Dad

I remember a lot of things about my father, who passed away on November 28.

When I was a child, Dad liked to watch “the Friday night fights” (professional boxing) on television. While he watched, he drank a beer or two: usually Budweiser, “the king of beers.” Occasionally he drank Wiedemann beer, though he later avowed that it was “awful stuff.”

Saturday mornings, I took charge of the television to watch “The Three Stooges,” a slapstick comedy team from the 1930s and 1940s whose antics I still enjoy on DVD. Dad was usually in the kitchen, adjacent to the TV room, cooking pancakes for the family. He enjoyed listening to the Three Stooges because of all the sound effects they made as they punched each other and poked each other in the eyes (don’t try that at home, kids).

Every Christmas, Dad dressed up as Santa to distribute presents to the children in the pediatrics ward of Methodist Hospital, where he was chief resident physician. Even though I wasn’t a patient in the hospital, I attended the big Christmas party where he gave out presents. I felt as if I was in on a big secret: The one handing out the presents wasn’t really Santa, he was my father.

On Christmas Eve, most children and their parents leave cookies and milk for Santa Claus in case he’s hungry when he visits. At my house, we left cookies and beer. Budweiser, the king of beers. I was starting to get suspicious about the Santa story.

When I played baseball in Little League and wanted to be a pitcher, Dad built a pitching mound for me in our backyard. On the side of the house, he painted a circle so that I could practice throwing accurately into the center of the circle. Dad had opened his own medical office by then, and his secretary was married to one of the players for the Indianapolis Indians baseball team. From the player, Dad got a major-league baseball bat that had been used in several games, and gave it to me. It was almost as big as I was, but it gave me extra confidence as I dragged it onto the Little League field to the awe of the other children. Dad was also a popular umpire for Little League games, partly because of his fairness, partly because of his knowledge of baseball, and partly because of his zany theatrics as an umpire.

Those are cherished memories, but they’re the kind of memories that many sons have of their fathers. I want to tell you about the man himself.

Aristotle recommended “moderation in all things.” The Buddha said that we should follow “the middle way.”

Neither of them ever met Dad. He was not a man of the middle way. His philosophy was more akin to that of Jesus, who said that if someone wanted our coat, we should give him our cloak as well; and if someone wanted us to go a mile, we should go two miles.

Whatever Dad did in life, he threw himself into it fully and without reservation. As a soldier, as a student, as a doctor, as a husband, father, and grandfather, as a civic leader, or just as a man, in baseball or golf or singing, he didn’t go just one mile. He didn’t go just two miles. He’d always go at least three, or four, or however many it took. And when he finally had to leave us, he did so on his own terms. As much as any man can be in control of his own destiny, he remained in control of his until the very end.

His total commitment applied to his moral beliefs and conduct as well. He wasn’t a perfect person: none of us is. He didn’t get everything right the first time. But whenever he became convinced that he’d been wrong about something — in belief, attitude, or action — he moved heaven and earth to do better and to get it right.

That’s part of the reason he was more than just a good man: he was a great man. His life and example continue to inspire us and enrich our community.

The night before Dad left us, I was at Starbucks writing an article — working, as Dad would have wanted — when my brother Dave called me on my cell phone. He told me that he had just come from Dad’s hospital room, and if I had anything else I wanted to say to Dad, now was the time to do it. I told Dave that Dad and I were lucky to have settled all our outstanding issues 10 years ago. I had been to the hospital every day for two weeks, including earlier that same day. We had said everything that needed to be said. And I went back to writing.

But then I stopped writing. I got up and drove to the hospital. There were two more things I needed to say to him.

I stood by his bedside and looked at the man who had taught me so much. And I said:

“I’m sorry that I am not a better man.”

I’m no worse than most people, and probably better than some. But no matter how long I live, and no matter how much I achieve, I know that I will never be the man my father was.

I took Dad’s hand. And I said:

“I will see you again someday.”

Each year, the hospital gave an award to the doctor with the highest percentage of correct diagnoses. Dad won the award year after year, until the hospital finally declared him "permanent champion."

