Shouting with Anger and Love for America’s True Greatness

March 19, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The hor­rif­ic events of 9/11 would make any coun­try trem­ble. But with the right lead­er­ship we could have shown the world our steady resolve and courage and we could have cel­e­brat­ed an Amer­i­can love and life and lib­er­ty that no air­plane could destroy. But Pres­i­dent George W. Bush has had uses for ter­ror. For eigh­teen months he has beat­en the drums of revenge till fear has become a sec­ond heart­beat in our pysche. Sim­mer Amer­i­ca over a low flame of fear and spice it with con­tempt for the world and you can bring her and her peo­ple to cry hun­gri­ly for blood [con­tin­ued on defunct Non​vi​o​lence​.org dis­cus­sion board] 

Tough Time to Love War(Making)

January 23, 2003
· Martin Kelley

This just isn’t a good time to be George W. Bush. Unit­ed Nations inspec­tors comb­ing Iraq for weapons of mass destruc­tion have come up emp­ty hand­ed. Sad­dam Hus­sein has allow­ing them rel­a­tive­ly unfet­tered access but all they’ve uncov­ered is a few unused shells.

Bush is noth­ing if not per­sis­tent when it comes to per­ceived world bad guys. Just yes­ter­day he told an audi­ence in St. Louis that Hus­sein is “a dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous man with dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous weapons.” Despite the repeat­ed use dan­ger­ous, the rest of the world is uncon­vinced. Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Ger­hard Schroder still talks about “peace­ful solu­tions” and Ger­many and France is putting the brakes on war in the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, wait­ing for evi­dence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion to turn up.

It must frus­trate our pres­i­dent to see that all these years of mil­i­tary sanc­tions against Iraq have been work­ing. All the evi­dence uncov­ered by the U.N. inspec­tors prove that we can “win with­out war,” as one cur­rent slo­gan goes, and that we have in fact been win­ning. We’ve kept Sad­dam Hus­sein from rebuild­ing his mil­i­tary after the Gulf War. U.S. iso­la­tion of Iraq has been suc­cess­ful despite its numer­ous flaws. Sad­dam is not a threat.

Which brings us to real threats and to North Korea. Pres­i­dent Bush and his team of war mon­ger­ers have been so busy look­ing at Iraq that they’ve giv­en North Korea just spo­radic atten­tion. Recently-declassified reports show that the U.S. Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency has known much more about North Korea’s nuclear bomb mak­ing over the last dozen years than anyone’s been admitting.

The C.I.A. has known that North Korea and Pak­istan have been trad­ing nuclear secrets. Pak­istan has been show­ing its ally of con­ve­nience how to build the cen­trifuges that process weapons-grade ura­ni­um. North Korea in return has pro­vid­ed the mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy that gives Pak­istan the nuclear reach to destroy arch-rival India. Now that we know Pres­i­dent Bush knew all about this his­to­ry of what we might call “dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous” tech­nol­o­gy trade, why did he cozy up to Pak­istan fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber 11th? He so want­ed wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that he nor­mal­ized rela­tions with a coun­try far more dan­ger­ous. If a Pak­istani or North Kore­an nuclear weapon goes off in New York City it will kill a whole lot more peo­ple than Osama bin Laden’s four hijacked air­planes. What hap­pened on Sep­tem­ber 11th was ter­ri­ble but it’s noth­ing com­pared to what a ene­my with resources could do.

There are real threats to world peace, far more “dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous” than Iraq. The Unit­ed States needs to drop its president’s obses­sions and look square­ly at the world and who we’re allied with. And when we reset our poli­cies we wqcan use Iraq as our mod­el. For as the U.N. inspec­tors have proven, we can cre­ate peace through diplo­ma­cy and we can iso­late trou­ble­mak­ers through smart sanctions.

What a tough les­son for U.S. lead­ers bent on war. 

Make Noise Now: War is Not Inevitable!

