Robert Reich: Donald Trump And Ayn Rand – OpEd

 August 13, 2023  

By Robert Reich

Thanks for joining me as we explore the common good — what it is, where it went, how it can be revived and strengthened.

The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare” — not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” 

What happened? One clue is found in the writings of writer-philosopher Ayn Rand, who argued that the common good was bunk. 

Donald Trump has called Rand his favorite writer and said he identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of The Fountainhead — an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints. (I doubt Trump has ever read Rand, but for the sake of this essay, let’s assume he has.)

Rex Tillerson, secretary of state under Trump, called Rand’s Atlas Shruggedhis favorite book. Former Trump CIA chief Mike Pompeo cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination to be Trump’s secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder said he devoted much of his free time to reading Rand. Paul Ryan, former Republican leader of the House of Representatives, required his staff to read Rand.

Rand fans are also found at some of the high reaches of American business. Uber’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has described himself as a Rand follower. He applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values. Kalanick even used The Fountainhead’s original cover art as his Twitter avatar.

Ronald Reagan professed to being a follower of Rand. His policies — and those of his contemporary conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain — appeared to draw inspiration from her thoughts and writing. 

In order to understand what happened to the common good, we need to examine Ayn Rand and her arguments against it. 

Rand was a Russian émigré to the United States whose father’s business had been confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Her most influential writing occurred in the 1940s and 1950s, in the shadow of European fascism and Soviet communism. 

She was best known for two highly popular novels that are still widely read today — The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) — and for other writings and interviews in which she expounded her views about what she called the “virtue of selfishness.”

“The common good is an undefined and undefinable concept,” she wrote, a “moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it.” 

When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual desires of its members, “it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

Rand saw government actions that require people to give their money and resources to other people under the pretext of a “common good” as steps toward tyranny. It was far better, in Rand’s view, to base society on autonomous, self-seeking, and self-absorbed individuals. To her, the only community that any of us has in common are family and friends, maintained voluntarily. 

If we want to be generous, she thought, that’s fine, but no one should have the power to coerce us into generosity. And nothing beyond our circle of voluntary associations merits our trust. 

No institutions or organizations should be able to demand commitments from us. All that can be expected or justified from anyone is selfish behavior, she thought. That behavior is expressed most clearly through the acts of selling what we have to sell and buying what we want to buy in a free market. For her, the common good does not exist.

Rand’s philosophy was updated and formalized in 1974 by Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick in his bestselling book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick argued that individual rights are the only justifiable foundation for a society. Instead of a common good, he wrote, “there are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives.” 

When Rand and Nozick propounded these ideas, they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the prior half-century had witnessed our interdependence during the Great Depression and World War II. 

After the war, we had pooled our resources to finance all sorts of public goods — schools and universities, a national highway system, and health care for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of African Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women. 

Of course there was a common good. We were living it.

But starting in the late 1970s, Rand became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially its libertarian strand. 

I BELIEVE RAND, NOZICK, AND THEIR MORE MODERN INCARNATIONS are dangerously wrong. Not only does the common good exist, but it is essential for a society to function. 

Without voluntary adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, daily life would be insufferable. We would be living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most wary could hope to survive. This would not be a society. It wouldn’t even be a civilization, because there would be no civility at its core.

Americans sharply disagree about exactly what we want for America or for the world. But we must agree on basic principles — such as how we deal with our disagreements, the importance of our democratic institutions, our obligations toward the law, and our respect for the truth — if we’re to participate in the same society. 

It’s our agreement to these principles that connects us. 

To take the most basic example, we depend on people’s widespread and voluntary willingness to abide by laws — not just the literal letter of laws but also the spirit and intent behind them. 

Consider what would happen if no one voluntarily obeyed the law without first calculating what they could gain by violating it, as compared with the odds of the violation’s being discovered multiplied by the size of the likely penalty. 

We’d be living in bedlam. 

If everyone behaved like Donald Trump, much of our time and attention would have to be devoted to outwitting or protecting ourselves from other Trumps. We would have to assume everyone else was out to exploit us, if they could. 

Every interaction would need to be carefully hedged. Penalties would need to rise and police enforcement to increase, in order to prevent the Trumps among us from calculating they might have more to gain by violating the law and risking the penalty than by abiding by it. And because laws can’t possibly predict and prevent every potential wrong, laws would have to become ever more detailed and exacting in order to prevent the Trumps from circumventing them.

