Fox News and Integrity

Well, now we’re thankfully being exposed to genuine insight about “Fox News.” It comes from their own words after the President of the United States defended his positions on public affairs and pointed out where he had been misinterpreted. I’m referring to a report in the Morning Call newspaper published in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Monday October 26, 2009.

Political analyst Brit Hume of “Fox News“ described the real purpose behind this well-known television station: “That’s kind of our attitude, ‘Hoist a Jolly Roger, pull out our daggers and look for more throats to slit.‘ “

Glenn Beck, described as the “newest star” on “Fox News,” pointed to a red telephone and declared it was “a special line for use by the White House to correct mistakes made by Fox News.” It was an attempt at satirical humor. Apparently Mr. Beck thinks mistakes about important issues are of no importance. Note that he shows no desire to correct mistakes.

Bill O’Reilly, who perhaps considers himself a senior spokesman for “Fox News:” “There is something very disturbing about the Obama administration fighting harder against Fox News than against the Taliban.” President Obama is Commander in Chief of brave men and women in our United States armed forces who are sacrificing their lives against evil powers (including Osama bin Laden) that stoop so low in their fanaticism that they murder people of their own religious background. Their desire to bring evil, murderous designs into our own nation is still real. Difficult decisions on how to make the sacrifices of our brave men and women count for eventual peace and security must not, and are not, being made lightly by our President. Mr. O’Reilly apparently thinks that his own bloated feelings of self-importance are sufficient to cause the President of the United States to spend more sleepless nights fretting about him than about the reign of terror perpetrated by those whose brains are obsessed with murder and hate.

What an overabundance of self-centered egotism!

Speaking of hate, the self-description that the purpose of “Fox News” is to “slit throats” sounds more like the Taliban than it does about being “one nation under God” (as we profess whenever we pledge allegiance to the red, white and blue of our nation‘s honored flag).

Do we really wish to live in a land where the President of our country is not allowed to defend his position? I wonder about the name “Fox News.” How can we trust the credibility of “news” when its stated purpose is to “slit throats” of people who think differently? And consider the fox – you may have heard the expression “as crafty as a fox.” Fox-like News; they’ve named themselves. Don’t the people of this nation deserve better than to bow their heads in reverence before the idol of craftily crafted propaganda masquerading as a news center?

They’ve said it. Out of their own mouths they revealed how much they despise this nation’s needs: facts instead of propaganda, truth instead of lies. They have condemned themselves and informed us that their real purpose is to mislead the American people with foxy, crafty disinformation.

1963 – 1971 The Church of the Good Shepherd Willingboro, New Jersey

A personalized history

Donald R. Repsher, pastor

I was ordained in the Evangelical United Brethren Church by Bishop George Edward Epp, in 1954 (in June, the same month when Pam and I were married). In those times the word “Evangelical” had a different meaning than it seems to have now. The word “evangelical” was an acknowledgement that our relationship with God is dependent upon the wonder-full compassion and graciousness of God. But at this point in time (2009) it sometimes seems that “evangelical” has become distorted by referring to how the Bible is interpreted.

The EUB Church (as we called it) began in the early 19^th century as a ministry to Pennsylvania Germans (also known as the Pennsylvania Dutch). Its organization and articles of faith were basically a translation of Methodist traditions into the Pennsylvania German dialect. It was in May or June, 1963, when I was first approached by my District Superintendent in the EUB Church about the possibility of moving from Carbon County, Pennsylvania, to a new church development in Levittown, New Jersey. (Responding to an invitation from the New Jersey Council of Churches, the Evangelical United Brethren Church, at its expense, had built the beautiful church building and then invited people to come to it.) The pastor’s salary was heavily subsidized by the East Pennsylvania Conference of the EUB Church.

Even so, the small congregation was unable to meet expenses. Someone thought of the idea of establishing a state-certified nursery school for children ages 3 ½ to kindergarten. My predecessor, Rev. Ray Pottieger, put much of his time into making this work. And it was working well until a state inspector came to visit. Tiny Tots Nursery School (as it was called) would no longer be certified, he said, because the director had children fill in and color pre-printed drawings with crayons instead of encouraging children to make their own pictures free-style. The director of the nursery school was a church member and her husband, a trustee. As I understand the story, she refused to follow the state certifier’s instructions. The nursery school committee realized that if it lost the church’s state certification the Tiny Tots Nursery School could no longer be non-sectarian and therefore it would lose almost all of its enrollment. The congregation might then be unable to meet its expenses, and the EUB annual conference itself had limited funds. The director was asked to resign. Not everyone agreed. The issue became very emotional.