September 26, 2002
· Martin Kelley

There are cer­tain moments when just about any­thing is pos­si­ble. Moments when peo­ple start ask­ing ques­tions they thought they knew the answers to. A skill­ful politi­cian will close down these moments to make their own agen­da seem all but inevitable. A strong move­ment will ask the ques­tions any­way and shout them out until answers are giv­en. Friends, it is time to shout.
Our gen­er­a­tion may well be defined by the wars we fight in the Mid­dle East and Asia but we will be just as defined by the wars we stop. There are a dozen coun­tries that could eas­i­ly erupt into vio­lence and pre­cip­i­tate an ever-larger glob­al war.

The Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has set forth a new doc­trine for a mil­i­tary might. War has been declared not on nations or even on spe­cif­ic ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions but instead on the slip­pery chimera of “ter­ror­ism.” A war on ter­ror can nev­er be won because ter­ror is always the bed­mate of polit­i­cal oppre­sion and where oppres­sion is left to grow ter­ror­ism will fester.

Rather than face the hard work of fix­ing prob­lems the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary hand threat­ens to crush all vio­lent dis­sent and rev­o­lu­tion. We are on the brink of his­to­ry now, where we could eas­i­ly slide into ever cra­zier cycles of ter­ror­ism between groups like Al Qaida’s and the U.S. military.

The Bush Doc­trine, if passed, would let the U.S. attack any coun­try it found hos­tile to it’s dom­i­nance and a threat to it’s ego. No cred­i­ble evi­dence of a renewed Iraqi threat has been pre­sent­ed, but then none is real­ly need­ed. Bush is ready to attack any­one inde­pen­dent of the Unit­ed States and that readi­ness increas­es with every drop of oil under its sands.

What Must Be Done

It is time to shout out about hypoc­ra­cy, to ask “why war,” “why now.” To ask who gets rich when oil flows get dis­rupt­ed. To ask whose approval rat­ings go up just because bul­lets are fly­ing. This war is not inevitable. And we must not acquience to it. We must shout out every day that this is NOT our war and that WE WILL STOP IT.

How? Over the next few weeks we need to con­tact Wash­ing­ton. I usu­al­ly smile indul­gent­ly about those who advo­cate writ­ing one’s con­gressper­son. But right now, it real­ly is need­ed and real­ly can make some changes. Politi­cians in Wash­ing­ton will do noth­ing unless the folks back home are mak­ing a stink. Call or fax Wash­ing­ton. Orga­nize speak­ers, hold signs at inter­sec­tions, give them a grass­roots out­cry which they can respond to.

The cur­rent arti­cles linked on the Non​vi​o​lence​.Org home­page are full of ideas and actions. Let’s get out there and stop this war. And let’s not be dis­cour­aged as the inevitable seems to start unfold­ing. It is time to stand for truth and time to mark our gen­er­a­tion. We must stop war and we must stop all cause of war. War is to stop today. War is to stop with us.

My Experiments with Plainness

August 20, 2002
· Martin Kelley

[See also: Resources on Quak­er Plain­ness]

This was a post I sent to the “Pearl” email list, which con­sists of mem­bers of the 2002 FGC Gath­er­ing work­shop led by Lloyd Lee Wil­son of North Car­oli­na Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Eighth Month 20, 2002

 

I thought I’d share some of my jour­ney in plain-ness since Gath­er­ing. There’s two parts to plain dress: sim­plic­i­ty and plain-ness.

The most impor­tant part of the sim­plic­i­ty work has been sim­pli­fy­ing my wardrobe. It’s incred­i­ble how many clothes I have. I sus­pect I have a lot few­er than most Amer­i­cans but there’s still tons, and nev­er enough room in the clos­ets & dressers (I do have small clos­ets but still!). I’d like to get all my clothes into one or two dress­er draw­ers and donate the rest to char­i­ty. Two pairs of pants, a cou­ple of shirts, a few days worth of socks and under­gar­ments. This requires that I wash every­thing fre­quent­ly which means I hand-wash things but that’s okay. The point is to not wor­ry or think about what I’m going to wear every morn­ing. I’ve been to a wed­ding and a funer­al since I start­ed going plain and it was nice not hav­ing to fret about what to wear.

