The Crime of Our Age

This evening I took in the mild, early summer weather and watched a group of 20 or so children play baseball.  Some of them sat in wheelchairs or had braces on their legs.  Others needed help because of mental ailments, deafness, or blindness.  Adults and teenagers mixed in with the kids on the field giving both assistance and encouragement.  A man with a microphone sat behind home plate and announced the children’s names as they came up to bat and rounded the bases.  It is always a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours, watching people love those who need it most, seeing young people with special needs being supported.

On this occasion, I noticed a conversation happening in sign language off to my left.  A middle-aged mom signed and spoke to her daughter who was waiting in line for a turn at bat.  The girl had Down Syndrome.  She displayed a fun-loving personality as she bantered with her mother, signing rapidly.  Her mother kept telling her to be sure to use a particular bat when she got to the plate.  The girl made a sign back at her mother that clearly meant something like, “Yak, yak, yak.”  It was impish and funny.  

As my wife and I watched the exchange, I said to her, “It’s a terrible crime, you know.”  

She responded, “You mean about the genetic screening and the abortions?”

“Yes,” I said.

The Trials of Parenthood (Music Edition)

Last night, I put Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys on my car stereo.

My son, Andrew, said, “I don’t like country music.”

I manfully restrained myself from slaying him.

Why Gmail Killed Yahoo Mail

Around 2004, I had been a dedicated user of Yahoo’s email system for four years or so.  It had solved the problem all email users had at the time, which was that if you switched internet providers or changed institutions, you had to make a difficult transition to a totally new email address.  Instead of all that, you could have a Yahoo address (or a Hotmail address) and keep it forever.  All your friends could remember that address and never get lost when you switched jobs or internet providers.  It was fantastic.

But then an old friend wrote me and told me he was trying out Google’s new email product.  I wasn’t really interested, but I did like how his address was with gmail.com.  Gmail seemed nicely understated relative to the yahoo.com addresses.  I don’t think it would have succeeded as quickly or as well if Google had been selling an address ending in google.com.  Gmail offered an escape from telling people they could write you at YAHOO.com.  It just sounded stupid.  (Too late, Yahoo offered up Ymail.)

Two things really moved the dial.  The one that caused me to switch was the realization, after playing around with gmail, that I could get to my emails with at least one less click with Gmail than I could with Yahoo.  Yahoo made you sign in, then look at a summary screen, then get to your inbox.  Gmail signed you in and went straight to the inbox.  Yahoo may have been maximizing clicks for metrics purposes, but they were doing it at my expense.  Gmail got me to my email faster.  That was decisive.

The second thing was the search function that has kept me an avid user and raving fan of Gmail for the last seven years.  Gmail doesn’t really need folders and subfolders (though it offers labeling) because you can find ANYTHING.  If you can remember just a few key words in any email you are trying to find, Gmail will deliver it.  Yahoo supposedly did the same, but there is a reason we all ended up moving to search with Google.  It is simply superior.

Companies should remember his much:  It was the convenience and speed that got me.  It was the rich features that kept me.  If Yahoo hadn’t maximized its clicks at my expense, I’d probably still be ignorant of Gmail’s awesomeness.  Gmail satisfied my agenda first.

Freedom, Democracy, and Secularism?

Here’s the opening to my latest Touchstone article “The Soul of Liberty.”  You can find the whole text here.

You can find a lot of interesting things on Twitter packaged in pithy statements of no more than 140 characters each. Some of you may recall that in the aftermath of the 2009 election in Iran, a number of protesters claimed that the government had tampered with the results to stay in power. Twitter was a key channel they used both to express their outrage and to receive support from sympathetic Westerners, many of whom shaded their profile pictures green as a sign of solidarity. I happened upon a number of short statements from students in Iran who asked for “Freedom, Democracy, and Secularism!”

 

Having studied the history of the West and paid particular attention to the question of religion and politics, this combination of concepts struck me as odd. But it obviously resonates with many Iranian students, who repeatedly use the Internet to call for this combination of political ideals. I find it again and again. They seem to believe it is the formula.

 

But do these three concepts belong together?

Read the rest at Touchstone . . .

A Theory of Deja Vu

Deja vu is the sensation that one has already experienced events that are happening in the present.  There have been times in my life when I have experienced that feeling very powerfully.  For example, I have had conversations in which I suddenly felt seized with conviction that I had already had the discussion before and thus could predict with complete accuracy what the other person was about to say.

Some think that it is just a trick of the mind, misfiring neurons or something like that, but I don’t buy that.  How can one explain a moment in which one briefly becomes capable of predicting the course of the next 30 seconds or so?

I have come up with my own explanation of this phenomenon.  Maybe time is not linear, even though we experience it that way.  Maybe everything has happened, is happening, and will happen all at the same time.  All of time already exists, but we are only capable of perceiving it as past, present, and future.  If that is the case, it seems possible that the me now could potentially access what the me in the future knows.  Somehow, this notion links up with the concept of eternity.

What I can’t explain is why it never happens with anything big.  The times I have had deja vu, it has related to knowing ahead of time things like people’s odd movements (a stumble, twist, or gesture), or a water fountain spraying up in someone’s face, or the next few turns of a conversation.

What Happened in Vegas Didn’t Stay in Vegas . . . GSA Version

Taxpayers are agog as they read tales of the General Service Administration’s junket to Las Vegas that emphatically did not stay in Vegas.

We have read about private room parties, paid mind readers, sushi bars and expensive recreational opportunities. The fun was apparently so important, the agency sent out advance scouts on multiple early runs to check out facilities.

My students and I calculated the cost per attendee. The agency spent nearly $900,000 for 300 attendees. We came up with approximately $2,800 per person. Pretty rich for government work.

Some readers look at the cost of the GSA conference and say, “Big deal. Major corporations do this kind of thing all the time.” A couple of answers present themselves.

First, big companies are private entities, and it doesn’t affect me how they choose to spend their money on employees. It is up to their shareholders to concern themselves with whether they are losing profits due to overspending.