In his concern for salvaging the congregation, the founding pastor also felt that new pastoral leadership would be helpful. I was asked if I was interested. The situation was explained to me by my EUB district superintendent. He informed me that if the congregation fell apart my salary would be guaranteed for the rest of the conference year until I could be appointed elsewhere. It was with faith that God would help that I expressed my willingness to give it a try.

The first two years of my ministry in The Church of the Good Shepherd were spent trying to get things running smoothly again. These people, many of whom were charter members, responded wonderfully. It was they who got the little congregation on its feet again, not me. The Tiny Tots Nursery School continued, having met its state certification requirements, and provided the necessary financial support that was shared by the congregation with the assistance of the East Pennsylvania Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. My job, in addition to being pastor, was to coordinate the Nursery School’s automobile drivers and their routes through Willingboro as they picked up the little children. Occasionally I substituted for an automobile driver who called in sick. I remember, with a smile, waiting in my car at the curb while one youngster was slow in leaving his home. He was about four years old, the son of a physician. As he breathlessly ran down the driveway tugging on his jacket he said to me, “I’m sorry I’m late. I had to defecate.”

Well, Levittown, New Jersey (as it was then called), was an upscale community. Many folks did not like their homes to be compared with Levittown, Long Island, or even Levittown, Pennsylvania. Finally they rebelled against being referred to as Levittowners. By a public referendum they voted to restore the original township name: Willingboro. At this point in time the Levitt corporation decided to call a halt to building at its own expense the public elementary schools that were in every “park” or district of the community. From then on taxpayers became responsible for building their own schools.

The parsonage at 77 Barrington Lane was a corner property with a great expanse of lawn. In seminary we had been told that we had an ethical responsibility for taking good care of the property because it belonged to the Church. I took a great liking to fertilizing and mowing the grass. One year the parsonage needed a fresh coat of paint on the outside and there wasn’t enough money in the treasury to pay for it. So I decided to paint it myself. It wasn’t long before I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew! But it was a good lesson. And it was fun.

The 1960′s were years of drought. I knew Willingboro had a high water table, and most of the land was sand. One afternoon I went to a hardware store and bought piping and rented the tools to put in my own shallow-well water pump. Since the water would only be used for watering the lawn, it didn’t need any water purification tests. Next to a corner of the back patio I drove the piping down eleven feet and found six feet of water. It wasn’t long before the water pump was running all day long, and the parsonage of The Church of the Good Shepherd had one of the greenest lawns in the community! Other people got the same idea, too.

Pam’s parents leaked out the idea that they would be interested in getting our three children a pet dog. Now, we didn’t want just any kind of dog foisted upon us! One day we were visiting the Cherry Hill Mall. I think it was Woolworth’s Department Store where we saw, in a bird-cage on a shelf, a little live monkey! They told us his name was Sam, and it was a “woolley” monkey (somewhat similar to a “spider” monkey, from the Amazon River area). Pam and I looked at each other. Ever since childhood I’ve been fascinated by monkeys and apes. We visited a nearby pet store in the mall and purchased a booklet on how to care for monkeys as pets. We looked through it. We talked. We thought. We talked some more. We decided that if we bought him we would re-name him “Willie.” And that’s how Willie the Woolley Monkey came to live in the parsonage at 77 Barrington Lane! (At that time it was perfectly legal to own an exotic pet.)

“It is easier to train a monkey than to tame a monkey,” the book said. “Wait for the monkey to take the initiative in making friends.” For one week we put his bird-cage on the living room floor with the cage door wide open. Willie wouldn’t leave it. He felt safe inside that little cage because it was the only home he had ever known. Our three children (Terry Ann, Karen, and Kurt) sat on the steps leading upstairs, patiently waiting for Willie to make the first move. And then it happened. Willie stepped out of his cage, walked over to the children, and crawled up on their laps. From that moment he became one of the family. At an auction I bought a doll’s high chair, and five-pound Willie enjoyed sitting in it and eating with us. I built a 5-foot-long, 3-feet wide, 5-feet high cage that stood about three feet up from the floor in the utility room. The cage door was often left open so Willie would not feel locked up.

Willie loved children. He became a welcome guest among the children at Tiny Tots Nursery School. He played with the little children as if he was really one of them. There’s a lot more I could tell about Willie; maybe some other time.

In our small church membership, only about six or seven people were from an Evangelical United Brethren background. “The Church of the Good Shepherd” was genuinely a church for the community. People from a wide variety of Christianity’s many branches – including some Roman Catholics and folks with no church background at all – came and became active. I’ll never forget the time when one Sunday morning an usher came to the lectern and informed me that our attendance had reached a hundred people!

