Mr Trump, did you just condemn yourself?

Presidents Trump and Obama both responded firmly and with dignity to the two mass shootings last weekend.

President Trump, August 5, 10:08 a.m.: In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.

President Obama, August 5, 3:01 p.m.: All of us have to send a clarion call and behave with the values of tolerance and diversity that should be the hallmark of our democracy. We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people....It’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much – clearly and unequivocally.

Wait - do you two guys agree?

President Trump, August 6, 6:47 a.m.: Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign [sic]. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.

Oh, I guess you don't. And now I'm confused. Mr Trump, could you help me understand?

1. Didn't you and President Obama say essentially the same thing on August 5? Did you understand the words you read?

2. President Obama never mentioned your name or your office. What makes you think he was talking about you when he called on American leaders to reject racist language in all its forms? Are you acknowledging that his description fits you?

3. Do you have any idea of the extent to which mass shootings have multiplied since you took office?

Here, let me explain the data. I'll keep it simple. Try to focus.

Yes, there were indeed 32 mass shootings during President Obama's two terms in office, if your criterion is that at least four people are killed per incident. During your two-and-a-half years in office so far, there have been 17 mass shootings. (The raw data is here.) Let's look at what that means.

During Mr Obama's presidency, there was a mass shooting every 91 days.
During your presidency so far, there has been a mass shooting every 55 days.

During Mr Obama's presidency, there were, on average, 4 mass shootings per year.
During your presidency so far, there have been, on average, nearly 7 mass shootings per year.

During Mr Obama's presidency, 295 people died in mass shootings. That's about one death every 10 days.
During your presidency so far, 215 people have died in mass shootings. That's about one death every 4 days.

During Mr Obama's presidency, 275 people were wounded in mass shootings. That's about one person wounded every 11 days.
During your presidency so far, 704 people have been wounded in mass shootings. That's about one person wounded every 32 hours--not even a day and a half.

Comparing your presidency, Mr Trump, to Mr Obama's,

• the number of mass shootings per year has increased by 67%.
• the number of deaths per week in mass shootings has increased by 129%.
• the number of people wounded per week in mass shootings has increased by 706%.

You're right that mass shootings have happened during previous administrations, but mass shootings are vastly increasing under yours.

President Obama did not condemn you by name or by office. You condemned yourself - both by recognizing who best fits his description, and by doing the very things that cause mass shootings (and all kinds of other despicable actions) to proliferate.

Shame.

"We hate the government, except for the large part of it that helps us"

[Colin Woodard's map of 11 American nations]

I just got back from another nation.

According to Colin Woodard, author of American Nations (and this recent article summarizing that book's thesis), the United States comprises eleven distinct cultures. By upbringing and acculturation, I belong to two of them, The Left Coast and Yankeedom. Earlier this week, I got together with friends in The Far West. I am still scratching my head.

Some of these friends hate the federal government, especially its Democratic representatives, and particularly the Obama administration. My views about government, Democrats, and Obama are radically different from theirs, though I understand why some people fear government overreach, I accept that good Republicans exist, and I occasionally disagree with President Obama myself.

But here's what baffles me. Everyone in the group of Far West friends I saw this week is a huge fan of VA hospitals, even though the US Department of Veterans Affairs is the second-largest department of the US government, and even though, as T.R. Reid points out in The Healing of America, VA healthcare is one of the world's purest examples of "socialized medicine."

Everyone in the group is also a huge fan of Medicare, even though Medicare is a US government program that closely resembles Canada's National Health Insurance, often derided by Obamacare opponents.

When I suggested that it would be nice if everybody in America had access to healthcare as good as that provided by VA hospitals or Medicare, everyone nodded. I think they were agreeing with me, though perhaps they were just being polite.

The thing is, we wouldn't have VA hospitals or Medicare if we didn't have a strong federal government.

• The Veterans Health Administration, established during the Truman years as the Department of Medicine and Surgery, today "operates the nation’s largest integrated health care system."
• Medicare, signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson with Harry S Truman by his side, accounts for 14% of today's national budget--and that's without including the government's healthcare programs for the poor. Add Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and you bring the total up to 21%.