I also appre­ci­ate using less resources up by hav­ing few­er clothes. It’s hard to get away from prod­ucts that don’t have some neg­a­tive side effects (sup­port of oil indus­try, spilling of chem­i­cal wastes into streams, killing of ani­mals for hide, exploita­tion of peo­ple con­struct­ing the clothes at hor­ri­ble wages & con­di­tions). I try my best to bal­ance these con­cerns but the best way is to reduce the use.

These moti­va­tions are simple-ness rather than plain-ness. But I am try­ing to be plain too. For men it’s pret­ty easy. My most com­mon cloth­ing since Gath­er­ing has been black pants, shoes and sus­penders, and the com­bo seems to look pret­ty plain. There’s no his­toric authen­tic­i­ty. The pants are Levi-Dockers which I already own, the shoes non-leather ones from Pay­less, also already owned. The only pur­chase was sus­penders from Sears. I bought black over­alls too. My Dock­ers were vic­tims of a minor bike acci­dent last week (my scraped knee & elbow are heal­ing well, thank you, and my bike is fine) and I’m replac­ing them with thick­er pants that will hold up bet­ter to repeat­ed wash­ing & use. There’s irony in this, cer­tain­ly. If I were being just sim­ple, I’d wear out all the pants I have – despite their col­or – rather than buy new ones. I’d be wear­ing some bright & wacky pants, that’s for sure! But irony is part of any wit­ness, espe­cial­ly in the begin­ning when there’s some lifestyle shift­ing that needs to hap­pen. As a per­son liv­ing in the world I’m bound to have con­tra­dic­tions: they help me to not take myself too seri­ous­ly and I try to accept them with grace and good humor.

But prac­ti­cal­i­ty in dress more impor­tant to me than his­tor­i­cal authen­tic­i­ty. I don’t want to wear a hat since I bike every day and want to keep my head free for the hel­met; it also feels like my doing it would go beyond the line into quaint­ness. The only type of cloth­ing that’s new to my wardrobe is the sus­penders and real­ly they are as prac­ti­cal as a belt, just less com­mon today. A few Civ­il War re-enactment buffs have smil­ing­ly observed that clip-on sus­penders aren’t his­tor­i­cal­ly authen­tic but that’s per­fect­ly okay with me. I also wear col­lars, that’s per­fect­ly okay with me too.

The oth­er thing that I’m clear about is that the com­mand­ment to plain dress is not nec­es­sar­i­ly eter­nal. It is sit­u­a­tion­al, it is part­ly a response to the world and to Quak­er­dom and it does con­scious­ly refer to cer­tain sym­bols. God is what’s eter­nal, and lis­ten­ing to the call of Christ with­in is the real com­mand­ment. If I were in a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty that demand­ed plain dress, I expect I would feel led to break out the tie-die and bleach and manic-panic hair col­or­ing. Dress is an out­ward form and like all out­ward forms and prac­tices, it can eas­i­ly become a false sacra­ment. If we embrace the form but for­get the source (which I sus­pect lots of Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry Friends did), then it’s time to cause a ruckus.

Every so often Friends need to look around and take stock of the state of the Soci­ety. At the turn of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, they did that. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing anti-plain dress book from that time that argues that it’s a musty old tra­di­tion that should be swept away in light of the social­ist ecu­meni­cal world of the future. I sus­pect I would have had much sym­pa­thy for the posi­tion at the time, espe­cial­ly if I were in a group of Friends who did­n’t have the fire of the Spir­it and wore their old clothes only because their par­ents had and it was expect­ed of Quakers.

Today the sit­u­a­tion is changed. We have many Friends who have blend­ed in so well with mod­ern sub­ur­ban Amer­i­ca that they’re indis­tin­guish­able in spir­it or deed. They don’t want to have com­mit­tee meet­ing on Sat­ur­days or after Meet­ing since that would take up so much time, etc. They’re hap­py being Quak­ers as long as not much is expect­ed and as long as there’s no chal­lenge and no sac­ri­fice required. We also have Friends who think that the peace tes­ti­mo­ny and wit­ness is all there is (con­fus­ing the out­ward form with the source again, in my opin­ion). When a spir­i­tu­al empti­ness sets into a com­mu­ni­ty there are two obvi­ous ways out: 1) bring in the fads of the out­side world (reli­gious revival­ism in the 19 Cen­tu­ry, social­ist ecu­meni­cal­sim in the 20th, Bud­dhism and sweat lodges in the 21st). or 2) re-examine the fire of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions and fig­ure out what babies you threw away with the bath­wa­ter in the last rebel­lion against emp­ty out­ward form.