People of color now began moving into Willingboro. Some visited The Church of the Good Shepherd. This was during the time of Rev. Martin Luther King. I was very proud of the folks in our previously all-white congregation for the cordial welcome these visitors received. People of color soon became active in all areas of leadership. The congregation was blessed.

In 1968 the long-discussed merger between the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church took place. The new name became “United Methodist Church.” Everybody knew that when we could hang the sign on the outdoor bulletin board and announce that we were now “United Methodists” more people would begin to visit. And they did.

One thing about a newly-formed congregation: do something two years in a row and it becomes a tradition! I never heard anyone say negatively, “We’ve never done that before; why try it now?” Not once. Regular church attendance became a tradition. Some of our members – most were younger than age 40 – enjoyed getting together in someone’s house on Saturday nights for fun and fellowship. I learned that sometimes these get-togethers wouldn’t break up until after midnight. And before they left they would laughingly say to their friends: “We can tell that you’re really getting old if you can’t make it to church in the morning!” No one dared to be absent from Sunday morning worship without being jokingly teased! In the autumn-winter-and-spring of 1970-1971 the church membership was 191 and the average attendance was 134. I don’t think many pastors I have known have served a congregation with that kind of commitment!

Another tradition occurred on special days like Thanksgiving Sunday, the Sunday before Christmas, and Easter: the choir and congregation joined together and sang Malotte’s version of “The Lord’s Prayer.” I can still feel chills of praise and gratitude running up and down my spine as we reached the powerful crescendo: “For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever!” Amen.

In the Evangelical United Brethren Church pastors were encouraged to think in terms of long-time pastorates. “Don’t ever use congregations like stepping-stones, trying to climb up a ladder toward some kind of monetary success. Stay with a congregation and work with that congregation, so that the congregation is strengthened.” This was one of the themes my E.U.B. bishop preached about in the service when I and others were ordained. I took that very seriously.

It became one of my most important professional goals. But to reach that goal I had to move on. The South Jersey Conference of the United Methodist Church, to which I had been transferred after the merger between the EUB and Methodist Episcopal Churches, did not seem to share at that time a commitment to long-term pastorates. I was asked to move to a United Methodist congregation that had never, in its long history, held a pastor for more than six years. I received an invitation from the Presbyterian congregation in Montgomery, Orange County, New York that was looking for a pastor with a family who was, like them, looking for a pastor who would work with them without wanting to move after only a few years. It was a good match.

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My Time Machines and Me

Early one morning, not so long ago, I stretched out in bed and listened as Johan Sebastian Bach entered the room, along with Albert Schweitzer. My time machine was fully functioning.

Before you scoff, let me add that one of my time machines consists of a stereo player, a record turntable, a CD player, compact disks, and vinyl recordings that prior to being used are amply doused with distilled water to eliminate static and give me, via five speakers placed appropriately within the room, excellent sound from earlier times.

I don’t remember where or how, back in 1980, I acquired a remarkable Japanese monophonic recording under the label of “EMI Angel.” Everything on the record’s jacket is in Japanese except the part that promises that I could hear Albert Schweitzer playing Johan Sebastian Bach’s Chorale Preludes. I was reaching back in time and listening to music that was composed centuries ago and played by a great man who has not been alive on this planet for decades, using an organ that may not even exist any more. Who is so out of touch with reality as to doubt the existence of time machines like this, making it possible for the past to be heard again?

I remember the time when I was a little boy and a stand-up phonograph, taller than me, was brought home. When my parents weren’t looking I opened the cloth-covered lattice that hid the sound box, trying to find the little people who I thought were inside. My mystification was not removed when I found nothing but empty space.

A few years later my imagination was kindled after browsing in the children’s section of a public library that the small-town fathers had thoughtfully provided for kids like me. My fingers touched a book by Carolyn Rogers titled “Pirate’s Loot.” Published in 1931, it had full-color illustrations by Gustaf Tenggren. I took it home, read it, and never forgot it. I often wondered if it would still hold the appeal that it had so many years ago. It did, after I acquired a copy from an antiquarian book source on the Internet and read it again.

The story was about several boys and girls who were on an island reputed to have a cave in which pirates had buried their treasure. The youngsters met an old man who was fussing with an electronic machine that might be able to reproduce sound from former times. His theory was that sound waves were permanently imbedded in stones and trees in much the same way as sounds were imprinted on 78-revolutions-per-minute records of that era. Eventually, after many trials and failures, the old man’s machine began to function. Along with the youngsters, he took it into the interior of the pirates’ cave and turned it on. They sat around the machine and listened. And through the static they heard the footsteps of pirates entering the cave. Their voices (in English, of course) were describing certain stones embedded in the cave that, properly turned, would open a back wall and reveal a room filled with treasure. The old man and the children located the stones, turned each one like the dial on a safe, and a hidden door creaked open to reveal a room where a skeleton dressed in a pirate’s ragged clothes was still keeping watch over the treasure.