Even then we’d be in trouble. We couldn’t rely on legislators to block or close legal loopholes, because Trump lobbyists would bribe legislators to keep them open, and Trump legislators would be open to taking such bribes. Even if we managed to close the loopholes, we couldn’t rely on police to enforce the laws, because Trumps would bribe the police not to, and Trump police would also accept the bribes. 

Without a shared sense of responsibility to the common good, we would have to assume that everybody — including legislators, judges, regulators, and police — was acting selfishly, making and enforcing laws for their own benefit. 

The followers of Ayn Rand who glorify the “free market” and denigrate “government” are fooling themselves if they think the “free market” gets them off this Trump hook. 

The market is itself a human creation — a set of laws and rules that define what can be owned and traded and how. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. Government officials — legislators, administrators, regulators, judges, and heads of state — must decide on and enforce such laws and rules in order for a market to exist. Without norms for the common good, officials have no way to make these decisions other than their own selfish interests.

HOPEFULLY, government officials base these sorts of decisions on their notions about the common good. But if Trumps were making and enforcing such rules, the rules would be based on whatever it took for these Trump officials to gain personal wealth and power. The “free market” would be a sham, and most people would lose out in it. (As we will see in the pages to come, something close to this has in fact occurred.)

Truth itself is a common good. Through history, one of the first things tyrants do is attack independent truth-tellers — philosophers (Plato), scientists (Galileo), and the free and independent press — thereby confusing the public and substituting their own “facts.” 

Without a shared truth, democratic deliberation is hobbled. As poet and philosopher Václav Havel put it, “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

Yet in a world populated by people like Trump, we could not trust anyone to be truthful if they could do better for themselves by lying. We couldn’t count on any claim by sellers of any product or service. Internet-based “reputational ratings” would be of little value, because Trump raters would be easily bribed. 

Journalists would shade their reports for their own selfish advantage, taking bribes from advertisers or currying favor with politicians. Teachers would offer lessons to satisfy wealthy or powerful patrons. Historians would alter history if by doing so they gained wealth or power. Scientists would doctor evidence for similar selfish motives. The truth would degenerate into a cacophony of competing factual claims.

We couldn’t trust doctors or pharmacists to give us the right medications. We couldn’t trust bankers and accountants not to fleece us, restaurants not to poison us, lawyers not to hoodwink us. Professional ethics would be meaningless. 

The common good is especially imperiled when a president of the United States alleges that an election was stolen from him, with no evidence that it was. Such baseless claims erode trust. They fuel conspiracy theories. They can lead to violence.

MOST BASICALLY, THE COMMON GOOD DEPENDS ON PEOPLE TRUSTING that most others in society will also adhere to the common good, rather than lie or otherwise take advantage of them. In this way, civic trust is self-enforcing and self-perpetuating. 

Polls tell us that a majority of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. The core of that identity has never been “we’re better than anyone else” nationalism. Nor has it been the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity. 

Our core identity — the most precious legacy we have been given by the generations who came before us — is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common. If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming blacker or browner or speak in more languages than we once did. It is because we are losing our sense of common good.

THE GENIUS OF A SYSTEM BASED ON POLITICAL EQUALITY is that it doesn’t require us to agree on every issue, but only to agree to be bound by decisions that emerge from the system. 

Some of us may want to prohibit abortions because we believe life begins at conception; others of us believe women should have the right to determine what happens to their bodies; some of us want stricter environmental protections; others, more lenient. We are free to take any particular position on these and any other issues. But as political equals, we are bound to accept the outcomes even if we dislike them. This requires enough social trust for us to regard the views and interests of those with whom we disagree as equally worthy of consideration to our own. 

Ayn Rand had it completely wrong. Moral choices logically involve duties to others, not just calculations about what’s best for ourselves. 

When members of a society ask, “What is the right or decent thing to do?” they necessarily draw upon understandings of these mutual obligations. Our contemporary culture of self-promotion, iPhones, selfies, and personal branding churns out cynics and narcissists, to be sure. But our loyalties and attachments define who we are.

***

Thanks for joining me on this journey.

These weekly essays are based on chapters from my book THE COMMON GOOD, in which I apply the framework of the book to recent events and to the upcoming election. (Should you wish to read the book, here’s a link). This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack.


Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

Ayn Rand in 1943. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for AYN RAND 

Water Conflicts Loom In Central Asia – Analysis

 

View of Qosh Tepa, an irrigation canal, which will direct the water from the Amu Darya river to Afghanistan's arid northern region. Photo Credit: © Afghanistan's Deputy Minister of Economic Development

 August 13, 2023 

By IWPR

By Marat Mamadshoev

An irrigation canal under construction in Afghanistan aims to transform its agricultural landscape, providing water to the millions of its citizens hit by regular droughts. Once completed, the Qosh Tepa conduit will stretch for 285 kilometres and help irrigate the country’s arid northern provinces.

Neighbouring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, however, are extremely concerned about the impact on their own water supplies. The canal will direct resources from the Amu Darya river and reduce the supply for the two countries, which have been siphoning water from the source since the Soviet era. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan may lose up to 15 per cent of the current supply once the waterway is completed in 2028. 

During a visit to Kabul in April, an Uzbek government delegation expressed concern about the plan to divert water to Afghanistan’s northern regions. Taleban officials responded that Kabul had as much right to access the water as its neighbours and that the three countries did not have formal agreements on its use.

The project, with a cost tag estimated at 684 million dollars, had been in the works for several years before the Taleban seized power, with the groundwork and feasibility studies initiated under Afghanistan’s former government with support from the USAID development agency . 

“It is a development project for Afghanistan that should have been implemented years ago. It is understandable that the Central Asian countries will be affected by this, but Afghanistan has the right to use the water of the Amu Darya River for its development,” Najibullah Sadid, a water and environmental expert at Germany’s University of Stuttgart, told IWPR, adding that successive wars had put the project on hold. 

While affirming that states had the right to use transnational rivers, Nekruz Kadyrov, a professor of international law at the National University of Tajikistan, noted that this applied to those both up and down river. 

“The issue of transnational river water distribution is regulated based on interstate agreements,” he told IWPR. “For example, Tajikistan cannot violate Uzbekistan’s rights in this matter. Moreover, Afghanistan cannot ignore the rights of countries downstream. If Afghanistan or Tajikistan only considers their own interests, what will happen to the interests of Uzbeks and Kazaks?”

When they took power in August 2021, the Taleban continued the work started by the previous government; at that time, seven kilometres of the canal had been built. The construction surged ahead under their government and satellite images reveal that approximately 100 kilometres of the canal were built between March 2022 and May 2023. 

AFGHANISTAN’S THIRST 

Water resources are critical for Afghanistan as the country is grappling with an unparalleled humanitarian crisis: according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly 17 million people, or 40 per cent of population, face severe food insecurity. With 80 per cent of the populace reliant on agriculture for sustenance, the impact of climate change profoundly influences crop growth periods and yields, exacerbating the peril of food shortages.

Amidst Afghanistan’s desert terrain, an abundant reserve of water resources lies untapped. Over 80 per cent of the country’s water originates in the Hindu Kush mountains, which offer a continuous flow to major rivers throughout the year as the snow melts during summer.

Yet poor supply infrastructure poses colossal challenges in guaranteeing uninterrupted access to water. Afghanistan’s history of conflict and occupation has hindered the development of extensive hydraulic structures and canals.

Some worry that the canal could inadvertently bolster the opium trade. Afghanistan is the world’s largest poppy producer. Despite the Taleban’s proclamation of a poppy cultivation ban, surging opium prices have fueled a thriving illegal trade. 

The quality of the construction is a key concern. Satellite imagery suggests that building methods are rudimentary, with no real reinforcement or lining for the canal’s bottom and banks.

That poses the risk of significant water losses due to seepage into the dry, sandy soil, which would exacerbate already pressing issues of salinisation and waterlogging in irrigated lands. Indeed, according to Sadid, recent developments indicate erosion in parts of the canal’s diversion dam.

THE POLITICS OF WATER

The Amu Darya river provides 80 per cent of all accessible water resources in the region. Some assessments suggest that in the span of five or six years, upon the canal’s completion and operation, the average amount of water flowing along the river into Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will fall to 50 per cent of its overall capacity. Others, like Sadid, set the estimate at about 15 per cent.

In Uzbekistan, this would mean a dearth of vital water resources to irrigate its cotton plantations, the primary agricultural crop accounting for approximately 17 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Overall, agriculture is central to the livelihoods of nearly 40 per cent of the population. 