I think Quak­ers real­ly found some­thing spe­cial 350 years ago, or redis­cov­ered it and that we are con­stant­ly redis­cov­er­ing it. I have felt that power/ I know that there is still one, named Jesus Christ, who can speak to my con­di­tion and that the Spir­it comes to teach the peo­ple direct­ly. I’ll read old jour­nals and put on old clothes to try to under­stand ear­ly Friends’ beliefs. The clothes aren’t impor­tant, I don’t want to give them too much weight. But there is a tra­di­tion of Quak­ers tak­ing on plain dress upon some sort of deep spir­i­tu­al con­vince­ment (it is so much of a cliche of old Quak­er jour­nals that lit­er­ary types clas­si­fy it as part of the essen­tial struc­ture of the jour­nals). I see plain dress as a reminder we give our­selves that we are try­ing to live out­side the world­li­ness of our times and serve the eter­nal. My wit­ness to oth­ers is sim­ply that I think Quak­erism is some­thing to com­mit one­self whol­ly to (yes, I’ll meet on a Sat­ur­day) and that there are some pre­cious gifts in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith & prac­tice that could speak to the spir­i­tu­al cri­sis many Friends feel today.

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kelley
Atlantic City Area MM, NJ
martink@martinkelley.com

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Dick Cheney’s Rambo Complex

March 12, 2002
· Martin Kelley

U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney is tour­ing Eng­land this week, try­ing to find co-producers on Gulf War II, the sequel to the dis­ap­point­ing minor hit of 1991. You remem­ber the orig­i­nal: it was briefly pop­u­lar until Bill Clin­ton’s “Peace and Proper­i­ty” broke all pre­vi­ous records for an unprece­dent­ed run.
In Gulf War II, Dick Cheney is play­ing Ram­bo. It’s twelve years lat­er and he and his side­kick George Bush Jr. are going to re-fight the war against Iraq sin­gle­hand­ed­ly. No oth­er coun­tries will join them this time in their fight for justice.

Like all shot-em-up movies, this one needs a con­vinc­ing vil­lain. There’s no con­nec­tion between Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein and Osama bin Laden but so what? They’re both shifty Arabs with facial hair. Throw in a spicy sub­plot if you want – “Dash­ing Amer­i­can pilots secret­ly held pris­on­er since 1991.” Amer­i­cans bare­ly notice plot and moti­va­tions. After 9/11 the White House is bet­ting that the audi­ence wants more war and retribution.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this isn’t a Hol­ly­wood movie. Dick Cheney and the sec­ond Pres­i­dent Bush are indeed try­ing to start a sec­ond war against Iraq. There’s no new provo­ca­tion from Sad­dam Hus­sein. There’s no con­nec­tion between him and Osama bin Laden or the 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks. None of our allies from the first Gulf War want to join us in a second.

But Cheney and Bush want a fight any­way. It’s hard not to con­clude this is some sort of “Ram­bo Com­plex.” The U.S. is led by two men fight­ing lega­cies that won’t let them put 1991 behind them. One is the son of the pres­i­dent accused of pre­ma­ture­ly stop­ping the 1991 war before U.S. troops got to Bagh­dad. The oth­er is the dying aide to both father and son, who has wait­ed almost twelve years for a chance to prove he was right.

This week rumors of an Amer­i­can pilot sup­pos­ed­ly held for eleven years have appeared out of nowhere. Pres­i­dent Bush has been divert­ing atten­tion to Sad­dam Hus­sein even while Osama bin Laden runs free. And Dick Cheney is indeed in Eng­land try­ing to drum up sup­port for a new Gulf War.