Of the seven of us gathered around a table at El Adobe Cafe earlier this week, five get Medicare, one gets VA benefits, and one is a caregiver. My friends love these programs because they need them, and they know what their lives would be like without them. At the same time, some of them hate the federal government that makes the programs possible.

I don't get it, but I've learned that arguing gets me nowhere. Even if these people are biting the government's outstretched hand, I'm glad they're getting fed. And speaking of food, El Adobe Cafe serves some of the best Mexican food I've ever eaten. The Far West gets some things exactly right.

Gimme that old-time health insurance ...

Yes, President Obama said that if we like our health insurance, we can keep it. 

Yes, that turned out to be false for a few million people.

Yes, the President chose his words poorly. Whether or not health reform became the law of the land, there’s no way any President could have known if we’d be able to keep our health insurance from one year to the next.

And with the changes mandated by the Affordable Care Act, insurance continuity would be even more of a crap shoot. Companies would tinker with benefits and prices in hopes of keeping the cash flowing after the reforms kicked in. They would certainly cut unprofitable policies or raise their prices stratospherically, or both. This was happening long before Obama took office; surely it would happen even more as insurance companies were required to, well, insure people.

So President Obama should not have made a promise he couldn’t keep.

However, I don’t think the President intentionally lied. I don't think he was naïve about insurance companies. I think he was naïve about Americans. I suspect he had no idea that so many Americans would actually like and want to keep those individual policies that 

• cost significantly more than work-based policies 
• hire people for the express purpose of finding trivial reasons to deny payment on claims
• respond to claims by shutting down people’s policies or raising their prices way beyond affordability
• refuse to insure people with any pre-existing conditions (e.g., people who have been kicked off their previous policies because they actually had to use them)
• set limits on how much they will pay that are way lower than the cost of treating most serious illnesses

And that pretty much describes most of the policies that have shut down as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

Oh, how they will be missed.

Hip hip hooray for Belgium!

Opponents of Obamacare like to talk about how long it takes to get a hip replacement in, say, Canada (even though the Affordable Care Act is nothing like the Canadian health plan). Let's put this in perspective. How about a system that charges so much that some middle-class insured people can't afford a hip replacement at all?

Unless they fly to a Western European country with "socialized" medicine and pay out of pocket. Check out this story about Michael Shopenn, a man whose artificial hip was manufactured in Warsaw, Indiana, "a global center of joint manufacturing." Shopenn, who had health insurance, could not get coverage for a hip operation because his insurer deemed it a pre-existing condition (note: that should no longer be a problem now that we have the ACA). So he ended up flying to Belgium.

A Belgian citizen with no supplementary insurance would have paid only 25-50% of what this American paid for "not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, [and] a week in rehab." And the Belgian would not have had to add airfare to the rest of the cost.

But for Schopenn, the Belgian tab was a good deal--far, far less than he would have paid in the U.S., and no more than his co-pay would have been if his insurer had been willing to cover the surgery.

If you're curious about Belgian healthcare, you can read about it here.

And yes, Belgian taxes are high. But if you total up American taxes (income, Social Security, Medicare, property, sales) and add them to the cost of American health insurance (what you pay and what your employer pays), you may notice that we Americans are spending a lot of money for our services, too, whether we can afford to use them or not. Maybe even more than the Belgians.
___________________________________

I put "socialized" in scare quotes because that's the word Obamacare detractors love to use, even though it's wildly inaccurate. Belgian healthcare is actually based on mutually owned insurance companies that compete for state funding based on membership. A high percentage of the hospitals are private.

More on why medical bills are killing us, including an account of my own recent experience

TIME magazine has put its brilliant long cover article, "Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us" (March 4, 2013), behind a paywall, so if you're not a subscriber the link won't help. I understand why they did this: my husband has been in the magazine business for over 30 years, and it's awfully hard to pay staff when readers want everything free.

On the other hand, I wish every American and especially every lawmaker (local, state, and federal) would read this article. It explains better than anything else I've read why our health-care system costs way more than that of any other developed country, and why Obamacare, alas, is so unlikely to bring our costs down. It also gives a few good suggestions about ways to improve our health-care system even if we're not in the mood to give it the total overhaul it so desperately needs.

