The Constitution and the root of all evil
I graduated from California State University, Northridge in December 2010 with a degree in History. School was not easy for me. In some ways, I was fortunate to graduate at all. I was routinely one of the brighter thinkers in the classes I took, but I was a mediocre student.
I never suffered for lack of intellect; I simply didn’t apply myself like I could (or should) have. My grades have never been reflective of what I’m capable of. I look back on my college years with a measure of regret, because I know I could have performed better. But everything happens for a reason, and I suppose life had to unfold the way it did to bring me to the place I’m at now. My time as an undergraduate is over, but my schooling is not, and as I begin a single subject teaching credential program this spring, I look forward to reestablishing myself as the student I know I can be.
I’ve always appreciated history, but I never intended to study it in school. I was a political science guy all the way. I only switched majors out of desperation, when budget cuts made it nearly impossible for me to find any available “polisci” classes during my first semester at CSUN in the Fall of 2008.
It ended up being a good fit for me, for a variety of reasons. Classical by nature, the study of history taught me discipline in a way I’m certain the political science professorate never could have. I was fortunate to have studied under a fantastic collection of scholars in the history department. And I quickly learned that history is, in so many ways, an autopsy of political events; to know history is to understand the basis from which political theory is formed.
Early on, I decided that I would try and analyze contemporary domestic and world events through the prism of history in an effort to better learn how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. In my last semester, I was given the opportunity to exercise that objective most effectively, in the form of my senior thesis.
From what I understand, not every undergraduate student at Northridge is required to write a senior thesis; it varies from major to major. The proseminar course I took during my final months at CSUN proved to be intellectually stimulating, and one of the highlights of my time there. I made some valuable friendships, learned a great deal under the tutelage of the first-rate Michael Ward, got to witness the development of some tremendous original research, and produced a work that I remain very fond of.
The title of my thesis is The Constitutional Development of Paper Money, 1776-1884. I can almost hear browsers closing all across cyberspace at the mere mention of its title. Such a topic appears, on its face, to be quite unique–if not a bit unusual. But as its opening paragraphs will reveal, the evaluation of modern monetary policy through the lens of American constitutional history may prove highly significant if we wish to avert a major economic disaster in the not-too-distant future.
I’m not even sure I agree with every point raised in the passages to follow. But my research is solid and honest and my analysis, agree or disagree, is fair-minded. I find Constitutional Development to be very well-written, one of my best. I’m proud of this piece, and I’m excited to have a forum from which to share it. It is reproduced below in its entirety.
Enjoy.
HL
The Constitutional Development of Paper Money, 1776-1884
[originally produced December 13, 2010]
The voluntary exchange of goods for services is essential in a free market economy. Reduced to its most basic definition, money is any item whose value can be agreed upon by two or more parties. For much of recorded history, the currencies of the world were commodity based. That is, the scarcity for a particular product made it inherently valuable as a form of legal tender to the people involved.
The last few centuries, however, have witnessed a gradual shift away from “hard” money, like precious metals, toward a “fiat” system, where the value of a currency is rooted in its country’s credit, rather than the intrinsic worth of the currency itself.
When a nation uses a currency that is linked to a commodity of which there is a finite amount, like gold or silver, it is limited in what it can afford to finance. However, a country that prints its own paper money is not as easily hindered by budgetary restrictions. Of course, serious problems can and do arise as a result of government printing presses.
Economic history reveals the short-term effects of fiat money to be inflationary; as the money supply is increased, the purchasing power of every monetary unit in circulation is depreciated. The long-term consequences of fiat money can lead to hyperinflation and complete currency debasement.
There was once a time in American history when economic and monetary policies were of seemingly equal importance. The fundamentals of American currency and the behavior of central banks mattered as much as levels of taxation and spending. Sadly, monetary policy is a lost language in contemporary American political discourse, but it ought to be more significant to Americans today.