While the Vice Pres­i­dent is off wan­der­ing the mar­gins of stage right, real tragedy and dra­ma are hold­ing the world’s atten­tion cen­ter stage. Pales­tine and Israel are close to an all-out war. The mount­ing vio­lence has wor­ried impor­tant coun­tries like Sau­di Ara­bia and Syr­ia so much that they’re propos­ing new peace plans. So much of the Mideast­’s anger against the U.S. revolves around the Pales­tin­ian ques­tion. A war there could top­ple friend­ly Mus­lim gov­ern­ments and rip apart our cur­rent alliances.

This is where the world’s atten­tion is focused. But Pres­i­dent Bush and Cheney are ignor­ing the sit­u­a­tion. They have not fol­lowed past Pres­i­dents’ lead in lead­ing peace nego­ti­a­tions. Amer­i­can pres­sure and involve­ment is cer­tain­ly need­ed to craft real peace between Pales­tine and Israel.

But Bush and Cheney are snor­ing in the bleach­er seats when it comes to the world’s most press­ing and intractable con­flict. They’re dream­ing of cin­e­mat­ic glo­ry. It’s 2002 and two lone G.I.‘s are para­troop­ing into Iraq, knives clenched in teeth, machine guns at the ready. One dreams of aveng­ing the cow­ardice and fail­ure of his father. The oth­er of win­ning just one more war before the cur­tains close in on him. 

Must Freedom Be Another Victim?

December 1, 2001
· Martin Kelley

Nation­al crises bring out both the best and worst in peo­ple. On Sep­tem­ber 11th, we saw ordi­nary Amer­i­cans step up to the task at hand to become heroes. The thou­sands of sto­ries of peo­ple help­ing peo­ple were a salve to a wound­ed nation. We have all right­ly been proud of the New York fire-fighters and res­cue work­ers who became heroes when their job need­ed heroes. We will always remem­ber their brav­ery and their sac­ri­fice as a shin­ing moment of human history.
But crises can also bring out the worst in a peo­ple and a nation. Some of the most shame­ful episodes of U.S. his­to­ry have arisen out of the pan­ic of cri­sis, when oppor­tunis­tic lead­ers have indulged fear and para­noia and used it to advance long-stifled agen­das of polit­i­cal con­trol and repression.

Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft are just such oppor­tunis­tic lead­ers. Under the cloak of fear and the blind of ter­ror­ism, they are try­ing to strip away civ­il lib­er­ties in this country.

It is true that we must review our pri­va­cy laws and secu­ri­ty poli­cies fol­low­ing the hor­rors of the air­plane hijack­ings. We must see if some judi­cious re-balancing might cre­ate more secu­ri­ty while keep­ing true to the spir­it and tra­di­tions of Amer­i­can liberty.

But George W. Bush and John Ashcroft are not the men for care­ful, judi­cious review. With every day that goes by, with every press con­fer­ence or speech, it is becom­ing clear­er that they are using the times to grab pow­er. The Attor­ney Gen­er­al in par­tic­u­lar is sul­ly­ing the hero­ism of those who died on Sep­tem­ber 11th try­ing to res­cue their fel­low Amer­i­cans. He is a cow­ard in the unfold­ing nation­al drama.

MASS ARRESTS

Over 1,200 peo­ple have been arrest­ed and detained since Sep­tem­ber 11th. Hun­dreds of them remain in jail. There is no evi­dence that any of them aid­ed the Sep­tem­ber 11th hijack­ers. Only a hand­ful of the detainees are sus­pect­ed of hav­ing any con­nec­tion with any ter­ror­ists. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ashcroft has refused to give basic details about these peo­ple – includ­ing their names!. He has defend­ed the secre­cy by imply­ing that jail­ing such large num­bers of for­eign­ers might maybe have pre­vent­ed oth­er ter­ror plots, though he’s nev­er pro­vid­ed any evi­dence or giv­en us any details.

His is a legal stan­dard based on the fear and para­noia lev­el of he and his Pres­i­dent are feel­ing. But we here in Amer­i­ca do not lock up any­one based on our para­noia. We need evi­dence and the evi­dence of some­one’s skin col­or or nation­al ori­gin is not enough.

