The Big Hollywood blogger and actor Adam Baldwin, recently of the television series Chuckand Firefly, has taken up his virtual pen to defend Britt Hume from those who have criticized him for suggesting that Tiger Woods should consider Christianity in his time of crisis. Hume made the statement on Fox News Sunday, thus prompting outrage from secularists who find such an offering offensive and irrelevant.
Baldwin scores several times in his blog piece. Here is the foundation:
As an avid golfer, Christian man, and therefore a witness to the historic fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Mr. Hume clearly offered his message in good faith with honest concern for both Tiger’s future and for that of his family, friends, fans and business associates.
Look carefully at what Baldwin has written. Britt Hume believes Christianity is true and is based on an actual historical event. He is not adverting to some mystery religion (reach for the seventh level, Tiger), but is instead giving advice every bit as practical, or perhaps more so, than urging Mr. Woods to seek marital counseling or to find a good attorney.
This is what secularists simply do not understand. They think Christianity is “inaccessible” to others. It is not. You can accept it or reject it, but there is no reason for confusion. The basis of the faith is quite clear. Either you accept the evidence that the resurrection of Christ actually occurred in time and space or you do not. In no case should you accuse the Christian of hitting you with a bunch of magical mysteriousness that you cannot possibly understand.
You should really consider reading the entire post. Baldwin completely exposes the inappropriateness and unfairness of the comparisons of sincere Christianity to Jihad and deftly analyzes the pretensions of secularism. I could try to summarize, but would just end up reproducing his essay.
Oprah Winfrey has had a massive impact on America, particularly on American women during the last two decades. She went from being something of an undifferentiated talker to being a sophisticated promoter of all the things she found interesting as her own possibilities broadened exponentially.
The journey has encompassed weight loss, healthy eating, exercise, Toni Morrison, new fiction novelists, Dr. Phil, the spiritualist Eckhart Tolle, and, of late, Dr. Mehmet Oz. When the book recommendations led to a couple of controversies, including one author preferring not to be recommended, she switched to a pure diet of more enduring volumes by authors like James Steinbeck.
She is on a ride. She takes her audience with her on television, in magazines, and anywhere else she chooses to go.
My wife, a devout Christian, has often expressed her own desire that Oprah discover Jesus Christ. From time to time I have thought about this. If I wanted Oprah to turn her attention to Christianity on the chance that it might leave a lasting impression, who would be the best person to speak to her about it.
I think I would choose John Eldredge for the task. There is much about his presentation that might resonate with her. First, he is an actor who gives voice to his faith with charisma, passion, and verve. Second, he cuts straight to the heart, talking about the pain we all feel in life and referring to our relationship with God as a romance. Finally, he upholds the very serious idea that we can be in communication with God, that we can feel his presence in our lives.
John needs to invite Oprah and her friends out to Colorado for one of his famous retreats.
We founded the journal as something of an evangelical First Things a couple of years ago and the response has been fantastic throughout.
Here’s a clip from the article:
At this relatively early stage, most of the examination takes place not in the public square but on the campuses of evangelical colleges and in Christian publications, and much of the discussion is about the nature of the evangelical mind. This is seen most clearly in Houston Baptist University’s new publication The City. Its winter 2008 issue featured an essay by a young evangelical writer named Matthew Lee Anderson titled “The New Evangelical Scandal.” Mr. Anderson suggests that though new evangelicals are marked by a shift away from the ethos of their parents’ generation—including moralism, political partisanship and anti-intellectualism—the change is not as drastic as some have come to think and is actually just “version 2.0 of the seeker-sensitive movement: it’s trendier, better dressed, and more open to conversation.” The scandal, Mr. Anderson suggests, is that the perceived shift occurring among younger evangelicals is more a matter of expression than substance.
My friend Ben Domenech and I founded The City together at Houston Baptist University. He continues to be the dominant force in the production of that journal and has gone on to found a fantastic website on politics and finance called The New Ledger. I feel very honored that Ben has seen fit to post an interview with me about the book there. And like many conversations between old friends, this one makes for good listening.
I once checked out the HBO show Deadwood. It appeared to me to be an exercise in seeing how many times characters in a western themed drama could utter, mutter, or exclaim the f-word.
I am now watching TNT’s Men of a Certain Age. HBO apparently rejected it. The theory here seems to be that it will be interesting to have middle aged characters constantly using the d-word for a man’s anatomy as an insult.
Best interview yet with the guys from the White Horse Inn. If you are crunched for time, start it up around the 20 minute mark. Great questions. And great commentary from the guys after I go off the air. (Just click on The End of Secularism under the Listen Now header.)
The well-known evangelical theologian and historian John Stackhouse has added his name to the ranks of Christians who don’t find much to like about the Manhattan Declaration. There is a twist in this case, though. He isn’t complaining about the alliance between evangelicals and Catholics, for example. (Thank you, Lord.)
However, one of Dr. Stackhouse’s major objections is equally perplexing. While he declares himself to be pro-life and pro-traditional marriage, he believes the call to enshrine those positions in the law is “philosophically and politically incoherent” if one is simultaneously calling for religious liberty (which the signers of the Manhattan Declaration do).
Before writing those words, Stackhouse might at least have thought a few moments about who we’re talking about. Robert George is one of the main movers and shakers on this document. And he happens to be a very important political philosopher in the American academy.
Now, disagreeing with Robert George is never evidence that one is wrong. So what if Prof. George is a political philosopher of the top rank? He certainly could be guilty of holding a “philosophically and politically incoherent” view on something. Surely, he could. And perhaps Dr. Stackhouse would be the guy with the right cut in his jib to effectively point that out.
But let’s consider the claim. Does calling for religious liberty mean that one is disqualified from simultaneously attempting to make abortion illegal (to use one of his examples)?
I don’t think so. Let’s take the shortest route to dealing with this claim.
If embracing religious liberty means that we should never attempt to embody moral propositions into the law, then we should not embody religious liberty in the law because it is a moral proposition. A philosophy that leads to THAT result is incoherent. The person who argues for religious liberty AND for other moral propositions in the law is on pretty sound footing in the vast majority of instances.
But if that seems like a cheap shot, we can go further. Why do we value religious liberty? We value religious liberty because we believe human beings possess an inherent dignity that entitles them to certain rights. For a very large number of people, quite likely an absolute majority, our rights come from God. Because God gives us certain rights, it is not the place of the state to abrogate them. But regardless of whether we claim our rights come from God, we have embraced religious liberty as a right. It is in tension with other rights. It is not a trump card. We do not accept any religious claim that would require freedom to kill another human being, for example.
Another right that we believe human beings have is the right to life. It is very easy and requires no recourse to scripture to demonstrate that the unborn child is, indeed, a human being. Given what I’ve said so far, is it at all difficult to understand that one could say religious liberty does not entail a right to be free from legal consequences for killing an unborn child?
No, it isn’t difficult. There is no incoherency in arguing for both religious liberty and for the legal right to life of an unborn child.
I recently gave an interview to the Georgia Family Council (where I worked as a younger fellow) about my book for their website. Here is an excerpt I think might interest readers:
I wrote this book for a few reasons. I detected that the moment might be right for someone to lay out a very rigorous critique of secularism. While it was once plausible to people that secularism might be a good, neutral solution to the “problem” of religious difference, it is more difficult to believe the same today. Secularists embrace a competing orthodoxy and they pursue the fulfillment of it. They like to think of themselves as referees, but they are actually just another team on the field.
In addition, I felt the need to help secularists and Christians to get a better handle on what secularism is and why it is an inferior solution to the separation of church and state rightly understood. We don’t need to evict religion from the public square. We do need to keep the church financially independent of the state — primarily for the good of the church, which I demonstrate through the example of Sweden — but we don’t need to politely excuse our religious beliefs and thoughts when it comes to public debate over values. Religion matters in politics. You can’t get away from it and bad things happen when you try. The Christian faith has been and continues to be hugely influential in encouraging many of the best things about our culture. Christianity is part of why we care about things like liberty, equality, mercy, and the sanctity of life.
Explain what you mean by “secularism” and how has it affected our culture?
The word secular once had a perfectly good meaning. It meant “in the world.” So, by that understanding, the Catholic Church even had secular clergy. But we have transformed the old meaning of “secular” to a new conception which requires that religion retire from the public square. In essence, the idea is that we will all be better off if religion is private, like a hobby. The problem, especially for Christians, is that we believe the resurrection of Christ is a real event in time and space and that if that is true, then it has the potential to affect the way we look at almost everything. And I would argue that influence has been dramatically for the good.
To the extent we embrace secularism, and almost all of us do to some degree, we focus more on material things because that represents reality to us. In America, our materialism mostly manifests as consumeristic and hedonistic pursuits.
Does secularism have an effect on how society views marriage and family
Unquestionably. If you buy into a purely secular view, marriage is nothing special. It is merely a contract (and not a particularly strong one) that people undergo when they decide to pursue life together for a while. While it can be inconvenient and messy to dissolve that contract, nothing tragic has happened. There has been no violation of any larger law. God’s conception of marriage doesn’t enter in. In fact, maybe marriage is just a cultural artifact that an enlightened, secular government merely needs to tolerate until it can be transitioned away.
Of course, we have seen this kind of change in the way we view marriage. It’s not just the effort to expand the meaning of marriage. The larger problem is that the state no longer values marriage as it once did. There is no bias toward keeping the family together. We no longer have the same concern for how divorce will affect the well-being of children, this despite the wealth of social science evidence chronicling the negative impact.
On the other hand, if you believe marriage represents a special relationship, one ordained by God, then you have a real reason, both as an individual and as a citizen in a political community, to seek to preserve it. This view, long the dominant one in western civilization, reinforces our best instincts about the family. It also happens to be much more humane to children and promotes human flourishing.
My son, Andrew (age 7) has been reading way too much Pokemon and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The result has been an infusion of ideas and habits that aren’t necessarily all that helpful from a behavioral perspective.
Suddenly, I realized that maybe I, the scholar-father, should make sure he reads something GOOD. Brilliant, I know.
So, last night I introduced him to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I had him read the first chapter on his own. He liked it and accurately reported back what happened. I laid in bed with him and read the next couple of chapters. I could tell he liked it because he occasionally finished a sentence ahead of me in a voice of wonderment.
Around 8 pm, I left him in bed with his lamp on and a bookmark in the book (he doesn’t tolerate folded corners like his old man).
When I checked on him before retiring myself around 11 pm, I could tell he wasn’t really asleep. He knew that I knew and looked at me.
“Andrew, have you been up reading all this time?”
“I finished it.”
I asked him what character he liked the best. “Aslan,” he said, but pronounced it OS-LAHN.
Daddy couldn’t resist rubbing the secret late night reader on the head and feeling rather triumphant as he walked out the door.
It’s the end of the semester. A degree of giddiness creeps in.
My students and I have been working through the political systems of a variety of nations. Yesterday, we talked about China.
China is a wonderful subject because any professor not completely sold out to Marxist fantasy gains the license to speak judgmentally about Mao’s ridiculous policies of The Great Leap Forward (in which the nation stopped producing food and tried to manufacture steel in backyards) and The Cultural Revolution (in which Mao deputized snotty teenagers to force their elders into self-criticism for improper revolutionary thinking).
But the fun begins to subside as you approach the present day. I was explaining to the students that although the Chinese still have the Communist Party — and it is the only party permitted to operate — the nation has rejected communism. Instead, they engage in a form of state-sponsored capitalism.
I began to say that the U.S. embraces private capitalism versus this state-sponsored capitalism of the Chinese, but then I realized that would be inaccurate. The truth, I realized and said to the students, is that both nations engage in state-sponsored capitalism. But there is a key difference.
The Chinese government owns companies that make a profit. The United States government only owns companies that lose money.
And that is why they are loaning us money instead of the other way around.
I know a little boy who has developed some bad habits by reading funny books his father got him without thinking about the consequences of said little boy emulating the behavior of the main character.
We don’t need to go into who the boy is or who his father is. Let’s just say I have a friend!
I would very much like to buy this little boy some books featuring characters who are admirable and who would be great for him to emulate. Any good recommendations?
I am a person who occasionally receives free copies of books from publishers. They send them to me hoping I will comment upon them somewhere online. It has never occurred to me to attempt to sell any of these books.
When I wrote The End of Secularism, my publisher encouraged me to send them a list of influencers to whom they should send the book. I made out a list of about 75 people. I have been very pleased by the comments and reviews offered by many of these people. For example, I continue to be gratified that the New York Times bestselling author Andrew Klavan took the time to write about my book despite not knowing me or my work in advance. You can scroll down the page and see his review in the lower right corner.
I am less pleased with some of them.
Is this because they offered a negative review? No. What’s the problem, then?
As soon as the book became available, my Amazon page showed approximately 20 “new” copies available from third parties. I have a suspicion that some of the recipients of advance copies simply sold them to third parties for cash who then turned around and offered them for sale on Amazon. This is not exactly nice behavior.
If someone sends you an advance copy of their book and you don’t want to take the time to read it — which is understandable as many of us receive too many books to read — then don’t do the author the disservice of putting the free book up for sale and thus competing with their publisher. Do the kind thing which would be to find another person who is interested in the book and does want to read it and who might end up reviewing it.
At another blog, I posted the letter to the Financial Times where a college professor from India decried monotheism and declared the benevolent goodness of polytheism and its modern ally, secularism. The letter struck me as provocative and worth mentioning in its own right.
But now I think I see a connection.
Polytheism, of course, was the norm in the Roman Empire. The empire managed its many gods by uniting everyone in a common worship of the emperor. Worship as many gods as you like as long as you also worship the apotheosis of the state.
Secularism is, indeed, like polytheism in this sense. Have whatever religious sensibility you like as long as you recognize that your ultimate allegiance is to the secular state which is representative of the real world. Don’t ever let your religion get between you and the state. Keep it private. Keep it in hobby status.
Score one for the man from India.
When it comes to this issue, I unapologetically encourage you to read The End of Secularism. The more Christians (especially those of a pietistic bent who like to privatize their faith) who read it and understand it, the better equipped we will be to confront the creeping return of the rainbow assortment of gods frolicking beneath the banner of a state happy to tolerate them because they don’t count for much in the end.
I have been thinking a lot about the way we sell church-related goods and services.
I have been thinking about that and about Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers and sacrificial animal sellers in the temple.
The marketing inside the church has probably never been more feverish than it is today. Hollywood hires savvy Christian marketers to try to gin up interest in certain films among our demographic. We trademark little phrases for sale to Christians. I recently heard an acquaintance excitedly describe a system for integrating Prayer and Your Priorities. I shall not share the catchy name for this system so as to avoid smearing the person working on it. This results in a marketing platform for an inspirational book, a devotional, a daily planner for the system, calendars, sticky notes, etc. I imagine it will prove attractive for some Christian publishing house.
My question, though, is whether this is a wholesome thing for the church. As the author of a book, though not a super consumer-oriented one, I think about it all the time. For example, if called upon to preach at a local church, should I take along a box of books to sell at the end of the service? Should I even mention the book? Should I ask whoever introduces me to mention the book? Should we sell ANYTHING in the church?
The question is not as easy as it may appear. For example, the market instincts of new publishers spread Martin Luther’s work to a large audience. Without the printing press, Luther probably would have died as just another dissenter. Marketing and the honest profit motive are surely reasons why the Bible is as incredibly widely available as it is.
But the question remains. How far do we go in making a profit from the gospel of Jesus Christ? I don’t have a good answer.
We held a book signing at the university recently and a former dean bought my book. He sent me an email last night that meant as much to me as any endorsement so far. Here it is:
Hunter:
I have read your book and come away from the experience with two points of praise and one regret. The style is masterful and the logic is persuasive. It is the clearest exposition I have read of what secularism is, where and how it originated, and what constitutes its inherent limitations. It is a work I shall revisit. I admire your ability to address divisive issues with a clear command of your rhetorical tools. This is no small feat in an age given much more to heat than light.
My regret is related to the excellence of your work: I am sorry it was not available when I wrote [title withheld by me to protect his identity]. Had I known the work, I would have shifted some of my positions, particularly regarding the Reformation. Since I used to teach courses in the Enlightenment, I feel more sure of myself there and may be guilty of attributing things to the eighteenth century that more properly have their roots in the Reformers.
Now that I have had the pleasure of reading your work, may I impose on you the penance of reading mine? I’ll send you a copy unless you tell me otherwise.
Congratulations, Hunter. I am sure you will go on to write many other notable works.
I must confess I feel a special pride in seeing a fellow Morgan Countian [Editorial comment: It turns out he and I come from the same county in Alabama] produce such an impressive book!
Over at Justin Taylor’s blog, he offers a transcribed interview conducted with Ken Myers of the great Mars Hill Audio. I want to talk about this part:
Question: One of the arguments out there by what I am going to call a “high two-kingdoms view,” is that there is not a distinctively Christian way of doing “X” vocation, even that we should resist that because that would be to mix the kingdoms, and if you were to, for example (this would be the anti-Abraham Kuyper position), be a politician, your Christian thought should not come in. Could you interact with that a little?
Myers:First of all I would agree…I am a believer in natural law. Let me put it this way. Let me say for the sake of the argument that I’ll agree with that, there isn’t a distinctively Christian view of politics and art, or anything. But there is a distinctively human view; that is there are de-humanizing possibilities in those spheres; Christians we are necessarily humanists. That is, Christians are necessarily interested in sustaining the best for human beings as human beings.
What I take issue with, and not in a pugnacious way, is the statement that “there isn’t a distinctively Christian view of politics.” I feel quite certain there is such a thing. Contrast, for example, some of the Christian socio-political values that took the place of their Greco-Roman predecessors. Mercy becomes desirable rather than contemptible. The church becomes a brake upon the state’s unrighteousness rather than a servant of it (thinking Ambrose and Theodosius here). The exposure of unwanted children to the elements and wild beasts goes way, way out of style. The gladiator games cease. Constantine closes the courts on Sunday unless there is a slave to be set free. He ends the practice of branding criminals’ faces. We could go on. A Christian politics is a distinctive thing. I suspect we think it is not only because of the degree to which the world now accepts many of those ideas and values as the correct ones.
UPDATE: I want to make it plain that I am not necessarily trying to rebut Ken Myers so much as to go against the perspective he chooses to inhabit in the course of this particular interview. I don’t think he agrees with that position so much as he proposes it for the purpose of consideration.
A colleague recently mentioned that a wag had observed the church had failed to solve poverty, so why not let the federal government have a try?
I think it is interesting that anyone, such as the wag in question, could think that the federal government can effectively solve the problem of poverty. I don’t think it can because it resolutely refuses to confront the sources.
Really, truly, don’t we know the cause of a great deal of the poverty in our midst? Here’s a hint: Adam Smith thought the poor who gravitated to the fiery preachers were wise. Why? Because the hell and brimstoners alone preached the doctrines that might prevent the poor from the catastrophic consequences of things like losing their jobs and money on liquor and gambling.
I can recall having lunch with Micah Watson, a colleague who teaches at Union, and he was talking about the trouble Jackson, TN has with some of its public schools. He said something that stuck. He said, “Many families in our school district lack the cultural capital to succeed.”
And he is right. Anyone who looks at the research in a dispassionate way will discover that people who do just a few things will almost never live in poverty. Those few things are that they will graduate from high school, get married, and delay childbearing until after marriage. If you do that, you will probably not spend your life below the poverty line.
Going a little further you will also find that children who come from intact, two parent families are significantly more likely to do better in school, to have fewer behavioral problems, to commit fewer crimes, to stay out of jail, to avoid sexual and physical abuse, and to stay off of public assistance than are their peers from broken homes or from single parent homes. These things are true even if you control for race.
For some reason, and I would argue that it is partially because of our silly secular mindset that favors avoiding moralism, we are unwilling to embody some of this knowledge in our public policy. When President Bush suggested that maybe we just might consider trying to encourage marriage among the poor, protest erupted. It was the same old thing, theocracy, blah, blah, blah . . . For some reason the morality that extends welfare to poor people is perfectly fine while the morality that would gently urge them toward the things that help human beings flourish is threatening and terrible and ultra-religious.
Does the church do enough? It does not, but I would argue that in part we fail to combat the problem of poverty adequately in the church because we think the duty has been subcontracted out to the state. The larger the state becomes, the less air is left in the community space for everyone else, especially the church because we buy into the idea of a secular state. (This is a point I talk about, by the way, in The End of Secularism.) The state eats up both resources and social influence. The system does not realize it has a soul, or if it does it is busy trying to kill it.
Machiavelli’s succinct and semi-diabolical advice to the prince is one of the most enduring works of political philosophy in the world. This man, writing in a time roughly contemporaneous with the Reformation, was less concerned with seeking the will of God than with winning at all costs. I wrote about him in my book The End of Secularism.
He is famous for advising the prince that it is important to appear honest, humane, religious, faithful, and charitable, but that it is equally important the prince be ready to abandon any of those attributes when opportunity presents itself. The prince should not worry about whether he will gain a bad reputation for deception, because, as Machiavelli suggests, there are always ordinary people willing to be deceived and the world is FULL of ordinary people.
The primary thrust of the book is advice about how to gain principalities and to maintain control of them. Many things work to a prince’s advantage, such as traditions of servitude and customs that reinforce the reign of a prince. But there is one thing that puts sand in the princely engine and grinds things to a halt. That thing is a tradition of liberty. If a people are accustomed to liberty, Machiavelli writes, then they will never stop trying to regain it. Even if they haven’t had it for a hundred years, the ancestral memory of liberty will be overpoweringly strong. It may be so strong that no manipulative device of the prince will be able to defeat it and he may have no other option than to destroy such a city.
Might I suggest to you that on Tuesday night we saw Americans in New Jersey and Virginia issue notice that they are not prepared to trade their liberty for hyper-statism and that they are not ready to become Europeans, always more subservient to the state than we have been, instead of free citizens of a great republic? The tradition of liberty is one of the greatest weapons we have in this struggle.
When William F. Buckley thought about the possible triumph of the United States in the Cold War, he imagined that American children would someday be thankful that “the blood of their fathers ran strong.” Let our blood, too, run strong with the cherished memory of our past and present liberty.
As I may have mentioned earlier, I grew up with Catholics on my mother’s side and the Church of Christ on my father’s side. Not exactly a recipe for happy relations. For the record, the Catholics were more gracious about it. I found the tension painful, difficult, and unnecessary and thus tried to avoid religion as a young person.
The Hound of Heaven got to me, anyway, while at college in Tallahassee, Florida. A story for another time.
Although my parents now go to the Southern Baptist church, my mother still bears the imprint of her Catholic upbringing and relates easily on religious matters to her brothers and sisters. I went through a period at the beginning of this century where I thought I might convert to Catholicism. Yet, here I am, still evangelical and probably not changing, although my mentor Francis Beckwith has crossed the Tiber.
Though I feel pretty settled as an evangelical — and the Reformation is part of why I feel that way — I do not understand why something like the claimed appearance of Mary at Fatima would be so disturbing. We are talking about a woman who, if scripture is to be believed, bore the son of God in her womb. We embrace the thought that God does everything for a reason. And for some reason he chose her. There is something I am missing, probably something obvious. Someone on this list will tell me why I should find the purported appearance of Mary more unsettling than I do.
What is it exactly that is so objectionable about the claim that she appeared to some children? I readily admit that I am not a theologian, but am instead more of a religio-political analyst. My many Catholic relatives may be blinding me, too. I just don’t see it.
What I can tell you is that I went to Mother Angelica’s beautiful church in Hanceville, Alabama a few years ago with my aunt and uncle, both of whom fit the old description of being more Catholic than the pope. (My uncle, a good and godly man, died of an agressive brain tumor earlier this year. He was the kind of man who wrote encouraging letters to prisoners.) I sat in that place on a wooden pew and heard cloistered nuns (out of sight behind a screen) sing the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life. Even now, I can feel the sensation of it, vibrating into my soul.
What grieved me at that time and in that place was not whatever feeling those people had about Mary, but that I could not take communion with them because they did not wish it so. Though I claimed Christ, just as they did, I was a separated brethren who could not share the sacrament.
The division of the church scandalizes me, especially in the world we live in. Part of the reason we lost as much as we did in American culture is because the Protestants worried more about “Romanism” than they did about secularism.
I wish I could see the Reformation’s end in sight, in a way that would somehow satisfy us all.
I’ve recently joined an evangelical group blog at First Things. Think of it as The Corner for evangelicals. So far, things are going swimmingly. Lots of activity. Joe Carter started us off by asking for a definition of an evangelical. Here’s my entry:
When I became a Christian at Florida State University at the end of the eighties, I encountered a different kind of Christian from the ones I knew as a southerner from Alabama.
Growing up, virtually everyone was some kind of churchgoer whether they were Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, Catholic, etc. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. It was just a default. To me, going to church was simply something people did. My family did it more or less often over time. Catholics, like my mom’s family, had stained glass, candles, and statues. The Church of Christ, like my dad’s people, worshipped in spare chapel rooms with acapella singing. ”There is pow’r! Pow’r! Wonder working pow’r!”
The Christians I met at Florida State through Intervarsity were faithful and committed to a real relationship with Christ well before any denominational identity came into view. We didn’t spend a lot of time debating differences in Christian flavors. We talked about knowing Christ and his Lordship in our lives. To me, it was endlessly interesting and challenging. The first time I heard the word “evangelical” it was IVCF’s sister organization, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).
Over time, I began to hear the word “evangelical” more frequently. I associated it with liking C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Wheaton College. I ended up marrying a girl in a classic evangelical family.
It is fascinating to read what other people have to say about the book (The End of Secularism). So far, all the reviewers seem to like it. Some show unconditional positive regard. Others emphasize what they like or don’t like. It seems to hit different people different ways.
For any would be reviewers who are curious, here’s what I’d say up front.
1. The End of Secularism is not a prediction so much as it is an argument for secularism to retire as a supposedly neutral philosophy.
2. The book is designed to make the average reader much more aware of the complexity of the question of religion and politics. A simplistic separation approach doesn’t really do anyone much good.
3. The book is a critique of secularism much more than it is a proposal for a great system of Christian thought. I’m trying to tear one house down in the effort to clear space for a new one.
4. If you take anything away from the book, please pay attention to my arguments about the nature of science and the inadequacy of science as a basis for political thought. To me, this was one of the places where my critique strikes the deepest.
5. Understand the separation of church and state. Support the separation of church and state. DO NOT let it morph into secularism, which goes much too far.
And by the way, the talented Matt Lee Anderson has reviewed the book. I really respect his work and have enjoyed much of what he has written. You can see it here. He focuses the heavy beams on my critique of secular neutrality, but I think other parts of the book are equally important, maybe more so.
Andrew Klavan has been my favorite writer of thrillers for several years now and has provided some of the best reading moments I’ve ever enjoyed. His books have been made into films starring Michael Douglas and Clint Eastwood. He also happens to be a conservative who writes sympathetically about Christianity.
Anyone who works in the writing business will understand: I don’t have time to read books sent or lent to me unrequested. What with informational reading, professional reading and reading for my craft and spirit, even books I want to get to sometimes have to wait as long as a year.
Plus I don’t remember ever having met Hunter Baker of Houston Baptist University so I don’t know why he had his publisher send me his new book The End of Secularism. But I’m startled to report I glanced at it while laying it aside, then picked it up again, then read it through. This is a very well written, concise and learned primer on the secularization of the public square. It gives a fair recital of the arguments in favor of it, and a strong but sensible and moderate outline of the arguments against. It has a firm grasp of history and neither falls for the usual “This is a Christian country!” rhetoric that makes its way onto television nor accepts the “separation of church and state,” pieties that were rendered obsolete by the state’s aggressive intrustion into what Dr. Baker calls “the life-world,” ie. our values and private lives. It’s a book you’ll be glad you read the next time you get in an argument about religion’s role in politics.
I wish I had time to write a full review of this book in a respectable venue (as opposed to this Blog of Ill Repute!). I just don’t. But if anyone from First Things or World Magazine or even the Weekly Standard or NRO is skulking through here and sees this, I think the book is well worth discovering.
In some of the most compelling parts of the book, Baker turns a scathing critique on the secularist movement itself, and in particular, its claims to take a solely neutral and scientific approach toward social and political science. If the secularists really employ the scientific method in sociology, where do they even come up with their cardinal rule of the equality of every person? Certainly not by scientifically quantifying the potential and actual achievements of each individual. In reality, they are on entirely borrowed ground. “If we are equal,” Baker wisely notes, “it is almost surely in the sense of being equal before God, because we are in fact equal in virtually no other way” (p. 177, emphasis original).
A big thank you to Nathan Pitchford for his very perceptive reading of the book.
And by the way, if you are looking for a place to buy The End of Secularism, then here it is.
The point has been made by outstanding thinkers like Stephen Carter and Richard John Neuhaus that the New York-Washington, D.C. establishment eats up left wing religion and declares it delicious. Give a radical a cross and we have activists bravely “speaking truth to power” and “speaking prophetically.” Put the cross in the hands of a conservative and suddenly secularism is the better course and church and state must be rigorously separated lest theocracy loom every closer.
I tried to draw attention to this double standard in my new book The End of Secularism by talking about both history and current events which prove the point. Mollie Ziegler Hemingway provided an excellent example in her Houses of Worship column for the Wall Street Journal last Friday as she reminded readers about the way faith-based initiatives have been viewed in this administration and its predecessor.
Bush filled the faith-based initiatives office with a prominent Ivy League sociologist and then with a former lawyer for Mother Theresa. Obama has chosen a Pentecostal preacher in his twenties to head up the office. Barry Lynn of the Americans for the Separation of Church and State was an avid critic of the Bush office. His position today? He serves on the advisory council’s task force for the office. Strangely, his concerns about the interaction of religion and politics seem to have dissolved now that the presidency has changed hands.
As I read Ms. Hemingway’s cutting piece, I couldn’t help but think about the Swedish socialists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were determined to destroy the tie between the nation’s church and state. Once they gained power, however, they had a change of heart. The church could prove useful under their enlightened leadership. I wonder if Barry Lynn feels the same way.
This was the first full contact review by a person who doesn’t know me at all.
Pretty exhilarating.
Layman is very complimentary of the book, particularly the first half where I review the history of church and state in the west and go through the American constitutional situation. He’s a bit less on board with me when I start talking about anti-foundationalism and the impact of postmodernism on the case for secularism. I think he says what Robert George would say, which is to suggest I should talk more about the case for our values than the weaknesses in secularism as a construct.
In my defense, I did what I set out to do, which was (as inspired by C. John Sommerville) to undercut secularism by being skeptical about it. It was more about deconstructing someone else’s castle than shoring up my own.
Still, a wonderful experience. And thank you to David Layman.
I admit that I saw the new Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds. Now that I’ve seen it, you don’t have to.
Inglourious Basterds is a cultural low point. It is the revenge fantasy of a poorly educated and completely unreflective thirteen year old. It is a jerky exercise in crudely manipulating the feelings of the audience in order to give them an excuse to hate the bad guys enough to want them brutally and cruelly dispatched.
I did hate the bad guys. But I hated some other things, too.
I hated the way the “good” guys acted.
I hated the way the film was put together.
I hated the extraordinarily hokey job of acting done by one Brad Pitt.
Let me dwell on that Brad Pitt issue for a second. He spends the entire movie oddly grimacing and occasionally growling out a line. Usually a cliche’. He is doing a bad impersonation of a cross between L’il Abner and R. Lee Ermey.
I think the theory of the film is that the Nazis are the one group of bad guys we can all agree were REALLY bad and therefore the audience will have the emotional permission needed to hate these men enough to unreservedly enjoy some completely gratuitous Hollywood graphic violence. I was unable to reach that level. I still had some reservations.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD.
The plot was a rip-off of the far superior The Dirty Dozen. You remember. All the big Nazis are going to be in one place. Let’s kill ‘em all while we have the chance. You’ve seen that movie before. Rest content. You don’t need to see it again.
Though Inglourious Basterds opened big, I don’t think it will carry over. I can’t imagine this film is going to capture many imaginations.
The innovation of this film is that you will see Nazi soldiers dispatched very cruelly and without any human feeling at all. You will see men scalped. You will see the survivors get swastikas carved into their foreheads. You will see a very large man nick-named The Bear Jew beat a Nazi soldier to death berserker-style with a baseball bat because the soldier will not divulge the location of his comrades. This is supposed to be very satisfying though the soldier passively takes the deathblows. Some in the audience cheered. I like seeing bad guys face terrible justice as much as the next guy. But it shouldn’t be filmed as the equivalent of a teenage wilding incident.
The film’s hook is that Brad Pitt and his Nazi hunters go about the countryside catching and killing Nazis. However, we don’t really get to know the men in the squad and most of their action is off camera or has already happened. The film is as much or more about a Jewish woman who survived the shooting of her family to escape into the countryside as it is about the “Basterds”. One has the notion that much of the footage that would help things make sense or help us to care has ended up on the cutting room floor. But one imagines that had to be the case because this is NOT a short film.
On the whole, I wish I’d seen G.I. Joe, instead. You know, the REAL American hero?
Well, the book by the same name is, anyway. The End of Secularism is now in stock at Amazon.com and should be available in stores, too. Help me, faithful readers.
I don’t think I’ll disappoint you. Francis Beckwith, David Dockery, Russell Moore (of Touchstone fame), Father Robert Sirico, Herb London, Jennifer Morse Roback, and Glenn Stanton all liked it. I hope you will, too.
“Secularism was supposed to have displaced religion before the end of the last century. It failed. Hunter Baker has done every Christian interested in a faithful life in the public square an immense favor. As an important and emerging young evangelical scholar and public thinker, Baker doesn’t cower at the seemingly imposing face of secularism but intelligently reads its vital signs and confidently declares its inherent weaknesses.”
Glenn T. Stanton, cultural researcher, speaker and author of Marriage on Trial and My Crazy Imperfect Christian Family.
Okay, I have revisited the glasses I received from Zenni. My conclusion is that the plastic frame glasses are still poor and the photochromic lenses do not work. However, the bendable titanium pair of glasses is quite good except for the fact that they failed to include the anti-glare lenses I paid for.
A few years ago, at a psychiatric convention, I ran into a girl with whom I studied medicine and with whom I interned in the Neurological Department of one of the municipal hospitals in Berlin. We met in a big hotel in Chicago. It was a most fortunate meeting and we were both overjoyed. We had not met for fourteen years, and had heard little of each other. She had the same halting, absent-minded way of speaking, as if she were always thinking of two things at a time. She looked older and there were lines in her face that had not been there before. There was so much we had to tell each other. While she spoke of her didactic psychoanalysis in Zurich, her marriage, her child, her practice, about mutual friends who had perished in Europe, I was asking myself: “Shall I tell, or shall I not tell?”
If I were to say to her, “Since we last met, I have become a Catholic,” it would be a statement entirely different from any other I could make. We both had many startling and unexpected things to tell; it could not be otherwise with two Jews who had parted in Germany in 1932 and met again in America in 1946. But the fact is that with that simple sentence, “I have become a Catholic,” there arises a cloud of estrangement. No matter how much one attempts to break this estrangement down to the elements of social or political separation, of prejudices from childhood, and so on, there is something additional which cannot be explained so easily. What is it?
While the conversation was as far removed as possible from speculations of this kind, I told her of this decisive event in my life. She paused for a moment and then said simply and shortly: “Oh!” Her polite exclamation contained a cosmic abyss. It is about this “Oh!” that this book is being written.
When I meet a friend with whom I used to work in the Zionist Youth Movement or in a group of radical students, I realize the extraordinary fact that, when we come to the bottom of things, I have not really departed from their ideals. There is a core to their beliefs which I still share with them. It is contained in my belief. What must appear to them as a betrayal, is to me a fulfillment. I still understand everything they are talking about, but they cannot possibly understand me. This is what makes these scenes, as human encounters and as meetings of friends, so agonizing. We talk about the Histatrut (the Labor Unions in Palestine), about the Poale Zion (left wing Zionism), the Kibbuz (the movement of cultivation of the land in Palestine, without private property), about my brother who lives as a teacher in one of those co-operative settlements, or of old friends who were killed as Trotskyites, as Social Democrats, or simply as Jews — and then it comes.
“What has happened to you?”
“I have become a Christian.”
Some of my friends even pale and their pupils dilate. A common world falls asunder.
Okay, I finally got my glasses from Zenni Optical. Ultra-long wait. Crappy glasses. The photochromic lens on one pair barely changes in the sun. Barely enough to notice. The other pair was ordered with anti-reflective coating. They don’t have anti-reflective coating. Low price gets you big hassle and low, low quality.
On the other hand, I ordered a pair from 39dollarglasses.com and they are spectacular. Great pair of glasses. High quality frames. Great worksmanship. Highly recommended.
I came across this piece in my personal archives and thought it might be worth running here. I was thinking along these lines because my pastor asked me to preach about the sanctity of life this week in church.
I never learned about William Wilberforce in my twelve years in the public school system. Neither did I run into him in any of my history courses at a large state university. It wasn’t until my summer associate work at Prison Fellowship during law school that I learned anything about the man who ended the slave trade in what was then the most powerful nation on earth.
I recently saw Amazing Grace, which is the story of the British politician’s drive to end the slave trade in the world’s greatest superpower within his lifetime. The film was impressive, both artistically and in its emotional impact. Wilberforce’s story brings you within the power of a quest for justice. You can literally feel the passion to save the Africans from the brutality of the slave trade and the tremendous frustration of Wilberforce and his group as they are blocked at every turn. Stress, anguish, and overwork led Wilberforce to ruin his health battling against the hold of slavery on his culture and its conception of economic interest.
This film is needed today. One of our great debates as we talk about sacred and secular America is whether the Christian faith has anything to say about public policy. Does Christianity have anything to do with the social order or is it purely a “heart religion” that the individual should work out only on his own or behind church walls?
Wilberforce answered those questions decisively in favor of a publicly relevant faith working hard against injustice. He thought a compartmentalized Christianity was a sign of spiritual bankruptcy. Wilberforce’s dedication to Christ and his fellowship with a group of like-minded believers unconcerned about damaging their standing in a slavery-minded society led him and his Clapham sect to mount a tireless decades long assault on the barbarism of the slave trade and then chattel slavery.
Those who wish to understand how Christians can make a difference in their society would do well to study the model of William Wilberforce. He and his friends lived close together in Christian community, but they were not exclusive. They welcomed everyone and engaged in a great deal of hospitality, particularly toward members of Parliament. They took prayer and Bible study seriously. And they endeavored to seriously work out the implications of the Christian faith for politics, economics, social welfare, etc.
To make what may be an obvious connection, Amazing Grace caused me to think about abortion. When I became a Christian in college, I began to be exposed to the case for ending the practice of abortion. Over time, I grew strong in the conviction that abortion ended a human life, that it was violent and barbaric, and that all possible steps should be taken to prohibit the procedure.
Law school took my feelings to a new level. A barely tolerable, white-hot fire rose up in my heart. I read Roe v. Wade carefully and concluded (with most of the intellectually honest legal world) that it was a travesty of cut and paste scholarship. Looking into that case damages one’s faith in the court. Blackmun went home to Minnesota, spent some time in the library studying the question, and then popped out an opinion that got everything wrong, particularly the history of abortion and law in the West. (In retrospect, I’m not sure you can blame him. The forces wanting to legalize abortion had done the recent historical work on the question. It’s only been after Roe that critics have picked apart his many questionable assertions.)
During that time, I decided that if I spent the rest of my life ramming my head against the law of legalized abortion it would be acceptable. I read about people who gave their lives to abortion protest. I regretted the fact that I was married because that meant it would be unfair to my wife for me to get arrested on a regular basis. I wrote a law review article on the topic where I took my best swings at Roe. I became a state-level policy director and lobbyist working, among other things, to require a period of reflection before any abortion could be performed. I testified before legislative committees. I argued the question of the law and the state of the current jurisprudence. I wept with a combination of sadness and rage when I listened to a young black woman report the nightmares she’d had since her abortion. “My son comes to me in my dreams and asks me why I did it.” My feelings about the injustice of abortion and what I felt were the misrepresentations of the pro-choice advocates sometimes led to incredibly dark moods.
When you feel there is an injustice that happens every day, multiple times a day, dripping like a faucet, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to prevent it, the anger and frustration can be tremendous. I eventually dealt with it by distancing myself from the problem. I intellectualized and played the game so many conservatives play by backing off from the world and coolly observing its troubles.
I vote pro-life. I write pro-life. But it’s been a long time since I participated in any rallies, followed the issue very closely, or thought about what I could do to drive the cause forward. I backed off because I got hurt.
All this reflection takes me back to Wilberforce and why he was a great man. Wilberforce drove forward for a couple of decades. He struggled and fought and never allowed himself to stop caring and working. He knew exactly, through hard experience, what Paul meant when he exhorted us to keep the faith. And in the end, he achieved his object. The slave trade ended in the British empire and so did slavery, in part because Wilberforce endured familiarity with injustice.
I never learned about William Wilberforce in my twelve years in the public school system. Neither did I run into him in any of my history courses at a large state university. It wasn’t until my summer associate work at Prison Fellowship during law school that I learned anything about the man who ended the slave trade in what was then the most powerful nation on earth.
I recently saw Amazing Grace, which is the story of the British politician’s drive to end the slave trade in the world’s greatest superpower within his lifetime. The film was impressive, both artistically and in its emotional impact. Wilberforce’s story brings you within the power of a quest for justice. You can literally feel the passion to save the Africans from the brutality of the slave trade and the tremendous frustration of Wilberforce and his group as they are blocked at every turn. Stress, anguish, and overwork led Wilberforce to ruin his health battling against the hold of slavery on his culture and its conception of economic interest.
This film is needed today. One of our great debates as we talk about sacred and secular America is whether the Christian faith has anything to say about public policy. Does Christianity have anything to do with the social order or is it purely a “heart religion” that the individual should work out only on his own or behind church walls?
Wilberforce answered those questions decisively in favor of a publicly relevant faith working hard against injustice. He thought a compartmentalized Christianity was a sign of spiritual bankruptcy. Wilberforce’s dedication to Christ and his fellowship with a group of like-minded believers unconcerned about damaging their standing in a slavery-minded society led him and his Clapham sect to mount a tireless decades long assault on the barbarism of the slave trade and then chattel slavery.
Those who wish to understand how Christians can make a difference in their society would do well to study the model of William Wilberforce. He and his friends lived close together in Christian community, but they were not exclusive. They welcomed everyone and engaged in a great deal of hospitality, particularly toward members of Parliament. They took prayer and Bible study seriously. And they endeavored to seriously work out the implications of the Christian faith for politics, economics, social welfare, etc.
To make what may be an obvious connection, Amazing Grace caused me to think about abortion. When I became a Christian in college, I began to be exposed to the case for ending the practice of abortion. Over time, I grew strong in the conviction that abortion ended a human life, that it was violent and barbaric, and that all possible steps should be taken to prohibit the procedure.
Law school took my feelings to a new level. A barely tolerable, white-hot fire rose up in my heart. I read Roe v. Wade carefully and concluded (with most of the intellectually honest legal world) that it was a travesty of cut and paste scholarship. Looking into that case damages one’s faith in the court. Blackmun went home to Minnesota, spent some time in the library studying the question, and then popped out an opinion that got everything wrong, particularly the history of abortion and law in the West. (In retrospect, I’m not sure you can blame him. The forces wanting to legalize abortion had done the recent historical work on the question. It’s only been after Roe that critics have picked apart his many questionable assertions.)
During that time, I decided that if I spent the rest of my life ramming my head against the law of legalized abortion it would be acceptable. I read about people who gave their lives to abortion protest. I regretted the fact that I was married because that meant it would be unfair to my wife for me to get arrested on a regular basis. I wrote a law review article on the topic where I took my best swings at Roe. I became a state-level policy director and lobbyist working, among other things, to require a period of reflection before any abortion could be performed. I testified before legislative committees. I argued the question of the law and the state of the current jurisprudence. I wept with a combination of sadness and rage when I listened to a young black woman report the nightmares she’d had since her abortion. “My son comes to me in my dreams and asks me why I did it.” My feelings about the injustice of abortion and what I felt were the misrepresentations of the pro-choice advocates sometimes led to incredibly dark moods.
When you feel there is an injustice that happens every day, multiple times a day, dripping like a faucet, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to prevent it, the anger and frustration can be tremendous. I eventually dealt with it by distancing myself from the problem. I intellectualized and played the game so many conservatives play by backing off from the world and coolly observing its troubles.
I vote pro-life. I write pro-life. But it’s been a long time since I participated in any rallies, followed the issue very closely, or thought about what I could do to drive the cause forward. I backed off because I got hurt.
All this reflection takes me back to Wilberforce and why he was a great man. Wilberforce drove forward for a couple of decades. He struggled and fought and never allowed himself to stop caring and working. He knew exactly, through hard experience, what Paul meant when he exhorted us to keep the faith. And in the end, he achieved his object. The slave trade ended in the British empire and so did slavery, in part because Wilberforce endured familiarity with injustice.
At Houston Baptist University, we’ve started up a really nice partnership with John Mark Reynolds and Wheatstone Academy to offer Christian worldview programming for high school students during the summer. If you live in or around Houston and have a student who could use (or would enjoy!) an intellectual boot camp for the faith, this is it. The program goes from July 26 to August 1. The cost is $850 and is all inclusive of food, lodging, events, etc.
This is exactly what your student needs before going to college, especially if you will be sending them off to a state school.
Ironically, after centuries of rebelling against religious authority, the coming of Islam is also reviving political issues most thought extinct in Europe, including debates about the limits of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to proselytize. And in all these areas, controversies that originate in a Muslim context inexorably expand or limit the rights of Christians, too. If Muslim preachers who denounce gays must be silenced, then so must charismatic Christians. At the same time, any laws that limit blasphemous assaults on the image of Mohammed must take account of the sensibilities of those who venerate Jesus.
The result has been a rediscovery of the continent’s Christian roots, even among those who have long disregarded it, and a renewed sense of European cultural Christianity. Jürgen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.” Europe may be confronting the dilemmas of a truly multifaith society, but with Christianity poised for a comeback, it is hardly on the verge of becoming an Islamic colony.
I ordered from Zenni Optical over a month in advance of a vacation so I would be sure to have new glasses and sunglasses. Calling to cancel after a wait of nearly a month now, I got the most unsympathetic customer service person I have EVER encountered. She informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I COULD NOT have a refund and COULD NOT cancel the order. The glasses had been made, she said, so there was no turning back.
I protested at my long wait and asked whether anything might be done to get me my glasses. She said, NO, and added the glasses would be shipped six days from now and then would take an additional 8-9 days! I then asked if they could do anything for me to make up for the inconvenience. Again, the answer was NO. I pointed out that nothing on the web site suggests an order should take more than three weeks. She said that was just a suggested time to wait.
I hung up with the Zenni customer service woman giving no ground whatsoever and suggesting nothing to help. I decided to call again about an hour later. The new customer service rep was wary of me because he could see I’d called earlier. I was not belligerent at all. Those of you who know me, know that. He was more pleasant, but equally unable to propose any solution. He said, as various agents of the company have at certain points, that one pair included a photochromic lens and that was holding things up. (After dealing with Zenni, I am near concluding that putting a photochromic layer on a pair of glasses may be harder than developing a nuclear bomb. In fact, I am certain Iran has not been able to break the photochromic glasses barrier!) Trying to improve my own situation and be my own customer service rep, I suggested that they send me the glasses without the photochromic lens and THEN send the photochromic pair when they are completed. In other words, break up the order and send as available. Amazon has done that for me from time to time without even being asked. He put me on hold and managed to win assent to the proposition. He said it would be done, but didn’t sound confident and said I should call back if I haven’t heard anything in a couple of days.
As a professor, I have to give Zenni a grade of FAIL. We’ll see if they can get their paper in late and manage a re-appraisal to a grade of barely adequate minus.
Okay, I posted a while back that I had ordered two great pairs of prescription eye glasses from Zenni Optical for a low price and that I fully expected a great success.
So far, it isn’t working. We are now three and a half weeks out from the order and I still have no glasses. I am significantly bummed. Though I called at various points and was told it took longer because one of the pairs had a photochromic lens, I finally got an honest person last night who told me there was no status update from the lens shop and that he couldn’t say when I’d get the glasses. Then, I got an email this morning making excuses about quality problems and promising that I would eventually get a confirmation of shipping.
I wrote back with an ultimatum. Promise me that I get the glasses by this Friday or the order is canceled.
At this point, I can’t recommend Zenni Optical. I may try another online vendor before I go back for another price whupping from Lenscrafters.
This ambitious work offers one of the most comprehensive attacks on secularism yet attempted. Hunter Baker argues that advocates of secularism misunderstand the borders between science, religion, and politics and cannot solve the problem of religious difference.
University scholars have spent decades subjecting religion to critical scrutiny. But what would happen if they turned their focus on secularism? Hunter Baker seeks the answer to that question by putting secularism under the microscope and carefully examining its origins, its context, its claims, and the viability of those claims.
The result of Baker’s analysis is The End of Secularism. He reveals that secularism fails as an instrument designed to create superior social harmony and political rationality to that which is available with theistic alternatives. Baker also demonstrates that secularism is far from the best or only way to enjoy modernity’s fruits of religious liberty, free speech, and democracy. The End of Secularism declares the demise of secularism as a useful social construct and upholds the value of a public square that welcomes all comers, religious and otherwise, into the discussion. The message of The End of Secularism is that the marketplace of ideas depends on open and honest discussion rather than on religious content or the lack thereof.