I supported Obamacare. It's awfully hard to steer a parked car, and the Affordable Care Act got us rolling. But we can't stop reforming health-care now, because our system is still broken. I agree with American economist Tsung-Mei Cheng's tongue-in-cheek Universal Laws of Health Care systems (I'm quoting from T.R. Reid's excellent book, The Healing of America, which I reviewed here, here, and here):

1. No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it.
2. No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitals will argue that it is not enough.
3. The last reform always failed.

America's health-care system is not getting the results it should. See the latest report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, whose title sums up our situation: "Americans Have Worse Health Than People in Other High-Income Countries; Health Disadvantage Is Pervasive Across Age and Socio-Economic Groups."

The way America's health care is financed would be hilarious if it didn't hurt so many people (go to the library and read the TIME article to be appalled). A personal example: I recently had an electrophysiology study performed at a highly rated Chicago hospital. From my arrival at 6:15 a.m. to my discharge at 9:30 p.m., the care I received was excellent. I am a big fan of most doctors and practically all nurses.

And then I got the paperwork.

• What the hospital and doctor billed my insurance company: $56,737.28
• What the insurance company agreed to pay: $18,591.77
• What I am probably going to have to pay: $858.80
• What I would be billed if I were unemployed and uninsured:  $56,737.28

Of course the hospital wouldn't be able to collect the full amount if I didn't have it, and I could always negotiate with them - that is, if my English language and negotiating skills were excellent, or if I could afford to hire a negotiator, or if I even knew that negotiation was possible. Or I could declare bankruptcy.

A lot of things still need reforming in our partially reformed health-care system. Could we start by requiring health-care services to have uniform prices for all, and to post their prices so that clients can know the cost of treatment before they sign up? And then could we ask the government not to give health-care services money unless it simultaneously puts limits on how much those health-care services can charge?

Maybe the fighting is almost over ...

[The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing at
President Obama's second inauguration]

"Faith in America's Future" - that's the theme of today's inauguration activities.

Watching the prayers, the songs, the speeches, the crowd massed on the Washington Mall, I felt the faith. We don't have to hate each other. We can work together for a future that will be good for our country and for us as individuals. We can, as the President charged us to do, make the "values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American."

Inaugurations are times for setting aside differences and wildly celebrating.  While Richard Blanco read his inaugural poem, even John Boehner looked teary-eyed.

The political divisions will be back in full force tomorrow, of course. And yet we Americans are in the midst of some really big changes--changes that may make today's partisan squabbles look hopelessly antiquated in just a decade or two. Today's events are highlighting these changes.

This morning a Hispanic woman justice of the Supreme Court administered the oath of office. An African-American civil rights leader and a Cuban-American Episcopal priest, once a refugee, prayed. A gay Cuban-American, the son of exiles, wrote and read the inaugural poem. Music was provided by a white woman, a black woman, a white man, and the magnificent multi-colored Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.

As a Boomer woman of mostly British descent whose paternal ancestors came to America in 1634, I felt wonderfully, happily, and mercifully irrelevant. Once people like me--well, people like my father--ran America. They did a good job of it in their day, and we honor them as war heroes, institutional founders, philanthropists, and thought leaders. But the day of white Protestant male supremacy is almost over.

It's been a rocky ride as women, people of color, gays, immigrants, and people with unusual religions have moved onto the stage. We've clashed. We've attacked. We've huddled in fear with people of our own kind. But looking at this morning's participants I couldn't help thinking: the changes are almost complete.

Non-Hispanic whites now make up less than 2/3 of the American population; in less than 30 years we will be a minority. WASPs--white Anglo-Saxon Protestants--are already a minority.

When the 113th Congress convened, 101 women took their seats. Three women sit on the Supreme Court. A woman is a serious contender for the 2016 presidential nomination.

People of both parties seriously working on immigration reform and on equal justice for non-heterosexuals. There is rising concern for those marginalized by poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, and inadequate healthcare and educational resources.

Most of these changes have occurred during the tumultuous administrations of our three Boomer Presidents, Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-present). These have been contentious years: change is never easy. It often feels dangerous. It divides people, and nations.

