The Nation's "great unfinished task."
Commentary
Jim Wallis 1-01-1997
Traveling across the country during the 1996 Presidential campaign, I saw almost no yard signs or bumper stickers with the names of the presidential nominees on them.
Jim Wallis 9-01-1996
How political fortunes change. Just two years ago, the Republicans swept the 1994 midterm elections and declared the beginning of a new conservative "revolution." Newt Gingrich, the most powerful man in the new Washington and self-proclaimed leader of the revolution, was seemingly omnipresent in the media.
Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition claimed credit for the Republican success and purported to speak for all or most Christians. Reed proudly announced his organization to be "a permanent fixture on the political landscape for people of faith."
As I write 19 months later, the Republican candidate for president is 20 points behind in the polls and there is talk about the possibility of the Democrats retaking both the House and the Senate. Republican candidates distance themselves from Gingrich, their former philosopher king. Reed has become a principal Republican Party operative (a "ward boss," as one evangelical leader recently described it), and the Christian Coalition played a decisive role in anointing Bob Dole as the party's presidential candidate, only to have the consummate compromiser waffle on some of their most important issues, like abortion.
Other things have changed as well. Because of efforts like the Call to Renewal, Reed now admits the Coalition doesn't speak for all Christians and has admirably counseled his followers to a greater "civility" in their political holy warfare. Most important, key evangelical Christian leaders are turning away from the Religious Right. The highly politicized Christian Coalition has gained considerable power, but at the cost of moral credibility among a growing number of church leaders. When all is said and done, most Christian leaders, regardless of their political leanings, prefer a politics more independent, spiritual, and prophetic than one that is too partisan, ideological, and caught up with the pursuit of power.
Julie Polter 9-01-1996
A pro-choice activist describes what it's like when a major pro-life protest occurs in her city: "I'm the one who calls in the army [of volunteer clinic escorts]....It's like a war. I don't like it. I'm tired. I want to see if there's another way to deal with this issue."
So on a brilliant spring day she joined 100 other people in Madison, Wisconsin, in the first national conference of the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice. For four days pro-choice activists, clergy, doctors, and women's clinic directors could be found with pro-life activists, clergy, lawyers, and crisis pregnancy center volunteers in workshops, strategy sessions on teen-age pregnancy and adoption, and—perhaps the biggest surprise—friendly conversation.
These people didn't ignore their very real differences on the core issue of abortion, but they also didn't allow those differences to distract them from seeking the "common ground" that exists even among adversaries.
The Common Ground Network came together in 1993 out of dialogue and joint action between pro-choice and pro-life supporters in Buffalo, St. Louis, and elsewhere. The network links such "common ground" groups around the country, providing resources, training, and facilitators.
Activists from both "sides" of the abortion issue sit down together for extended discussion under specified ground rules: respectful speech and behavior; a desire to understand; a pledge to refrain from attempts to convert and convince; and confidentiality. Discussion moves from issues directly related to abortion (What's the life experience that's led you to the position that you've taken?) to related topics suggested by group members (What are your beliefs about birth control? How do we best teach our children about sexuality?). A goal is to identify areas of agreement and possible cooperative work. Examples have included promoting adoption and developing a mutual "code of conduct" for public hearings concerning abortion.
Michael T. Klare 9-01-1996
Congress claim to represent different approaches to national governance, they have virtually no disagreements when it comes to setting the Pentagon budget. Key leaders of both parties, including Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, agree that military spending must rise in the years ahead to ensure continued American military supremacy.
In March 1996, when the Republican-dominated Congress was avidly slashing federal aid to the poor, the homeless, and the infirm, Clinton sent to Capitol Hill a six-year Pentagon budget laying out steady increases in military spending. Under the administration's plan, Department of Defense allocations will rise to $276.6 billion by 2002, an increase of 14 percent over fiscal year 1997. If the Republicans maintain their control of Congress (and/or win the presidency), these figures could go even higher.