A few weeks back, I posted a version of the famed Richard John Neuhaus/Rockford Institute break-up incident. The story there was that the break-up happened because Neuhaus overspent the Institute’s budget on conferences after having been ordered to cancel them. That version of the story came from John Howard, who used to run the Rockford Institute a number of years ago. Howard’s version was new to me. I’d mainly heard the rumblings about ideological discontent and jumped at the chance to shed a little light on a longtime mystery.
Joseph Bottum, who now runs First Things, offers more discussion about the incident on page 69 of the June/July issue of the magazine. He reiterates the story of ideological animus, but does provide some reinforcement to the budget/conference planning story I mentioned before. However, according to Bottum there was a conference Neuhaus was ordered to cancel, but he refused because the planning was too far along and he had raised adequate earmarked funds. So, Howard’s story is that Neuhaus went beyond his mandate and the Neuhaus story is that Rockford crawfished on a deal!
I was thrilled to see the discussion continued at FT, but I have one small objection. Dr. Howard is presented in the short piece as bringing Neuhaus in for some “knocks” on the occasion of his death. That part isn’t really fair. In the conversation I had with Howard (who is probably an octogenarian), he was very complimentary of Father Neuhaus and clearly respected his body of work. I asked him to tell me the story and he did. Tone doesn’t come across in the typed word many times. That applies here. Dr. Howard was clearly proud of having been associated with Father Neuhaus and of having hired him.
I’ve been reading the stories in Russell Kirk’s Ancestral Shadows collection. They are chillingly full of awful justice. Highly recommended for the Christian supernaturalist.
Not like my old law school, which once invited Sarah Jane Weddington (the winning lawyer in Roe v. Wade) to make all the pro-lifers super happy on their graduation day!!!!
“Hunter Baker’s volume is a much-welcomed addition to the debate on the role of religion and faith in the public square. To the confusion regarding matters of religion and politics, Baker brings illuminating clarity. To the ambiguity regarding the meaning and place of pluralism, he provides thoughtful analysis. To the directionless arguments for secularization, he offers an insightful and discerning response. This much-needed volume provides a readable, historically-informed, and carefully-reasoned case for the place of faith in our public deliberations. It is with great enthusiasm that I recommend it.”
—David S. Dockery, President, Union University
“Hunter Baker is a gifted writer who knows how to communicate the issue of secularism to an audience that desperately needs to hear a critical though winsome voice on this matter. In many ways, the book is a twenty-first-century sequel to the late Richard John Neuhaus’s classic, The Naked Public Square. Baker understands the issues that percolate beneath the culture wars. They are not merely political but theological and philosophical, and they are rarely unpacked in an articulate way so that the ordinary citizen can gain clarity. Baker offers his readers that clarity.”
—Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies, Baylor University; author, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice
“Hunter Baker is one of the sharpest thinkers in contemporary American Christianity. This work will provoke the same kind of conversation ignited by Richard John Neuhaus’s The Naked Public Square. Read this book slowly with a highlighter and a pen in hand as you think about questions ranging from whether the Ten Commandments ought to hang in your local courthouse to whether there’s a future for public Christianity.”
—Russell D. Moore, Dean, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
“The task of discerning the alternative to practical atheism lived by many nominal Christians and the pretense of a neutral secularism has been made easier by this rich study. Once authentic Christians grasp the ramifications of the incarnation of Christ, then and only then will it be apparent that, as Baker argues, “secularism only makes sense in relation to religion.”
—Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute
“The End of Secularism debunks the widespread myth that secularism is the inevitable wave of the future, coming at us like an unstoppable force of nature. Baker shows instead that the secularization of society was the result of deliberate planning and concerted effort by a relatively few determined ideologues. Baker makes it clear that what they did can be undone. We shall be hearing more from this promising young man.”
—Jennifer Roback Morse, Founder and President, The Ruth Institute
“Hunter Baker has produced a powerful and carefully constructed argument against the secularists in our midst who are attempting to subvert the traditions that gave birth to our unique national enterprise.”
UPDATE: I called Zenni today to see how much longer I’ll have to wait for the glasses. They said the photochromic lenses I ordered with one of the pairs require a little more time. I will be looking at nearly three weeks waiting for the glasses. Still, very much worth the savings if the glasses work out. I’ll post again when I get them.
Even though I don’t have a complicated prescription, I usually go to Lenscrafters and get hit with about $500 or so for a pair of glasses and a pair of sunglasses.
This time around, I started getting headaches and sensed I needed an eye exam.
I vowed not to do the Lenscrafters thing again.
The optometrist gave me my prescription and measured my pupillary distance so I could order glasses online.
I went with zennioptical.com. With their easy to use website, I ordered a pair of bendable memory titanium frames with anti-scratch and anti-glare coatings. I also picked up a pair of black plastic frames with anti-glare, anti-scratch, and photochromic lenses (they darken in the sun).
Total price with shipping? Under $100.
Is it too good to be true? I await the package in the mail.
Star Trek was so good, it was like when she insisted that “and to obey” stay in the vows.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like the day you arm-wrestled Hitler for the Sudetenland, and won, and he returned to his art.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like that time you were at a lonely midnight bar with Elvis, Dean, Bogart, and Monroe.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like that time Superman arrived, saw you, and said, “Clearly I’m not needed here.”
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like arguing with a stranger on the Internet, and he says, “You have a valid point, and I am persuaded of it!”
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like being that kid in Transformers, only this time you get to tag along with Decepticons!
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like coming home, and Genghis Khan is there, and he says, “There’s something I have to tell you — son.”
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like having ninjas eliminate your enemies, and then you go make new enemies, so you can see the ninjas work.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like having a leopard, a rhino, a cobra and a deadly lionfish all on a leash, and taking them for a walk.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like the time you won the Pinewood Derby with a rocket-powered car, and your dad beat up the other dads.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like that time you were trapped in the Arctic with those cheerleaders, and only body heat kept you alive.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like a thousand machine guns fired by fifty mile-high robots controlled ALL BY YOU.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like Safeway selling nothing but bacon-flavored EVERYTHING.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like your mom putting you on a diet of chili dogs and Pringles — for BREAKFAST.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like a ticker tape parade for having picked up the dry cleaning.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like setting off a thousand illegal fireworks in an empty lot, and the cops arrive, and they give you a medal.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
Star Trek was so good, it was like V-J Day, and you’re in Times Square, and there’s a compliant nurse you’ve never met.
about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck
The year was 1988. Jack Kemp came to my hometown, Pensacola, Florida, where Navy pilots trained and the kids hung out at the beaches with the sugar white sand.
A friend and I were hooked on the old Crossfire with Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden/Michael Kinsley. We identified Kemp as the best hope to continue Reagan’s reign.
Kemp stopped at the airport just long enough to shake the hands (including mine which I considered not washing) and give a speech. I was one of a hundred or so who came out to see him that day. His prospects already looked shaky. He asked us, “Do you want me to give up?” We all shouted, “NO!”
There could probably be a great alternate history written with the premise of Kemp being elected that year.
He lost, of course, but went on to serve in Housing and Urban Development in the Bush administration. His many young fans held out hope his time would come. When Dole put him on the ticket as a running mate in 1996, it seemed like destiny for those of us who thought Kemp would rejuvenate the party. He would bring back Reaganomics. He would break the back of monolithic African-American support for Democrats and big government.
Instead, he lost the Vice-Presidential debate to Al Gore (truly performing with less verve than Dan Quayle in 1992, who BEAT Gore!) and the GOP ticket made way for Clinton’s second term.
After that, Kemp ceased to be the man many of us felt we were waiting for and the party has lacked a true iconic figure since that time. There was Reagan and then there was the one who would take up Reagan’s mantle. Kemp was supposed to be that man.
While Kemp failed to become the party’s leader (and, of course, the nation’s), his career was one of the most consequential in American politics in the second half of the twentieth century. Kemp was a winsome evangelist for the Reagan project in Congress when the need was great. He was part of a group that performed the near impossible in politics. They promised. They delivered.
Here in Houston, the time has come to issue judgment on the first hundred days of the Obama administration. Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, and Mike Gallagher are coming to the Dunham Theater of the Morris Cultural Arts Center at Houston Baptist University tomorrow night (Wednesday) to offer their critique of the president’s program so far.
The event is sponsored by the local conservative talker, KNTH 1070 AM and has provoked a lot of interest around the city. We expect over 1000 Houstonians to attend, but there just might be a ticket or two left. Here’s the link for the event.
And before the political balance police get up in arms, I would like to add the footnote that HBU is merely providing the forum to the radio station. We did the same for the Holocaust Museum by hosting Madeline Albright several months ago.
When I first became a father, I was traumatized by the experience. There was part of me that rebelled in being tied down with such an awesome responsibility. I am thankful to God that he changed my heart and helped me accept the gift of fatherhood.
What I have discovered is that my greatest joys in life, bar none, relate to my children. Getting the right job, having an article published, making a book deal; none of those things compare to the exhilarating happiness I experience as a result of things my children do or say.
For example, I like to give my kids nicknames. My son Andrew can’t stand it. He is very strong on the rules. That means I can only call him Andrew. Not Bigstuff. Not Anderson. Not Handsome. Just Andrew. But little Grace, at age four, takes things a little more easily. We used to call her Baby Grace, then Baby G. Lately, I’ve taken to calling her Gracie-tot or Tabitha the Tot or little Tiger.
Yesterday, I picked her up in my arms and said, “I like to call you nicknames. Is that okay?”
She replied in the happiest little voice you ever heard, “Okay, Daddy. You can call me Pipsqueak. How about that?!!”
My heart melted in a pool of happiness at her goodwill, desire to please, and awesome overall cuteness.
Andrew, by the way, went to a new pediatrician with his mother yesterday. When the doctor asked Ruth whether Andrew was on a multi-vitamin, he precociously beat his mother to the punch by announcing, ” I have vitamins, but I never get to take them because Mom says I’m too late for school and I have to hurry.” He’s big on honesty.
For those of you who CHOOSE to be childless, think twice about it. It’s true you won’t enjoy restaurants as much and your time won’t be your own. But the emotional return on watching this little person, who really is part of you, grow up is impossible to duplicate with ski weekends or trips to Mexico.
I was late in receiving my Richard John Neuhaus tribute issue from First Things, so forgive my mentioning it after many have long read it.
Going through, one thing that stands out is that Richard John Neuhaus was so influential not only because of his tremendous proficiency and prolificity with words, but also because of his gift of friendship. When great groups of friends stay together for a long time, it is often because there is one person standing at the center doing the work and exerting an almost magnetic attraction. Neuhaus stood at the center of an incredible network of brilliant people. That becomes clear as you read the tributes.
I had a friend like that in high school. He made the friendships work. We didn’t have a lot without him. We got together recently in Chicago after twenty years apart. The same dynamic was in place.
Stephen Barr’s tribute underlines the point:
[Neuhaus] also created a particular part of the public square that hadn’t existed before. He created a place where a great throng of religious intellectuals, hitherto isolated from one another and often unaware of one another’s existence, could meet to share their thoughts and pool their intellectual resources.
Quite right. And one man was brilliant at linking those people together in a culturally important way. Who will be next? Robert George? Father Sirico? I wonder . . .
I’ve posted a reflection on the future of higher education, with a particular emphasis on the Christian universities, over at the Touchstone Magazine Mere Comments blog. Catch it here.
Here’s a clip:
The economic downturn has had a substantial impact on colleges and universities.
The first shoe dropped when endowments everywhere took big hits from a rapidly falling market. When endowments go underwater, they produce no income and generally can’t be touched.
The other shoe will drop when we see how private colleges and universities do in terms of their student numbers for the fall. My casual conversations with peers indicates that the private schools are running behind in terms of student deposits. The buyers are not feeling flush.
The public universities, on the other hand, have their own problems. The ones that have endowments are down. They also rely on tax subsidies in a time when tax revenues are diminished. The trend of the last several years has been for states to offer less and less financial support. In-state tuition has risen substantially. Where they do not suffer is in terms of student numbers. They will be overwhelmed by bargain seekers in tough economic times. The question is whether they will have state funds to backfill the subsidized education they offer and how many they can admit. As it stands now, their facilities are often severely strained, teaching assistants do an awful lot of the instruction, and there are a large number of cattle call style courses.
Last night I watched the latest episode of The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition. I have been pulled into the series this year largely because of the compelling finishes where The Donald lectures celebrities about their work habits and managerial ineptness. Dennis Rodman has been a draw because of his incredibly bad behavior.
This was Dennis’ week. His teammates chose him to be the project manager because they hoped he would rise to the challenge if he was running things. It worked, for a short while, then he drank enough to go past caring. First, he got angry. Then, he absented himself from the project he was supposed to direct.
The men’s team lost, which gave rise to the beautiful moment. Motorcycle entrepeneur and reality star Jesse James confronted Dennis Rodman with his drinking problem. The others readily agreed with the diagnosis. Rodman got angry and defensive, mostly offering support of his own worthiness by adverting to his NBA career which has been over for some time now. Finally, getting nowhere, Rodman said in frustration, “I . . . I could kick all y’all’s asses. Everyone one here.”
Now, I’m not sure that is actually true. Jesse James, for example, was a professional bodyguard at one point. But James didn’t respond to Rodman’s provocation with a physical challenge. His actual reply was devastating:
“Then why don’t you kick our asses at being a good person?”
Rodman sat silent.
I called this a beautiful moment for the natural law because Jesse James put the idea out there for millions of people whether he or they realized it. We know what a good person is. We expect people to aspire to that AND to achieve it.
At a minimum, we expect people to be honest, to keep their promises, to be reliable, and to moderate their own behavior out of respect for others. These are things Thomas Aquinas would say we can reason to from the premise of the social nature of man. Rodman did none of that. And he was kicked out.
This year’s national meeting of the Philadelphia Society was my first. William Campbell of LSU invited me (a young-ish faculty member of Houston Baptist University) after reading a piece I wrote on libertarians and conservatives for the Acton Institute. I am very thankful for the opportunity and enjoyed the event very much. The list of attendees was really quite impressive and people were generally interested in and open to others.
At each meal I sat with a different group of people and found the conversation rewarding. There was a strong sense of fellowship and collegiality. I felt that individuals who offered divergences of opinion were treated respectfully and well. It was, in the best sense of the word, scholarly.
However, I write to offer a suggestion. To me, the panels shaded too much to the hall of famer/veteran side and not enough (or even at all) to rising, young talent needing an opportunity to demonstrate what they can do or what new things they have to say. A meeting of this kind would represent a great way for the distinguished members to identify talent and then to figure out how to promote the careers of young people who can seek to build on the previous generation’s successes.
For every paper delivered by a long-standing member who is confident in what he has said and is ready to say it again, there are young people who will work their brains out for a chance to present something impressive to people they respect. The leadership needs to figure out how to move national meetings in that direction to a greater degree.
The Philadelphia Society’s New Orleans meeting has concluded. This was my first time to be invited. I have some impressions to report about both the society and the town. For this post, I’ll focus on New Orleans.
If I can judge from the French Quarter and the rush hour traffic, New Orleans is back. The downtown area was absolutely hopping and it wasn’t Mardi Gras time. I’ve never seen an American city other than NYC with so much night life.
However, I have to admit I was taken aback by Bourbon Street. On Saturday morning, I visited Cafe du Monde with a fellow academic who’d been a Bush appointee. After eating our beignets, we walked along the sidewalks and were nearly flooded out by a street washing machine that literally poured soapy water all over the streets and walkways. I wondered how often the city conducted that operation. My guess now is every night. By the end of Saturday, I’d seen the Quarter in operation. You run into an awful lot of questionable liquids on the street and sidewalks. Come morning, the wages of overindulgence (and a lot of horse droppings) need to be washed away.
I was stunned by “out there” nature of the sexually-oriented businesses in evidence. That takes a little doing since I live in Houston which is filled with elaborate strip clubs, but there you spin rapidly by them on elevated freeways. In New Orleans, you walk by women in lingerie standing on sidewalks and in doorways to beckon customers inside. I imagine Times Square was like that P.G. (pre-Giuliani).
Having been to 21st century Times Square and seedy Bourbon Street. I’ll take Times Square. One changed for the better. The other stayed the same. Of course, I take into account the admonition of Thomas Aquinas that you can’t use the law to abolish all vice, lest you create a backlash of total rebellion. Still, Rudy G. seems to have done a better job of locating the golden mean than his counterpart Ray N.
I visited Notre Dame last year at this time to meet with a few professors for the purpose of academic networking. My university was hiring and I hoped to hear about Christian doctoral students ready for their first job. As I walked across the snow-covered campus, I was a little in awe of how wonderfully the sacred space had been planned and laid out.
But when I met with one older professor who had been with the university for quite some time, he expressed a great deal of regret for how his student (the current president) was making decisions. Looking around his office, I noticed photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr. holding hands with priests protesting the injustice of segregation. I thought to myself, if this man feels something good has been lost at Notre Dame, it must truly be so.
When I heard about Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Obama to speak and receive an honorary doctorate, I could not believe it. I knew the university had liberalized. I knew many faithful Catholics felt ND had lost its way, but I also knew many fine, Christian scholars populated its offices and classrooms. How could it be that the university many of us point to when we aspire to building a great Christian academic institution would invite a president to speak and receive and honorary doctorate when he could not liberalize abortion laws quickly enough upon taking office?
Has the protection of unborn and newly born life not been a distinctive of the Christian church from the beginning? Did not the Catholic church act convincingly to remind evangelicals and others of their duties to protect life?
All I can think about as I watch this great university rushing to honor a president who considers the question of when life begins to be above his pay grade and yet who acts to liberalize the capacity to extinguish it is that Notre Dame is trading its heritage for the applause of the culture. Friend, Father Jenkins, I pray that you would consider the quality of the culture whose applause you seek.
As Walker Percy, a self-proclaimed bad Catholic who was actually a great one said, there is decline and fall and then there are the options. Choose life instead, sir. I say that to both of these presidents. One, the president of a university, and the other, a president of a nation.
At the Making Men Moral conference a few weeks ago, Robert George shared the story of how Richard John Neuhaus gave up his opportunity to be the media star of mainline Protestantism in order to remain an advocate for the unborn. Professor George has now memorialized that speech by publishing it as a column at the First Things website.
1. To mark your page you: use a bookmark, bend the page corner, leave the book open face down?
I occasionally leave a book open face down, but I almost always dog-ear the corner of the page I’m on and shut the book. When I try to do this with my six year old son’s books, he reprimands me for not using a book mark as he has been taught to do at his fascist public school.
2. Do you lend your books?
I loan books because I want to influence people’s thoughts about the world. I usually don’t get them back. It’s not something I judge the human race about because it is very easy to forget you have borrowed a CD or a book. I’m sure I have done it myself.
3. You find an interesting passage: you write in your book or NO WRITING IN BOOKS!
Not only do I write extensively in books by bracketing text, underlining text, and adding marginalia, but I also write in library books. I know this is a vile habit which horrifies anyone I tell, but I can’t help but note places that meant something to me. I promise I do it in a very modest and not very noticeable manner.
4. Dust jackets – leave it on or take it off.
OFF. They are an impediment and were not made to be long for this world. I used to remove them while reading and replace them. Then, I started putting them in a drawer. My wife threw them away one day. I freaked out for several minutes and then realized, so what?
5. Hard cover, paperback, skip it and get the audio book?
Hardbacks are unnecessary for me. I probably like the trade paperback format the most for ease of handling and reading. Of course, I keep getting more and more interested in using the Kindle to read.
6. Do you shelve your books by subject, author, or size and color of the book spines?
I shelve them so as to get them off of other furniture and keep my wife from injuring me. Not much rhyme or reason except that I usually isolate the mass paperbacks and keep my very favorite books downstairs in the best bookcase.
7. Buy it or borrow it from the library later?
I don’t use the library much these days. Amazon turned me into a serious book buyer. Especially Amazon marketplace.
8. Do you put your name on your books – scribble your name in the cover, fancy bookplate, or stamp?
I used a beautiful book embossing device that says Baker Family Library — Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. It is a treasured gift from a friend.
9. Most of the books you own are rare and out-of-print books or recent publications?
Highly eclectic mix of books. I am becoming averse to really old books because the dust and mildew affects as I age.
10. Page edges – deckled or straight?
Straight. I think the rough cut book pages are just a little precious. You have the technology to do it straight, so just do it that way.
11. How many books do you read at one time?
I frequently have multiple books going at one time. If I am reading only one book, that is a sure sign that it is a marvelous read.
12. Be honest, ever tear a page from a book?
Are you a barbarian? Leave me and go sack Washington, D.C.
Okay, I have now had time to read an entire book on the Kindle. Excellent experience. What is really amazing is the content delivery aspect of it. I was going to deliver a lecture on technology and culture and wanted to brush up on Orwell’s 1984. I downloaded it via the Kindle for .99. Instant delivery. No shipping. I was reading in the next minute.
I was worried about the issue of notetaking, highlighting, underlining, etc. Good news on that front. You can easily highlight text and then go to a separate page that keeps all of your highlighted sections. Outstanding. Only one minor complaint is that you can’t highlight text across pages. You highlight on the page you are on. Stop. Then highlight the section you want on the next page.
It takes a little reading experience to get used to holding this device in hand and reading. It is different from holding a book. No question. Feels different. At first, I thought I was going to reject it. But after reading for about 10 minutes, it became quite natural.
I think these e-readers are going to change the publishing business substantially. E-publishing will eventually grab maybe a quarter of the overall take. Just a prediction. Probably too modest.
The real question is what is this going to do to publishing companies. With a device like the Kindle, you simply do not NEED a publisher. At least, you do not need a publisher if you have established your own name and/or brand. Though the attempts have been abortive so far, there WILL come a time when the big writers, analysts, reporters, etc. just sell their stuff direct. It will be interesting to see what the political effect of that kind of democratization of discourse will be. The model, strangely enough, might be something like the old Evans and Novak report. Something like that would be perfect to just purchase direct via micro-payments or a cheap subscription.
Linker, known primarily for betraying Richard John Neuhaus by serving as editor of First Things and then publishing a book accusing Neuhaus of scurrilous theocratic aims, now writes primarily at the New Republic. In a recent post there, he brilliantly claims to have demonstrated the idea of natural law is obvious poppycock. Why? Because he disagrees with two officials of the Catholic Church holding that a nine year old who was raped and with her life endangered by the pregnancy should still have the children rather than an abortion. Linker reasons that if the Catholic Church is wrong about that, then their idea of natural law is wrong.
Where to start?
Given that Mr. Linker worked at First Things, I’d figure he had his Aquinas down pat. Thomas Aquinas (AKA, the DOCTOR OF NATURAL LAW) held that we should agree on the first principles of natural law (like that the lives of innocent children should be protected), but that we may well disagree with the application of that natural law on a case by case basis. Well, guess what? Here we have just such a case. Does it mean the idea of natural law is vacuous? No. And Aquinas didn’t think so, either.
Mr. Linker thinks the church (or more specifically two church officials) is wrong about this case. And maybe they are. I’m unfamiliar with it. But does his disagreement with their reasoning about this case mean that the larger principle (the lives of innocent children should be protected) no longer holds? No, that position is obviously incorrect. The broad propositions of the natural law continue to hold.
Several months ago, I heard a story that forced me to give more careful thought to my views on the built-in morality of the market. A large airline on the brink of bankruptcy in 2002 asked employees to make substantial wage concessions. They agreed. The airline returned to profitability, and management acknowledged that it had the workers to thank, but in the subsequent years, instead of restoring the wage concessions, it awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives.
When pressed by reporters, the airline’s spokesman said the bonuses were necessary to retain top managerial talent. Pilots and other airline personnel could not leave because the airlines’ seniority systems would require them to start over at a new company. In effect, the workers could not easily punish the airline for failing to pay them back, so it was in no hurry to do so.
The story jarred me. Somehow, I had never applied my Christian conception of a sinful world to corporate behavior. In hindsight I realize my faith should have cautioned me against too easily deferring to the idea of the sufficiency of the invisible hand to produce justice.
Now, judging from this short bit, I’m guessing some of you will think I’ve gone all lefty on you. Not so. Read the piece. There is not a call for the slightest government action. What I’m calling for is the exercise of moral suasion. If we can protest when the convenience store decides to carry porn, we can also protest when an airline screws its employees. Follow the link and see whether you agree.
The author of this masterpiece, one Alan Moore, is a paranoid left-winger (See V for Vendetta, for example), but the man can write. Perhaps the character people remember the most from the Watchmen is Rorschach, a man in a hat and trenchcoat who covers his face with a mask of ever-changing ink impressions. Rorschach has no superpowers or even the genius and equipment of Batman. He is a man determined to set things right and is uninhibited in his willingness to do violence to wrongdoers. Rorschach was once a more conventional hero, but he has seen too much evil in the world and is no longer prepared to accept limits on his retribution. This vigilante, full of retrograde opinions and mourning for an America whose best days are behind her, is Archie Bunker without the laughs. Rorschach walks along a street in the red-light district and notes that he is offered French love, Swedish love, and other exotic pleasures. But American love, he regrets, “is like Coke in green glass bottles . . . they don’t make it anymore.” He is dangerous. And he is Moore’s idea of a conservative. If it is intended as an insult, it is one most of us can live with.
This was a unique engagement of many natural law thinkers such as the Catholics Robert George and Francis Beckwith with Southern Baptists like Russell Moore and Greg Thornbury. In that connection, Russell Moore delivered a message that I think would be considered a highlight of the conference by anyone who attended. He addressed the differences between Catholics and Evangelicals irenically without being ecumenical in any mushy way and spoke eloquently about the joint engagement by the two groups with the culture.
This was a wholly edifying address that shied away from nothing. For that reason, I’m linking the audio. It is well worth your time if you are interested in the relationship between the two traditions.
The evening panel featured Robert George, Jean Bethke-Elshtain, David Novak, and Harry Poe. Their primary subject was the life of Richard John Neuhaus. Lots of great material, but Robert George spoke very movingly of Neuhaus’ career.
In the 1960’s, Neuhaus was a friend and associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. During the next decade, Neuhaus moved into position to become the most prominent religious liberal in the United States, perhaps succeeding Reinhold Niebuhr in the esteem of the media and cultural elites. It was a position that would have been attractive to the talented Rev. Neuhaus.
Then, Roe v. Wade happened. At first, there was such a thing as a pro-life liberal. Teddy Kennedy was one. Jesse Jackson was one. Albert Gore was one. So was Richard John Neuhaus.
But the center failed to hold and the pro-life liberals pronounced fealty to Planned Parenthood in serial fashion. Richard John Neuhaus could have done that, too, had he wished to preserve his chance to succeed Niebuhr as the most prominent mainline Protestant.
Abandoning the unborn child, the defenseless and innocent human being who desperately needed protection, was a step too far for Neuhaus. So, he left “the left” behind.
The tenor of the story fit a persistent theme of this conference with speakers cognizant of the presence of young evangelicals in the room. Hold your ideals more dear than your lust for applause. The temptation to make oneself acceptable to the dominant zeitgeist is terrible in its power. Do as Richard John Neuhaus did. Resist.
I’ve had the chance to hear some great lines offered up by conservative academics. Here are a couple:
Paul Kerry (BYU) on the difference between Robert George and Cornel West:
“Last year, Robert George was invited to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. Cornel West was similarly honored to be invited to meet with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.”
Russ Moore (Southern Seminary) on better relations between evangelicals and Catholics:
“Very few evangelicals today would still say the Pope is the Anti-Christ. Bill Maher might, but evangelicals wouldn’t.”
Union has done a tremendous job of putting this conference together. They may be on track to become another conservative favorite like Hillsdale, the graduate school at Claremont, and the political theory program at LSU (represented here by the delightful James Stoner).
Later, I’ll have a report about the events of this evening. Richard John Neuhaus was slated to speak at the conference, but died recently, thus leaving a substantial hole in the conservative tapestry. It’s a hole, thankfully, that we have men like Robert George and Father Robert Sirico to help fill.
Tonight, Robert George, Harry Poe, and others will host an informal conversation with the assembled guests. I’m guessing we’ll have a great time hearing stories about the exploits of Father Neuhaus.
In the wake of Joseph Lawler’s piece on George Mason economists evaluating conservative magazines’ affinity for liberty on the basis of their treatment of sex, gambling, and drugs, Princeton’s Robert George is the perfect antidote. He could have reminded the measurers of liberty that those who favor laissez faire with regard to vice are often much less friendly to consensual acts of capitalism between adults. It’s a point he made in his seminal book Making Men Moral.
I’m currently attending a Union University conference honoring the work of Robert P. George. If conservatives are to have a chance of winning the argument over the proper balance of liberty and virtue, they could do no better than to look to Professor George as an example. As Russell Moore reminded the audience this evening, Robert George has never imitated the tendencies of many conservative and/or Christian academics to make themselves or their work more palatable to the ambient culture. Instead, he has unapologetically argued for a robust conception of the natural law and has mentored many academics to follow in his footsteps.
Am I referring to affirmative action? Pell Grants? Forgiveness of student loans?
No, I’m talking about the primary area where college students are actually plagued by injustice. I am talking about the market for textbooks.
Though the world of academia tilts heavily to the left, the professor/textbook writers of the world participate as rapaciously in cutthroat capitalism as anyone on the planet.
Students get sticker shock when they go to buy a particular text. So, they resort to the used market, which is better than ever thanks to ebay, half.com, and a variety of other outlets.
But the textbook writers regularly act to destroy the value of the old editions by continually issuing new ones whether necessary or not. The Nobel winning liberal economist Paul Samuelson earned a fortune on his many-times updated standard text.
The situation is on the verge of changing, though. Whether you want to own cherished novels or books of history as an e-book is one question. Owning college texts as e-books is a slam-dunk yes. And because the texts are electronic and can be easily altered, students have a strong case to expect updates as a matter of course to be either free or offered for a nominal additional cost. Certainly, they don’t have to be forced to pay for the hard covers, the glossy paper, and the full color ink.
The day of the $20 college text may finally be here. And the incentive to continually offer updated versions with an extra paragraph here or there may be coming to an end.
The company to do it is Amazon. Much has been made of the iPhone as a device for reading books, but I can’t imagine using that small screen for textbooks where you need to take notes, mark passages, etc. The Kindle is exactly that kind of device. And a student version may eventually be forthcoming.
My favorite radio station (conservative talk format) regularly runs commercials featuring the “Beach Bum Ty Coughlin” who created the Reverse Funnel System to help you make $52k a month without selling! What cracks me up is that whether it is Ty Coughlin or someone giving a testimonial, the voice and cadence are essentially the same. You can tell the guy is trying to make his voice sound deeper or he’s talking a little slower, but there are definite tells that the same person is speaking.
I just decided to google the Reverse Funnel to see if there is any scam alert material associated with it and found a fellow named Jonathan Budd appearing on websites a commenter bravely defending the validity of the system and the integrity of Ty Coughlin. He even made a youtube video making fun of those who call the Reverse Funnel a scam. Check it out:
The great thing is that Jonathan Budd, too, has the voice pattern of Ty Coughlin. I get this great picture of a guy recording this stuff in his home office. It’s a sock puppet selling system!!! Go make your fortune friends!
I have come to know about a situation which causes me to understand why people can sometimes become obsessed with getting the truth out about something. As an example, you occasionally see a person in a high position called out for some sin they are committing and you wonder why it was so important they be exposed. Was it worth the damage?
I think I understand why these things get exposed.
If you learn about a lie and then watch it go on long enough, you begin to crave the truth. You begin to want it like you want a breath of air for your lungs.
And you don’t just want the truth for yourself. You don’t just want a few people to know. You begin to want the truth to be broadcast on as broad a scale as will be meaningful. You just want the truth to dispel the layers of obfuscation, partial disclosure, and lies with the destructive force of a bomb.
Will it hurt? Yes. But it will restore the truth. And that has a high value of its own. We need truth in our lives. It is a terrible thing to have to live with an unraveling tapestry of lies. Every day something else is lost.
Just burn down the corrupt edifice of deceptive fiction and start over.
The promise is there that God can find a way to make all things new. Let us be committed to the truth.
I have read all of Lars Walkers books, which fit in the fantasy/sci-fi genre. After reading his books, I got addicted to his blog. Lars appears to hate many things about life, including pickles. I offer this gem of prose from his list of foods he can’t stand:
3. Pickles. Sweet or sour, I hate them all. If I had a nickel for every pickle I’ve picked off a hamburger, I’d have enough money to buy a big jar of pickles, which I’d then throw away.
I’ve been reading America’s Secular Challenge by NYU professor and president of the Hudson Institute Herb London. The book is essentially an extended essay about how elite, left-wing secularism undercuts America’s traditional strengths of patriotism and religious faith during a time when the nation can ill afford it. The assault on public religion and love of country comes in a period when America faces enemies who have no such crisis of identity and lack the degree of doubt that leaves us in semi-paralysis.
The best compliment I can pay the book (by a Jewish social critic) is that it reminds me of the outstanding work of John Courtenay Murray (the great Catholic church and state scholar) who wrote:
And if this country is to be overthrown from within or without, I would suggest that it will not be overthrown by Communism. It will be overthrown because it will have made an impossible experiment. It will have undertaken to establish a technological order of most marvelous intricacy, which will have been constructed and will operate without relations to true political ends: and this technological order will hang, as it were, suspended over a moral confusion; and this moral confusion will itself be suspended over a spiritual vacuum.
Some years ago, I testified at the Georgia state capitol in Atlanta on the subject of abortion regulations and their constitutionality. I will never forget the testimony that day of women who have had abortions and have come to greatly regret that choice. In particular, there was a young, black woman who tearfully recounted her dreams of a son who asked her why she ended his life. Moving past the intense power of her story, she went on to tell what she knew about the disparate racial impact of abortion on the African-American community. Afterwards, an African-American state senator from the Democrat party questioned her about whether her claims were really true.
Consider the following: African-Americans make up 26% of the population of Alabama; they account for 54.7% of the abortions; 29.6% of Georgia’s roughly 8 million citizens are African-Americans yet African-Americans make up 57.8% of the abortions; in North Carolina the population percentage is 21.3% while the proportion of black abortions is 44.2%; in my adopted home state of Tennessee, African-Americans are 16.6% of the population yet make up 41.6% of the abortions; most egregious, however, is Mississippi where African-Americans make up 37.1% of the population and a mind-boggling 77.2% of the abortions. In fact, in every state where African-Americans make up more than 10% of the population, the black abortion rate far exceeds the population percentage, often by a factor of two or three.
I’ve been working with Crossway on bringing The End of Secularism to publication. In the process, I have compiled some of my favorite quotes from the manuscript. Here they are:
Because advocates of secularism present it as a solution to the “problem” of public religion, we become the audience for a caricature of the ways the two concepts are opposed to each other. Instead of “without reference to God” versus “with reference to God,” the antonyms expand to look more like “reason and tolerance” versus “prejudice and superstition.” This misunderstanding has not been accidental, but is instead the thrust of the presentation pushed by advocates of a particular side. Thus, rational thinking processes, empirical verification, and social harmony are said to accompany a secular outlook. Religious associations, on the other hand, are tied to mysticism, violence, ignorance, and coercion. The secular take on religion is more Torquemada, Jim Jones, and Osama bin Laden than Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Newton, and Pascal.
. . .
On [the secularist] view, religion is like white phosphorus. It should be submerged lest it ignite.
. . .
Given a right understanding of secularism as the separation of religion from public life and the separation of church and state as nothing more than formal institutional independence of church and state, citizens should value church-state separation as the healthier and more justifiable state of affairs.
. . .
The advocates of real theocracy among Christians are very few. The live debate between Christians in the present has more to do with the degree to which the Christian faith should inform politics and how explicitly Christians should appeal to their faith in political debate and policy formation. It seems to be the consensus of Christians in this millennium that the church is a voice calling the state to righteousness and justice rather than to be a state or a supervisor of the state itself.
When I became a Christian at Florida State University in the late 80’s, I bought the Bible I saw most of my InterVarsity Christian Fellowship friends carrying. It was the NIV Student Bible with notes by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford. Wonderful Bible, especially for a new Christian. Every time I had a big question, there was some kind of comment there that didn’t downplay the complexity. Got a college student? The NIV Student Bible is perfect.
A few months ago, I left that Bible (or its successor since I may have replaced it once) on the top of my minivan and drove off. When I retraced my route, it was nowhere to be found. The university president and New Testament scholar Robert Sloan advised me to get a New American Standard Bible, which I did. I bought the one with wide margins by Zondervan. I really like that Bible for taking notes. I looked at a few that offer the room to take notes. To me, the Zondervan model is the most realistic about the space you need for writing.
But then, Crossway sent me their ESV Study Bible. Wow. Each page has several footnotes with clear, highly readable background and explanatory material. The Crossway team clearly put a lot of work into this Bible and the brisk sales attest that their effort bore fruit. I’m now torn as to which Bible I want to use. I’ve carried the ESV Study Bible more lately because it can really help clarify things when a dispute arises.
The best down to earth compliment I can give the ESV Study Bible is that I originally thought I’d re-gift the Bible to a friend, but after digging in and trying it out, I decided I needed to keep it. Thumbs up.
(Disclaimer: I’m a Crossway author with a book coming out this August, but I wouldn’t recommend this Bible unless I liked it.)
Gran Torino is good, really good. For a long time, I’ve heard writers and film directors talk about the importance of showing people something instead of telling them. The best films are those that set a scene which demonstrates a fundamental truth about people’s lives instead of having some character give a dramatic speech spilling out an entire philosophy of HOW IT IS and HOW IT OUGHT TO BE. Gran Torino succeeds on that score. Eastwood as the director working from a masterful script rolls out scene after scene revealing truths about our lives to us.
Is this a film, which the trailer portrays, in which we get to see Eastwood doing his Dirty Harry thing? There is some of that. No question. That’s what I went to see. But Gran Torino rewarded me with a deep reflection on America, on faith, on family, on immigration, on aging, and on heroism. Who are we as Americans? We’re immigrants. To some degree we’re nationalistic, chauvinistic, racist, aggressive. But there’s something else about us, too. We tend to come out of the right side of things. We love justice more than anything else. Gran Torino shows us all of that.
Nothing preachy here. Just solid, solid storytelling. Everything works. I can’t imagine anyone seeing this movie and feeling disappointed, as I did with the much splashier and showier Quantum of Solace, which left me empty and relatively unthrilled.
Robert P. George is arguably the most potent conservative in the academic firmament. Through his scholarship and the outstanding programs of the James Madison program at Princeton University, George has contributed powerfully to the philosophical debate over the sanctity of life, marriage, and religion in the public square.
Next month, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee is holding a conference in honor of the 15th anniversary of the publication of George’s outstanding book Making Men Moral. The roster of speakers is quite good. In addition to Professor George, Hadley Arkes, James Stoner, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and many others will be in attendance. I’m not certain of it, but Francis Beckwith may also be there.
Richard John Neuhaus had been slated to attend before his death last week. I imagine most of those attending this conference will be his friends and admirers. Informal tributes may bloom.
For those who don’t remember, Union University is the school that rebounded so admirably from a devastating tornado strike last year.
Many of us remember the U.S. victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid. It came at a good time.
We all know the story. The 1970’s had been hard on America. We were beginning to look like losers buffetted by economic uncertainty, high inflation and unemployment, the loss of prestige on the international stage, the looming threat of nuclear war . . .
We often point to Ronald Reagan’s election as where it all turned around, but that hockey game at the Olympics, a moment when Americans (college kids, no less) rose to the occasion against all expectations, seemed to be part of a comeback in the public consciousness.
I had a little of the same feeling this morning while listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio interview a guy who was seated on the exit row in the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River. He described a scene where people didn’t panic, but instead did what they needed to do in an orderly fashion to survive. Everyone, from the pilot to the crew to the passengers to the ferry operators and other rescuers, worked together to bring life out of a deadly situation.
This is a proud moment. It comes at a time when we’ve been smacked around by crisis and negativity. We have had a feeling of looming disaster. We walk around psychically hunched, braced for a hit. The actions of everyone involved in the miracle on the Hudson shows that we may be better suited to weather a storm and to rebuild than we thought.
I didn’t have anything to do with this wonderful story, but these people are my countrymen. I’m standing a little taller on the inside today. This may be the start of our turnaround.
Okay, this is the post I can’t put up at American Spectator. This is the kind of post for which personal blogs were made.
I have long been troubled by the choice of many to be cremated. I far prefer the practice of Christian burial, which leaves the body intact as a sign of the dead person’s hope in resurrection by the Lord.
There are people in my family who are Christians and who prefer to be cremated. This disturbs me. I want to visit those who predecease me at their graves. I want to visit them where they lay, not look at some urn or think about how we scattered an incinerated body over a lake or something like that.
So, I have been trying to think about how to convince people not to be cremated. Some of my Christian relatives and friends are annoyed by my strong preference against the practice of incinerating the dead. They accuse me of having too little faith that God will raise whom he will raise regardless of the state of the body. He will raise even a body that has been burned into ashes.
I suspect they are right. I doubt God would refuse to resurrect or admit to the afterlife someone who requested and received cremation. Still, I think we call it Christian burial for a reason. It is a symbol, just like the wedding ring on a finger. We are signaling the world that we believe God has plans for us. He will resurrect the old body and transform it into an uncorruptible, glorified new body with a future we can only guess about.
But I titled this post “The Secular Case Against Cremation.” Here it is. You aren’t going to have to believe in anything more than the techological progress of man. If you are cremated and your physical body has been destroyed, then how are the incredibly advanced humans of the year 3500 going to reconstitute you by using your DNA? The graveyards are going to be an incredible bonanza of super advanced bio-archaeology. They’ll need a body or at least some old bones to work with! Then, you can hang around telling them about your world until the sun starts going supernova.
Chew on that for a while and see if you’re still so hot about making your final rest as a bunch of ashes in a coffee can. I hope Heather Mac Donald and the rest of the “secular right” folks enjoy this exciting use of my secular reason.
Part of the reason Richard John Neuhaus will be remembered is for his impact on Christians in higher education. There is no question that his seminal book The Naked Public Square and then his journal First Things changed the way many of us think about religion and culture. He also did something I think is nearly impossible with FT. He created a serious journal that causes many people (a great many of them professors) to do a little dance when they find it in their mailbox.
First Things is not an academic journal, but it is close and better. Instead of dividing knowledge up into a million little pieces and then writing ad nauseum about those subcompartments. First Things invites strong minds to contribute big essays about the intersection of religion, culture, law, politics, art, music, etc. The result is readable and edifying. When I was younger, I knew it was above my head, but I pursued it for improvement, just like a gangster listening to a pronounciation soundtrack to improve his speech. First Things took me places. Today, when I meet a fellow reader, I meet a friend.
Enough of the unsolicited advertisement. I saw a snippet of an email exchange about Neuhaus that is worth reproducing here. I won’t include the name in case the person wants that to remain private:
Converted (to Catholicism) about 1990 or 91. He is one of those Missouri Synod Lutherans who had a tremendous early education in their prep schools and liberal arts college…then a fine seminary education. It was the old German gymnasium system where young guys went off to prep school at 14 and learned German, Greek, Latin, church history, the confessions even before they got to college. The college at Fort Wayne gave them a terrific liberal arts education—classics, literature, history, languages—and then off to seminary. Pelikan, Wilken, Neuhaus, Marty, and many lesser lights came through that system. Valparaiso’s golden age occurred when these highly educated pastors also went into other fields and got doctorates. They had dual educations that made faith and learning engagement a natural thing. M.Divs with a degree in law, economics, literature. Very erudite types who occupied many positions at Valpo. But that has all disappeared….a great but probably necessary loss. How many families would send their boys off to prep school at 14 and what church could afford to run prep schools all over the country for their young men?
But Richard was one of that group….didn’t really need a doctorate.
No, he didn’t really need that doctorate. Wish we could reproduce that system for young people from families without tremendous means.
Richard John Neuhaus is dead. We’ve lost some big ones in the last year. Many of you will not realize how big this one was. I pray Jody Bottum and some of the others in the First Things (Neuhaus’ hugely influential journal) world can carry on his legacy. Though Neuhaus’ death leaves a chasm to be filled, I think Dr. Bottum is the right man for it.
Anthony Sacramone is a former managing editor of First Things. He is also one of my favorite writers. So, I’m happy to bring you his wonderful tribute to Neuhaus. Here’s a taste:
Woody Allen said that 90% of life is just showing up. Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Whether it was at civil-rights marches in the 1960s or pro-life marches of the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Whether it was at the altar as a parish priest or at the bedside of a dying friend, Richard John Neuhaus showed up. As writer, lecturer, editor, raconteur, counselor, teacher — Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Every day. Until today.
And by the way, the New York Times didn’t do badly, either. I give them credit, particularly since Father Neuhaus spent part of his last column writing about how his desire to read the NYT had continued to slip.
My father-in-law and I bonded years ago when he introduced me to the genre of action thrillers. It began when he loaned me a box full of the first 60 or so Remo Williams novels. I still remember that chapter two of each book began with “His name was Remo and . . .”
Our latest action hero has been Jack Reacher, the creation of British television writer Lee Child. Reacher (always Reacher in the series, never Jack) is an imaginative hero. He spent the first thirty-five years or so of his life on military bases. First, as a child of a soldier and then as a top military policeman. The hook is that Reacher, as a military policeman, is something like a super-cop. His targets were trained men, often devious, tough fighters without a moral code.
As he aged, he tired of his regimented life, quit the army, and became a wanderer. Reacher doesn’t even have a suitcase. He wears a set of clothes until it wears out, buys good quality English walking shoes, and carries an ATM card and a folding toothbrush. He is something of a cross between Dr. Richard Kimble (The Fugitive) and The Incredible Hulk. Big, tough, strong, and very street smart. He moves from place to place and gets involved in situations usually requiring his violent intervention.
All in all, it has been a highly enjoyable series. The kind of candy I yearned for while working on my dissertation. Upon finishing, I gorged on the likes of Reacher.
The latest, Nothing to Lose, lost me as a customer. Lee Child, the author, seems to have REALLY enjoyed the recent works of village atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He seems to have enjoyed them so much that he had to come up with a highly improbable plot just to demonstrate how stupid he thinks Christians are. Oh, and along the way he manages to claim that nothing the American military has done since 1945 has been worth the price of men’s lives.
But Child’s little crusade against conservative protestants and American military efforts of the past sixty years wouldn’t have been enough to send me packing if the book weren’t so bad. The villain catches Reacher multiple times and somewhat inexplicably lets him go. The bad guy has a compound. Reacher spends the entire novel working his way in and out of the compound as he goes between two towns, Hope and Despair. On the one hand, the villain has put together an incredibly devious and ingenious plan to help bring about the apocalypse. On the other, Child (through Reacher) assures us that the villain is a weak-minded man who is accustomed to believing things that comfort him. It is profoundly boring, which is something I have never been remotely close to saying about any of the other books. It was literally an act of will for me to continue reading Nothing to Lose. I was determined to finish because I knew it would likely be the last run for Reacher and me.
Last year, I went on a trip to Illinois and Indiana for academic networking purposes. I spent one of the days at Notre Dame where I met with Mark Noll and David Solomon.
Solomon and I sat down at a little corner eatery on campus and began chatting about the last few years and a few things we have in common. In the middle of it, he looked up and began speaking to a man behind me who I couldn’t see.
He said something like this:
“I can’t talk with you right now. I’m having lunch with Hunter Baker.”
I asked, “Who was that?”
He replied, “Oh, that was Alasdair MacIntyre.”
My little subgroup of fellow academics are all smiling now.
It is nearly New Year’s Eve and the time of reflection is greatly upon us. This reality is especially poignant in the wake of a revolutionary left-liberal presidential victory and the onset of substantial economic challenges.
Under the circumstances, I thought now might be a good time to propose a list of outstanding books for the intellectually curious friend or fellow traveler.
I would not dare attempt to put these in order based on excellence. Just consider it a series of number ones.
1. Lancelot by Walker Percy — A southern moderate-liberal is slowly fading out of his own life. He doesn’t know what his purpose is or where his marriage and family are going. But then, something strange happens. He discovers there is such a thing as evil. Percy won the National Book Award for The Moviegoer, but Lancelot is my favorite.
2. Witness by Whittaker Chambers — Surely, the greatest memoir of any man of the right. Possibly, the greatest memoir ever. I once tried to copy out the passages that meant the most to me and ended up just typing in whole pages at a time. For those too young to know, Chambers was an American traitor loyal to the Communist cause, who left the Communists for what he felt was the losing side. He had to do it because of his recovered belief in God. In the course of his life, he became a senior editor of Time magazine and ultimately defeated Alger Hiss in legal battles over Hiss’s identity as a communist agent. Since Frost/Nixon is hot, you might also know that Richard Nixon’s presidency would likely never have happened without his championing of Chambers’ cause.
3. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand — I can’t resist putting Chambers and Rand together, especially since Chambers was the instrument William F. Buckley used to read Rand out of the conservative movement. As a Christian, I find Rand’s work antithetical to my own sensibilities, but I have to admit its power. Besides, this is a conservative-libertarian list and she can’t be left off. On the other hand, as literature, it cannot rank with the greats. I still remember the moment when John Galt grabs a microphone to speak to the nation . . . and one hundred pages later is wrapping it up!