But looking at the people on the inaugural platform this morning, I felt renewed hope. In another decade or two, the changes that are rocking the Boomer years may have produced an America in which people are truly equal--or at least a lot more equal than we are today. "America’s possibilities are limitless," President Obama exhorted the nation, "for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention."

Step up to the plate, youngsters. It's almost your turn.

Violence : It isn't just about the guns

This is not a blog post about gun control. Everything that can possibly be said about that subject, pro or con, has already been said millions of times since Friday. We are talking too much, too soon. In the words of my rabbi, “Judaism teaches that when there is nothing to say we should say nothing….Sometimes only silence gives voice to what has happened."

We Americans should all be sitting shiva.

But when, next week, we rise from our knees and begin working – together, I hope – to reduce the terrible problem of violence in our country, we must realize that our disorder goes much deeper than simply owning too many guns, and that any effective solution will have to go much deeper too.

When they are distressed, some people clean house or do push-ups  I collect data. All week I have been amassing numbers and arranging them in rows and columns, trying to shed light on the question: Why are some nations violent while others are not?

To answer that question would take a lifetime of research and more wisdom than Solomon’s. The best I could do was to look at the homicide rates of the 34 OECD nations, which are the countries that most resemble the United States in culture and economics, and to compare them with rates in other categories. The best I can offer are correlations, not causes.* Here is what I have learned in the last four days.

1. Despite what liberals like myself would like to believe, the homicide rate does not correlate, either negatively or positively, with the gun-ownership rate per se.** South Korea, for example, has a very low gun-ownership rate but a high homicide rate. Austria, Norway, and Switzerland, on the other hand, have relatively high gun-ownership rates but low homicide rates. Japan has low rates all around – very few guns, very few homicides – while the United States has high rates of both gun ownership and homicide.

2. Despite what some preachers (and atheists) have claimed, the homicide rate does not correlate, either negatively or positively, with religiosity. The United States is highly religious and highly homicidal. Japan is barely religious and has almost no homicides. Most nations, though, are an unpredictable mixture of spirituality and savagery.

3. There appears to be some correlation between high homicide rates and a high degree of economic inequality. This seems particularly evident in Mexico, Estonia, the United States, and Chile, who all have lots of homicides and a great gap between rich and poor.

4. The homicide rate correlates most strikingly with three other rates:

• The higher a nation’s homicide rate, the more likely it is to have a high rate of military expenditures.
• The higher a nation’s homicide rate, the less likely it is to have an effective healthcare system.
• The higher a nation’s homicide rate, the less likely its students are to earn high scores in mathematics.

In other words, if you want to identify homicidal OECD nations, look for the ones with the strongest militaries and the weakest social services. 

In case you’re wondering, of the 34 OECD nations, the United States has the third-highest homicide rate. We also have the highest number of guns per 100 residents and the fourth-highest rate of military expenditures (for what is by far the most expensive military in the world). At the same time we have the third highest income-inequality rate. In healthcare outcomes we are in 24th place, and in mathematical achievement we are tied with Portugal and Ireland for 25th place.

Sixty years ago President Eisenhower warned us about the path we were taking:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. ... Is there no other way the world may live?

Today President Obama announced that Vice-President Biden will "lead an exploration of options" regarding "the renewal of an assault weapons ban, limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines and an end to loopholes allowing gun purchases with no background checks."

Such options, if legislated and enforced, might well decrease our appalling homicide rate. They will not, however, reduce our huge military outlay. They will not make our healthcare and educational systems competitive with those of other nations. And until we prioritize people over power, we are likely to continue down our violent path.

--------------------------------------------------
* This research is about correlation, not causation. Two facts - we'll call them A and B - coexist. A may cause B. On the other hand, B may cause A. Some other fact may cause both A and B. Or A and B may have nothing to do with one another. For example, eating chocolate may cause migraine headaches. On the other hand, an incipient migraine headache may cause a person to crave chocolate. Or possibly some alteration in brain chemistry may cause a person both to crave chocolate and to get a migraine. Or maybe chocolate and migraines are totally unrelated. It takes wisdom, common sense, and often hindsight to sort out how, and if, coexisting facts are causally related.