According to the Uzbekistan Statistical Committee, the nation’s annual water consumption stands at an average of 51 billion cubic metres, with agriculture alone accounting for about 90 per cent, mostly for watering cotton fields. The cultivation of cotton has already contributed to the region’s largest environmental calamity, the desiccation of the Aral Sea.

The problem is equally acute in Turkmenistan, where the Amu Darya feeds into the Karakum Canal, enabling irrigation and navigation along its 1,300km length and sustaining approximately 1.25 million hectares of irrigated land. Agriculture consumes 91 per cent of all the country’s water resources.

Fluctuations in the river level are already causing problems. In June 2023, for instance, farmers in Turkmenistan’s northeastern region of Lebap Velayat struggled to irrigate their cotton fields because of insufficient water reaching the area. This presents a problem for the government, which promises farmers irrigation water, fertilisers, seeds, and agricultural machinery in return for providing specific crop quantities at predetermined prices. 

With climate change exacerbating water scarcity, any reductions in supply could damage both countries’ agriculture and food security.

THE NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS

The absence of robust legal mechanisms governing water processes in the region, which affects water intake and river management, complicates the situation. 

Afghanistan is not party to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Waters (1992), which serves as a cornerstone of transboundary river and lake management. Nor is it part of the 1992 Almaty Agreement, which governs river use, while an earlier 1946 agreement with the USSR is no longer valid.

There is certainly room for negotiation, as Afghanistan depends on its neighbours for other vital resources. For example, Uzbekistan provides Afghanistan with electricity, while Turkmenistan supplies it with gas. 

But climate change is likely to add pressure and governments need to look beyond international agreements and adopt sustainable farming techniques, such as crop diversification, and sustainable irrigation methods, such as drip irrigation systems and the reuse of collector and drainage water. 

Sadid noted that, due to the rapid melting of the glaciers in the Pamirs, the water in the Amu Darya River will increase until 2050. However, this means it will then start shrinking, exacerbating disputes over water. 

Upgrading the irrigation systems in the wider region is key. 

“For example, Uzbekistan and other countries in the region should work on improving irrigation technology and enhancing it,” Sadid continued. “If we do not upgrade the irrigation system, undoubtedly, there will be more conflicts and disputes over water in the region.”

About the author: Marat Mamadshoev is IWPR Tajikistan’s Chief Editor

Source: This publication was published by IWPR and prepared under the “Amplify, Verify, Engage (AVE) Project”implemented with the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway.



IWPR

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting is headquartered in London with coordinating offices in Washington, DC and The Hague, IWPR works in over 30 countries worldwide. It is registered as a charity in the UK, as an organisation with tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) in the United States, and as a charitable foundation in The Netherlands. The articles are originally produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

India seizes assets of late mining tycoon’s estate after probe prompted by Panama, Pandora Papers leaks

Two series of millions of leaked confidential documents revealed massive hidden networks of tax havens involving corrupt or unethical dealings by the wealthy. 

REUTERS

Nirmala Ganapathy
India Bureau Chief


NEW DELHI – The Indian authorities have seized the entire shareholding of late mining tycoon Anil Vassudeva Salgaocar’s estate, after opening an investigation against him on the basis of information disclosed in the Panama and Pandora Papers.

The move comes months after his widow Lakshmi Anil Salgaocar, who is the estate’s administrator, won a protracted case in Singapore’s High Court that involved assets implicated in the Indian investigation.

The Panama and Pandora Papers refer to two series of millions of leaked confidential documents, published from April 2016, that revealed massive hidden networks of tax havens involving corrupt or unethical dealings by the wealthy and elite across the globe.


Mr Salgaocar, a well-known industrialist who died in Singapore in 2016, is suspected of violating foreign exchange laws and not declaring millions of dollars of profits to the authorities, according to India’s Enforcement Directorate which tracks economic crimes.

He was also a member of the 2007 legislative assembly of Goa state.

The directorate, in a press release dated Aug 9, said that as part of investigations, it seized all the shares owned by his estate.

The assets seized comprise shares in 33 companies, with the estate’s ownership ranging from 0.1 per cent to 99.9 per cent. The 33 firms own 441 properties in the states of Goa and Karnataka, as well as in Mumbai.