What’s not in the official obituary:

• As a doctor, Dad made house calls and charged $35.
• He was almost never late. If you had an appointment with him at nine o’clock, you saw him at nine o’clock unless you were late.
• He had only one examining room and saw only one patient at a time. As a result, he made less money than most doctors but gave his patients better care.
• He was much in demand as a diagnostician. When other doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with a patient, they called Dad. He was like the TV doctor “House” except that he didn’t need a cane, he didn’t need a “team,” and he was always kind to patients.
• When he was chief resident at Methodist Hospital, he dressed up each Christmas as Santa Claus to distribute presents to the children in the pediatrics ward.
• Though he was a scientist, he believed in the personal and spiritual side of medical practice. He thought it was just as important to care for his patients as people as it was to give them the right drugs.
• If he had a fault, it was that he believed all doctors (and all Republicans) were as dedicated, honest, and conscientious as he was.
• He provided a moral example that I still struggle to follow.

Robert W. Palmer, M.D., born 1922, passed away after a brief illness.

Dad was born in the small town of Tyler, Minnesota in the United States, son of the Rev. Roy Palmer and Cassie O’Camic Palmer. He grew up in Waterville, Minnesota. He had three brothers and two sisters. As a youth, he was a talented athlete in football, baseball, and basketball, and a successful Golden Gloves boxer.

When the United States entered World War II, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a B-24 bomber pilot in the South Pacific. He flew 76 combat missions, became a squadron commander, rose to the rank of Major, and was decorated repeatedly for heroism.

After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to enroll in Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he graduated with honors three years later. While visiting a friend in upstate New York during his senior year, he made an impromptu Saturday morning visit to the University of Rochester Medical School. There, he encountered an elderly gentleman who gave him a tour and asked him questions about his background. After the tour, the man asked Dad if he wanted to enroll. When Dad said that he doubted he could gain admission, the man revealed that he was Dr. George Whipple, a Nobel prize-winning medical researcher and dean of the medical school. He told Dad that his application was accepted. Dad enrolled the next year and earned his M.D. in 1953.

He moved in 1956 to Indianapolis, Indiana. There, he became chief resident physician at Methodist Hospital, a post later held by one of my brothers, Steven. He entered private practice as an internist in 1960 and retired in 2003, though he continued to serve as staff physician for Meals on Wheels.  He was affiliated for most of his career with Community Hospital, where he served on the board of directors and established the family medicine residency program.  He was also assistant professor of clinical medicine for the Indiana University School of Medicine. He was elected to the Fellowship of Distinguished Physicians of Community Hospital in 1991.

Dad was active in many civic and charitable causes. He was president of the Lawrence Township School Board, president of All Souls Unitarian Church, and a founder of the World War II Roundtable. He was an active member of the Service Club of Indianapolis and the American Legion, as well as a volunteer at the Indiana State Museum and a driver for Meals on Wheels.

Link: A 1988 interview that I did with my father about his life.

Once upon a time, it was the Carthaginians who were coming to get you. Or the Etruscans. Or the Spartans. Or the French. Or the Germans. Or the Japs. Or the Spanish. Or the Catholics.

For most of the 20th century, it was the Godless Commies who were hiding under every bed. They worked tirelessly, so we were told, to subvert all that was free and good in our societies. They infiltrated the schools to poison the minds of our young. They infiltrated the labour unions to cripple industry. And they agitated for so-called “civil rights” to foment rioting and “uppitiness amongst the Negroes.”

Since the Bush-Cheney regime’s signature event of “9/11,” it’s been the Heathen Muslims who are out to get us. They’re not Godless, but they’re even worse: they really believe in all that religion stuff. They take it seriously. And they’re every bit as sneaky as the Godless Commies: anyone could be a secret Muslim, and probably is. They’re infiltrating your neighbourhood. They’re building mosques. They’re recruiting the blacks. They’re plotting mayhem. They’re comin’ to gitchya, and they’re gonna take yer wimminfolk, too.

Oh, Good Lord, do we have to go through this homicidal foolishness yet again with another so-called “enemy”? I guess that we do.

“The Other” Is Always Out to Get You

All people have evil impulses: that’s part of being human. In the Jewish tradition, the impulse to evil is called yetzer hara , while the impulse to good is called yetzer hatov. In Christianity, the impulse to evil is embodied in the idea that man is a “fallen” being who is not good by default, like the angels, but who must choose good over evil. For Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, our impulses to evil were in the part of our minds called the Id, while moral conscience was in the superego. These concepts even found their way into popular culture, in classic science fiction movies such as “Forbidden Planet,” about which I will say no more because everyone should see it and I don’t want to spoil the ending. In terms of evolutionary biology, we inherit amoral animal impulses from our pre-human ancestors.