I often think of that book. And now, as I listen to music composed at another time and played at still another time, I still have something of that boyish sense of wonder. The wealthiest person in all the world, not all that long ago, couldn’t have financed a command performance such as we can achieve by the touch of a button on one of our marvelous twenty-first century time machines!

I think of the other time machines in my home. A television set which actually shows me – and let’s me hear – people from the past. With the right programming I can see, as a young agile man, Fred Astaire dancing. Through the wonders of DVD recordings I can see and hear Jack Benny, still 39 years old, with his wonderful humor that continues to make me laugh. I can reach back in time!

I can record live programs from television and, a dozen years from now, see those very same programs again.

I open the pages of history books and they enable my mind to return to a world ten or ten thousand years ago.

I leaf through a photograph album and see my parents and grandparents once again, at different stages of their lives. That album is a time machine made of paper!

I’m a very lucky guy. Where is my imagination, if I do not recognize that time is being preserved, and I’m able to see and hear once again what once was? We praise technological knowledge that proves there are no miracles. But if I lack the wisdom that preserves a sense of wonder, have I not lost a marvelous gift? While retaining my knowledge, don’t I do well if I allow my primitive spirit to soar with gratitude? How many time machines do you have where you live?

Working for the Bangor Daily News

I was a youngster when I began passing newspapers in the south side of Bangor, Pennsylvania, for the Bangor Daily News. World War II was engulfing the world in human slaughter. No one in America ever questioned who the “good guys” were. They were civilians who went into basic training in our U. S. Military, learned how to use a gun, and went overseas either to be injured, maimed for life, die, or return with victory shining in their eyes.

I still remember picking up my newspapers for delivery at the newspaper office on Main Street, next to the bank, and seeing huge headlines that filled half the front page: “FRANCE FALLS.” And I remember, several years later, putting a bundle of newspapers under my arms and going out into the streets calling “Extra! Extra!” when Germany surrendered, and later, on V-J Day, celebrating the victory over Japan. Those were possibly the only “Extras” ever published by our small-town newspaper.

Delivering this four-page newspaper along South Main Street meant folding it into a small square and throwing it up the steep incline from sidewalk level, while hoping it would land on the subscriber’s front porch instead of in the shrubbery. My route took me to Messenger Street, and going up Messenger Street to where it ended at Tommy Richard’s Apple Orchard. Then I turned right into what quickly became a country road. A return walk through some fields brought me to Snyder Street and then home on Miller Street. Invariably I whistled tunes of my own making as I walked along in the country. I loved the dusk of evening as daylight slowly began to disappear. I still love that time of day – it evokes pleasant memories.

(In autumn, I enjoyed walking over to Tommy Richard’s and watching them make apple cider. Everything went into the cider bin: good apples, rotten apples, and possibly some of the flies that were always swirling around. And that was good, well-flavored cider, let me tell you! Now-a-days you can’t buy cider like that at any price. And I never heard of anybody getting sick. Maybe we were a lot healthier in those times.)

The headache came when it was time for the weekly “collection,” when I knocked on the doors of customers or rang their doorbells to get paid. Too often no one was at home and I would have to make another trip on another day. But the compensation for that was at Christmas-time, when I collected “tips” from the customers. We newspaper carriers enjoyed making fun of the four-page newspaper. We called it the “Bangor Daily Keyhole” because people just looked through it.

I only “passed papers” for about a year when I was invited to take the place of a boy named Leopold as the mail clerk. He may have graduated from Bangor High School at that time. This meant picking up about 130 newspapers fresh from the printing press, taking them to the counter in the business office, and rolling them up inside an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of newsprint. I had already pasted on the addresses of the mail recipients. By far most of these were mailed to our brave people in the military. Most of those addresses indicated overseas delivery. The names and addresses were printed on strips of paper. I brushed paste on an entire strip at a time, held it in one hand and with the other hand cut and pasted each address on one of the 8 ½ by 11 sheets of newsprint. These were laid out in such a way that about a dozen sheets at a time could have paste brushed across their top edges. The four-page newspapers were then folded, tightly rolled up, pasted, and put into a pile. When the last newspaper was ready for mailing, I piled them into a bundle, tied a piece of twine around them, and carried the bundles to the post office. No postage was ever required; I suppose the newspaper paid the post office by the week or by the month. Leftover copies were put in a bin and eventually one or more was retained for historical purposes. (When the microfilm copy, made years later, skips an occasional day during that era it is my fault; I forgot to put that day’s newspaper into the bin.) But I was fast.

