Most humans never tasted fresh milk from any source other than their mother for almost all of human history, and fresh cow’s milk could not be routinely available to urbanites without industrial production. The federal government not only supports the milk industry by spending more money on dairy than any other item in the school lunch program, but by contributing free propaganda as well as subsidies amounting to well over $4 billion in the last 10 years.

These aren’t new arguments, but Bittman presents them well, citing his own experiences. And of course it makes a difference that he’s a charming, high profile Times columnist.

My solution: Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and whomever else wants to participate refuses to pay war taxes for a few years, and we suffer the consequences. I think we should campaign for a war-tax-free 2010 in all Quaker meetings and Mennonite/Brethren/etc. communities. What are they going to do–throw us all in jail? Maybe. But they can’t do that forever. No one wants to pay their taxes for a bunch of Quakers and other pacifists to sit in jail for not paying taxes. It doesn’t make sense.

A commenter chimes in with a warning about Friends who were hit by heavy tax penalties a quarter century ago. But I know of someone who didn’t pay taxes for twenty years and recently volunteered the information to the Internal Revenue Service. The collectors were nonchalant, polite and sympathetic and settled for a very reasonable amount. If this friend’s experience is any guide, there’s not much drama to be had in war tax resistance. These days, Caesar doesn’t care much.

What if our witness was directed not at the federal government but at our fellow Christians? We could follow Quaker founder George Fox’s example and climb the tallest tree we could find (real or metaphorical) and begin preaching the good news that war goes against the teachings of Jesus. As always, we would be respectful and charitable but we could reclaim the strong and clear voices of those who have traveled before us. If we felt the need for backup? Well, I understand there are twenty-seven or so books to the New Testament sympathetic to our cause. And I have every reason to believe that the Inward Christ is still humming our tune and burning bushes for all who have eyes to see and ears to listen. Just as John Woolman ministered with his co-religionists about the sin of slavery, maybe our job is to minister to our co-religionists about war.

But who are these co-religionist neighbors of ours? Twenty years of peace organizing and Friends organizing makes me doubt we could find any large group of “historic peace church” members to join us. We talk big and write pretty epistles, but few individuals engage in witnesses that involve any danger of real sacrifice. The way most of our established bodies couldn’t figure out how to respond to a modern day prophetic Christian witness in Tom Fox’s kidnapping is the norm. When the IRS threatened to put liens on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to force resistant staffers to pay, the general secretary and clerk said all sorts of sympathetic words of anguish (which they probably even meant), then docked the employee’s pay anyway. There have been times when clear-eyed Christians didn’t mind loosing their liberty or property in service to the gospel. Early Friends called our emulation of Christ’s sacrifice the Lamb’s War, but even seven years of real war in the ancient land of Babylonia itself hasn’t brought back the old fire. Our meetinghouses sit quaint, with ownership deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands wondering why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.

But what about these emerging church kids?: all those people reading Shane Claiborne, moving to neighborhoods in need, organizing into small cells to talk late into the night about primitive Christianity? Some of them are actually putting down their candles and pretentious jargon long enough to read those twenty-seven books. Friends have a lot of accumulated wisdom about what it means the primitive Christian life, even if we’re pretty rusty on its actual practice. What shape would that witness take and who would join us into that unknown but familiar desert? What would our movement even be called? And does it matter?

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Anyone interested in thinking more on this should start saving up their loose change ($200 commuters) to come join C Wess Daniels and me this November when we lead a workshop on “The New Monastics and Convergent Friends” at Pendle Hill near Philadelphia. Methinks I’m already starting to blog about it.

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.