The evi­dence of skin col­or and nation­al ori­gin was enough in one oth­er time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry: the shame­ful round­ing up of Japanese-Americans in World War 2. Polit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties in Amer­i­can’s fear fol­low­ing the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor and we con­struct­ed con­cen­tra­tion camps. Many of those sent there were full Amer­i­can cit­i­zens but they had no choice. There weren’t enough clear-headed, decent Amer­i­cans then to say “enough,” to demand that the U.S. live by it’s birthright man­date to ensure free­dom. The prop­er­ty of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans was also tak­en and giv­en to politically-connected landown­ers who had long cov­et­ed it. It was a dark moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Now, in 2001, we are once again lock­ing up peo­ple based only on the coun­try of their origin.

KANGAROO COURTS

Pres­i­dent Bush has by sleight of hand declared that sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists can be tried by Unit­ed States mil­i­tary tri­bunals. This is an extreme step. We have judi­cial process­es that can try crim­i­nals and the Unit­ed Nations does as well. The only rea­son to use the mil­i­tary tri­bunals is out of fear that oth­er courts might be more fair and more just. They might be more delib­er­ate and take longer to weigh and con­sid­er the evi­dence. They will sure­ly be seen as less cred­i­ble in the eyes of the world, how­ev­er. We will have lost any moral lead­er­ship. But more impor­tant­ly, we will have lost the true mean­ing of Amer­i­can lib­er­ty and justice.

DOMESTIC SPYING

Yes­ter­day, Novem­ber 30th, John Ashcroft announced a fur­ther grab of polit­i­cal pow­er, anoth­er attempt to erode civ­il lib­er­ties. He is con­sid­er­ing allow­ing the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion to begin spy­ing on reli­gious and polit­i­cal groups in the U.S.

The New York Times says: “The pro­pos­al would loosen one of the most fun­da­men­tal restric­tions on the con­duct of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and would be anoth­er step by the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion to mod­i­fy civil-liberties pro­tec­tions as a means of defend­ing the coun­try against terrorists.”

For those of you who don’t know the his­to­ry. These restric­tions against open spy­ing were put into place in the 1970s when the extent and abuse of for­mer spy­ing became known. The F.B.I. had a wide­spread net­work that active­ly tried to sup­press polit­i­cal groups.

Fig­ures such as Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., were not only under con­stant sur­veil­lance by the F.B.I. They were harassed, they were black­mailed. Often incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence would be placed on them and rumors spread to dis­cred­it them in their organization.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment active­ly sup­pressed polit­i­cal dis­sent, free speech, and orga­niz­ing. The reg­u­la­tions Ashcroft wants to over­turn were put into place when the extent of this old spy­ing and dirty-tricks cam­paign­ing was exposed.

Pres­i­dent Bush and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ashcroft are using the fear of ter­ror to return us to an era when domes­tic spy­ing and abro­ga­tion of lib­er­ties was the norm. When fear of for­eign­ers and polit­i­cal dis­sent gave U.S. offi­cials pow­ers far beyond those that democ­ra­cy and secu­ri­ty require.

The words you read right now are a gift from the U.S. found­ing fathers and from gen­er­a­tions of good Amer­i­c­as who have stood up bold­ly to demand con­tin­ued lib­er­ty. Like the fire-fighters of Sep­tem­ber 11th, dis­senters and free speech advo­cates are nor­mal peo­ple who were called by the times to be heroes. Our coun­try and are world needs mores heroes now. Speak out. Demand that our free­dom not be anoth­er vic­tim of Sep­tem­ber 11th. 

Stopping the Next War Now: More Victims Won’t Stop the Terror

October 7, 2001
· Martin Kelley

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Non​vi​o​lence​.org

The Unit­ed States has today begun its war against ter­ror­ism in a very famil­iar way: by use of ter­ror. Igno­rant of thou­sands of years of vio­lence in the Mid­dle East, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush thinks that the hor­ror of Sep­tem­ber 11th can be exor­cised and pre­vent­ed by bombs and mis­siles. Today we can add more names to the long list of vic­tims of the ter­ror­ist air­plane attacks. Because today Afgha­nis have died in terror.