Even so, frequently I was the last one out of the building at night. I had no key. Holding the bundle of newspapers in one arm I would close the door with the other and it would automatically lock. One cold night I walked out of the building and absent-mindedly left my jacket inside. I didn’t even get across Main Street before I knew I had really goofed. Fortunately luck was with me. One of the newspaper carriers had somehow discovered that a never-washed window on the side of the building facing the bank was never locked. (He enjoyed telling us about how he and his girlfriend climbed through the window, found their way in the dark to a pile of blank newsprint laying on the floor, and made love. None of the grown-ups ever learned about this.) I set the bundle of newspapers down on the front doorstep, squeezed between the Daily News building and the bank, opened the never-washed window, climbed through, and soon emerged from the front door wearing my nice warm jacket.

After fire destroyed the press area the newspapers were printed in Quakertown by Charles Meredith of the Quakertown Free Press (who purchased the Bangor Daily News). Once in a while Mr. Meredith himself would show up. Up to that time I had been paid by the week. By that time repairs from the fire had been made and the printing press began rolling out the papers again. Mr. Meredith saw how fast I was, and when I asked him if I could be paid fifty cents an hour instead of by the week he consented. It could be that he didn’t know how late the papers were printed, and that I would be paid for the time between showing up after school until after the papers were taken to the post office. Or, more probably, he was just generous. Fifty cents an hour was very good pay for a kid my age, back then.

The paper delivery boys and I arrived after school and always hung around for a couple of hours waiting for the newspapers to come off the press. As an “indoor” guy I watched Al DeRenzis lock the lead print into metal forms and place them in the press. Then he would start the press rolling. It was a sight to behold! Seldom did things go smoothly, however. The not-perfectly-aligned rollers frequently ripped the huge roll of newsprint and everything had to be re-threaded by hand. This delayed even more the eventual delivery of newspapers. Once in awhile Mr. DeRenzis allowed me to pull back the long floor-fastened handle that started the press moving. What a thrill to feel that giant press moving at the command of my little fingers! (Giant-sized to me, of course, was all relative; I never saw a really large city newspaper-printing press.)

Sometimes I walked up the old creaky stairs to the second floor, where the job-printing work was done by Robert Sleeman: letterheads, fliers, whatever. Mr. Sleeman lived in Pen Argyl. He was a friendly guy, and once in awhile he allowed me to take a job-printing press through a run. (Now I see those presses in museums!) First I would spread ink on a circular metal plate, then get the press moving. Rollers ran over the ink on the flat round “table,” and on down across the lead form. A sheet of paper, lightly fastened to a pad, would be pushed against the lead and thereby printed. My job was to insert each sheet of paper at a time; when it was printed I grabbed it, quickly placed it in a pile, and put in another blank sheet. No thought was ever given to being too slow and getting one’s fingers caught and crushed. That just never happened.

Another favorite past-time while waiting for the newspapers to finally roll off the press was watching the linotype operator. I forget his name. The vast machine always had a small bucket of melted lead; below it a hot fire always kept it molten. After the operator typed a line he touched a button, a long thin arm reached down, picked up the line of type, dipped it into the molten lead, and whizz! a fresh line of type emerged ready to be added to all the other lines of type. It was an amazing process. At least that’s the way I remember it. I thought it would be fun to work on a linotype machine when I graduated from high school, but rather unexpectedly I decided to go to college instead.

The newspaper always included cartoon strips on an inside page. I remember “Mandrake the Magician” and his side-kick Lothar, and “Brick Bradford.” There were a couple of others. Every week the “mat” for each cartoon was delivered by the postman, and I had an opportunity to read it and tell my friends at school what the following week would bring in the adventures of Mandrake the Magician and Brick Bradford.

Against one wall in the front office was a gizmo they called a teletype machine. There it would sit, very quiet with a roll of yellow paper going through it. Suddenly it came alive with a clitter-clatter and typewriter-like keys began leaping up at a terrific pace! This was the Associated Press sending the national and international news over telephone wires. Soon the linotype operator tore off a sheet, place it on the linotype, and retype everything that had been printed by the teletype machine. To this day I think it was a marvel.

Mr. Meredith was a kindhearted man. When he learned that I planned to go to college he offered me a job through the summer as “circulation manager.” I didn’t have a clue as to what I was supposed to do. But I would come to work each weekday and spend my time drawing diagrams of the newspaper routes. I don’t remember anything else about that job. When I went off to college the job, created especially for me, disappeared with me. I owe a great deal of my first year’s college costs to this gentleman from the Quakertown Free Press who now owned the Bangor Daily News.