4. After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre — This is arguably the finest and most readable piece of political philosophy I have ever encountered. Anyone who wonders why our political discourse has become so poisonous and incommensurate should read this work. So, for that matter, should anyone interested in answering John Rawls. George W. Bush would have known long ago that “the new tone” was destined to fail, if only he’d read his MacIntyre.
5. Anarchy, Utopia, and the State by Robert Nozick — I’ll make this one simple. Robert Nozick provides the most convincing case for a minimalist state that I’ve ever seen. You can break your head on his symbols and formulas, but bear with it because you WILL get it if you keep reading. Even if you were only to read the short portion where he tells his “tale of the slave” you will be confirmed in your libertarian instincts.
6. Man and the State by Jacques Maritain — This collection of lectures about the relationship between the individual, the culture, and the state contains the kind of essential thought we wish every politician understood. Careful, wise, insightful. You will understand many things better after reading Maritain. If you would like to read political philosophy, but have been afraid to start, this may be your entry point.
7. Stained Glass by William F. Buckley — William F. Buckley is dead and I don’t feel so good, myself. However, I am comforted by reading his best works. This Blackford Oakes heart of the Cold War novel is one of his strongest entries. You want to see the kind of chess match the Soviets and Americans were playing? Then, read this Buckley spy novel.
8. The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer — Would you like to know who was the prince of the Christian conservatives? It wasn’t Falwell or Robertson. It was Francis Schaeffer. The missionary who set up a Swiss Chalet spent years arguing with college students in Europe. Along the way, he formed a convincing apologetic for the existence of God and the reality of values. (I am almost required to point out that Schaeffer was wrong in his critique of certain figures. So, I said it. Still, this book is great stuff.)
9. Perelandra by C.S. Lewis — I could have chosen almost any title by C.S. Lewis, so I picked the one that had the greatest emotional impact on me. Perelandra is the second book of Lewis’s space trilogy (underappreciated next to Narnia). The story centers around the drama of Adam and Eve being replayed on a new planet with an earthman there to witness it. Utterly compelling and, of course, full to bursting with philosophical and spiritual meaning.
This semester was my first one teaching in addition to working as a university administrator. Rarely have I longed for a Christmas break like I did for this one.
Teaching brings up emotions that are difficult to describe. You have so much invested in the students. Do they show respect? Are they listening? What’s going on behind those laptop screens? Can they be helped to understand what it is to form a legitimate research question or to argue persuasively for some point of view?
And then there is the grading. Some papers and exams are profoundly gratifying. Others are incredibly frustrating. you feel as though their writers simply occupied space in the room and learned nothing.
But enough about my thoughts. What moved me to post was this beauty by Joseph Knippenberg (a friend and mentor of mine). Here’s a sample:
We have a technologically-induced short attention span. We like, and can have, our information in short, easily digested bursts, soundbites, if you will. These are not arguments, but at most quips or wisecracks. They almost have to be short because they are placed in a context where there are many competitors for the audience’s time and attention. What’s more, because we have the capacity to accompany them (and compete with them) with video and audio, it’s relatively easy for the words and arguments to be overwhelmed by the images. Stated another way, our multimedia age privileges images and the emotions they evoke over arguments that are more likely to appeal to reason or to provoke a reasonable response.
I’m going to throw myself against the tide this semester. I’ll be teaching an intro to political science survey where I intend to have the students leave the laptops shut and to read through Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Mill, Locke, and many others with me. We will find the passages that are jewels and dwell upon them. I’m praying lots of lights will come on.
After writing the piece on Paul Weyrich for Friday’s online TAS, I found out a friend had a connection to Richard Viguerie, one of the pioneers of the modern conservative movement. He recalled a decade beginning in the in mid-seventies of breakfasts with Weyrich and other conservatives, including Newt Gingrich at one point, in his home.
Viguerie, like everyone I’ve spoken to so far, had a high opinion of Weyrich and his value to the movement. “Paul was a master strategist. He saw around corners. There were many occasions when he alerted our group to issues well ahead of time.” When I pressed him to explain Weyrich’s virtue as a strategist, he said, “Many people have mentioned that Paul coined the term “moral majority”. That’s not so much. His influence was bigger than that. It was Paul’s idea to bring the religious right on board.”
One of the things that stood out most as I listened to Viguerie was his recollection of Weyrich’s force within the context of a meeting. “When Paul had something to say, he spoke with confidence and authority. You had to be awfully sure of yourself to contradict Paul. I know I rarely did. The man was clearly a political genius.”
Viguerie also reinforced the positive things I’ve heard about Weyrich’s character. “Paul had one face for the world. One face. Period. Once he made a commitment, that was it.” He echoed others, too, in emphasizing that Weyrich was not a self-promoter. He was committed to the movement and not to building up his own reputation.
His estimate of Weyrich’s contribution to the movement? “He ranked with Goldwater, Buckley, and Reagan. He was a major contributor.” It sounds grandiose. I don’t claim to be in a position to evaluate the statement. But one thing is certain. Viguerie is not the only person I’ve heard put Weyrich in that class.
It’s the end of the year, so the book lists are out. I’m thinking about conservative icon Russell Kirk.
If you want a really enjoyable and edifying read, I recommend you begin with The Roots of American Order. That book will give you an understandable and historically grounded sense of what “ordered liberty” means. It will also open the mysteries of Kirk wide to the uninitiated reader. The prose is lively. Highly readable.
I’ve written this post in anticipation some of you will be visiting in response to my tribute to Paul Weyrich which will be at TAS on Friday.
Let’s get off on the right foot. I’d like to introduce you to a recent piece I did on whether social conservatives and libertarians can maintain their political marriage of convenience. My answer is YES.
Thanks for the visit. Stick around and kick the tires.
I have major policy disagreements with Barack Obama, but I have to admit that I like the way he handles himself. He gets this big left-wing backlash for having Rick Warren give the benediction at the inaugural and his response is pitch perfect. Boiled down to essentials: This is a big country and there are a lot of ideas around. There are going to be many points of view represented by people interacting with the White House.
Awfully good appeal to pluralism in the best sense of the word. Score one for Mr. Obama.
What exactly happened in the wake of Henry Paulson’s impassioned plea for a bailout of no less than $700 billion dollars? Irwin Stelzer narrates:
Consider this. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson persuaded congress to give him a $700 billion pot of money with which to buy the rotten IOUs on banks’ balance sheets. The theory was straight-forward: relieved of this burden, the banks would resume their role of lenders to potential homeowners, businesses, and consumers. Sounded like a good idea. But almost immediately it occurred to Paulson that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had a better idea–recapitalize the banks by buying shares so that they could begin lending again. That, too, was confidently touted as a good idea. But we have moved beyond the range of what we know about credit crunches. All we know is that the results so far have not matched the predictions of the proponents of these policies. Which is one reason why Paulson decided not to use the second half of his $700 billion, and to leave it to the next congress and the incoming president to decide whether it might not be better to pass the remaining $350 billion directly to home owners falling behind in their mortgage payments.
Think about that for moment. The Secretary of the Treasury demanded a massive bail-out of Wall Street and banks predicated on the idea that there was no choice and that something had to be done immediately. There was no time to think it over, to consider alternatives, etc. This same bail-out affected the dynamics of the presidential election and, more importantly, scared millions of consumers into save mode thus exacerbating economic forces pushing toward recession.
THEN, he decides his approach was the wrong one! And further concludes he should wait on figuring out what to do with half of the huge bail-out funds? Congressional spines should be stiffening everywhere. The technocrat who came in with demands based on his incredible authority and expertise has been left flailing.
Kathleen Parker has a major case of secular reason sickness and it needs to be cured. I’ll keep this short and simple. Here is an offensive line from one of Kat’s latest columns:
How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one’s values, but let reason inform one’s public arguments.
Problem #1: Social conservatives very rarely argue for their public policy positions on the basis of straight-up revelation. It is much more common to hear them talk about scientific evidence that life begins from conception (which could be found in an embryology textbook, for example) than to hear a scriptural exegesis of, say, Jeremiah 1. If anything, American social conservatives have worked quite assiduously to persuade their fellow citizens without direct appeal to revelation.
I think the Yale Law professor Stephen Carter was more correct several years ago when he complained conservative Christians relied on a platform that lacked spiritual distinctives and simply mimicked Republican positions. See, Kathleen, Mr. Carter is a scholar in the area of law and religion. His observation runs completely counter to yours, which you have seemingly formed on the fly in response to your personal Sarah Palin fiasco.
And let us not forget that when some Christian leaders hid behind the separation of church and state to avoid addressing topics like Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and nuclear proliferation, their liberal colleagues were applauded for highly public spiritual approaches to those controversies. When liberals do it, we call it “speaking truth to power” or “speaking prophetically.” When conservative religionists enter the political process, everyone suddenly frets about impending theocracy.
Problem #2: Ms. Parker acts as though everything we discuss in politics can be parsed scientifically. This is the same sort of casual toss-off we get when some self-satisfied personage says, “You can’t legislate morality.” Really? Hate crimes? The illegality of segregation? A welfare state? Human rights?
The simple fact is that politics concerns itself with the realm of value as well as the realm of fact. There are both religious and philosophical approaches to questions of value. Is there any compelling reason to commit epistemological segregation, Ms. Parker? Must the religious contestants sit at the back of the bus to satisfy you?
I have been part of an email correspondence group for a couple of years now which includes a number of strong public policy thinkers. One of the best is a man named Francis Cianfrocca (aka “Blackhedd”) who writes regularly at Redstate. He has been spot on with regard to the current financial crisis. I’ve read far better stuff from him in my inbox than I’ve been able to find at CNBC or Fox Business News. All of this is to say that he is plugged in to the financial community and has a strong analytical mind for making sense of it all.
Obama could sweep away a lot of this uncertainty and unreasoning fear with no more than a ten-minute news conference.
He could stand up, with the towering Paul Volcker, the sour-pussed Larry Summers and the sardonic-looking Tim Geithner standing behind him, and say the following:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve consulted at length with my economic team. We’re acutely aware that our economy is facing great uncertainty. We understand that our system is a capitalistic one. We intend to do whatever it takes to get business and capital working again, for the sake of every consumer and working person in America.
We also recognize our critical responsibility to the rest of the world. As the pre-eminent economic power, it’s up to us to lead global markets back to health and prosperity.
I’m announcing the following key decisions, which we will stand by until our markets are back to normal, employment is growing, and our economy is healthy again:
All tax increases on capital, dividends, and business income are OFF THE TABLE.
All protectionist legislation, including increased tariffs and import duties, are OFF THE TABLE.
All new regulations, mandated costs and taxes on businesses, including export businesses, are OFF THE TABLE.
That is all. Thank you.”
If Obama were to give this speech, you’d see explosive market rallies, and everyone would heave a big sigh of relief.
So how about it, Mr. President-elect?
Sounds like some first class “Nixon goes to China” action to me.
Hugh Hewitt had Mike Huckabee on his show recently. I missed it, but read the transcript and found this gem:
HH: Governor, here’s a contradiction in the book, and I read it very closely. On some places like Page 70, you denounce “yuppie greedheads”. Another place, you’re assaulting the management of Halliburton and Home Depot and Pfizer. And then in another place, you’re palling around at the ranch of Chuck Norris, whose done very well in life, and it’s a very funny chapter, by the way. I wish I’d been there when you were filming this commercial. But when is accumulated wealth okay, and when do you find it a reason to denounce someone like a yuppie greedhead? I mean, what’s the difference between a yuppie greedhead and Chuck Norris?
The latest issue of Religion & Libertycontains an essay I wrote for Acton about whether the relationship between social conservatives and libertarians can be saved. A student at my university (Houston Baptist University) read the essay and formulated a number of thoughts on his own. I was so affected by what this undergraduate sent me, I had to pass it along:
I have strong beliefs about limited government, states rights, individual liberty, free-markets, etc. But these beliefs come under fire when I see how one person’s pornography addiction leads to rape after years of unsatisfiable self-gratification, or when innocent children are born fatherless to promiscuous mothers.
There are 2 things I’ve come to realize. First, that every law is a removal of liberty. Second, that every system of law is either based upon the will of man, or based on that which we perceive to be Natural Law. Given this reality, the latter necessitates a belief in higher power, while the former holds no basis for the concept of “inalienable rights” whatsoever.
Without a giver of freedom the only “freedom” is that which is given by he who is stronger to he who is weaker.
Libertarian belief in liberty is founded in the idea that we have a God-given right to such liberty, and in that sense they share commonality with social conservatives.
But Liberty without order is chaos. There’s no doubt, law in our land is based on Natural Law. So the question is not whether we should legislate morality, but to what extent it should be done.
This is a question I still struggle to answer.
The young man’s name is Wesley Gant. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see a young person thinking things through this clearly.
The Acton Institute asked me for an essay for their publication Religion and Liberty a few months back. Here is an excerpt from the piece I gave them:
As the standard bearer for American conservatism for two decades, Ronald Reagan effortlessly embodied fusionism by uniting Mont Pelerin style libertarians, populist Christians, Burkean conservatives, and national security voters into a devastatingly successful electoral bloc. Today, it is nearly impossible to imagine a candidate winning both New York and Texas, but Reagan and that group of fellow travelers did.
In the meantime, the coalition has begun to show strain as the forces pushing outward exceed those holding it together. The Soviet Union, once so great a threat that Whittaker Chambers felt certain he was switching to the losing side when he began to inform on fellow Communist agents working within the United States, evaporated in what seemed like a period of days in the early 1990s. Suddenly, the ultimate threat of despotic big government eased and companions in arms had the occasion to re-assess their relationship. The review of competing priorities has left former friends moving apart. Perhaps nowhere is the tension greater and more consequential than between the socially conservative elements of the group and devotees of libertarianism.
The two groups have little natural tendency to trust each other when not confronted by a common enemy as in the case of the Cold War. Libertarians simply want to minimize the role of government as much as possible. For them, questions of maintaining strong traditional family units and preserving sexual and/or bioethical mores fall into an unessential realm as far as government is concerned. The government, echoing the thought of John Locke, should primarily occupy itself with providing for physical safety of the person while allowing for the maximum freedom possible for pursuit of self-interest.
Social conservatives similarly view the government as having a primary mission of providing safety, but they also look to the law as a source of moral authority. Man-made law, for them, should seek to be in accord to some degree with divine and natural law. Rifts open wide when social conservatives pursue a public policy agenda designed to prevent divorce, encourage marriage over cohabitation, prevent new understandings of marriage from emerging (e.g. gay marriage or polygamous marriage), prevent avant garde developments in biological experimentation, and a variety of other issues outside (from the libertarian perspective) the true mandate of government that cannot seek to define the good, the right, and the beautiful for a community of individuals. To the degree social conservatives seek to achieve some kind of collective excellence along the lines suggested by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, libertarians see a mirror image of the threat posed by big-government leftists.
I teach political science courses at Houston Baptist University in addition to my work as an administrator for the school. I also occasionally speak to young people in other venues. Something that I see now, which was nearly non-existent when I first gained teaching responsibilities as a grad student years ago, is the backside of a bunch of laptops facing me while I lecture.
Speaking to a colleague in the education department, I expressed my concern that students are too distracted by technology to pay attention and learn. She assured me these young people have different brains and can handle the multi-tasking.
I’m not so sure. I imagine that while I’m lecturing the students are partly listening and are dedicating the rest of their attention to online chat, email, facebook, fantasy football, and wedding planning. There may be some evolution of neural pathways, but I find it hard to believe there is any substitute for actually reading material, listening carefully to a lecture, asking questions, and discussing the subject matter without any other distractions.
And forget the immediate question of education in the classroom. Are these the kind of people who can pay sustained attention to public policy debates so they can participate meaningfully in the democratic process?
When I send my son (now 6 and pretty tech savvy) off to school, I may be looking for one that bucks the trend by promising me that he WON’T have a laptop in class.
My university is in the middle of talking about a reform of the core curriculum. When the school was founded, it began with a knock-out liberal arts core that could not have helped but shaped students in a significant way. Over time, like so many other schools we moved to a cafeteria-style core that mainly serves the majors.
People in the professional schools often seem to hold the view that a liberal arts education is unnecessary. An accountant, they might suggest, is a better accountant the more credit hours he has in his discipline. If that comes at the cost of serious liberal arts courses, then the loss is an acceptable one.
I once wholeheartedly agreed with that type of thinking. I thought the liberal arts were useless. However, I slowly became aware of the lacunae in my own learning. Attempting to make up for what I hadn’t learned earlier, I began to study the liberal arts on my own and then at the Ph.D. level. I became a convert. To me, to know something about history, literature, political theory, art, and other matters is to know something about being human. It is to escape the consumeristic spirit of the age and to gain access to wisdom and beauty. My life has been far richer since I learned to appreciate the things I once believed to be useless hobby-horses.
Will the liberal arts transform a scoundrel into a saint? Will they turn a professional into a super-professional? No to both questions. But the study of the liberal arts through careful reading, consideration, writing, and speaking can turn a philistine with the attention span of a gnat into a more thoughtful and perceptive individual who knows what kinds of things happened in the world before he was born. I suspect that’s enough difference to prove telling.
After church, I drove Andrew (6) and Grace (3) to lunch at our traditional spot, a place called Double Dave’s. On the way, Grace sang a song she made up:
God loves us.
God loves us.
God loves us.
Even when we’re bad.
She continued the song for quite a while until Andrew burst out, “Stop singing that song. It’s not even real. It’s just made up.”
In defense of Grace, I countered, “But Andrew, all the songs we sing were made up by somebody at some point or the other.” I was sure he’d stop with that.
He returned fire immediately. “I don’t care. That could never be a real song. I bet it would never even be recorded!”
That busted me up and finished the argument. Grace and I laughed while Andrew kept up his serious face. Happily, she was unoffended by his criticism.
Then, we ate lunch at the pizza buffet. Grace stayed at the table and mowed through dessert pizza while Andrew pretended to play video games for which he had no money. She dropped a piece of sticky, cherry pizza on the seat of our booth. She started to pick it up. I told her not to because now it was dirty. She kept moving the piece toward her mouth.
I exclaimed, “No, Grace. It’s dirty!”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because that seat is where people put their bottoms,” I said gravely.
She had no words. The piece of cherry pizza stopped moving toward her mouth. She now looked at me with an expression of pure horror.
When I began my doctoral studies at Baylor University in 2003, I was full of excitement over the 2012 vision cast by the university’s president Robert Sloan. I was also interested to meet Francis Beckwith, who had just joined the program where I’d be studying. In my mind, I was going to a place where a renaissance in Christian higher education would occur. New leadership. New scholars rising. I felt as though I was joining a great historical movement.
About five minutes after I got there, it began falling apart. News vans parked all over the campus. The presidency of Robert Sloan was under siege, as was the vision for a great Christian university. On a smaller scale, similar things were happening in my department. Francis Beckwith came under attack almost immediately from members of an old and distinguished Baylor family. I also became aware of dynamics within our department that would cause trouble for Beckwith when it came time to apply for tenure. To his credit, Beckwith never believed me when I told him there were forces conspiring to deny his tenure. He found out the hard way. He also fought tenaciously to win the tenure he deserved. And he eventually prevailed. You can get Beckwith’s story on the affair (including a few references to yours truly) in his Return to Rome.
It was in this boiling cauldron of university politics where I found myself trying to gain the notoriously elusive doctoral credential, the union card for college faculty. I began with Beckwith as my adviser and my future dissertation chair, but as I have noted above, I realized he might be tied up in other difficulties. I had to figure out how to move forward. Who could guide me? Who could I count on to make sure I was treated fairly? The choice was simple: Barry Hankins. Hankins was one of my first professors at Baylor. The simplest thing I can say by way of describing him is that he struck me immediately as an intellectually honest man. He reinforced that impression many times over during the next few years. I was terrifically blessed by his willingness to help me.
Hankins has been a prolific author during the past few years. I had the privilege of serving as a research assistant for him while he was writing Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America. Hankins is a scholar studying Schaeffer, while I’m more of a sold-out fan. His treatment of the revolutionary Christian activist preacher and thinker is highly informative. I learned many things I hadn’t known before. The big difference I had with Hankins while he was writing was that I saw more of a continuous Schaeffer while Hankins saw a great voice fall off stride a bit in a detour with the religious right of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Hankins’ point of view is probably the more well-accepted one.
I strongly recommend his book. Working with him on it hardly felt like the usual grad school drudgery. Hankins is an academic with a gift for direct, simple expression. I consume his books. Put his Francis Schaeffer on your shelf next to his masterful Uneasy in Babylon which was written about modern Southern Baptists. Once you buy a book by Hankins, you’ll quickly want another.
Like many conservatives of my generation (b. 1960), I came of age when there was a vibrancy and excitement for the works of authors such as Bill Buckley, Russell Kirk, Frederick Hayek, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Henry Hazlitt, Hadley Arkes, and George Gilder. Our political heroes included Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Reagan, and Thatcher.
Sadly, this present generation is rarely put in contact with these leading lights and their works. Instead, young conservatives as well as young liberals are tutored almost exclusively by blogs and bombast, by “stars” whose command of the intellectual roots of conservatism is an inch deep and a mile wide. We’ve come from “Don’t immanentize the eschaton” to “Sean, you’re a great American.”
I agree with my former professor fully in this regard.
I was speaking to a group of students (mostly conservatives) yesterday. Like me, they were a little disturbed about losing the election. There are many good reasons to have reservations about Obama. For me, the most notable has been the friendliness of his voting pattern toward abortion.
However, it would be a mistake morally, spiritually, and intellectually to be against him right from the start. We have to hope and pray that he will be a good and successful president. I can think of few things better than for him to be president for several years and for all to agree that he had served wisely and well.
I pray God will be much with him as he makes his first decisions.
I pray President Obama will search his own soul carefully.
I pray for his success to the benefit of the American people.
Something else. It knocked me off kilter to not have a white man be president. I mean that in a good way. I went to Target where a gracious African-American woman opened up a register to allow me to check out more quickly. I looked at her while I paid for my purchases and thought, “For the first time ever, the president of the United States is one of you rather than one of me.” This has to be a very good time for African-Americans. I am glad for them. This should help heal some legitimately sore old wounds.
Back when I was a student of political science, we spent a lot of time discussing the bell curve theory of American politics. The idea was simple. Americans are supposedly arrayed along an ideological spectrum. The vast majority of voters are in the center, while small numbers lurk out at the edges. So, the theory goes, the winning party will be the one that finds a candidate to plausibly occupy the center position.
I think that theory is out the window.
There is no way rational voters could have looked at the choice offered by John McCain and Barack Obama and concluded that Barack was closer to the ideological center than McCain. Obama had no record of cooperation with Republicans. McCain has passed major legislative packages with Democrats. Obama has never broken with his party other than to go left of his party. McCain has regularly broken with his party to move in with centrist coalitions.
Yet, McCain was beaten soundly.
I suspect that voters are not really rational centrists.
I think voters are highly emotional and I think they are often looking for a narrative they can understand. Barack Obama appealed to both of those things. Disgust with Bush as the author of a long, expensive Iraq adventure that even if effective, feels like castor oil going down. Anger at the economic problems that seem to have no bottom of late. And the narrative, of course, is the candidate of hope. The one who can bring us together, heal wounds, and importantly, who is not a Republican like George W. Bush.
Goodbye bell curve. May political consultants and party bosses everywhere cut you loose.
It has been interesting to observe the public debate over Barack Obama’s associations with individuals whose personal histories can only be categorized as radical. Bill Ayers is a former terrorist. Jeremiah Wright preaches race adversarialism. For the most part, Obama’s friendships with these men has been water off a duck’s back for the electorate.
Imagine a different scenario. There is an evangelical candidate. He is the best evangelical candidate ever. A Rhodes Scholar, a distinguished lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court, astoundingly eloquent, you get the idea. This candidate is a conservative, but answers all questions in such a way as to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. He hits all the right chords.
Further imagine that the record shows this man was once heavily involved with Christian reconstructionists who believe stoning should be re-instituted for adultery. He went to a church for two decades where a Christian reconstructionist preached each Sunday. One of his mentors was part of a group that bombed abortion clinics.
Where would that candidate be right now? And how different would that candidate be in terms of associations from one Barack Obama?
I am a college professor and administrator. I am 38 years old.
Yesterday, I saw one of my students walking through the parking lot. She is a young woman of about 19 years of age. Struggling to find something to say as she strode toward me smiling, I came up with this gem:
“So, are you going trick or treating this weekend?”
Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh.
When I was a teenager, I can distinctly recall my father telling me that he realized abruptly at age 35 that he was no longer a young person. He heard a group of early twenty-somethings talking. Their concerns were different from his concerns. Their interests were different from his. Their language was different. Their clothing and hair was different.
That is happening to me. Thank heaven I can talk about some really old stuff (like Augustine and Aquinas and Machiavelli) secure in the knowledge that I won’t be out of date and knowing that some young people will really be interested in hearing about it, if for no other reason than that it is really old.
There are other impacts to not being a young person. I am slowly divesting myself of the feeling that I am junior to everyone on the campus who is not a student. I don’t have to cover myself in disclaimers if someone should happen to call me “sir”.
I have also become somewhat protective of my own dignity. A friend called me out on something on an email list full of peers. I wrote him back privately informing him that I am of an age where I just can’t handle being publicly corrected! But do please upbraid me in private. I will respond in a reasonable fashion.
On the other hand, I am nowhere near middle-aged! I refuse it. I’m just not young. That’s all.
I really enjoyed McCain’s speech at the Al Smith dinner and have been waiting to see a transcript. Thanks to the Kansas City Star, I can provide it. Do yourself a favor and read this all the way through. He brought the house down.
John McCain:
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Your Excellency and Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Paterson, Senators Schumer and Clinton, Senator Obama, Al and Nan Smith, thank you all for the warm welcome.
It’s a privilege to be with all of you for the 63rd anniversary dinner of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation.
And this is a very distinguished and influential audience and as good a place as any to make a major announcement.
I am going to list the more spectacular points. All are direct quotes from the article:
For starters, [Obama] supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions that are not necessary to save the life of the mother and are not the result of rape or incest.
[Obama] has promised that ”the first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed ”fundamental right” to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy . . .
Obama, unlike even many ”pro-choice” legislators, opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice.
Appallingly, [Obama] wishes to strip federal funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women in need. There is certainly nothing ”pro-choice” about that.
Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama has opposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child.
[A]s an Illinois state senator Obama opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist’s unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability.
On October 10, 2008, Christopher Buckley, the son of the great William F. Buckley, author of Thank You for Not Smoking and National Review shareholder/back page columnist, informed the waiting world that he’s pulling the lever for Obama in November. He unburdened himself on a website appropriately named The Daily Beast. Ron Reagan, Jr. has owned the genre of true confessions by sons of famous conservatives, but here we had Chris Buckley, a well-known author in his own right! No matter how unpleasant, surely Buckley the younger would deliver a wallop.
Regrettably, the read is scarcely worth the click. Buckley provides a mundane and unconvincing explanation for his desertion of party and candidate. It is as though he couldn’t quite get his heart into it or worse is like a hostage trying to signal with his eyelids that what he’s saying isn’t true. Because Buckley is justly known as a comic author, one wonders whether he is kidding and simply failed to develop a good punch line. Whatever the reason, the result is disappointment. After all, this is the scion sprung from the loins of the founder of National Review, the mightiest political provocateur of his age. Read the rest of this entry »
I have spent the last five years of my life with two goals.
One has been to write a book about secularism which would demonstrate what I believe to be the uselessness of the concept. That goal has been achieved. The End of Secularism comes out in August 2009 with Crossway Books.
The other has been to do anything I can to take Christian higher education to the next level. I worked to that end while trying to save the presidency of Robert Sloan at Baylor University. What I saw there was a growing community of serious Christian scholars taking shape. Those on the outside can laugh if they want, but what I saw happening there in Waco was the first emerging signs of a Christian Ivy. Baylor is surprisingly large with about 15,000 students. It is part of the Big 12 athletic conference. The endowment is over a billion dollars. However, since Dr. Sloan left Baylor the basic identity of the school has remained in doubt. I cannot say who will prevail. It will either be an alliance of iiberals and Christian pietists who think their faith is private or it will be Christians dedicated to bringing their faith and scholarship together. I certainly hope the latter group eventually runs the school.
I just received the latest issue of the Baylor Alumni Association’s magazine. They have consistently been against the Sloan vision for a renaissance of Christian higher education. The issue contained a series of suggestions from various alumni and other stakeholders on how to unify Baylor. I was particularly repulsed by a letter from retired professor Rufus Spain who dripped contempt for the new “world class” (quotes added by him) faculty at Baylor. I don’t get that. Why wouldn’t you want your university to improve? Why wouldn’t you be happy to be associated with people who have reached the top rank of their profession? I don’t fancy myself a great Christian scholar, but I am thrilled to see them do their work and to help them influence the culture.
I finished my own doctoral work in December 2007 and have joined Dr. Sloan at Houston Baptist University to continue the project of renewal for Christian higher education. I have been there nearly a year and a half and have never had such good work to do in all my life. Culturally speaking, we dare not ignore the university. College students are amazingly open. They are thinking everything through and are figuring out:
What work they will do
What their view of the world is
Whether they will go to church
Whom they will marry
How they will vote
And a number of other things about life. Christian universities need to be attractive and ready to meet the challenge of mentoring students. It is clear to me that while it is good to have big cultural ministries like Focus on the Family, we have underinvested in colleges and universities. These institutions are force-multipliers, better than think tanks and policy institutes by far. At our colleges and universities we can have both character and worldview formation of the young AND research and publication by our faculty. This is where many of us need to be working and giving today.
During the summer, I watched a film starring Robin Williams in a dramatic role. Contrary to his comedian image, I’ve always thought he was better as a serious actor. This particular film, The Final Cut, was about a future in which it is possible to have a bio-implant that essentially records every event of one’s life. At death, it is removed and a “cutter” reviews the material (organized by the software into amazing categories) for compilation into a remembrance.
As you might imagine, the raw footage is all too honest. The only people who ever see it are the cutters. They know the real truth, but rarely show it. The surviving friends and relatives don’t want that. They want an idealized memory.
I recommend the film, but the bigger point is that it is provocative of thought. As I watched, I kept thinking about how people would think or how they would live their lives differently if they knew they had such an implant. What would that be like?
Then I realized that we do have an implant like that. It’s called a soul. And God will be the one who judges our lives in their entirety. You think about that and you know you need a savior. You know you need someone to make up for everything you failed to do and for every wrong decision you made. You know you need someone to help you account for the sheer waste and lack of human sympathy in your life.
The mortgage based security crisis has confounded me because I keep thinking, “So what if the mortgages fail, that’s what the underlying asset is for. Why is this thing so intractable?”
As is the case with most scams, this one involves greed, deception, illegality, collusion, intrigue and gullibility. There are plenty of guilty parties including politicians, bankers, brokers, Wall Street executives, corporate executives, sales people and yes, house buyers.
Uncle Bud goes on to break the problem down into comprehensible chunks. Check it out.
Now, before I go on, I understand how a man like McLaren could support Obama. You say, “Look, this man will begin programs for poor people. He will save the environment. He will bring healing to the racial divide in this country. Most of all, I like the way an Obama presidency feels.”
Aside from the last point, I will not even bother to rebut, though I could. I suspect the feeling about Obama may be the most important part. Many Christians have an averse reaction to conservative Christians in politics because they don’t like the tone. They don’t like the style, the apparent judgmentalness, the hardness of it. McLaren is one of those who has the averse reaction. Though I am far more conservative than McLaren, I’ve had the reaction myself in a room with certain types of people.
Unfortunately, McLaren is making a terrible mistake. If we agree that abortion is a terrible evil, which it is, then we must ask who is aiding that system of killing. The answer is simple. Obama aids it. He praises the funders and practitioners of it. He promises never to let it be limited or constrained. The one place where he is certain he favors free markets and laissez faire is with regard to abortion.
One could say it is but one of many issues, but so what if the issue is properly basic? Protecting unborn life is a yes or no answer pretty much like segregation is. Either you affirm humanity and its most basic rights or you do not. How would McLaren react to a candidate who supported everything he supported except that he proclaimed the question of segregation above his pay grade? Would he support that man or woman? I suspect not.
Brother McLaren, if you can’t go Republican for various reasons, your option would not be cooperation with a program of clear wrong. Your option would be to sit out until you can find a Democrat not actively at odds with one of the most basic tenets of the church (including the early church).
He thought her convention speech was substance-free and her debate performance was mediocre. I view things a bit differently. That convention speech was one of the finest political performances I’ve ever seen. The line about not seeking the good opinion of the media/political elite alone was worth the price of admission. And not just in entertainment value. That was substance. It was about embracing a different scale of values than those some think are so dominant as to brook no dissent.
But leave that aside. Sarah Palin has a political record. Let’s forget the ups and downs of her public speaking career and consider that. Are there conservatives who are going to argue her record is less than admirable? I don’t think it can be done. (No, this is not a challenge to see whether conservative contrarians can provide great e-alert material to the Obama camp.)
Palin is still imperfectly seasoned, but I think she’s going to be a transformative political figure in American politics. We’ll have to revisit that question in due time.
We’ve got our Conor Friedersdorfs and Kathleen Parkers shooting at Sarah Palin and Erick Ericksons defending her. The defenders wonder what team the critics are on. The critics appeal to intellectual honesty.
I appeal to the concept of edificiation. Do the words we write or say actually contribute anything to the election and to the civic discussion? Are they adequately considered after time to look at all the evidence? If I look at it in those terms, I have to side with the defenders.
The only possible way the critics could be in the right is if the writer really believes Palin is unfit to serve. I have a hard time believing that a bad interview demonstrates that. The situation is simple. A person with a career in state and local government, so greatly cherished by conservatives who love federalism, needs a little time to adjust to the national frame. I think it is really that easy. Patience is a virtue, friends.
I think the problem is endemic to the pundit class. We feel a need to produce a product, which is opinions, and so any thought that might have any possibility of generating a little action or emotion is vomited into the ether. When it comes to punditry, the idea of holding one’s tongue (or pen or keystroke) is counter to the entire business as it has evolved in the internet era. Words are free and readers are checking for updates constantly.
As a longtime contributor the American Spectator web site, I’ve been invited to the magazine’s pig roast for the last few years. It takes place in Madison, VA at Al Regnery’s country place. On the first three occasions, I couldn’t go, but this year it was possible to build a business trip around it.
Wow. What a party. I was there for five hours. Once I got used to the nearly continuous sound of gunfire, it was pretty good. I think I stopped flinching after each shot at about the two hour mark. Have I mentioned that conservatives like their guns???!!!
Seriously, it was a great event. I got to meet a number of people whose writing I’ve enjoyed for many years, including Jim Antle and my personal hero, Wlady Pleszczynski. And Jeffrey Lord! His columns are like great conversation and the man in person makes a wonderful party companion.
Much has been made by some conservative pundits about Obama being teleprompter dependent and how he racks up the speech pauses when he goes off the cuff. One might recall Rush Limbaugh compiling just the “uh’s” in an Obama appearance for comedic effect or Hugh Hewitt wondering how many of the awkward pauses he would accumulate during the first debate.
I don’t think the issue is that Obama is ‘prompter dependent or that he is inarticulate off the cuff. I followed him closely during the Democratic primary season and found him smooth whether working from prepared remarks or not.
The reason he has begun to seem halting is simple. Obama runs effortlessly to the left because that is his comfort zone. When he can give the “workers of the world unite” rhetoric and promote his reasons for dovish foreign policy, he is at home, talking to his people about what they all believe. That’s why he was so good in the primaries.
But in the general, he faces a different problem. He can’t roll the same way. He has to think carefully about what he says because all kinds of Americans are paying attention. Those pauses are necessary because the wheels do need to turn. He HAS to find the nuance in order to avoid appearing radical.
I didn’t appreciate at the time what an elite group of kids I went to class with in high school. The coming of Facebook has changed that. Now, I can see what those kids from the AP classes, where I was an underwhelming underperformer, have done with their lives. What I’m finding is that many are very successful in life.
A newscaster in Detroit, a surgeon, a talented artist, a commercial musician . . . There are many winners. What has depressed me is the extent to which these old peers of mine aren’t very much like me. We could have great conversations, but they would be unlikely to agree with me about religion, politics, and values. REM was the cutting edge at the time. One of their songs was “Life and How to Live It.” That group doesn’t have a lot in common with me on that topic, except perhaps in the sense that we’ve blazed some interesting trails.
But there was one guy in the class I considered to be the best of us. Even as a teenager, he was brilliant, wise, thoughtful, and caring. I’ve wondered through the years where he has been and what he’s done. He has a very common name so googling doesn’t help much.
Today, I got a friend request on Facebook. It was from him.
We’ve got a gallery displaying all the damage here. It’s terrible in the sense that much has been lost that has been replaced, but I’m also mindful that destruction often precedes creativity and growth. Hence, the idea of creative destruction.
From John, with whom I’ve not spoken in at least twenty years:
Thanks for reaching out! Looks like things are going super great for you and your family out there in Houston! I’m glad you like the music too!
I read your blog about the reunion and your faith — good read! Yes… reunions… a middle age (pre-middle age?) rite of passage or milestone. One that I don’t mind missing. Though I’m glad it happened. Makes me realize the paradox of how people don’t change and yet how people do change. How’s that for vague, cloudy relativism!?!
Not to start a theological discussion, but you mentioned us probably operating under different philosophies. I suppose on some level we do. Your blog made me think of an inconsequential “e-conversation” I participated in on Facebook several weeks ago. Read it if you’re ever TRULY bored:
Hi. I use this blog mostly to figure things out… Email me sometime: letters[at]johncommon[dot]com or just REPLY to a blog entry… Keep the pin in the grenade, John
I’ll check it out and don’t worry, I pretty much enjoy talking about religion, politics, any of it. You can’t get do much graduate work in those areas if you’re thin-skinned.
I had no idea in high school that you were a musician. It sounds like you’ve actually managed to make a career of it, which I know is a serious accomplishment. I’m a writer and have published many magazine pieces and have a book contract, but I’m still very far from being able to make a living at it.
John, I checked out the conversation. You seem pretty open, which is extremely refreshing. I do tend to embrace the Christian anthropology, the idea that there is something missing, that we are somehow fatally flawed. I feel it in the moments when I have thoughts I’d never admit to another human being except MAYBE my wife. I feel the selfishness, the pettiness inside me. I know I have to struggle to even think of being noble and loving.
But the “you have a God-shaped hole” stuff was never what convinced me. I’m one of these guys who essentially became convinced of the resurrection of Christ. If you think that really happened, then the rest is how you react to that, not what you think of Christian theology. That’s where I am.
Sorry to go on, but I keep thinking of other things. I don’t hold to the faith regardless. I do think Paul was right when he said if this isn’t true, then we are to be pitied. If I stopped believing it, I’d be right out of the game. Goodbye church, hello NY Times.
UPDATE: Forget what I said about electricity. The university still does not have power. I’m praying it will be restored on Friday.
I promise to return to blogging about things other than the storm, but right now I’m furtively grabbing a little access outside a Panera that has no food, but does have internet access. Bless them.
The university has probably just gotten its electricity back by today. I visited yesterday and checked out the damage. Our main administrative buildings are in really bad shape. The good news is that we can largely protect the student experience because of our newer facilities built in the last year. The less good news is that my office is part of what will likely be condemned and I’ll probably be working from a laptop on somebody’s porch, LIKE NOW.
In seriousness, there is a lot of work to be done. We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress at HBU during the last couple of years. We’ll do everything we can in God’s providence to protect that momentum and keep moving forward. If you want to pray for us, pray for strong support from donors and alumni. Also pray for good natured and honest insurance adjusters.
And if you should just happen to want to make a tax deductible donation or just keep up with the last information, go to www.hbu.edu.
After completing my doctoral work at Baylor University in part under the supervision of SA’s Frank Beckwith, I took a job teaching and as an administrator at Houston Baptist University. It’s been my privilege to be at the school during a time of growth in the student body and the hiring of many new faculty members.
Last weekend, HBU took a big hit from Hurricane Ike. Every update I get, the damage estimates seem to rise. Please consider giving to reconstruction efforts at www.hbu.edu. You can read more from our president Robert Sloan and from the Baptist Standard.
Our power went out around 4 pm on Friday. The storm came on hard around midnight. We had the kids bedded down in a half bath with no windows. They slept through it. Ruth and I kept watch in the living room, occasionally sleeping a little. The room is full of windows. We did it to be close to the kids.
I remember the raw fear of being awake through the night for Hurricane Elena in Pensacola back in the mid-eighties. This was better and worse. Better because I had experienced severe weather before and didn’t face the unknown. Worse because this storm just went on and on for hours. I kept wondering when the assault would compound into serious damage to the house. Kept waiting for that shower of broken glass.
At about 3 a.m., I realized water was blowing in under the back door. Didn’t seem to be enough to worry about. By 6 a.m. it was beginning to accumulate somewhat impressively. We stuffed towels and saran wrap under the door before my wife decided one of us needed to go in the backyard and remove leaves from the path of drainage from the porch. I put on a hard hat and went out into the storm, largely to keep her from doing it.
At first, it was a little thrilling. The wind gusting hard. Rain hitting like b-b’s. I scooped wet leaves. Then I looked up in the pale blue light of early dawn. The landscape of my backyard was different, but I couldn’t quite make out why. In the space of seconds, I realized most of my wooden fence was missing and that a whole section of it was hanging precariously from another section. In other parts, the boards had simply exploded. Suddenly, it occurred to me that this was not a safe place at all.
The storm has passed and I’m now happily watching the NFL at a friend’s house that amazingly has power. I’m grateful, since my house has become hot, dark, and BORING for children. My two little ones were beginning to act out The Lord of the Flies.
For the last year, I’ve worked at Houston Baptist University where we are striving to push Christian higher education to a new level. Part of our strategy has been to publish a journal of Christian thought aimed at the educated layperson.
My 20th high school reunion was held in Pensacola this summer. The class of ‘88 from Booker T. Washington high school met to share memories and update each other about their lives. I wasn’t there. I agreed to a mini-reunion a few months earlier with some of my best friends. We went to Chicago, ate expensive steaks, walked the streets, took the train, and watched some sports. It was a good time. But if I could go back, I’d go to my reunion instead.
There have been a flood of pictures, facebook connections, and renewed contacts thanks to the group from our class that did make the choice to re-connect. I realize now that my memories of that group have faded. I wish I could have heard some of them speak, looked at the receding hairlines, observed the wrinkles, found out who achieved their promise, and who is still looking. Maybe part of why I wish I had gone is because I am no longer a wanderer. After obtaining four degrees, including a Ph.D. and a J.D., I have finally settled down at a university and have a book contract. I would have been able to say something about myself rather than being a bewildered thirtysomething, which I was.
I’m burying the lead (or lede as the journalists say). One thing that has struck me in looking at facebook pages from my high school peers is that many of them seem to remember Pensacola as a hotbed of fundamentalist Christianity. More than one seem to define their lives in some degree as a reaction against that.
I’m fascinated. I wonder whether I was just too caught up in other things to notice at that age. My parents were from different denominational backgrounds and I just wasn’t interested in Christianity. Today, Christianity is my passion and massively important to me as a scholar. But back then, it was noise. I didn’t hear it. Not really. I was more concerned with getting a girlfriend or college football or David Letterman. I wasn’t leading the examined life in any way. Just trying to have some fun, go to college somewhere, and not mar my PERMANENT RECORD. Yes, I was a big believer in that. Not worried about God so much as a paper file that would follow me throughout my life.
If I had any kind of feeling about Pensacola, it was that it was a Navy town. I remember the handsome guys with short hair driving up to pick up their girlfriends (our girls!!!) in convertibles. I remember the Blue Angels and the push for young guys like me to consider Naval employment. I remember the radio stations. TK 101.5 and WABB. The way the cool kids were all listening to U2 just ahead of the curve, REM a little further ahead of it, and the Smiths and the Cure way ahead of it.
But if I push a little harder, I can recall the street preacher standing at the corner across from Albertson’s where I had a summer job as a bag boy. I can remember him warning of hell and damnation. Can remember his emphasis on the need for JEEEEEEEEEE-SSUSSS! At the time, it just annoyed me. Just kind of embarrassed me. I understand why some Christians refer to the scandal of the gospel. It seemed kind of scandalous. This guy was telling us that we aren’t good enough and that something is wrong with us.
The strange thing is that I’ve come to agree with him. The style and tone is different, but I do think we all have the something wrong. That unresolved something. And I do believe that a man was born who changed everything with his life, death, and resurrection. I believe there is evidence for it. Is it a slam dunk? Is it an unavoidable belief? No. But the great philosopher Alvin Plantinga is right when he says that it is warranted.
A few years ago, I somehow came upon the fiction of Lars Walker. I’m not sure how it happened, but it did. I became aware that there was a Christian writing fantasy and that he was a guy to consider. His book The Year of the Warrior touched me. Though published almost as pulp fiction, I discovered the book contained serious reflection on the nature of faith, religious freedom, and the spread of the Christian faith to pagan cultures. I went on to read his other books and his blog. At his blog, he wrote quite a bit about a fellow named Andrew Klavan.
I picked up Klavan’s books and began one of the more rewarding reading experiences of my life. In particular, I have to single out the Weiss and Bishop detective series for special praise. Just from reading them, I began to suspect Klavan of being a Christian.
I don’t know if he was one at the time of writing those novels, but he is a Christian now. He appeared on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to talk about faith. I am usually the type who would much rather read than watch short videos, but this one is an exception.
What you will see is a thoughtful man really thinking about life and offering a fascinating story of his Jewish upbringing and being bar mitzvah’d even though he’d been raised not to believe.
John McCain deserves tremendous credit for maintaining his cool while being repeatedly interrupted by protesters. Somehow, he managed not to lash out or show visible irritation. I kept expecting him to yell, “What the hell did you ever do for your country? Don’t you think I deserve to be heard? Have I earned that much?” He soared above it.
On the other hand, I have to rate the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the speech as weak. It had the same uninspiring feeling of a George W. Bush State of the Union. The laundry list, the calling out of ordinary Americans. When he started naming people struggling with recession, I thought of some campaign functionary looking at the poll results. “Cares about people like me” — Check. The first part of the speech had to be endured, sort of like direct mail that repeats the old pattern and the old tricks. You have to wade through it to get to the meat.
The good news is that there was meat. McCain got through the faux SOTU and began talking about what really matters — who he is, what his life has been like, why he is ready to lead. When he talked about that, the tingle started to develop. You could feel it. The contrast sharpened almost painfully. You realized, “Barack Obama has scarcely held a full-time job and we are about to elect pretty words when we desperately need a veteran.” That’s when John McCain scored. Scored points in bunches. He shook off a tired old cocoon and metamorphosed into the great man when he did that.
Being married to an obstetrician, I’ve long been aware of the search and destroy mission conducted by many in the medical world on unborn children with genetic defects. With regard to Down Syndrome children, the trend has been so pronounced that I expect to hear within a few decades that there are perhaps no more than 10% as many as there once were. This will be declared a victory for public health.
Today, we had the image of Sarah Palin, age 44, with four of her five children, including her youngest, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. God bless this woman for her simple choice to bring life into the world. I pray that message will resonate more than any other.
I started looking through the stuff you copied for me. One thing jumped out right away from [Sam] Harris. I had forgotten this quote:
“I no more believe in Zeus, Isis, Thor, and the thousands of other dead gods that lie buried in the mass grave we call ‘mythology.’ I doubt them all equally and for the same reason: lack of evidence.”
This is one of the most absurd statements I have ever seen. I promise you that I am open and susceptible to counterarguments about Christianity, but this one is utterly ridiculous. To say that there is some equivalence between, for example, Christ and Thor is to reveal incredible illiteracy about history and religion. Sam Harris is not qualified to write on the topic, especially not with the degree of certitude he claims. It is as though I started a conversation with someone who told me he was quite certain the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. I’d be suspicious of anything else he said.
The simple fact is that there is evidence, substantial evidence of the claims about Christ. Far more than for Zeus, Isis, etc. If Sam Harris thinks otherwise, it is because he entered the subject with his mind made up and thinking he had no need to perform research.
On the other hand, the bits you highlighted about the tragedy of being insecure in faith and doubt and faith not being at war make a lot of sense to me. The only people without a doubt would be the ones who participated with the Israelites in the amazing acts of God or the early Christians who actually saw the risen Christ. I have become a believer in Christ because I think the Christian faith, both historically and personally, offers the best explanation for why the world is the way it is and why we are as we are. I hope it is true. I can say with little difficulty that it is substantially more likely than the alternatives. I suspect it is Christ or nothing. And I find it very hard to believe in nothing. It wouldn’t explain anything about creation, would it?
Thanks for the article. I enjoyed the interaction between Warren and Harris. Anything you want to talk about (or email about), please let me know. I enjoy talking about this stuff.
A baby burbled audibly in the silent crowd. Perhaps it was pure serendipity that the child wore a t-shirt proclaiming “I love NY,” but I remembered the old stories of LBJ’s campaign appearances where he exhibited tremendous flair by tossing a gorgeous white Stetson into the assembled mass. What the folks never knew was that the greatest of Texas campaigners had practiced his aim and had a staffer charged with the task of catching that hat at every stop. When Giuliani walked over to the baby, mugged with it, and jumped back to the podium proclaiming, “Hey, I am a politician!” to the obvious delight of the audience, I wondered how often such happy accidents occur. Nobody at HBU was skeptical. They loved it and the ice was broken.
