This might not be the most welcome message on Memorial Day but it is the most important one. Especially the identification of military veterans as the personification of national identity and the consequent worship of the military and what it does. Brueggemann extends that to the entire program of corporate-state oppression and destruction of people elsewhere and here. What he says in this lecture is as radical, if not more radical than the statements of Malcolm X which got him kicked out of the Nation of Islam.
Later I will point out the dangers of nostalgia, which is especially dangerous for the left in the United States and elsewhere. This year might be the year that has finally killed off any belief I had in the effectiveness of the secular left, their methods and even their goals. Where those overlap with the actual struggle for equality and justice, even economic justice, I don't have any faith that the secular-atheist left will do anything but damage the possibility of achieving those. I think the Sanders campaign is just the latest manifestation of that. Even Bernie Sanders has pointed out that Pope Francis is more radical than he is. I would say that is true not only in theory but in fact. The Catholic Near East Welfare Association, the Catholic Relief Services and other Papal agencies have done more to make real peoples' real lives better than the entire secular left here. And the radicalism of Brueggemann, James Cone, Marilynne Robinson and many others who you are unlikely to see championed in The Nation or Mother Jones as the foremost leftists of our time who are to the left of Pope Francis'.
Update: When the camera pulls back during the question period, look at that audience that heard this incredibly radical lecture, took it seriously, took it as true and wanted to know how to apply it in life, here, now and without the permission of some revolutionary party. Think about that the next time you hear some atheist snarking about "church ladies".
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