Second, I can count on the market test to protect me from their extravagance. For example, if Procter and Gamble was to regularly waste its funds on similar activities, there is a good chance Colgate-Palmolive could find a way to exploit the mistake and undercut P&G on price.

The problem with government overspending on fun activities and rewards is multifaceted. GSA might tell us their employees deserve this kind of trip to Las Vegas. They might say they’ve done an excellent job for us. But how do we know this is true?

With a private company, it is simple to see how well they have competed in the marketplace. We can observe whether they have made or lost money.

With an agency like the GSA, we basically have to take their word for it. Instead of having to earn money, the GSA receives a large appropriation from Congress each year. The trip to Vegas looks more like a way to spend all of the appropriation and ask for more the following year than it does like a reward for great service.

Another problem is that every time money is spent, there is an accompanying opportunity cost. For example, if a student chooses to take his parents’ money and spend it on video games, then he may not be able to buy his books for the semester. The one expenditure rules out the other one. Or it causes the student to resort to taking on more debt.

What opportunities is the GSA missing because it chose to spend nearly a million dollars and many hours of employee time on a taxpayer-financed vacation? What other uses might have been superior?

A million dollars might have paid for 10 inspectors to spend a year looking for government waste. And those inspectors might have actually found a way to return money to government coffers.

Given the trillions of dollars of debt the government currently faces, a figure shy of a million is pretty small stuff, a tiny amount. But the principle, if followed elsewhere, could add up quickly.

Besides, as one student pointed out to me, the amount the GSA spent could be more than the taxes he pays during his whole working life. And it would be a shame that those taxes were spent so wastefully.

 

Downton Abbey Explains Classic Conservatism

Over the weekend, I finally took the dive into Downton Abbey.  I have been amazed to see English society of that time presented in a well thought out way.  You really see life from the point of view of a maid, a butler, a man of the middle class, etc.

But the one that really got my attention was the Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville.  The Earl is in the unusual position of having lost two heirs in the Titanic.  His American wife’s huge fortune merged with his own when they married.  They have produced no sons.  Now, the estate (including her money) will go (by English law) to a distant cousin.  No one really approves of this result.  But when the Earl is encouraged to find some way to smash the entailment, he refuses.  Why would he not seek some device to benefit his wife and daughters at the expense of a cousin?  It makes all the sense in the world.  But he does not.

His explanation for his lack of combativeness on behalf of his nuclear family and their rights is informative with regard to classic conservatism.  He will not try to defeat the ancestral entailment because he views himself as a custodian of the estate, not as its owner.  He knows that someone else conceived and built Downton Abbey.  The simple fact that he is the current possessor does not entitle him to tear down their intent in favor of his own.  In short, the Earl of Grantham is connected to his ancestors and to those who come after him.  He has duties and obligations to both.  He may not view himself as a disconnected atom capable of doing whatever he can conceive, especially when he acts in a setting in which he stands on the shoulders of those who came before.

If you want to know what authentic conservatism is, that is it.

Everyone’s a Little Crazy

Yesterday, I was standing on a covered porch talking to a man who is legitimately psychotic.  He explained to me that he has won several major literary prizes, holds a number of important patents, and traveled around the world in a dirigible for years.  Trying to find a way to make conversation, I confided to him that I am afraid of flying.  His mania seemed to subside as he looked at me, took my measure, and said, “You know, flying is a lot safer than other methods of transportation.”

The Christian Scholar As the Antidote to the Televangelist

I was a teenager in the 1980′s when many secular Americans (including me) formed their view of Christianity on the basis of what was happening with Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.  Two men who had become rich through ministry ended up making mistakes that severely damaged their reputations and organizations.  The trashy, deceptive, scoundrel, flashy preacher character is part of the stock of American literature.  

If you want to see the type in action, there are places you can go via cable or satellite to get your fill.  You can stuff yourself with shameful judgment and delight as you watch them with their sparkling, colorful clothing, jewelry, and architectural hairstyles.  They model wealth because their appeal to the viewer is that if you will call a number and give a gift very quickly, you, too, will be blessed.  You will have planted a seed against your need.  The unexpected life-changing check will surely appear on your doorstop very soon.  

Truly, I do not know any of these people.  At age 41, I have been a Christian now for about 23 years.  I have yet to meet anyone who endorses the theology broadcast by the prosperity gospel industry.  Nor have I found any Christians who run around in rhinestones and purple hair.  

But to those of you who are unchurched, who think very little of Jesus Christ and Christianity, and who take your cues from someone like, say, Jon Stewart, I have an antidote to offer to the poisonous view of the faith you may hold.  The antidote is the Christian scholar.  

The first person to really get my attention with regard to Christianity was Robbie Castleman.  She had been doing graduate work and would eventually obtain her doctorate.  She is a professor at John Brown University now.  Robbie was never interested in spending lots of time shopping or in the salon.  She was the first person I ever met who didn’t run after a ringing phone. Robbie and her husband, Breck, were (and are) generous with their time and money.  She didn’t preach AT people.  She had relationships with people.  And the energy behind all of it was Jesus.  She put up with an egotistical, exasperating, and lazy kid like me without losing patience.    Robbie is a Christian scholar.  Such a different creature than that Brother Love character you all know and despise.

I won’t name names of other people to whom I’m close (because I don’t want to embarrass them), but I don’t mind describing them to you.  The Christian scholar is the man with a rather unkempt beard and the pants and sleeves with frayed cuffs.  The tie often clashes or is a couple of decades out of date.  If you know men like these you probably find them somewhat eccentric and uninterested in many of the passing things the rest of us chase after.  They don’t know which buttons to fasten on a sportcoat or how to properly coordinate belts and shoes.  And the reason why is not because they are ignorant, but rather because they are setting their powerful minds to other tasks.  They are, as a friend in Texas who had some impressive life experience said to me, deep rivers.  They are otherworldly.  