** I have not studied OECD gun laws, so I do not know what kinds of guns are involved in these countries, who can legally purchase them, or what background checks or training are required before purchase. Nor do I know how laws may have changed over the last couple of decades, or how homicide and gun-ownership rates may have changed in response to changed legislation. Any of those factors could affect their homicide rates.

Mr. Metz's 5% health-insurance surcharge

I'm having trouble understanding today's news about "Florida based restaurant boss John Metz, who runs approximately 40 Denny's and owns the Hurricane Grill & Wings franchise." According to an article in the U.K.'s Mail Online, Mr. Metz "has decided to offset [the extra cost Obamacare will bring] by adding a five percent surcharge to customers' bills and will reduce his employees' hours."

Here's what scares Mr. Metz: By 2014, Obamacare will require employers (of more than 50 workers) to provide adequate health insurance for full-time employees or risk paying a penalty (you can learn the details at the Kaiser Family Foundation's website).

If he's scared, it must be because his restaurants do not provide adequate health insurance for their full-time workers. Actually, Denny's does provide what their New Employee Enrollment Guide calls "affordable limited benefit medical plans to all eligible employees." (That was from their guide for hourly employees; salaried employees also get health insurance.) Is Mr. Metz ignoring Denny's benefits package? Or does he believe that the insurance is so inadequate that employees will choose to get insurance elsewhere? Or are his workers paid so poorly that they can't possibly afford even the low-cost option? Or does his own chain, Hurricane Grill & Wings, not offer this benefit at all? Because if he's providing decent health insurance that his employees can afford, he will not have any extra charges and so has no reason to add a surcharge to his meals.

So why is he adding a surcharge and downgrading his workers to part-time status?  According to Fox News, "To further offset the costs, Metz, who oversees roughly 1,200 employees as president and CEO of RREMC Restaurants, LLC, said he also will slash most of the staff's time to fewer than 30 hours per week." If Mr. Metz is providing inadequate insurance - or no insurance at all - to his full-time employees, I can understand why he would want to make all jobs part-time. That way he would face no government penalties for his miserable benefits policy. But if by reducing hours (and hurting his workers even more than he's already doing) he manages to escape the penalties, then why is he adding the surcharge?

Mr. Metz seems to be sending the message that he hates Obamacare. He may not realize it, but he's also sending the message (whether true or not) that he's a rotten employer who provides inadequate employee benefits, would rather cut workers' hours than be required to treat them humanely, and then is willing to make diners pay more for supposed additional costs - even though he has managed not to incur them.

I was going to end there, but then I got to thinking: maybe this isn't only about Mr. Metz. Maybe he really can't give his workers adequate pay and benefits and still stay in business. Maybe this is really about us.

We Americans in the upper 53% have relatively inexpensive houses and cars and clothing and groceries and restaurant meals (when compared with the rest of the world). We manage this by sending much of our manufacturing overseas and by paying squat for services

The people who grow our food, process our meat, bring the food to our tables, wash our dishes, clean our offices, and care for our aging parents often do not earn enough to support their families and must rely on tax-supported programs just to survive (in Florida, Mr. Metz's home state, a person working two 24-hour-a-week minimum-wage jobs, 52 weeks a year with no time off, would bring in $19,144 before payroll taxes; in neighboring Georgia, where Mr. Metz has a few restaurants, the minimum-wage two-job worker would make just $12,854).

But we Americans have relatively low taxes - which means that our social safety net has a lot of holes in it.

Did you know, for example, that "Wal-Mart's poverty wages force employees to rely on $2.66 billion in government help every year, or about $420,000 per store[?]. In state after state, Wal-Mart employees are the top recipients of Medicaid. As many as 80 percent of workers in Wal-Mart stores use food stamps" (check it out here).

So what happens to these underpaid workers if we continue to demand lower prices and lower taxes?

Obamacare, though it needs improvement, is an important step toward justice. Mr. Metz's surcharge could be another step in the right direction if it enables him to insure all his employees.

However, if diners reduce their tips by the amount of the surcharge, restaurant workers will end up with even less take-home pay than before. If Americans continue to push for lower taxes, more and more of the working poor will fall through the safety net. And if Mr. Metz goes ahead and reduces the hours of his full-time workers so that they won't qualify for health insurance, the extra 5% will go directly into his pocket.

