I stayed up until 4 am Friday morning on Thursday night with my father. We were watching the live broadcast of Pope John Paul II's funeral from St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. It was momenetous and you could feel the grandeur of the event radiate from the television. Never in my life have I ever heard of anything so awe-inspiring as was this funeral for the most beloved world figure of the modern age, this Polish Pontiff. Nearly every world leader was there, including the Iranian and Jordan heads of state. Some notable were not in attendance. The Humanitarian President, Jimmy Carter, was not permitted by the Bush Administration to attend on behalf of the United States because of his criticism of the war in Iraq. You see, each nation could only have five representatives in immediate attendance in St. Peter's Square. Because of Carter's criticisms, Bush excluded him and instead allowed the doormat Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. So Presidents Bush 41, Clinton (now a panderer and media whore), First Lady Laura Bush, and "W" were the other four. Seeing the majority of the world's leaders within direct proximity of each other was something that will go down in history unparallelled.Anyways, I hate hypocrisy. So seeing the most hypocritical and terror-inducing American President in history kneel before the Pope's cypress box reminded me of that scene in The Devil's Advocate when Al Pacino dipped his finger in Holy water inside a Cathedral and the water immediately began to boil. Now I am not calling Bush Satan. Not exactly. But nearly every speech, bill, executive order, and thrashing of the english language that George W. Bush has given in his 5 years as Commander-in-Chief has been in complete contradiction with Catholic teaching and what Pope John Paul II stood for. Feeling the same way I do, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro called Bush a "hypocrite" yesterday. The CNN article here. Now Fidel has had minced words with the Pope in the past. During the Pope's first decade, he was a stallwart opponent of Castro's brand of Communism. In more recent years, the Pope has warned and criticized the American brand of Capitalism. It creates too much poverty. So the Pope was able to find common ground with many leaders while still being openly critical of what they do AS leaders. The Catholic Church, right now, is enjoying global attention like never before. I pray that the next Pope can and will capitalize on being in the center stage, the chance to achieve world peace has never looked so ripe.
Over the last decade we have seen the Conservatives of this country become less and less receptive to fact-based knowledge. We've seen and heard our administration change the reason why they started a war after the initial reason turned out to be a complete fabrication. We've listened to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and the other Republican attack dogs at Fox News rail against "liberal academia" while leaving author and pundit Ann Coulter alone when she demanded the bombing of the entire middle east after Sept. 11th. The Republican party is still attempting to cast shadow over evolution. But they aren't using science to debunk a scientific theory, they are using the book of Genesis. The majority of the Old Testament, if taken as fact, makes you untrustworthy. They are meant to be moral truths, not historical ones. Even the economic policies of the Right wing are based in rhetoric instead of fact. Reagan's "trickle-down economics" proved to not work and create a growing percentage of Americans living in poverty. And what have we been sold by this President Bush? Trickle-down economics via insanely lop-sided tax cuts benefitting the wealthiest of the wealthy. And Nascar Nation bought it, and continue to buy it. Why? Because they think they'll be rich someday. While they dream about being rich, the rich make sure becoming rich is as difficult as possible. So why do Republicans hate facts that contradict their rhetoric? Who knows? I suppose it's an obvious result of becoming more and more wrong throughout time. In another Op-Ed from the NY Times, Paul Krugman mulls over the latest study cluing us in to why the collegiate community includes so few Conservatives. I say it's because they hate people smarter than themselves, so why not try to surround themselves with stupid people? Thus remain outside the academic community.An Academic QuestionBy PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 5, 2005
It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?
Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story.
Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?
One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.
But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the "party of ideas." Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the "party of theocracy."
Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.
In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's "the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time," saying that "as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence." And it conceded that it had succumbed "to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do."
The editorial was titled "O.K., We Give Up." But it could just as well have been called "Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days." Thirty years ago, attacks on science came mostly from the left; these days, they come overwhelmingly from the right, and have the backing of leading Republicans.
Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies.
Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.
Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.
And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.
If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
While the American Christian Right starts wars and executes prisoners and tortures detainees, the Legacy of Pope John Paul II remains unequivocally against all forms of government sanctioned death. Whether it's the termination of an unborn child, the execution of a remorseful convict, or an international war waged on false pretenses, the Pope, known affectionately as "JP II", stood steadfast against all forms of human killing.