I regret (a little) to say that I do know about the belts and shoes, the right buttons to button, which colors can go together, and other matters of concern to people of fashion.  But I admire those who have no need at all to care about those things.  And when my wife, no great follower of trends herself, happens to note that I am wearing pants that seem to be falling apart a little or the seat is wearing out, I’m almost sorry to notice.  Because I was just a little closer to being like those men and women I so admire.  

 

A British Political Conversation (Second-Hand)

I recently had lunch with a friend working in the UK.  When I asked him about the electoral politics, he reported the following conversation:

Friend:  (Speaking to British citizen) Who are you voting for?

Brit:  My parents were Tories, but I’m voting for the Lib-Dems (the Liberal Democrats).

Friend:  Really?  Why are you voting for them?

Brit:  They’re for social justice!

Friend:  That’s interesting.  What is social justice?

Brit:  Let me put my mind to that and I’ll get back to you.

Raquel Welch on How Pornography Is Ruining Men for Sex

When I was a child (probably around the year 1979), I once asked my father to tell me who was the most  beautiful woman in the world.  He instantly replied that it was my mother.  I then asked him to tell me who was the most beautiful woman other than my mother.  He replied nearly as quickly that the answer to my question was Raquel Welch.

I clipped the following section from a very interesting interview between Raquel Welch and Men’s Health magazine.  Her comments are worth carving into the face of a mountain somewhere.  Take special note of how her interviewer goes from flip to serious as she makes herself clear.

MH: You once said that you think sex is overrated. Could you elaborate?

Raquel Welch: I mean just the sex act itself.

MH: Really? Are you sure you’ve been doing it right?

Raquel Welch: I think we’ve gotten to the point in our culture where we’re all sex addicts, literally. We have equated happiness in life with as many orgasms as you can possibly pack in, regardless of where it is that you deposit your love interest.

MH: Okay, admittedly that doesn’t make sex sound very appealing at all.

Raquel Welch: It’s just dehumanizing. And I have to honestly say, I think this era of porn is at least partially responsible for it. Where is the anticipation and the personalization? It’s all pre-fab now. You have these images coming at you unannounced and unsolicited. It just gets to be so plastic and phony to me. Maybe men respond to that. But is it really better than an experience with a real life girl that he cares about? It’s an exploitation of the poor male’s libidos. Poor babies, they can’t control themselves.

MH: I cannot dispute any of what you’re saying.

Raquel Welch: I just imagine them sitting in front of their computers, completely annihilated. They haven’t done anything, they don’t have a job, they barely have ambition anymore. And it makes for laziness and a not very good sex partner. Do they know how to negotiate something that isn’t pre-fab and injected directly into their brain?

Reading those last few lines I wonder if Raquel Welch might have made an outstanding writer and cultural commentator.  How many men know exactly what she is talking about?  And isn’t “annihilated” the perfect word in the perfect place?

There Are Some Things You Can Believe Online . . .

Grace saw me looking at Europe on Google Maps. She noticed the United Kingdom and was excited to see it, but then said, “That’s not a real place.” 

“Yes, it is,” I insisted. “And it has a queen and princes.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you should never believe anything on the internet.”

Management Sheep Dip

When I was a graduate student in public administration about 20 years ago, one of my professors was the much-published, much-decorated Robert Golembiewski.  He was almost as wide as he was tall, had a terrific head of white hair with accompanying white beard and mustache, and proudly displayed a large poster for Polish Solidarity (SOLIDARNOSC!) on the door to his office.

He and I spoke many times as I took every advantage of opportunities to learn from him.  I still recall a framed letter he had from another very famous social scientist, Aaron Wildavsky.  The letter opened by congratulating Golembiewski on some photograph that had been taken of him and subsequently appeared somewhere notable.  ”What an excellent likeness, Bob.”  In the second paragraph, Wildavsky announced that he had cancer and would not live very long.

On the occasion of one of my visits, I was excitedly discussing the book Reinventing Government by Osborne and Gaebler and the corresponding Clinton reform initiative, the National Performance Review.  I was surprised to hear Golembiewski dismiss the initiative as “just another management sheep dip.”  The conversation didn’t go much further because I had no idea what sheep dip was.  I have since figured out that he was referring to a veterinary treatment for sheep similar to the kind of special bath dogs get to keep fleas and other pests at bay.

Today, I was thinking about Golembiewski and “management sheep dip.”  I think his critique was that most managerial reforms are like a coating that appears to work for a while, but doesn’t change the essence underneath. The conversation came home to me as I took my class through a case study about education reform in Denver during the last decade.  Michael Bennet managed to become a U.S. Senator after his purported turnaround of the schools in Denver.  It is clear that he worked hard.  I am less sure whether his reforms were successful.  It mostly seems that the force of his personality was important, but now he is gone.

We frequently hear about new plans for big reforms.  People make much of them, although those of us who understand PR appreciate that the gains get pumped up larger than they really are and the problems are minimized.  We get catchy labels such as Scientific Management, Total Quality Management, Lean Six Sigma, Reinventing Government (which is my favorite for what it’s worth), and others.  A number of people make a lot of money promoting these ideas, writing, consulting, etc.  But what it really comes down to is a few things.  Do political leaders, administrators, and employees care about their work?  Are they honest?  Do they have integrity?  Are they competent?  I would submit to you that if those things are true, then it not so much the managerial sheep dip that we are proposing that matters so much as it is the soul with which we approach the work.

Here’s the really terrible side of that truth.  If you have political leaders who just care about moving up to the next job, administrators and other employees who are primarily worried about getting more money and better benefits and having an easy life, then whatever sheep dip you apply will make things look and smell better for a short while, but you’ll go right back into mediocrity or worse, decay.

Fundamentally, if you have competent, conscientious people working in good faith, then the system you have is a matter of secondary importance.  This is an awful thing to understand, because it means if you have a bad culture, if your people lack character, if families aren’t raising children well . . . then you don’t have a great chance of turning things around.

We basically have two hopes for making things better.

One is that technology improves so much that we can afford our many social pathologies.  (Of course, that road may lead to the kind of human existence we see portrayed in WALL-E.)

