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic when I realized that political bloggers, far from being a new phenomenon, were an integral part of the national thought life that formented the American Revolution. They may not have been logging onto laptops via wi-fi to change the world, but they were just as subversive, unregulated, influential, and wildly speculative. Sometimes referred to as ‘pamphleteers’, they were often anonymous, took advantage of new media, displayed wide-ranging bias, and used humor as a weapon. Multimedia variants included engravers like Paul Revere, whose inaccurate portrayal of the Boston Massacre still holds great sway.

To read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, click here.

To read a few current ‘pamphleteers’, check out Polliblogger or Wonkette.

A Nightmare

Early this morning I dreamt I was in a war zone on the road to Haifa, Israel.  A rich older woman talked me into going with two girls and two other guys so I could write about the experience.  It was such a scary place to be.  Men were driving by in big trucks with machine guns.  Somewhere along the way there was a DeWalt chop-saw, and someone had been using it to kill other people.  There were bones and remains scattered periodically along the side of the road.  I wasn’t able to keep track of who was on which side, and both sides threatened us.  I remember a man who, eyes crazy with zeal, threatened to kill us with his AK-47.  I answered very softly and calmly, and he turned away.  I remembered the passage from Proverbs 15:1 – ” A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

The dream didn’t have a conclusion, and I woke up fearing first for myself, then for the people who will actually live that nightmare.  My first thought this morning was to pray for Israelis and their Palestinian and Arab neighbors.

New Windows on the World

Hello, Shinnfans. I’m here today to share with you a fascinating new window to the world that I’ve been enjoying. It comes in the form of a British Accent emanating from my iPod earphones.

BBC Radio News-pod is a collection of highlighted stories from across BBC radio. It’s a half-hour program I receive daily. Things I’ve found fascinating so far:

  • The international flavor of the news coverage. Clearly, the Brits are far ahead of us Yanks in the whole ‘paying-attention-to-the-rest-of-the-world’ area.
  • The British accents.
  • The differing relationship between media and government on their side of the pond and our side of the pond. I’d just like to say that having worked in media relations for the U.S. Government, I had it really easy. British reporters not only ask the hard questions, but they can sometimes be actually combative. I haven’t heard any interviews turn to fisticuffs, but that’s probably because interviewees are very used to aggressive reporting.
  • The British accents.
  • Things Britons care about. Britain is far behind the U.S. in legislating child protection from convicted pedophiles, for instance. That’s been made clear by a rash of stories about horrible offenses and an immature state of the national debate over what to do about them.
  • Have I mentioned the British accents yet?

In all, it’s been a fascinating experience. I have a much-expanded view of several issues, including the U.S. Immigration Debates. More on that in future blog posts. Until then, here are some blog posts that are on the horizon from me:

  • In Which I Equivocate (a reaction to extended exposure to The DaVinci Code)
  • Immigration: Not Just a U.S. Problem (what I’ve been learning about the effects of migration around the world)
  • National, Personal Duty (tentative, an exploration of current-day applications of principles from Abraham Lincoln)
  • Mexifornia (a book report, even though I’ve just started the book)

Please let me know in the comments below if any of these sound interesting to you. If I get enough reaction on them, I’ll know how to priortize them. Until then, I remain,

Truly Yours,

Andrew

Sad times for U.S.

“It’s just like it used to be in East Germany,” he told me.  He should know.  He lived there during the reign of the communist regime.  He was detained for several hours yesterday at gunpoint for taking pictures of the Golden Gate bridge from a scenic overlook.  “In East Germany, you could be arrested and detained for taking pictures of any government building or national landmark.  I never thought it would be that way here.”  The park ranger, plainclothes detectives and two squad cars of police officers kept him for a long time, cited him with a fine, and make him delete photos from his camera.  In my understanding as a prior government media relations specialist, this is an unconstitutional practice.  But faced with a night in jail and a trial for resisting arrest (he was told), he complied and handed over his equipment so the officers could delete any ‘dangerous’ images from his camera.  When he asked me about it, I told him that the officers had overstepped their legal bounds.  But the price of showing them the error of their ways would be a trip to jail and a court date to let a judge (who has a fuller grasp of the constitution and U.S. case law) straighten out the constitutionality of the situation.  So he complied and submitted to the unwarranted search, seizure, and destruction of his property.  All for taking pretty pictures from a scenic location.

Inwardly I weep for our country.  If this is to be the routine way of things, then in some ways the terrorists have won.  Will they be able to turn the United States into a totalitarian regime where citizens lose their first amendment and personal property rights?  If so, our momentary security may have the illusion of enhancement, but our idealogical gatekeepers have lost the battle that separates us from our enemies’ version of a perfect society.

Faith and Politics: An Answer to the Question

I’ve wondered long, hard, and deep about a Christian’s role and responsibility within the political realm.  I’ve felt the waters as if with my pinkie finger, wanting so badly to bathe in the stream of that answer.  This morning the answer hit me like a flood.

A friend pointed out that Judaism is the only world religion in which faith seeks to inform power instead of grasping at it.  I understand now that a modern Christian’s responsibility is to do the same.  My friend put the Old Testament prophetic tradition into an entirely new context for me.  What is a prophet?  According to Abraham Heschel, a Jewish scholar, “The prophet is not only a prophet.  He is also poet, preacher, patriot, statesman, social critic, moralist.”

As American Christians, we are called to speak God’s Word.  We are called to speak prophetically.  We are called to start with the message of salvation and redemption, but we’re not to stop before addressing systemic oppression and the dirtier threads of the fabric of our society.

The answer for me came along with another set of questions.  My previous question (What should Christians be doing about politics?) became: What should I be doing to speak prophetically to our culture?  How can I best be a voice to the nations?  And what’s the weight of that task?