Despite the moment described above, I fully agree with those who think the Giuliani campaign is over and doesn’t know it, yet. Read the rest of the article for the explanation.
I think this event deserves a discussion of the media context.
Let me start simply this way. David Broder is the “unchallenged dean” of the Washington commentariat. No op-ed columnist has enjoyed the respect and prestige David Broder has. (I don’t need to go further to tell you that Broder is nobody’s conservative.)
This is the man who has called for the resignation of one Harry Reid.
Once upon a time, this Broder pronouncement might well have created a tidal wave. Harry Reid might have been halfway out the door by the afternoon of the Broder column’s publication. In short, Harry Reid might have been given the full Trent Lott treatment on a matter much more richly deserving it.
The case is easy to make and Broder made it. Reid conducts himself in an aggressively boorish manner. In an apparently desperate bid to be invited to the next Yearly Kos meeting, he recently yelped that “The war is lost,” despite the fact that we have poured a rather large amount of blood and treasure into Iraq, the fact that the United States is never outgunned, but only loses its nerve, and the fact that there are several million Iraqis hoping we don’t pull a cute Vietnam-style see ya later (and quite a few terrorists who hope we do). Reid badly undermined us with both enemies and allies.
Broder said all this (just a little more nicely than me, but not much) and Pejman and I have to share the news. It did not generate its own massive press explosion. I’m not sure Broder’s announcement will mean more than Mark Levin’s a few days ago. To a person who remembers life before the blogosphere, that’s a little surprising.
(Personally, I pray the Democrats fall to common sense and send Reid to the back benches. David Broder is not the enemy of the Democrat party. He probably lifted a toast on that unhappy November night last year. They should heed his advice.)
But guys like David Broder don’t carry the influence they once did. I can think of no position in the established media that has been more thoroughly damaged by the internet than the once small ranks of op-ed columnists. Not so long ago, there were just a handful of political column writers who could hope to influence national opinion. In the age of the internet, the ranks of well-educated opiners with something to say are legion and they are constantly cranking out content. The democratization of discourse is in effect.
Broder’s column may just sink beneath the waves of the opinion ocean. It’s too bad. Because this time (no, it’s not the only time) the dean is right.
I remember going for an evening walk with my young wife some years ago. As we strolled past a heavily wooded yard with a house barely visible, I suddenly heard the menacing growl of a very obviously big and mean dog. My immediate reaction was to run. The big muscles in my legs flexed and fired. The only thing that stopped me was my wife’s anguished cry, “Hunter, don’t leave me!” I forced down the fear impulse, backed up and put myself between her and the threatening sound. We walked on and nothing happened.
When Professor Librescu, an old man, a septuagenarian whose body had been through the terrors of the Holocaust, spotted a terrible threat he pushed his weight against a door and tried to keep a killer from murdering his students. All but two of the students and Librescu got away. In an email exchange yesterday, one of our Redstate contributors wondered why able-bodied young men would have chosen to run instead of coming to the assistance of their heroic professor.
Thinking of my own experience and looking at what happened in that besieged classroom in Virginia, I think I know the answer. Liviu Librescu had seen death up close much earlier in life. He very probably saw his friends and neighbors killed and had many opportunities to measure his own reactions in light of right and wrong, valor and heroism. It is no surprise to me that such a man would resist rather than run. I suggest to you that he knew exactly who he was. The young men in that classroom were probably a lot like me in the situation with the dog. They were untested and had probably never been in serious physical danger. More important, they had probably never stopped to consider what they would expect of themselves in a life and death situation.
There are a couple of lessons that come to mind. The one that many conservatives will point to is that we have a culture that does not successfully impute manliness. We already knew the ethic of dedication to wife and children had slipped badly. We knew less well that we weren’t raising boys with expectations of self-sacrifice and protectiveness toward others. But this is the smaller of the two lessons.
The greater lesson is that we should all take pains to reflect on who we want to be and what we really believe. It was once common to speak of the examined life. That phrase fell under the massive heap of self-help materials and endless reflection on why we don’t have a better sex life, more money, and a better job. But the examined life goes deeper than that. It comes down to knowing who you are. Without it, you will almost inevitably run in the face of danger, quail before the bully, and excel in self-justification after the fact rather than action in the relevant frame.
Jeff Emanuel made the point in his post that none of us know how we will react in these situations. I believe he is right about that, but I am at least equally sure that we can prepare ourselves for the event and drastically increase the chance that we WILL do what we merely hope we would.
My mother grew up in small-town Alabama. She was Catholic and went to a parochial school through the eighth grade. When she went to the local public high school she got a taste of anti-Catholic prejudice. People asked her questions like, “Is it true that when you get married, you have to sleep with a priest before you sleep with your husband?” It was a sometimes humiliating experience, but she lived through it and today, Catholic and Protestant relations in that same town are very comfortable. In fact, the pastor at a Southern Baptist church in the city gave a sermon praising John Paul II after his death. He went on to say that we should fervently hope the next Pope is a man like him because the Pope is the face of Christianity around the world. This rapprochement between Catholics and Evangelicals hasn’t happened by avoiding questions or hiding behind identity politics. It has been earned through engagement.
So now, Hugh Hewitt writes a book about Mitt Romney as the first Mormon in the White House. I’ve already questioned whether the book is premature in the extreme. It’s not as if there has been some amazing groundswell for the one term governor of Massachusetts who skipped out on the second term at least in part because everyone knows he would likely have lost. But the part that concerns us here is Hewitt’s claim that by acting as if Romney’s faith matters at all we somehow violate the spirit of Article VI’s prohibition on religious tests for officeholding and that evangelical Christians in particular should hesitate to consider Romney’s religion because they don’t want to have their own political hopes stymied by others considering their faith.
I think Hewitt is fundamentally wrong. Let’s tease this thing out a bit, shall we?
Article VI prohibits any religious test for officeholding in the federal government. So we will have no official requirement that only Episcopalians or whoever may serve in the federal government. Historically we know that set-up was basically about federalism (different states endorsing different denominations thus requiring federal stalemate), but let’s forget that and deal with it as we see it today. No official test set in legislation, executive order, etc. Fine. But then there is the question of the individual’s vote and you may exercise that however you wish. No Article VI interaction there.
Now, Hugh Hewitt wants to play the left-wing game and say that Article VI sets out an American value we should observe and that paying any attention to Romney’s religion is a violation of that value.
I disliked that argument just as much the first time I read it in a little book titled The Godless Constitutionby Isaac Kramnick and Laurence Moore. Kramnick and Moore were concerned that evangelicals and Catholics would refuse to consider a candidate who wasn’t religious enough and would therefore, apply a sort of religious test against an atheist, for example, running for President.
Historically, there is plenty of precedent for considering a candidate’s religion and it hasn’t been such a terrible thing. Jefferson was nobody’s idea of an orthodox Christian. He was the perfect picture of a deist, believing in morality and punishments and rewards in the afterlife, but not in the specific Christian revelation. New England Clergy who were members of the Federalist party raged against Jefferson’s lack of correct faith. They preferred Adams, who was also not a picture perfect Christian in theology, but who was more favorable to religious establishments. Tellingly, Jefferson’s supporters felt the need to deny the attacks on his Christianity.* Despite the religious controversy, Jefferson did defeat Adams and won the presidency. He required no rule against debating religious convictions of a candidate to do so.
John F. Kennedy was another example. In order to keep the Democratic party’s southern support base intact, he had to deal with the issue of his Catholicism by taking it up directly with the people, as he did with Baptist ministers in Houston. Kennedy insisted he would be the president and not a proxy for Rome. Work it out for yourself whether that was correct theologically for a Roman Catholic, but Kennedy didn’t hide behind some kind of insistence that his faith was off limits.
In interviewing Erick Erickson, Hugh Hewitt wanted to compare caring about Mitt Romney’s religion to caring about someone’s race. The entire line of argument is wrong-headed. The left has enchanted us into thinking about everything in terms of categories and how wrong it is to consider categories. On the face of it, Hewitt is right. Certainly, it would be illogical and malicious to refuse to consider voting for someone based on the surface reason of their race or religion. But there is a second layer to the inquiry. If a white candidate’s beliefs about the world, about government, and about culture were significantly impacted by his race, then I think it’s fair ground to know exactly how. If it leads him to believe in some kind of white superiority, then it’s worth taking into account when voting. The same is obviously true of a disciple of Louis Farrakahn, in which case we are considering his race AND religion. I do not say such persons have no right to run for or hold office. I am saying WE have to right to ask such persons questions and to withhold our vote from such persons.
Would anyone willingly relinquish that right?
The point Erick made repeatedly in the interview that Hewitt treated as though it were no point at all is that there is very little public knowledge about the Church of Latter Day Saints. As a Ph.D. candidate in religion and politics, I know a great deal about some of the ways Mormons have been terribly mistreated in American history, but I know very little about their actual theology. I’m an evangelical Christian with great sympathies toward the Catholic Church. My theology certainly affects my view of politics and I think I would be a cad to take the position that if I were running for office no one would have a right to ask me about it and wait to hear what I would say. I would assume that equal respect for a Mormon would be to assume that his religious beliefs are not purely private but actually have some impact on what he thinks, believes, and does.
To hold otherwise is to become a secularist who says that religion is only private and doesn’t matter in the public square. I don’t think Hugh Hewitt has come out in favor of secularism before, but maybe that’s his new position. Religion is private and doesn’t matter a whit to politics. Is that what you think, Mr. Hewitt?
No, Erick Erickson had the correct position. It’s okay to be curious about the Mormon faith. It’s okay for Mitt Romney to face questions about how his faith impacts the other areas of his life, including his political life. There’s nothing unconstitutional or immoral about it. This is the process that will make the Church of Latter Day Saints a part of the fabric of American religious, political, and social life. Just being open to engagement is the key.
*The part about Jefferson’s backers defending him from attacks on Christianity is telling because it denies the claim that the founding generation wasn’t much concerned with the Christian faith. Jefferson couldn’t come straight out with it and hope to still be elected.
Don’t mean to step on ST’s turf, but as this review in CT says, you should take the time and go see the new movie Amazing Grace, the story of the abolitionist William Wilberforce, whose efforts as a British MP finally ended the slave trade in the British Empire. The movie doesn’t shy away at all from Wilberforce’s evangelical faith and manages at the same time not to bludgeon you with it, either. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s quite good and I think may point interestingly toward where Evangelicalism is headed over the next generation or so. But more on that later…just go see the movie.
Salvo is a very cool magazine that just happens to have brought on your beloved commentators Samuel “L.” Karnick and Hunter Baker. We wrote for the first quarterly issue and my essay is finally available via .PDF on the web.
Mr. Karnick’s “Five Myths Crafted by Hollywood” remains behind the subscription wall.
This mag deserves your attention. They had the good sense to make me a Contributing Editor and Mr. Karnick a standing Columnist.
Besides, how can you not like a mag dedicated to:
Blasting holes in scientific naturalism, marveling at the intricate design of the universe, and promoting life in a culture of death.
Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass media influence, and questioning the sanity of our consumerist lifestyle.
Countering destructive ideologies, replacing revisionist fictions with undeniable facts, and paring away political correctness.
Debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence.
As a social conservative, as a Dobson apologist, as a Colson fan, as a man who has been in love with Alan Keyes in the past, I am surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea of Rudy in the White House.
Yes, he’s socially liberal. Yes, he won’t be anybody’s moral crusader. That’s alright with me.
If the man understands the real nature of the office AND follows his career-long law and order instincts, then there is arguably no one better for the White House than Rudy G. He is articulate, effective, and widely admired.
He saved New York. I dare say he can pull Iraq out of the crapper, too.
Oh, I know Jim Geraghty has renamed his NRO blog “The Hillary Spot,” but I’m still sure Obama will be the main man for the USA in 2008. I feel sustained in my opinion by the newly minted concept of The Obamessiah.
I saw the Obamessiah speaking at the DNC meeting today via one of the cable nets. He was perfectly playing Reagan to the lefties. “We musn’t spend our time attacking each other. Instead we must concentrate of saving this precious country of ours.”
He won’t get dirty. He’ll keep his hands clean with no legislative program other than to be kinder, more caring, and more above the fray than any before him. Then Queen Oprah will embrace her true child and the stars will align and then New Hampshire shall fall before him and . . . and . . .
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
I don’t know if Alan is still active one way or the other with TRC, but his new book is apparently out and it sounds like great stuff. Even though I’ve handed in my TRC retirement to blog with American Spectator, I’m just sentimental enough to plug Alan’s work here at his (and my) old stomping ground. Here’s what National Review’s Rich Lowry had to say about it:
If you don’t yet believe that we live in a de facto caste system, just wait until the new Democratic economic populists take over Congress. They will rely on the usual myths to portray the American economy as an engine of inequity and dispossession, benefiting only the very rich.
In advance of this onslaught, Cato Institute scholar Alan Reynolds has written a new book, Income and Wealth, that explodes much of the downbeat conventional economic wisdom.
The key difference between the richest and poorest households, Reynolds finds, is simply work: “Most income in the top fifth of households is from two or more people working full time. Most income in the bottom fifth is from government transfer payments.” According to the Census Bureau, there are almost six times as many full-time workers in the top households as in the bottom, and 56.4 percent of the bottom households didn’t have anyone working at all in 2004.
Not as much as you might think. A few interesting nuggets from this study. “Born-again” Christians make up almost 20% of the professoriate, but only 1% at elite institutions. Only 69% of professors at “religiously affiliated universities” claim a belief in God. Pretty interesting stuff.
I came out of semi-retirement just to put you on the scent of a remarkable author, the intrepid Lutheran (ya listenin’ Sam?) Lars Walker. I already posted about him at TAS and Southern Appeal, but I couldn’t bear thinking any of the TRCers might miss out.
It happens every once in a while. You discover something that is really special, that should be incredibly successful, but unaccountably, isn’t. A very well read friend made me aware of the fiction of Lars Walker. He writes mostly about Vikings during the period when Christianity contended with pagan religions, but he also has a contemporary novel (which happens to deal with Viking lore!).
I cannot give a high enough recommendation to Lars Walker’s The Year of the Warrior. I had to wait for it, but it was completely worth the wait. The narrator of the story is a young Irishman taken captive to sell as a slave by Vikings. They give him a tonsure to make him look like a priest so he’ll fetch a higher price. A newly converted Viking nobleman buys him because he needs a priest for his village. The Irishman decides to play the part of the priest in order to survive and the action flows from there.
Wonderful historical saga. Interesting insights about the Christian faith and its relationship to political power. Some beautiful battle sequences, too. Fully developed characters. Worth reading in every way.
So why the lack of bestseller status? I have a guess. The Lars Walker novels are published by Baen, which really specializes in sword and sorcery/science fiction. The covers of the Walker books have that look to them, but they are actually much deeper. I think the normal Baen reader is disappointed by the lack of standard genre stuff when they buy the book. But you, dear reader, will not be disappointed. You shall be blessed.
After finishing an article, I once decided to treat myself to a visit to the local Borders to buy a book. But I was so dismayed at what Borders had up in their entryway, that I turned around and left. Most appalling to me were the “hack books,” the partisan political books that deserve little more than a good pulping. (Think Al Franken, Bill O’Reilly, and, yes, Ann Coulter). So it’s pretty dismaying to me that Princeton University Press has decided to publish Sidney Blumenthal’s book How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime, which is little more (according to the book description) than a collection of his columns for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. It’s dismaying because UPs are supposed to be a bit different, they’re supposed to be publishing scholarship. Now, I know that there’s plenty of hackery disguised as scholarship – and most of it of a rather unthinking lefty bent – but this seems like a real step down for a University Press. Princeton can – and should – do better.
Inside Higher Ed reports that Georgetown has told six evangelical groups, including InterVarsity Fellowship, that they have lost their recognized status on campus, meaning that they can’t organize Bible studies, hold worship services, participiate in student organization fairs, etc. Georgetown says that it’s just an “administrative” move designed to streamline ministries on campus, but I don’t believe it for a minute. Most university chaplaincies don’t much like evangelical groups, staffed as they are (on the Protestant side, at least) by liberals. As an alum, I’ve sent a note to the chaplain involved and I’ll let you know what she says.
I’m announcing my semi-retirement from The Reform Club today. I just began blogging over at American Spectator and am planning to consolidate my efforts over there. They gave me my start in the online journalism/punditry world. It is through work for them that I met S.T. Karnick, which has been one of the great privileges of my adult life. He and I started this blog together. Through it, I have met several wonderful people and have actually gained some professional opportunities in the bargain.
Thanks to my co-bloggers Sam, Tom, Kathy, Alan, Ben, Jay, Herb London, and “Michael Simpson.”
I’m never going to forget listening to Rush talk about Alan for twenty minutes of million dollar airtime. Mind you, it wasn’t for a Reform Club post, but I still felt privileged. Alan continues to have his townhall.com blowtorch.
Kathy had a period several months ago where I thought she was blogging as well as anyone in the game. I couldn’t wait to see what she did next. She’s been in semi-retirement lately, but maybe she’ll reclaim some of the real estate I’m vacating.
Jay came to us after bowling me over with some of the coolest election commentary I’ve ever seen back in 2004. He also provided an extremely interesting Jewish perspective on the whole Darwin/I.D. question. In fact, he joined the blog via comment box writing on that very topic.
Tom got us mentioned in Newsweek’s Blog Watch. Never mind that he was opposing me in my merciless campaign against the Harriet Mier’s nomination! We brought Tom in after bravo performance in the comment room. Confidentially, I think he writes the most provocative posts of any of us.
At least one of Ben’s accounts of international conferencing with the tragically hip crowd deserves to be anthologized somewhere. Tom Wolfe is calling!
Herb London looks more and more prescient as things in the Middle East continue their spiral into some sort of eschatological scenario.
S.T. Karnick is finally threatening to do more of the work that caused me to repeatedly acknowledge him as “the greatest living film (and television) critic in the English language (TM).” Look for him to break out in the pop culture area in 2006-2007.
And Michael Simpson, we barely know ye, but you are clearly a shrewd analyst of what lurks behind the ivy and what lives in the ivory towers.
I’ll be back, but not so often in print here at the Club.
In a comment to a post below, Mr. James Elliott refers to me as a “Christianist.” I would love to have the term defined so that I might know the full extent of my sinfulness as one not worthy to untie the sandals of John Dewey or some other great secular saint.
Please favor me with a definition and tie it to me since I am the one so labeled.
Salvo Magazine is the latest effort by the publishers of Touchstone. Salvo has an intellectual edge, like Touchstone, but is not devotional or necessarily religious at all. It is, however, a wickedly funny indictment of culture with some insightful articles along the way.
I’m telling everyone I can about the magazine because it has exceeded all my expectations. I wrote an article for it and promptly forgot about the project thinking it would be just another throwaway magazine, but Salvo is gorgeously rendered and makes the articles pop right out of the page.
You have to buy the mag or subscribe for four quarterly issues to see it, but I can assure you that the fake ads are worth the price of admission alone. Bobby Maddex has really accomplished something as editor of this magazine and I encourage everyone who wants to see more of these efforts to support it by subscribing for the first year.
Stuart Buck points out that the traditional view of teaching v. scholarship (that good scholars make for good teachers) is likely not true (or likely not often true) but that teaching might make for better scholarship:
No matter how intensely you study a particular subject, if time goes by without regular review, it’s easy for the details to slip from your memory. But teaching a course inherently requires regular review — not just of your own scholarship on a given subject, but of everything else that is relevant to that subject. If you’re going to stand in front of a group of people and explain a particular legal subject, you have to know the ins and outs of all the important cases/statutes/commentary. It’s not enough to know this stuff “on paper” — you have to know it stone cold, so that you can answer practically any question that students might throw your way.
What’s more, you have to know the subject well enough to explain it to beginners. I think that this requires more in-depth knowledge than merely being able to converse with other “experts.” When you’re talking to beginners, you have to understand the topic well enough to boil it down to the basics. You can’t get away with casually genuflecting in the direction of some abstraction on the assumption that everyone else will know what you’re talking about.
I think there’s something to this. At least for political theory (my field), the best scholars are those who can work their way through a problem and bring to bear a wide range of analytical tools and concepts. There’s a place, of course, for the detailed study of what Locke thought about parental relationships, but if you’re trying to think about how we ought to understand (and capture in law) such relationships, you’re better off if you can draw from a wider range of thinkers and histories. Scholars who teach widely seem to me more likely to do that.
That said, it’s still worth noting that when research universities have great teachers it’s because they want to be great teachers, not because there’s any particular incentive in that direction. For most, teaching is something they “get through” in order to do their “work” (i.e. research and writing). Most try to find ways to minimize the amount of work they have to do for the classes (Ever had a course where the students were doing presentations the last four weeks?) and the better scholars get rewarded by having to teach fewer classes. Until the incentives change, teaching will always be a sidelight, not the main event, at research schools.
When I arrived at Baylor University to begin my doctoral work, one of the first people I met was a dark-skinned Nigerian man named Abraham Mbachirin. Abraham practically lived in our research center.
Our program proved to be quite challenging for him because many of the core courses deal with American law and religion, something he hadn’t understood at the outset. And there was another problem: he couldn’t type. That was a significant problem when students crank out thousands upon thousands of typed words each semester.
He was low on money, had English as a second language, and missed his wife and several children back home. Yet, he fought and struggled. His love of knowledge and yes, of the Lord, gave him the strength to press onward.
Though the enterprise looked precarious at times Abraham never faltered. I’m proud to report that Abraham Mbachirin successfully defended his dissertation today. He returns to Nigeria to build that nation’s institutions of higher education and to continue his role in the Presbyterian church.
Africa needs good men. Godspeed to Abraham Mbachirin. I pray he comes back to us someday as an official of the Nigerian government, more stable and successful than ever. I don’t think Nigeria has ever had a Kuyper, but Dr. Mbachirin might just fill the bill.
It’s been referenced here at the Reform Club and is often mentioned here and there in the literature. C.S. Lewis was well known as an unbeatable debater until he ran up against Elizabeth Anscombe. The history of the event is that Anscombe won the debate and that C.S. Lewis abandoned apologetics (reasoned defense of Christianity) for other things like children’s literature. Victor Reppert, who has written his own book about Lewis, disagrees vigorously with the idea that Lewis abandoned apologetics after the Anscombe debate. Read about it here.
In addition, I think the general thought is that Anscombe beating Lewis in debate represented some triumph of the non-Christian over the Christian. She was actually a serious Catholic who was later in life arrested for pro-life activities in England similar to what Operation Rescue did in the United States. More about her and a confirmation of Victor Reppert’s report on Lewis’s continued interest in apologetics here at First Things.
Sometimes we act like the scientific method was only invented a few hundred years ago. Don’t you know that even an absolute savage seeing a thin tree spanning a narrow river would use something like the scientific method in deciding whether to cross at that point? He’d probably figure in his mind whether the the tree would bear his weight. He’d test it near the bank. He might get as far out as he could without totally committing and then come back. If he were really ambitious he might even roll a heavy log out onto the tree to see if it would hold. Then, he would take his data and decide whether he should cross. That’s scientific thinking and it’s been going on probably for as long as there have been human beings.
We like the scientific method. I’m a devout person, but I prefer knowledge vetted via the scientific method to any other kind. I think everyone does. If I hear about someone claiming to have been healed of cancer, I ask whether they’ve had it confirmed by a doctor and some tests. Anybody who tells you they don’t like knowing things scientifically is probably lying. The scientific process is a good thing.
However, the scientific method is really limited in terms of what it can tell us about life and how to live it. No matter how much we learn about the natural world and how it works, the simple fact is that science has zilch to say about most of what we talk about in politics. For example, there is a lot of passion on this website about the policy the United States takes toward dealing with poor people. What does science have to say about that? Is mercy a scientific matter? Is compassion? The truth is that virtually all of us want to see the poor better off, but if we try to discuss why that should be, science just won’t much enter the picture.
Science helps us figure out how to do things we want to do, but it is very little aid in figuring out what the wants are. Does science say whether we should have an anti-poverty policy? No. Does science say whether we should be aggressive or pacifist in our foreign policy? No. Does science say whether we should rebuild Iraq? No. Does science say whether we should have an affirmative action policy or that we should have ended slavery? No. Science is blind to most of politics and not surprisingly, to much of life.
Values help us figure out what our wants are. Things like freedom, loyalty, brotherhood, mercy, love, bravery, honesty, commitment, etc. Now, there are different ways to decide what your values are, but none of them are dead-on scientifically rational. I’m sorry, but it’s true. This is why we get jarring statements like the one from Richard Dawkins the atheist who tells us he is a passionate Darwinist (and atheist) who is just as passionately anti-Darwinist in his politics. He is telling you that scientific knowledge about the world won’t resolve the issue of your politics and for once, he is right.
What will resolve the issue of your politics? The answer is that you have to think about things like what is the nature of human beings, what is good for human beings, what does good even look like, whether something like evil exists and if so what qualifies as evil, what should you care about, what should government care about, etc. In figuring out your politics you figure out yourself. For most people, that process includes thinking about what God thinks and looking for clues to answer that question in religion. It should be clear, however, that those who do not look to religion to help answer these questions are no more rational or scientific than their religious co-seekers. Both persons or groups of persons, religious and irreligious, are filling their cups of value with something and they are not doing so on the basis of scientific analysis.
I think that is the substance behind Ann Coulters’s claim that left-liberals are religious. They are engaged in the experience of determining their values and they do so in a way that is no more logical or reasonable than those who are religious. This is the ineffable territory of the soul — defined as who you are.
Further Thoughts
This inability of science to provide any warrant for our longing for things like justice, good order, compassion, fairness, truth, etc. leads us to where we are and have been for some time. Despite the moniker “political science” we have no science of determining political (or personal, for that matter) ends. Thus, we accept the non-mathematical precision presented us by politics (as did Aristotle) and try to reason from experience and observation about ourselves and society. Natural law tries to deduce our morality in this way.
Religion enters the picture either as a mystical dropping out, a dismissal of the earthly world as an illusion, or (more relevantly) as a massive claim upon history. This last is what we encounter with the Jewish and Christian faiths in particular. Both say “This really happened (the giving of the law or the resurrection of Jesus)” and “Because this thing happened we can draw the following conclusions from it.” The Christian faith in particular offers us this way out of the conundrum of little-explained or mysterious values.
The first kind of religion, that which drops out, is in fact irrational and proudly so. The latter kind, that based on a witness of real history, can only be seen as an attempt at rigorous rationality, perhaps even of the scientific kind. Thus, the Christian claims to have a better idea of what values one should advocate than others who grasp at the issue with no better guide than practical reason well beyond the parameters of the scientific method.
There are at least two ways I see that are helpful for getting at the question of the church’s attitude toward the recognition of gay marriage by the government. I’ll outline the short way, and give some hints at the long way, which I believe both end up arriving at the same conclusion.
Before this, however, I want to take a moment to define some terms. For the purposes of this discussion, I will use the term gay marriage to refer to the legal and public recognition of the union of two same-sex partners. My use of this term should not be construed as an acknowledgment of this social relation as a species of the genus marriage. I explicitly do not believe that so-called gay marriage is really marriage at all.
First, the short way. If we take Aquinas’ rule of thumb as a starting point, that not all immoral things are to be illegal (quoted here), the determining factor becomes whether the criminalization of an immoral behavior would result in more or less evil, i.e. whether by doing so the state would be stirring up more evil or restraining it.
From a Christian perspective, that gay marriage is immoral is beyond doubt and that it violates at least the commandment regarding adultery is undisputed. Note that the scope of the seventh commandment is sexual purity, and that as has been the traditional Protestant and Roman Catholic practice is to interpret these commandments with both positive and negative aspects.
As part of the second table, Calvin, Luther, and others would agree that the enforcement of the adultery commandment at least theoretically falls under the purview of the state. The traditional differences which you relate that are often observed about the relationships between the first and second table are thus of no real relevance for this discussion, since first table commandments are not at issue. Gay marriage is not simply a “religious” issue as the first table is often construed, but a moral/civic one relating to the second table. With this in mind, we must at least consider the possibility whether or not homosexual activity, and certainly the kind of homosexual relations characteristic of gay marriage, ought to be criminalized.
Let’s assume for the sake of this argument, as so much of American society already has, that this sort of legal prohibition does not meet Aquinas’ prudential criterion: it creates more evil (in the form of an intrusive government, among other things) than it restrains. This, I believe, is a possible and tenable argument against the criminalization of homosexual activity.
This recognition does not leave us with only one option, that is, for the government to recognize gay marriage. This merely leaves us without any laws whatsoever from the government on this point, and thus leaves the government’s approval or disapproval of this activity as moral or immoral ambiguous at best.
But for the government to actively recognize and therefore promote gay marriage would be to explicitly sanction this activity as morally praiseworthy, just, and helpful for society. We have already established that homosexual activity is immoral, and therefore the government has no valid role in promoting or establishing such activity as normative. There is thus a difference between saying something is legally permissible and that it is morally permissible or even praiseworthy.
In this way, the Christian view of the government’s role regarding gay marriage can take two forms. First, the Christian might say that the government should prohibit and enforce this portion of the second table in pursuit of restraining evil. Second, the Christian might make a prudential judgment and say that the government would create more evil by making and enforcing such laws, and should therefore make no positive law on this point. There is no third option for the Christian view of the state, that is, that it should actively promote, recognize, and protect an immoral set of social relations.
I understand the current attempts of Christians to argue in favor of some sort of marriage amendment to prevent the third (non)option, in favor of the second, which leaves homosexual relations legal but does not allow for them to be codified and sanctioned by the state.
The long way of going about this argument would be to outline the roles and relationships between the various institutions, spheres, or mandates, specifically regarding marriage/family, government, and church. I understand these in a similar way to what Bonhoeffer says regarding the four divine mandates (marriage, work, government, church), which I believe is consistent with a line of social thought including at least one possible form of Kuyper’s view of sphere sovereignty (not specifically Dooyeweerdian conceptions, for example) and going back through various Reformers including Wolfgang Musculus, who wrote of three laws in the Garden of Eden, relating to procreation, dominion, and work/provision of food.
On this account, marriage and family exist apart from and distinct from government and the church, and so both of these latter institutions merely recognize, affirm, and ratify the prior relationship rather than creating it de novo. I believe gay marriage would be a legal creation, not the recognition of an actual prior social relation that is continuous with the created and preserved order of heterosexual marriage. I don’t have time more than to hint at this latter method, but again, the result would be that the state certainly has no obligation, or even permission, to recognize, promote, and/or establish, a set of social relations that violate the moral order, especially as articulated in the second table commandments.
A few other issues:
1. Can you explicate further this distinction between an instrumental vs. sacred function of the state to which you refer? Do you get this terminology from Luther? For Luther, the state is sacred, insofar as it is God’s rule with his left hand.
2. The recognition of the state as an order arising from the Fall rather than something embedded in creation is of ambiguous relevance. Calvin would certainly agree that the coercive nature of government arises as a result of sin, even though he might argue that government without this characteristic is at least hypothetically manifest in the primal state. But Calvin is not representative of the entire Reformed tradition. A more modern example, like Brunner, who at least in some ways is taken to represent a Reformed position, argues explicitly that the state is an order of preservation arising after the Fall, distinguishing it from an order of creation.
How exactly is the Christian to view the state? The answer to that question answers a slew of other ones, including, perhaps, the thorny question of gay marriage sanctioned by the state.
Three options jump out at me as I think about Christianity and the state:
The medieval Catholic view has the state below the church. If we were to draw an org chart, the state would be at the bottom, the church in the middle, and God at the top. In this scheme of things, it clearly makes sense to speak of a Christian state.
Calvin’s view is a little different. The church and the state are not in a hierarchical relationship. Each answers to God separately, but the implications are not what you might think. Because God invests government with authority, governors should be primarily concerned with things like right worship and doctrine. Heresy would absolutely be a punishable offense.
What is similar about the two views described above is that the state is a sacred entity and it is going to be involved in matters of religion.
Luther represents a definitive break. His state is not sacred or confessional. Instead, it is purely instrumental, which is to say that the state has no eternal destiny but it has a job to do. The job is simple: restrain evil. Because of the fallen state of man, sin is everywhere on the earth and without the restraint of rulers the world would be a desert as the wolves preyed endlessly on the sheep. Luther’s state shouldn’t worry so much about correct doctrine and punishing heretics. That is for the church to handle through persuasion and excommunication. Instead, the state should wield the sword against those who will do evil in the form of violence, theft, and fraud.
Of the three options, it may be clear that I think Luther’s view is the best and is of the closest accord with the New Testament. Christ really didn’t bring a doctrine of the sacred state, at least not as far as I can tell. The church’s mission is far more important than the state’s, but we often act as if we believe the state is where all the action is. I think that is a legacy of Calvin. I should also add that I see foreshadows of Locke in Luther, but Luther rarely gets the credit.
Gay marriage comes into the picture because it is of such great moment for Christians involved in American politics. I still recall talking to John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute in 1998 with a group of fellow summer associates. Whitehead told us gay marriage was already lost. We protested. I think he was right and we were wrong. The question is how upset we should be about that.
If you take Calvin’s view of the state, then I think gay marriage is completely unacceptable. The honor of God is implicated in the Calvinistic state and something so clearly at odds with Christian doctrine would be an ultimate affront. The result is that you have to fight and fight hard because the state is a covenant entity and God will punish a faithless people.
If you take Luther’s view, the picture is a bit less bleak. Gay marriage is really outside of what the state should be doing, but the honor of God is not on the line because we are only talking about an instrumental entity for earthly convenience. It is quite possible that gay marriage will represent a milestone that immediately fades into insignificance as we discover the whole thing was primarily about making a point rather than about the desire to build nuclear families.
Just to clarify a bit through comparison we can see that in Calvin’s world gay marriage would be every bit the problem abortion is. Gay marriage might be even worse than abortion because it runs directly counter to scripture. In Luther’s world, abortion would be far more grave because the state is licensing real harm and violence against innocent parties. Gay marriage represents something less troublesome by several degrees.
Love to hear discussion and feedback on this one. The thinking here is early and tentative.
Update: I mentioned three models of the state from a Christian point of view, but there are others. For example, one could embrace a radical reformation view in which the church withdraws almost completely from the state, viewing it as a source of corruption and malignant worldliness.
Friends, neighbors, TRC’ers, I have returned. Your faithful correspondent was back in Waco taking his doctoral preliminary exams.
I can report two things.
First, I have now equalled one Dick Cheney in terms of progress toward the Ph.D. He is ABD and so am I. (Cue the Bentsen-tribute where a ghostly voice reminds me that I’m no Dick Cheney.)
Second, the subject of the natural law came up in a talk with a friend. She is very passionate about the rights of illegal aliens, border issues, etc. I happened to know prior to the conversation that she considers herself a “nontheist.” If I understand correctly, the word nontheist is being used by some to get away from the highly negative associations attached to the word atheist.
Anyway, I listened to her talk about the rights of various people and finally had to ask: “Where do those rights come from?”
She thought about it and said, “I think I’d go with the Constitution on that.” (This would strike some as a bad response, but it isn’t so wrong. Just because one doesn’t have all the constitutional rights as with a youth, prisoner, or illegal alien, it doesn’t mean one has no constitutional rights.)
I replied, “Those are just words on a piece of paper. They could easily say something else.”
She then returned, “I can’t see the answer being natural law.”
Me: Why not? I have a friend from Nigeria and we agree on the essentials. Lying is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Murder is wrong. Unprovoked assault is wrong. Yet, we are on opposite sides of the globe. These notions seem to be built into the structure of reality.
She: But there have been people who sacrificed virgins!
Me: That doesn’t do anything to undercut natural law.
She: Huh?
Me: The people who have sacrificed virgins have offered justifications for doing so. In fact, they offer an ultimate justification — to satisfy a god. What would damage natural law thinking would be if they thought it wonderful to sacrifice virgins for no reason at all. They may be wrong about the justification, but they aren’t wrong that one must have a good one before murdering innocent people.
And at that, we had to switch the subject because she did not wish to be converted to natural law any more than to Christianity.
Alan, were your ears burning a little after noon today? Rush Limbaugh spent, I kid you not, about 10-15 minutes discussing your column in which you referred to his immigration analysis as “patently absurd.”
Reform Clubbers can get the Alan Reynolds column here at Townhall.com. The gist of it is that Alan thinks Rush and other conservatives are pumping the numbers of future illegals way up with assumptions that mirror those of compound interest with money. Rush’s response is:
a. It’s realistic to think multiplication will occur as described. b. If the numbers are too high, we are still talking about a ridiculously high number of illegal immigrants.
What interested me more than the debate itself was the amount of time Rush spent talking about Alan. Do you have any idea what an advertiser would have to pay for a quarter hour of Rush’s national audience’s undivided attention?!!! Alan, I have no idea what you get from Cato and Townhall.com, but influence-wise, you just became a millionaire.
There was also something provocative in Rush’s treatment of Alan. As he went into the break, Rush suggested Alan was probably asked by someone to write the column. Rush, are you accusing our Alan of a Bandow-esque lapse? More important, are you suggesting our man Alan is doing the administration a solid?
If the answer is yes, then I want to get to know Alan better, because he’s rubbing some premium elbows!
More seriously though, if Rush were to look a little deeper, he’d find Alan Reynolds has been writing about immigration for some time and that this latest column is a continuation of a pre-existing interest in the issue.
National Review Associate Editor Anthony Dick has an article up today praising a new documentary about Intelligent Design and Evolution. I got hung up on the part where Dick starts talking about the concept of irreducible complexity:
Olson’s exposition of this first point hinges on what has become the biggest buzzword in the ID movement: “irreducible complexity.” This concept is the golden calf of ID advocates, who argue that there are some biological structures that are so complex that they could not possibly have evolved through the Darwinian process of genetic mutation and natural selection. The proper functioning of these structures, they claim, requires the simultaneous operation of numerous different components. These components supposedly could not have been of any use to an organism if they had evolved individually on a gradual timescale, so it is not clear how they could have evolved together to form the larger structures.
And so? Do IDers modestly conclude from this that they may have found an interesting challenge that should be the topic of further discussion and investigation?
Well, not exactly: They conclude that, because we can’t presently think of a way that some complex biological structures evolved naturally, these structures must have been fashioned by an intelligent designer. Here you will want to fire up your camcorders: Rarely will you see a logical long-jump that hurdles so many acres of careful reasoning with such soaring ease. If ever there was a record-breaking flight of fallacy, surely this is it.
Olson correctly identifies this “irreducible complexity” canard as a textbook example of “God of the gaps” reasoning, whereby one finds a gap in human understanding of the world, and then immediately plugs this gap by invoking divine intervention. It is by the same thought process that the ancient Greeks deduced the existence of an angry Zeus hurling thunderbolts.
Mr. Dick appears to have done some easy leaping of his own. If it is the case that there are some biological structures that are simultaneously too complex and too irreducible in function to have had some predecessor (and we don’t mean the eye, but a flagellum), then the entire evolutionary theory is on the rocks waiting to be spelled out by a more capable theory. Such a finding would not be modest, but would be foundation shaking. Dick’s “god of the gaps” is Behe’s “find a new theory, don’t worry I’ll wait.”
Once again, as an observer of the debate rather than as a participant, I can’t help but feel that one team is desperate to knock the other one of out the arena by pure scorn rather than by engagement.
I’m particularly intrigued by the accusations about “god in the gaps.” It is quite true that one of the great achievements of science is to explain how certain things work, how they happened, or how they might have happened in such a way that we can go beyond, “God made it that way.” And we should all applaud. I can imagine some good Calvinists out there thinking that scientific exploration is exactly the sort of role God envisioned for man right from the beginning.
However, the joy of learning, explaining, and naming shouldn’t mean that we are incapable of admitting a need to go back to the drawing board or to make a major revision. I think that because the issue of evolution has been so charged with atheist and Christian fervor, there are many who believe evolutionary theory is a battlefield of honor on which science must prove itself to be the master narrative with the best chance of explaining “life, the universe, and everything.” And on the battlefield, you don’t admit weakness, even if it’s real.
When I watch the way this battle is conducted. I see weakness and its not with the IDers. It’s with the guys who conduct little inquisitions in colleges and universities when they find a colleague whose orthodoxy is suspect.
I’ve now read in several places that John Podesta’s (Bill Clinton’s former Chief of Staff) glitzy new think tank, the Center for American Progress, circulated press kits to members of the media informing them of Tony Snow’s negative appraisals of the Bush White House. The idea was apparently to embarrass Bush or Snow or both on the day of his hiring as White House spokesman.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) was conceived as a left-wing counter to outfits like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. It launched with a lot of fanfare and has surely offered its share of white papers, policy briefs, and expert testimonies. I sense that with the Tony Snow maneuver the CAP may have damaged its own credibility. We’re talking about petty electioneering type stuff and my experience is that think tanks don’t do that, not even the ones with a clear ideological bent.
S.T., Kathy, Ben, Alan, you have all done plenty of think tank time. Am I right? Is this a breach of etiquette?
Several posts down I included the words of Francis Canavan, who countered the usual baby’s rights versus mother’s rights talk by inserting the commonsensical notion that the child is in his mother’s womb, which is, in fact, the only natural place for him to be.
A debate commenced in which one group repeatedly invoked the notion of competition between mother and unborn child for scarce resources. There is an immediate problem with that metaphor if we consider that Americans are typically not starving and that food is not scarce, but let’s leave that aside.
The bigger problem is that this segment of the abortion debate could be dealt with via Darwin. In evolutionary terms, we all just want to reproduce and ensure the spread of our contribution to the gene pool. A pregnancy is, therefore, mission accomplished. In evolutionary terms, aborting a child is evidence of insanity. It is evidence that a person doesn’t wish to do the only thing they are really here to do.
I find this fascinating because I’ve finally found a confluence in traditional morality and Darwinism. Darwin says, have the baby. Christianity says, have the baby. The natural law says, have the baby. All three agree that infanticide is evidence of a mind not working correctly.
“If we take the principles of liberal individualism as axiomatic, we find it possible to think of the fetus and the woman as the parties of the first and second part arguing over their respective rights. We are then able to blind ourselves to the natural fact that they are related as mother and child and that the child is in the only natural place for him to be, his mother’s womb.”
I took the wife and kids (both under 4) to Little Italy Pizzeria in downtown Athens last night. As we walked toward the restaurant from our parked car, I saw and heard a very large parade coming toward us on the sidewalk. I knew what it was right away. The American flags and the Spanish chanting gave it away. I maneuvered my way through the crowd into Little Italy with my one year old in my arms.
It was a peaceful demonstration, but it didn’t go down well with me. I kept thinking that this was something in the nature of a demonstration of power in numbers — a steel fist in a velvet glove, a loudly whispered “Don’t tread on us.”
My wife works in an indigent clinic in Athens and speaks Spanish. She basically provides free medical care to illegal immigrants for a living. She’s not very political and didn’t know the purpose of the rally. When she finally came in the restaurant she was smiling and said, “Those are my people!”
When I explained the point of the rally, she was a little less happy. It was her natural sense that there is something not quite right about illegal immigrants demanding that the host country do nothing to secure the borders or regulate the citizenship process, especially when they receive things like free medical care.
That natural sense is right. America should be generous, but not because she is intimidated.
I saw United 93 on Saturday night. It was the single most powerful film I’ve seen in my life. The film lacks any element of fiction. I didn’t feel as though I was being told a story, so much as I felt that I was a ghost given permission to observe events at the FAA, NORAD, and onboard United 93.
What I observed was the incredible vulnerability of human systems confronted by something new, the tenuousness of authority in the face of relentless second-guessing by media and legal professionals, and the willingness of people to keep working in the most impossible situations.
The recreation of events on the flight are super-realistic. We only get one side of phone calls. We see the rapid formation of a plan by men who know only that they have to do something and that failure will be no worse than a death sentence 95% already delivered. By the time the passengers move against the attackers you are so keyed up and identify so fully with their plight, you move with them. I could almost smell the recycled air of the cabin.
The closest I can come to explaining the experience is to invoke the holodeck of Star Trek fame. I felt as though I had walked into a holodeck taking me through September 11 and United Flight 93. I couldn’t help, but I could feel the emotions and take in the atmosphere.
When the passengers finally move against their captors, I felt a dam break inside me and all the tension, fear, and anger racked my body as tears literally jumped out of my eyes. I knew no one in the theatre would notice because the other people were going through the same thing. When the credits came up, no one moved.
After a few moments, we recovered from our shock and walked from the theatre in a procession just as orderly as a funeral.
If a lot of people see this film (and I pray they will), there will no longer be much debate about Iraq or Iran. Wide recognition will dawn upon Americans that we are in uncharted territory and that something is exponentially better than nothing when facing an implacable foe. We need to churn up as many difficulties as possible so that our experience will be wide and we will never again display the innocence we did just a few Septembers ago.
No matter how much we wish it were not so and pretend it is not true when previous memories fail, we are violently reminded that there is evil in the world and that its practitioners are convinced of their rectitude.
Back in his internet entrepeneur days, George Gilder wrote convincingly about narrowcasting rather than broadcasting and people tuning in to get the news they wanted from the source they wanted with the viewpoint they wanted.
Wow, was he right. We’ve seen a step in that direction with Fox News. More steps with all the political news sites and blogs on both sides of the aisle.
But I think Michelle Malkin has kicked the process further yet down the field. Check out her new internet television-style commentary site. It looks like television with television style graphics. Really quite impressive just from the standpoint of aesthetics.
One wonders whether she can keep this up on a regular basis (a question the boys at Powerline asked), but it is easy to imagine that small consortiums of the more successful bloggers could easily do something like this and get lots of eyeballs every day. If the blogworld ever develops the resources to do serious reporting, the broadcast medium will be absolutely dead.
A fascinating discussion over at Mere Comments over whether Christians should bury or cremate their dead. I’ve been rather instinctually against cremation, but mostly, I suspect, because it seems so fashionable.
A couple of things of note: some of the commenters seem unable to distinguish that there is some space between what is forbidden and what is prescribed. That is, there are things, in St. Paul’s words, that are “beneficial” though not necessary. It’s as if Christians can’t say we ought to do anything except what is required for salvation. Second – and Russell Moore alludes to this but doesn’t spell it out fully enough – when we are thinking about what we should and should not be doing, it’s not enough just to say how an action (or omission) will affect us directly. We also have to reckon with how an action will affect the shape of the lives we all live together. Moore’s claim is that in burying our dead sans the funeral pyre, Christians show and shape themselves to be the sorts of people who expect the resurrection. In burning the dead, we aren’t denying the resurrection, but we are creating the conditions in which its expectation seems a bit less “real.”
The oft-repeated claim that priests cannot effectively advise people about sex and marriage is false.
Consider this: If you had a brain tumor, would you look for a cure from someone who has one and is dying of it, . . . or from someone who has studied neuromedicine thoroughly and has cured hundreds of patients?
If you have automobile trouble, do you consult a friend whose car has broken down, or take it to a qualified mechanic?
Likewise, If you had a marriage or sexual problem, would you really rather talk with someone who has never formally studied the matter but has had three failed marriages, or aborted a couple of children, or can’t stand their spouse, . . . or with someone who has never been married but has studied marriage and sex issues and had literally thousands of counseling talks with people bringing him or her a wide variety of moral dilemmas to consider?
Certainly, there are psychological counselors who have been married and can provide good advice, and people who have problems that don’t weigh on their conscience and don’t have deep moral implications can do very well by consulting them. But for people whose religious faith places a moral content on their sexual relationships, consulting a qualified minister seems to me their best option and a very good one indeed.
I know whom I would choose—and I am not a Catholic and don’t believe in requiring celibacy of ministers. The preference for someone who has studied something formally over someone who has practical experience but failed at the matter is simply common sense, and it is what we choose in any other realm. In this centrally important area, it makes all the more sense to go to the experts, regardless of their level of personal experience.
Years ago when I was living my own version of the cubical-land dream and had not yet lit out for the sparkling shores of scholarship, I had a friend who lightened the days of flow-charting and corporate re-engineering by sending bits of self-constructed levity my way. It would not be excessive to say that he was the master of email humor. Alas, we had only an intranet and none of the material was forwarded out to the world at large.
We recently struck up our friendship again and he sent me a piece that was wonderfully funny when the main character was a young Bosnian immigrant and is now adjusted to fit the more fashionable illegal immigrant from south of the border.
Here it is for your reading pleasure (with minimal modification and one story censored altogether) the genius of Dave Heimerl:
Possible Story Ideas
Teacher/Student Murder Story – A young illegal immigrant arrives in the US out of the goodness of a wealthy Mid-Western couple. He is not very bright, but he is very handsome, and he soon becomes the romantic target of his ‘Lifestyles in the 2000’s teacher, who is looking for a dupe to kill her husband. The story follows the dramatic, and often humorous efforts of this siren of the classroom to lure the young immigrant first into her bed, then into her plot. (I see this story line as having the possibility of going in any one of several directions.)
For example:
He kills her husband, she turns on him and he is sent away. She soon follows thanks to the efforts of the wealthy mid-western couple, who are bitter over their lost investment.
He takes the teacher to bed, and seemingly is duped into her plan as she intends. At the last minute, however he kills her (after one final love-making session) and only then do we see that he has fallen for her husband, who has been aware of the plot all along.
The teacher takes him to bed, and he is such a lousy lover that she kills him, does her time and renews the plot to kill her husband upon her release from prison.
The teacher takes him to bed and they hatch their plot. He expands it (mission creep) to include the wealthy mid-western couple so they can get their money. The murders occur, he gets the money and they settle down immediately in a new home without the least bit of suspicion being raised.