The other lies with spiritual renewal.  And that road is the tougher one by far.

In fact, you have to die first.  And then you have to live again.

John Mark Reynolds and Houston Baptist University

As many of you know, I worked for Robert Sloan as a writer while I was doing my doctoral work at Baylor and then as a director of strategic planning and associate provost at Houston Baptist University.  Those jobs changed my life.  They gave me a vocation.  I have not doubted my calling since it came to me so clearly during those years.

I felt that I had to leave HBU in order to be closer to my parents (for a variety of reasons, mostly a debilitating health condition which has troubled my mother) and found an opportunity at Union University.  Though it was extraordinarily difficult to leave (and I struggled with an outpouring of emotion almost daily), I looked forward with anticipation to learning from David Dockery just as I did from Robert Sloan.  God has been gracious.  Union has been a good place for me.

The years at HBU were tremendously satisfying.  In God’s providence, we put together a strong ten year plan for the university, reformed the core curriculum (in a rigorous, traditional sense), established an honors college, and brought about substantial growth in both the physical aspect of the campus and in the student body.

Change happens.  I left for Union.  Paul Bonicelli (once a key part of establishing Patrick Henry College, too) moved on to an executive vice presidency at Regent University (where he is already doing good things).  And now John Mark Reynolds assumes the title of provost at HBU.  He has exactly the right sensibility about academic content for an institution that seeks to be a truly classical Christian liberal arts university.  I look forward with great anticipation to seeing him establish the same kind of loving and scholarly association at HBU that he brought into being at Biola in the form of the Torrey Institute.

I should add that I hope John Mark does not merely take his gifts to HBU, while Biola loses them.  Rather, I echo his hope that the work at Biola goes on while a new one takes root at HBU.  Let the good work multiply rather than simply transferring.

HBU has dared much these past several years.  It is my prayer that God will bring greater things of it than any of us have dreamed or intended.

Al Regnery, the Future of The American Spectator, and Me

In 2002, I was a recent graduate of the University of Houston’s law school and had previously received a master’s degree in public administration from the highly regarded program at the University of Georgia.  In my eagerness to do something like Christian political advocacy, I found a job with the Georgia Family Council in Atlanta.

Under the tutelage of one of the best guys in the conservative movement, Randy Hicks, I was busy learning how to influence things at a big state capitol, but I was terribly frustrated.  It wasn’t the work so much as my own sense that I had things to say and no way to get the ideas out into the culture.  I was stymied.

That same period was probably the low point for The American Spectator (TAS).  They were trying to come back from the failed attempt by George Gilder to make the magazine into a slick new conservative version of Forbes + Wired.  After reading a piece at the website that got some fact wrong about the late Paul Coverdell, I emailed the editor and apparently caught Wlady Pleszcyznki at his desk.  We traded a few messages and somehow I ended up sending him a piece I’d written.  That was the beginning of a whole new way of life for me.  Over the next few years, I wrote something like 30 pieces for the website and had a  couple published in the magazine.  Without the start the Spectator gave me, I don’t know that I would have had any of the wonderful opportunities that have followed in the years since.  For example, I seriously doubt that I would have ever written The End of Secularism or the forthcoming Political Thought: A Student’s Guide without the encouragement toward writing that TAS provided.  The magazine prides itself on launching careers.  It did so with me.

I still remember that the first couple of checks (or at least the first ones I remember) I received from TAS were signed by Al Regnery, the son of Henry Regnery who founded the legendary conservative publishing company. He appeared to be the man chosen to rescue the publication from its precipitous fall after hitting a giant peak during the Clinton years.  I know very little of the internal dynamics of The American Spectator, but it seemed to me that it could only be good to have a man like Al Regnery on board.  Recently, I heard Regnery is leaving after losing some sort of argument with the magazine’s board.  The news has stimulated memories.

For years after becoming a regular freelance contributor, I received invitations to attend annual pig roasts put on by the magazine.  In either 2008 or 2009, I finally resolved to go.  The event was held at a property owned by Regnery somewhere out in the sticks of Virginia.

My expectations ahead of the event were all wrong.  For example, I don’t know if the Regnery’s are wealthy, but I assumed so based on the many big sellers the company has published.  Accordingly, I expected a mansion of some kind with rolling green hills and a manicured lawn.  I thought I would see people dressed very nicely and having witty conversations.  Instead, I struggled to find the property in the backwoods.  When I finally did, I realized I would need to figure out the parking situation and tucked my rental car into some shady alcove.  I walked up to a ramshackle structure where a grizzled man sat upon a white bucket.  His hair was unruly.  His face was unshaven.  He wore a weathered aqua knit shirt, old shorts, and a pair of clogs of some kind.  Could it be?  Was it . . .?  ”I’m Al Regnery,” he said, as he extended his hand.  ”I’m Hunter Baker,” I replied and began to explain my identity.  ”I know who you are,” he said, which pleased me.

As usual with parties, I was on-time which meant that I was very early.  I made small talk with two men roasting a large pig over a fire as people slowly began to arrive.  The scene was very rustic.  Friends showed up and we chatted.  It took me nearly an hour to stop flinching at the nearly continuous sound of gunfire.  The real action at the roast centered on the guests trying out a variety of firearms.  I’m a good conservative, but my interest in the second amendment of the constitution has typically been more a point of principle (a way of backing up the social contract) than a way of life.

By that time, my contributions to TAS were much diminished.  Part of it was that I became less interested in political pugilism and more interested in a level of abstraction a little higher than immediate political disputes.  Of course, that may have been a self-defensive reaction to the Bush presidency’s miserable entanglement with Iraq and subsequent loss of majorities in both houses of Congress.

The Regnery story indicates that he had different ideas about the necessary direction of the magazine than did the editorial staff and the board.  I don’t know what his ideas were, but it is a terribly difficult time to be in the business of punditry.  The American Spectator was the kind of publication you could read with delicious pleasure on a Sunday afternoon.  It featured witty and satirical conservative opinion pieces.  Fifteen years ago, such magazines were unusual finds.  People could remember when they first got their hands on a National Review or an American Spectator.  Discovering them was like joining a club.  How I recall my own thrill at reading NR many years ago or in finding First Things in the mid-1990′s.