The directorate said investigations showed that iron ore from mines owned by the tycoon in the states of Goa and Karnataka were exported to China through subsidiary firms set up in the British Virgin Islands and Singapore. All firms were set up between 2003 and 2012.

Profits amounting to US$690 million (S$932 million) earned by five of those firms in the British Virgin Islands between 2004 and 2012 were not declared to the Indian authorities, according to the investigations.

These firms “were not declared before Indian authorities and they acted as trading companies indulging in sale of iron ore produced in India to China which resulted in profit shifting outside India”, the directorate added.

By acquiring foreign exchange and holding assets outside India, Mr Salgaocar violated the country’s Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema), it said.

Under India’s laws, Indian nationals cannot freely acquire foreign exchange nor hold assets outside the country, among other things. Penalties include recovering three times the sum of money involved in the violations.

The directorate added that its investigations against Mr Salgaocar and his estate were initiated on the basis of the Panama and Pandora Papers leaks.

The Indian Express newspaper, whose journalists are part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that investigated the Pandora Papers, alleged in a 2021 article that six of his companies had been incorporated with the help of Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were managed by Panama-based corporate services provider OMC Group.

Sources from the directorate told The Straits Times that members of the Salgaocar family were cooperating with the investigations.

Under Fema, the family would have recourse to challenge the asset seizure, the sources said.

The authorities’ move against the estate comes six months after the family won a long-running legal dispute in Singapore that involved assets implicated in the current investigation.

Mr Salgaocar in 2015 sued his business friend, Mr Jhaveri Darsan Jitendra, in Singapore, accusing the man of misappropriating assets from a trust that the tycoon set up in 2003.

The firms in the British Virgin Islands that were used to trade iron ore and subsequently implicated in the Indian authorities’ investigations were set up through this trust.

Mr Darsan argued that no such trust was ever set up and that he funded the firms himself.

The High Court in February 2023 ruled against Mr Darsan, ordering him to transfer the trust assets, including the companies’ shares, to Mr Salgaocar’s estate.

Asked about the authorities’ seizure of the Salgaocar estate’s assets, the family’s advocate and solicitor Niru Pillai referred ST to the Singapore High Court order.

Mr Pillai noted that the family won the case here on all counts. He said he could not give more information related to the matter, as Mr Darsan had indicated his intention to appeal against the ruling.

The lawyer declined to say whether Mr Salgaocar’s family – his widow, two daughters Chandana a

Artificial intelligence will have more solid impact on Britain than Industrial Revolution, says British Deputy PM

Oliver Dowden

Oliver Dowden said: “This is a total revolution that is coming. It’s going to totally transform almost all elements of life over the coming years, and indeed, even months, in some cases."

Artificial intelligence will have a more significant impact on Britain than the industrial revolution, Oliver Dowden has said.

The Deputy Prime Minister said AI had enormous potential to speed up productivity and perform boring aspects of jobs, but also posed a significant threat to democracies.

Speaking in an interview with The Times, Dowden said: “This is a total revolution that is coming. It’s going to totally transform almost all elements of life over the coming years, and indeed, even months, in some cases.

“It is much faster than other revolutions that we’ve seen and much more extensive, whether that’s the invention of the internal combustion engine or the Industrial Revolution.”

Asylum claim applications processed by the Home Office are already using AI, and it could even be used in reducing paperwork that goes into ministerial red boxes.

Dowden said this streamlining of work would allow for faster future decision-making by governments.

“The thing that AI right now does really well, it takes massive amounts of information from datasets in different places and enables you to get to a point where you can make decisions.



“Ministers are never going to outsource to AI the making of decisions. But all of the work that goes into getting to that point . . . You can use AI to speed it up.”

While he acknowledged the growth of AI would lead to a significant restructuring of the economy, Dowden likened the change to the invention of the automobile.

He added: “We have a very tight labour market and the job of government is to make sure that people can transition.

“Ultimately, AI should have the capability to do the boring bits of jobs, so that humans can concentrate on the more interesting bits.”

However, Dowden also said that AI could be harnessed by terrorists to expand knowledge on dangerous material or conduct widespread hacking operations.

Details of more than 10,000 officers and staff at the Police Service of Northern Ireland were published online for a number of hours on Tuesday, following an “industrial scale breach of data”.

