BF: You ask the question, “What if the stories of the Bible were happening today?” As we read Testament, the picture that emerges is one of intense struggle, between gods and humans, humans and humans, and gods and gods. What is everyone fighting for? What is at stake?
DR: Well, what we're fighting for in the Bible and today is life itself. That's what Torah is really about: life vs. non-life. Pharaoh is head of a death cult, and the escaped slaves are attempting to create a life cult. An open source "religion," if you will, where humans write the laws by which they live. And they keep changing the laws to make them more ethical, more life-affirming, as time goes by.
Today, the most life-threatening gods take the form of currency. Money is not real; it's really not. It's created by a central bank, and based in nothing at all but a number. There's no "value" like gold or silver attached to it. Yet thousands are dying for money right now. Iraq isn't about oil—it's about a currency system that depends on artificial scarcity. That's why we can't use a replenishable energy source. We don't know how to make a "market" for it. And this very dependence on scarcity is Joseph's invention in the Bible. It's what gets the Hebrews enslaved.
That's why I thought the Bible could be such a powerful document for our time. But most everyone who says they read it actually don't. They just listen to preachers. So the Bible remains relatively undiscovered in this country, where it could be really useful.
Mar 22nd
OLBERMANN: There was a withering editorial in “The New York Times” over the weekend, which was echoed by Senator Schumer, who said yesterday that part of the problem here is that Mr. Gonzales has never seen himself as more than Mr. Bush‘s personal lawyer, even though he was also the attorney general. Is that the true extent of the damage here, that, that the judicial branch was co-opted into the service of the, of the White House, as well as of a, of a single party-controlled Congress?
TURLEY: Well, there‘s a lot of career people at Justice that are very unhappy with what‘s happened to the Justice Department. You know, the Justice Department has always really sold itself as independent of the president. They‘re not the president‘s lawyer. There‘s a lot of career lawyers over there, and there‘s been a lot of complaints that they‘ve been politicalized under this administration.
And in that sense you know, Gonzales is viewed as something of an empty suit for the president, that he is the creation of the president, he really earned his bones with the president by being his lawyer for all these times.
But for many people, he comes across as a type of enabler, that a lot of people in the administration constantly tell the president that he is all-powerful, that he can do all these things, that the law is not going to be a barrier. And it‘s gotten this administration in a lot of trouble.
You know, at the end of this administration, I think history will tell that this president was ill served by all of these enablers. And I believe Alberto Gonzales is perhaps the greatest of the lot.
OLBERMANN: Because he validated the enabling of all the other enablers too.
Mar 13th