A Wrong Side of the Tracks Story – A young illegal immigrant arrives in the US through the generosity of a small southwestern church. He works hard to repay the church members and soon experiences the culture of our country.
The differences between the haves and have-nots are brought home vividly when he falls head over heels in love with the daughter of the wealthy owner of the local mill. Although she loves him also, their love is tested many times as they face the disapproval of both their family and the community at large.
The story climaxes when the couple, having reached the end of their ropes, make a suicide pact and carry it out by leaping from the tallest building in the small south-western town. In a surprise ending we find that the building is only one story tall and they suffer only minor injuries.
Having given their best, they part ways. She marries the son of her father’s business partner and suffers a loveless marriage. He remains at the church as a custodian and never marries. He goes to his grave harboring the suspicion that she knew of the building’s height limitation, and thus the likelihood of only minor injuries when she agreed to leap with him.
A Fantasy Sequence Story – The story begins with a young man (late teens) suffering a terrible day in school. In a classic teen torment sequence of events he suffers an embarrassing episode relating to personal hygiene, is wrongly accused of a prank by the class bully and ordered to meet the bully after school, is put down by the cutest girl in school and finally misses his bus home due to the beating he takes at the hands of the bully. While walking home he pauses to rest and drifts off to sleep.
It’s rare these days for me to be asked to address a Jewish organization. Last week featured one such occasion, and here is the text of my address:
We are all familiar with Hannah’s silent prayer in the first chapter of Samuel, pleading for the opportunity to bear a child. But a more puzzling ‘prayer’ appears in the second chapter, after Samuel is born and she makes good on her promise to deliver him to serve full time at the Tabernacle in Shiloh.
The chapter reads: “And Hannah prayed: My heart is overjoyed with God… my mouth is expansive against my enemies, because I am happy with Your salvation. There is none so holy as God… and no bastion like our Lord.” Then she goes on at some length about how the downtrodden eventually rise up and the good guys always win in the end. This sounds like a celebratory poem in the tradition of Moses and Deborah. What is puzzling is that it is not identified as “singing”, the expression used in those instances, but rather as “praying”. How is celebrating creation in general, or personal good news in particular, quantified as a form of prayer?
The answer, I believe, lies in the Talmudic tradition which teaches that when she said there is no bastion like our Lord, there was a double meaning intended. The word ‘tzur’ for bastion (or rock) can also be read as ‘tzayar’, meaning artist. Hannah meant to say that the human being is the greatest work of art in existence (Talmud Brachot 10a).
Why would Hannah be the one person in history to deliver that particular message? I think that is simple to understand. She prayed the hardest for a child and so she appreciated its artistic magnificence the most.
This, it seems to me, is the prayer. When you praise the artist Who made everything we see on this planet, you are leaning on Him a little to keep that beauty at its sharpest.
A good way to demonstrate this is to cite a recent story from Michigan. A group of school kids went on a class visit to a museum, and one bored ten-year-old stuck a piece of chewing gum onto one of the paintings. Even after it was removed, there was a moisture stain the size of a half-dollar that marred the beauty of the painting. A half-million dollar masterpiece had been reduced to a fraction of its value. When we praise God’s masterpiece, it is a way of asking Him to remove its real or perceived blemishes. Any person who needs a healing or a living or a child is a stain on the painting, and it behooves the Artist to clean the canvas.
I believe that this must be our approach to political and cultural involvement as well. We need to focus primarily on the beauty of our nation’s founding documents, its history, its providing of opportunity both past and present, its virtue in war and peace. Highlighting that will make the flaws, such as may stubbornly persist, stand out in ways that will encourage the populace to make the necessary repairs.
In a spirit of admiration for this country, gratitude towards its founders and leaders, and appreciation for the gritty men and women who go out and make it work every single day, we can live in profound happiness and share that with all of mankind.
I’m reproducing a several lines from Richard Niebuhr’s classic Christ and Culture. This excerpt does a fantastic job of explaining the constant complaint of the nation-state against the Christian faith:
The Christ who will not worship Satan to gain the world’s kingdoms is followed by Christians who will worship only Christ in unity with the Lord whom he serves. And this is intolerable to all defenders of society who are content that many gods should be worshipped if only Democracy or America or Germany or the Empire receives its due, religious homage. The antagonism of modern, tolerant culture to Christ is of course often disguised because it does not call its religious practices religious, reserving that term for certain specified rites connected with officially recognized sacred institutions; and also because it regards what it calls religion as one of many interests which can be placed alongside economics, art, science, politics, and techniques. Hence, the objection it voices to Christian monotheism appears in such injunctions only as that religion should be kept out of politics and business, or that Christian faith must learn to get along with other religions. What is often meant is that not only the claims of religious groups but all consideration of the claims of Christ and God should be banished from the spheres where other gods, called values, reign. The implied charge against Christian faith is like the ancient one: it imperils society by its attack on its religious life; it deprives social institutions of their cultic, sacred character; by its refusal to condone the pious superstitions of tolerant polytheism it threatens social unity. The charge lies not only against Christian organizations which use coercive means against what they define as false religions, but against the faith itself.
I see that the ineffable Paul Krugman today slams John McCain for smoking the peace pipe with Jerry Falwell; politicians who endorse Falwell must accept responsibility for his views, sayeth the Great Krugman from above. OK, Paul: Please refer me to you past op-ed in which you said the same about Gore and Kerry and Hillary and all the rest who planted wet kisses on Al Sharpton’s backside. What a hypocrite.
Matt Tapie is the very definition of the man contending earnestly for the faith. He writes about the city of God and the city of man on a new blog that has already been noticed by Hugh Hewitt and The Evangelical Outpost.
I bring him up today because he has a particularly good post about how Christians should react to Brokeback Mountain. Is it boycott time?!!! Not according to Matt. He has a different view of things:
First of all, we must not confront culture using its rules of engagement. In our culture, much of politics has become a debased game of power plays. There is no longer agreement about the possibility of a “good” society, so there exists only grabs for power. The question has ceased to be about how to make society “good” and has now become “Who has the power to define society?” Because of this, we are tempted to appeal to polls and what the “American people” think to advance our positions. Christian cultural engagement is frequently associated with activism, boycotts, protests, and mass emails. Our engagement must rise above these “majority rules” methods. If our primary means of engaging culture consists of boycotting Target because they use the term “holiday tree,” or boycotting a movie because it does not line up with the Christian worldview, I believe we are in grave danger. We are in danger of being seduced by power politics and distracted from the mission of God in the world. Our obligation to live as the salt and light of the earth has been reduced to a lobbying effort, and Christ is not a lobbyist–he is the Son of God and Savior of the world.
I think I’m going to end up disagreeing with Matt on this one, at least as far as my own choice goes. Last time I saw a movie for reasons of cultural engagement was The Last Temptation of Christ. I’ll never get that two hours of my life back. I’m going to bow out for aesthetic reasons rather than any sort of political protest. I like my cowboys minimally interested in women, but only because they’re too busy driving a herd under desperate conditions or because some cold-blooded murderers are on the loose. Pencil me in for another viewing of Tombstone.
When I was in high school, it was muy uncool to like comic books. I still remember hanging out at Albertson’s grocery store before or after a shift reading comics on the rack. One of the “cool” guys with the fab preppie name of Jonathan John walked by with his girlfriend and sarcastically inquired about the fortunes of Archie and Jughead. I didn’t bother to say I was busy reading Crisis on Infinite Earths. Besides, I kinda like Archie and Jughead, too.
Given my background, one might not be surprised to know that I’ve read the original comic version of V for Vendetta, which is now a film in theatres. I didn’t like the comic that much, largely because it imagines a post-nuclear scenario in which a group of men who are basically skinheads in suits and with better haircuts have taken control of the government of England. The message is typical left-wing fantasy: Conservatives are waiting to really unveil their true colors and start liquidating anyone of African descent, artists, gays, and fashion designers. Oh, and they’ll also have a concentration camp because it fits their brutal aesthetic.
I haven’t seen the film, though I probably will at some point, but hearing from a friend and reading the review by Peter Suderman at NRO indicates it may be worse than I thought. Same ugly message about conservatives, but instead of a post-nuclear scenario the conservatives have taken over post-extensive terror war operations. Thus, the conservative dystopia is updated to take in George W. Bush. How enchanting.
After some thought, I’ve concluded this genre is Left Behind for secularist lefties, except Lennon-like there’s no heaven after the “good” guys win. But I’ll tell you what, there’ll be free porn for EVERYBODY! Except, that is, for the Intoleranti who shall be lying in a pool of their own unenlightened blood!
Alister McGrath takes Daniel Dennett (he of the “religion can be explained by evolution” program) down a bit here
(HT to Stuart Buck)
My favorite line: “This book, in my view, makes a critique of religion dependent on a hypothetical, unobserved entity, which can be dispensed with in order to make sense of what we observe. Isn’t that actually a core atheist critique of God – an unobserved hypothesis which can be dispensed with easily?”
Bernard Chapin is a friend of the blog and one of the most outrageously politically incorrect people you’ll ever meet. In fact, it is possible the phrase was invented to describe Bernard, who makes me blush on occasion.
Bernard is devastating when he combines his countercultural conservatism with a subject he knows particularly well. As a school psychologist, Bernard knows the wily world of professional educational philosophy and practice. What he knows, he doesn’t like. His recent book Escape from Gangsta Island explains why.
Dexter, a dean at Eastlands and my former friend, was battered in the middle of the hallway by a student with a criminal record as long as the Mississippi River. I made a split second decision to leave the family I was escorting through the hall so I could end the beating. The impact of my intervention didn’t turn out as I planned. The kid dragged me down a wing of our building until help arrived. After the danger subsided, our principal showed up. In 11 years, no sicker scene have I ever witnessed than when she began to rub the boy’s stomach while whispering, “That’s alright baby. That’s alright.” It wasn’t alright. Dexter wasn’t alright either. He had bruised ribs, a concussion, and saw double for several months thereafter. The center’s complete lack of leadership was evident when our assistant principal yelled at me for allowing the family to observe the thrashing. I had no witty comeback. What could I say?
My maternal grandfather Andrew Joseph Boike died last week. I offered the eulogy. With the funeral 3-4 days after his death I felt sure I’d be able to give the speech without difficulty. I was wrong. As I watched the respect with which his body was treated and listened to the funeral mass I found myself overwhelmed with the conviction that no gift of words I could give this man would be adequate.
No matter how well I did my job, the end product would fall far short. The realization was crushing. I felt as though God was teaching me a lesson. The gap between my best and the requirements of divine justice is so great that only His grace can bridge it.
For those who would like to read about a life and see what a grandson does with an opportunity to give a eulogy, I reproduce the text of the speech below:
My son is three years old. His name is Andrew and he was named for my grandfather Andrew Boike, who we all call Pop. I hoped that having a first grandchild named for him would reverse his condition and bring Pop back to his old self. It didn’t work, but I did see Pop smile when I brought that little boy around and he was even able to hold him in his lap a few times.
Watching my son grow and the awe with which he perceives his grandparents, I’m reminded of the days when I was young and how like most boys at Walter Jackson, I liked to join in the game of talking up our dads. You know, my dad is stronger than your dad. If we reached a tie on dads, I could start bragging about Pop. And when I did that, no one could match me. That’s what I want to do today. I want to spend just a minute or two bragging on my Pop.
His appearance by itself made him notable. He was short, strong, and had a face that looked like it was cut from a rock. His hair was the color of steel. He had a working man’s hands. Even as he lay dying I looked down at his hands and thought they looked like they had really been to work.
There were stories floating around that gave him mythic status in my young mind. During his high school football years he was commanded to demonstrate a tackle on his assistant coach. He didn’t want to do it, but having been ordered he executed the maneuver so well the man was left with a limp for years. He survived a motorcycle accident and getting hit in the chest with a chainsaw. On top of that he spent all his free time around flowers even though he was highly allergic to bee stings. To a grandson, he seemed like the toughest man alive.
His rugged looks were lightened by a bright and ready smile. He loved to laugh and joke around, particularly with daughters-in-law and grandchildren. If Pop and Uncle Jimmy were together, you knew the parents would be laughing until they had tears in their eyes.
He also loved the polka and learned to play the accordion in his youth. I don’t know how many times Christina and I rode in his car (that 1974 beige/yellow Caprice Classic) with the windows cracked to let cigarette smoke out while Myron Floren’s accordion belted out the beer barrel polka on an eight track wedged into the dashboard. For a grandchild, being with Pop was our own first taste of Oktoberfest. He was like a rock star to us. Okay, maybe a polka star.
He developed a brilliant avocation in flowers with specialties in chrysanthemums and azaleas. After winning several competitions around the country, Pop became a contest judge at the national level. You may remember a novel from many years ago titled Magnificent Obsession. Pop knew something about that. I can remember him quickly maneuvering the car to the side of the road to gather a specimen of some native azalea growing on a hillside. He included his family in his work. Grammy was his indispensable partner in preparing for shows and for years it was a treat to go to his house and see the plants and flowers he’d hybridized and named for different members of the family. I was very proud to see my name on one of those little white tags one day so many springs ago.
The man I’ve described was an interesting person, an exciting person in many ways, but he was also faithful in the small details of everyday life that loom so large when all is said and done.
He spent most of his career with the postal service. My mother remembers what a big deal Christmas was every year and how Pop would come home day after day loaded with Christmas presents from appreciative homeowners on his route. A dozen years after he retired I had a job delivering prescriptions for Brunton Drug. A lot of strangers became instant friends when I mentioned Pop’s name. To tell you the truth, being Pop’s grandson probably helped me get the job in the first place.
Pop was also a faithful provider, father, and husband. He helped build the house his family lived in and put in place a moral and spiritual foundation, too. His five children Brenda, Jim, Becky, Dean, and Joan all married and are all still with their spouses. Many of his grandchildren have married and they are all still with their spouses, too. In a society where some dispose of family ties as easily as an old car, the value of commitment has not been lost on us. It’s one thing to be told, but nothing beats the power of a good example.
There was another area in which Pop was less concerned with telling than showing. Someone mentioned to me the other day that although Pop wasn’t the type to say he loved me, I should know that he did. The words caused me to think. It was true that he was like a lot of other men of his generation in that he may not have been one to tell you he loved you. But I never doubted it. He showed me over and over again. It was always clear to me that this amazing man was my friend and he loved me and approved of me and was proud of me. He watched my ballgames, expressed interest in my schoolwork, and gave me funny nicknames. He treated my father like a blood relative rather than like an in-law and immediately accepted my wife into the family.
I know he loved his other grandkids just as much. I have specific memories of him speaking proudly of the accomplishments and attributes of all the other grandkids. He was really in love with Christina, Kevin, Mandy, Nathan, Josh, Heather, Matthew, John Paul, David, Cassady, and Shaina. His family became his treasure and in the years before his failing health really took hold he was simply great at being a grandfather. Effortlessly great. At least it looked that way to me.
Grammy and Pop’s 50th wedding anniversary was one of our really memorable family events. I look at the pictures and see Pop happy and fully engaged. The pictures of him holding Grammy’s hand like a newlywed are worth keeping forever. I married not long after that celebration and it is a great comfort to me that my wife Ruth got to know Pop before his weakness and withdrawal became more pronounced. She liked him immensely. It was a very easy thing to convince her to give our first child the name Andrew.
It’s a little tragic that my children Andrew and Grace, Mandy’s son Jacob, Kevin’s unborn child, and the many other great grandchildren yet to come won’t get to experience Pop the way he was for so many years, but he won’t be forgotten. I was bragging on Pop when I was seven and will probably be doing it when I’m sixty-seven. He made a big impression on me. And the wonderful, enduring fact of his life is that I’m not the only one.
At my son’s high school, they put on the traditional Purim play, where the students get creative and they poke fun at everything under the sun.
I thought this one skit was hilarious. Donald Rumsfeld comes in to President Bush and says: “Mr. President, three Brazilian soldiers were killed today in Iraq.”
The President begins weeping and wailing, while Rumsfeld looks somewhat befuddled by the strength of Bush’s reaction.
“Tell me, Don,” the President says, when he collects himself. “How much is a brazillion?”
Sorry to be silent for so long, but I’ve been traveling a great deal. I just thought I’d note for those interested that if you’re a student and thinking about grad school and interested in studying religion’s intersection with just about anything, you should look seriously at Notre Dame. The history department just hired Mark Noll away from Wheaton and now the sociology department has hired Christian Smith away from UNC. So you have probably the best historian of American evangelicals (and probably the best historian of American Catholics in John McGreevy) and the best young sociologist of religion, some outstanding political scientists, great law faculty, and very good philosophers to work with. Just a thought…
Have some self-respect man. You’re in your twenties and have both your health and a measure of celebrity. You’re in danger of losing your man-card forever with this petition. Take it back while there’s still time!
We seem to have picked up comments from an author (Carl Olson) at Ignatius Press. Since I happen to be the happy owner of several of their volumes (despite my continuing status as an evangelical “separated brethren” type), I’m going to make it easy for those interested in reading further about the controversy over The Da Vinci Codeby clicking here.
I haven’t read Dan Brown’s blockbuster and probably won’t. I’m in the camp that thinks we’re looking at a marketing sensation because the central thesis of the book has not been a recognized serious controversy in the scholarship as far as I know. If someone knows otherwise, please feel free to lay it out in comments to this thread.
I don’t know a lot about blog etiquette, but I know what I like and so I’m reproducing this entire post from The Evangelical Outpost’s Joe Carter:
Let’s Melt the Ice Cap:Evangelicals, Scientific Consensus, and Global Warming A group of more than 85 influential evangelical leaders has released a statement, the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), expressing a “biblically driven commitment to curb global warming” and calling on the government to “enact national legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global climate change.”
The group’s manifesto, “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call for Action”, includes a FAQ explaining the urgency of the issue. “Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change,” notes the website. “Why? Climate change will make natural disasters like floods, droughts, and hurricanes more damaging.” The site also notes that “few are in denial about the reality of the problem, a scientific consensus that climate change must be addressed has actually existed since 1995.”
Is there a scientific consensus that climate change is occurring? An article in Newsweek appears to provide strong evidence for that claim:
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth….
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
This article would appear to shore up the ECI’s claim that “Climate change, also called global warming, is an urgent problem that can and must be solved.” Except that the article is titled “The Cooling World” and is dated April 28, 1975 during a time when the scientific consensus held that climate change, known back then as global cooling, was leading to a new Ice Age. After a long history of eschatological predictions that that fail to come to fruition, you’d think that evangelicals would be more skeptical of doomsday scenarios. But like most people, we tend to have short memories and forget that what was once considered “scientific consensus” (global cooling will lead to environmental disaster) and “conventional wisdom” (the population explosion will lead to global famine) isn’t always gospel truth.
We also tend to suffer from “chronological snobbery”, the presumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited, and are prone to believe that since global warming is the consensus in 2006 that it is more likely to be true than the 1975 consensus that global warming was occurring. But if we were wrong in 1975 then perhaps we should be careful of assuming that we are warranted in believing that we are right just because the calendar says it is 2006.
We might also have justification for being skeptical of the idea of “consensus science.” In an intriguing lecture at Caltech titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming” , author Michael Crichton has some harsh words for the oxymoronic concept:
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
A counterargument that is often presented is that since it is possible that global warming is occurring we are better off taking action now than waiting for confirmation that we are correct. Some people have the attitude of the BR-549 song that “Sometimes I gotta’ do somethin’ even if it’s wrong.”
But what we had followed the proposals offered in the late 1970’s to counter global cooling? What if we had followed what Newsweek refers to as the “more spectacular solutions proposed” of melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers? These former solutions are now considered some of the dire consequences of our planet overheating.
But even the less far-fetched proposals can have a devastating impact. For example, there was much hand-ringing over the U.S. refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol even though it would have cost $150 billion annually and have only delayed the warming expected in 2100 by six years. For half that cost, notes Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, we could provide clean drinking water, sanitation, and basic health care and education for every person in the world.
Almost all policy proposals offered to counter global warming would impede economic growth. The ECI warns that “millions of people could die in this century because of climate change.” But millions of people are already dying every year because of the greatest cause of environmental disaster on the planet: poverty. As Lomborg explains in the latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly:
The single most important environmental problem in the world today is indoor air pollution, caused by poor people cooking and heating their homes with dung and cardboard. The UN estimates that such pollutions causes 2.8 million deaths annually—about the same as HIV/AIDS. The solution, however is not environmental measures but economic changes that let these people get rich enough to afford kerosene.
While Bob Geldof is sponsoring global concerts that “raise awareness”, you won’t find too many celebrities raising money to end “indoor air pollution.” Handing out kerosene simply doesn’t have the same hip cache as handing out condoms. Even if it kills more people than HIV/AIDS, it will never be the issue du jour of the rich and famous.
That is why it is imperative that the evangelical community stand in the gap. Instead of keeping our car’s engine tuned as a way to fight global warming, we need to keep our attention tuned to the realities of our fellow man. Global warming may be the pressing environmental problem in 2106, but in 2006 the urgent ecological concern is poverty.
The original Reform Club was a place where individuals of many different dispositions could socialize, discuss, and yes, argue. Perhaps the best example of the spirit of the club was the friendship and debate between G.K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. The two men could scarcely have been more different. Chesterton was larger than life, jolly, mysterious, and Christian. Shaw was austere, a vegetarian, a great critic of religion. What they shared in common was civility and a common brilliance.
When Mr. Karnick and I opened the Reform Club online we hoped to foster the sort of conversations that happened at the original Club. The basic idea has been in our introductory header for as long as we’ve been posting. Along the way we picked up several other members with different gifts to contribute. We also gained a multi-religious cast. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and maybe one or two without much religion at all.
The goal of these conversations would be to start with a post and end up with something even more interesting through the comments offered. Commenters might know something interesting to add. A different angle, a new fact, a cheerfully offered critique. The attitude that would keep it all functioning smoothly would be epistemological humility. In other words, we all know we could be wrong. Thus, it makes no sense to blindly assert, to be churlishly insistent, to never admit an error.
Sometimes, we get exactly what we’d hoped for. A discussion is conducted on the plane of intelligent adults committed to civil discourse. We learn something or are stimulated to reconsider or discover a new line of inquiry.
Other times, we get nothing but competition and not the kind that makes you better. No, it’s the kind of argument that occurs between very little persons who have not reached adulthood. It is an enervating thing. One that causes one to despair.
Speaking for myself, I know I haven’t always had the patience of a saint. The patience of a Saint Bernard, perhaps. But I am always open to genuine conversation, the kind in which the disputants are not constantly engaging in ad hominem, committing the genetic fallacy, etc.
All of this is a long way of saying, if you want argument at the level of a radio call-in show or some of the less sophisticated blogs, please take it elsewhere. We are trying to cultivate something more like a graduate school or faculty lounge atmosphere. Everyone who participates should make the others better. We are not looking for an endless contest of slaps. Real scholars (credentialed or otherwise) don’t waste their time with that crap.
I’ve been harsh on a couple of occasions, but that is primarily because I’ve twice recently caught a commenter freely and arrogantly asserting facts and conclusions which are blatantly and obviously incorrect. In the future, I would like to see an ultra-amicable mode of discussion and yes, disputation.
But the commonality, the philosophical link, is swiftly identified once the Democrats leave the stage. In study after study, authors say that “racial and economic conservatism” married white Southerners to the GOP after 1964. So whereas historically accidental events must have led racists to vote for good men like FDR, after 1964 racists voted their conscience. How convenient. And how easy it would be for, say, a libertarian conservative like Walter Williams to generate a counter-narrative that exposes statism as the philosophical link between segregation and liberalism’s economic populism.
Yet liberal commentators commit a further, even more obvious, analytic error. They assume that if many former Wallace voters ended up voting Republican in the 1970s and beyond, it had to be because Republicans went to the segregationist mountain, rather than the mountain coming to them. There are two reasons to question this assumption. The first is the logic of electoral competition. Extremist voters usually have little choice but to vote for a major party which they consider at best the lesser of two evils, one that offers them little of what they truly desire. Segregationists were in this position after 1968, when Wallace won less than 9% of the electoral college and Nixon became president anyway, without their votes. Segregationists simply had very limited national bargaining power. In the end, not the Deep South but the GOP was the mountain.
Second, this was borne out in how little the GOP had to “offer,” so to speak, segregationists for their support after 1968, even according to the myth’s own terms. Segregationists wanted policies that privileged whites. In the GOP, they had to settle for relatively race-neutral policies: opposition to forced busing and reluctant coexistence with affirmative action. The reason these policies aren’t plausible codes for real racism is that they aren’t the equivalents of discrimination, much less of segregation.
Why did segregationists settle for these policies rather than continue to vote Democratic? The GOP’s appeal was mightily aided by none other than the Democratic Party itself, which was lurching leftward in the 1970s, becoming, as the contemporary phrase had it, the party of “acid, amnesty, and abortion.” Among other things, the Democrats absorbed a civil rights movement that was itself expanding, and thus diluting, its agenda to include economic redistributionism, opposition to the Vietnam War, and Black Power. The many enthusiasms of the new Democratic Party drove away suburban middle-class voters almost everywhere in the country, not least the South.
Given that trend, the GOP did not need to become the party of white solidarity in order to attract more voters. The fact that many former Wallace supporters ended up voting Republican says a lot less about the GOP than it does about segregationists’ collapsing political alternatives. Kevin Phillips was hardly coy about this in his Emerging Republican Majority. He wrote in 1969 that Nixon did not “have to bid much ideologically” to get Wallace’s electorate, given its limited power, and that moderation was far more promising for the GOP than anything even approaching a racialist strategy. While “the Republican Party cannot go to the Deep South”—meaning the GOP simply would not offer the policies that whites there seemed to desire most—”the Deep South must soon go to the national GOP,” regardless.
After reading some of the leftist commentary on my CSK funeral post, I remembered this great line from Billy Madison:
“Mr. _______, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
I think I’ll take a minute and actually deal with some of the poop being shoveled here. Trolloc thinks the GOP is permanently racist and sexist. Never mind that it is the party that both freed the slaves and obtained the vote for women and blacks.
All the goodwill is erased because the GOP (or Richard Nixon, at least) had a southern strategy to capitalize on the disaffection of southern whites over civil rights. What does that look like?
The GOP became the party of law and order in contrast to the leftward tilt of the McGovernite faction. They advertised their toughness on crime relentlessly. Ooooooh. How racist.
The GOP opposed affirmative action. Look out! Never mind that opposing affirmative action fits perfectly with the party’s traditional insistence on limited government and freedom of contract. It has to be a racist move. There couldn’t be another possibility could there? HMMMMMM.
And on women, the GOP opposes abortion. That must be because of a desperate desire to control women and keep them domesticated. Never mind that the party claims another justification, which is to protect unborn life from physical violence. And oh, by the way, to argue against the notion that the woman owns the fetus as property just as slaves were property. What’s this? Another historical connection to the GOP of the past. Why how can it be? I thought this was the new GOP turned bad after the great wonderful GOP of Lincoln in the past.
Suffice it to say that the party and its members can hold certain principled positions with great sincerity, but rather than deal with the actual intellectual and even spiritual content of those positions there will always be persons who will rather cry racist, sexist, etc.
When Rosalyn Carter said of Ronald Reagan, “He makes us comfortable with our prejudices,” that was her way of avoiding the deep insufficiencies of her husband’s leadership and the emergence of the GOP as a successful populist party cutting into traditional Democrat strongholds.
Yeah, the GOP won the southerners, but guess what? They won the new southerners and often not the old ones. How many have families like mine where all the grandparents (from the patently racist period) support the Democrats TO THIS DAY (FDR, you know) while the younger progeny are Republicans to the core? I’ve got news for you. The switch is not due to a change in GOP racial policy (which there never has been). The switch is due to a successful combination of economic sanity (i.e. not socialism or socialism lite) and a particular brand of philosophico-religious morality that emphasizes the sanctity of life.
And oh, I forgot, the GOP actually wanted to win the Cold War. That made a wee difference, too.
UPDATE:
After writing all this, I couldn’t help but remember the example of one Barry Goldwater, the predecessor of Reagan who got toasted by LBJ largely due to sympathy for the dead President Kennedy and some mighty vicious campaign tactics.
Goldwater’s family department stores had always been integrated. He had himself experienced discrimination at prominent golf courses because of his Jewish background. Goldwater had once responded to a golf course attendant, “I’m half Jewish, can I play nine holes?” Nevertheless, LBJ’s Democrats never thought twice about labeling him a racist for his principled opposition to federal civil rights legislation.
I used to love to listen to Public Enemy. That was back in the days when I had absolutely no critical engagement with the message of music I liked.
(Of course, I have to backtrack a little and say the evangelical in me identified quite fully with the PE classic “Burn, Hollywood Burn.”)
Eventually, I experienced my own growth of consciousness and realized I had to stop shelling out dollars to celebrities, fashionistas, television writers, and moviemakers sowing puerile crap into the tragically open (read nonreflective) minds of the millions. That was the end of me and Public Enemy.
I thought about the rap group today after reading through more puerile crap from the Rev. Joseph Lowery and former Pres. Carter spoken against the current President Bush. I said puerile crap. I should have said puerile, classless crap.
On this particular occasion, I’m taking more offense at the classlessness than the puerility. Coretta Scott King was being honored and mourned. Her legacy is rich. She was an ultra-effective preacher’/activist’s/prophet’s wife and suffered many indignities stoically. She was also a political figure who did not descend into one-note hackery. The lovely Mrs. King, for example, was a great advocate for school choice. Her creative engagement with the issues stood in stark contrast with the advanced boorishness of some of her contemporaries. I’ll avoid naming names.
Do you think a lady like that would like to see an honored guest (the president, no less) called out and abused at her funeral? Do you think she would have given her permission? Do you think she would appreciate seeing her funeral turned into a rally? Paul Wellstone might have appreciated what was done at his funeral. Decent though he was, he also had enough of the “workers of the world unite” thing going on to enjoy it. I think Mrs. King would simply be appalled and probably is appalled.
She might also have noted that it was Bobby Kennedy, not George Bush uno or dos who had her husband’s phone tapped. She might have been offended enough to call the bad hosts of her good name on the carpet.
Athletes need to stay away from Campbell Soup. I offer you the record:
Figure Skater Nancy Kerrigan carries the Campbell Soup banner. She is assaulted by a lackey of Tonya Harding and gets ripped off for the gold medal at the Olympics.
Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers stars in the first “Me and My Mom” commercials for Campbell’s. He becomes embroiled in controversy over remarks given to the Wisconsin legislature, loses the soup deals, and dies young.
Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles replaces White in the “Me and My Mom” series. He has a terrible performance in the Super Bowl, gets cancer in the form of Terrell Owens, and ends up on the sidelines with injuries.
I’ve heard Jerome Bettis was shooting one with his mom in Detroit . . .
By linking to this website, I have set up your weekend as well as it can be set up. You will be entertained and will go about in a general haze of frivolity and happiness for days.
I said Alito would be confirmed by a comfortable margin with no filibuster.
Correct.
I also said it is the next vacant spot on the court, not O’Connor’s seat, that will provoke the battle royale. With O’Connor’s retirement and replacement you get four strong conservative votes, not five. Our side lost one when White was replaced by Ginsburg. A pretty serious swing, but the GOP wasn’t complaining, now were they?
The next seat will make the Bork battle look like a party provided a Republican is doing the nominating. If not, the GOP will sit politely by while the Democrats appoint pretty much whoever they wish, AS USUAL.
One of our commenters has repeatedly charged that the followers of Jesus chose to keep soldiering on after the crucifixion because of the desire for some material gain. In other words, they somehow cynically endured persecution in hopes of getting the big score and I don’t mean heaven.
I decided to end the dime store atheist crap by looking a little deeper. Reading Gary Habermas, who is intensively engaged in this issue and famously debated the former atheist (now plain theist) Anthony Flew, I found the following statement which would seem to end this particular line of hazing:
It is the substantially unanimous verdict of contemporary critical scholars that Jesus’ early disciples at least thought that they had seen the risen Jesus.
Since we now have the opinion of people who actually study the matter, rather than that of those who line their parrot cages with the latest issue of Skeptic magazine, we can put the cynical religious charlatans argument to rest.
Michael Simpson posted about the relevance of religion to the academy and I commented that religion is indeed relevant because I have more evidence for the resurrection of Christ than I do for the existence of justice.
After that intentionally provocative comment, I received an email from one Tom Van Dyke encouraging me to be a bit more forthcoming. I was originally hesitant to do so because I haven’t read the latest and the greatest on the subject of the resurrection, which is the treatment of the subject by N.T. Wright. Wright’s work is at least partially responsible for the conversion of the famed horror writer Anne Rice. However, I remembered that William Lane Craig is very strong on the subject and I could probably get a condensed essay from him. I was right.
Here’s a bit of whetting:
So complete has been the turn-about during the second half of this century concerning the resurrection of Jesus that it is no exaggeration to speak of a reversal of scholarship on this issue, such that those who deny the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection now seem to be the ones on the defensive. Perhaps one of the most significant theological developments in this connection is the theological system of Wolfhart Pannenberg, who bases his entire Christology on the historical evidence for Jesus’ ministry and especially the resurrection. This is a development undreamed of in German theology prior to 1950. Equally startling is the declaration of one of the world’s leading Jewish theologians Pinchas Lapid, that he is convinced on the basis of the evidence that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. Lapid twits New Testament critics like Bultmann and Marxsen for their unjustified skepticism and concludes that he believes on the basis of the evidence that the God of Israel raised Jesus from the dead.
I read through the essay and found it quite thorough and informative. If this blog were my sole property, I would paste the whole thing in and monopolize the real estate. Instead I will content myself with providing you with this very large LINK. (Don’t get down on Craig for any typos in the essay, I think some noble person actually typed in the essay from dead tree to get it online.)
Read the essay and see whether I was exaggerating when I made my provocative statement. It’s easy to be correct because the evidence for the existence of justice is weaker than expected, while the evidence for the resurrection is stronger.
Because we are an interfaith blog, I hasten to explain to my Jewish friends that I am not seeking to kick up some kind of battle over Christian history between Jews and Christians. Rather, I am trying to further the point that religion is relevant and not merely because of some psychological reason.
This is interesting: some academic group is calling for universities to engage religion more, both as a part of the curriculum and as part of students’ lives. Who knows what this will mean in practice, but as an emphasis, it seems like a positive move. On one particular note, I think it’s especially promising. In my teaching, I deal a lot of with religion and thorny moral/political issues it often touches on. What I’ve found is that students are very reluctant to engage on those issues, largely because they think that you just can’t argue about religion – and, by extension, the sorts of moral issues it touches. I think they’re making a mistake in equating the truth that we won’t be resolving our moral and religious differences anytime soon with the (erroneous) claim that there’s nothing to be discussed. But that’s how they think. You might suppose that this sort of “method of avoidance” is productive of social comity – but that, too, would be a mistake. Since religion still, perhaps inevitably, shows up in discussions, the fact that people don’t have any experience in discussing religion- related things, they have no idea how to do it reasonably and with some civility. I’m not sure that most universities will do that well in fostering civil dialogue, but it seems worth a shot.
Not being snarky—between Howard Dean, Kos, and then Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer clumsily trying to make respected jurist Sam Alito out as a racist, it’s a genuine confusion as to who the Democratic Party is these days. I dunno if they know, either.
There are a lot of Democrats out there who don’t mirror “the Loud Left.” Hillary Clinton. Russ Feingold. John Kerry.
OK, baby. Lock and load.
When all else fails, try principle. Actually, that’s just what the GOP was forced into after Nixon and all those years of Democrat control of Congress. Petty politics, technique, and mealy-mouthing only get you so far.
The GOP made its historic gains on the backs of two visionaries—Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. (Their successors admittedly, and almost by definition, pale in comparison.)
Shooting spitballs is not a political philosophy. Nominate Russ Feingold instead of guys like the last two weasels, and let America vote up or down. Run on your beliefs instead of from them. In three years, nobody’s going to remember who the hell Jack Abramoff is, or was.
Russ Feingold represents the Democratic Party as I best understand it (ADA lifetime average rating of 96, if we can believe the Wiki).
I disagree with Feingold on virtually everything, but I still trust his character. He conducts himself like a human being, like a statesman. We could do worse, and almost did with Gore and Kerry, who are wack. (Gore, wack. Kerry, trying to lead an unprecendented constitutional revolution via phone from Switzerland, wack.)
(Let’s save Hillary for another day. Too much fun to use up here. Hehe. [sound of knife being sharpened])
Feingold vs. Gingrich in 2008. Now that would be fun. No middle ground there…
Harry Reid has got to be the most disingenuous member of the Senate. Check him out in this AP story:
Democrats are working to get a large opposition vote to make their points against President Bush.
“I think it sends a message to the American people that this guy is not King George, he’s President George,” said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Bush should have picked a woman, said Reid, who urged the president last year to pick White House counsel Harriet Miers. “They couldn’t go for her because she was an independent woman,” Reid said of Miers, whose nomination was withdrawn under conservative criticism.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Dusty Harry. Had Bush stuck with Harriet Miers, who was underqualified and tied to Bush like his ranch kerchief, then we might have been able to sustain the King George charge.
Actually, if he looks like a King, it is the King George who suffered the revolution of his American subjects, because it was a revolt that brought Alito in. Quietude was the road to Harriet.
This post has been attracting a lot of comments, so I thought I’d bring it back up top for convenience’s sake. –Hunter B.
Ross Douthat, newly returned from filling in for Andrew Sullivan, points to an essay on the ol’ question of why those red-staters are voting red. (follow the links)
Now, I think the question is a bit hackneyed, not least because the fact that some state tends conservative or liberal is a long way from being able to say anything about the effects of social conditions on voting behavior. Having 55% of a state’s voters (not citizens, mind you) who vote conservative or liberal and then making snarky comments (a la the NYT’s Frank Rich) about how funny it is that those states have higher divorce rates, watch Desperate Housewives, etc. doesn’t get you very far.
In any case, it seems to me that the whole question is based on a misunderstanding, namely, that politics is primarily about economics and only then about “cultural” issues. That’s just nonsense, mostly dreamed up by people who *want* politics to be all about economics. Politics is, rather, primarily about culture, it is a vehicle for people to decide “who” they are. Economic decisions, the allocation of resources or opportunities, is a part of that “who-ness”, but it does not contain it. Economics does, of course, shape culture, but I think it’s a mistake to think it’s primary.
As he discusses the horror film Hostel, currently a low budget hit eclipsing older releases Narnia and King Kong, Hibbs noted a distressing phenomenon:
Yet, the most depressing and horrifying thing about these sorts of films is, alas, not the explicit gore. It is the fact that at nearly every screening of a gruesome horror film I attend (from Massachusetts to Texas), I see parents in the audience with young children. That strikes me as a serious form of child abuse and a more convincing sign of the impending apocalypse than anything depicted on the screen.
I had the same thought a few years back when I went to see Blade 2 with Wesley Snipes. I was shocked to see several small children in the theatre who had been brought by their “parents” who were engaging in their own mysterious version of “parenting.” It wasn’t quite Kill Bill, but the film had graphic portrayals of bodily mutilation that took tatooing several steps up the cruelty scale and mass murder with blood hosing everywhere.
I don’t need to see a study to know that the children exposed to this kind of film will become insensitive to violence, killing, etc. To use a more biblical expression, I’d say it hardens hearts. My own experience bears this out. As a teenager, my friends and I took advantage of the combination of video rental privileges and driver’s licenses to rent every horrible thing we could get our hands on. The more a film pushed the border of tastelessness, violence, and sexual priggishness, the more likely we were to give it a viewing. I particularly recall a film that portrayed graphic serial rape of a woman caught in the wilderness Deliverance-style by a group of bad men. The first time I saw it I was shocked and shaken. The fourth time I was laughing.
After years of exercising more personal vigilance in my viewing choices, I’ve managed to recover my sense of shock at the depiction of outrageous behavior onscreen. I can only imagine how warped an individual’s sensibilities can become after dulling the edge of the conscience on reels and reels of bloody, sex and violence-drenched celluloid (or digital media), particularly when the process begins with non-parenting parents initiating their toddlers into onscreen bloodsport.
This damage to the mind’s facility for perceiving moral distinctions is the basic problem with total liberation of entertainment from social constraints. All the barrier-busting and fun-poking at stuffy taboo protectors leads to an arena with no-holds barred. What demons will wrestle in the virtual stadiums of the future? I’m not at all sure we want to know.
I wasn’t satisfied with the conclusion of Monk tonight. The writers successfully established that the lab tech was guilty of fiddling with results, but did not reach the same level of certainty with regard to the fashion designer being the murderer.
It was possible that only labels had been changed, but the lab tech could have engaged in more elaborate fraud and disposed of any evidence tying the fashion designer to the original crime. The loop remains open and I don’t like it.
Otherwise a pretty good episode. I’ll annoy the Karnickian by stating for the record that I still miss Bitty Schramm.
“The knife went in,” three different stabbers told Dalrymple, when he pressed them, in the prison, to describe the deed that landed them there. Why should a low-IQ barely-literate youth believe in the doctrine of free will, when, for all he can see, his intellectual superiors have given up on it?
Dalrymple is particularly good on the squeaky-wheel syndrome that is so characteristic of modern social services. Defy your circumstances; manage to get some scraps of education; win some decent, if low-level employment; stay out of trouble; stay off the dole; maintain some minimal standards of honesty and chastity; and see what happens to you! If you are lucky, the authorities will ignore you; if not, they will actually harass you. Should your less disciplined neighbors make your life a misery, you will get no help from police or social workers. If, on the other hand, you follow your peers into the world of dysfunction and dependency, all the attentions of England’s extravagant welfare state will be lavished on you. You will be given a free apartment furnished with all modern appliances, a regular supply of money, free medical attention, and the doting ministrations of “health visitors,” “case workers,” “counsellors” and so on.
Americans may find it surprising that most of the people wallowing in this slough of ignorance, illiteracy, promiscuity, bastardy, intoxication, vice, folly, lawlessness and hopelessness are white English people. Much of what is described here is the sort of thing Americans instinctively associate with this country’s own black underclass. There is some satisfaction, I suppose, though of a very melancholy kind, to be drawn from the revelation that sufficiently wrong-headed social policies, persisted in with sufficiently dogged refusal to face simple truths, will visit moral catastrophe on people of any race.
As Judge Samuel Alito endured his protracted questioning in the Senate Judiciary Committee with the Left still unable to make a plausible case for turning him down, the desperation became evident with some prominent Democrat Senators’ allegation that the nominee is a racist. The charges appear to be utterly unfounded, but it appears that there may well be some unsavory racial activity in the past of one Democrat Senator on the panel:
Charles Schumer trying to tar Samuel Alito as a racist because of membership in some club? Don’t make me laugh. The fact is that Charles Schumer came to power as a New York State Assemblyman in 1974 by virtue of an overtly racist scheme that he created and sold to a naive neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He convinced them that he would use his power to rid their area of black people. And who is my source for this serious accusation? Me.
The study found a strong tilt to the left in the reports of most media organizations.
Now is this proof in itself of bias? Let’s look at a recent Washington Post article on the NSA domestic “spying” affair.
Aside from the contentious wording that the administration has “assertions” while the contrary congressional report has “conclusions,” we see that the WaPo quotes two “experts,” both of whom are dismissive of the administration’s position.
I discussed this very article with a lefty pal of mine and he sees no bias. Me, I see not only Congress lined up against the executive branch (little surprise—this tug-of-war over national security authority has been going on since the founding of the republic), but 100% of the outside experts. I would expect the casual reader to conclude that the weight of arguments is against the administration, since they occupy the lion’s share of the volume.
I find this article to be representive of the norm, and certainly my liberal buddy saw nothing unusual about it. Which is precisely the point.
Since I’m feeling magnanimous today, I’ll offer that no Bush-friendly “experts” were consulted because the WaPo simply doesn’t know any. But whatever the reason, the aforementioned study (and it is not the first such) clearly indicates it is the rule rather than the exception in our national news media that among third party commentators, the left get more air than the right.
Put simply, an article or news segment is imbalanced unless it presents both sides in roughly equal proportion, as spoken by third parties, not just the accused and the aggrieved themselves. We all tend to give credence to the views of third parties when making up our minds about things, as we should. For that reason, I find the theory behind the study’s methodology entirely proper, and can think of none better.
The WaPo rounded up two “impartial” witnesses against the Bush administration and none in its defense. Any reasonable person would, based on the evidence presented, be obliged to conclude its guilt.
The WaPo article was biased, whether intentionally or not. I do not know which of those possibilities is more disconcerting.
The Redskins have sucked virtually the entire time since he left after winning yet another Super Bowl. Gibbs, on the other hand, went on to major success as a NASCAR team owner.
Daniel Snyder, the much disliked owner of the team in the post-Gibbs era, tried Norv Turner, Marty Schottenheimer, and Steve Spurrier. Not much luck in any case, despite the fact that the latter two are all-time greats and Norv Turner has twice been a very successful offensive coordinator.
This season the breaks are all falling Washington’s way. I conclude, in reverse Pat Robertson style, that the blessing of the Lord is upon Joe Gibbs and Dan Snyder was smart enough to hire him and get out of the way.
When I was newly minted with J.D. in hand and some conservative organization experience built-up, I called friends and asked for help finding work. One of the referrals was to a high profile lobbying/public relations firm with a high profile head. I will not name either of the above for fear of getting sued by them. I attended an interview and they explained the nature of some of the work.
One of the things it was proposed I could do was to write op-eds that would later be issued under the name of more famous persons in favor of some public policy initiative or position. At the same time, I’m sure that some of these persons would write their own op-ed, sufficiently proud of their own style and convictions not to turn the job over to the hired gun at firm X. It never occurred to me that anything in that process was wrong. The famous person would be someone who could agree with the stated position. What they would be selling would be their access to the editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers and magazines. This is not bribery, but rather someone paying you to say what you would already say if the opportunity arose.
Now, I’ve heard the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow is basically done for, having taking significant money from Abramoff for columns he wrote. That is a shame. Doug Bandow is a strong writer and thinker.
On the surface, the problem goes like this: I like cake. I want to eat cake. I’m going to eat cake. Somebody steps up and says, “Hey, why don’t you eat that cake NOW and I’ll pay you for it?” And you do. Wouldn’t seem to be an ethical lapse.
But it is and the real answer is revealed by imagining that everyone had full information. The newspaper or magazine wouldn’t run the piece if they knew about the payment. The think tank you might work for wouldn’t allow you to take the payment because their credibility is even more important than yours. And you haven’t told anyone these things because deep down, you know how they would have reacted.
And that’s why it’s wrong. Take away the self-interest and look at the interests of others and it shines forth bright as day.
Now, I never took that job. Nobody ever slipped me a check in exchange for my promotion of a particular view at their urging. But I might have done it and could have done it without getting as far down the moral analysis as I did in this post.
In the final analysis, I’m sorry for Doug Bandow and damn glad I’ve had this opportunity to think it through before anyone offered me the chance to screw up.
This guy was supposedly hired for his political and public relations expertise:
If he was going for Johnny Cash, he missed the target. If he was going for Black Bart, the evilest man to occupy either the Longbranch Saloon or Enron, then he nailed it.
Whoosh!
Do you hear that sound? It’s Ralph Reed’s candidacy going up in flames in Georgia. Before the primary, even.
Mark Gauvreau Judge is a good writer, but I think he should have left this one in the unsubmitted file. His basic thesis is that the red state identity basically celebrates cretinism. I disagree with that, despite not really loving NASCAR, Bill O’Reilly, and some of the other targets he picks.
But what is really offensive is that he somehow conflates wearing the right clothes and discriminating consumerism with advanced spirituality in the Christian sense.
I don’t think so.
At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll include my letter to the editor on the piece:
Dear Editor,
I’ve always liked Mark Gauvreau Judge’s work, but I find at least part of his central thesis about the superiority of being a metrocon questionable and maybe even objectionable. While I agree that there is nothing to celebrate about being tacky or willfully ignorant (which I’m not sure his target group really is), I disagree vigorously that the “second growth” of spirituality involves learning how to purchase and wear the right clothing and accessories. Natty apparel has never been a sign of spiritual maturity as far as I can tell. Were it so the fashionistas would be the deepest folk on earth.
It is one thing to argue that many of today’s conservatives don’t hold a candle to William F. Buckley on style points (surely, they do not), but to conflate that point with spiritual maturity and depth evokes a Christianity of which I’m not aware. Certainly, a preference for Brooks Brothers over Wal-Mart does little to inform one about the nobility of a particular soul. In fact, the good book might make the opposite case.
Hunter Baker Contributor to The Reform Club Athens, Georgia
So, conversations with socialists. I have them. A lot.
I have them with that special brand of socialist– the 20-something post-collegiate angsty intellectual who has the luxury of saying Fidel Castro “has some pretty good ideas” because, for him, it’s not a national talking point enforced at the muzzle of a gun and the blindfolded brink of a ditch. That kind of socialist.
They’re good folks. They truly do want the best for people. They think “equal” necessarily equals “good.” They, therefore, want equality enforced.
Sometimes during these conversations, my big-government buddies concede, “All right, so maybe it doesn’t always work in practice, but it’s a nice thought.”
I used to concede that point. “Yes, it’s a nice idea in theory,” I’d say, “But it never works in practice. In fact, it’s disastrous, deadly, and scoops out people’s souls like so many cold lumps of cosmic ice cream, splatted on the sidewalks of humanity. But you’re getting the picture.”