We dislike finding these evil impulses in ourselves. They make us feel ashamed, so we often try to deny that we have them.* One way to deny it is to attribute them to somebody else, via a psychological process called projection. Transactional analysis, a modern popularization of Freud, calls this strategy I’m OK, You’re Not OK. The group to which we attribute our own evil impulses is called the other.

Psychologically, the other is a group of people on whom we project all of our own undesirable qualities: our aggression, lust, dishonesty, irrationality, envy, and so forth. It’s like a film screen on which we watch the horror movie of our own worst and most frightening selves.

We use the other group as a scapegoat for our own sins and shortcomings. By doing so, we symbolically cleanse ourselves of evil and achieve self-esteem. But even if it makes us feel good about ourselves, demonizing the other makes us perceive it in wildly unrealistic and negative terms.

The situation becomes even more dangerous if we can talk ourselves into attacking and killing the people in the other group. Because we see those people as a symbol of our own evil impulses, we see destroying them as a symbolic way to destroy the evil in ourselves. Unfortunately, such acts of aggression mean that we are following our evil impulses instead of eliminating them.

In the West, many people perceive Muslims as “the other.” The situation is complicated by the fact that many Muslims see us as “the other.” Each group attributes only the best, most peaceful motives to itself and only the worst, most aggressive motives to the other. The only way we’re ever going to live in peace is for each group to achieve some realistic understanding of the other group. Freud would say that we need to move beyond seeing each other as psychological symbols of our own projected evil, and see each other instead as real human beings.

Islamic Courts: Coming Soon to Your Town?

The most recent alarms about Islam were raised in a September 14, 2008 article in The (London) Sunday Times. That article was followed two months later by a November 19th New York Times article about the increasing number of Islamic courts in Great Britain and the existence of similar courts in the United States.

According to The Sunday Times:

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. … Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

The follow-up article in The New York Times added that:

But ever since the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, called in February for aspects of Islamic Shariah to be embraced alongside the traditional legal system, the government has been grappling with a public furor over the issue. [In addition,] Courts in the United States have endorsed Islamic and other religious tribunals, as in 2003, when a Texas appeals court referred a divorce case to a local council called the Texas Islamic Court.

To their credit, both newspapers mention, though without emphasis, three facts that are vital in determining how much of a “threat” Islamic courts are to Western political and legal rights. They leave out a fourth, historical fact that’s also relevant.

Fact #1: Islamic Courts are legally equivalent to arbitration

First, the Islamic courts offer services that are legally equivalent to arbitration — nothing more. Arbitration is a cheaper, faster alternative to trying cases in court. If both parties agree to binding arbitration, then the arbitrator’s decision has the force of law — in Britain, it falls under the Arbitration Act of 1996. That much has nothing to do with Islamic courts. It applies to everyone. In Britain, as in other countries, private arbitrators can decide cases that otherwise might go to court. Sometimes, the private arbitrators are Islamic scholars, but they’re just applying an already-existing law.

In addition, people who take their disputes to arbitration (Islamic or not) go because they agreed to do so. No one is forced to do it.

The New York Times article begins with the statement: “The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce.” That case is representative. If you want an Islamic divorce, you can’t get one from secular government courts. The article continues:

Indeed, most of the courts’ judgments have no standing under British civil law. But for the parties who come before them, the courts offer something more important: the imprimatur of God.

Fact #2: They handle only civil cases

Second, they handle only civil cases such as divorce, inheritance, and property disputes. Criminal cases, whether involving Muslims or not, are handled by the mainstream legal system. Islamic law (“Shari’a”) has historically prescribed more severe punishments than modern Western societies consider reasonable, but such cases are not handled by Islamic courts in non-Muslim countries. According to one Islamic jurist quoted in The Times, “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases.”

Fact #3: Other religions have similar courts

The Times notes that:

Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.

So there’s nothing new or unique about Islamic courts. Jewish and Christian courts don’t bother us. The only difference is that we haven’t been conditioned to think of Judaism and Christianity as breeding grounds for terrorists.