Dowden said: “You can shortcut hacking by AI. The ability to do destructive things — you can use AI to help you do those.

“Disaffected people exist already. Tie them in with AI, and that enhances, that proliferates, the kind of things that they can do.

“We need to be careful not to overstate these things and do it on an evidential basis, but there is the risk there that has to be addressed.”

Dowden said the leak of data announced by the Electoral Commission on Tuesday was “precisely” the kind of threat that ministers had been warning about.

The Independent

Priest: My conversion on LGBTQ rights tells an important story

 Opinion by Michael Coren • CNN

Editor’s Note: Father Michael Coren is an Anglican priest, journalist and writer. He is a columnist for the Toronto Star, frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail and the author of 18 books. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

I don’t think I was ever a homophobe, but I certainly came close.


Michael Coren - Courtesy Rev Michael Coren© Provided by CNN

That is a profoundly shocking thought, and extremely painful for me to say, especially as, for the past decade, I’ve been regarded in Canada as a Christian champion of equal marriage, same-sex blessings and the full affirmation of LGBTQ+ people in the church. The change, the transformation, the conversion – for that is what it was – came about for various reasons, but mostly because of a new reading and understanding of the Bible.

I became an ally because of a deeper faith. Here I now had to stand. I could do no other.

Some background and context: Until 2013 I was a Roman Catholic, and as a journalist and broadcaster with a fairly high profile, spoke and wrote frequently in support of Catholic sexual teachings. There are, of course, many Catholics who dissent from the official line, but the official line it remains. And according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.” Pope Francis has made some soothing and compromising comments but, at heart, very little has changed. In January 2023, Pope Francis told The Associated Press that “being homosexual is not a crime,” yet then reiterated that homosexuality was “a sin” under Catholic doctrine. And while he encouraged bishops to welcome gay people into their ministries “with tenderness,” he also discredited larger attempts to alter existing church practices, which included attempts to provide church blessings to same-sex couples.

I suppose I could have tried to find a way to ignore this, but life’s messy realities do find a way. In March 2014, the humanitarian organization World Vision US announced that it would hire Christians in same-sex marriages in its US offices. The organization’s motives were entirely noble, if a little naïve. Within two days, numerous leading evangelical groups denounced the charity, threatening to withdraw support. World Vision apologized, reversed its new policy and asked for forgiveness. It seemed such a cruel over-reaction, such a humiliation of good people.

At around the same time, Canada’s then-foreign minister John Baird criticized the Ugandan president for legislation that could lead to life imprisonment for gay sex. I supported Baird on my television show, arguing that even those of us who disagreed with same-sex marriage surely condemned such a monstrous policy. As a result, I was roundly attacked by Christian conservatives, Catholic as well as Protestant.

I felt as if I were being pushed against a wall of uncertainty. My defense of traditional Christian teachings on the issue was, I’d always assumed, based on love rather than hate. I started to question myself. Was that a self-defense mechanism, a comforting denial of truth? Perhaps. And that creeping doubt led me to return to scripture. “Tolle Lege,” said that mysterious voice to St. Augustine. Take up and read. So, I did.

The Bible can be as gentle as a watercolor and as powerful as a thunderstorm. It can be taken literally or taken seriously but not always both. It’s a library written over centuries, containing poetry and metaphor as well as history and biography, and without discernment, it makes little sense. It has to be, must be, read through the prism of empathy and the human condition.

The thing is, the Bible hardly mentions homosexuality, which is of course a word not coined until the late 19th-century. The so-called “gotcha” verses from the Old Testament are specific to ancient customs and are often misunderstood. The Sodom story, for example, wasn’t interpreted as referring to homosexuality until the 11th-century. Lot – the hero of the text – offers his virgin daughters to the mob in place of his guests, so it can’t exactly be used as a compelling morality tale!

Ezekiel in the Hebrew Scriptures says, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me” (Ezekiel 16:49-50).

The Old Testament never speaks of lesbianism, and its mentions of sex are more about procreation and the preservation of the tribe than personal morality and romance. It also has some rather disturbing things to say about slavery in Genesis and in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, about ethnic cleansing in Deuteronomy and even killing children in First Samuel. So a precise guide to modern manners it’s certainly not.

