Some things you can change. Some things you can’t.
You can pray.
You can act.
You can raise awareness.
But sometimes, surrender. Because you can only do so much.
The world is full of suffering. Insidious kinds of suffering. I wrote about suffering here.
Atheists use suffering as an argument against the existence of God.
Their logic goes like this:
If God exists, he must be good
If he is good, he would not allow needless suffering (like children being locked up in homes with their abusers)
The world is full of needless suffering
Therefore, God does not exist
Philosophers call this puzzle the Problem of Evil: Technically, The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.
Some suffering is from natural evil — disease and disasters.
The other is due to human evil — things people do to others, bringing physical and emotional (or both) pain.
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(As an aside, I’m reading The Book Thief for the first time.)
Humans can’t do anything to prevent natural evil; we can’t prevent earthquakes or tsunamis or tornadoes.
Surrender.
But human evil — physical abuse and rape and verbal abuse and greed — can be stopped.
People have choices. (Though I do hold to a libertarian view of free will, I still, often, find myself afraid that most of our actions are done without decision — we are in autopilot more than we want to believe.)
Even so, human evil is prevalent. (You and I have played our own parts in it.)
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When my children were young, one of our prayers before bedtime was the Serenity Prayer. We’d pray it after the Our Father, Glory Be, then Anglican prayer of repentance. Anyway, it’s not really Christian, but it’s a good one: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Acceptance and surrender are the same thing.
The good news is that human evil can be curbed through education, intervention, legal sanction, attending 12-Step meetings.
But even then, you can only do so much. Evil still happens.
My thoughts on human rights, social justice, mercy, philanthropy, advocacy go far beyond my job as the CEO of an international NGO.
But this wasn’t always the case.
I once sought to live in life sequestered in an Ivory Tower. In my 30’s, I decided I would give my life to thought — hoping to master the canon of western (analytic) philosophy. I would earn my Ph.D.
I finished UCLA with a BA in philosophy at 38, having studied informally and formally since my mid-twenties. (I didn’t go to college after high school. And I think my GPA was under 2.0.)
Preparing to become Doc Martin, I studied for the GRE, fervently. I toured my reach schools and traveled to some campuses — Christ Church, Oxford, Georgetown. I looked at homes in the suburbs north of South Bend, Indiana because I wanted Notre Dame.
As I prepared to pivot my work, my family, my life, I hit a big fat fork in the road: to the left, academia, to the right, social justice.
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An ivory tower is thought to be a metaphorical place — a place where people wrest themselves from the rat-race world, in favor of their own pursuits, usually mental destinations.
I had spent much of my life caring for people. Trying to bring physical, emotional, and spiritual healing to those who need it most. I learned most of it from my mom. The one I can no longer see.
A fork in the road. To the left, academia. To the right, social justice.
I chose to stay on the right path. Some of my decision, like all decision, was out of pure selfishness. Job prospects for philosophy professors were, and remain, bleak. One professor friend of mine at UCLA warned me: “I have a BA from Princeton and Ph.D. from Harvard. I work my brain to the core every single day, producing papers, getting published, so that, hopefully, I will be one of a few associate professors here in the past 30 years to become tenured. (I was so glad to see the Pamela Hieronymi was tenured a few years later, and also recently was a chief contributor to the TV Series, The Good Place.)
But what drove me to philanthropy was probably my keen awareness of my limitations. I don’t think I would have made a good academic. Those guys are really smart. I’m more of a generalist, a jack-of-all-trades who knows just enough about a bunch of things (business, history, marketing, music, theology, public speaking, writing, cooking, botany, finance, digital, politics) but not a lot about any one thing.
I’m a hack in so many ways. Just look at the post; what is even really about?
I’m not that good at focusing if you want to know the truth. I get too distracted. I didn’t think I’d be good at being a philosophy professor — those guys are Albert Einstein’s, figuring out the non-physical world.
Plenty of professors live balanced lives — help advocate for these in need, and they remain in academia. But most are not. Most live in their ivory tower.
Believe it or not, Einstein wasn’t one of them.
He did not lock himself in. One can find countless volumes of his letters and articles written on pressing political and social issues of the day. He would advocate for peace and disarmament. He would write to high officials of various countries.
Nearing the end of his life, Einstein said, “I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared so bad to me, and so unfortunate, that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.”
A decade or so earlier before the Nazi Adolf Eichmann trial, he wrote that “external compulsion can, to a certain extent, reduce but it can never cancel the responsibility of the individual.”
I feel that I have a responsibility to use my voice when I must.
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May we never let ourselves feel guilty of complicity.
Ivory towers are not only of those in academia. An ivory tower can be your job, school, church, your image, your family.
An ivory tower is locking yourself up and in so doing, ignoring the crucial social issues of the day.
One of the biggest issues today is ignorance — calling a wicked and unpredictable pandemic, “the flu” because you heard it on some news station or from an email chain.
