Today in History - 60 Years Ago

[giblets]

Whoever the black guy on SNL said, "I don't want to go back to the original intent of the Constitution. It said I was 3/5 of a man."

No one who advocates an originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution is advocating the repeal of the 13th amendment. And for that matter, slavery would not have been solved by simply believing the Constitution says whatever you want it to say.

[Dinner]

They also had a very interesting interview with a Russian journalist were he was talking about Putin using the church to help rebuild Russian nationalism and a sense of Russia's history for its people. That strikes me as a good thing though Putin is definitely using it to build up his own power base, to buy support from church officials, and to launder dirty money. You now see the church officially owning all manner of businesses but the day to day running of these businesses mysteriously ends up in the hands of government officials while every businessman who wants to do business with the government is no virtually required to donate money to the church. There is all manner of dirty kickbacks in these construction contracts to rebuild old churches and it was odd to see even Muslims donating tens of millions to the church in hopes there company would get construction contracts (worth far more than the "donations") while the suppliers for these construction projects seem to all be run by corrupt government officials.

[Elok]

60 minutes recently had a great piece on corruption in the Russian Orthodoxed Church. Or rather it was really about corruption in the Russian government and how state support for the Orthodoxed Church has resulted in the church itself getting entangled in the government's corruption. With all those Tsarist era churches to rebuild and the vast expenses that entails I can see why church officials would feel they'd have to play ball with Putin in order to get the money to complete those projects but it also means a river of dirty money is being laundered through the church by corrupt government officials. It seems like the church has made a classic deal with the devil to get the money it needs to rebuild what the communists destroyed.

While I don't contest that the Russian church is crooked as all get out--it's a Russian tradition, and apparently they didn't learn anything from the Communist era--where on earth did you get the idea that "Orthodox" is a verb? There's no -ed ending.

Re: nationalism, you have to be Orthodox, or know a good deal about the Church, to understand. There's basically no international hierarchy; the Ecumenical Patriarch is nominally in charge, but in much the same way that the VP is in charge of the Senate--if the Senate hadn't held a session for over a thousand years. He's held in great respect, but he has no real authority over, say, a bishop in NYC. This is good in that there's no screwy international politics like the RCC dealt with back in the day; the hierarchs are little effected by affairs outside their own borders, for the most part. Also, power can only accumulate so far.

It's bad in that religious identity can be coopted by/made subordinate to national identity. Even Orthodox here in America have a bad tendency to think of their faith as an aspect of being Greek or Russian or whatever. And without that international hierarchy, it's very easy for a powerful government to turn a church into its poodle. Since Orthodoxy has a strong tradition of royal patronage--which has not been entirely detrimental, to be fair--we don't always see why this makes transparent, secular government essential for the health of the Church. We always remember Justinian and forget Peter the Great. And since Communism got curbstomped, it seems Russia has forgotten the abuses that made it so easy for the Reds to turn the country against the Church in the first place.

[Dinner]

No one who advocates an originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution is advocating the repeal of the 13th amendment. And for that matter, slavery would not have been solved by simply believing the Constitution says whatever you want it to say.

All you ever hear out of conservatives is original intent.

[Dinner]

One Soviet dissident writer said once, "Stalin was a tyrant, but who wrote four million denunciation letters?"

The people who were told to write them or they'd end up in gulag.

[PLATO]

60 minutes recently had a great piece on corruption in the Russian Orthodoxed Church. Or rather it was really about corruption in the Russian government and how state support for the Orthodoxed Church has resulted in the church itself getting entangled in the government's corruption. With all those Tsarist era churches to rebuild and the vast expenses that entails I can see why church officials would feel they'd have to play ball with Putin in order to get the money to complete those projects but it also means a river of dirty money is being laundered through the church by corrupt government officials. It seems like the church has made a classic deal with the devil to get the money it needs to rebuild what the communists destroyed.

Russian Churches making a deal with corrupt Russian governments...who would ever have believed!

[Dinner]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21667261

[onodera]

The people who were told to write them or they'd end up in gulag.

Maybe I used the wrong word for these letters, but I suspect a lot of them were completely voluntary, just because the writers wanted to see their boss or neighbour in GULag.

[Kidlicious]

No one who advocates an originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution is advocating the repeal of the 13th amendment. And for that matter, slavery would not have been solved by simply believing the Constitution says whatever you want it to say.

SNL is a comedy show. But there's always some truth to funny jokes.

[Sava]

STFU PUTIN IS THE SLAVIC CHUCK NORRIS JACK BAUER DARTH VADER AND PIMP DADDY KANE ALL IN ONE