Fact #4: Historically, Islamic countries gave similar rights to their own religious minorities

That applies especially to Judaism and Christianity, which Islam regards as its closest religious relatives. Jews and Christians living in Islamic countries are considered dhimmi, that is, “protected people” whose religious practices are officially tolerated by the Muslim state (The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 117). Dhimmi had to pay a special tax and were subject to restrictions that varied depending on the country. However,  Bernard Lewis, a Princeton University professor who is a world-renowned authority on the Middle East and Islam, writes:

The position of non-Muslims in the Muslim world was in general far better than the position of non-Christians or, still worse, deviant Christians in most Christian countries. … In the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century reforms, dhimmi communities, Jews and Christians of various churches, formed their own communities, under their own heads and subject to their own laws, administered by their own courts, in such matters as marriage and divorce, inheritance, and much else. (Islam: The Religion and the People, pp. 56-57.)

Most Britons and Americans don’t know that, but you can be sure that most Muslims know it. And they see Islamic courts as nothing more than equal treatment.

Islam: Religion of Terrorists?

But isn’t the main problem that Islam is a religion of terrorists?

No. It’s true that some Muslims are terrorists. And it’s true that you can find violent passages in the Qur’an (the Koran). But those things apply equally to Judaism, Christianity, and most other religions.

In any large social or religious group, a minority of people will be prone to violence and hatred. In almost any religious tradition, some elements will be enlightened and some will be barbaric. Here are a few relevant facts:

• When two Muslims greet each other, they say Salam alaykum (“peace be with you”), which is closely related (because Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages) to the Jewish greeting of Shalom aleichem (“peace be with you”).

• The five pillars of Islam are (1) The creed “I testify that there is no God but Allah. I testify that Mohammed is the prophet of Allah.” (2) Prayer; (3) Charity; (4) Fasting; and (5) Pilgrimage. If you do all five of those things correctly, then surprise! You’re considered a Muslim. Notice that “terrorism” is not on the list.

• “Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warning of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements.” (Lewis, op cit, p. 151)

• “The emergence of the by now widespread practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history and no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition. It is a pity that those who practice this form of terrorism are not better acquainted with their own religion.” (Lewis, op cit, p. 153)

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Singer-satirist Tom Lehrer said it best in his song about “National Brotherhood Week:”

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,
And the black folks hate the white folks.
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

It’s not easy to see “the other” as someone just like ourselves. However, if we want to be true to the best lights of our religions and our civilizations, we have to try: Jew, Christian, and Muslim alike, along with Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and everyone else.

It’s our planet and our societies at issue. We can make them into a heaven or a hell. God, by whatever name we call Him, won’t force us to choose one way or the other. He’s leaving it up to us.

* Freud made the very important distinction between having evil impulses and acting on them. We all have evil impulses: that’s part of our nature. Merely having evil impulses does not make us evil. It’s what we choose to do about our evil impulses that determines our moral status. It’s in the choice to turn away from our evil impulses and follow the path of goodness that we become morally good beings.

Oh, goody: Another day with falling stock prices all over the world. Everyone’s nervous about hedge funds. Even the pound and the euro are in trouble. Roger Cohen at The New York Times wonders if it’s time to shoot our horses for food. The last time that happened, by the way, was in 1942 in the Philippines when the U.S. Army’s last horse-mounted cavalry regiment was under siege by the Japanese.

And George W. Bush will still be in office for another three months. Uh-oh.

Amid all the apocalyptic fretting, I come to offer reassurance. Not from economics, but from the medical field.

Doctors know a principle called “Palmer’s law of self-diagnosis.” It’s not named after me, but I do like the name.

Palmer’s law states that when people are sick, whether they are laymen or medical professionals, they diagnose themselves as having either the least serious or the most serious illness consistent with their symptoms.

We’ve spent the last eight years diagnosing ourselves as having the least serious illness consistent with our symptoms. Now, we’ve embraced the opposite extreme and we believe that we’re at death’s door.

Our first diagnosis was wrong. Our current diagnosis is likely to be just as wrong.

The world isn’t ending quite yet. Jesus will let us know when it does.

Copyright 2008 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as credit is given.