I graduated from Bangor High School in June, 1947, and several times when I came back home on a vacation from Albright College in Reading I would stop in the newspaper office to say “hello.” But there were personnel changes. It was never the same, and after a year or so I stopped going and said farewell to a very interesting period of my boyhood life.

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WALL STREET, 2009

I love a small town. People can pass each other on the street, look each other in the eye, smile and say a friendly “Hello.” I was thinking about this the other day and compared this to Wall Street, Manhattan, and its financial environs.

Wall Street! The legendary place of the Great Financial Collapse of 2008-2009! Wall Street teems with people, crowds of people. And yet beneath the facade: how many people walk those fabled streets without acknowledging anyone else! No friendly folks waving and saying “Hey there, glad to see you!” No friendly, sunny smiles. It’s as if no one else existed. Each individual is intent on going in his or her own direction. Wall Street is the symbol of unrestricted self-concern. Forget the enlightenment that tries to enter in the form of social responsibility. Too many corporate employees are driven not by loyalty to the corporation, nor for the common good of the world beyond, but for the “bottom line” of profitability which will bring their next big bonus.

The human needs of people beyond are important only as they might be exploited for increased profitability. Even benefits to stockholders are ignored for the benefit of personal pocketbooks with their bonuses that reap millions. If the corporation does not provide a large enough bonus, then jump to another corporation that will bow before the unrestrained lust for money. And the destination of having enough money to satisfy one’s personal wants is never reached. It continues on and on, from one bonus to the next.

Greed has done more to bring America close to collapse than the perpetrators of the terroristic acts of 9/11 ever hoped for. Osama bin Laden sits within his mountain façade and must surely be gloating. I doubt if he ever thought of being so successful as to have the entire American economy gasping for its life. The perpetrators of Wall Street greed – a symbol for the greed that permeates through America like an all-consuming dragon – have done more for Osama bin Laden‘s cause than that hate-filled man could ever have imagined!

We have been experiencing at first hand sociopathic behavior of the severest degree. Let’s call a spade a spade, my friends. The people who bundled mortgages at huge fees for themselves, the people who arranged mortgages for people who they knew could never afford to pay, the people who were obsessed with their own ever-enlarging bonuses regardless of the common good, are not great financiers. A great financier will be concerned with financing things so well that profitability will continue to be sustained for the good of all. Instead, these bonus-seekers are nothing more than lecherous psychopaths obsessed with themselves and their own fortunes.

I mean this literally. This obsession for far more money than will ever be needed is abnormal. Anti-social. Sociopathic. Psychopathic.

They need to be restrained. All psychopathic behavior needs to be restrained. That is one of the things for which government exists. Psychopaths who get behind the steering wheel of a car and drive off on the wrong side of the road at 100 miles an hour need to be restrained – no question about it. Psychopaths who become arsonists and enjoy seeing buildings burn along with the hopes and dreams of their inhabitants are restrained. Psychopaths who delight in painting graffiti that destroy a good appearance are, if caught, restrained. Psychopaths who delight in smearing reputations can be restrained through libel laws. Why should psychopaths who are willing to bring down the economy of an entire country by sociopathic behavior, destroying the lives of untold numbers of people, be left unrestrained?

People, including Republicans and others who fantasize about “small government,” are incredibly naïve. The common-sense goal should be neither “big” government nor “small” government but government of the right size to best meet the needs of society. The idea that a “free,” unrestrained market is in the best interests of the nation is incredibly naïve because it fails to take account of obsessive psychopathic behavior, greed, and the many insidious ways in which greed can creep through the economy, finding ever-new ways of exploiting societal loopholes for self-interested purposes.

The idea that a “free,” unrestrained market is in the best interests of a nation fails to take account of the fact that psychopaths can be brilliant beyond the means of most of us. And they do exist. Their friendly, smiling countenance to about-to-be-betrayed consumers are harbingers for disaster to everyone but themselves – and sometimes, ultimately, to themselves as well. They need to be restrained. If not, they will wreak their damage upon the nation again and again until either the nation collapses or they are, at last, restrained.

The antisocial behavior of financial psychopaths must be brought under control – or else. The “or else” is too frightful to even imagine.

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© 2009 by the author, Donald R. Repsher, Bath, Pennsylvania. The copyright owner grants permission to anyone who wishes to copy or publish this paper electronically or any other way, provided attribution is made to the author.

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Representative Joe Wilson’s congressional outburst

It happened in September, 2009: a joint session of Congress was listening to a televised speech by President Obama on universal health care. Suddenly there was an outburst from one of the members of the House of Representatives: “You lie!” shouted Representative Joe Wilson in a voice loud enough to be picked up by television’s microphones and sent all over America.