How money is created and how it retains its value can literally affect whether the United States pursues peace or war. It can determine whether Americans live in liberty, or under despotism. Health care and climate change are important issues, but money is, without doubt, the driving force behind every political matter in the United States. With an outstanding debt totaling nearly $14 trillion, and a severely depreciated dollar that has lost 95% of its value in less than 100 years, it isn’t unreasonable to suggest that the United States stands on the cusp of a genuine currency crisis. [1], [2]
The economic conditions plaguing the United States today present an intriguing opportunity to operate the theories outlined above through the prism of what America’s Founding Fathers might have believed about paper money. A variety of questions emerge: What did America’s Founding Fathers have to say about paper money? Were their thoughts negative or favorable? Did they intend for paper money to be a distinctive feature of American capitalism? Are their beliefs codified in the Constitution? Have those beliefs been preserved by the judicial system?
The research conducted in the preparation for this paper sought to test the premise, that the issuance of irredeemable paper money, acting as legal tender, was not a power intended for the federal or state governments by the Framers of the Constitution. This paper traces the constitutional history of paper money, from America’s independence through Reconstruction, with an emphasis on the Early National and Antebellum periods. Its reinforces the assumption that America’s Founders possessed a fundamental distrust of paper money, and sought to hamper its use by way of constitutional mandate. It examines noteworthy Supreme Court case material relevant to the understanding of the constitutional development of this subject, and it reflects on the political and economic ramifications of the Court’s interpretations.
It is commonly understood that America’s Founding Fathers bolstered the philosophic underpinnings for their political convictions by looking to the historical record. They were no different in the case of paper money.
While the professed intent behind the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation,” it was the “wretched condition of the government finances” that acted as the impetus for widespread popular disappointment in the Articles.[3], [4] Chief among the concerns that many of the delegates had expressed in their private correspondences prior to the Convention, was the idea that placing “restrictions upon the issuing of paper money [was] necessary” in order to provide for a more consistent currency standard among the states.[5]
Under the Articles of Confederation, the issuing of independent currencies was made “permissible [to the states] with the consent of Congress.”[6] Article IX also empowered Congress, as well as representative colonial assemblies that convened during Congress’ recess, to “borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States.”[7] The lack of uniformity that resulted from allowing individual states to circulate their own currencies, and the excessive distribution of paper money, yielded disastrous economic consequences for the young republic.
In an effort to finance the American Revolution, the Continental Congress did not hesitate to issue paper money, but “depreciation set in rapidly as the authorities over issued the notes and the British counterfeited them, resulting in a drop in public confidence.”[8] Congress continually escalated its demand for more paper Continentals to underwrite the war effort, sometimes in multiple million dollar increments, and often before the previous requests had even been completed and placed into circulation.[9] The demand for Continentals soon grew “to more than 275 million, as Congress poured out more and more money in the hope of catching up with the depreciation.”[10] In doing so, Congress ironically ensured the rapid devaluation of the Continental dollar.
Benjamin Franklin was perceptive in understanding that inflating the money supply acted as a form of indirect taxation. Franklin wrote in 1780:
“Congress…is…not well skilled in finance…They issued an immense quantity of paper bills to pay, clothe, arm, and feed their troops, and fit out ships; and with this paper, without taxes for the first three years, they fought and buffeted one of the most powerful nations of Europe. They hoped, notwithstanding its quantity, to have kept up the value of their paper. In this they were mistaken. But this depreciation, though in some circumstances inconvenient, has had the general good and great effect of operating as a tax, and perhaps the most equal of all taxes, since it depreciated in the hands of the holders of money, and thereby taxed them in proportion to the sums they held and the time they held it, which generally is in proportion to men’s wealth.”[11]
The devaluation of the dollar hurt George Washington’s army tremendously, as it struggled “to buy supplies [sufficient] to feed itself through several harsh winters.”[12] Washington wrote that currency devaluation revealed “melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue,” and lamented that “a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.”[13], [14] Daniel Webster remarked that to “force value or credit into your money by penal laws” would yield about as much return as “[whipping] love into your mistress with a cowhide.”[15] Not surprisingly, “by the end of the Revolution…Continental notes were almost worthless.”[16]
Ultimately, Article I, Section X of the Constitution would remedy the problems that had arisen as a result of competing state currencies in unequivocal terms. The final draft of the Constitution made clear that “No state shall…coin money; emit bills of credit; [or] make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.”[17] Shoring up the matter of whether to validate paper money as a revenue source for the federal government proved more challenging.
