Author Archives: Rob Harrison

The death book for veterans

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I’d meant to repost this from Conservatives4Palin yesterday, but I got distracted; I still wanted to mention it here as well, though, because it’s important. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jim Towey has done our country a service (in a piece linked yesterday by Sarah Palin on her Facebook page) by calling attention to a document recently re-promulgated by the Obama administration’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs called “Your Life, Your Choices.” This is a 52-page document for end-of-life planning which was first drafted by the Clinton administration—by an advocate of physician-assisted suicide and health-care rationing, Dr. Robert Pearlman. When the Bush 43 administration got a look at it, they ordered the VA to stop using it; as Towey describes it,

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran’s health-care system that seems intent on his surrender. . . .

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable.

In my book, George W. Bush did the only decent and honorable thing in pulling this invidious document; for the Obama administration to start using this again with VA patients—all patients, mind you, not even just those who are clearly dying—is nothing short of despicable. Thank you, Mr. Towey, for writing about this; and thank you, Gov. Palin, for using your platform to call it to our attention.

Most-searched posts

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I don’t get huge traffic around here; I don’t call this “The Blog that Nobody Reads” (that would be fellow Palinite House of Eratosthenes, which is ironic because he gets more traffic than I do), but the number of folks who do read this blog isn’t all that large. Which is fine, since I’m not trying to make a living off this—this is a discipline for me, and I write about what interests me, and if it interests others as well, then that’s great.

That said, I do watch the traffic I get, because that interests me, too; I like to see what posts get linked to elsewhere around the Web, and what searches land here. Some of them are pretty strange, though I don’t seem to get as many really odd ones as folks like Hap do. I’ve noticed, though, over time, that some posts get an inordinate number of hits—they just keep popping up in searches, week after week. That being the case, I thought it might be worth collecting them and posting the list.

The parable of the three little pigs
Reflecting on 1 Corinthians 3:10-20, 6:19-20: what are you building your life with?

Midway between luck and skill
On the role of luck in the Battle of Midway—which, from a Christian perspective, looks like the providence of God. I don’t know that most searchers are looking for that perspective, though.

Elemental powers
The ancients believed that the physical world was ruled by spirits (the elements, the stars, the sun and moon, and so on); Christ came to set us free from slavery to such things. In this post and a follow-up, I asked the question, “What powers does our culture think rule the world?” It appears others out there are asking the same question.

“May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering!”
This is a video I posted on the two Moravian missionaries who sold themselves into slavery in the West Indies in order to evangelize their fellow slaves.

Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei
I wouldn’t have expected it, but there appear to be a lot of people out there Googling this phrase; I wrote this post for Tim Challies’ Reformation Day symposium, considering the meaning and misuses of this motto, and I hope the various searchers find it helpful.

“Send ’em up, I’ll wait!”
This is a story I picked up from Don Surber of the Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, which it appears is still circulating briskly, judging by the number of folks still looking for it.

The OSM (Obama-stream media) theme song
So far, I haven’t seen anyone else referring to the media as the OSM, but a lot of folks seem to be looking for some variation of “Obama theme song.” Not many searches for the Great Big Sea song lyrics I posted, though.

“Darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable”
Reflecting on the murder of George Tiller and the old Indigo Girls hit “Closer to Fine”; most of the hits are on searches for the quote.

The Gnosticism of sexual sin
Would we be so casual about our sexual behavior if we really understood its significance? I don’t think so.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
It would appear that a lot of people want to understand what “the fear of the Lord” means—which is something I’m still working on myself.

Where have all the good men gone? Blame Roe, for starters
This one gets hit from a lot of different angles, but the most common search is what you’d expect: “where have all the good men gone?” Further evidence of the sea change Roe brought to male-female relations, I think.

Ambulance bills subsidize ambulance chasers

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I linked last Saturday to John Mackey’s piece on eight free-market health-care reforms that would actually work and not balloon the deficit. One of the necessary steps he laid out was “Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.” This morning, Sarah Palin elaborated on that pointin a note she posted on her Facebook page:

President Obama’s health care “reform” plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what we had in mind—change which poses serious ethical concerns over the government having control over our families’ health care decisions. In addition, the current plans greatly increase costs of health care, while doing lip service toward controlling costs.

We need to address a REAL bipartisan reform proposition that will have REAL impacts on costs and quality of patient care.

As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation’s health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, “I feel your pain.”

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he’ll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

Dr. Stuart Weinstein, with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, recently explained the problem:

The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs.

Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage? [2]

Dr. Weinstein makes good points, points completely ignored by President Obama. Dr. Weinstein details the costs that our out-of-control tort system are causing the health care industry and notes research that “found that liability reforms could reduce defensive medicine practices, leading to a 5 percent to 9 percent reduction in medical expenditures without any effect on mortality or medical complications.” Dr. Weinstein writes:

If the Kessler and McClellan estimates were applied to total U.S. healthcare spending in 2005, the defensive medicine costs would total between $100 billion and $178 billion per year. Add to this the cost of defending malpractice cases, paying compensation, and covering additional administrative costs (a total of $29.4 billion). Thus, the average American family pays an additional $1,700 to $2,000 per year in healthcare costs simply to cover the costs of defensive medicine.

Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.” [3]

You would think that any effort to reform our health care system would include tort reform, especially if the stated purpose for Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care industry is the current high costs.

So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?

Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that, after his state enacted tort reform measures, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas “skyrocketed by 57 percent” and that the tort reforms “brought critical specialties to underserved areas.” These are real reforms that actually improve access to health care. [5]

Dr. Weinstein’s research shows that around $200 billion per year could be saved with legal reform. That’s real savings. That’s money that could be used to build roads, schools, or hospitals.

If you want to save health care, let’s listen to our doctors too. There should be no health care reform without legal reform. There can be no true health care reform without legal reform.

—Sarah Palin

[1] Seehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350370729883030.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
[2] See http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/nov08/managing7.asp
[3] Id.
[4] Seehttp://www.abajournal.com/magazine/new_laws_and_med_mal_damage_caps_devastate_plaintiff_and_defense_firms_alik/print/
[5] See http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Tort-reform-must-be-part-of-health-care-reform-8096175.html

“That limitless horizon”

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Last week, I posted the video of Neil Gaiman reading his wonderful poem “Instructions,” noting inter alia that the poem will before long become a picture book (an event I await with happy anticipation). Last night, I linked to Eric Ortlund’s blog to cite his excellent post on the necessity of grace, and the fatal thing that is moral exhortation apart from the gospel message. As such, I cannot fail to note the linkage of the two: Dr. Ortlund has also posted Gaiman’s video, and along with it some comments on Gaiman which, quite frankly, say it better than I ever have.

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors because . . . well, aside from his knowledge of ancient religion, reading him feels like I’m dreaming. There is a surfeit of meaning in his books; he’s able to evoke that limitless horizon against which we all live, and the deep, deep ocean (miles deep, dark, impenetrable) over which we walk. He makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, although I can never quite say why. Something opens in the back of my mind, and something big starts to hum back there. Don’t know how else to say it.

Beautifully put.

(Follow the link for some of Dr. Ortlund’s recommendations; and bear in mind that Gaiman has a very broad range. If you like urban fantasy, read Neverwhere; if you love fairytales, it’s hard to beat Stardust; the sequel to American Gods, Anansi Boys, is also excellent; and of course his latest, The Graveyard Book, won a well-deserved Newbery.)

Calling the administration to account

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During and (especially) after last year’s presidential campaign, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on the Republican side of the aisle about how the Democrats were so much more hip to social media and Web 2.0 and texting and so on, and how far behind the Republicans were and how much of a disadvantage they were at as a consequence, and how hard the party would have to work to catch up. I’m not sure anyone went quite so far as to claim that this was the only reason Barack Obama won, but there were a few folks who seemed to be thinking that (as there are always people looking to blame the unexpected on something they consider to be a gimmick).

Now, I think we can safely say that at least one prominent Republican gets it: Sarah Palin. As governor of Alaska, she used Twitter to keep Alaskans up on what she was doing and what was going on—as well as giving quick, incisive comments on broader political issues—and won a large number of followers in so doing. Now that she’s left office, she’s turned from the scalpel to the sword, using her Facebook account to go to war with the current administration in Washington, DC, primarily over their efforts to deform the American health-care system; and though she’s wielded Facebook like a rapier, her blows have fallen on the administration’s efforts like great strokes from a claymore, depriving them of momentum and putting them on the defensive. For those of us who think Obamacare is the wrong approach at the wrong time and will only make matters worse, this is a very good thing, a nice change from politics as usual, and reason for real hope.

Just because her focus of late has been on health care (which is, after all, the domestic political issue at the moment), though, doesn’t mean she has nothing else to talk about; energy is still a signature issue for her as well, and so when the Obama administration used the Export-Import Bank to commit $2 billion in loans to fund offshore drilling—in Brazil—she was quick to offer the following comment:

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That’s all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I’ll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: “Drill, baby, drill.” Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a “win” for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can’t say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

—Sarah Palin

Now, this is not to say that this is a bad deal; in fact, though the Ex-Im Bank doesn’t have a great record, there are some very strong reasons to be very glad the administration made this move. They probably have other reasons as well (such as the fact that it will pump a lot of money into George Soros’ pocket), but those don’t invalidate the deal by any means. It is to say, though, that this deal calls into question the administration’s stance against energy development in the US, because there is simply no coherent way to support offshore drilling in Brazil and at the same time oppose new drilling off the Gulf Coast, in the Chukchi Sea, or in ANWR.