"We're the greatest" - an empty boast or a call to action?

I believe we can seize this future together -- because we are not as divided as our politics suggest; we're not as cynical as the pundits believe; we are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions; and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America. And together, with your help, and God’s grace, we will continue our journey forward, and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.

--President Barack Obama, 7 November 2012

Yesterday I joined a Facebook exchange about whether the United States is indeed the greatest nation on Earth. By quite a few objective criteria, I argued, we trail other nations: health care accessibility, lifespan, maternal mortality, education, infrastructure development, employment, equality of opportunity ... well, the list is frighteningly long. We are clearly not the greatest nation on earth by any standards that people from other nations would accept, and we are becoming less great every year (for a European view of America's decline, read this sobering article - in English - from Monday's Der Spiegel).

Yesterday I also told my two little dogs - Muffin the poodle mix and Tiggy-Winkle the terrier - that they are the best little dogs in the world. By quite a few objective criteria, I am deluded about my dogs. Tiggy  digs holes in upholstered furniture, and she barks so much that she was nearly kicked out of obedience school ("Just give up," the trainer advised; "she's going to bark, whatever you do"). Muffin snores, refuses to cooperate with her groomer, and bites large dogs. But I love my dogs passionately. I wouldn't trade them for any Westminster champions or obedience winners. Several friends, watching me interact with Tiggy and Muffin, have said they would like to be my dogs.

Some people who say America's the greatest really believe that we have the best health care, the best education, the highest incomes, the most liberty, the least corruption, and the most opportunities to succeed. Sadly, these people are deluded. That may have been true in the 1950s, but it is not true today.

However, I suspect that most people who say America's the greatest, including our president, aren't thinking about data at all. They are saying they love America passionately and that they wouldn't consider moving elsewhere even if they found a country that surpasses America in every quantifiable area. They are saying they believe in our founding fathers' vision of America as summarized by Abraham Lincoln: "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." They are saying they love the spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the purple mountain majesties, the fruited plain - and especially the patriot dream that sees beyond the years (I really think "America the Beautiful" should be our national anthem). They are saying they are willing to work hard to make the dream the reality.

The people who truly believe America is greater than any other country need to check their data. They might also want to read Jesus' story about the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:10-14) or Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" or Carl Sandburg's "Four Preludes on Playthings in the Wind." Hubris does not make America strong. To the contrary, by blinding us to our problems, it keeps us from fixing them.

But the people who know that America has serious problems and yet love her anyway - love her so much that in their enthusiasm they sometimes say America is the greatest nation on Earth - are the people who can lead our country back to equality of opportunity, who can work to improve our schools, our health care, our roads, our businesses, our environment, our immigration policies, and our working conditions. Most important of all, these are the people who can encourage us to be concerned not only for ourselves but also for one another.

When people in other countries hear Americans say America is the greatest nation on Earth, they tend to think this is an empty boast from a nation of bullies (after all, we do have the biggest military on earth, outspending the next 13 countries combined). If, however, they understood us to mean We love America and want to make it great, I suspect they would be more indulgent toward us, even if they didn't care for our word choice. In the interest of international understanding, we would probably do well to change our diction.

In the late 1930s, as nationalism intensified and much of the world was on the brink of war, Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness wrote words to the tune Finlandia that express American patriotism at its best. Here are two of its verses:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating,

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is the language of hope and love, not of bluster.

It is the language President Obama used in his victory speech:

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's what makes America great.

It is the language that can lead us to "crown [our] good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea." And beyond.

Advice for November 6: Choose your battle wisely

Vice-President Aaron Burr spoils his political career by
killing former treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton.

Yesterday during the Prayers of the People at St Barnabas, someone in the congregation spontaneously thanked God that the American election season is almost over. Everyone laughed.

One reason this election has brought out the worst in us is that we are fighting two battles at once. I fear that, no matter who wins the presidency, we will continue to fight these battles. We will probably still be fighting them in 2016.

We are fighting an economic battle between those who believe that the federal government should spend tax dollars on the military and little else, and those who believe that the federal government should also play a major role in assuring health care for all, supporting the indigent and elderly, rebuilding our infrastructure, and aiding disaster-stricken areas.