In the last couple years, I’ve had to revise that. The truth is that it is not a nice idea, in theory. Well, not if you actually think about what the theory implies.
Socialism is enforced equality. But someone has to enforce. Someone has to take all that a country of dynamic, amazing, different people has produced and slice it up into dull, government-approved parcels that go to each according to his need. So much for diversity, right?
This means that no one owns anything except for the guy doing the enforcing of equality, who without fail, feels a lot less strongly about his own equality with the proletariat than he does about the rabble’s equality with each other. That’s how Fidel Castro ended up on the Forbe’s list of richest people.
This guy inevitably gets a little testy when folks step out of line by wanting to own the things they earn, thereby cutting down on his net worth. And by testy, I mean blood-thirsty and murdery.
Mary Katherine has it exactly right. Beware Chavez-istas. You won’t like the future.
What’s a guy with a carefully developed collection of books to do?
My father-in-law was a high-level academic librarian for many years. He always said the book is so good at doing its basic job, there will probably not be a solid replacement for it.
I’m beginning to suspect he might have been wrong about that.
Exhibit A: I saw a fellow reading a book on some sort of electronic notepad device (possibly a tablet PC) recently. He also appeared to be able to electronically mark it up. Looked very good.
Exhibit B: Michael Hyatt’s weblog keeps mentioning that something like an iPod for readers is coming and it will have a big impact on the market. Since Hyatt is the president of big publisher Thomas Nelson, I think he knows whereof he speaks. His latest post really has me sweating it.
Why am I sweating it?
Because I realize that someday my collection may become quite obsolete and I will be able to do more, faster, better, etc. with a massive collection of books on some tiny media device.
Of course, I’m a Ph.D. student now and can’t wait for even next year. Still, it hurts a little to know I keep moving all these boxes of books when obsolescence is around the corner.
“Sharply rising rates of divorce, unwed mothers, and runaway fathers do not represent ‘alternative life styles’. They are rather patterns of adult behavior with profoundly negative consequences for children.”
–Elaine Kamarck and William Galston, Putting Children First: A Progressive Family Policy for the 1990’s, a publication of the Democratic Leadership Council
“I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of the evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue: on the whole, for children, two-parent families are preferable . . .If our prevailing views on family structure hinged solely on scholarly evidence, the current debate would never have arisen in the first place.”
– David Popenoe, former Dean of Social Sciences, Rutgers University
“Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents’ race or educational background (italics added), regardless of whether the parents are married when the child is born, and regardless of whether the resident parent remarries.”
–Princeton sociologist Sara McLanahan and the University of Wisconsin’s Gary Sandefur
“We know what the cause of poverty is in this country and, like it or not, it’s divorce and non-wedlock childbearing. We know that for every three divorces, one family ends up below the poverty line. The average woman with dependent children who ends up in poverty stays poor for eight months. The federal government pays for part of that, but states pay the balance. Divorce, by itself, is a major economic issue.”
–Sociology professor Steve Nock of the University of Virginia in a New York Times story
Relevant statistics and academic study conclusions (citations available):
• The poverty rate for children living with cohabiting parents is five times that of children with married parents. The poverty rate for children living with single mothers is seven times that of children with married parents.
• The average married father annually contributes about thirty thousand dollars to the welfare of his children. The annual contribution of a non-custodial father averages about three thousand dollars yearly.
• In 1998, 12% of black children with married parents lived in poverty, BUT 55% of black children with single moms lived in poverty.
• Only 6% of births to women above the poverty line are out of wedlock. To contrast, 44% of births to white women under the poverty line are out of wedlock.
• Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents are three times more likely to have a child out of wedlock, 2.5 times more likely to become teenage mothers, and 1.4 times more likely to be out of school and unemployed.
• Daughters of single parents are 164% more likely to have a premarital birth and 92% more likely to have a divorce than daughters of married parents.
• According to a 1994 report in American Economic Review, those who leave welfare because of marriage are the least likely to return.
• “Among married-couple households, the bracket with the largest number of households is $75,000 and over. Among ‘other family groups,’ the bracket with the largest number of households is that under $10,000.”
• Children of two-parent lower income black homes perform better in college than children from single-parent affluent black homes.
• Children who grow up with one parent are twice as likely to drop out of high school than kids with both parents at home.
• Children whose parents are divorced are more likely to exhibit conduct problems, psychological maladjustment, and lower academic achievement.
• Children in two-parent families receive the highest grades in school of any family structure.
• Seventy-two percent of America’s adolescent murderers, 70% of long-term prison inmates, and 60% of rapists come from fatherless homes.
• Boys raised outside of an intact nuclear family are more than twice as likely as other boys to end up in prison, even controlling for a range of social and economic factors.
• Married women are much less likely to be victims of violent crime than unmarried or divorced women. Only 14.4 married women per 1000 are victimized versus 60.6 never-married women per 1000 and 53.6 divorced or separated women per 1000.
• A cohabiting boyfriend is thirty-three times more likely to abuse a child than a married father who lives with the mother.
• A biological father who cohabits with the mother, but is not married to her, is twenty times more likely to abuse his own child than fathers who are married to the mothers of the child.
• Cohabiting women are more likely to suffer severe violence from their partners than are married women.
• Children without resident fathers are more vulnerable to predators, both sexual and physical, outside the family.
My wife is a big fan of House, M.D., which I agree is an enjoyable program. If memory serves, our own S.T. Karnick gave it a nice review over at NRO.
I was watching this evening when the physician team was treating an African-American death row inmate played by L.L. Cool J. The docs, of course, had to talk about social justice, the death penalty, racism, etc.. Fine with me. One of the docs said he’s against it in principle, but is unbothered when the switch gets pulled. Another, a female doc, said she was against it because it is racially motivated. Her statistical claim was that black murderers are ten times more likely than white killers to get the death penalty.
This is where my eyebrows tilted up. Not quite, lassie. As I recall the cases in law school where the question of racism in death penalty sentencing was considered, the race of the killer turned out to be statistically insignificant. Guess what was signifant? The race of the victim! Killers who murder blacks are less likely to get the death penalty than killers who murder whites. Very interesting. So, if there is racism, it is in the fact that killers of African-American victims should theoretically be less deterred than killers of whites.
Television would be more interesting if writers would take the time to do a little research.
For my part, I kind of agreed with what the African-American doctor character said when confronted with the (as I just established, fallacious) racism charge in death penalty sentencing. If that’s true, “we just need to kill more white folks.” Of course, the show isn’t over and he may be dramatically converted by the end of the episode.
Joseph Knippenberg of Oglethorpe University has been increasing his profile lately, first through the Ashbrook Center’s blog “No Left Turns” and more recently as a columnist for The American Enterprise. Dr. Knippenberg’s recent piece for TAE on the Cobb County textbook controversy shows why his work is becoming better known. He has the unusual knack of actually informing through opinion pieces.
I’d give you a snippet, but it just wouldn’t do justice to the overall argument. As Instapundit likes to say, “Read the whole thing.” You’ll come out understanding religion in the public square a bit better than you did before.
I caught the late show of Narnia last night. Paid full price. Worth it without question.
The unfortunate thing for Narnia is that it will inevitably be compared to Lord of the Rings. It can’t quite stand up to that comparison. The main difference is that the Narnia stories are really intended for children, whereas the LOTR tales are written without an age group in mind. Thus, Narnia doesn’t carry the same terrible feeling of impending doom or massive relief at the escape from doom.
One of the primary factors that makes Narnia so much less threatening is that we see so much of the villain, the evil queen. In LOTR, the ultimate villain is always beyond our grasp. So ancient, dark, and terrible, one can only strive in near blindness to prevail on faith. Here, the Queen is bad, but quite manageable by comparison. Like I say, Narnia is a children’s story. They can’t handle as much. In a way, Narnia is like The Passion of the Christ if you tried to make it endurable for kids. The result is entertaining, beautiful, reverent, and something that adults can enjoy, but is not FOR adults.
My distinction between what is for adults and children would possibly not hold up so well in an age where adults were not as world weary and jaded as we are. I suspect an audience from an earlier time would have all the violence and threat they would need to be pushed to the max by this film. That may be part of why C.S. Lewis wrote for children. They are still impressionable and in a good way.
Those who know me are aware that I could never could be called “a man of the left,” but maybe “a man of the heft” would be fitting.
Hitting age 35 while still carrying excess weight has landed me in the doghouse with my doctor. He threw the book at me and I’m now blogging about the experience as a way to stay accountable to dieting.
If anyone is interested in reading about that and maybe contributing their own comments, just slide over to I Might Be a Giant, a new weblog about cutting personal liabilities.
You know Catholics and Evangelicals have ceased hostilities when you read National Review’s list of 15 Unsung Conservatives and find:
Carl F. H. Henry (1913–2003): Billy Graham was the greatest evangelical preacher of the 20th century; one of the greatest evangelical thinkers was Henry. An ordained Baptist minister, he gave the evangelical movement its intellectual heft through his books and, most notably, his editorship of Christianity Today, a magazine that he and Graham founded in 1956 to counteract the influence of the more liberal Christian Century. Although he defended traditional understandings of Scripture, he rejected fundamentalist rigidity and urged evangelicals to engage the wider world rather than to retreat from it — an encouragement that continues to motivate serious Christians to occupy the public square.
CFHH is one my personal heroes, but he wouldn’t have been on the radar of NR twenty years ago. The fact that he is included now shows the religious interpenetration of the two camps and how well Henry’s legacy is wearing.
I had to go out in the wee hours to get medicine for my infant at a Times Square pharmacy. The trip felt ultra-safe. I could have been walking through Disneyworld. One would not be able to say the same of Atlanta, Houston, or Birmingham. Message to those cities: try electing a Republican mayor every once in a while, even of the nominal type. Might improve your chances of attracting a little tourist revenue.
2. What You Get With Monopolies
We took taxis on a couple of occasions. Both times, one felt as though he were dealing with a mercenary instead of with a businessperson or a service provider. It’s less “where do you want to go” and more “come with me if you want to live.”
New York might consider dropping their system of authorizing only certain taxi services and let everyone compete who is willing to honor safety regulations. The market is captive right now. And it shows.
3. The Democratization of Cuisine
I think it was once the case that you had to travel to great metropolises or abroad to get outstanding food. That is no longer the case. I’ve had the opportunity to dine in a wide variety of locales and it is clear to me that you can get really good food almost anywhere there is a market of reasonable size.
So, the food may not make New York an attraction. What I think will keep NYC flowing with tourists is Broadway. You just cannot get live theatre like that in such abundance and quality wherever you go. Broadway is a fabulous distinctive.
Tom Peters’ team likes to point out how influential he is. I’ve noted before that I have enjoyed reading his books, but his trendiness and political correctness become a little insufferable at times. However, I think when it is all said and done his work will not outlast that of Peter Drucker, who recently died after an amazing career.
Checking out the Peters website recently, I ran across this unsightly bit:
11.28 cover tribute to Peter Drucker, called him … “THE MAN WHO INVENTED MANAGEMENT.” Maybe he “invented” management—highly unlikely, since British trading companies among others have been doing it brilliantly for about half a millennium—but he sure as heck didn’t “invent” leadership. (Nor say much about it, for that matter.)
Not very nice, Mr. Peters, especially when one is talking about the most eminent management theorist of the last half century and the gentleman with whom you like to think of yourself as competing.
This was spurred on by a few lines in a Neal Stephenson novel, probably Cryptonomicon. At one point, Stephenson describes a weed as a stupendous evolutionary badass because it, like every other living thing on earth, was the product of millions of years of winnowing.
So, I carried that thought in my mind for quite some time and my wife, an OB-GYN, tripped a connection. She was talking about the large numbers of women who need C-sections and the many different pregnancy complications that are continually part of her world. I thought, wait a minute, why are there so many faulty child-bearers out there?
After millions of years of winnowing, the trait of having an inadequate cervix, or lack of pushing force, or failure to begin labor should have been bred out long ago. It’s only been the last fifty years or so that we could save women like that. Previously, they and their children would have overwhelmingly met their end in labor . . . and did.
Question for the evolutionists: Why aren’t we blessed with a flock of women bearing babes with maximum efficiency? Why have the bad childbearing traits survived in such great numbers?
I was listening to ESPN’s Colin Cowherd on the radio a couple of days ago when the host started ripping Michael Irvin (late of the Dallas Cowboys) for bringing up Christianity and the problem of generational curses in his discussion of the recent controversy in which he was found with a crack pipe in his car.
Cowherd started in an interesting way. He said that God is not a prop and the Bible should not be used to deflect blame or criticism. Good stuff. Couldn’t agree more.
The slip started to show a little bit as he then proclaimed that if a fellow wants to talk about the Bible, he had better be living it. Don’t sin and talk about the Bible. Whoops. Colin, I think you missed your Sunday school class on that one. In fact, you may have missed the whole point. I don’t know if Irvin is sincere about being a Christian, but the cup is for sinners, Laddie.
It got worse as Colin apparently got nervous and began to assure listeners he’s not very religious (ya kidding bro, I never would have guessed it). Perhaps emboldened by having delivered that disclaimer, the good Cowherd (as opposed to the good Shepherd) provided his own carefully crafted theological opinion clearly informed by a lot of thought. “Religion is like a stream that runs through everything and we can just dip a ladle in and get some refreshment whenever we need it.” This was an odd statement to make after he ripped Irvin and other athletes for bringing up religion whenever they are in trouble. No, that doesn’t sound anything like dipping in a ladle as needed.
I remember years back reading a GQ article where a reporter ditched a college athletic ceremony because he didn’t want to listen to the theological opinions of athletes. Maybe the shoe should be on the other foot and we should just let the athletes keep giving glory to God and have the sports reporters just stick to sports.
One more thing about fancy hotels: they charge you for everything. If I were at the aforementioned Holiday Inn Express, I’d get local calls and high speed internet for free. Here, I pay $12.95 a day to use the internet and make phone calls. Just an observation.
Wandered to the Good Morning America studio window, but they were either on commercial or done because they were talking casually. Didn’t see any of the principals. My wife refers to Katie Couric as “the devil,” because of her cute image combined with occasionally mean interviewing techniques.
Took the kids all around Times Square, but they’re a little young to appreciate it. I’m astounded by the sheer number of Broadway plays and musical productions. There is a musical about everything. I kept expecting to see Fantastic Four: The Musical!
Thanks to a conference my wife is attending, we’re hanging out in Times Square at the Marriott Marquis. This is my second trip to the Big Apple. The first was memorable because I was convinced I would die if I went to New York. I grew up in moderate sized southern towns and everything I knew about New York came from 1970’s and 80’s cop shows. Grimy, corrupt, expensive, randomly violent.
I made that first trip because I was working near Washington, D.C. and my New York friend (one David Chang if he’s monitoring) made it a matter of friendship that I come up for a visit despite my massive misgivings. The short version is that it was 1999, Rudy was in charge, and I found NY to be far less threatening than downtown Atlanta. Aside from paying about $300 worth of road tolls on the drive up, I was enchanted.
On this second trip, I’ve already been reminded of one thing. There is a war between cars, other cars, and pedestrians. David picked us up from the airport and drove us to the heart of Times Square. At various points, I was certain he was going to run into cars that darted in front of him or that he forced his car past. He also came super close to various pedestrians who didn’t budge an inch. In any other American town, I think we would have witnessed tragedy on our ride to the hotel, but not here. Everybody seems to know just how much margin there is for error, but it’s right up to the edge at all times.
The hotel we’re staying in is hideously expensive. On the way over, we discussed the price and location and I said, “The room accommodations will probably be a lot like Holiday Inn Express, Dayton, Ohio.” And whaddya know? They basically are. But Holiday Inn Express is pretty good these days.
I’m now awaiting a letter of thanks from Holiday Inn Express and a threaten to sue unless I remove this post about the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.
Finally, a point on multi-culturalism and New York. You know this is a global city when you see a pedecab (modern rickshaw) with a white guy peddling away as an Asian couple whispers sweet nothings to each other in the back seat.
I was always struck a little weird by the leftist claim to inhabit “the reality-based community.” Yesterday, I realized why. This is the same group of people who accept a basically Marxist methodology of economics and think that the solution to a recessed economy is to raise taxes. Reality-based community?
Listen, if you can’t figure out why the Soviets failed and the socialism-lite nations of Western Europe have big problems with unemployment, reality is not the bottom line of your thought-life. Better to go back to the stoner thing.
Is The American Scene, written primarily by Ross Douthat of The Atlantic Monthly. Ross just has an endlessly interesting grab bag of topics that typically hit my sweet spot of Christianity, politics, law, etc.
His latest entry is a very good discussion of whether the Narnia stories are actually allegory, which they are typically assumed to be. If you like Narnia or discussions of literary genre, you should check it out.
I’m going to do something I think will make our blog even more interesting. We had a commenter on the thread about evolution and intelligent design that Jay started who put in some serious effort to moving the conversation forward. So, I’m moving the comment up to the main page for the edification of any who would like to read it.
The identity of the commenter is a secret. We know him only as . . . Bubba.
Here it is:
Ok, since I WAS a Science major, not a Literature or a PolySci major as it appears most of those who post are, please let me ramble on for a minute.
The “Scientific Method” starts with a hypothesis, and tries to systematically go about to prove or disprove the hypothesis. “Science” is publishing your conclusions, along with your methods and materials, so that other “scientists” may review and prove or disprove your work with their own work, thus creating an open debate.
“Science” relies upon “laws” (e.g., Gravity, Thermodynamics, Motion) which have come to be relied upon as fact after multitudes of experiments and an innumerable number of blackboards of mathematical equations seem to be able to describe and predict the outcome of experiments relative to these “laws”.
OK, where am I headed? The statement was made “Scientifically there is no debate about evolution”. Balderdash. Go read some scientific journals. Open up a “Chemistry (or Physics) For Dummies” book. Use some intellectual integrity to subject your beliefs and theories to serious scrutiny.
Evolution is a theory that has been propounded, promulgated, and legislated without the accompaniment of hard scientific experimentation and data. In fact, the theory of Evolution is believable only after one has blinded one’s self to laws of Science which have been overwhelmingly proven and been accepted as fact for hundreds of years, such as Newton’s laws of thermodynamics, and the definitions of Entropy and Enthalpy.
Alternatively, there is no debate about the veracity of Evolution only if debate has been outlawed in the public forum, or the debaters are shouted down or called “religious extremists” by those who are afraid that open, honest SCIENTIFIC debate would not substantiate their pet theory.
Q: Where did the large molecules come from?
A: They were put together from small molecules after having been zapped with solar radiation.
Q: Where did the small molecules come from?
A: Energy fused micro-molecules together.
Q: Where did the micro-molecules come from?
A: Nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms.
Q: Where did the Nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms come from (since “Matter is neither created nor destroyed”)?
A: (no answer)
Q: Where did the solar radiation or the energy required to overcome the laws of Entropy come from?
A: (no answer)
The statement was made: “…I have no problem debating it and even reconciling it, but as tbm says, ID is not science, it’s religion…”
It is clear that to believe in the theory of Evolution as though it had been proven factually has become such a matter of complete ‘faith’, and is no less ‘a religion’ for its believers than the Evolutionists accuse those who believe in Intelligent Design, or “Heaven” forbid, those who believe in the Bibical account of Creation of having.
I’m a history/law/religion type guy, but I didn’t know myself as a younger person and studied social sciences like economics/political science/public administration. One author who stands out to me from that period and whom I still enjoy reading is Peter Drucker. Here was an individual who wrote penetratingly about management and organizations and who launched no fads. There was no “Theory X” or “Re-engineering” with Drucker. He simply had an awesome sense of effectiveness and strategy. Accordingly, he was paid astronomical sums for his advice. Tom Peters, for instance, is fun, but he’s just a cheerleader compared with Drucker.
He had a brilliant line that skewered both groups: “The reason reporters call these people gurus is that they’re not sure how to spell ‘charlatan.’”
and
Drucker simply didn’t care about the conventional view on any management topic, since he had thought them all through and knew where he stood. Yet I was still surprised by the vehemence with which he disdained the modern vogue for exalting leadership, as distinct from paltry old management. It infuriated him, though he was too polite to say so unless you asked him about it, which I did. His reasoning was extremely simple: “The three greatest leaders of the 20th century were Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. If that’s leadership, I want no part of it.”
and
There were many things Drucker wanted no part of. Big universities, for instance. He scorned them all to remain at tiny Claremont College—payback, perhaps, for the scorn they’d heaped on him early in his career. Economists dismissed his work as cheap sociology. Sociologists had no use for business. And Drucker was dismissive of them all. “No economists were interested in organizations,” he explained in a 2001 interview with my colleague, Jerry Useem. The field “was based on the asinine assumption that organizations act like individuals. They don’t.” Here, Drucker had sensed a huge opportunity. Like any great entrepreneur—“somebody who creates something new,” as he once defined the term—he was raiding these older disciplines to create one that didn’t yet exist. Physics sprang from Newton, economics from Adam Smith. And Peter Drucker became the undisputed father of management—the discipline devoted to the study of organizations.
Last time I went on a really good vacation, I took two books with me. One was David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise. The other was Drucker’s The Effective Executive. He’ll be missed, but some of his predictions are still probably good for twenty more years or so. Start reading.
Tom brought up Tim Robbins and I commented on the film Bob Roberts that Robbins made as a parody/paranoid comedy about right-wingers. I decided to look for the lyrics and found that Robbins refused to make a soundtrack because he didn’t want to hear the songs outside the context of the film. I suspect that’s the case because the songs are great conservative humor and would be heard for years to come.
Here are the lyrics of the song I mentioned in the comments to Tom’s post:
COMPLAIN
Some people will work Some simply will not But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
Some people must have Some never will But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
Like this: It’s society’s fault I don’t have a job It’s society’s fault I am a slob I got potential no one can see Give me welfare Let me be me
Hey bud, you’re living in the land of the free No one’s going to hand you opportunity
I spend all my time drunk in a bar I want to be rich I don’t have a brain So give me a handout while I complain
Some people must have Some never will But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
If anybody knows where I can get the lyrics to the rest of the songs short of getting a copy of the film and transcribing them, let me know.
S.T. does a nice job of giving us the “what it all means” review of Tuesday’s events and I’d like to build on it. The Republican Party has fully lost its fashionable insurgency quality and is stuck with the unatractive prospect of just plain governing. Since Newt left, the GOP has not seemed much like the party of big ideas and the war has, in fact, gone on a lot longer than most expected (certainly at the popular level). Fact is, the GOP is on its heels. There is one saving grace. Unlike the GOP of the 80’s and early 90’s, the Democratic Party is not flush with exciting policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, the GOP doesn’t have much positive force right now. They haven’t proven the ability to deliver any of the basic agenda beyond some modest tax cuts. No cut in the size of government, no revolution in social security, no market-driven healthcare reforms, no school choice to speak of . . . just a lot of military action with a steady drip-drip of casualties blown into a flood by an unsympathetic press.
Here’s where Alito comes in. The only thing that saved Bill Clinton and the Dems, perhaps, was that they gained sympathy when conservatives appeared overzealous to crush him. A filibuster against Alito would constitute similar overreach and would give people a reason to rally around Bush and the GOP again. The Dems want to keep W. in the uncomfortable place he’s been stuck in for a while. They won’t offer him the easy way out of emerging as the gallant knight riding to the rescue of the well-qualified and dignified Samuel Alito. He’ll be confirmed with just a little more sturm and drang than John Roberts got.
On Oct. 18, 2004, The Reform Club launched into the roiling blogwaters of the Bush-Kerry 2004 conflict. S.T. Karnick (founding editor of American Outlook, contributor to everything) conceived it. Hunter Baker (Religion/Politics Ph.D. seeker, former public policy professional, contributor to lots of online mags, — mainly TAS) filled out the blogwork and made the first post. And, oh yeah, this guy named Alan Reynolds (minor deity of supply-side economics, Cato Institute) was on board POSTING (kidding, Alan, I kid because I love).
I kept thinking that I would remember to commemorate the occasion, but I didn’t and neither did anybody else. We’re sentimental fools here, aren’t we?
If memory serves, Alan told us we should invite Ben Zycher, which we did. With a stroke, we became multi-faith and added our second well-known economist. Next, we invited this fellow Jay Homnick (Jewish World Review, TAS, ghostwriter), whose articles I used to link because I was in wonderment at his facility with wordplay. Then came Kathy Hutchins, who knew S.T. from the Hudson Institute days and whose comments were begging for a more prominent placement. Ditto Tom Van Dyke, whose achievements I mentioned recently (hint, he wrote the quote that got us in Newsweek and everywhere else). And finally, Herb London (NYU Prof. and Hudson Institute president) joined up and brought us full circle because he co-founded American Outlook with S.T. Karnick.
I suppose you could say American Outlook folded its tent and experienced reincarnation as The Reform Club.
Many TRC readers know that I’m powering my way through a massive pile of books in preparation for my doctoral prelims. The next book on the list is Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. My only previous encounter with this book had to do with my sister’s wedding. She asked that I do a reading, so I consulted the very knowledgeable Ralph Wood (religion and literature) scholar at Baylor. He recommended the wedding sermon from a prison cell, which was perfect:
As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
Not a popular sentiment today, but a true one, I think.
In any case, I am going to find out just what the soon-to-be hanged 39 year old Lutheran thought he was doing when he resisted Hitler in Germany’s churches and then joined a plot to assassinate him. I do know that he met his finish believing it was just the beginning.
I’d love to see comments or insights from anyone who has read the Rev. Bonhoeffer.
In an interview with the Waco Tribune-Herald, new Baylor president John Lilley gave the answer that shows he’s on board with the university’s vision. Here’s the relevant exchange:
Q: Here at Baylor, there have been a couple of issues that have been controversial for faculty and others. One is the integration of faith and learning. What do you see as the proper roles for those?
A: Well, the whole issue of Baylor’s intention of holding a Christian university in a Baptist tradition, that’s at the heart of what Baylor is. In the history of this country, almost all the private schools of any age were founded by churches, and very few of them remain. Most have simply become really outstanding private universities or colleges. And so that was a decision that someone along the way made. And our regents have made the decision, as confirmed by the faculty senate, that Baylor will be intentional about being a Christian university. And Baylor will work at it, as it were. As far as how to do that, where there are disagreements – well, let’s rejoice over the agreements, then focus on the disagreements and see how we can work through those. And so it’s just kind of a common-sense approach for recognizing, as I said earlier, that the faculty are the heart of this operation. And we have to be unified. Now that’s not some false unity, that’s genuine unity. I’m confident we can work though theses issues. My impression is that interim president Underwood has been working steadily on them. And I know no one would be happier about a common understanding than Chancellor Robert Sloan.
Looks like Baylor is in good hands. It’s also a very good sign that Lilley doesn’t run away from association with Robert Sloan.
Those of you who have watched the Battle for Baylor will be interested to learn that the university has a new president. It’s John Lilley, who previously led the University of Nevada at Reno and Pennsylvania State University-Erie. He’s a Baylor grad, but perhaps not a Baptist. In Erie, he was a ruling elder of the First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, a PCUSA church. But the Baylor press release says “While a student at Baylor and USC, Dr. Lilley, a licensed Baptist minister, served as minister of music at two Baptist churches.” He told today’s press conference that he’ll be attending First Baptist.
Weblog doesn’t know much about him, but it’s worth noting that Hunter Baker, who has written on Baylor fights for Christianity Today, says, “He will be in favor of the faith-learning integration project already underway and will continue on the path to making Baylor a true research university.”
Also, it’s worth noting that the BaylorFans message board, largely populated by the kinds of people who thought that former Baylor president Robert Sloan was a “fundamentalist” bent on destroying the university, is generally upset with the appointment.
So it sounds like good news. But we’ll withhold judgment until we can actually do some reporting on this.
Just to be clear, CT misquoted me slightly. I prefaced the remark above by saying it was based on what I’ve heard so far from scattered sources. Nevertheless, I’ve seen the new president’s first press conference and thought it was great stuff. The board seems to have unearthed a gem. I liked what John Lilley had to say very much.
Now, let’s see what he does about picking a Provost.
I made no secret that I would have liked to have seen Robert Sloan return to the Baylor presidency to finish what he started, but it looks like the board has replaced the interim with a completely new candidate or is just about to do so.
The new president will be John Lilley, who is currently president of the University of Nevada-Reno. Based on what I’ve heard in scattered information, he will be in favor of the faith-learning integration project already underway and will continue on the path to making Baylor a true research university.
He is an older man, in his mid to late 60’s, I think, and may well be a transitional figure. Some wonder whether Union University’s David Dockery will eventually become president of Baylor.
“Dear Congressman Watts, thank you for your years of service to the United States House of Representatives. Many people are proud you have been dedicated to an opportunity few people of African-American descent have in this land. If you can, please remain as a pioneer on the Republican side until others come to assist you. I am glad I stayed in my seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus December 1, 1955. I did not know at that time people would rally as they did. I was pleased about their support, but it has sometimes been lonely.
“Through the years my life has had peaks and valleys, but I have never been sorry about my decision. The Lord has always provided.
“I would also like you to keep your seat and not think of your mantle as heavy, but think that you are chosen to prepare the way.
“Peace and prosperity, Rosa Parks.”
She obviously reasoned that it would be good for Black folks to have friends and influence on both sides of the aisle, instead of just one.
DRUDGE links to a story about the attacks Black gubernatorial candidate Michael Steele can expect from Black Democrats.
Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.
Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an “Uncle Tom” and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.
Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report — the only Republican candidate so targeted.
But black Democrats say there is nothing wrong with “pointing out the obvious.”
“There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names,” said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
R.I.P., Rosa Parks. You were not only brave but wise. Your successors are craven and foolish. But that is pointing out the obvious.
No doubt about it: I am a cynic among cynics, even amidst the rarified cynicism of the Reform Club atmosphere. Nonetheless, the argument that the Dem memo on Alito and the Mob implies only ineffectiveness on the part of Alito the prosecutor, and not friendliness toward those Italians whose professional pursuits are encased in euphemism is—how can I say this gently?—a lot of blarney. Why even discuss such an issue if “competence” is the focus; except for the Chief Justice (and even for him a minor matter), administrative skills are far below sea level on the importance priority list for Court Justices. No, it is obvious that the central purpose of this memo was to imply a certain degree of corruption on the part of Alito, a corruption perhaps tribal rather than financial in its orientation. That this could not be said directly also is obvious, but what is equally true is that the intellectual corruption of the Democratic Left is so consuming that the adverse political effects of such amateurish “arguments” remain obscured by the Pavlovian impulse to sling mud. And so please forgive me, but I stand by my earlier argument to the effect that this memo was a (draft) attempt to shower wet manure on Alito; that it was dumb and certain to backfire implies stupidity rather than an absence of malice.
For whatever it’s worth, I am amazed—truly—at the political stupidity of the Dems, the latest manifestation of which is this (draft?) memo arguing or suggesting that Alito as prosecutor went easy on the gangsters because they’re all part of that big happy Italian spicy meatball family. Or something. I just cannot believe that anyone with more IQ points than teeth thought that this would be a winning argument. Am I missing something? Or was politics more fun when the disingenuousness was subtle? And all those Democratic Senators from the Northeast who have lots of Italian constituents? How fast will they be able to backpedal away from this?
Nothing burns me like hearing that leaders of various Christian ministries are living the big life in big houses with fast cars and swimming pools all paid for by the donations of regular folks.
These men and women get a television or radio show and start taking large salaries or get houses and cars subsidized. The justification is that they’d be making much more in the secular world.
My response: Guess what, good Christian? You are supposedly engaging in a ministry and that entails certain sacrifices. More is expected of you and you are supposed to expect less for yourself.
The latest article in the series of disappointments focuses on Jay Sekulow:
But there is another side to Jay Sekulow, one that, until now, has been obscured from the public. It is the Jay Sekulow who, through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
That less-known side of Sekulow was revealed in several interviews with former associates of his and in hundreds of pages of court and tax documents reviewed by Legal Times. Critics say Sekulow’s lifestyle is at odds with his role as the head of a charitable organization that solicits small donations for legal work in God’s name.
For example, in 2001 one of Sekulow’s nonprofit organizations paid a total of $2,374,833 to purchase two homes used primarily by Sekulow and his wife. The same nonprofit also subsidized a third home he uses in North Carolina.
At various times in recent years, Sekulow’s wife, brother, sister-in-law, and two sons have been on the boards or payrolls of organizations under his control or have received generous payments as contractors. Sekulow’s brother Gary is the chief financial officer of both nonprofit organizations that fund his activities, a fact that detractors say diminishes accountability for his spending.
In his defense, he points out that he could be billing $750 an hour at a private firm. If the money is what you value, then go get it in the private sector. Stop the direct mailings and the big appeals to people struggling the pay the mortgage. They don’t know too little goes to cover the cases, while too much goes into your residence.
When The Reform Club was a bit younger, I noticed the excellent comments to our posts by a fellow calling himself “TVD” and urged him to reveal himself. He did and I asked Tom Van Dyke, legal headhunter, game show champion, and musician to join our act.
Tom came on board and is the original source for our now stupendously well-circulated line claiming that to be “miered” is to be “unscrupulously torpedoed by an ally.” He hasn’t gotten the credit because the media powers that be refuse to give him any additional time after his stints as champion of Joker’s Wild and Win Ben Stein’s Money (a show that will be remembered for unleashing the amazing half talent Jimmy Kimmel upon the world).
Gwinnett County budget-meister Jay Vinicki (a very longtime personal friend of an entire lifespan) called me to say that The Reform Club is once again in the mass media as part of Newsweek’s Blog Watch. Color me impressed.
Thanks, Mr. Van Dyke. Great things may lie ahead. I can remember when we were thrilled to be mentioned at NRO’s The Corner. (Actually, we’d be thrilled to see that again. Do it, Goldberg. Do it, Ramesh.)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I dispute (and disputed) the definition of being “miered.” In my book, Ms. Harriet was not torpedoed and it was not unscrupulous. The cannon were all fired from above the surface of the water and war was fairly declared. The result was a good one.
Still, the turn of phrase was brilliant and there is NO argument about that.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released its most recent guide to choosing colleges and Baylor made their top ten list of colleges that emphasize American values:
6. Baylor University, Waco, Texas – This Baptist school, with a solid teaching tradition and a newly beefed-up faculty, is a place where conservative students can get a solid liberal arts education. It has one of the best core curricula of any school. Students are required to follow a structured curriculum and to demonstrate a proficiency in a foreign language. General education requirements make up more than half of a student’s course load. College Democrats and Republicans coexist on the Baylor campus, along with a flourishing chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas, a popular political group that has chapters on campuses throughout the state.
Baylor’s enrollment has been booming lately. This year’s record is likely to be eclipsed significantly by next year’s group. Interested parties should remember to thank one Robert Sloan.
Jim Wallis gets a lot of mileage out of being the evangelical with a social conscience. In other words, he votes Democrat most of the time. Certain other top-drawer evangelicals swing that way, too, reflecting what I think is usually fear of being labeled a member of the “ignorant” and “non-compassionate” right. The question is, how correct is Wallis in his inclination to lean left? Is he more biblically-correct in his pro-life, but economically statist positions?
WALLIS PRESENTS HIS VISION as a fourth option to conservatives, liberals, and libertarians. In his view it “follows from the prophetic religious tradition.” In sum, “it is traditional or conservative on issues of family values, sexual integrity, and personal responsibility, while being very progressive, populist, or even radical on issues like poverty and racial justice. It affirms good stewardship of the earth and its resources, supports gender equality, and is more internationally minded than nationalist.”
One can make good prudential policy arguments on behalf of all of these positions. But while God says much about people’s relationship to him and each other, he says very little about when people should coerce each other — that is, what government should do. And this failure to distinguish personal moral imperatives from prudential political concerns places him squarely where he does not want to be: standing between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
Perhaps no where is this more evident than Wallis’s reflexive rejection of “tax cuts for the rich.” However, the money is not a “public good” to be spent either on government projects or gifts for the wealthy. Rather, the money has been collected from the very people to whom it is being returned. In fact, the rich pay the vast majority of income taxes: for instance, the top one percent pay more than a third of revenues. So any fair tax cut means that the rich will receive more than will the poor. One can justify progressive taxation and social spending, but one must make the argument, rather than simply denounce “tax cuts for the rich.”
Similarly flawed is Wallis’s discussion of poverty, both domestic and international. No faithful Christian can ignore the enormity of the problem of poverty. But a requirement that one help the poor does not authorize one to force others to help the poor. You will search Scripture long and hard to find such an authorization.
I think Bandow has hit the nail on the head. It’s refreshing to read such a well-informed bit of reasoning on church and state. I’ve often hoped someone would address these issues raised by the Wallis position and am glad to see Doug Bandow gets the job done so in such measured fashion. The entire review is worth reading.
The good Samuel Alito (who reminds me of Sandy Stern from the Scott Turow novels) will win confirmation without as much difficulty as many expect.
The O’Connor seat is not the crucial seat. Even if we have Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts, the other team has Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Mr. “Sweet Mystery of Life” Kennedy. This seat is not the one that changes the balance. It makes the middle depend almost entirely on Kennedy, that’s all.
Where it’s going to get ugly is if a Republican gets a chance to nominate Stevens’ replacement.
Several years back I caught a film on cable starring Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, and Dana Delaney. I didn’t see all of it, but what I did see was nearly hypnotic in its effect on me. Over the years I hoped I might run into it again, but I didn’t know the title and didn’t think about looking for it.
Recently, though, I found the film late at night. The title is Light Sleeper. It’s a 1992 movie directed by Paul Schrader. Dafoe is fabulous as a drug dealer who has kicked his own addiction and is now looking to escape the essentially destructive life he’s led. Five stars.
What got me this time around — more than the story — was the music, particularly a number by Michael Been titled “To Feel This Way.” I had to do some digging to figure out the title of the song and the artist, but I did and ended up ordering the entire CD, On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough, of which it is a part. Wonderful, melancholy stuff. I just want to lay on the floor and listen to it, particularly the track that arrested me in the first place. Hits all the right mood notes, especially regret.
I also discovered (S.T. Karnick is somewhere going “No, DUH.”) that Been was the main man behind the Christian band, The Call. I purchased some of their stuff which I don’t like quite as well as the Been solo album. It’s still good. One of the cuts was apparently used by the Al Gore 2000 campaign! Also found out Bono is a fan of the band.
We’ll see if any other TRC types knew these interesting secrets before I did.
Hi, everybody. I just spent a week doing things in the North Georgia mountains that three year olds enjoy and infants can tolerate. Thus, the putt putt golf courses, moderate length walking trails, and playgrounds of the region have all been visited and conquered.
There was one condition placed on the trip by the wife. No laptop.
So, anything happen with the Harriet Miers thing while I was gone?
A contributor to The Reform Club, a right-leaning blog, wrote that to get “borked” was “to be unscrupulously torpedoed by an opponent,” while to get “miered” was to be “unscrupulously torpedoed by an ally.”
S.T. Karnick, co-editor of The Reform Club, elaborated.
“If you have a president who is willing to instigate a big controversy, the prospect of being `borked’ will be the major possibility,” he said. “But if you have a president who is always trying to get consensus, then it’s much more likely that nominees will get `miered.’”
The abortion issue always gets my attention, but blogger is freezing me out of the comments section. So forgive another post.
Connie raised utilitarianism as an answer to the abortion issue, to which I respond:
Utilitarianism is a bankrupt philosophy. That has been demonstrated repeatedly. If you accept greatest good for the greatest number you can easily justify punishing the wrong person (even if you know it is the wrong person) for a crime in order to deter others from committing similar crimes.
What really happens with utilitarians is that they inevitably have to sneak other philosophical value models into their own in order to make it work. There is always a “why” lurking in the utilitarian’s choices that goes well-beyond “greatest good for the greatest number” because it is a largely vacuous concept aside from the stark opportunity for one person to jump on a grenade to save several.
But EVEN that example raises questions. Why should one individual commit suicide to save a number of others? Why are several people more valuable than one? What is the justification there? I suppose it would have to depend on the value of persons. Utilitarianism takes that for granted and thus relies on some other value system (like Christianity), which is not shocking considering the heritage of the folks who started pushing utilitarianism. (Is Christ the ultimate utilitarian? He who ransomed his life for the billions? Unlikely, for he also emphasized leaving the flock untended to go after the single stray.)
Still, let’s just accept utilitarianism in the abortion dispute. It gives us no answers. One utilitarian could say, “We must allow abortion because it is usually poor mothers who would give birth to these unwanted children and we would experience a strain on our social services PLUS we’d probably have more crime down the road.” Another utilitarian could say, “We should compel these women to have the children because we have a growing population of the aged who must be supported by a growing pool of workers among our younger population.” Both would be using utilitarian reasoning but delivering the opposite result. In neither case would either have any concern for human rights, which has interesting implications for utilitarianism as a method of governing.
Jay wondered why his fellow Jews are so detached from the pro-life movement which he believes is their heritage, to which I respond:
I think about Francis Schaeffer in this connection, Jay. When Roe v. Wade came down, the evangelical Christian society was out to lunch. They didn’t care. You can find quotes from heavy duty Christian types expressing basic cluelessness on the issue. Schaeffer brought the sanctity of life issue to his community via the prophetic mode.
His basic message? This is evil and wrong. It is so evil and wrong that I and everyone else must question whether Christianity is real at all if you have no will to oppose it. You don’t oppose it because you are too caught up in your real values of personal peace and affluence to care. He pierced some shells of indifference with that message and the evangelical world joined the Catholics as opponents of abortion on demand.
If a Christian can be prophetic about abortion, I KNOW a Jewish person can do the same. Who is that person, Jay?
It’s a fundraiser, but it is also intended to introduce the organization to interested parties. Sponsors frequently buy more seats than they fill, so they can probably find a place for the motivated attender.
The GFC dinner is always a great Atlanta event. Past speakers include Jack Kemp and Sean Hannity. This year features the new president of Focus on the Family, Jim Daly. GFC is a Focus-affiliate.
And just so you know, I’ll be there. So look me up.If you’re interested, email kylee@gafam.org.
Update: I’ve already had one well-heeled taker contact me and the above-mentioned Kylee. I’ve got room for a few more. Email kylee@gafam.org and give her your name and whether you’d like to bring a guest. Tell her I sent you.
By the way, this is typically not a bad place to meet state legislators.
I gave up reading Richard Cohen a long time ago, but my friends at the American Spectator blog drew my attention to his latest effort. If the headline didn’t give it away, Cohen (though still pro-choice) admits he’s no fan of Roe:
I no longer see abortion as directly related to sexual freedom or feminism, and I no longer see it strictly as a matter of personal privacy, either. It entails questions about life — maybe more so at the end of the process than at the beginning, but life nonetheless.
This is not a fashionable view in some circles, but it is one that usually gets grudging acceptance when I mention it. I know of no one who has flipped on the abortion issue, but I do know of plenty of people who no longer think of it as a minor procedure that only prudes and right-wingers oppose. The antiabortion movement has made headway.
There is such a thing as cognitive dissonance. It is not possible to keep going as a culture that celebrates the ultrasound and the abortion license at the same time. Cohen is one more indicator of that fact.
As many of you know, I’m on a 100 book tear as I prepare for my doctoral prelims. The latest book on my list was Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I wasn’t sure it would be more than a book to get through, but I was wrong.
First off, Nozick performs the most convincing take-down of John Rawls that I’ve ever seen. They were both high-powered Ivy League types, so I’d love to know if they ever discussed the issues in person. Probably not. Nozick praises Rawls to the heavens, but absolutely wins the debate as far as I’m concerned. I make the remark about Nozick and Rawls to tantalize. Go read it for yourself.
Second, and more to the point of this post, I found myself arrested by an amazing sequence in which Nozick shows anything more than a minimal state is essentially equal to slavery. I’m pasting it in below:
“The Tale of the Slave”from Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-292.
Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.
1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.
3. The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.
4. The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.
5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him three-sevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.
6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.
Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.
7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.
8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)
9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.
The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave?
I thought about getting into my own thoughts about this passage and how it relates to my understanding of the Bible, for instance, but I decided to draw back and see what others might say. Discuss, if you like.
Some people mark their lives in terms of great events. Others remember what they were reading at a particular time. During 1996-1997, I was in reading bliss because my father-in-law, a great book collector, loaned me a large box full of the adventures of Remo Williams: The Destroyer. During that year, I made my way through about 80 volumes of the awesome pulp fiction series and counted myself a lucky man to have such an interesting father-in-law.
Some of you are probably thinking the men’s action/adventure genre is blandly similar. The hero arrives in town, has a shower, a steak, a woman, and then gets down to business blowing all the baddies away. Remo didn’t fit that pattern. He was a former Vietnam vet/beat cop framed up for the express purpose of becoming the one man enforcement arm of a special organization named CURE. The group would freely violate the Constitution in order to enforce it.
Remo was trained by the Asian assassin Chiun, a self-satisfiedly racist old man with the deadliest hands and feet in the world. He accompanies Remo on his adventures because he can’t stand to see his good work endangered. Remo is only a white man, Chiun reminds him, but he has almost transcended his racial limitations. The old Asian creates much of the comedic relief in the series, particularly as he interacts with hippies and other assorted leftists. They regularly praise him and give him honor because he’s “third world,” but don’t realize that he is about as royalist and reactionary as anyone could be. Nevertheless, he soaks up their laurels. Chiun also amuses with his horrendous poetry.
Remo becomes almost as deadly as Chiun through his training and often resents his transformation from man to superman. He is bored with sex because he knows all the technical details about how to drive women wild. He also yearns for American junk food, but his body has been so purified he is only able to eat fish and rice, like Chiun. His body rejects anything else. Despite his annoyance with life as a super-assassin, Remo enjoys bringing bad guys (and girls) down and displays a lot of style in so doing.
Finally, there is the head of CURE, one Dr. Smith. Smith is simultaneously brilliant and terribly dull. He was selected to head the organization because of his lack of imagination. A visionary type would figure out how to turn CURE into a platform for subtle world domination. The highlight of Smith’s day, on the other hand, is eating his usual prune whip yogurt. He runs things behind the scenes from the Folcroft Sanitarium.
The series was created by Warren Murphy and Dick Sapir. It was quite good until Sapir died and Murphy quit writing them. Since the 80’s, it has been licensed to various publishers with varying results. Of late, Remo has been in the hands of a Canadian publisher who doesn’t understand the property. Which is why I wrote this entire post, just to link to this National Review story about the recent fate of Remo.
I’ve been a little relentless. Reading Tom’s posts send a message of re-focus and clarity. Seek truth in a community of friendship. He’s right.
Unfortunately, there are more problems with the Harriet Miers nomination that should be discussed. First off is this strange report from John Fund about the teleconference between Christian conservatives and Texas judges Hecht and Kinkeade to discuss Miers. According to Fund, the two judges gave strong assurances that Miers would be a vote against Roe.
I should be happy about this, right? After all, I am seriously pro-life and have to try not to think about it too much to avoid being sick and miserable all the time about the loss of innocent life.
Readers and TRCers, I am not happy.
I do not believe that we achieve justice by stacking the court in favor of a particular position on a particular issue. It is basically a disgusting phenomenon that every time a Supreme Court justice is nominated all anybody wants to know is what they think about Roe. Even liberal legal types know what’s wrong with Roe, it’s just a matter of whether they will interpret the law squarely and fairly.
The right course, the only course is to choose nominees who are dedicated to interpreting the law and the Constitution in a manner closely tied to its text and intent. If we can find justices who will do that, it will not matter what their policy preferences are. We have lost something precious with the left-wing move toward justices who embrace policy over strict interpretation of law. To the extent that we should ever embrace that mistake, except to substitute right-wing preferences, then we, too, will be in error.
Now, we don’t know how a Justice Miers would approach the problem since she lacks the indicators of judicial philosophy that would inform us. However, the Fund story gives all the appearances of a stealth nominee designed to stack the court on an issue rather than to give it a guiding philosophy. I think that’s the wrong approach. If Roe is going to be overturned, then it had better be via the fairest and cleanest hands method available. The way to do that is to bring back a correct judicial philosophy. And the way to do that is to appoint judges who have thought deeply about the act of judging.
Our resident anonymous liberal, Liberal Anonymous (which sounds like a good name for a self-help group), writes to my colleague:
Actions speak louder than words, Hunter, and Scalia has shown himself to be a rank hypocrite whenever he disagrees with the outcome of the law.
Aye, that’s our real world, LA. We are all human, and thus vulnerable to rationalizations and therefore hypocrisy—although I personally think Scalia’s batting average for fidelity to his judicial philosophy might make him the court’s ranking non-hypocrite. To wit: Justice Ginsburg fully allows that Roe is bad law, but won’t lift a finger to overturn it, or even tame it.
Do you favor turning your back on essential questions of right and wrong when the law dictates the contrary of your moral sense? I mean, surely a person of your obvious cosmic rectitude would have dissented in the Dred Scott decision.
Or as our current President Bush (two down, one to go) so eloquently put it:
“Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.
That’s a personal opinion. That’s not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we’re all—–you know, it doesn’t say that…”
Precisely. Ah, the inarticulate speech of the heart: he is the master.
Trusty Slate lefty Tim Noah associates, and not unfairly, Roe with Scott, and why Bush says he wouldn’t appoint someone so reasonable as to agree with the Constitution (at that time) on the latter.