The deaths in New York City, Wash­ing­ton and Penn­syl­va­nia have shocked Amer­i­cans and right­ly so. We are all scared of our sud­den vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. We are all shocked at the lev­el of anger that led nine­teen sui­cide bombers to give up pre­cious life to start such a lit­er­al and sym­bol­ic con­fla­gra­tion. What they did was hor­ri­ble and with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But that is not to say that they did­n’t have reasons.

The ter­ror­ists com­mit­ted their atroc­i­ties because of a long list of griev­ances. They were shed­ding blood for blood, and we must under­stand that. Because to under­stand that is to under­stand that Pres­i­dent Bush is unleash­ing his own ter­ror cam­paign: that he is shed­ding more blood for more blood.

The Unit­ed States has been spon­sor­ing vio­lence in Afghanistan for over a gen­er­a­tion. Even before the Sovi­et inva­sion of that coun­try, the U.S. was sup­port­ing rad­i­cal Muja­hadeen forces. We thought then that spon­sor­ship of vio­lence would lead to some sort of peace. As we all know now, it did not. We’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with vio­lence in the region for many years. Our for­eign pol­i­cy has been a mish-mash of sup­port­ing one despot­ic regime after anoth­er against a shift­ing array of per­ceived enemies.

The Afghani forces the Unit­ed States now bomb were once our allies, as was Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein. We have rarely if ever act­ed on behalf of lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy in the region. We have time and again sold out our val­ues and thrown our sup­port behind the most heinous of despots. We have time and again thought that mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism in the region could keep ter­ror­ism and anti-Americanism in check. And each time we’ve only bred a new gen­er­a­tion of rad­i­cals, bent on revenge.

There are those who have angri­ly denounced paci­fists in the weeks since Sep­tem­ber 11th, angri­ly ask­ing how peace can deal with ter­ror­ists. What these crit­ics don’t under­stand is that wars don’t start when the bombs begin to explode. They begin years before, when the seeds of hatred are sewn. The times to stop this new war was ten and twen­ty years ago, when the U.S. broke it’s promis­es for democ­ra­cy, and act­ed in its own self-interest (and often on behalf of the inter­ests of our oil com­pa­nies) to keep the cycles of vio­lence going. The Unit­ed States made choic­es that helped keep the peo­ples of the Mid­dle East enslaved in despo­tism and poverty.

And so we come to 2001. And it’s time to stop a war. But it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly this war that we can stop. It’s the next one. And the ones after that. It’s time to stop com­bat ter­ror­ism with ter­ror. In the last few weeks the Unit­ed States has been mak­ing new alliances with coun­tries whose lead­ers sub­vert democ­ra­cy. We are giv­ing them free rein to con­tin­ue to sub­ject their peo­ple. Every weapon we sell these tyrants only kills and desta­bi­lizes more, just as every bomb we drop on Kab­ul feeds ter­ror more.

And most of all: we are mak­ing new vic­tims. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren are see­ing their par­ents die, are see­ing the rain of bombs fall on their cities from an uncar­ing Amer­i­ca. They cry out to us in the name of peace and democ­ra­cy and hear noth­ing but hatred and blood. And some of them will respond by turn­ing against us in hatred. And will fight us in anger. They will learn our les­son of ter­ror and use it against us. They cycle will repeat. His­to­ry will con­tin­ue to turn, with blood as it’s Mid­dle East­ern lubri­cant. Unless we act. Unless we can stop the next war.

Resources on Quaker Plain Dress

July 30, 2001
· Martin Kelley

This is a list of testimonies, guides, books and resources on the Christian testimony of plainness, historical and present. It focuses on the traditionalist Quaker understanding of plainness but it’s not restricted to Quaker notions: you’ll find links and discussions to the related concepts of modest dress and simple dress.