But now, there is no shortage of conservative opinion on the web.  It can be found in many places and can be further broken down into many of varieties of conservatism, each designed to please a particular niche.  Best of all (for readers, at least), it is generally free.  National Review was quicker to master the internet space (in large part due to Jonah Goldberg’s influence and personallity), while The American Spectator struggled to be reborn as a going concern at the beginning of the millennium.  TAS was behind.  And while it had had a Tyrrell as its own sort of Buckley in the print period, it never had a Goldberg.

I don’t know what the future holds for TAS or for Regnery, but I wish them both well and am thankful for the opportunities they have given me.  (Indeed, I still contribute the occasional blog item.)  We need publications of TAS’s type, especially if they are able to bring together people of insight, talent, and influence.  The odds of making a profit or covering the costs with subscription or ad fees are long, but the chances of making a positive contribution to the broader culture are significant.

Better and Worse Ideas about Government Spending

We are hearing a great deal at the moment about government austerity, especially in Europe, as various states attempt to deal with massive budget crises resulting from a combination of low growth, bad demographics, and overly rich welfare programs.  European Central Bank president Mario Draghi recently gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he made things quite clear:

WSJ: Austerity means different things, what’s good and what’s bad austerity?

 

Draghi: In the European context tax rates are high and government expenditure is focused on current expenditure. A “good” consolidation is one where taxes are lower and the lower government expenditure is on infrastructures and other investments.

 

WSJ: Bad austerity?

 

Draghi: The bad consolidation is actually the easier one to get, because one could produce good numbers by raising taxes and cutting capital expenditure, which is much easier to do than cutting current expenditure. That’s the easy way in a sense, but it’s not a good way. It depresses potential growth.

Draghi’s insight is one American policymakers need to understand.  If the government is spending a great deal of money simply to put dollars in people’s pockets, pay salaries, etc., then we are not getting nearly the good we could obtain with better government spending AND we go bust trying to afford it.  The superior situation is one in which you can keep taxes low and government spending is on items that last and have the potential to spur growth into the future.  

For example, consider the difference between a government paying for things like the interstate highway system or the Tennessee Valley Authority mechanisms of energy generation versus a government that sends out a lot of entitlement checks.  The first government will see substantial returns over the long run.  The second one is mostly just poorer at the end of the year.  

In America, we used to have a government of the first type, but we increasingly have a government of the second type.  I opposed the president’s nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, but it would have been a lot easier to swallow if it had been aimed at some truly valuable investment such as reinforcing America’s physical infrastructure (highways, electrical grid, etc.) rather than simply trying to push out cash as quickly as possible.

Is It Hyperbolic to Say the HHS Mandate Is a Type of “Rape of the Soul?”

The LA Times blog referred to my friend Ben Mitchell and his fellow panelists at the hearing on the HHS mandate as “hyperbolic.”  Mitchell, in particular, employed Roger Williams’ famous comparison of violations of religious liberty with “the rape of the soul.”  

It is interesting to note that religious people, of a variety of persuasions, tend to naturally understand how serious a problem the HHS mandate presents.  What the department did, deliberately and with full knowledge of the consequences, was to create a very real and urgent crisis for institutions with a religious identity (especially the Catholic ones).  We could call this kind of crisis a “God and Caesar crisis” in which an individual or a community must choose between obeying God or obeying the coercive force of government.  ”Rape” is not an absurd metaphor to employ when we are talking about the use of raw power to force an action against conviction.  

Now, it is obvious that religious belief cannot command a blank check, but the old standard was essentially that religious belief (and action) would remain undisturbed as long as it did not pose a threat to the peace and safety of the community.  It should be obvious that declining to fund contraceptives in an insurance policy is far from an affirmative threat to either peace or safety.  After all, there are many low cost ways to obtain contraceptives and no one is forced to work for a religious employer.  The coercion being employed is what is hyperbolic.  No one should be forced into a God and Caesar crisis with so little regard for the alternatives and so little regard for conscience.

A Rather Practical Little Girl

Grace was reading one of the Frog and Toad stories to me. They were trying to fly a kite. Frog had Toad run with the kite, run while jumping up and down, and run while jumping up and down while holding the kite over his head. Each time, the little birds mocked Toad. Finally, Frog insisted that Toad try again doing all of the above plus shouting, “UP! UP! KITE!” And it worked!

She finished reading, turned to me and said, “I don’t think the shouting is what did it. Probably some wind came up or something.”

The End of Secularism and the HHS Mandate

The primary point of my first book, The End of Secularism, was to demonstrate that secularism doesn’t do what it claims to do, which is to solve the problem of religious difference.  As I look at the  administration’s attempt to mandate that religious employers pay for contraceptive products, I see that they have confirmed one of my charges in the book.

I wrote that secularists claim that they are occupying a neutral position in the public square, but in reality they are simply another group of contenders working to implement a vision of community life with which they are comfortable.  And guess what?  They are not comfortable with many of the fundamental beliefs of Christians.  Regrettably, many secularists are also statists.  Thus, their discomfort with Christian beliefs results in direct challenges to them in the form of mandatory public policy.

Collectivism is often very appealing to Christians who want to do good for their neighbors.  Unfortunately, collectivism is frequently a fellow-traveler of aggressive secularism with little respect for religious liberty.  The veil has slipped.  I hope we do not too quickly forget what was revealed in that moment.  Collectivism gives.  But it also takes.  And what it takes is very often precious and irreplaceable.

God and Children

We were driving to school one day when my six year old daughter Grace expressed the great frustration of her life: “God knows everything. He knows I got a sled for Christmas. Why doesn’t he make it snow?”

As I tried to formulate a response, her nine year old brother replied with some annoyance in his voice: “Grace, he’s NOT your slave!”