Article I, Section VIII of the U.S. Constitution contains a list of specifically enumerated powers reserved for Congress. Among those are the “power to…borrow money on the credit of the United States, [as well as] coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.”[18] This stands in contradistinction to the Articles of Confederation, which had empowered Congress to “borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States.”[19] Those who reflect an expansive view of constitutional interpretation point to the aforementioned clause that affords Congress the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and suggest the lack of an explicit prohibition on Congress to issue paper money is, in essence, an implied grant of power.[20] After all, that power which is expressly prohibited to the states by the Constitution is not similarly prohibited to the federal government.
In fact, when the delegates to the Convention were still debating the powers of the Legislature, they had “approved the power ‘to borrow money,’ but disapproved the words ‘and emit bills,’ on the credit of the United States.”[21] Some early drafts of the Constitution, which were introduced as far back as May 29th, empowered Congress to “borrow money and emit bills of credit.”[22]
When the matter was finally debated before the entire Convention on August 16th, Gouverneur Morris officially moved to strike out the words: “and emit bills on the credit of the United States.”[23] Recognizing the difference in language between the various drafts, those present made clear to distinguish between the issuance of paper money (i.e., bills of credit) and the congressional power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, the latter of which Madison denotes in his records as having the effect of “promissory notes,” comparable to interest-bearing bonds.[24] The ensuing debate centered not around whether Congress ought to have power to issue irredeemable paper currency as legal tender, but whether Congress should possess emergency powers to borrow money on the credit of the United States in the form of promissory notes.
Gouverneur Morris was opposed to paper money in any form, and argued, “If the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary; if they had not, unjust and useless.”[25] Oliver Ellsworth, who would later leave the Convention without endorsing the Constitution, believed the debate presented a fine opportunity to “shut and bar the door against paper-money.”[26] He referred back to the failure of the Continental dollar when he suggested, “The mischiefs of the various experiments which had been made [are] now fresh in the public mind, and [excite] the disgust of all the respectable part of America.”[27] Ellsworth was convinced, “Paper money can in no case be necessary…the power may do harm, never good.”[28]
James Wilson agreed, “It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States, to remove the possibility of paper-money.”[29] George Read “thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the mark of the Beast in Revelation.”[30] A majority of the other delegates were sympathetic to these arguments, but expressed concern about unforeseeable emergencies that could arise, under which the Congress, in extreme instances, might be compelled to distribute promissory notes.
Madison described George Mason and Edmund Randolph, both of whom later refused to back the new Constitution, as possessing “antipathy” and a “mortal hatred” toward paper money, but were nevertheless skeptical about completely tying the hands of the Legislature.[31] Madison appreciated Mason’s reasoning that “the war could not have been carried on, had such a prohibition existed.”[32]
Madison asked if “it not be sufficient to prohibit the making them a tender? This will remove the temptation to emit them with unjust views.”[33] Gouverneur Morris sought to placate doubters by contending, “Striking out the words will leave room still for notes of a responsible minister, which will do all the good without the mischief.”[34] Nathaniel Gorham concurred, believing that striking out the words, while permitting Congress to borrow money in the form of promissory notes, was sufficient to explain that Congress’ power would be limited in scope. He understood “the power, as far as it will be necessary, or safe, is involved in that of borrowing.”[35]
Even John Francis Mercer, who was, as Madison put it, “a friend to paper-money,” acknowledged, “in the present state and temper of America, he should neither propose nor approve of such a measure.”[36] Ultimately, the motion for striking out the phrase passed by a vote of 9-2.[37] Madison actually notated the measure was agreed to “nem. con.,” meaning, “With no one dissenting; unanimously.”[38], [39] The Framers, “both those who spoke for and those who spoke against the proposed language,” plainly “understood that striking the language amounted to a prohibition on Congress’s power to issue paper money.”[40]
The Federalist Papers, the celebrated and authoritative treatises that sought to convince skeptics during the ratification process to support the new Constitution, do not contain many references to paper money. Still, in Federalist 44, Madison regrets “the loss which America has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money,” and assures the cynics, when he writes, “The prohibition to bills of credit must give pleasure to every citizen in proportion to his love of justice and his knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity.”[41]
Silence in the legal system is significant, especially following an event as monumental as a constitutional convention, because it can denote relative harmony with respect to legal interpretation. Accordingly, it is worthy of attention that nothing of importance developed in the courts regarding paper money from the ratification of the Constitution until the middle part of the nineteenth century.