At least, there’s no coherent economic or environmental argument for doing so; which suggests that those aren’t the arguments that really matter to the White House.

It’s not enough to be against sin

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Listen, I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist, I’ll butt it as long as I’ve got a head, and I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. And when I’m old, fistless, footless and toothless, I’ll gum it till I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition.

—Billy Sunday

I live in the home of Billy Sunday. Not literally in his house (that’s a museum), but in his hometown, and his hometown church. People don’t usually associate traveling evangelists with Presbyterianism, yet he was indeed a Presbyterian minister, ordained in 1903; as he explained it, it was because of his wife Nell, a formidable figure in her own right who’s still remembered around here as Ma Sunday. (In fact, in our church’s row of photos of past ministers, hers is first in line.) Billy said of his wife, “She was a Presbyterian, so I am a Presbyterian. Had she been a Catholic, I would have been a Catholic—because I was hot on the trail of Nell.” They were instrumental in the construction of our church building, and there are photos from his ministry in various places around the church; more than that, when his tabernacle by the shores of Winona Lake was torn down in the early 1990s, members of the congregation rescued some of the benches, and they sit in the entrance area of our building.

I’ll be honest, before I came here, I had more of an awareness of Billy Sunday the baseball player (a dangerous baserunner but a poor hitter, he was the man who first occasioned the observation, “You can’t steal first base”) than Billy Sunday the revivalist; I have a strong interest in the history of revivals, but I’ve mostly studied earlier ones, so I hadn’t really read much on his career. Obviously, that has changed, and is changing; even this late on, it’s important to understand the Sundays and their ministry to understand this community. The quote at the top of this post, for instance, is one which I first read on the front of one of the local tourist brochures (when I said his house is a museum, I meant that literally); and I’ve been interested to find some of his messages on YouTube.

In checking out some of his sermons, it’s clear that that quote is completely accurate: Billy Sunday was against sin. He was powerfully and insistently against sin; he painted it in stark colors, described it in no uncertain terms, and called his hearers to repentance, firmly and uncompromisingly. This is not to say he was a Hellfire-and-brimstone preacher—he recognized that trying to scare people into salvation is unbiblical and ineffective—but he didn’t stint talk of Hell, either, and he strove hard to make his hearers feel the badness of their sin and their need to repent.

The thing is, while I hear Sunday preaching hard against sin (most famously, against alcohol; the man preached Prohibition)—while I hear the bad news that tells us of our need for Christ—I don’t hear much of the good news. I don’t hear the gospel of grace. I don’t hear anything about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. All I hear is works righteousness, with repentance held up as the chief work. It could be that this is from an unrepresentative sample of his messages, to be sure, but somehow I don’t think so; and even if that’s the case, it certainly suggests that his preaching wasn’t driven by the gospel of Jesus Christ, but rather by something else. It suggests that he didn’t really preach grace, he preached moralism and teetotalism.

That’s too bad, for reasons Ray Ortlund’s son Eric laid out well in a recent post titled “Grace or Moralism”:

Except that’s not the right title for this. It’s not this one or that one. It’s grace or nothing; grace or death. What I mean is, I was thinking about a great video I saw recently which talked about how important young men are for churches, and how feckless and wandering most young men are—and it’s true for me too. . . .

But then I thought, What if I were a pastor and I had a 20-something male who was into video games and porn and not much else, and I started to pound him and tell him to get his act together, and become a noble and valorous warrior? (I say that last phrase without any irony whatsoever.) If I were to morally exhort him that way, two results are possible: (1) He would fail to change and improve. (2) He would succeed to change and improve. Both options lead to death.

If #1 happens, shame would be added to sin, and he probably would be inclined to hide from further contact with the church.

If #2 happens, he would turn into a Pharisee. Moral exhortation made outside of the larger controlling context of grace and the gospel, if heeded and acted upon by its audience, produces Pharisees.

Read the whole thing—it’s great—and think about it. This is why Paul says that human rules and regulations “have an appearance of wisdom . . . but . . . lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence”; the most they can do is redirect that indulgence into other channels, which may well be even worse in the end. It’s important to be against sin—too many these days who consider themselves Christians aren’t, and that’s scandalous—but it isn’t enough by itself; we need to be against sin because we’re for Jesus Christ.

Links on Obamacare

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“Essential Reading” Department:

David Goldhill, “How American Health Care Killed My Father”
Yes, it’s 10,000 words. It’s also the most important thing you’re likely to read about the state of our health care system. I’ll be posting on this article in some detail when I have the time.

John Schwenkler, “Maybe the Best Thing I’ve Read on Health Care Reform”
Consider this the SparkNotes/CliffNotes version of Goldhill’s article.

Sally Pipes, “Top Ten Myths of American Health Care”
Good debunking of the current CW. Warning: it’s a PDF.