Rationality and the Gay Marriage Question

Before I begin, I will make an upfront admission that I can certainly understand the reasons why a significant number of people believe gay marriage should be affirmed by the state.  John Stuart Mill’s arguments regarding liberty make enough sense to cause me to look skeptically at any action or policy of the government which would infringe on human freedom without a corresponding argument for restricting a harm.

However, I am extremely troubled by the recent trend of courts finding legal policies against gay marriage irrational and only supportable as a matter of religious belief.  It seems to me that there are ways one could find that the traditional view of marriage is rational.  I am focused on this issue because I was taught in law school that the court would essentially never overturn any law for failure to meet rational-basis scrutiny.  The fact that courts are now overturning laws on exactly that basis leads me to believe that jurists think there is no rational way to think marriage should be confined to male-female pairings.  That way of thinking is, I believe, very dangerous to the notions of self-government and republicanism.

Thinking in terms of what is rational and what is not, I would like to set forth what I think should be considered a rational account of why marriage should remain a male-female arrangement.  My own view might be different in important ways from this one, but I am trying to present something that is non-religious in nature and which I think should be capable of being accepted as rational by any person.  Note:  “rational” does not mean that it convinces you.  It merely means that you could see the argument as a position a person could hold without being, basically, crazy.

So, here is one rational account of why marriage should be confined to opposite sex couples.  As you read, keep in mind that you need only find the account rational (i.e. not crazy) rather than truly persuasive.

 

Men and women are obviously complementary in nature.  This is not a matter of holy writ.  Without the man and the woman, it is not possible to produce children.  Without the ability to produce children, the political community has no future whatsoever.  It will die out like the Shakers, who chose celibacy.  This interest in the future is clearly a political interest since the political community emerges from families.  Families form villages.  Villages form towns.  Towns grow into cities.  And so on.  Male-female marriage is the basis of the political community.  For that reason, it is obviously rational for the political community to take an interest in affirming, sustaining, and protecting male-female marriage.  

Same-sex pairings are not procreative.  The answer will come back that many heterosexual marriages are not procreative.  That is true, but the marriage is still rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and the complementary sex act.  The man and woman share an intimate relationship based on the way their bodies are made to fit together.  You could say God made this design.  You could say it emerged from evolution.  Regardless, it is clear that the male sex organ and the female sex organ work in harmony in a way that the male sex organ and a non-sexual male organ do not.  This biological fact is the reason for the long existence of marriage between men and women.  Marriage would not exist without it.  

Homosexuality was once considered a disorder.  Looking back on those who thought so, can we say with great confidence that their conclusion was invidious or irrational?  Or was it to some degree a reasonable position to take considering that the desire to engage in sexual stimulation (not intercourse as that is impossible) with members of the same sex is highly atypical for human beings and, biologically speaking, does not make sense?  And there is little question of that.  Biologically speaking, the act of a man attempting to have sex with a man or a woman having sex with a woman makes no sense at all.  

There are a number of atypical behaviors to which some human beings appear to be predisposed.  We do not need to make a list, but I am sure we can agree that such behaviors exist.  Our reaction to these atypical behaviors is mostly to accept without having to positively affirm.  

Given these realities, it is not surprising at all that the history of marriage has been the history of men and women marrying each other.  Marriage is a direct consequence of the biological complementarity of the sexes.  While we should not positively inhibit same-sex pairings, we should not give those pairings the same status as male-female marriage.

Based on what has been written above, is it clearly irrational for the government to favor the traditional and biologically sensible form of marriage?  One might characterize these remarks as insensitive or unpleasant or out of fashion, but would it be fair to say that they are irrational?  One may easily disagree, but would you regard these remarks in the class of comments claiming the moon is made of green cheese?  Could you not easily say, “I disagree with what this person has said, but it is a rational  reason to oppose gay marriage.  If I have a vote on the matter, I will cast my vote against this position.”  To do THAT, to cast a vote in favor of gay marriage, is a fundamentally different exercise than to do what courts have done by simply ruling that the person or institution opposing gay marriage is irrational.

What we are talking about is a few different arguments, some stronger and some weaker, in contest over a social innovation with potentially large consequences (frankly, we just don’t know what they might be).  I do not see what many courts see, which is one highly logical and rational argument squaring off against one that is irrational, superstitious, and religious.  If the standard is merely that laws confining marriage to opposite sex couples merely need be considered rational by some low standard of rationality, then it seems to me that the courts have decided wrongly.

The courts do not have the privilege of filling the law with content.  Marriage laws are already very full of content.  The content is centered around men and women marrying.  There is a very simple way of changing that content.  It involves making arguments in the public square and voting.  Such a process is the natural course of democracy and has the advantage of not turning a group of lawyers into sages capable of determining the moral (or rational) content of law.

The Hubris of the Secular Statist

The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that religious institutions (including Catholic ones) must include coverage for contraceptive services in the care insurance they provide to employees.  This is not a big deal, we have been told, because Catholic churches will be exempted, and the organizations adversely affected will be given a year to make their peace with the situation.  

Let that sink in for a minute.  You’re a Catholic organization.  You have just been purposefully placed on a collision course between your God and Caesar.  But it’s okay.  Caesar is going to give you a year to stop being so upset.

The amazing thing here is that some official came to this conclusion and our president (the president of a nation which has religious liberty for one of its greatest achievements) has placed his imprimatur of approval upon the measure.  Their reasoning is as follows:  Many women who work for Catholic organizations are not Catholic or do not agree with the official teaching of the church regarding birth control.  Many of these women feel they would like to employ birth control.  According to our modern day Caesar, the answer is simple.  Citizens want birth control.  The organizations which employ them will provide that birth control.  Note that the answer is not to have the government provide the birth control or to subsidize the birth control or HEAVEN FORBID to have the women buy their own birth control.  No, Caesar simply walks up to the pope and says, “I don’t care what church teaching is.  If you want to live in my society, here is what you are going to do.”