At the same time, we are fighting a moral battle between those who believe the federal government should allow individuals the freedom to decide whom to marry and whether to carry a child to term, and those who believe the federal government should outlaw abortion and recognize only heterosexual marriages.

The two major parties have divided up our concerns in unexpected ways. The Democratic ticket is communitarian in economics and libertarian in morals; the Republican ticket is just the reverse. This creates a problem for people who are consistently communitarian or libertarian.

A lot of students at Miami University of Ohio, as Bill Keller points out today in "The Republican Id," are consistently libertarian: they are enthusiastic about Republican economics but reject Republican morals. For them, economics trumps morals: the majority support Romney.

Most Catholic bishops, on the other hand, are consistently communitarian: they support Democratic economics but reject Democratic morals. For many bishops, morals trump economics (see David Gibson, "Catholic bishops make last-minute push for Romney"): they too support Romney.

The students are far smarter than the bishops.

If Romney and Ryan are elected, there's a good chance that federal programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will be gutted (click here for five good reasons to be worried, even if you're over 55), along with smaller programs such as highway construction, education, and food stamps. There's not much chance, however, that abortion or gay marriage will go away. Overturning Roe v. Wade would not outlaw abortion; it would return the question to the states. As long as a woman had enough money, she could simply travel to wherever abortion was available.

If you're a student at a highly rated university like Miami, you probably figure you'll be one of the elites that would be helped by Romney/Ryan economics. As one of those elites, you could find your way around Republican moral strictures. So yes, as long as you're not concerned about people who haven't done as well as you, it makes sense for you to vote for survival of the fittest. (In a decade or two you may discover you're less fit than you thought you were, but you can vote differently then.)

The Catholic bishops, on the other hand, are showing themselves to be as wise as doves and as harmless as serpents. Even if they get their way - in the name of religious liberty! - Americans will continue to use contraception. They will continue to marry or live with whomever they please. They will continue to get far too many abortions (though if abortion goes underground, a lot more women will die).

Catholic bishops have little effect on American morals (even among their own parishioners: click here to see statistics on abortion rates and here to see statistics on contraceptive use among Catholics), but if they tip the election to Romney/Ryan, they may have a major effect on American economics - an effect that goes against more than a century of Catholic social teaching. In the name of freedom and small government, more families will struggle to put food on the table, to send their children to college, to find adequate housing, to care for their aging parents. Americans will continue to die younger than people in countries with universal health care. Our highways and bridges will deteriorate, and environmental pollution will increase. We may tumble back into recession or even depression.

Here's my point. Our next president's policies will probably have a major effect on America's economic health and, very likely, the economic health of the world. His policies will probably have a minor effect, if any effect at all, on America's morals.

If you like Romney/Ryan's Darwinian proposals, if you think the financiers who are paying for their campaign will help the middle class, if you believe that trickle-down economics help the poor (or if you think the poor shouldn't be helped), if you think business can thrive in the absence of a strong infrastructure, if you think climate change is a hoax, and if you trust for-profit health insurance companies with your life, then by all means vote for Romney-Ryan.

Just don't think they're going to bring about moral renewal in America.

The foreign policy debate, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and four candidates

Albrecht Dürer, ca 1497-98
The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse

Tonight's debate between President Obama and Governor Romney is about foreign policy. This may be the most important topic of the entire [interminable] election season, both to America's future and to the future of the whole world.

If our leaders get foreign policy wrong, we may suffer more than a severe recession. Think world economic collapse. Rampant terrorism. All-out nuclear destruction. Conquest, war, famine, death (the four horsemen of Revelation 6).

Unfortunately, tonight's debate is likely to have fewer viewers than the first two presidential debates: it will be competing against Monday night football. We Americans have priorities.

And, as writers for Forbes magazine recently pointed out, learning foreign languages--perhaps the most important tool for understanding other cultures--is not high on our priority list. Though demand for foreign language learning is increasing, "schools at every level are balancing their budgets and offsetting reductions in government allocations by cutting their offerings and/or eliminating foreign language requirements."