To be sure, monetary policy stood at the epicenter of political thought from the moment the Constitution was ratified. The Washington administration’s economic program, spearheaded by Alexander Hamilton, set off a decades long national dialogue between federalists and republicans about the establishment and constitutionality of a national bank. The relevance of the Bank of the United States, as it relates to paper money, is obvious, since any central bank would become the primary issuer of the public currency.
Although no such bank is described in the Constitution, Hamilton believed the justification for instituting one was ingrained in the authority Congress enjoyed to carry out anything “necessary and proper” for executing the powers delineated to it in Article I, Section VIII.[42] Conversely, Thomas Jefferson opposed the creation of a national bank, arguing a bank is “not among the powers specially numerated,” and insisted “the very power now proposed as a means was rejected as an end by the Convention which formed the Constitution.”[43], [44] More relevant to the context of this paper, was Jefferson’s personal repudiation in 1798, of Congress’ “power [to make] paper money or anything else legal tender.”[45]
The debate over the constitutionality of the Bank eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, by way of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The state of Maryland had “imposed a tax on the Baltimore branch” of the Second Bank of the United States in an attempt to “keep the hated Bank from crossing their borders.”[46] Chief Justice John Marshall ruled conclusively in favor of the Hamiltonian perspective, resolving that “Congress possessed implied powers to carry out its enumerated responsibilities as well as powers that were ‘necessary and proper’ to accomplish a legitimate end within the scope of the Constitution.”[47] Disagreement regarding the Bank raged on for years, and did not end as a result of the McCulloch decision. Banking frenzy reached a fever pitch when President Andrew Jackson eventually dismantled the Second Bank in an effort to restore soundness to American currency (with mixed results). Even so, McCulloch did not modify the popular understanding that paper money operating as legal tender was strictly forbidden as a revenue source for the federal government and the bank it incorporated.
The earliest examples of Supreme Court case material concerning paper money preserve the traditional understanding that the federal and state governments were not authorized to circulate irredeemable paper notes. The language of Article I, Section X is seemingly clear in its absolute prohibition on the states to issue paper money and make anything but gold or silver legal tender. Indeed, the Supreme Court affirmed this view when it voided a Missouri state law in Craig v. Missouri (1830) that allowed for “state interest-bearing certificates.”[48] However, this decision would soon be overturned in Briscoe v. The Bank of Kentucky (1837), when the Court ruled that a state-chartered bank could “issue notes for public circulation,” provided the notes in question were not officially distributed and exchanged by the state itself.[49]
The interpretation offered in Briscoe “hinged on the definition of a bill of credit.”[50] Since the redemption of the notes under consideration fell within the purview of a state-managed corporation, and not the state of Kentucky, the Court advanced that “state bank notes were not bills of credit within the meaning of the federal Constitution and were allowable.”[51] Justice John McLean, speaking for the Court, reasoned, “To constitute a bill of credit within the Constitution, it must be issued by a State, on the faith of the State, and be designed to circulate as money.”[52]
Madison’s journals of the Federal Convention were not published until years after the Briscoe decision, and as a result, the Taney Court that heard Briscoe was not privy to crucial original knowledge surrounding the paper money debate that occurred at the Convention.[53] This was not to be the case, however, when the groundbreaking Legal Tender Cases (1871) were decided; yet the Court did not rescind their original rulings, but instead audaciously broadened their previous judgments in a brash display of constitutional apathy.
The Framers of the Constitution understood that barring Congress from issuing bills of credit also forbade them from making paper money legal tender, and “even those at the Constitutional Convention who supported Congress’s power to issue bills of credit opposed granting the power to declare them legal tender.”[54] Yet, in the wake of the Civil War, Congress had attempted to raise revenue for the Union army without raising taxes, by passing the Legal Tender Act of 1862. That act gave Congress authority to distribute so-called “greenbacks,” or irredeemable paper notes that acted as legal tender.
The Supreme Court took up the matter in Hepburn v. Griswold (1870). The statute at the center of the Legal Tender Act controversy was the component that forced citizens to accept greenbacks as a tender in payment of private debts. Chief Justice Chase concluded “the law was invalid in so far as it applied to contracts made before its passage.”[55] Stated differently, the Court “held it a violation of the Obligation of Contract Clause to retroactively alter contract terms by permitting payment in ‘greenbacks’ of an obligation incurred in gold dollars.”[56] In other words, the Court was concerned not with their inability to reconcile fiat money with the Constitution, but rather with the mandate the Legal Tender Act placed upon private debts incurred prior to the law’s enactment.