Underlying this agreement on budget levels is a deeper consensus on the nature of future threats and on the type of forces needed to counter those threats. This consensus was forged in 1993, when Clinton unveiled a new U.S. military blueprint for the post-Cold War era. Known as the "Bottom-Up Review," this blueprint calls for sufficient U.S. forces to fight and win two "major regional conflicts"—that is, Desert Storm-like engagements—"nearly" simultaneously, a force about three-quarters of that supposedly needed to defeat the Soviet Union at the peak of its strength.
Mark Cerbone 9-01-1996
Debate over the importance of "role models" and "mentoring" touches on everything from the behavior of professional athletes to the trumpet call to men sounded by Promise Keepers. Charles Barkley claims no responsibility to be a role model, while a Million Men march to proclaim they ought to be.
A steady stream of unsettling incidents involving young people helps propel the discussion on the impact of role models—positive and negative—on impressionable youth and formative children. It's an especially urgent topic in urban America, where the social and economic fabric continues to unravel. The plagues of racism, violence, poverty, and environmental degradation have some obvious linkages to the more muted crisis of the declining number of healthy, intact families.
The end results of disintegrating family structures are obvious in our troubled Buffalo, New York neighborhood. Adult models of responsibility, maturity, and employment are hard to find on the West Side. Of the 50 or so children and teens that attend our church's youth programs, only one family is headed by a married, employed couple. Pain and disruption mark nearly all of their homes. Missing father, alcoholic mother, poor food, siblings fathered by different men (all now absent), drugs, violence.
Hugh Brown 9-01-1996
"You are now entering the village of El Mozote." Harold Recinos, a community advocate from Washington, D.C., led a band of U.S. seminarians and clergy on a three-mile pilgrimage this spring that precisely followed the route of the Salvadoran military's Atlacatl Battalion some 15 years ago.
In December 1981, the U.S.-trained and funded Atlacatl entered El Mozote and massacred a village of evangelical Christians. The group of pastors and students that entered the village this spring was met by dozens of small children who spontaneously surrounded them—reaching out in a mysterious depth of hospitality that was especially poignant in light of their town's past.
In some ways El Mozote, crucified by war but with a tenacious will to survive, symbolizes the nation of El Salvador after four years of so-called peace. In January 1992, the government of President Alfredo Cristiani and the commanders of the FMLN, the umbrella guerrilla group that waged civil war against the U.S.-backed government throughout the 1980s, gathered in Mexico City and signed an agreement to end the 12-year-old war that left more than 75,000 Salvadorans dead.
Among other things, the 1992 peace accords provided that the army be purged of "known human rights violators" and be reduced by half; that the guerrillas disarm and some of their number join a new civilian police force; and that the Atlacatl and other rapid-reaction battalions be disbanded. The agreement also provided for a Truth Commission that would investigate "serious acts of violence" since 1980.
Rose Marie Berger 9-01-1996
In Bosnia, there are no easy answers. Any question naively put forth by outsiders prompts a history lesson that usually begins at the time of Constantine if directed at a Croat, the 1389 Battle of Kosovo if toward a Serb, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire if speaking with a Muslim. For Americans who can't remember what they watched on television last night, this can be a bit disconcerting. However, while history does not predetermine a country's direction, it does highlight possible futures.
In the aftermath of genocide in Bosnia, the fundamental question is, Did this have to happen? The answer is no. Here at the end of the 20th century we have participated in a global dramatization of the adage, "All that evil needs to triumph is for good [people] to do nothing."
Contrary to the propaganda of the U.S. media, the former Yugoslavia is not genetically encoded for violence; nor did the collapse of communism preordain civil war. The mass graves that NATO forces are opening in Srebrenica, Jajce, and Tuzla are not only filled with sons, fathers, daughters, and friends, but with the coldly pragmatic, morally vacuous remnants of empires' attempts to save themselves.
Serbian President Milosevi´c, a very intelligent Communist hardliner, had no future in the age of democracy, so he initiated a violent land grab, particularly for Bosnia's military-industrial factories. Croatian President Tudjman had a small-minded Nixonesque craving for power. After Croatia's relatively successful secession from Yugoslavia, he took advantage of the chaos created by the Serb aggression to indulge his greed and extend the Croatian borders.
Julie Polter 7-01-1996
When President Clinton vetoed a bill this spring that would have banned a specific method of late-term abortion, many people were outraged.