Blegging Michael Simpson

Michael, you know a lot more about Christian Democracy than I do. How about putting up a post about it? I’d be particularly interested in whether you think a Christian Democrat party might emerge in the U.S. and what such a party might look like. To me, it looks like the potential third party that would have the best shot possible at becoming one of the two big guys or at maybe holding place as a third party.

Wouldn’t such a party have a strong chance of holding together a coalition with people like Jim Wallis and James Dobson in the same structure? Wouldn’t it have a better shot at bringing in African-American Christians and maybe Hispanics, as well? It seems to me to have the capacity to do a lot better than Ross Perot ever did.

Valentine to the Memory of Jim Baen

I was happy to see this piece by Hal Colebatch on his association with James Baen, founder of Baen Books, who died in 2006.

My friend Lars Walker is a Baen author with three books published by that house.

His memories seem to be in accord with Mr. Colebatch’s, who writes about a man who performed a cultural service as an ex-hippie combatting the suicide of the West through the publication of sci-fi that elevated honor, duty, chivalry, patriotism, and military valor.

Colebatch also includes anecdotes about the personal affection Baen had for authors and illustrators. He was the kind of man who would guarantee future work (wow) to help talent get a mortgage and would give advances larger than those requested!

I once worked for a pharmacist who owned a little neighborhood apothecary. After my half year driving his truck around town and manning the cash register, he gave me a $500 check as a going away bonus. He knew I needed the money for getting set-up at graduate school. When he gave it to me, he said, “This isn’t a loan or a gift, it’s an obligation. When you see an opportunity to help someone who works for you or with you, then it will be your turn.” Jim Baen sounds a lot like my old pharmacist friend and I imagine he’s left a lot of obligations out there in the world that his friends will gladly fulfill.

The New Atheists

Interesting article from Gary Wolf in an unlikely source (Wired Magazine?) about ‘The New Atheists’, a group of non-believers seeking to inspire (evangelize just doesn’t seem appropriate) atheists everywhere to ‘come out of the closet’. The idea here being that: 1) there must be a great mass of people out there who call themselves agnostics when they are really atheists; 2) these people need to be mobilized in order to put down the destructive force of religion. Wolf, who identifies himself as part of their target market, takes the reader along for the ride on his own personal journey to discover whether he should respond to their call.

Wolf’s conversion adventure is centered around his interviews with three of the movement’s leading members – evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and philosopher Daniel Dennett. Each man world-renowned in his field; each with his own special point of emphasis in the reason and need for an un-revival. Yet, despite his favorable disposition towards their non-theistic foundations (along with an understanding of Christian apologetics so pathetic that it could only have come from its opponents), the call does not resonate with Wolf.

Wolf concludes:

“When prophets [i.e. the New Atheists] provoke real trouble, bring confusion to society by sowing reverberant doubts, spark an active, opposing consensus everywhere – that is the sign they’ve hit a nerve. But what happens when they don’t hit a nerve? There are plenty of would-be prophets in the world, vainly peddling their provocative claims. Most of them just end up lecturing to undergraduates, or leading little Christian sects, or getting into Wikipedia edit wars, or boring their friends. An unsuccessful prophet is not a martyr, but a sort of clown.

“Where does this leave us, we who have been called upon to join this uncompromising war against faith? What shall we do, we potential enlistees? Myself, I’ve decided to refuse the call. The irony of the New Atheism – this prophetic attack on prophecy, this extremism in opposition to extremism – is too much for me.”

But why does he arrive at this conclusion? Despite the gaping holes he pokes in the arguments of Dawkins, Harris and Dennett (one wonders if there might there be more:), it’s not as if Wolf is about to lose his faith in the non-existence of God (…if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous…).

But perhaps I should stay quiet, maybe even relieved or grateful for his conclusion. Perhaps he is serious about his agnosticism, and is genuinely open to the possibility that God exists.

Or perhaps he has discovered that it is just easier to shut down the investigation there and remain in a position that is extremist in its own right – one that requires no defense and nothing of you. He can have it; sounds a little too much for me.

Christian Democrat Party USA?

There never has been a need in the United States for a Christian political party because avowedly anti-Christian forces have been historically rare. Instead, we’ve had a continual alliance between moderate Enlightenment thinkers and Christians who have had similar agendas.

I sometimes wonder whether it is this coalition that is under more strain than the one between conservatives and libertarians that everyone talks about.

I also sometimes wonder whether the United States will ever see the emergence of a Christian Democrat party of the kind we see so frequently in Europe, though the U.S. version would surely be a tad more laissez-faire simply because of the American heritage. Such a party in the U.S. would be pro-life, pro-traditional family (through promotion rather than making alternatives illegal, probably), pro-modest welfare state tied to moral requirements, and soft on immigration. It would come down more or less in the center of American politics economically with a rightward tilt socially. I suspect it would also be typically pro-Israel given the sympathies of the great majority of American Christians.

There are a few fellows working on the Christian Democrat United States version on the web. For an interesting thought experiment as much as anything else, check ‘em out at www.cdusa.org.

(This fella off to the right is Abraham Kuyper, former university professor, newspaperman, prime minister of the Netherlands, and probably not a bad mascot for Christian Democracy.)

Bow Before the Worldwide Leader . . . in Sports!

ESPN is, as it likes to tell you over and over, the Worldwide Leader in Sports (TM). And they don’t mind leaning on you a little to establish it.

I was listening to Colin Cowherd, who I can’t stand but is the only thing going at 10-12 noon in Athens, GA, talk to Kirk Herbstreit about tonight’s national title game.

They bemoaned the fact the game was spaced out so far beyond the other bowls. I agree. They said the game had lost momentum. Again, I agree.

But here’s the kicker. Herbstreit suggested that people weren’t as interested as they might be in the title game between Florida and Ohio State because it was a Fox property rather than an ABC/ESPN production. He and Cowherd then went on to discuss how maybe in successive years BCS bowls would consider that ESPN/ABC might not give as much coverage to events that aren’t owned by the Worldwide Leader and that therefore the games not under that rubric might suffer a disability in publicity.

I’m not sure they realized how much they sounded like the kind of Evil Monopolists that made Teddy Roosevelt wanna bust trusts like a soft-spoken bad boy with a big stick.

My Bold Prediction for 2007-2008: Obama Fever Unstoppable

Barack Obama is going to be the presidential nominee for the Democrats without breaking a sweat. He is going to win the presidency of the United States, too.

I had this feeling about Bill Clinton well before he became the frontrunner. Obama’s going to make it look easy. The guy is an absolute master at sounding like the perfect moderate while simultaneously voting party line left-wing liberal. Thus, he shall be loved and lauded by the press and pushed by the party hungry to retake the White House.

Obama will also make a major impact on religious voters. Despite his voting record, Obama has mastered the valentine to persons of faith. He goes out of his way to show he does not share the secularistic contempt of the faithful even if he does share the secularists’ voting record. He’s going to get ALL the Jim Wallis-Tony Campolo types and a good chunk of the “emergent” Evangelicals as well.

This guy could have a gay lover scandal followed by falling into a pile of horse manure all before a 10 a.m. campaign stop and still be our next president.

The only thing that could stop him would be another 9-11 type disaster on American soil, which would make Rudy the next occupant of the White House.