The other big issue is those millions of children living in foster care — in group homes, without a mother or father to assure them that all will be okay. They don’t know about Coronavirus, but they know they are hungry and more scared than you and me.
Imagine. After every terrorist attack, the president offering “thoughts and prayers” to the families. Same with the Senators. Same with those in Congress. Then their constituents,“There’s nothing we can really do about it, terrorism is going to happen anyway.”
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This is the Trump-GOP. These are his supporters. After carnage at schools, concerts, nightclubs, churches, they offer gutless sanctimonious platitudes to the grieving families — mere words. No action in Congress.
Then we all wait, hoping the next one doesn’t hit home.
The next one always hits home.
It hit home for the parents of my step-daughter’s classmate at Pepperdine University, Alaina Housley.
I think about Alaina’s mother every single day. I don’t know why I think about her mother and not really her father, but I’m telling you I think about her mother every single day.
⠀⠀ You might not pay attention to congressional efforts to increase gun safety. I do. The pathetic fact is that GOP leaders block nearly every national initiative to pass legislation — measures that would aim to at least try to increase measures to protect our children.
At least try to protect the innocent from terrorist attacks: check.
At least try to protect the innocent from drunk drivers: check.
At least try to protect the innocent from internet scams: check.
At least try to protect the innocent from mass shootings which increase at exponential rates: thoughts and prayers. Or bile about how the left is trying to take everyone’s guns away.
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Why would Republicans fight against basic gun safety? It’s simple. Their campaigns are funded by the NRA. And those precious dollars help keep them in power. Congressional leaders block common-sense gun legislation, the NRA gives back millions to their campaigns. Twenty-five million to get Trump elected so Trump could protect the NRA.
Quid pro quo.
When I ran in the primary for United States Congress I was one of the few Republicans to receive the Gun Sense Candidate Distinction from an amazing organization, Moms Demand Action. Not because I want to take always guns — not because they do — but because leadership requires protection of the innocent. Whether the danger is from outside or inside the US, leaders stop at nothing to save innocent lives.
Moms Demand, like Mother’s Against Drunk Driving, is a grassroots movement. It was started by a mom named Shannon Watts. After the Sandy Hook massacre, she quit her day job. Started speaking truth to power. Millions of mothers today are part of Mom’s Demand in all 50 states. Not to take away guns, but to ensure they get into the hands of responsible citizens.
I want to reform my party — because Democrats shouldn’t be the only ones to fight for human rights, civil rights, social justice, the environment, and basic gun safety.
What does the GOP champion today that protects the innocent?
Millions of mothers shouldn’t have to choose between smaller government/lower taxes and a party what works to protect its children from senseless gun violence. Why not a national database (point system) to determine who can buy a new gun? We do this with the DMV; cars are also killing machines.
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Some things are more important than party loyalty. Like the lives of innocent children. For their sake, it’s time for GOP leaders to shut up and act.
America first? Not for this Christian. For me, it’s Jesus first.
And what was Jesus about? The children. The poor. The outcast. The traitors and “losers” of society.
Foster children.
I have never put my political party before my faith. I never will.
I have never put loyalty to the GOP above the teachings of Jesus. I never will.
If I’m going to err, I will err on the side of the poor, the outcast, the persecuted.
That’s what Jesus did.
To be Christian means to be Christ-like — imitate what Jesus said and did.
I ran as a candidate for US Congress. I ran as a Republican in California’s 48th congressional district primary. I was tired of the Democrats being the only ones who spoke out boldly and consistently for human rights, for civil rights, for social justice.
I didn’t advance to the midterm election, which is held today, November 6, 2018.
I didn’t win, but I’m certain I did and I wrote about it here.
Err on the side of the poor. That’s what Jesus did.
Character matters in leadership. Integrity matters in leadership.
Our children and grandchildren watch what leaders do.
Leaders are role models. All of them.
Our children are watching. Our children and grandchildren will remember us by what we stoof for, and stood against.
Republicans and Democrats rarely agree on anything. But in 2012, 92 United States Senators and 89% of House Members voted for a bill called The Magnitsky Act. The bill sanctioned a bunch of rich Russian thugs for torturing and murdering a Russian tax attorney named Sergei Magnitsky. A husband and father with two young children, Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million tax scheme. He tried to expose it to Russian authorities. The thieves didn’t like it. Neither did Vladimir Putin. So they kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Magnitsky.
But so incorrigible was the evidence, that the bill was passed with overwhelming support of both parties.
The next day, as “retaliation,” Putin suspended the adoption of Russian orphans. Many of these orphans suffered for HIV, fetal alcohol syndrome, spina bifida, and other illnesses.
In effect, Putin murdered countless children to “penalize” the U.S. Tens of thousands of Russian citizens took to the streets of Moscow in protest.