The hypocrisy of the Evangelical Right in this day and age is only amplified with the collective reflection on the truly saintly life of Pope John Paul II. While American Christians compromise the teachings of Jesus to cater to their political and social opinions, the Pope was a beacon of stallwart pacifism. So remember, when our "Man of God" President executed mentally retarded felons while Governor of Texas, sanctions torture on a widespread scale, wages war without provocation, and contradicts nearly every other staple of Jesus' teachings (especially the one about serving the poor, get acquainted with W's 2nd term tax plan), remind yourself of a better example of faith leadership. Reflecting on the past 25 years while on her journey opposing the death penalty, Sister Helen Prejean, of Dead Man Walking fame, writes about her relationship with the beloved Pope and their mission to rid the world of systematic death.
Above All Else, LifeBy HELEN PREJEAN Published: April 4, 2005
Boulder, Colo. — Of the many great legacies of Pope John Paul II, the one I prize the most is this: he was instrumental in helping the Catholic Church reach a position of principled opposition to the death penalty - an opposition that brooks no exceptions.
The effects of the pope's leadership will be felt for years to come, both in the highest echelons of the Catholic hierarchy and among the Catholic faithful in the pews. Whereas polls once showed that American Catholics supported the death penalty about as much as other Americans, they now show that support for the death penalty among Catholics has fallen below 50 percent. Just last month, Catholic bishops in the United States inaugurated a vigorous educational campaign to end the death penalty.
This is a moment I have been waiting for, hoping for and praying for more than two decades, ever since I walked out of the killing chamber in Louisiana after watching Patrick Sonnier electrocuted to death in 1984. And it is the pope who made it possible.
In the early 1980's, I began looking for a way to have a direct dialogue with the pope about the death penalty. During this time I had accompanied three people to execution and plunged headfirst into public debate. My efforts to persuade Catholic bishops in the United States to include the death penalty as an integral part of their pro-life campaign had been futile. While the bishops had issued numerous statements that cited the moral failure of the death penalty, they had failed to conduct energetic educational campaigns to change the hearts and minds of the people in the pews.
At last, in 1997, I finally got my chance to communicate directly with Pope John Paul II. It happened through the case of a Virginia death row inmate, Joseph O'Dell, whose spiritual adviser I had become and whose plea for justice had attracted the pope's attention. Lori Urs, who was working on the legal team trying to save Mr. O'Dell's life, visited Rome and handed my letter to the pope on Jan. 22, 1997. A friend of mine in the Vatican, present when my letter was delivered, assured me that John Paul read every word of my letter.
And an impassioned letter it was, pouring into the pope's lap 14 years of searing experiences of accompanying human beings into killing chambers and watching them be put to death before my eyes. "Surely, Holy Father," I wrote, "it is not the will of Christ for us to ever sanction governments to torture and kill in such fashion, even those guilty of terrible crimes. ... I found myself saying to them: 'Look at me. Look at my face. I will be the face of Christ for you.' In such an instance the gospel of Jesus is very distilled: life, not death; mercy and compassion, not vengeance."
I spoke candidly about my disagreement with one part of the pope's 1995 encyclical, "Evangelium Vitae" ("Gospel of Life"), which, while urging imprisonment instead of execution, allowed the use of the death penalty in cases of "absolute necessity." Whenever governments kill criminals, I pointed out in my letter, they always claim to act out of "necessity." I urged him to close the loophole and make Catholic opposition to government executions unequivocal.
This was no small thing. The teaching of the Catholic Church upholding the right of the state to execute criminals "in cases of extreme gravity" had been in place for 1,600 years.
But that's precisely what the pope did: he removed from the Catholic catechism the criterion "in cases of extreme gravity." The omission changes everything, because Catholic teaching now says that no matter how grave the crime, the death penalty is not to be imposed. This cuts the moral ground out from under American politicians who advocate the death penalty for the "worst of the worst criminals."
The quantum change in the catechism took place in September 1997, and in 1999 when the pope visited St. Louis, he uttered words of opposition to the death penalty that could not have been more uncompromising:
"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil."
For this statement, and for his leadership, I am forever grateful. Thank you, Pope John Paul. Because of you, the Catholic Church can at last stand alongside those human rights groups that oppose, unequivocally, government killing.
Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun, is the author of "Dead Man Walking" and, most recently, "The Death of Innocents."