If thou wilt be faith­ful in fol­low­ing that inward wit­ness that has been so long plead­ing with thee, thy sins shall all be for­giv­en and I will be with thee and be thy preserver. 
–William Hobbs, quot­ed in Ham­m’s Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism. (p.3)

Back in the sum­mer of 2002 my wife and I became inter­est­ed in Quak­er tra­di­tions of plain dress (here’s some idea of how we look these days). Try­ing to dis­cern the issues for myself, I found very lit­tle on the inter­net, so here’s my page with what­ev­er tes­ti­monies, tips and links I can find. I’m start­ing to col­lect stories:

Literary Plainness

  • Friends accom­plished in the min­istry were often encour­aged to write jour­nals of their lives in their lat­er years. These jour­nals had a dis­tinct func­tion: they were to serve as edu­ca­tion and wit­ness on how to live a prop­er Quak­er life. As such, they also had a dis­tinct lit­er­ary form, and writ­ers almost always gave an account of their con­ver­sion to plain dress. This usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied a pro­found con­vince­ment expe­ri­ence, where­in the writer felt led to cast aside world­ly fash­ions and van­i­ty. Howard Brin­ton wrote about some of the lit­er­ary forms of the clas­sic Quak­er Jour­nals.

Books on Plainness, a short bibliography

  • The Quak­er: A Study in Cos­tume. By Amelia Gum­mere, 1901 (out of print, gen­er­al­ly avail­able used for around $50). As the sub­ti­tle sug­gests, Gum­mere is crit­i­cal of the “cos­tumes” of plain dress­ing Quak­ers. She argued that Friends need­ed to cast aside the musty pecu­liarisms of the past to embrace the com­ing social­ist world of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. Although unsym­pa­the­ic, this is the most-frequently ref­er­enced book on Quak­er plain dress. To get a sense of the turn-of-the-century Quak­er embrace of moder­ni­ty, I rec­om­mend Jer­ry Frost’s excel­lent talk at the 2001 FGC Gath­er­ing, “Three Twentieth-Century Rev­o­lu­tions.”
  • “Why Do They Dress That Way?” By Stephen Scott, Good Books, Inter­course, PA, 1986, 1997, avail­able from Anabap­tist Book­store. A well-written and sym­pa­thet­ic intro­duc­tion to modern-day reli­gious groups that con­tin­ue to wear plain dress.
  • Quak­er Aes­thet­ics. Sub­ti­tled “Reflec­tions on a Quak­er Eth­ic in Amer­i­can Design and Con­sump­tions,” this is a 2003 col­lec­tion of essays put togeth­er by Emma Jones Lap­san­sky and Anne E. Ver­planck. There’s lots of good stuff in here: see Mary Anne Caton’s “The Aes­thet­ics of Absence: Quak­er Wom­en’s Plain Dress in the Delaware Val­ley, 1790 – 1900” which does an excel­lent job cor­rect­ing some of Gum­mere’s stereo­types. Although I’ve only had time to skim this, Caton seems to be argu­ing that Friends’ def­i­n­i­tions of plain­ness were more open to inter­pre­ta­tion that we com­mon­ly assume and that our stereo­types of a Quak­er uni­form are based in part in a way of colo­nial re-enacting that began around the turn of the century.
  • Meet­ing House and Cout­ing House: Tolles’ book has some ref­er­ence to plain­ness on page 126. Have to look into this.

Posts and websites on Plainness

  • Dis­cus­sion thread on Quak­er Plain­ness on QuakerRoots
  • Short His­to­ry of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends: Most plain dress­ing Friends today are part of the Wilburite/Conservative tra­di­tion. This online essay does an excel­lent job show­ing this branch of Friends and is a good coun­ter­point to his­to­ries that down­play the Wilbu­rite influ­ence in con­tem­po­rary Quakerism.
  • A num­ber of the blogs I list in my guide to Quak­er web­sites fre­quent­ly deal with issues of plain dress. See also: Quak­er Jane.
  • Anabap​tists​.Org and Anabap​tist​books​.com. Through­out most of the last 350 years, Friends have been the most vis­i­ble and well-known plain dressers, but today the Amish, Men­non­ites and oth­er Anabap­tists have most faith­ful­ly car­ried on the tra­di­tion. Quak­ers have a lot to learn from these tra­di­tions. These sites are put togeth­er by a Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite in Ore­gon. His wife makes plain dress­es, for sale through the bookstore. 

Clothing Sources

Online tutorials

  • My own guide to order­ing Quak­er plain men’s clothes from Gohn Broth­ers.