In a dramatic turn of events, President Ulysses S. Grant capitali
zed on an opportunity during the year following the Hepburn decision, to pack the Supreme Court with Republican justices who were more favorable to central banking and fiat currency.[57] In Knox v. Lee (1871), the Court reversed its previous decision, and “upheld the Legal Tender Act as applied to both prospective and retrospective debts.”[58] As government entities are fond of doing, the Court exploited the crisis of the Civil War to preserve “the power to declare paper money to be legal tender.”[59] Finally, several years later, in Julliard v. Greenman (1884), “the Supreme Court extended Knox, upholding the validity of legal tender laws during peacetime. The Court held that the federal government’s monetary power was inherent in its sovereignty; thus it need not be enumerated in the Constitution.”[60]
The long-term effects the Legal Tender Cases have had on the development of American monetary policy are incontrovertibly gargantuan, although impossible to gauge with quantifiable certainty. Justice Stephen Fields dissented in the Julliard decision:
“If there be anything in the history of the Constitution which can be established with moral certainty, it is that the framers of that instrument intended to prohibit the issue of legal tender notes both by the general government and by the States; and thus prevent interference with the contracts of private parties.”[61]
Therein lies the true imbalance of constitutional interpretation. Court decisions that appear to stand in direct contrast to the clear intentions of the Constitution’s Framers have grown with increasing frequency in the decades following the Knox and Julliard rulings. The desire to faithfully execute the laws of government in accordance with constitutional provisions is an apparently dying aspiration among America’s elected elite. Seldom do modern American presidents, for example, echo the sentiments of their predecessors, like Grover Cleveland, who vetoed legislation on the grounds that he could “find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”[62]
Even the reform-minded progressive movement of the early twentieth century, which sought to expand on or dissolve any number of constitutional conditions, acknowledged the limited nature of the document, and made the amendment process a hallmark of their program. Presently, politicians and jurists find countless “penumbras” embedded in the Constitution, so that the document protects almost anything a legislator can imagine.
It is fascinating to speculate how different the United States would be today if its high court had more strictly followed the precedent established by the Founders in the realm of paper currency. It is probable that a government controlled return to sound money would be riddled with imperfections. Yet, if the constitutional development of paper money in America’s early history – not to mention its more recent evolution – can be used to argue, with any degree of credibility, that fiat money encourages false and unsustainable economic booms and currency depreciation, in a more exorbitant and detrimental fashion than sound money managed by free markets, it deserves to be reformed or dissolved.
[1] U.S. Department of the Treasury, Debt Position and Activity Report, September 2010 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Public Debt, 2010).
[2] Ron Paul and Jim DeMint, “Americans Deserve a Transparent Fed,” The Wall Street Journal (2009), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704782304574542280971009044.html.
[3] Max Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 42.
[4] Farrand, 45.
[5] Farrand, 45-46.
[6] Farrand, 154.
[7] Articles of Confederation, art. 9.
[8] Douglas Mudd, All the Money in the World: The Art and History of Paper Money and Coins from Antiquity to the 21st Century (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 136.
[9] Jason Goodwin, Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003), 68.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Goodwin, 71.
[12] Goodwin, 70.
[13] Goodwin, 69.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Mudd, 136-137.
[17] United States Constitution, art. 1, sec. 10.
[18] United States Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8.
[19] Articles of Confederation, art. 9.
[20] Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1948), 108-109.
[21] Farrand, 147.
[22] James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E.H. Scott (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1898), 67.
[23] Madison, 541.
[24] Madison, 542.
[25] Madison, 541.
[26] Madison, 542.
[27] Madison, 542-543.
[28] Madison, 543.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Madison, 542-543.
[32] Madison, 542.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Madison, 543.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Oxford American Dictionary, s.v. “nem. con.”
[40] Edward Meese III, Matthew Spalding and David F. Forte, et. al., eds., The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005), 115.
[41] The Federalist Papers, no. 44.
[42] Kelly, 178.