The political calculation, I suppose, is that there aren’t that many really serious Catholics and no one will understand why they are upset.  I hope that calculation is wrong and that many Americans, like myself, will see that the secular government is running roughshod over legitimate religious convictions without so much as an “I’m sorry!” yelled halfheartedly out the back window. 

The hubris on display is incredible.  This is a test of our national character.  Do we prefer religious freedom to a state which dictates to us or do we just want our welfare?  

And note the jarring contrast with the left-wing jurisprudence which is deconstructing marriage.  I can understand the impetus for freedom which is pushing toward a more expansive view of marriage to include same sex couples.  I cannot understand how essentially the same group of persons think the state should be able to dictate something like practices regarding birth control to religious organizations.

The Reversal of Proposition 8: A Dangerous Precedent

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has acted to reverse the democratic decision of the people of California to confine marriage to its traditional parameters of a man and a woman.  In making this decision, the court decided that it could overturn the will of the people of California on the basis of what is known in legal circles as “the rational basis standard.”

When evaluating the violation of fundamental rights, the court has often used a standard of “strict scrutiny” in cases involving racial or religious discrimination.  By that standard, the petitioner frequently wins.  In cases of gender discrimination, the court has relied on a kind of intermediate scrutiny.

The rational basis standard is a different bird.  We were taught (as have been law students for a long time) that under the rational basis standard, the government would almost always win because the burden of establishing irrationality is so high.  My liberal New York Jewish law professor taught us that the court would only find a state action irrational if it did something like declare that everyone must wear one green shoe on Tuesday.

The Ninth Circuit has now effectively said that to believe marriage is a matter for a man and a woman is to be so irrational as to declare that everyone must wear one green shoe on Tuesday.

Now, I understand that many readers may favor expanding marriage to include same sex unions.  And there are reasons to support that move.  But the case is not so overwhelmingly strong as to render the opposite conclusion nonsensical.

This is an important case.  If a handful of individuals can declare a particular point of view completely irrational (a democratically expressed view), then we are not a republic.  We are an oligarchy.

Children and Moral Reasoning

You can learn a lot about what is right or wrong by attempting to explain things to your children.

My children have begun to learn about the civil rights struggle of African-Americans.  It is bittersweet because on the one hand the history presents a good way to learn about justice.  On the other, it awakens racial awareness in them that was not really there before.  I regret that children have to learn about such things.  Sometimes, I fantasize that we could all wake up with no knowledge of the past of racial slavery or segregation.  Of course, it is probably better to remember mistakes so as not to repeat them.

In any case, as Andrew and Grace learn about these matters, they ask questions of their mother and me.  They would like an explanation for the wrongs that were committed.  They have also wanted to understand what happened with the American Indians and the Trail of Tears.  

(I will admit that I was anxious to learn from my son whether he knew anything more about Andrew Jackson than that he authored the evil of the Trail of Tears.  In my effort the flesh things out, I even looked up the lyrics to The Battle of New Orleans on my iPhone and then sang them to the family at the dinner table.)

When you start to try to answer those questions, it is very simple, indeed, to see who was right and who was wrong.  White Europeans imposed themselves on the natives of this land with a substantial amount of force and fraud.  The same general group engaged in a vicious chattel slavery and a massively inhumane slave trade.  The moral lines assert themselves quite easily (thus demonstrating the silliness of relativism).  The stronger people dehumanized the weaker ones and found a way to justify getting what they wanted.  

And what is really suggestive for our view of current controversies is that I felt the same sort of tension winding up as I tried to explain abortion to my son.     

 

 

Should Evangelicals Give Up on Christian Politics?

The University Bookman asked me to review D.G. Hart’s book on how evangelicals have subverted conservative politics.  While I appreciate his strength of mind and his craft, I disagree with his thesis that striving for something like a biblical politics is a non-starter.  Here’s a clip:

As a professor at a Christian college, I must cede to Hart and his argument in this excellent and provocative book that many of us do live and work inside a movement aimed at extending the lordship of Jesus Christ to politics and every other endeavor of human life. Certainly, I can understand how many Christian political ideas and efforts add up to a “betrayal” of conservatism as Hart sees it. But the call to evangelicals to give up this task of developing a Christian politics and attempting to bring it into being through persuasion, office-seeking, and other work is unlikely to succeed.

 

The first major barrier is the immense effort (specifically of the last quarter century) that has gone into encouraging Christians to “think Christianly” about every area of their lives, including politics. The second barrier is the related lack of desire that evangelicals have to return to something like the early Falwellian position that the church has no business encouraging activism with regard to matters of domestic (such as race) or international policy (such as the Cold War). That form of church-state separation looks in the rear-view mirror very much like the pitiable refuge of those who were more concerned about intra-congregation conflict than with calling for righteous action.

 

While Hart likely does not intend to frame exactly this message, in some ways the very civil and erudite complaint against overly ambitious Christian politics comes across as a call for Christians to subordinate their faith (or at least a prominent interpretation thereof) to conservatism. He seems to be encouraging a political secularism of the right at exactly the time when Christians have been working vigorously to do away with it as an excuse for not bringing ideas from the church into the public square.

You can read the whole thing here.

What Do I Read?

A young person just asked me what I read. Interesting question.

I rotate through a variety of different magazines. Favorites include First Things, Touchstone, Christianity Today, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The New Atlantis, The City, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, National Review, and Kiplingers. A publication I would like to read, but haven’t gotten around to other than the occasional web read is City Journal.

With regard to books, my favorite author of fiction is Walker Percy.  I am also very fond of Lars Walker’s work.  My  tastes are eclectic, but I tend to gravitate toward mysteries and the old pulp action stuff, like from Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs.  My son has gotten me back into comic books.  We’ve been reading through huge sections of the Avengers series.

On the non-fiction side, Whittaker Chambers’ Witness may be the best single book I ever read.  I have a mini-obsession with Peter Drucker’s books.  I am currently reading through the volumes I think of as having to do with social thought, but he was mostly associated with management.  I love lots of different political thinkers:  Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Locke, Rousseau, Paine, de Tocqueville, Sandel, Nozick, MacIntyre.  Hadley Arkes is really great, too.