I believe this is a very basic religious-political issue. This kind of outburst is never countenanced in the Bible. You cannot be a Bible-believing Christian and engage in uncivil outbursts like this. Consider what James asserts in the epistle that bears his name: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:26).

In other words, if Representative Joe Wilson thinks Christians can conduct themselves like this he is deceiving himself. If people in South Carolina think their Representative in Congress has conducted himself as a Christian they are deceiving themselves.

I think there is a psychological principle called “projection” which is revealed here. The picture projected on a screen by a motion projector does not reveal what the screen itself is like. It reveals what the film, going on inside the projector, is like. When Representative Wilson gave that outburst in a televised meeting of Congress he was not revealing what President Obama is like. But he did reveal a lot about what he himself is like. We learn far more about the one who offers an uncivil shout than the one at whom he shouts.

In my research about the Lenape Indians of Pennsylvania I have transcribed one document after another of the minutes of treaties old treaty negotiations. Some of these negotiations in the mid- 1700′s were highly emotional. Not once have I come across anything from Lenape Indian negotiators except respectful discussion. I have read William Penn’s account of a highly-charged meeting with Chief Tamanend and his Council over the issue of selling property rights in 1683. Not one Indian, not even those who opposed selling away their precious land, spoke out of turn or with an uncivil tongue. The white men called those Indians “savages.” Savages? They behaved far more in the spirit of Jesus than people like Representative Joe Wilson!

There is too much vitriolic hate in America. Far too much. It does not need to be fed by Congressional representatives who carry a veneer of Christianity. Again, in the Epistle of James, we read: “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body … and is itself set on fire by hell … a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:5-8).

Jesus himself said this in his Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:21-22).

Representative Joe Wilson was told by members of his own political party to make a formal apology. He did. Whether that apology came from his heart is a matter between him and God Almighty. But in the eyes of hate-mongers he is still a hero. It is his responsibility not simply to offer a formal apology but to put out the fire which he helped to feed. And it is the responsibility of every civil person to help put out the hellish fires of hate that burns away at the soul of America. The burning flames of hate can come back in unexpected ways to haunt not only those who hate but those who allow hate to continue unchallenged.

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Impending Surgery

Before I retired I would visit folks in hospitals and attempt to give them some words of encouragement. I tried bringing a smiling countenance, because I’ve always believed that this is conducive to good health.

So now that I’m anticipating surgery I look back on those memories and share the same smiles. Now I have the opportunity to be what I have always encouraged other folks to be!

And here’s some thoughts from an email friend who also has the same philosophy. I can’t resist sharing these goodies with you:

THINGS YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ON THE OPERATING ROOM TABLE:

“Better save that. We’ll need it for the autopsy.”

“Someone call the janitor! We’re going to need a mop!”

“Fido, come back with that, you bad dog!”

“Wait a minute. If this is his spleen, then what’s that?”

“Hand me that … uh … that uh … that thingie.”

“Damn, there go the lights again!”

“Everybody stand back! I lost my contact lens!”

“Can you stop that thing from beating? It’s throwing off my concentration.”

“What’s THIS doing HERE?”

“I wish I hadn’t forgotten my glasses.”

“Well, folks, this will be an experiment for all of us.”

“Sterile, schmerile. The floor’s clean, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean he wasn’t in for a sex change?!”

“Anyone see where I left that scalpel?”

“Okay, now take a picture from this angle. This is truly a freak of nature….”

“Don’t worry about that now. I think it’s sharp enough.”

“FIRE! FIRE! Everybody get out quick!”

“Darn! Page 47 of the directions manual is missing!”

“Oops!”

“We CAN fix that, can’t we?”

“Oh, shit!”

“What do you mean you didn’t give him enough anesthesia?!”

“That doesn’t look right to me….”

“It’s not supposed to do that, is it?”

“I think we can let the medical student go ahead and do this part….”

“Good lord, the patient’s peeing all over the place!”

The Delaware River and Me

Well, how many of us have secrets that we’ve never told our parents? I’ve had a few. And one which I enjoy remembering is the time I rented a lifeboat so I could row it on the sometimes treacherous Delaware River.

I guess I was about twelve years old or so. I grew up in Bangor, Pennsylvania, and every once in a while Mom would take me along on a 14-mile bus trip to the “big” city of Easton – population at that time about 16,000, I guess. On one of those trips I noticed a little building along the river with a sign, “Rowboats for rent.” Ah, that would be quite an adventure! And I had the money, from delivering daily newspapers. (Money, of course, is useless unless it’s spent, isn’t it?)