[43] Thomas Jefferson, The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 261-263.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private, ed. H.A. Washington (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1859), 260.
[46] Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War: A Study in the Growth of Presidential Power (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1967), 31.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Kelly, 343.
[49] Kelly, 344.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Kelly, 115.
[54] Meese, 115.
[55] Kelly, 482.
[56] Meese, 115.
[57] Kelly, 482.
[58] Meese, 116.
[59] Ibid.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Grover Cleveland, The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland, ed. George F. Parker (New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1892), 450.
On insecurity, beauty, devotion, and other topics I’ll regret writing about in the morning
Much like everyone else who inhabits this small planet, I have strengths and weaknesses. There are areas in my life where I excel, and places where I work hard just to stay on pace with the rest of the pack.
My obituary will surely note that I was an outgoing guy with a pretty quick wit. A passionate personality. A skilled musician. Someone with a knack for putting pen to paper. A devoted friend who loved helping others. A chatterbox with a penchant for sharing his thoughts on politics, religion, and philosophy.
I’m such an open book. Anyone who’s met me twice has probably read the above paragraph and concluded that I’ve successfully reduced myself to a few sentences.
In so many ways, it’s a sham. I am the most insecure person I know.
My logical sense tells me that everybody has something they wish they could change about themselves. But if you’re anything like me, you probably feel as though you are the only lonely soul on Earth who is inhibited by your own perceived shortcomings. My insecurities don’t always slow me down; sometimes, they paralyze me, and completely cripple my ability to be functional.
Chief among the “deficiencies” that plague me i
s my own self-image. I will spare you the details, and hopefully save what little is left of my face in the process. Suffice it to say, I pretty much loathe the body God has given me. If I could change sixty percent of what I’ve got to strut, I would.
Once the giggling has died down, those of you who are honest about your feelings may sigh and reflectively concede that we aren’t that different. Seriously, who among us isn’t ashamed of at least part of the way they look? Probably not many.
I know that those supposedly closest to me have done a bang-up job at helping me feel miserable about myself. “Blood is thicker than water”, they say, except for when every imperfection is looked upon with quiet disapproval and sometimes even verbally addressed. “For better or for worse” sounds easy enough, until you are rejected for the way you look in your most vulnerable moments.
The media has certainly played a role. Oops, my apologies for the understatement of the century. Perhaps this is more apt:
The media are the chief propagandists and propagators of a warped and broken understanding of beauty. They have fashioned a false world of unrealistic–and many times, impossible–expectations that harm everyone and benefit no one. They contribute far more to bulimia, anorexia, self-harming, and obesity than they will ever get credit for. They have inflicted more psychological damage upon society’s collective self-esteem than any other single entity. And they remain perfectly willing to continue hurting people as long as their emotionally destructive content results in more dollars.
Fuck the media.
What I don’t understand is how the West has fashioned a society that is ashamed of itself yet doesn’t do a goddamn thing to change the status quo, except produce Dove commercials in the hopes that someone, somewhere will grow a pair big enough to actually start acting on the message. Fuck the media, indeed, but shame on us for giving up and bending over so easily.
Women have endured history’s most recent round of repulsive objectification in the last six decades plus, with the advent of television, Playboy, film pornography, and the internet. I have tried my best through the years to stand among the ranks of those who, regardless of gender, decry the treatment of women as sex objects in the media.
More recently, perceptions about the perfect male body have 
become equally objectified in films, porn, and mass media campaigns. If you deny this, then your head must be securely lodged up into the darkest regions of your ass. Women have had to deal with it for far longer, but physical objectification is an equal opportunity game in 2012, and I fear too many women have been too quick to give in to the bullshit. And, considering what they’ve been put through, shame on them, for either being inconsiderate rubes who don’t think to conduct themselves with the same kind of integrity they desire from their men, or for deluding themselves into believing that their own mistreatment gives them license to act out in revenge.
I’m certain that some men–maybe even many–are as sensitive about the way they look as women are. I haven’t looked into the exact numbers, but I’m sure it’s enough. I know it’s true for me. The fact that guys don’t (or can’t) articulate their discomfort about their own body image doesn’t mean it isn’t so. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was great advice two thousand years ago, and it’s still good today. Being unfairly hurt ought not give one the right to continue a vicious cycle by repaying wrong for wrong.
