Cowbird Morals

Posted on May 25, 2004 in Accountability Morals & Ethics Secularism Social Justice

It’s politics Tuesday.

Cowbirds wreak depletion upon populations of birds unwise to their methods of reproduction. They are a parasite. Like the European Cuckoo, cowbirds place their eggs in nests of other birds. The spawn either crowd out their legitimate nestmates or cry loudest so that they get the most attention from the suckered parents.

Stealth is not nearly as important as brazen insertion. Cowbird eggs look little like those of their hosts. Nor do the gargantuan young look anything like the fledgelings. They hatch a day before their broodmates. Only 3% of cowbird eggs and nestlings reach maturity: their parents make up for this by prolifigacy. A single female cowbird invades many nests. Infanticide or abandonment of the nest present negative alternatives that just enough passerines avoid to ensure the propagation of the pirate species.

---

The planting of rogue ideologies that go against the interests of the American people is nothing new in American life. In the classic study Millhands and Preachers: A Study of Gastonia, Liston Pope witnessed how those who wanted to prevent the rise of unionis in a North Carolina town used donations to churches as a means of propagandizing the people. Focusing on places of worship was clever: a church or a temple stands second only to the home as a place with which we identify. The better the grounds, the more rich the services, the larger the congregation, the more people seek to affiliate themselves with them. Large donations for buildings and clergy salaries made the anti-unionist churches appear more comfortable and more successful in preaching the gospel than their pro-union counterparts. The elite wrangled the support of those they exploited in a crusade against what would free them of their bondage.

I call this cowbird politics or cowbird morality. The real Christian message is being increasingly lost by the demand that churches be financially successful. We cannot help but compare the Crystal Cathedral with the Orange County Friends Meeting House, the one a mass of steel and glass, the second a few rooms in an old downtown office building. The comfort of the seats, the quality of the minister’s suit, and the sheer size of the whole edifice — vacant though it may be of true Christian witness — matter more in Cowbird theology than the congregation’s living according to the Word and spirit of Christ.

These giants in the nest push out the weaker and truer fledgelings or, at least, deprive them of popular support.

Religions are not the only place that human cowbirds infest. The parasite also appears in our schools. Bereft of the tax money which allowed them to conduct full-bodied educational programs, they are seduced by major corporations to include their television programming and other course materials. In a mileau which has forgotten the meaning of physical education and replaced it with mindless boosterism for school athletic teams, children no longer learn to be citizens — independent agents who as part of a whole contribute to their own betterment through the enrichment of the body politic — but become consumers — slaves to name brands, fat-polluted supersized meals, and designer labels without the skill to distinguish between the good and the bad.

In colleges, the sports cowbird eats up large portions of the school budget. It is true that teams draw more donations to schools, but these are donations wasted in sports facilities used only by a tiny fraction of the students. They do not serve to further the academic program or the fitness of the student body: they function primarily as pacifiers and training grounds for professional sports teams. Athletes provide false role models, a cult of the hero which demeans intelligence — the attribute for which the university supposedly exists in the first place. Closing down these programs does come to the table from time to time, but as with many who face sacred cowbirds, few are brave enough to deny them the food they demand in the form of resources and time.

Boosterism in the schools primes us for tolerating the hugest glutton of all, the chickenhawk military industrial complex. To witness an example of cowbird morals in action, look only to last Friday when fat Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House — draft avoider without a conscience — told lean John McCain — war hero, disabled veteran, and former POW of the North Vietnamese — to learn something about sacrifice by looking to the wounded service men in our VA hospitals! All this because McCain has begun to question our feeding of the biggest cowbird of all, to insist that the burden for this war be placed on the parasitic class that wanted it in the first place — the prime beneficiaries of the disastrous Bush tax cuts that turned a surplus into the largest deficit in U.S. history. This Bush-Cheney-Hastert cowbird is ruining our country. Only by commanding the airwaves and chirping loudly in our ears twenty four hours a day, seven days a week about 9-11 and “support” for our troops does it avoid the focus being turned on the corruption and its failure to serve the interests of the American people.

---

In nature, a few species have figured out the cowbirds’ program. When they see the cowbirds eggs in their nests, they push them out. Likewise, we must learn the lesson known by robins and other passerines: we must prevent the Cowbirds of the Right wRong from nesting in our schools, our churches and our governments. When the big donations come in with their attached advertisements, we must turn them out the door, let them fall to the ground. Cowbirds work insidiously in American society through grants of course materials, mentions on public television and radio, school athletic sponsorships, stolen elections, and unregulated campaign financing. To overcome them, we must push their eggs out of our shared insitutions. We must have the courage of robins to do what is best for our own interests and leave these parasites to nest for themselves — if they can.

---

Yes, you may steal the graphic. Email me for a copy to upload to your web site or click here to download it to your own.