Then Dana Rohrabacher, the 30-year congressman who I ran against, went to work. He did everything in his power to lobby for Putin, a man who murders orphaned children, a man who executes his political opponents, even when they live on foreign land. Dana went to Moscow, was given a propaganda video made by The Kremlin that sought to deny the death of Magnitsky. He brought the video back. Tried to show it to members of Congress. They told him — his own Republican colleagues — that the video would not be showed.
So he promoted a public event in DC, the “premiere” of the “documentary.” He worked in tandem with Natalya Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who, by her own admission, is a Russian informant.
Dana has failed. The Magnitsky Act is still the law in the U.S. And the pioneer of the bill — the man who hired Sergei Magnitsky — financier and human rights crusader, Bill Browder, has worked to get the act passed in other countries.
In the early stages of my campaign last year, I learned of The Magnitsky Act. I learned of Browder. I learned of those innocent sick orphans and how Putin had effectively sentenced them to death. Then I learned how Browder had, through his work to sanction these murderers, had become known globally as “Putin’s #1 Enemy” — how Putin wanted him dead.
I marveled with bouts of rage about how a sitting U.S. Congressman would endorse and advocate for the agenda of a murderous dictator. I didn’t purchase any polls to determine what to make my campaign about. I knew what my campaign would be about because I know who I am.
If I’m going to err, I will err on the side of the poor, the outcast, the persecuted.
I made my campaign mainly about Putin’s human rights abuses — the abuse of Russian orphans — and about how our Congressman, my opponent, enabled the thug who sentenced them to death.
Bill Browder formally endorsed me on March 28th of this year:
“Putin has found a backdoor way into American politics through Dana Rohrabacher. Orange County is now one the key flash points in the global proxy war between Putin and the West. Paul Martin sees this and I wish him Godspeed in his quest to stop Putin and Dana Rohrabacher from compromising the integrity of American democracy.”
This was one of the greatest honors of my life. If you don’t know anything about Bill Browder, just google his name. You will be amazed. Because it’s one thing to talk a big game about human rights, it’s another to lay down life for a friend.
Bill Browder with photo of Sergei Magnitsky
I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC a few weeks ago. And I cried. But not when I was on the third and second floors — where you learn of and see photos and video of Hitler’s gruesome mass murder of Jews, dark-skinned people, and homosexuals. I cried on the floor the tour starts — the fourth floor, where you read about the years of Hitler’s attacks on institutions of power, his hate speech, his bigotry, his charismatic promises to restore Germany to economic prosperity. To “Make Germany Great Again.”
One of my mentors is a retired Jewish man. A conservative Jew who teaches Hebrew at his synagogue. I see him often at the local coffee house. I told David about my visit to DC. He had tears in his eyes.
Two days later, I saw him at the local CVS Pharmacy. Our cars were ironically parked right next to each other and when I got out I almost bumped right into him. It was the day after the Pittsburg massacre in the synagogue.
He could not hold back tears.
“Paul, this is not supposed to be happening. My people are scared. Neo-Nazis want to destroy us. There are not ‘very fine people on both sides.'”
I hugged him.
I have never put my political party before my faith. I never will.
I have never put loyalty to the GOP above the teachings of Jesus. I never will.
If I’m going to err, I would err on the side of the poor, the outcast, the persecuted.
“Paul, you give me hope.”
My mentor told me in a CVS parking lot that I give him hope and it humbled me so much.
Sometimes people tell me I need to switch parties, become a Democrat or an Independent. No. Issues of human rights and civil rights and social justice should be championed equally by all political parties.
A friend named Michael Wear worked for President Obama. He headed up his faith-based initiatives program, working closely with many leaders of all faiths. Michael is a devout Christian. And even though he’s a Democrat, he believes people should stay in their parties in order to help reform those parties. He recently wrote a piece in Time Magazine titled Don’t Quit The Republican Party. Stay And Fight. An excerpt:
“When you register to join a political party, there is no fine print that reads, ‘I hereby sign over my conscience to every jot and tittle of my party’s platform.’ There is no loyalty pledge involved.”
I hereby sign over my conscience to every jot and tittle of Jesus‘ platform. Because there is a loyalty pledge required.
(I saw David this morning at the coffee house. Then I quickly wrote this. I asked if he’d let me take a photo with him. “Paul, I like to stay out of the spotlight but I commend you for using your voice.”)
The refugee stays home and dies, or flees with loved ones to another country. It’s a matter of primitive survival instincts. You and me — we would run for our lives, as the refugee must.
The asylum seekers, like the refugees, flees county to escape war or persecution — they don’t want to die. They don’t want their children to die. But they have yet to achieve refugee status. Recently, the Trump administration said that families fleeing rampant violence of gangs and gov’t corruption cannot seek asylum in the US.
The migrant flees country to seek a better job, to improve standard of living, to join family.