In 2001, before the latest round of language cuts took place, only about one in four Americans could carry on a conversation in a second language (Gallup poll). Half of these were native Spanish speakers. By contrast, "just over half of Europeans (54%) are able to hold a conversation in at least one additional language, a quarter (25%) are able to speak at least two additional languages and one in ten (10%) are conversant in at least three" (Europabarometer survey, 2012).

President Obama agrees about the importance of speaking foreign languages and has apologized for not speaking any himself (though he apparently knows some Indonesian from his childhood).

Governor Romney claims to speak French. After listening to him read a speech at the Salt Lake City Olympics, I'm guessing that he's far from fluent without a script.

Vice-President Biden and Congressman Ryan, as far as I know, speak no foreign languages at all.

OK then, what about the foreign affairs knowledge and experience of these men who want to lead the world?

President Obama lived in Indonesia from 1967 to 1971, between the ages of 6 and 10; for part of that time he attended local schools. His undergraduate major at Columbia University was political science with a subspecialty in international relations. Between 1981 and 2006 he traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Kenya (three times), and Europe.

Governor Romney lived in France from 1966 to 1968, between the ages of 19 and 21, working as a Mormon missionary. I was unable to find evidence of other overseas trips before this summer's tour of Europe and Israel--a trip that may have contributed to the fact that "the reputation of the US in Europe risks sinking back to Bush-era levels of unpopularity if Mitt Romney becomes president, according to new international polling published on Tuesday" (The Guardian, September 11).

Vice-President Biden was for many years a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and chaired that committee three times. Over the years Biden has met with dozens of heads of state. The Council on Foreign Relations summarized his positions and achievements (up until 2008) here.

As far as I can tell, Congressman Ryan has had no particular education or experience in foreign policy.

Not so long ago the United States had an administration that understood so little about the world, they really believed they could overthrow the Iraqi regime without giving Iran a license to do their worst--and they really thought that if they did this, Iraqis would fall to their knees in gratitude. We don't need another administration with that kind of dangerous naïveté.

Today the New Yorker magazine, in a long and thoughtful article dated October 29, endorsed President Obama. Here is what they said about Governor Romney's approach to foreign policy:

Holding foreign bank accounts is not a substitute for experience in foreign policy. In that area, he has outsourced his views to mediocre, ideologically driven advisers like Dan Senor and John Bolton. He speaks in Cold War jingoism. On a brief foray abroad this summer, he managed, in rapid order, to insult the British, to pander crudely to Benjamin Netanyahu in order to win the votes and contributions of his conservative Jewish and Evangelical supporters, and to dodge ordinary questions from the press in Poland. On the thorniest of foreign-policy problems—from Pakistan to Syria—his campaign has offered no alternatives except a set of tough-guy slogans and an oft-repeated faith in “American exceptionalism.”

I am posting this four hours before tonight's debate begins. I sincerely hope both candidates show broad knowledge and deep wisdom about questions of foreign policy, because one of them is going to win this election. I also hope that voters have enough wisdom and understanding to be able to tell when they are speaking truth and when they are blowing smoke.

A lot depends on the winner's understanding of and ability to work with other nations. A lot.

P.S. None of the four candidates served in the military. None of Governor Romney's five sons served in the military. One of Vice-President Biden's sons joined the National Guard and has done a one-year tour of duty in Iraq.

10 grumpy observations about the first debate

1. Mitt Romney is a bully. We knew that.
2. Barack Obama doesn't know how to stand up to bullies. We knew that too.
3. Jim Lehrer really doesn't know how to stand up to bullies. Jim, just cut the mike.

4. Neither candidate stuck to facts. We are not surprised.
5. This may be because neither candidate knows what is factual. This is worrisome.
6. Or it may be because neither candidate cares about facts. This is even more worrisome.

7. America's economy is in profound poop. No surprise there.
8. Neither candidate has a plan that will help very much. No surprise there either.
9. Only once was the word "sacrifice" uttered--after the debate was over, by commentator Mark Shields (click this link and listen to minutes 7:06-7:24), who pointed out that the concept was entirely missing from Romney's discourse. Shields may know more about how to fix the economy than either candidate does.

10. Will the presidential debates sway the undecided voter? This SNL clip says it all.

Alas, I can't get the actual clip to embed on my blog.
Click HERE to see it. It's less than 2 minutes long.