Jesus doesn’t mention the issue, and St. Paul’s comments, mainly in his letters to the Romans, are more about men using young male prostitutes in pagan initiation rites than about loving, consenting same-sex relationships. There is, however, one possible discussion in the New Testament. It’s when Jesus is approached by a centurion whose beloved male servant is dying. Will Jesus cure him? Of course, and Jesus then praises the Roman for his faith. The Greek word used to describe the relationship between the Roman and his “beloved” servant indicates something far deeper than mere platonic affection.

Then there’s the love of David and Jonathan, Jesus refusing to judge and the pristine beauty of grace and justice that informs the Gospels. Most of all, there’s the permanent revolution of love that Jesus didn’t request but demand. His central teaching, remember, is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. We’re told this in three of the four Gospels — Matthew (22:35-40), Mark (12:28-34) and Luke (10:27). It’s a transformational moment for Christians, to know that only by loving others can we properly know and love God.

As I read more, I prayed more. As I prayed more, I reached out to gay Christians, who taught me lessons in forgiveness that shamed me. I made a public apology in my syndicated newspaper column for harm caused to the LGBTQ+ community by my writing and broadcasting. As a consequence, I felt the full force of those on the political and religious right. I’ve reported from Northern Ireland and the Middle East but seldom seen such visceral hatred. Abuse, threats, attacks on my children and campaigns to have me canceled and fired. Thank God, because it confirmed everything that I’d come to believe.

I became an Anglican, and three years later entered seminary. I’m now a priest, spend my time trying to preach the genuine song of the Gospels, and write books and columns doing the same. In other words, I’m a Christian conservative’s nightmare. But for me, a dream lived. I found truth. I found Jesus. This straight, 64-year-old man, married for 36 years and with four children, has a lot to be grateful for. Most of all, I thank the gay community for teaching me so much about what Christianity really means.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MICHAEL COREN

Students at David Solomon's alma mater slam the Goldman Sachs CEO of 'blatant ignorance and disrespect' during a debate

Story by rhogg@insider.com (Ryan Hogg) 


Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon speaks at the bank's investor day this February. BRENDAN MCDERMID / REUTERS© BRENDAN MCDERMID / REUTERS

David Solomon was criticized of "blatant ignorance and disrespect" at a college event.
The Goldman Sachs CEO discussed divestment issues with students at his alma mater Hamilton College.

Goldman Sachs didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Students at David Solomon's alma mater have accused the Goldman Sachs CEO of having "blatant ignorance and disrespect" during a conversation about fossil fuel divestment.

Three seniors at New York's Hamilton College wrote a letter accusing the executive of "belittling" them during a discussion about the university's climate change initiatives.

Solomon, who graduated from the private liberal arts college in 1984, was attending a networking event at the college in March this year when the students challenged him on the issue of divestment.

The letter says that Solomon was speaking to "a group of six or so people," who "were all non-male, and at least half were people of color."

Related video: Goldman Sachs departures: 90 partners have left under Solomon (CNBC)  Duration 2:17  View on Watch

It adds that throughout the discussion, Solomon's attitude and behavior toward the students came from a "position of power."

"Despite knowing nothing about us and our roles in our communities and history of activist work, Solomon claimed he does more in a week to help climate change than we will ever do in our entire lives. When we asked him to elaborate, he attributed his "capital accumulation" and position of power," the letter read.

The letter also claims that Solomon pointed to the group, claiming that they must have benefitted from a financial aid.

"Once we all looked shocked at the claim, he quickly backtracked, citing the statistic that something like 80% of Hamilton students are on some kind of financial aid," it adds.

The students also said Solomon suggested fossil fuel divestment was a "stupid movement" and said that the university likely had a higher exposure to fossil fuels than it claimed.

They alleged that Solomon also called them hypocrites for driving cars and using electricity while supporting divestment, adding that he told them they would "see how the world really works" if they visited countries like China, India, and Cambodia.

"At one point, he laughed and told us he'd be dead in thirty years, so climate change would be our problem anyway," the letter also says.

Goldman's spokesman Tony Fratto told Insider in a statement: "David Solomon has enormous respect for the students at Hamilton College. He did not and would not say things to offend them. We strongly dispute the claims that he did."

Solomon has had a tough time at Goldman lately, with a big bet on its consumer banking business ending in a mess and partners voicing their concerns about him to the firm's board.

Even Solomon's DJ side hustle has brought him issues, with sources telling Insider they were fuming at his use of a private company jet to promote his gig.