Whole beauty should be about so much more than physical attributes. Physical appearance says nothing about the heart, character, or intelligence of a person. It doesn’t mean someone will treat the elderly with respect, or do right in their business dealings. It doesn’t mean they will be a good wife or mother, husband or father.
We humans are an impatient animal. We don’t much go for delayed gratification, yet we possess within us the capacity to think corporately and act outside of self in an effort to express love to others. Any short-term carnal pleasure we may gain by fleetingly lusting after doctored images of people we will never have and know nothing about must surely be negated by the long-term feelings of inadequacy and jealousy we impose on our loved ones through our behavior. There is nothing more dejecting than the belief that we are decidedly unexceptional, but one of the highest acts of sacrificial love and service a person can show their partner is undivided emotional chastity.
So maybe age-old wisdom had it right, after all: don’t set worthless things before your eyes, and guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.
I write this, and it all makes sense in my head. But I know believing in my own self-worth is another matter entirely, because tomorrow I’ll have to wake up and see all the same images on television and Facebook that make me feel undesirable. I’ll read words not intended to hurt me, but they will sting anyways. I’ll continue to struggle, but I won’t give up. Because I want the world to change, so I must strive to be the change I want to see.
Jesus, following through is a bitch!
I started this website a year and a half ago and have done absolutely nothing of consequence with it since. I originally intended for this space to serve as an outlet for my musings on government, and hoped it would offer me a chance to develop a portfolio’s worth of intelligent career-building political content. The irony is not lost on me, then, that my first real contribution to the blogosphere in ages would have nothing to do with politics.
Those who know me best probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’d created a website; they would probably be even less surprised to know I never did anything with it. I tend to suspect that I am seen by my peers as a man of interesting ideas and high-minded goals, but of little follow-through…
The last six months of my life have (largely) been, to quote the great Ron Swanson, a “blood-soaked, nightmarish hellscape” that I wouldn’t wish on my fourth-worst enemy. This isn’t to say that my existence has been reduced to a series of black clouds, however. On the contrary; I know a silver lining when I see one, and I have been fortunate to stumble upon more than a few. One such silver lining has been a renewed dedication to finding strength and meaning in the substance of my convictions. For the first time in my life, I am no longer satisfied in indiscriminately accepting the presuppositions I have assumed to be true without giving them much further thought. I am committed to seeking the truth free from bias (as much as possible; obviously no one can fully achieve this, but it’s worth the effort) and trying to find peace in my conclusions, whatever they may be. In other words, I am finally following through, and it’s driving people nuts.
At the forefront in this search for meaning is a reexamination of my own beliefs about the existence and nature of God, the basis for religious faith, and, more specifically, the veracity of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. I am Jewish, but grew up in a Messianic (i.e. Jewish-Christian) home that stressed the foundational significance of Jewishness that lies at the heart of the Christian story. And I was brought up believing that the Bible is the Word of God, free from error in the original manuscripts.
Much to the chagrin of many (though not all) of the conservative–and in some cases, borderline-fundamentalist–evangelicals whose company I’ve kept in the last couple years, these are not the kinds of faith claims I am comfortable continuing to stake. And, for the most part, they haven’t let me forget it. It has not been fun embarking on this quest within the context of a community who is absolutely not above emotionally beating the living shit out of you because you refuse to accept their carefully selected focuses–and denials. Not fun at all. Nevertheless, with a quick tip of my cap and a polite “pound sand” to anyone who feels otherwise, I have grown quite tired of first beginning with a premise I entirely lack confidence in, then trying to force answers to fit that premise. I am also decidedly uninterested in wholly rejecting the spirit of the message simply because I have concerns regarding some of the historical-critical and/or theological assumptions promoted by contemporary evangelical Christianity. I see nothing wrong with approaching supposed discrepancies that challenge the notion of biblical inerrancy/infallibility on a case-by-case basis, and reaching conclusions based on the strength or weakness of the arguments presented.
I have yet to come across one singular political philosophy or historical review that got it all right. I am not a Bible scholar and I don’t claim to be, but I have no reason to assume that it is any different for God’s Holy Book. I am comfortable with the notion that I will never be satisfied with the answers for every question I have about God or the Bible. But the significance of that which I know does not currently hold more weight than that which I do not know. And until it does, I lack faith that what I am reading can be trusted as the Perfect Word of God.