So one sunny summer Saturday I invented an excuse to be away all day, and trudged down to the railroad tracks along Martin’s Creek which led to the River. Mom and Dad had frequently warned me about those railroad tracks, because they were afraid that I would be so intent on balancing myself as I walked on the rails that I wouldn’t hear the train coming. I knew better; they were all steam locomotives in those days and could be heard a mile away. Finally the tracks went past the boat-rental place and I eagerly applied for two oars and a boat. I had never learned how to swim, and no one thought to ask me. I didn’t even need a life jacket. They helped me put the boat into the water and after several awkward pullings of the oars I was out there in the River, one happily thrilled guy.

The river was so quiet and gentle. So beautiful! I rowed along, and of course you know that in a rowboat your back is always turned away from the direction you’re going. Finally I became aware that I really didn’t need to row any more. The boat was moving of its own accord. I turned around to see where I was going, and saw white-water rapids toward which I was faster and faster approaching.

Wow! If I didn’t know how to row really well before, I certainly learned fast! That boat got turned around real fast and I began rowing with all my might and main. Obviously I made it safely back to the boat rental place, or you wouldn’t be reading this today, Pam would never have known me, and three wonderful now-grown children plus three wonderful grandchildren would never have been born. But to the day they died, my parents NEVER knew about that little adventure on the Delaware River, halfway between Bangor and Easton. And yet, I would not give up that memory for anything. Even now, I can close my eyes and see the beautiful river as it moved silently between rows of trees on each side, and the white waves bouncing against the rocks. I bet I could take you to that very place right now.

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Wall Street, Jesus Christ, and homeless school children

Here it is, from the front page of the New York Times, Sunday September 6, 2009, with the headline, “MORE HOMELESS PUPILS, MORE STRAINED SCHOOLS.” Reported by Erik Eckholm:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – In the small trailer her family rented over the summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try harder and bring her grades back up from the C’s she got last spring – a dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel.

Charity is one child in a national surge of homeless school-children that is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities – and the federal mandate – to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil….

Here are more of the results of the greed that emanates from Wall Street financiers with multi-million dollar bonuses for the havoc they have created. Mortgage companies and bankers and those who put together “cheap” mortgages for people who could not afford them in the first place…. and after profiting from fees they’ve charged, are quick to foreclose because they don’t really care for how many people they hurt.

Now think of what Jesus Christ said about all this. Matthew 25:31-46 (New Revised Standard Version). I cannot argue with what Jesus said:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats….

Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me….

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me….” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The clause that was added to the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag haunts me: “One nation under God….” Has this nation become a nation subservient to thieves and robbers from Wall Street and its environs who parade around like little gods in their obnoxious wealth?

(continued on next page…)

On the same front page of this same issue of the New York Times is another headline: “NEW EXOTIC INVESTMENTS EMERGING ON WALL STREET.” Reported by Jenny Anderson:

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one. The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash…depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors…who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die. The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return – though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money. Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them.

So now, having turned mortgages into turmoil, they’re planning to turn life insurance into turmoil, encouraging bondholders to eagerly wait for old and ill people to die. Either way, the Wall Street people will profit from their fees. Will the Government stop this new tragedy, built upon the rotten foundations of the mortgage tragedy, before it happens?

I’m so grateful….

When I was young I didn’t think of medical insurance. In fact, I had none – until only five months after I obtained that insurance. Then – whacko – I landed in the hospital for 15 days with viral pneumonia. That was a long time ago, back in the 1960′s. But Pam and I were living on a minimal salary, and the expense would have come close to destroying us. I’m so grateful!

And now we’re both fully covered with Medicare – a Government program that is working wonders for us and keeping costs down – and a secondary insurance which does … yes … have “rationing.” But the amount is three million dollars, of which the secondary insurance has spent less than $10,000 up to the present time. I’m so grateful for this coverage!

Then I think of the uninsured. For too many, I reluctantly agree that they’re already taking unfair advantage of the system. But for those who are “falling between the cracks” my heart goes out. I don’t need any better health insurance than what I have. But I’m so grateful for what I have that I’m willing to be taxed to help provide health insurance for those who don’t have it.

I think of the Old Testament story of Cain and Able. Cain was jealous of his brother and killed him. When faced with God, Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” And the answer came as plain and clear as God has ever been heard: “Yes, you are your brother’s keeper!” And I think that if anyone dies because I have not spoken in favor of health insurance for everyone, I am guilty of the sin of omission.

Just today (September 5, 2009) someone sent me this quotation, source unknown: “No one should die because they cannot afford health insurance, and no one should go broke because they get sick.” I believe that. And I behold the negative-thinkers in our United States Congress. I wonder if the Mark of Cain the brother-killer is written upon their hearts.