I ask you this not to put you on the spot, LA, but to open the gates of heaven and hell to all on this Miers thing. I mean, it’s far easier and quicker to learn someone else’s mind than their heart, which is why I think Bush went this way. Peter Singer or FDR? Sensibility or sense? Nietzsche or Jesus? Justice or mercy? Winston Churchill or Viggo Mortensen?
“Be kind. It’s worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them. If you allow yourself to be somewhat curious — and if you get into the habit of doing that—it’s the first step to being open minded… and realizing that your points of view aren’t totally opposite. I don’t think anyone’s are, in the end. It’s just a question of finding out by spending time with them or giving their ideas a chance to be considered.” —Viggo Mortensen, Artist, Actor, Activist
(Very interested as to what Brother Viggo has found in common with al-Qaeda and the janjaweed, and to hear his plan for Congo, but that should not diminish the universialityness of his sentiment. I’d think we could count him as firmly in Ms. Miers’ court. What a nice man. If he had spent 10 years at Harriet Miers’ side, spending time with her and giving her ideas a chance to be considered, I’m sure he would have nominated her himself.)
On Miers’ side to date: Ken Starr, Lino Gralia, Thomas Sowell, James Dobson, Jay Sekulow, Marvin Olasky, Chuck Colson, Michael Medved, William Rusher, R. Emmett Tyrrell and of course Fred Barnes. Against her: The Corner, Tucker Carlson, Bill Kristol, Robert Bork, Mark Levin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and Charles Krauthhammer. I like those odds.
Oh, yes. President Bush thinks she’ll make a fine Associate Justice. A strong case allows the weak case as much time as it wants. A weak case shouts down its opposite, and refuses to engage.
Hauling water for Bush on Miers has made Hugh Hewitt weary. First, he puts R. Emmett Tyrrell in the Miers camp when Tyrrell scarcely declared a side. Instead, he noted the ugliness and uselessness of fighting over something that is going to happen. He also said conservatives have every right to be disappointed with the choice. Hey, if that’s what counts as support, then the thinness of the fabric is starting to show.
Second, Hewitt declares the anti-Miers crowd has a weak case and is shouting down the “stronger” case for Miers. We’ve heard the case for Miers, haven’t we? Trust the president. Trust the president. And oh, by the way, trust the president. On the other hand, the critics of the nomination have examined her record, her writings, and her resume’ and have concluded there are many better options. That doesn’t exactly qualify as shouting down a stronger case.Give it up, Hugh. You’ve gone from “clutch” to just plain “clutching.”
The gang at NRO’s The Corner has come up with the multiple meanings of “Getting Miered”:
1. Good –
To put your own allies in the most untenable position possible based upon exceptionally bad decsion making.
2. Better –
While steadlily going in reverse in the driveway of your own home, intentionally abruptly pressing gas pedal as to crash into garage door for no apparent reason.
3. Best –
Getting used to everyone hating you except your core supporters and thinking what the hell, it’d be cool to see what it’s like to have everyone hate you at same time.
“I can’t find anything in any religion anywhere, I certainly cannot find anything in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ, that says you ought to take health care away from poor children or money away from the poorest people in the country to give it to the wealthiest people in the nation.”
Kerry made the statement to a Democrat women’s group in Iowa.
What I would love is for any of the lefty-lurkers at Reform Club (well-loved, of course) to defend Kerry’s statement. Exactly how does this transfer take place? What program takes health care and money from the poor and shovels it into the accounts of the wealthy? I haven’t heard of it or seen it debated on Capitol Hill. It must have been covered extensively. I mean, it sounds so terrible.
I have no idea why Hugh Hewitt has attached his significant credibility to defending the Miers nomination no matter how weak the arguments he has to serve.
First of all, Mark Levin, who was once chief of staff to the Attorney General, challenged Hugh on the exalted significance he attaches to the White House counsel office, where Hugh once worked and which Miers currently heads. Specifically Levin said, “Sorry, Hugh. They’re not considered the Constitutional engine that runs the government.”
Second, Hewitt continues his absurd notion that the resistance to Miers will somehow do massive damage to evangelical support of the conservative movement. After Howard Fineman suggested (as have several of us at SA) that a GOP primary candidate would be well-advised to vote against a Miers confirmation, Hewitt said,
“That is simply wrong. To vote against Miers because the Bos-Wash Axis of Elitism is against her is not the way to gain Evangelical favor. The opposite, in fact.”
Evangelicals are not identity-voters. If they were, Ronald Reagan would never have beaten Jimmy Carter, an established evangelical Christian at the time. Evangelicals vote issues. When it comes to the court, the issue is whether it will be empowered to settle all disputes over sex, marriage, and reproduction. They have been sorely disappointed with several nominees and are quite unlikely to lash out at those who complain Harriet Miers’ judicial philosophy is unknown and untested.Contra Hewitt, conservative evangelicals are going to act a lot more like Missourians than bloc identity voters. Show us, baby. We ain’t budgin’ till you do.
My reflections on Bush have nearly reached the pitch blackness of the worst moments of the Clinton era when he pled for an end to the Monica story because he needed to be about the business of the American people, as though there was a room somewhere that required his steady hand on the controls.
At least Bush can claim he’s been distracted by the extraordinary challenge of Iraq.
But it’s not good enough, not nearly. I’d love to hear from the other RC’ers on this question, but I do believe the Miers nomination is the biggest political <expletives deleted> screw-up (the replacement term) I have ever seen in my lengthening life.
We’ve had S.T. play the “she’ll vote fine” card and Tom urge tolerance in light of core values the president may be observing and those are good things to say. I count them better men than I for holding their water with so much less volatility.
But all of this ignores the fact that there has been a conservative legal movement going strong for about twenty years now. It has certain identifiable members. Resume’s from that group look a certain way. They are a lot like Bork except more diplomatic and more careful. Bush was very definitely understood to be referring to this group of people when he said he wanted originalists like Scalia and Thomas.
Many members of this group are quite well-accomplished as academics, jurists, or both. The expectation has been building for this entire period, really longer than twenty years, that when we had both the White House and the Senate, we would nominate these people and WIN.
For the President to choose any other course of action is almost willfully dense or offensive. To compound the offense by claiming he selected the most-qualified person available is insulting. To the extent men I admire, like James Dobson and Chuck Colson, seconded Bush in this choice I can only imagine that they found it difficult to oppose a personal request from the President when he offered his word of honor.
For the White House to expect the controversy would blow over in 48 hours displays the same kind of tone-deafness that utterly failed to prepare the American people for the size and duration of the action in Iraq.
There is no other way out than to start over. The President is picking Hugo Black over Learned Hand and that is just not the way to do things (forgive me for an illustration that may not resonate with non-legal types). It isn’t fair to the people who have prepared for these opportunities. It isn’t fair to Harriet Miers. It boggles my mind that she didn’t refuse him if he brought up the idea.
What’s going on is more of the old LBJ, Bull—-, down-home politics and that just isn’t the way you handle the court. If Bill Clinton can nominate and confirm a former ACLU bigwig like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then I dare say we need not do less when our opportunities arise.
Call time out, Mr. President. Step back from the plate. Clear your head. Find an honorable way to start over. Then, swing away.
Everyone has their heroes. One of mine, since the tender age of about 18, has been William F. Buckley. I’m thinking about him because of this lovely profile in the NYT. Without Buckley, I seriously doubt there would ever have been a Goldwater presidential run or a Reagan presidency. It is a cliche’, a true one, but still a cliche’, to say that Buckley gave the conservative movement style and wit. Some claim him as the founding modern conservative intellectual, but one would need to make a bit of room for Russell Kirk (who showed us the historical pedigree of conservatism) and Whitaker Chambers (who never accepted the conservative label), too.
While a graduate student at the University of Georgia in the early nineties, I had the privilege of attending a speech given by William F. Buckley. The elder statesman of the movement amazed the large crowd with both his wit and his wardrobe. To this day, I remember his navy sportcoat, yellow shirt, khaki pants, and RED belt. You’ve got to be good to pull that look off, but Buckley was equal to the task.
At the end of his presentation, he allowed questions. The first supplicant approached the microphone and hopefully inquired, “Mr. Buckley, what do you think about Rush Limbaugh?” This was during the time when Rush was still something of a rising star. His rhetoric was bombastic, hard-edged, and wickedly funny. Members of the audience shifted forward in their seats expectantly as Buckley answered by telling the following story.
There were two Spaniards sitting in a bar. One asked the other, “What do you think about General Franco?” Instead of answering, the man gestured for his friend to follow him outside. Once on the sidewalk, he motioned for the friend to follow him to his car. They got in the car and drove to a forest. Deep in the woods, he parked the car and beckoned the friend to hike with him down to a lake. At the edge of the lake, he pointed to a boat which they boarded. He grabbed the oars and rowed to the center of the lake. Finally, he sat still, looked his friend in the eyes and paused for a moment. “I like him.” Buckley told the story so brilliantly and created so much suspense, the denouement brought the house down amid gales of laughter and happy applause.
Not as many will take notice when Buckley finishes his time among us as did when Ronald Reagan passed on, but I’m quite sure there will be some of us who may feel the loss even more deeply when it comes.
Buckley was/is incomparable. The NYT story carries the suggestion that Buckley became so much larger than life because he stood alone without much competition. I think he’d shine in any crowd.
By virtue of his work in the LOTR trilogy, Viggo Mortensen has clearly made his way into the top tier of Hollywood leading men. The fact that he got the juicy role of Tom Stall in A History of Violence proves it.
HOV is a superb film. I haven’t seen anything in the theatre that has caught my interest in the way this movie did in a long time. It is violent, graphically violent in a smoothly choreographed fashion, but this isn’t action movie violence. It isn’t glorified. At every point you see the dualistic nature of violence, justified or not, and the way even the justified violence leaves you feeling a little sick.
The basic story is about a simple, small-town man who kills men about to commit rape, robbery, and murder in his cafe’. He is so successful in thwarting the attack of these bad men, he attracts attention from the media who view him as a hero and from less savory characters who think he is one of their number from the past. These big-city mob types want to kill Tom Stall as revenge for something they believe he did years ago. They think his name is Joey and that he maimed a made man.
Whether he is the man they are looking for or not, I leave for you to find out.
In any case, the film is very successful in riveting the viewer’s interest and stimulating thought. You care about the characters and become invested in the outcome.
Finally, William Hurt had a small, but very important part in the film. He may be on screen for ten minutes, but they all count. He’s magnificent in his role. If they give an Oscar for a brief, but powerful appearance, it’s his.
Side note: There are two sex scenes in the film between Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello. The scenes are semi-gratuitous. I say semi because they do contribute to the development of the story, but the same could have been done with less graphic scenes. I wouldn’t mention it except that the scenes are far from cookie-cutter, so you end up reflecting on them.
Side note 2: Despite the fact that I clearly asked for a ticket to A History of Violence, the cashier gave me a ticket to The 40 Year Old Virgin. Since it was a weeknight and it didn’t matter, I didn’t ask for a new ticket. After the film, however, I wondered whether the mistake could have been intentional. Think of it, my money went to a film I didn’t see. Unethical individuals could arrange something like that with bribes or favors to cashiers. I could be on an imagination trip, but it seems possible.
New Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. yesterday sharply questioned a lawyer arguing for preservation of Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law, noting the federal government’s tough regulation of addictive drugs.
At the outset, Chief Justice Roberts directed a barrage of questions at Oregon Senior Assistant Attorney General Robert Atkinson before the state official could finish his first sentence.
“Doesn’t that undermine and make enforcement impossible?” he asked Mr. Atkinson.
At one point, a flustered Mr. Atkinson said: “I’m starting to be backed into a corner.”
It makes a difference what kind of intellect and experience you put on the court.
Well, I’ve missed a lot around here lately. I was back in Philadelphia, where my mother, Marie, passed away peacefully last week at age 71.
She was too weak to undergo a second operation, but strong enough to stay with us a few weeks longer so we could all say goodbye, and slowly get used to the thought of living on without her. That’s the way she was, giving much more than she took.
It was difficult, of course, but thoroughly proper in that old-fashioned way before this age of pulling tubes and plugs, gathered about her bedside singing songs, retelling our family stories, catching up for the last time, and sharing lots of smiles and laughs and kisses.
She said that it sounded strange, but she had some very, very happy times in those last few weeks. I know what she meant. There are a few selfish tears of loss, but mostly the ones that come in the face of those rare moments of crystal clear yet incomprehensible beauty.
Please let me thank you all for the warm thoughts sent our way through this, and close off the comments for this post. A quick prayer would be appreciated. Sleep in peace, Mom, until I come to thee.
“When you find a moment of happiness, bask yourself in it. Roll around in it and enjoy it. Promise me you will.
And when the bad times come—and everyone has their time on the fence—you take it one day at a time. That’s all there is for it.” —Marie O. Dyke
Miers’s undergraduate education was completed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1967. Ingraham graduated from Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. That’s not to say an Ivy League education is a prerequisite for Supreme Court service. It’s not. But as one of many details in one’s background, a highly selective admissions process is not nothing. Campus conservative? No, Miers was essentially apolitical in the 1970s and gave money to various national Democratic politicians in the Reagan years. By contrast, Ingraham was a regular contributor to the conservative Dartmouth Review and worked in the Reagan White House.
Miers attended law school at Southern Methodist University, not one of the nation’s top 20 law schools at the time. Even today it is ranked 52nd best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Ingraham studied at the University of Virginia Law School, currently ranked eighth in the nation.
Federalist Society membership? It does not appear that Miers bothered to join. Of course, it was founded years after she passed the bar, but many conservative lawyers do join after law school. “But she supports the society,” says White House press person Dana M. Perino, and Miers has spoken at a number of Federalist Society events. Ingraham of course was a member.
Clerked for federal judge? Yes, Miers clerked for a U.S. District court judge Joe E. Estes in Dallas. Ingraham clerked for judge Ralph K. Winter on the second circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court? Miers did not, while Ingraham researched for Justice Clarence Thomas.
Age does not seem to favor Miers either. She’s 60; two decades younger, Ingraham would have more natural staying power.
Attorney at a top-20 national law firm? While a lot has been said about Miers’s accomplishments, her old firm is simply not a major player on the national stage. Even after a merger with another firm, the new outfit, known as Locke, Liddell & Sapp, was ranked no. 94 by The National Law Journal in 2003. That same year, Ingraham’s firm — Skadden, Arps, Meagher & Flom — was ranked no. 3 by The National Law Journal. So, at best, Miers was a big fish in a smallish pond.
Both Miers and Ingraham have White House experience. Ingraham was a speechwriter for President Reagan in his last two years, helping craft the president’s message on many of the vital issues of the day. Interestingly, despite what Bush describes as Miers’s “stellar record of accomplishment in the law,” he did not name her White House counsel in his first term. Instead, she was appointed staff secretary, a manager of presidential paperwork. While many distinguished people have served as staff secretary, including Brett Kavanaugh, it may say something about Bush’s view of Miers’s capacities that he first put her in such a detail-oriented staff job, rather than one grappling with major legal and policy issues. Miers only became counsel to the president, the top legal job in the White House, in February 2005. Seven months later, she was nominated for a Supreme Court seat.
Of course, Miers has other government experience. She cleaned up the mess at the Texas Lottery Commission. No doubt a vital public service. But Governor Bush did not urge her to join the state supreme court. Meanwhile, Ingraham served in policy positions at the U.S. Department of Transportation and Department of Education. This seems like a draw.
Miers does not have much a paper trail, or at least one that the public will be able to see. By contrast, Ingraham has written two books, including one bestseller, as well as many bylined articles in national newspapers and magazines.
The president told a reporter Ms Miers is the most qualified female lawyer in the nation. Think he’d like to reconsider? And Ms. Ingraham isn’t even the best credentialed female out there.
We keep hearing assurances that Harriet Miers is pro-life.
That is not, strictly speaking, what I’m interested in. It is true that I am ardently pro-life and that I am on record in the Regent University Law Review arguing that changes in our medical knowledge now fully vindicate treating unborn humans as persons under the 14th Amendment. However, what I am interested in is getting a judge who will not twist the Constitution into a vessel for imposing one’s preferences on the American people as was so clearly done in Roe. Roe was wrong on history, wrong in what it said it didn’t need to know, and wrong in its constitutional interpretation. Those penumbras and emanations resonating off various parts of the Constitution were ridiculous and we all know it. If they weren’t, then we should have “discovered” massive protection from economic regulation in the contracts clause.
Miers’ friend Judge Hecht has said that one could be pro-life and still believe the constitution requires upholding Roe. I don’t think so, not because of any special quality of being pro-life, but simply because no intellectually honest person can or should believe the constitution requires upholding Roe.
At a minimum, Justice Scalia is right and the abortion decision should revert back to the states. His position is not related to his pro-life viewpoint. His position depends entirely on his theory of constitutional interpretation, which is the only theory that keeps us out of the situation of having five of nine justices essentially rule as philosopher-kings.
So, what we are interested in is Ms. Miers’ understanding of constitutional interpretation, not her political position re: abortion. I would rather have a jurist with a correct understanding of the constitution than I would one who believes the right thing policy-wise about abortion.
I find the anger of the Republican rank and file toward President Bush for the Miers nomination quite interesting, and I greatly respect the opinions of my fellow members of the Reform Club. I have been quite critical of President Bush on this site, from the right of course, especially as regards his economic policies. I think that I have been the most critical of the Reform Clubbers by far, toward this president. Perhaps this is why I have not reacted with such horror at the Miers nomination: My expectations of this president have evidently been not nearly as high, and hence my disappointment is minimal. To me, the nomination remains a practical question: Will Miers make a strict-constructionist majority on the Court? And to me the answer is yes.
Hugh Hewitt is one of the most ardent defenders of the Miers nomination, referring to it as “a B+ pick.” I defer somewhat to Hugh in the normal course of events because he is often right, but this time he is a Bush homer to the limit.
The following line demonstrates the degree to which he is deceiving himself:
Yes, I wanted Judge Luttig or Judge McConnell, but the president wanted Miers, and I don’t for a minute believe it is because of friendship, but because of W’s understanding of the importance of the Court.
I’d like to know how you could possibly bring Luttig and McConnell into the conversation and then suggest the Miers pick was because of the importance of the court. I’d love to see Hugh defend his statement by explaining in what way Miers excels Luttig, McConnell, or any of the excellent female appellate judges who have been mentioned. He can’t defend his statement in that way. That leaves us with friendship and personal comfort level, which are clearly the wrong criteria for the selection.
My own take is that Hewitt has generally been virtually uncritical in his support for Bush and that he reflexively supports Miers because he was also part of the White House Counsel’s office. It’s personal and organizational loyalty all the way. When it comes to the law, that attitude won’t cut it.
I am completely unified with the good Doc Zycher both in his opposition to the Miers nomination and in his distaste for W’s leadership at this point in the presidency.
I was extremely underwhelmed by his choice of Dick Cheney for Vice-President back in ‘00. Do I lack appreciation for the magnficent Mr. Cheney? No, he’s a stud, but I knew the election would be hard fought and it didn’t make sense to add a fellow to the ticket who tipped the scales not at all on any state that mattered. How did he pick Dick? Well, Mr. Cheney was charged with finding the right veep candidate, just like Harriet Miers was supposed to find the right court nominees. Twice on crucial personnel decisions, Bush has taken the (personally) easy way out and offered the job to a friend of the family.
I want to be clear about something. I expect Harriet Miers is superbly talented and has done her job well, but we are trying to have a debate both on the court and in the public about judicial philosophy. John Roberts, who was arguably the top Supreme Court advocate in the nation prior to his appeals court appointment, comes ultra-well equipped to join Thomas and Scalia in writing provocative opinions and perhaps even moving the court’s decisions through sheer force of argument. Harriet Miers has nothing in her record to indicate she has that type of temperament or ability. She will also carry the disadvantage of joining the court without the kind of resume’ that will command respect among the other members. If Bush had picked Michael McConnell for instance, he would have come on board as an elite legal scholar and an appellate judge. Instant respect. Instant ability to move the direction of the court. Instant vindication of GOP principles because we are supposed to believe in meritocracy. And of course, there have been female judges who have made names for themselves, as well, and who were far more deserving than Ms. Miers.
I believe the president should be able to appoint people he trusts to his cabinet and White House positions, but that is emphatically NOT the key point to be observed in nominations to the court.
My esteemed colleague Sam Karnick observes in the context of Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court that El Presidente W says that she has the right philosophy, an interesting observation from a man (W, not Sam) not known for philosophical musings, whatever his other virtues. And there purportedly is no reason to believe that she is less likely to retain her current philosophy than John Roberts. And she almost certain to be confirmed. And so, asks Sam: “What’s the problem?”
Oh, dear; where to begin? In a White House that values “loyalty” above all, in a world in which the line between loyalty and sycophancy is less than sharp, Ms. Miers’ “philosophy” remains entirely obscure, above all to President W regardless of the self-deception into which he has allowed himself to descend. That she implemented W’s preferences in the numerous judicial searches conducted by this White House is far less revealing than Sam seems to believe: In a While House populated with sycophantic careerists desperately seeking each day opportunities to plant wet kisses on W’s shoes (or somewhere), Miers is reported reliably to have displayed the greatest zeal of all, announcing to all within earshot that W is “the smartest man she ever met.” Well: That says something interesting either about Miers or about W or about all the other men she has ever met, however few that may be. But we cannot know which. The central fact is that no one—probably including Ms. Miers—knows her legal philosophy, in that there is no evidence that she has ever devoted the time and effort necessary to develop one that can be called coherent. Perhaps she has. But what is the evidence for that other than a testimonial from W, who—ironically like Saddam—hears largely what his staff believes that he wants to hear? More generally, there is good reason to distrust—profoundly—anyone who has succeeded fabulously in an environment in which objectivity does not appear on the list of attributes yielding upward mobility. That environment is the current White House, and that success is the shining achievement of Miers.
And so the assertion that she will prove as steadfast as Roberts over the long run rests on a series of assumptions far less than awe-inspiring. It is at least equally plausible that, just as she has bent to the prevailing winds in the White House, she will over time “grow” as the Washington Post likes to put it, that is, move to the left. Perhaps that is wrong. But the point is that there is no way to know from her record; and unlike Roberts, who implicitly would have to repudiate a career-long record of writings and other output, Miers would face no such constraint in terms of a shift toward the Breyer/Ginsburg/Souter axis. And so: There is good reason to believe her more likely than Roberts to move to the left, particularly given the Beltway blandishments available to those who do so. The Harvard lectureships. The conference panels in Europe. Ad nauseam. Does Clarence Thomas—by far the best of the current Justices— receive many such invitations? The question answers itself. Perhaps Miers indeed will prove steadfast. But what is the rationale for accepting this risk?
That she is likely to be confirmed is irrelevant to the issue of Constitutional philosophy, both in its own terms and in the larger context of depoliticizing the confirmation process. Here was a chance for W to nominate an intellectual giant. Here was a chance to force the leftists to oppose a stellar nominee, in a world in which such a stance would be far more difficult politically than in 1987. Here was a chance, with a nomination of, say, Janice Brown, to expose the utter hypocrisy and nihilism of the Senate blue staters. Here was a chance, in short, to drive several nails into the coffin of Borking. Here was a chance to excite the Republican base in advance of the 2006 elections. Here was a chance to entice the leftists into a filibuster and thus to shove the nuclear option down their throats. (Do not let anyone tell you that fifty votes would not be available to do so.) And so what did W do? He looked into Miers’ eyes, presumably, and liked whatever it is that he thinks he saw. Not in every dimension, but in most, W is a disaster.
There is no event that cannot be related to an episode of “The Simpsons.” The freak-out among social conservatives about the Miers nomination reminds me of the “Kamp Krusty” episode, truly one of the all-time greats.
You’ll recall that Bart and Lisa spend a summer at Kamp Krusty, which is gruesome, ghastly and horrible in about a million different ways.But Bart refuses to believe it, because to have done so would mean having to question his faith in his hero, Krusty the Klown.
But when the camp leaders try to pass Barney the Drunk off as Krusty, Bart cracks. He spouts:
“I’ve been scorched by Krusty before. I got a rapid heartbeat from his Krusty brand vitamins, my Krusty Kalculator didn’t have a seven or an eight, and Krusty’s autobiography was self-serving with many glaring omissions. But this time, he’s gone too far!”
I looked in on the comments to an earlier post and saw the argument over the existence of morality as more than a subjective being discussed. We’ve been over this territory, but I think a twist is possible.
This time we’ll put the burden on the relativists (or whatever they want to be called): please give your evidence that there is no absolute right or wrong.
Baylor’s Board of Regents looked at three finalists for the top job and essentially took a pass. No to Don Powell, head of the FDIC. No to interim pres. Bill Underwood (who withdrew). And apparently no to Linda Livingstone from the Pepperdine school of business. So, here we are back at square one. They made a neat troika of right (Powell), left (Underwood), and middle (Livingstone).
It’s not such a far-fetched idea. Sloan is still on campus as the chancellor of the university. He’s in his fifties and has years to give.
Another alternative would be to invest the chancellor’s office with the presidential powers and make the president more of a chief of operations.
Being the top officer at Baylor during the implementation of an ambitious and ground-breaking vision is not going to be easy going for anyone. Asking a new person to come in and deal with a board that is divided, but improving may not be fair. Asking Robert Sloan to come back and finish what he started may be the only thing that is fair.
Pro-lifers used to have fun (of the pissed off sort) pointing to formerly anti-abortion Democrats who switched positions upon announcing presidential campaigns. You know, Edward Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore . . .
Now, we can chart the same transformation when it comes to supporting presidential nominees for cabinet and court jobs.
Senator Evan Bayh (the “moderate” Democrat capable of winning in a GOP state like Indiana) has well-known presidential ambitions. Viewing the Dean-ization of the Democratic party, Bayh made the “principled” decision to vote against Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State and now is rejecting John Roberts for the Supreme Court.
One suspects Bayh may not have plans to run for Senate again in Indy-land, because this is not his usual position on the political spectrum. Looks like Bayh is making sure Kos and Company know he’s already in the bag and is nobody’s New Democrat.
I just heard that Don Adams (Maxwell Smart of Get Smart) is dead.
All I can think about is my dad imitating one of the scenes from the show:
“Not Craw, CRAW!”
Prior to PC, which really does have its uses, it was considered hilarious to have an Asian villain completely incapable of pronouncing his evil name. And, in fact, it was quite funny.
(He was The Claw, just in case you needed a little help getting up to speed.)
What do you call a liberal mugged by reality? A conservative.
But I’m already a conservative and I got mugged by reality last night.
Just after dinner there was a knock at the door. A very down on his luck looking African-American man stood there when I opened the door, expecting a package for my son. He explained he was looking for work. I offered to let him wash my car and planned on overpaying him. I told him to meet me in the backyard.
After I brought him a bucket, soap, rags, etc., he asked for a cold drink and to come in and use the bathroom. I was worried about letting him in to use the bathroom because he had a cough and I have a six month old and a three year old. I got him the drink and told him frankly about my concern with contagious illness. He said it was asthma. Didn’t sound like asthma to me, so I put him off and went back in the house to consult with my wife about it.
Looking out the window, I could see the man was beginning to wash the car. A flash of blue caught my eye out the side window and I noticed two police officers, one male and one female, walking into my backyard. When I got to the backyard, the man was talking to the cops. I approached and told the officers I had hired this man to wash the car. They explained a neighbor had called. He walked back to the car and began working again, but the officers didn’t leave.
The female officer talked on the radio, while the male officer told me I’d made a mistake. He said the odd jobs request was a common tactic for casing a house for later burglary. When I told him the man had asked to come inside, he said that was likely part of the plan. The female officer said something I didn’t quite catch and the male officer said, “It’s him.”
Meanwhile, a third officer walked up. At this point, I noticed all three were wearing bulletproof vests under their clothes. I asked if the man washing my car was wanted for a crime. The radio spoke up again, but I couldn’t understand it. One of the officers said the man had a felony warrant, probably for burglary. I half-wondered whether the man would attempt flight or resist arrest.
They approached the man I’d hired and put cuffs on him. He protested, but they said they couldn’t take a chance. He asked if he could finish the job. They said no. I felt terrible that he had worked while the police officers waited to hear whether they should arrest him. I told them I wanted to pay him. I offered the money and the policeman put it in the man’s pocket. He thanked me. They went off. The whole thing was very quiet and calm.
I stood there feeling like an idiot for possibly putting my family in danger, but my instinct was to give the man a job and try to help him. Had I done the wrong thing? I don’t know and still don’t.
Tlaloc (whoever he may be in real life) is the most prolific commenter at this website. In the Bizarro world, Reform Club is run by him and James Elliott.
What has to be up for discussion is the question of what is an anarchist? Tlaloc has proclaimed himself to be one, but has consistently favored government solutions over free and independent human action in case after case after case.
I guess the question I have to ask is one immortalized by the great Robert P. George:
“What’s wrong with acts of capitalism between consenting adults?”
Especially as far as it concerns an anarchist. Even if the state withers away or is blown away by revolution and not replaced, one imagines people will still buy and sell and will do so very freely with no regulating leviathan around.
Actually, it’s Jordan Ballor v. Andy Crouch, but they serve as proxies for their respective employers. I think this post is very interesting and shows a healthy debate among what we might term center-right Christians on global warming.
P.S. Saw part of a really wretched Robert Altman film predicting a frozen future. Yes, remember we used to worry about global cooling back in the day. Paul Newman starred in this turkey titled Quintet.
Thanks to the Reform Club, I met a couple of professors online who also blog: Michael DeBow of Samford University (Law and Economics) and Joseph Knippenberg of Oglethorpe University (Political Theory). DeBow blogs at Southern Appeal and Knippenberg blogs for the Ashbrook Center’s No Left Turns. These are happy alliances for an aspiring academic.
Professor DeBow will be lecturing at Oglethorpe in Atlanta today as part of the Constitution Day festivities. I’ll be there to meet the profs in the flesh for the first time. If there are any Reform Club or Southern Appeal readers who will be attending, be sure to say “Hi.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about those people in the Superdome who have now become a human herd moved from one massive venue to the next.
I agree with those who say that the trouble these people have endured is a scandal and a terrible comment on race relations. No question about it. However, the discomfort caused means we have to wonder what is wrong with this picture.
Think about it. We are looking at a group of people who literally were unable to get out of town. Many of them may have no family ties outside of the city. Many have probably lived in a welfare culture for decades, born and raised. Such persons have been robbed of their basic human dignity. This is a group of people who have been socially engineered into passivity and helplessness. The possibilities for sociological study are astounding. How many of them have ever held a job, have ever left the city of New Orleans, have ever left their state, have ever drawn a check from any entity other than a government agency? How many have any family member in a position to help?
Once you consider it, this is an unacceptable existence for anyone and we should not settle for it. Before 9-11, we were hearing story after story of the amazing successes due to welfare reform. We heard about people who held jobs for the first time, people who had pride in accomplishing something on their own for the first time, and children who could view their parents as role models for living a broader life for the first time. We heard about former Clinton officials who resigned in protest over welfare reform and now strongly endorsed it.
We have got to get back to addressing this situation. The War on Poverty failed — possibly made things much worse — and we must once again get people out of this institutional lifestyle where they are so terribly encapsuled in hopelessness and passivity.It’s time to bring welfare reform and school choice back out of the closet. We’ve seen the cost of not moving forward with a better solution.
In the last post, one commenter (Tlaloc) came down hard on the tobacco companies. Another commenter (Classical Liberal Anonymous) asked Tlaloc whether he was engaging in a moral argument. This was interesting because Tlaloc has generally thrown bombs at notions of foundational morality despite frequently engaging in moral argument. Tlaloc, perhaps sensing the implications, carefully distinguished his moral argument from any endorsement of universal moral values.
So, let’s work it out. The basic allegation by Tlaloc seems to be that the tobacco companies have immorally lied for profit and have sold an addictive drug for profit. The basic rules being put forth seem to be:
1. It is wrong to lie without a compelling justification (such as to save a life — e.g. lying to the Nazi S.S. about the Jew hiding in your closet). Lying for mere monetary profit is particularly bad.
2. It is wrong to subject others to the harm of unhealthy addiction for the sake of personal enrichment. It is further wrong to lie about the fact that one is doing that.
Now, here’s the money question. Why wouldn’t these rules stand up as universal moral values? When would it ever be right to lie for profit without any compelling justification? When would it ever be right to subject others to addiction for no better reason than to get rich?
Once again, Jennifer Tilly has won a major poker tournament, her second in a few months. But she has only been playing for one year, since her boyfriend has been Phil Laak, the poker great. It is absolutely stunning to reach this level of dominance in a sport whose participants take it deadly seriously – and in such a short time. This is real quality insight into a person’s intelligence and ability, something no publicist can fake.
Of course it helps that she is unbelievably wealthy, since she received a percentage of The Simpsons in her divorce from its creator, Sam Simon. Still, that may make you a cooler bettor, but you can’t be a consistent champion like this without spectacular skills.
Personal note: I’ve been a member of a lot of odd sets, from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to Our Lady’s Rosary Makers. One of the most enjoyable and rewarding, and certainly the one with the most eminent fellow members, is “People Who Used to Work for Fred Smith.” Only there can I presume to have something substantially in common with the likes of Jonathan Adler, Sasha Volokh, and Michael Fumento.
There is some recent research that suggests that of all Atlantic and West Pacific tropical cyclones measured since the 1970’s, a warming trend in sea surface temperatures has been accompanied by stronger and longer-lived storms. In fact, the increase in the total power generated by the storms that the study computed was actually much larger than could be accounted for by theory, suggesting changes in wind shear or other processes are operating in addition to just increased temperatures. (Unpublished results by the same researcher suggests, however, that this trend was not apparent in land falling hurricanes since the 1970’s).
Given the recent work, how should we view the role of global warming? First, we know that category 4, and even category 5, storms have always occurred, and will continue to occur, with or without the help of humans, as the above examples demonstrate. Therefore, if we are prepared for what nature can throw at us, we will be prepared for the possible small increase in hurricane activity that some studies have suggested could occur with man-made global warming. To suggest that Katrina was caused by mankind is not only grossly misleading, it also obscures the real issues that need to be addressed, even in the absence of global warming. From a practical point of view, there is little that we can do in the near term to avert much if any future warming anyway, no matter what you believe that warming will be, including participating in the Kyoto Protocol. So why even bring it up (other than through political, philosophical, or financial motivation)?
The United States has an oil reserve at least three times that of Saudi Arabia locked in oil-shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to a study released yesterday.
Dereliction of my duty, you say? Perhaps you are right.
I have been remiss in not alerting my friends to the story that I reported in today’s American Spectator. It takes us out a half-step ahead of the loop, while TV is still walking us through the gasping-but-not-grasping stage of gawking at the events. The stories usually emerge some time later, as selves are progressively collected. Here is a tale of woe, of awe, of horror, of desperation and, eventually of courage and heroism, even flashes of joy.
What was the big deal with Copernicus and Galileo, really? I mean, if you live on the Earth’s surface, what difference does it make if the earth or the sun or some other spot is the center of the universe? What difference does it make if the sun and planets move around the Earth in epicycles on crystal spheres or if Tycho Brahe was right and Kepler was wrong. You can hold these views and still explain anything you’d be likely to observe. Stick ellipses on Tycho and you can even explain the phases of Venus. There really is no reason for such a person to prefer modern cosmology to Ptolemy, is there?
In fact, there’s a good reason for such a person to reject modern cosmology. The Ptolemaic system doesn’t require you to accept the obviously ludicrous notion that the earth is moving. Only some ivory tower mooncalf, with no knowledge of the real world, could possibly believe a theory that requires the obviously still and solid world to be hurtling through space.
Now replace “Copernicus and Galileo” with “modern economists” and “Ptolemy” with “certain commenters in the ‘I Am Speechless’ threads” and I think you’ll see where I’m going.
There is, really, no reason for the vast majority of people, even successful business people, to think in the way economists think. It is not necessary for them to interpret the world with our concepts in order to make and sell products. They can happily take as given and fixed all the information that economists know is being constantly generated and recalibrated through interactions in the market. They can make decisions using this information, without being aware of their own role in changing and generating new information.
They can even believe they are putting one over on their customers — that they are, for instance, selling them goods purposely designed to wear out “too fast” and thereby sell more and earn more than if they made the sturdy, quality products the customers really want. They can believe this even while the relative prices for durable and disposable goods are reflecting consumers’ time preferences and discount rates with exquisite precision, leading the businessman to supply exactly the mix of goods the consumers desired.
I’ve never quite understood, though, what was the point of getting so shirty when economists explain what’s really going on. But then, Galileo got a few goats in his day too.
In his latest column, the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby writes about the conclusion of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and what it means:
[I]f Sharon and the supporters of unilateral withdrawal are right, the departure from Gaza should mean fewer terrorist attacks like the one that cost Elkanah Gubi his life. No longer obliged to defend a Jewish presence there, physically separated from the Palestinians by a security fence, Israelis ought to be more secure without Gaza than they ever were with it.
For years, Israel has been told much the same thing by its critics: Since the “occupation” of Gaza and the West Bank is the cause of Arab terrorism, the way to end Palestinian terrorism is to end Israel’s presence in the territories.
“Today you leave Gaza in humiliation,” he taunted the Israelis. “You are leaving hell. We promise that tomorrow, with Allah’s help, all of Palestine will be hell for you.” For the umpteenth time, an Israeli government spokesman urged the Palestinian Authority to disarm and dismantle Hamas, as required by the international “road map” it has agreed to.
If Jacoby is correct, as I believe him to be, the implications regarding U.S. efforts in Iraq are clear.
The recovery of survivors from New Orleans has left a lot to be desired. A friend wrote me outraged that babies are dying for lack of adequate food, shelter, etc. How can this be in the richest, most creative, most powerful nation in the world?
I think the answer is as follows: We haven’t had a disaster like this in a long, long time and when it happened in the past, the vast majority of victims died rather than surviving. We have not been faced with something of this magnitude spread over such a great geographic area, probably ever. Certainly, we haven’t seen a major inner city area suddenly and violently reclaimed by nature.
FEMA probably had enough water, food, drugs, and bandages ready, but not the kind of massive mobilization of search and rescue workers needed for a disaster like this. It was simply incomprehensible.
We don’t keep an army of rescue workers waiting around for something like Katrina. I’m not sure we could even afford to do so. But the situation is grave and what must be considered is something new. We can’t let the victims die. We have to mobilize. That means it may be time to consider conscription of boats, buses, helicopters, etc. Maybe even the conscription of men if volunteers can’t be found. I know I’m offending libertarians. But it may be time to think on those lines. Actually, it simply is time.
Throughout the coverage of the disaster that has befallen New Orleans, it seems one thing has been assumed throughout: the rebuilding of New Orleans. Much depends on how long it will take to get rid of the water, engage in massive repair and new construction, and how much of the city’s tax base sticks around.
The reality is that the entire professional class or a large portion thereof will relocate because they are unable to wait for the new city to rise. Many businesses will take a hard look at the New Orleans operation and decide they can’t let resources like fallow that long. Expect a major migration of many branch offices and probably some headquarters locations.
Even the poor citizens of the town whom we have seen engaged in remarkable suffering as all rescue efforts pale before their plight may never come back to town. As many of them are long term clients of government programs, they will probably have the option to spend time in ultra-ultilitarian state and federal camps or to resettle elsewhere with the help of social workers and/or family members in other cities.
Unless someone can show me otherwise, I don’t think there should be any assumption that New Orleans is going to continue as a major metropolitan area in the United States. It may just be a ghost living a marginal existence. Galveston never truly recovered from the great hurricane that leveled the town and killed so many. New Orleans may not rise even so high as the old Wall Street of the West on the Texas coast.
As Hunter Baker posted below, Jude Wanniski unexpectedly passed away Monday afternoon after he suffered a massive heart attack. I’ve heard our esteemed co-blogger Alan Reynolds tell many stories about Mr. Wanniski and Polyconomics, but I’ll let Alan tell those stories himself if he’s so inclined. I want to tell a story about the effect a small group of men, including Alan and Jude, had on my generation of economists, social scientists, and policymakers.
When I started graduate school in the fall of 1980, it looked very much as though the country would be run by Jimmy Carter for four more years. When I looked back over my life from what then seemed the impossibly mature vantage point of 22 years on earth, I saw little but anxiety, conflict, and pessimism. I started paying attention to the outside world at about age ten, so my memories were bookended by Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia and Soviet tanks in Afghanistan. Sandwiched in between were domestic political assassinations, oil embargoes, hostages in Iran, Watergate, double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, and the bankruptcy of New York City. I don’t even remember now why I wanted to be an economist then. Economists were responsible for the splitting of ever smaller pies at home, and negotiating surrender to whichever economy would overtake us abroad.
Then Reagan beat Carter at the last minute. And we discovered that some of our professors were closet free market libertarians. Austrian School, even, a couple of them. They started lobbing ideas among themselves, and then at us, that first seemed silly, and then subversive. Critiques of Keynes, Samuelson, Kuznets, and Myrdal that undermined everything we’d learned as undergrads. Hints that macroeconomics would never be intellectually solid until it was reintegrated with microeconomics. Proposals that all sorts of behavior, not just commerce, could be explained with economic principles.
We starting passing a few books around among ourselves, on the QT; we were a little abashed that we were studying popular works instead of articles from JPE and Econometrica. But the stuff made sense, and kept on making sense the farther we pushed it: Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions. George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty. Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource. But before all those, anticipating them and paving the way, was Jude Wanniski’s The Way the World Works. These books opened our eyes to an economics that was hopeful and exuberant, that placed human creativity at the center of wealth creation, and that gave the economist something valuable to do: help arrange civil society so that creative force can be free to make things better.
And things did get better, all through the 1980s. It was men like Alan Reynolds and Larry Kudlow who gave us the proof that Sowell and Gilder and Wanniski were right, by putting those ideas to work during the Reagan years.
Twenty-odd years later, even though I’ve spent few of those intervening years working as a professional economist, I’ve never again forgotten why I wanted to be an economist in the first place. Rest in peace, Jude Wanniski. Your place in this world is secure, go forth into the next.
[T]he response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.
Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces.
After recounting some of the activists’ statements, which have received much attention in the news, Glassman addresses their claims directly:
The Kyoto advocates point to warmer ocean temperatures, but they ought to read their own favorite newspaper, The New York Times, which reported yesterday:
“Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught ‘is very much natural,’ said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.’”
Finally, Glassman points out that the very premise that tropical storms are increasing in intensity is entirely unsupported:
[T]here is no evidence that hurricanes are intensifying anyway. For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: “Reliable data…since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased.”
Yes, decreased.
Not only has the intensity of hurricanes fallen, but, as George H. Taylor, the state climatologist of Oregon has pointed out, so has the frequency of hailstorms in the U.S. (see Changnon and Changnon) and cyclones throughout the world (Gulev, et al.).
Jude Wanniski has died. He was one of the great names of modern conservatism and will be remembered in the canon of that movement as long as it exists. I didn’t know him, but our Alan Reynolds did and apparently quite well according to this article by James Glassman.
You see, because Haley was insufficiently invested in environmental regulation, the Lord redirected Katrina from New Orleans and decided to slam Mississippi.
Look out, Haley. Greenpeace has a direct line to heaven.
Because the politician in question’s last name is Kennedy (and you know that’s not as in D. James Kennedy), he will receive somewhat different treatment for this pithy statement than he would have if he were surnamed Falwell or Robertson.
Sigh. Do we really need to teach Economics 1 here at Reform Club University Graduate School? Well, I see that indeed we do, as certain of our stalwarts seem to have swallowed various versions of the Broken Window fallacy (see my post below) whole, washed down with the old “planned obsolescence” chestnut.
Disasters cannot yield economic growth (that is, a bigger economy, or to say the same thing, greater aggregate wealth) because the resources used to repair the attendant physical damage—put aside the human suffering that cannot be redeemed at all—otherwise would have been used to produce other goods valued by individuals. Accordingly: Disasters must make the economy smaller in the aggregate. Yes, certain sectors (e.g., construction) will be bigger, and owners of inputs (labor and capital) in those sectors will be wealthier than otherwise would have been the case; but other sectors will be smaller, owners of inputs in those sectors will be poorer, and it is unambiguously the case that the losses exceed the gains, because in the absence of the disaster we would have both the housing and other physical capital as well as the other goods. Period. And please note that while owners of inputs in such sectors as construction might become wealthier, that does not mean that they are made better off (or happier) by the disaster, in that they might lose loved ones as well.
The “planned obsolescence” argument—as old as it is silly—assumes away the marginal cost of added quality, in this case added longevity. Consider the simple case of a razor blade that lasts forever; if we ignore such irrelevant complications as present value calculations (more on this below), risk aversion, and the like, consumers would be willing to pay for an infinite-life razor blade the expected lifetime purchase cost of ordinary razor blades. If the marginal (“extra”) cost of producing such a blade is less than (or in the simple case, equal to) the added value of the blade to consumers, then profit-maximizing firms will produce the blade. If it is not, then the firms will not produce it, and that outcome is wholly efficient, that is, consistent with the interests of consumers, because the extra resources needed to produce the infinite-life blade would yield greater value for consumers in the production of other goods.
Only if the discount rate used by producers to calculate present values is higher than that applied by consumers might some version of the planned obsolescence argument make any sense at all, and that outcome would not necessarily be inefficient. And, anyway, I rather doubt that the “planned obsolescence” crowd has anything quite so sophisticated in mind; their goal is to attack capitalism, however mindlessly. Precisely why would producers discount the future more heavily than consumers (on the margin)? The only plausible argument is the corporation income tax, which in a nutshell forces the corporate sector to discount the future more heavily than other sectors. Is the “planned obsolescence” argument really a left-wing call for fundamental tax reform? Please…
Well, not literally speechless; that would be so not Zycher. But in today’s Wall Street Journal we are informed by some poor soul—oops, a journalist—writing about Hurricane Katrina that “amid the grief and heartbreak, it should be noted that growth often follows such catastrophe. Hurricanes Andrew in 1992 and Floyd in 1999, for example, both ended up boosting local and national growth rates as rebuilding efforts created jobs and increased spending.”
If this is not the classic manifestation of the old broken-window fallacy, I know not what is. Why not nuke the whole eastern seaboard—I’d say California, but I live there—so that we can expand employment and spending in a rebuilding effort? Is this guy a moron? Or does he merely need to fill up twenty column inches with, well, whatever? That modern journalists are the political equivalent of hurricanes destroying public discourse everywhere they set foot would be amusing were their ignorance not so appalling.
One of the major techniques of modern politics is to take every important event and tie it to the back of one’s own particular hobby horse. One of the more ludicrous examples was the utterly absurd claims that the Asian tsunami was caused by global warming. Hence it was inevitable that we would begin to see articles today with titles such as “Brace for more Katrinas, say experts,” from today’s edition of Agence Press France. The anonymous author correctly observes that hurricane activity has intensified and looks likely to remain so for a while:
“Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Risk, a London-based consortium of experts, predicted that the region would see 22 tropical storms during the six-month June-November season, the most ever recorded and more than twice the average annual tally since records began in 1851.”
The piece also notes,
“Already, 2004 and 2003 were exceptional years: they marked the highest two-year totals ever recorded for overall hurricane activity in the North Atlantic.”
That is all quite true. Then the article moves on to consider a possible relationship to global warming, as has been posited by advocates of controls over greenhouse gas emissions:
“This increase has also coincided with a big rise in Earth’s surface temperature in recent years, driven by greenhouse gases that cause the Sun’s heat to be stored in the sea, land and air rather than radiate back out to space.”
The characterization of the rise in the planet’s surface temperature in recent years as “big” is certainly an exaggeration. However, the article does go on to point out that hurricane activity is cyclical and almost certainly always has been:
“But experts are cautious, also noting that hurricane numbers seem to undergo swings, over decades.
“About 90 tropical storms — a term that includes hurricanes and their Asian counterparts, typhoons — occur each year.
“The global total seems to be stable, although regional tallies vary a lot, and in particular seem to be influenced by the El Nino weather pattern in the Western Pacific.”
These are very important observations. The article then outlines, at some length, the arguments of global-warming advocates who claim that g.w. is creating more intense hurricanes, if not more such storms overall:
“On the other hand, more and more scientists estimate that global warming, while not necessarily making hurricanes more frequent or likelier to make landfall, is making them more vicious.”
The evidence the article adduces for this argument is coincidental and not causal, however, and is clearly highly speculative at this point. The piece says, for example, “‘The intensity of and rainfalls from hurricanes are probably increasing, even if this increase cannot yet be proven with a formal statistical test,’ Trenberth wrote in the US journal Science in June. He said computer models ’suggest a shift’ toward the extreme in in hurricane intensities.” That is to say, Trenberth believes it although there is no statistical evidence for it.
The article ends on that note, which is a pity because there is more to the story than that. Readers are not told, for example, that as an article in the forthcoming October issue of Environment and Climate News mentions, a group of prominent climatologists and other experts on climate change has noted, “according to a century of National Hurricane Center reports, the decade with the largest number of hurricanes to come ashore in the United States was the 1940s, and that hurricane frequency has declined since then. They also cited data from the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Association that hurricane frequency has declined since the the 1940s.”
The ECN story, unlike the APF one, quotes the environmental scientists as observing that “centuries-old evidence, as well as computer models, suggest warmer periods may actually generate a decline in the number or severity of such storms.”