Right out of the starting gate, biblical inerrancy (or is it infallibility? the difference between the two is a distinction not-so-easily defined) relies on a faith claim I simply cannot accept. Biblical inerrancy is a belief that the Bible is free from error in the original manuscripts. Of course, no living human has ever seen an original scriptural manuscript, because they do not exist. We only have copies of copies made, in many instances, centuries later.
Although some biblical discrepancies can, in fact, greatly affect the functional significance of the messages inherent in the texts, other apparent contradictions are negligible and change nothing of consequence about the ethos or core tenets of the Christian faith. Not every believer is interested in, or impressed by, textual criticism and the historical-critical approach to biblical analysis. Some only go for the devotional component. You can have belief in God and faith in Christ and still acknowledge that Scripture contains trouble spots. That is not why I find the minutiae important. I find it important because the consequences of rejecting the inerrancy of the Bible has far-reaching implications for those who seek to stringently apply its precepts to their lives. If the Bible is God’s very Perfect Word, then the magnitude of its content is self-evident. If, however, one can dismiss part of the Bible as certainly lacking the confidence of being God-breathed, then which part isn’t up for closer examination? Nothing is sacred. So the idea of contradictions in Scripture is quite significant to me. And indeed, the Bible contains discrepancies, some of which appear irreconcilable.
Allow me to highlight two examples that better illustrate this dilemma:
In Mark 2:23-28, Jesus and his disciples are confronted by the Pharisees as they passed through the grain fields collecting heads of grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees ask Jesus: “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” In verses 25-26, Jesus responds with a brilliant answer: “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?”
The story of David and the show bread is found in I Samuel 21. Verse 1 reads as follows: “Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest.” Wait, what? Ahimelech the priest? Didn’t Mark quote Jesus as saying that Abiathar was high priest? Yes he did. And Mark was wrong.
Daniel B. Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at the conservative evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary, points out that “Ahimelech’s ministry was in Nob, while Abiathar’s would especially be in Jerusalem.” Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son, and while Abiathar was a priest during the time David came to Nob and took the consecrated bread, Abiathar was not high priest.
Or consider the baptism accounts of Jesus found in the Gospels. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus escapes to the wilderness to be tempted by Satan after having been baptized by John in the Jordan River. Mark is explicit that Jesus left his baptism “immediately” to go out into the wilderness. But in John’s Gospel, John the Baptist interacts with Jesus (presumably also in Bethany beyond the Jordan?) the day after his baptism. From there (again, “the next day”), Jesus “purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me.’”
So the question is posed: what did Jesus do the day after his baptism? Did he withdraw to the wilderness, as Mark reports, or did he interact with disciples and converts in Bethany and Galilee, as described by John? It depends on which Gospel you read. They can both be wrong, but they cannot both be right. Which means that someone has erred.
Was Jesus born during King Herod’s reign or when Quirinius was governor of Syria (both cannot be true)? After Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, did his family flee to Egypt or return directly to Nazareth? When did Jesus clear the Temple, at the beginning of his ministry or during his final week? When did Jesus die, on Passover day or on the Day of Preparation for the Passover? When did the curtain in the Temple rip, while Jesus was alive and hanging on the cross or after he expired? After the resurrection, did the disciples go to meet Jesus in Galilee or did they stay and meet him in Jerusalem? In each case, it depends on which Gospel you read. And there are countless others; the entire Judeo-Christian canon is riddled with similar (and sometimes seemingly irreconcilable) contradictions. It is certainly puzzling to consider why God would protect and ensure the perfect dissemination of his Word, but not its preservation.
Not every scholar agrees on the validity of every alleged discrepancy found in Scripture, but it is fair to say that most agree (or at least acknowledge) that some combination of them do exist. Even the most conservative Christian apologist may concede the appearance of biblical contradictions, but try to reconcile the irreconcilable out of a sense of obligation to the primary belief that God’s Holy Book may contain no errors. Rather than concede the point that an inspired book can still contain human fingerprints, they spend their time trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and often create their own amalgam of contrasting recorded events in the process (the entire Passion Narrative = Exhibit A). Frank Turner said it best: “If that’s your road, then take it, but it’s not the road for me.”