I used to be a great reader of many websites.  You could count on me reading American Spectator, National Review, Weekly Standard, and Christianity Today online with great regularity.  With the popularization of Facebook and Twitter, I find that I spend a lot more time reading things other people point out to me.  I have come to count on Real Clear Politics a lot more, though.

UPDATE:  I should add that I read the Bible, too.  In recent years, I have felt much more strongly that is important to do so.  Before, I felt secure in my sense that I understood the basic message and what it is all about, but I came under conviction that it makes no sense to examine all kinds of other texts closely and not to spend more time on the single most important text.

“Love Makes Me Rather Terrible . . .”: A Review of Troll Valley by Lars Walker

My primary complaint with Lars Walker is that I have read all of his books.  He set his hook deep with Year of the Warrior.  I have hungered for more ever since.

Lars wrote his first three books (Year of the Warrior, Wolf Time, and Blood and Judgment) for the well-known sci-fi and fantasy publisher Baen Books.  I’m not sure that Baen ever really knew how to market Lars’ work.  Still, he has a growing cult following.  I am convinced there is money to be made in buying the rights to his work from Baen.

He wrote a fourth volume for Nordskog (a sequel to Year of the Warrior called West Oversea).  I heartily recommend them all, though Year is my personal favorite.  I have read from it to stunned silence from underclassmen and professors alike.  The book has impact.  Gene Veith prefers Wolf Time.

Now, Lars has bravely taken the path of writing a book directly for Amazon and the other ebook formats.  Troll Valley is available for a mere $2.99 at Amazon.  I happily loaded it on my kindle and read it like some guilty pleasure which would occasionally turn my emotions inside out.

The story revolves around a young man named Chris Anderson.  He is the grandchild of Norwegian immigrants living in Minnesota in the early 20th century.  There are three outstanding facts about Chris.  He has a deformed arm he bitterly compares to a duck’s wing.  He has an honest-to-goodness fairy godmother (it is she who is made terrible by her love for him).  And when he feels angry, inferior, or threatened, strange things happen.  Though it sounds like it, this book is not for children.  

I am not enough of a student of literature to say what genre this book fits into, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would call it something like Christian magical realism.  Lars has a special gift for writing engrossing stories which also contain many lessons, most of them about the faith.  

I urge you to start reading the books written by this talented and wise man.  Troll Valley at $2.99 is not a bad place to start.

A Son Speaks to His Non-Famous Author Father

My short introduction to political thought will come out this summer.  Andrew (9) had some concerns.

Andrew:  Did you dedicate this book to me and Grace like you did the first one?

Me:  No, I dedicated this one to your mommy.  You’ve already had your dedication.

Andrew:  Yeah, but nobody at my school knows about your first book.  (He is referring to The End of Secularism.)

Me:  Well, the book wasn’t written for elementary school children.

Andrew:  None of my teachers know about it either.

Symmetry and Beauty

I read sometime ago that people’s perception of beauty in others has a lot to do with symmetry.  Sadly, I must report that I am sorely lacking by this reckoning.

My hairline has receded asymmetrically.  It goes further back on the right side than on the left.

One of my hips is higher than the other.

My smile is crooked and my canine teeth are almost vampire long.

I find it almost impossible to sit still and have a tendency to draw one leg up under me so as create a slanted look.

One eye is almost always more open than the other.

Amazingly, none of this bothers me terribly much,  for which I thank God for giving me perspective and my beautiful wife for possessing the feminine virtue of looking beneath the surface in evaluating a mate.

The Future of Higher Education

A colleague and I went to a presentation by Apple Computer on using their technology in higher education.  They showed us some things I’d seen before such as lectures by some of the most famous professors online for anyone to see.  My colleague was stunned and began to develop a view that higher education as we know it is over.  After all, if anyone can have access to the substance of an ultra-fine education whenever they want it, why have a multitude of institutions doing the work separately across the land?

I am less sure than my colleague that the revolution is on the horizon.  There are several reasons.  Just because someone can witness all the lectures from Verygood business school does not make them a Verygood business grad.  They don’t necessarily have the scores to get into Verygood business.  They won’t have spent a few years interacting with students in Verygood business.  Nor will they have had their work evaluated by Verygood business professors over a period of years.  If access to content were the whole ball game, then the profusion of good public libraries in the twentieth century would have spelled the end of higher education.  Content is NOT king in higher education.  Part of the answer is that education is about more than the information a professor can convey in a series of lectures.  Grades matter.  Class dynamics matter.  Class participation matters. Interaction with the professor matters.  Community matters.

The basic question remains, though.  Why can’t I just watch all the Verygood business lectures and then do my own homegrown projects and show up for a job interview with a portfolio I have compiled?  Isn’t it true that in the past many lawyers simply studied on their own and then took the bar?

Better yet, why don’t employers create their own schools to teach exactly what they want and then recruit students out of high school to attend?  Why doesn’t Apple have an Apple Institute full of teachers of all things relevant to making Apple great and profitable?

The answer on both counts is that the current system makes life easier for employers.  Sure, human resources departments could look at the entirely self-taught individual’s portfolio and try to make a judgment as to his or her skill.  But it is much easier (and you will never go broke betting on easy) to find a recognizable credential and filter out the ones who have it for further consideration.  College and university degrees provide a time-saving way to evaluate large numbers of applicants.  The same is true of a law school class rank, for example.  A firm might weed people out by considering only graduates in the top 15% of their class.

And why doesn’t Apple run its own college or school?  Why should the shareholders of Apple foot the bill for such an exercise when they can sit back and wait for lots of promising young people to graduate (at their own expense) so they can skim the cream with no more cost than what it takes to recruit and evaluate?

No, higher education is not dead simply because the content is easy to access for potential do-it-yourselfers.  Nor is it going to be replaced by expensive institutes run by employers for employers.  They would rather students pay and they pick the winners afterwards.