The ECN story quotes James J. O’Brien, director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University, as arguing that “the more likely cause of hurricane frequency might be found in variations in the Atlantic Ocean Conveyer, the movement of the warm Gulf Stream whose waters, taken from the South Atlantic, replace the cooler, sinking water in the North Atlantic.
“When the Conveyer is strong, O’Brien said, historic records have shown an increase in Atlantic hurricanes; when it is weak, so are the hurricane seasons. For a hurricane to grow stronger, it must keep moving over waters warmer than 80 degrees F, which leads some people to link global warming and the storms. But, he said, there’s no scientific evidence to show that such areas of warm water are increasing in size.”
And just in case being a Grammar Nazi isn’t enough to derail the Roberts nomination, the Washington Post has decoded a 20-year-old first draft to conclude that Roberts is a crypto-secessionist (Hat Tip: Bench Memos.) You could stand in rebel territory and hit the Washington Post Building with a well-pitched rock, so I’m surprised I have to inform the staffers that Southerners do not call the Civil War The War Between the States, they call it The War of Northern Aggression.
The University of California system is refusing to take students from a Christian high school that teaches unorthodox views of biology and history. They say the students will be “unprepared.”
I’m not sure when I’ve heard anything quite so insincere. It doesn’t matter whether you slept through biology in high school, you will be aware of Darwin. In fact, these Christian students will have heard of Darwin and his theory, if only in the manner of refutation. Having been taught the “correct” version of the theory of origins has zero to do with one’s eventual performance at the university.
Imagine this scenario: Benighted, fundamentalist Christian student goes to a school teaching a highly Christocentric version of history, science, etc. He also happens to be quite intelligent and trots out an SAT score around 1450.
Question: Will this young man have any trouble putting up A’s in the University of Californa institutions? Noooooooooooooooooooooo.
Given that is the case, there can be only one reason for the policy recently announced. Intimidation. Welcome to secular totalitarianism lite.
I think it’s time Matthew Broderick considered playing a cool guy again. He’s played so many milquetoasts since Ferris, he can probably not worry about getting typecast.
“They have been so nice, I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible.”
– Convicted murderer Eric Rudolph, sometimes called a “Christian terrorist” for his attacks on two abortion clinics, a gay nightclub, and the 1996 Summer Olympics, on “good people … mostly born-again Christians looking to save my soul.”
FSU’s in the clear! Now, we can get back to hating Gators, instead of the useless bureaucrats of the NCAA.
I’m pasting in the statement and you can ask yourself whether any of the below would constitute new info for the NCAA:
Statement by NCAA Senior Vice-President for Governance and Membership Bernard Franklin on Florida State University Review
“The NCAA staff review committee has removed Florida State University from the list of colleges and universities subject to restrictions on the use of Native American mascots, names and imagery at NCAA championships.
“The NCAA Executive Committee continues to believe the stereotyping of Native Americans is wrong. However, in its review of the particular circumstances regarding Florida State, the staff review committee noted the unique relationship between the university and the Seminole Tribe of Florida as a significant factor. The NCAA recognizes the many different points of view on this matter, particularly within the Native American community. The decision of a namesake sovereign tribe, regarding when and how its name and imagery can be used, must be respected even when others may not agree.
“The NCAA position on the use of Native American mascots, names and imagery has not changed, and the NCAA remains committed to ensuring an atmosphere of respect and sensitivity for all who participate in and attend our championships. This decision applies to the unique relationship Florida State University has with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Requests for reviews from other institutions will be handled on a case-by-case basis.”
Internet Electoral Data Demigod Patrick Ruffini has just posted his 2008 GOP straw poll. He provides lots of interesting ways to break down the poll data (by state, region, even by referring blog!) that make data nuts like me want to hug him and squeeze him and call him George. Go vote, and then take a look at the overwhelming popularity of one “fantasy” candidate.
I just read an interesting post by a brilliant legal mind, Richard Posner, on the Ten Commandments decisions. His comments were interesting and worth your time. However, I stopped short when he made a side remark about intelligent design being nothing more than thinly veiled biblical inerrancy.
That’s a seriously uninformed perspective and I’m surprised to see it from a thinking machine like Posner. I can only conclude he has failed to investigate ID for himself and trusts the characterizations of ID set out by opponents.
Intelligent design is primarily a critique of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. It looks at things like statistical probabilities and irreducible complexity to sharply question whether Darwinian evolution could have occurred as postulated. There is NOTHING. Read NOTHING in ID theory to harmonize with the content of the Bible with the exception of an agreement about likely creation of the complicated life on the planet. ID does not reference Genesis or any other book of the Bible to make its case. It has a real intellectual content to it that can be debated without reference to revelation of any kind. In short, it is absurd to describe intelligent design as “thinly veiled biblical inerrancy.”
Now, I have no idea whether ID theorists are ultimately correct. I have read some of the books and articles and certainly do know that Posner’s characterization is ridiculous, irresponsible, and unusually slothful in his case.
Do savor this marvelous essay by the master of alienated existentialism. Don’t be scared by the fancy words. Here’s a sample to convince you:
I can hardly tell one Bourbon from another, unless the other is very bad. Some bad Bourbons are even more memorable than good ones. For example, I can recall being broke with some friends in Tennessee and deciding to have a party and being able to afford only two-fifths of a $1.75 Bourbon called Two Natural, whose label showed dice coming up 5 and 2. Its taste was memorable. The psychological effect was also notable. After knocking back two or three shots over a period of half an hour, the three male drinkers looked at each other and said in a single voice: ‘Where are the women?’ I have not been able to locate this remarkable Bourbon since.
I went on a G.K. Chesterton tear a few years back and thought I’d seen his best stuff.
I hadn’t.
Please take my recommendation seriously. If you like G.K. Chesterton and you haven’t read any of his Father Brown detective stories, you must partake. I picked up a collection on a whim recently and have been richly rewarded.
In Father Brown, I think I see some of the original source material for Columbo. He’s underestimated by everyone, but is, in fact, hugely gifted. A lot of it has to do with his underwhelming appearance, but the bigger issue is the poor esteem in which the reason of clergy is held. The simple priest blows that bugbear out the window. He is mighty in the art of detection and much of it has to do with his theologically informed knowledge of man.
Joe Manzari offers an important observation on the Planned-Parenthood Golden Gate cartoon controversy that really tells you all you need to know about media bias. It’s really this simple:
Imagine if Focus on the Family published a cartoon depicting their chairman, James Dobson, as a superhero blowing up non-violent Planned Parenthood protestors. Do you think the liberal media would just shrug it off? How about if that same cartoon depicted pro-choice demonstrators being decapitated and drowned in sex-lubricant? Can you imaging that slipping through the cracks of the New York Times editing room? I think not.
Manzari is right. There is simply no question that this story would have been covered differently if it had been, oh say, the Washington state branch of Christian Coalition in its heyday.
On another front, Manzari is wrong. He characterizes Planned Parenthood Golden Gate as an organization that advocates violence because of their cartoon. Let’s be serious for a moment. We know that what they are really trying to do is satirize pro-lifers so potently as to make them seem completely unworthy of being heard. Still quite an unsavory tactic, but not quite in the realm of advocating violence.
“Freddy Got Fingered” This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.
I hope everybody caught Jay Homnick’s check-yourself-before-you-wreck-yourself JWR piece about the racism that still, unfortunately, remains buried only about an inch deep in America.
Now, a look around the world shows that aside from the rare righteous country like Denmark, the rest of the planet is looking out for number one, foremost, first, and last. World civilization is being held together by the English-speaking peoples, the “Anglosphere”: the US, UK, and our underappreciated friends, the Australians.
But also underappreciated is that after decades of partner-changing in the geopolitical dance, the Anglosphere may finally be embracing as its own the world’s largest democracy, and it’s high time. President Bush recently met with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and a leading American Sikh, Satjiv Chahil, gushed, “It marked a turning point in US Foreign Policy and was an acknowledgement of the potential for India to become an invaluable strategic partner of the US from a global, political, economic and social perspective.”
I hope so, because Dr. Singh followed with these remarks at Oxford while on a state visit to the UK:
Every time terrorists strike anywhere all of us who believe in democracy and the rule of law must stand together and affirm our firm commitment to fight this scourge resolutely and unitedly. I sincerely hope that all of those who cherish and value open and free societies will join hands in the war against terrorism wherever it is fought. I wish the people of London well. I pray that their lives will soon return to normal and they can resume their celebrations for having been chosen the venue for the 2012 Olympics…
Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilisation met the dominant Empire of the day…
It used to be said that the sun never sets on the British Empire. I am afraid we were partly responsible for sending that adage out of fashion! But, if there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English speaking people, in which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component.
Of all the legacies of the Raj, none is more important than the English language and the modern school system. That is, if you leave out cricket!
More on cricket some other time mebbe, but India gets it, and maybe now so will we.
Next time you’re tempted to play The Ugly American on an incompetent and/or incomprehensible voice from the subcontinent, blame the outsourcing corporation if you want, but not the person on the other end. They are feeding their families, and helping a great nation and a great people rise out of their heartbreaking poverty with education, a lot of hard work and a bit of Adam Smith.
I admit it’s sure tempting to be rude, because overseas service lines are the pits and the frustration is nigh-unbearable. But we should ask ourselves honestly if our tempers would be so quick if we imagined a pasty-faced Irishman on the other end. We should ask ourselves if that’s how we treat family.
When I next find myself consigned to the seventh circle of international call-center hell, I’ll try to be patient. And if I think of it, I’ll take a minute to welcome the heavily-accented voice on the other end to the family. We Anglosphere types gotta stick together. The future of civilization depends on it.
Last time I wrote, I panned The Black Mountain, which disrupted the Wolfe formula by taking him away from his famed New York brownstone. I thought the break in the formula was the problem. Too Many Cooks proves me wrong. This time Wolfe and Archie go to a spa in West Virginia where the world’s 15 greatest chefs are gathering for fellowship. One of them is hated and ends up assuming room temperature. Wolfe doesn’t want to figure it out, but circumstances force him into it. Wonderful story. Pick it up.
But the point of this post is not so much to review the book as it is to note the interesting perspective on race. The book was published in 1938. At various points I was horrified by the references to the black men working at the spa. They are called boys, niggers, shines, etc. One black man’s wife is said to have left him to raise three “pickaninnies.” Local law enforcement is clearly racist (which plays a part in the way the facts develop) and Archie is not much better. Because author Stout chooses to speak primarily through Archie, I began to wonder about Stout. Not to worry. Once Wolfe goes into action we finally see a man who has his head on straight about race. He dispenses with racist language and attitude and is rewarded with a frank relationship with the black men who are very relevant to the story.
The longer one thinks about the book, the more one reflects on race and the times. I continue to be haunted by the way Wolfe tells the black waiters and cooks that he is told blacks and whites have a certain way of dealing with one another in a place like West Virginia, but then demolishes the notion by proving that individuals matter much more than race.
When did that strain of civil rights cease to be a mainstay of the discourse?
So George Will thinks that intelligent design is worth talking about, just not in science class. I don’t agree, but not for a reason I’ve seen anyone else mention. Intelligent design belongs in the science classroom not because it’s science, but because it’s philosophy.
I’ve had this gripe for a long time. Considerations of how a discipline is pursued, and its basic epistomological underpinnings, should not be put off until graduate school. It’s a glaring weakness of secondary and undergraduate college education in the United States that it so often is. I’m not claiming the hard sciences are particularly bad in this regard; in fact, they’re probably better than history and some of the social sciences.
I came to realize how ill prepared undergraduates were to make basic process critiques when I started teaching History of Economic Thought at the UT/Dallas. (Yes, this is an odd course to relegate to a teaching assistant. But until I offered to teach it, it had been in the catalog for ten years and taught once.) You have to start somewhere in a survey course like this; I started with the Scholastics. But you can’t understand anything about how the Scholastics approached economic questions unless you know something about the philosophical structure they used, and in particular the ways they thought it was permissible to argue from individual observation to general theory. Then, when we moved on to the early French and English mercantilists, I realized that my students were no better prepared to understand their epistomology than they were with Aquinas. Most of them had picked up what the mercantilists believed in other classes; none of them had the foggiest notion why they believed it. And so it went, on up into Marshall and Keynes and the standard supply-demand and IS-LM analyses they’d all been suckling since they were freshmen.
And it’s just the same in other disciplines. A student who majors in history spends his entire undergraduate career taking courses that teach him what happened when. They teach nothing about why historians think that happened then, how historians work, how evidence is weighed, how contradictions are reconciled. And students of evolutionary biology learn the evolutionary theories that are currently in vogue. They learn nothing about how those theories are formed and tested. They learn nothing about how one would challenge a standing theory, what constitutes a meaningful challenge, how a priori assumptions focus attention on some evidence and blind us to other evidence.
That is why students of biology should be introduced to intelligent design in the science classroom. I hold no brief for or against intelligent design. I don’t know enough about it to have an informed opinion. But the little I do know seems to place it squarely in the Kuhnian tradition. Evolutionary biology as it currently stands, while it has significant explanatory power and a body of solid physical evidence, has unexplained mechanisms, apparent contradictions. Intelligent design is one approach to correcting those problems. There is nothing unscientific about the process that sometimes lead to scientific revolutions.
“An American, starting at any given point, believes that his career must go from success to success. In the American artist, of any kind, it is the equivalent of the optimistic businessman’s creed of the continually expanding economy. The intermittent failure, the cadenced rise and fall of the level of a man’s work, which is accepted and understood by the European artist, is fiercely rejected as a normal picture of the process of creation. A dip is not a dip to an American artist, it is a descent into an abyss, an offence against his native moeurs and his compatriots’ most dearly held beliefs. In America, the normal incidence of failure, either real or imagined, private or public, which must be expected in such a chancy and elusive endeavor as writing novels or putting on plays or directing motion pictures is regarded, even by the artist himself, as evidence of guilt, as self-betrayal.” (from Two Weeks in Another Town)
Sometimes NRO is more like feminine-RO, but I like it anyway.
I always enjoy the columns by Myrna Blyth. This little excerpt is worth noting:
At the wedding, my son told his guy friends that they had not been invited to a wild and crazy bachelor party because there had not been one. Jonathan explained that his brother, the best man, had come up with lots of suggestions for ending his bachelorhood in amusing, even spectacular, ways. He had suggested, for example, that they go skydiving together. Jonathan reported, “I said to him, ‘You must be kidding. I don’t want to go skydiving.’ And then I realized my brother has been married four years and has a baby. Does he know something I don’t know?”
Yes.I’m kidding. Kidding, I say. (I’ve been married ten years and have two kids under 3.5 years of age.)
I’m going skydiving next week with an outfit named Cooter’s Budget Skydive. The motto is “Y’all pack yer own parachute now, y’hear?”
The limited-liability status of corporations allows them greater latitude in decision-making, by taking away the risk that corporate owners and decision makers will be held personally responsible for their actions. It also makes corporations less likely to respond wisely and decently to concerns raised by people outside the main circle of decision makers. As a result, it invites government to step in and regulate corporate behavior directly.
Recent corporate scandals have place increased pressure on management and boards to institute more effective ethical self-policing. Without the incentives of real liability, however, such actions are not likely to have much effect.
Hence the recent court decision regarding Disney’s $140 million payoff to former Disney president Michael Ovitz, who served in that capacity for all of 14 months, has greater implications than just the relief it brings the Disney board, whose actions in hiring, firing, and paying off Ovitz “did not violate duties to shareholders,” according to the judge’s ruling.
The judge, however, was highly critical of the Disney board’s behavior, writing in his opinion, “Many lessons of what not to do can be learned from defendants’ conduct here.” Today’s New York Times story on the matter noted that even though Disney won the case, scrutiny over corporate boards and management will increase:
[B]oard members have good reason to adopt a more conservative stance in compensation matters and avoid second-guessing, said Charles M. Elson, head of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics.
Although the judge ultimately found that the Disney board did not breach its duties, he discussed a tough standard for the diligence required of board members, Mr. Elson said. The standard has been clarified, and directors at other times and at other companies could be held accountable under it.
“It means that you can’t just make a decision with a devil-may-care attitude,” Mr. Elson said, adding, “it has altered director behavior forever.”
Because we are a multi-faith weblog, I generally try to stay away from straight-out proselytizing. However, since I can peg this to a celebrity, a major world rockstar (who is very newsworthy in his activities), I’ll proceed with a humble spirit and ask that co-bloggers grant me a little latitude.
I was reading an excerpt from a new book made up of extensive interviews between a journalist and Bono, the lead singer and songwriter for the band U2 and came across this segment that could speak for virtually any Christian you know. You think I sometimes get overly aggressive with a commenter or am maybe too sarcastic or uncharitable in a post? Believe me, I know that and much worse about who I am. Bono puts his finger on what all of us (Christians) are counting on:
Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
When asked to make his confession by the journalist, Bono replies:
That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
You have simply got to drop everything and read this amazing post by Dawn Eden at The Dawn Patrol. She’s got a scene by scene analysis of an animated feature Planned Parenthood uses for agitprop purposes (actually, it can’t be agitprop when you’re the establishment).
The Carnival of the Capitalists rightfully and righteously recognizes the excellence of our own Kathy Hutchins’ post exploring the economics of the dental hygiene and chocolate businesses, Mr. Wonka’s factory, misappropriation of trade secrets, undocumented Oompa Loompas, and John Locke. (Spoiler: Properly capitalize labor, and you don’t have to eat cabbage soup.)
Follow the link (above) back here to the post (below) in case you missed it; let’s give the COTC some traffic. Cheers, Kathy. It’s an everlasting gobstopper.
What is interesting is that (Terrell) Owens claims he is doing this for his family. “The most important thing is my family,” he said.
This assertion has become so common and familiar among public figures as to become something like punctuation, a mere indicator of seriousness without any real content.
I won’t back down on this matter, it suggests, and not because I’m a pompous, selfish donkey, but on the contrary, because I am so selfless that I will forego my own interests in order to avoid letting down my family. The invocation of family says: Even though my actions indicate otherwise, I’m not a fool, nor a scoundrel; I’m selfless and devoted to others.
Patriotism used to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson said-until phony patriots destroyed the positive connotations of the term. Today, family is the scoundrel’s first, last, and paramount refuge.
I’ve spent a lot of time this week working on a post about John Roberts’s Catholicism and why all the discussion I had seen was way off-base from the viewpoints of both Catholic moral theology and constitutional law. I knew what I wanted to say, but was having a harder time than usual making my argument cohere.
Well, I spend too much time on the post. Professor Steven Bainbridge has already published the article I wanted to, but was never going to be able, to write, complete with learned references and his trademark clear thinking. Go read it and I’ll work on torture narratives in the lyrics of ABBA or something.
There exists great outrage about the possibility that some interrogation tactics used at the Guantanamo facility may constitute torture.
Some leftists, perhaps motivated more by the desire to score points than out of any righteous feeling, have drummed on the torture theme with great determination. If one accuses me of being less than charitable, I must ask leave in light of the tremendous lack of left-wing intellectual outcry against massive human rights violations of the worst type by governments that carry leftist premises to their full conclusions.
Nevertheless, to say certain persons never cared much for the fate of brothers who didn’t go along with coercive state socialism or those who are snuffed out in the womb or dismembered in the birth canal simply ends the conversation by making the charge of hypocrisy and determining that these individuals have no right to complain or at least have no integrity in so doing.
So, let us assume that the concern with torture is righteous and should be dealt with on its face. There are several problems that arise and do not go away simply because the complainants raise their voices and charge others with stupidity, mercilessness, etc.
First, what is torture? Dictionary definitions include “infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion,” “excruciating physical or mental pain; agony,” “something causing severe pain or anguish.” When individuals are asked, they frequently come up with notions of limbs being amputated, bones broken, sexual organs mutilated, blinded eyes, burnt flesh, etc. If methods like emotional intimidation and sleep deprivation are to be included, then it MUST be admitted that they are down the line on the torture scale and any rational person describing their choice of torture to endure would surely prefer the latter to the former.
Second, is torture (by a state) ever justified? If we agree the primary end of the state is to protect its citizens and maintain the peace, then there are a number of means that may be employed to attain that goal. In the case of secret conspiracies, particularly those knit together by fierce fanaticism, then it will come to pass that the state will at times apprehend members of said conspiracies and have them in their custody. It would be sheer folly (and perhaps negligence of the worst sort) not to attempt to gain information about planned mass murders from these individuals. Serious interrogation tactics will have to be considered as a means of obtaining that information.
In the case of tactics that are universally agreed to constitute torture, a large percentage of us will likely be unable to support the permanent mutilation or even summary executions that would come of them. (Though some would and perhaps an absolute majority if the crisis were great enough and enough innocents had been killed.) However, for a government to be unable to employ even the lesser measures of intimidation on the level of sleep deprivation is to tie that government’s hands in such a way as to value the lives of the guilty more than the lives of the innocent.
Now, the answer may come back that we will make up the deficiency with better police work or that these tactics don’t work anyway, but I have no idea how we can be expected to trust these answers. Where exactly do we come by these carefully constructed studies on whether these tactics work? If they don’t and it is so clear, then why are they being used? Further, why would the prospect of being extradited to regimes that engage in real torture be a potentially useful threat? If better police work is so much more effective than strong interrogation of suspects, then why hasn’t that yielded all the answers?
We don’t know how much information gained through interrogation has prevented terror attacks, but imagine that even one mass murder had been blocked. Weigh that versus the misery of sleep deprivation or fear of dogs experienced by a likely terrorist or terrorist in training and determine for yourself whether these tactics cross the line.
For my part, I hold a high view of human rights. Some leftist is sniggering, but those giggles are supremely undisturbing given their own regrettable view of the disposability of unborn and elderly life and their utter lack of care for the victims of leftist governmental projects gone awry. So, as I state, I hold a high view of human rights. But such a view cannot be a full or fair one unless it likewise considers the stakes for both wrongdoers and their victims, actual and probable. Thus, a view of the situation that obsesses over the difficulties experienced by those who have associated themselves with wanton murderers, while paying little or no attention to what must realistically be done to protect innocent persons can only be an immature one.
If I must choose whom I shall protect with the greater zeal, it will be the innocents.
UPDATE: I removed the incorrect statistical claim wherein I confused attacks blocked by the Patriot Act with the unknown quantity blocked by information gained at Guantanamo. That’s the accountability of the blogosphere.
My goodness, the meister of American Politik has opened up his own blogshop under the auspices of U.S. News and World Report. Color me impressed.
Raises a question. Will the ranks of the independent blog operators survive as more than a footnote once blogging becomes the norm for the big-league commentators? I think so, primarily because blogs expose the talents of those who would ordinarily never have a platform beyond their immediate circle? Look at Ed Morrissey. The guy is a superb writer/commentator/aggregator of info. He has a large readership. Where was he ten years ago? Frustrated, probably.
In any case, Barone is in the game and looking good with both short posts and the longer essay style stuff. I particularly liked this one:
There are two postings in www.powerlineblog.com on Ted Kennedy’s changing responses to recess appointments today and during years when we had Democratic administrations. Surprise: he is against them now and was for them then. You could probably easily find similar inconsistent statements by Republicans. All of which only illustrates my First Rule of Life: All process arguments are insincere, including this one. My Second Rule of Life, if you’re interested is: Never eat in a Chinese restaurant next door to an animal shelter. I am still working on my Third Rule. Suggestions welcome.
Third rule is, “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”
I read Dorothy Sayers’s excellent 1927 murder mystery Unnatural Death recently, and noticed the following interesting passage, in which readers may find insights into some recent controversies:
[Detective Lord Peter Wimsey said,] “Supposin’ somebody knows someone who’s very ill and can’t last long anyhow. And they’re in awful pain and all that, and kept under morphia—practically dead to the world, you know. And suppose that by dyin’ straight away they could make something happen which [someone else] really wanted to happen and which couldn’t happen if they lived on a little longer (I can’t explain exactly how, because I don’t want to give personal details and so on)—you get the idea? Well, supposin’ somebody who knew all that was just to give ‘em a little push off so to speak—hurry matters on—why should that be a very dreadful crime? . . . [D]o you honestly think it’s very bad? I know you’d call it a sin, of course, but why is it so very dreadful? It doesn’t do the person any harm, does it?”
“We can’t answer that,” said [priest] Mr. Tredgold, “without knowing the ways of God with the soul. In those last weeks or hours of pain and unconsciousness, the soul may be undergoing some mecessary part of its pilgrimage on earth. It isn’t our business to cut it short. Who are we to take life and death into our hands?”
It is easy to see how a disbelief in the soul and an afterlife would remove one of the important factors Tredgold cites as making it wrong to cut off the life even of a person in very bad condition.
Tredgold cites an additional problem: “I think . . . that the sin—I won’t use that word—the damage to Society, the wrongness of the thing lies much more in the harm it does the killer than in anything it can do to the person who is killed. Especially, of course, if the killing is to the killer’s own advantage. . . . That puts it at once on a different plane from just hastening a person’s death out of pity. Sin is in the intention, not the deed. That is the difference between divine law and human law. It is bad for a human being to get to feel that he has any right whatever to dispose of another person’s life to his own advantage.”
Wimsey and Tredgold go on to observe that the ability to justify one murder makes it easier for an individual to justify others: Tredgold says, “Society is never safe from the man who has committed murder with impunity.”
The conversation revolves around the likely effect on the individual murderer, because, of course, that is the subject of a murder mystery. (It is important to note that the characters are not referring to socially approved killings such as capital punishment and war, which are a matter for separate arguments.) At the time Unnatural Death was written, however, the eugenics movement was making very public claims about the positive social value of killing some types of persons. From our current perspective, after nearly a century of pro-eugenics arguments and policies, it is easy to see the greater significance of the situation Sayers describes: the effect on individuals when society accepts claims about the positive value of killing people who strike us as inconvenient.
For those of you with access to services like JSTOR and Hein Online, I’d like to announce the publication of my article “Competing Orthodoxies in the Public Square” in the Journal of Law and Religion.
The basic thesis is that all of us, including the Court, are moving into a more postmodern way of looking at religion versus the alternatives (like say, Marxism, feminism, or various race-centrisms), and thus a strict separationist view is untenable because it singles out religion without treating functional equivalents the same way. As proof of the phenomenon at work, I discuss the movement of free exercise cases into the free speech realm.
[Our friend Greg McConnell, a reporter based in the Midwest, kindly sent us the following message. You may visit the web link below to see photos from the trip Greg mentions.]
While the popularity of short-term mission trips has been skyrocketing, many Christians aren’t convinced that this is a positive development. Recently, Christianity Today examined whether or not short-term mission trips are even good stewardship (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/127/22.0.html). At the heart of the debate is a study by Kurt Ver Beek, professor of sociology and third-world development at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which essentially concludes that most short-term mission trips don’t accomplish much.
I think that this is a healthy discussion, and accountability on such matters is very important. Besides, Ver Beek doesn’t seem to have a vendetta against short-term missions; he wants to understand them and, if possible, improve the system.
On a personal note, I went on a short-term mission trip to Costa Rica this past June (http://gjmc.blogspot.com/). I suspect that most anyone who goes on a short-term mission trip will tell you it was good stewardship, and I am no exception. However, I honestly do think that special relationships were formed with the Costa Ricans who hosted us. Only time will tell if this partnership lasts to bear long-term fruit.—Greg McConnell
Reform Club has hit the summer vacation slump in posting, but don’t worry, we’ll be back stronger than ever in the days to come. For now, lets review what we’re offering to the blogosphere:
1. The prose stylings of S.T. Karnick, one of the best all-around writers in the fields of political and cultural commentary. S.T. has written for every significant publication in those areas and has expanded his portfolio to the Christianity Today family of magazines in the last year. He is the former founding editor of American Outlook and current editor of several Heartland newspapers. Karnick is also the first books and culture editor for the forthcoming Crux magazine.
2. Two top economists in the persons of Benjamin Zycher and Alan Reynolds. Both bring a free-market libertarian flavor to their posts. Zycher’s work can be found at Tech Central Station. Reynolds writes for the Wall St. Journal and Townhall.com. Reynolds and Zycher operate in the think tanks of the Cato Institute and Pacific Research Institute, respectively.
3. Master of wordplay Jay Homnick writes for Reform Club when he isn’t busy with one of the most intensive freelance schedules in the business. His work regularly appears at American Spectator and Jewish World Review. He is also a working ghostwriter who never reveals his clients (hear that prospective clients?).
4. Hunter Baker is the junior member of the Reform Club and is an MPA/JD working on a Ph.D. in Religion and Politics at Baylor University. Baker is the former director of public policy at Georgia Family Council and maintains significant contacts throughout the community of cultural conservatives. His work has appeared at National Review Online, American Spectator, Christianity Today, and the Journal of Law and Religion.
5. New additions include Herb London, Kathy Hutchins, and Tom Van Dyke.
London is the head of the well-respected Hudson Institute, which was founded by Cold War intellectual Herman Kahn. He is also an astute cultural analyst and scholar (New York University). If that weren’t enough, London once ran for Governor of New York as the most successful third party candidate in state history for the Conservative party.
Kathy Hutchins is an economist by training who combines acerbic wit with the riches of Catholic social thought. Prior to leaving full-time work to care for her family, Kathy worked for the Hudson Institute. Though we lured her away, she still blogs individually at Gathering Goat Eggs.
Tom Van Dyke is a former champion of both Joker’s Wild (all-time champion) and Win Ben Stein’s Money (where he did, in fact, win Ben’s money). When he’s not showing off his abilities with trivia, he’s working on a new recording contract. Tom should be posting in the very near future.
In short, it’s as interesting and varied a line-up as you’ll find in any daily magazine of political analysis, economic reporting, and cultural commentary. We don’t easily fit into a regular blog category. We’re not a God blog, though we have strong theists of both Jewish and Christian stripes. We’re not a pure politics blog. We’re not an entertainment blog. We’re not an economics blog. We’re not a law blog. We’re not an academia blog. We’re not a war blog. You will, however, find elements of all of the above on a regular basis. Bookmark us and visit regularly.
I have to admit some serious prejudices with this post. I am married to an OB-GYN. We tied the knot while she was in medical school, so I know what residency was like and how hard it is to be a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. During residency there were hundred hour weeks. If you look at her compensation during that time, it was probably sometimes less than minimum wage.
In private practice, the money is much better, but there is the constant need to practice defensive rather than optimum medicine and of course, the hours continue to be brutal. After my wife scaled-back to spend more time with our first child, she was still averaging more than 40 hours a week. People who don’t live this life can’t imagine what an enemy the beeper is and what it feels like to see your spouse called out of bed at 2 a.m. on countless occasions.
The difficulty of having kids and managing a medical career actually prompted us to get out of medicine for a couple of years. My wife felt called back into it after helping a neighbor through a serious health crisis and acting as his advocate with the local medical establishment. This is a calling and a very challenging one.
I mentioned the items above simply to lay the groundwork for my outrage that the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated a law putting caps on pain and suffering damages. They invalidated the law under the rational basis level of scrutiny, which means such a cap is totally irrational as a method of lowering overall costs, ensuring quality care (like keeping physicians in the state), and dealing with skyrocketing medical malpractive insurance rates.
The first impulse is to say that we should simply go ahead and nationalize the practice of medicine and get rid of this headache. We’ll accept our physician bureaucracy pay and go on with life. The second impulse seems more appropriate. Let’s nationalize the practice of law and take the profit out of this parasitism. After all, the practice of law depends entirely on the existence of a government with a monopoly on the use of coercive force. There’s a good case to be made that all the servants of the law should be public servants.
This is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I’d like to see the fatcats who’ve never held someone’s life in their hands sweat a little.
Oh, couple more things. Is it at all worrisome that the two richest men in Texas are trial lawyers who made their money in tort actions? Second, should hospitals start putting up a sign that says, “Cutting into people’s bodies with metal instruments is an inherently dangerous business, but the alternative is that you go back to the guy shaking a gourd full of seeds.”
UPDATE: Something I forgot to mention. The Wisconsin Court said the statute limiting malpractice pain and suffering damages failed rational basis scrutiny. My constitutional law prof. (a wonderful New York liberal Jewish lady) used to say that to fail rational basis scrutiny a statute would have to declare something on the level of everyone must wear a green shoe on their left foot on odd days of the month. Is a limit on pain and suffering damages irrational like that or is the bar just taking care of itself?
I am now in possession of the first season of the Columbo television movies. Last night I viewed the pilot for the first time. Very interesting. Peter Falk’s Columbo is a little different in this version and so is the obligatory villain played by Gene Barry.
Barry is a psychiatrist who crafts the perfect murder of his wife who is threatening to ruin his medical practice with a scandalous divorce. His execution is picture perfect. Enough issues to keep Columbo on his tail, but no proof, not even circumstantial evidence. The scenes where Columbo and the murderous psychiatrist engage in conversational duels are outstanding, particularly when they begin to speak more frankly.
At one point, the two speak of a hypothetical murderer and Columbo asks the psychiatrist to construct a profile. They both know he will be speaking of himself. He states that the murderer is highly intelligent, a professional man, patient, strong nervous system, etc. Columbo interjects: “But wouldn’t someone who takes a human life in cold blood be insane?” “No,” the psychiatrist answers, “Morals are all relative and murder is simply one option among many. An intelligent man would use it if need be.” Paraphrasing a bit here. This is the great part. Columbo says, “Well, that’s interesting. I guess a fellow like that would figure he’s very hard to catch, but there’s a problem. The murderer gets one chance to commit the crime. One chance to learn. But a man like me sees a hundred crimes like this in a year. It’s my business.” Finally, the psychiatrist begins to pale a bit as he realizes he may be outgunned.
The Columbo of the pilot is a little bit different from the detective of the long-running series. He is younger, better groomed, and angrier, much angrier. Any fan of the series needs to see this episode, which is surely the least-aired of the bunch.
After yet another round of head meeting wall of denial in the comment room, I am reminded of a story about a philosopher who kept having the most interesting dream. In his dream, the philosopher saw himself meeting the greatest minds of history in debate. With a single remark, he sent each of them away despondent and defeated. No matter whether they were natural law theorists, Christians, atheists, agnostics, continental, analytic, Freudians, Marxists, behaviorists, nihilists, whatever, he sent them away with his awe-inspiring single remark.
The only problem was that he would wake up each morning completely unable to remember what his atomic statement was. The greatest piece of argumentation of all-time and he couldn’t remember it!
After having the dream several more times he read that some dreamers could wake themselves long enough to take notes on their dreams before collapsing back into unconsciousness. He resolved to do so himself. He placed a pencil and notepad by his bed and spoke very sternly to himself about the need to wake up. Despite the tension caused by such rigorous concentration and self-talk, he finally managed to fall asleep.
The dream faithfully recurred. Amazingly, he managed to rise and scribble the deadly argument on the pad. As he finished his note unconsciousness descended and he immediately returned to slumber.
He awoke to the sound of his alarm clock with great expectation. He remembered having woken from his dream and having made a note. He could barely get his eyes to focus on the pad he held with shaking fingers. With great discipline he mastered himself and read the inscription only to go pale with disappointment as he read what it said:
Running from the floodtide of internet filth? Plagued by the merchants of obscenity? Maligned by the mercenaries of smut? Stop the madness and insist on the product that protects my family from the lewd, lecherous portal known as the world wide web.
Get the best Internet filter available from Integrity Online. Now with S.P.I.F.T.™, Superior Pornographic Internet Filtering Technology.
We’re also alerted to the fact that this filter “PROTECTS THE JOHNSONS!”
His Airness (and that doesn’t refer to his vertical leap) Howard Dean fired another shot into the alternate reality-based community in which he lives. By Dean’s account:
“The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is ‘okay’ to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.”
Dean perhaps missed out on the fact that the four dissenters to the Kelo eminent domain decision included the three most conservative justices: Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. Get that man a newspaper, wouldja?
I’ve stated before that I think Rush Limbaugh transformed talk radio as much or more because of his talent and humor than because of his ideology. Assuming Guantanamo is more a detainment facility and less the raging chamber of torture horrors the Daily Kos groupies think it is, I’m linking to the hilarious merchandise Rush has for sale in the Club G’itmo line.
Sample lines from mugs, t-shirts, etc.:
“What happens at Club G’itmo, stays at Club G’itmo.”
“My mullah went to Club G’itmo and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
We’ve all seen the news accounts of the face transplants that will soon begin to take place. Interesting, hopeful stuff, particularly for those who have been severely disfigured. As I read, I began thinking of the highly implausible, but really entertaining film Face/Off which starred Nick Cage and John Travolta. What was hard to believe was that two men with really different bodies, hairlines, etc. could trade faces through surgery.
My wife, the doctor, pointed out a much better reason it would be implausible while I told her about the new transplants. She informed me (duh, why didn’t I think of that) that face transplant recipients would not look like the donors because the bones of the face play a great part in defining the way the face looks. Interesting point.
Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost has an interesting post on something we argue about quite a bit here, which is objective moral truth and whether God exists. Click here to read more. I particularly like this sketch of the argument because it includes stuff from the American C.S. Lewis, Elton Trueblood.
I happen to rent the crappiest house and yard on one of the best streets in Athens, Georgia. The property is a real outlier compared to the well-groomed beauties around it. My landlord says he has a plan to rehabilitate, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I said that to say this. Turner South showed up on my doorstep and asked if I’m interested in letting them remake my horrible yard. I said yes and referred them to my landlord. If the family gets some TV time, I’ll be sure to alert the Reform Clubbers.
I recently used the TRC blog to publish my speculations about whether the story about a private investigator claiming to work for “rich and powerful people” (get the guy a better script next time, people) had been hired to successfully dig up dirt on Baylor interim President Bill Underwood. To my surprise, Christianity Today picked up on the story and what I thought about it. (Never assume you are blogging into obscurity, friends.)
Here’s the relevant part:
The “Battle for Baylor” has more than its share of intrigue, not to mention ample opportunities for tea-leaf reading and code cracking.
The story took a turn to the ridiculous last week as the Waco Tribune-Herald reported (and editorialized) on a private investigator who claimed to be hired by “rich and powerful people” to dig up dirt on interim president Bill Underwood. Former Baylor insider Hunter Baker thinks it’s a hoax—or that the investigator was actually hired by Underwood supporters in an attempt to “make Underwood look like a victim of evil conservative Christian types and let him ride into the presidency full time on a righteously indignant sympathy vote.”
The rest of the article is worth reading, too, particularly for those watching the bold experiment still taking place in central Texas at the intersection of I-35 and the Brazos River.
Perhaps having been too much influenced by the sexual tint that pervades everything in our culture, I have often thought of “the confirmed bachelor” as a gay man whom everyone pretended was simply a fellow who avoided marriage and liked living alone. John Derbyshire has a few paragraphs in his discussion of former Conservative U.K. Prime Minister Ted Heath that causes me to reflect a little more deeply:
The bachelor life. Heath never married. He showed not the slightest sign of being homosexual, though, repressed or otherwise. He was a specimen of a type that, it seems to me, used to be much more common than it now is, and was certainly more socially acceptable: the confirmed bachelor. He simply had no interest in sex. Nowadays such a person is thought to be strange, to have issues, but the generality of people didn’t think like that 30 years ago.
Whatever you think of his politics (I detest them), it can hardly be denied that Heath lived a full and useful life. He reached the very summit of his chosen profession. He had an absorbing and uplifting hobby — playing and conducting classical and sacred music — to take his mind off his work. He was a keen and accomplished sportsman (racing sailboats). He had close friends, who loved him, spoke affectionately of him, and were loyal to him. In his youth he led men into battle, bravely and capably. He wrote, or at any rate dictated, half a dozen books. From the humblest of beginnings, he rose to wealth and power. He was very intelligent, though unimaginative and not well read. (Among his recorded remarks are: “I never read novels.”) He stuck to his principles, returned loyalty for loyalty, and committed no crimes.
Not many of us can hope to get as much out of life, or to leave as much of an impression on the world, as Ted Heath. Yet in that full and vigorous life, sex apparently played no part whatsoever. He simply wasn’t interested.
We used to be much more comfortable with that than we now are. (That “we” refers to we Anglo-Saxons: I think these remarks apply equally to both sides of the Atlantic.) There was a whole bachelor culture, certainly not homosexual, and not particularly hostile to women, though regarding them as a bit of a nuisance to be got away from as much as possible — in men-only clubs, on the golf course, on walking tours with other bachelors. Philip Larkin, who was heterosexual and liked sex, but unfortunately did not much like women, wrote very affectionately about that culture. It’s all gone with the wind now, alas. If I were to suggest to one of my male colleagues at National Review that we go on a walking tour in the Catskills together, I should get a very strange look.
The discussion reminds me that I have known some men of this type. They often end up living with mother after dad dies and plan trips to go golfing at St. Andrews because they have enormous disposable income. The part about the walking tour is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis who was a confirmed bachelor for many, many years before he met the woman he would marry as a pretense (for immigration purposes) and grow to truly love. He and his friends tromped all over England during his single days.
Never has the great liberal White Elephant Constitution in Exile been discussed more frequently and with less reason than here at the Reform Club, but we’ve become positively intoxicated by stretching this canard to the breaking point. After mentioning that Ramesh Ponnuru (a notable conservative) mentioned the Constitution in Exile in a blog post, Mr. Ponnuru took the opportunity to make clear his own position on the unicorn of the conservative world.
Here it is, in full, reproduced at the same level as the original post noticing his post! That’s the kind of accountability you get in the blogosphere! Read below:
EXILE, CTD. [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Perhaps, given this post, I should clarify my views about the “Constitution in Exile.”
1) I think it can safely be said that no conservative has ever used the phrase as much as Jeffrey Rosen and Cass Sunstein do.
2) In some sense, most conservatives believe that we are exile from the Constitution–that the way we are governed corresponds less to that document than it used to do and that we ought to increase that correspondence. I certainly do.
3) But the phrase, as used by the people who use it most, means something more than what I wrote in 2). It means that there is a movement, with a significant chance of success (or at least of doing damage), that wants to undo the New Deal and Great Society from the federal bench. This I do not believe. Nor would I want such a movement to exist.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard in response to a reporter’s insinuation that British/American policies in Iraq are to blame for recent terrorism:
Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it’s given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.
Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.
And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.
Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia’s involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn’t have done that?
When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan?
When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq — a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations — when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.
Now I don’t know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can’t put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I’ve cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.
(Hat tip to Powerline) If G.W. spoke that way, he’d have been re-elected by ten points.
Found an interesting article on the CIE movement or lack thereof courtesy of our friends at Southern Appeal. Check it out.
Here’s the telling paragraph:
In short, I despair of our supposed plans for toppling the New Deal. And in truth, there is no Constitution in Exile movement. Google the phrase, run it through Lexis-Nexis, search far and wide: No conservative or libertarian activist, theorist, or judge has used the term since its casual mention in 1995 (and few have ever heard of it).
This helps explain my shock as a dues-paying, secret meeting having, long term member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy at having never heard the term until it was brought up quite recently by a left-leaning commenter.
Dr. Benjamin Zycher (a great sci-fi name) included a hit on Bill Bennett in his speculations about the new Supreme Court nominee. The drive-by shot reminded me of a more extended assault on the virtue guru by yours truly. I was and am a fan of Bill Bennett, but I felt a tremendous disappointment in hearing about his gambling habits. It seemed to me the conservative zines were determined to give Bennett a pass, so I tried to preserve the integrity of social conservatives (particularly of the evangelical set) with this piece for American Spectator.
Because it was original and not a whitewash, it was quoted by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and several other web outlets. The best part, though, was that I saw an email one S.T. Karnick sent to the editor of American Spectator praising the short essay. That led to me writing for his magazine American Outlook and ultimately to this weblog, which we hope to someday expand into a more full-featured website with archived essays, short fiction, reviews, etc..
We had a small tussle over whether various appointees embrace a theory of “The Constitution in Exile” which would require extreme rollback of federal powers. Karnick and I, plus citees from The Volokh Conspiracy (heavy legal experts), called B.S. on one of our commenter’s assertions about the CIE. I have to give some credit to the commenter because Ramesh Ponnuru of NRO talks about it as a going concern with at least one judge here.
Of course, we now know John Roberts was the nominee. The Prowler at AmSpec helps us understand why Edith Clement was everywhere. She was a very good feint aimed at forcing Moore-On.org to send out their attack email and then have to send the same email with name altered. Message: we oppose anybody.
My reasons for thinking Clement was it were not related to the press buzz, but it doesn’t matter now. After reading the AmSpec article, I’m wondering whether Rehnquist didn’t influence the choice of Roberts, his former clerk. He may have threatened not to retire unless Roberts was picked. Pure speculation on my part (and we may have some sense of how good my speculative powers are).
The Prowler always has juicy inside-the-camp Democrat quotes about whatever’s going on. So much so that some doubt their reality. Not I, being a big fan of the magazine’s editor. Here’s the latest one:
“We are expecting one, if not two, more nominees to the Supreme Court this calendar year,” says a senior Democratic strategist. “We have to be true to our values and defend them against a nomination like Roberts, but we have to be realistic. He’s going to get through. But we have bigger fights ahead that will be even more pivotal. We’ve advised folks to keep their powder dry and not to waste it on this fight. Wait for the biggies to come.”
This Supreme Court nomination brings back discussion of Bork because the left would like to see something like that happen again. It’s the model. Of course, they had a majority and were still the dominant party then. The memory is that Bork lost for being extreme. I recall a little history and can suggest a different reason.
The reason Bork was demonized was simple payback. He was in Justice during Watergate. Nixon told Elliott Richardson to fire Archibald Cox (special investigator). Richardson resigned. Next guy down resigned. Bork agreed to do the firing at the behest of Richardson and his lieutenant because someone had to do it lest a full-blown constitutional crisis emerge. That act earned Bork everlasting enmity from the left.
Some commenters will ask why I’m making a post out of a response I gave to comments earlier. The answer is, “I feel like it.”
As a longtime fan of Bob Newhart who has since discovered as an adult the man was even funnier than I’d previously believed, I happily point you to an interesting story by Cathy Seipp in National Review.
Here’s a funny bit:
Contrary to Hollywood tradition, the 76-year-old comedian has been famously and happily married for 42 years to the same wife he started out with. When she gets the last laugh on him, he likes to tell the story. “I said, ‘Do you think Joanne Woodward makes Paul Newman take out the recyclables?’” he said, recalling a complaint he made on garbage day. “She said, ‘If you were Paul Newman, I wouldn’t make you take out the recyclables.’”
All this is an especially good thing because Newhart lived with his parents until he was in his late ‘20s and almost never dated. “We didn’t need to dig for dirt to make this interesting,” an A&E producer noted a few years ago, when the cable network’s Biography series premiered Bob Newhart: The Last Sane Man. After a perfectly timed pause, Newhart added then: “Luckily, the bestiality thing never came up.”
The old show is apparently coming out on DVD. I’m priming for a 70’s nostalgia moment and may have to pick it up.
Today’s article in the Los Angeles Times reminds us how fearful atheists must be in a climate where religion is burgeoning out of control. With all these weird sectarian fundamentalist types spouting their weirdo creeds against stealing from, insulting, striking and murdering people, it must be a hair-raising time indeed for the harried community of nonbelievers.
The gentleman on the right in this picture is one of those many quiet heroes who came storming out of the soul-crushing experience of the Holocaust to fashion impressive careers in the United States. I use the word “fashion” advisedly, because this is Stanley Glogover, my grandmother’s (father’s mother) cousin, who grew up as a wealthy kid in Makow, Poland. His family owned the department store. In the United States, he became the fastest graduate ever of the Fashion Institute in New York City, doing three years of work in one. He was such an amazing student that they asked him to stay on and teach for a few years.
But between his Makow years and his stellar rise in the fashion industry, he had a six-year hiatus, replete with ghettos, concentration camps, a German experiment that consisted of opening his skull without anesthesia, a long stint at Auschwitz and a few years in Displaced Persons camps in Italy. Someday I hope to write the full story of his experiences.
His fashion career has made him much beloved of women the world over. He is the inventor of the maternity bra and the nursing bra.
Now he enjoys his retirement here in South Florida, where that photo was snapped a week or so ago. The question that puzzles me is: who is that funny-looking fellow on his left?
The latest addition to the NYT op-ed stable is John Tierney and he’s got a piece outthat’s got to have Karl “the MSM-slayer” Rove feeling his oats:
Karl Rove’s version of events now looks less like a smear and more like the truth: Mr. Wilson’s investigation, far from being requested and then suppressed by a White House afraid of its contents, was a low-level report of not much interest to anyone outside the Wilson household.
So what exactly is this scandal about? Why are the villagers still screaming to burn the witch? Well, there’s always the chance that the prosecutor will turn up evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice during the investigation, which would just prove once again that the easiest way to uncover corruption in Washington is to create it yourself by investigating nonexistent crimes.
For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.
It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:
Eric Pfieffer goes where few men dare; he took a stroll down Pennsylvania Ave. Last Thursday to check out the MoveOn rally demanding Karl Rove’s head on a pike in Lafayette Park. I suppose most conservatives would be more irritated by the hippie in the Che shirt, (is it Che? On second glance it might be Jimi Hendrix. Well, it’s someone annoying, I’m sure) but I think another snapshot tells us more about the character of the bull-goose-loony-left. It was 90+ degrees F. in Washington last Thursday, and this dog is not only sitting on concrete in the sun, it’s wearing a cardboard garment. The photo caught my eye immediately because I also have a husky. On a day like last Thursday, she’s allowed outside for no more than 30 minutes at a time, and even then she’s in the shade on grass in a spot where she can dig in damp sand if she wants to. She usua
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