Megan McArdle, “Why I Oppose National Health Care”
“Once we’ve got a comprehensive national health care plan, what are the government’s incentives? I think they’re bad, for the same reason the TSA is bad. I’m afraid that instead of Security Theater, we’ll get Health Care Theater, where the government goes to elaborate lengths to convince us that we’re getting the best possible health care, without actually providing it.”

 

“Where Did You Get Your Medical Degree” Department:

Scott Gottlieb, “Obama and the Practice of Medicine”
Are bureaucrats really more qualified than doctors to make these decisions?

 

“Can’t Anybody Here Play this Game?” Department:

Caroline Baum: “Obama Goes Postal, Lands in Dead-Letter Office”
So comparing the “public option” to the Postal Service is supposed to make us like the idea?

Jay Cost: “Obama Misread His Mandate”
One of our few great political analysts says the administration doesn’t have the mandate it seems to think it has . . .

Dorothy Rabinowitz: “Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign”
. . . but the ineptitude of its salesmanship so far isn’t helping its case any, either.

 

“Sarah Palin Was Right” Department:

Mark Steyn: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Panels”
“Government ‘panels’ making ‘rulings’ over your body: Acceptance of that concept is what counts.”

Andy McCarthy: The right interpretive framework
“Raising these issues hit the right notes: they gave people a prism for understanding the big picture of Obamacare.”

Thomas Sowell: Whose Medical Decisions?
Daniel Terrapin summarized this one nicely: “Call it what you like, ‘death panels’ will be the end result.”

Mark Steyn: You’ve Had a Good Innings
“Ultimately, government health care represents the nationalization of your body.”

Pundette: “Sen. Diaz doesn’t like euthanasia vibes he gets from House bill”
Just a reminder that Gov. Palin didn’t make this up.

Robert D. Novak, RIP

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Robert Novak, longtime reporter, columnist, and commentator, died this morning at the age of 78 after a year-long battle with brain cancer; our country is the poorer for the loss of his voice. Like Tim Russert, Novak was one of the rare media figures who made a real difference in the politics of this country; like Russert’s fellow Buffalonian (or whatever would be the proper term for someone from Buffalo, NY) Jack Kemp, an old friend of Novak’s and one of the few politicians he liked and respected, it’s hard to imagine the Reagan Revolution happening without him. As Kenneth Tomlinson points out in his Human Events piece on Novak,

Novak was the journalistic godfather of the supply-side movement, and his columns gave political legitimacy to Kemp’s 30% tax-rate cut proposal that would, at the 11th hour, make it into Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign offerings.

And like both Russert and Kemp, Novak was a good man who remained uncorrupted by Washington, DC and its ways.

Novak was a conservative icon, but he was much more than that; as Tomlinson says,

Novak worked political sources like no other reporter. That is why so many people would be astonished when his political sources would become known. . . . Who would have imagined that Novak’s source for the Valerie Plame CIA column was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s No.2 and certainly no friend of the Bush White House. . . .

Bob Novak was first and always a reporter, and that is what made the politics of his column so appealing for conservatives and liberals alike.

The Chicago Sun-Times bears witness to this as well in the statement from its editorial board:

Bob was a relentless reporter. His political columns were marked by his determination to dig out new information, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and Washington secrets to tell us something we didn’t know. He combined that with sharp analysis, insightful commentary and passion about the issues facing the nation to emerge as a brawling contestant in the great national debates of his era. . . .

But more than that, his contributions to the great debates of the day demonstrated that Bob was someone who thought deeply about his country, its system of government and the challenges both faced. . . .

Bob most definitely was a conservative, though he never let his political inclinations blind him to what he saw as the realities of the world, even when it angered his natural allies. . . .

We at the Sun-Times will remember Bob as a generous friend and colleague, a tireless workhorse, an innovator in journalism and an example of how to practice our profession. His most enduring legacy, though, may well be his work to pass down generation to generation his love of this country, its traditions and its values that guided his life and work.

There is, as always, more that could be said, and folks like Michael Barone and Mark Tapscotthave good things to say. The most important thing, though, is that Novak (a late-in-life convert to Catholicism) was all about finding the truth, and would go wherever he believed it led. Tapscott relays this anecdote from Mal Kline that captures it all:

When the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, Novak did not become a pushover for the new GOP majority. “Bob, your problem is that you’ve been on defense so long that you don’t know what to do when your team is on offense,” a Republican congressman told Novak at the time. Novak smiled and said, “I’m not on your team.”

Given how that majority ended up, one can only wish that more conservatives had taken that attitude.

HT: Michelle Malkin

Update: I had to add this from Larry Kudlow:

Bob had a lot of opinions—conservative opinions; Reaganesque opinions. But his pursuit of journalistic detail, facts, scoops, and stories that no one else got was remarkable. He was “old school” in this respect, which is why he was so esteemed by political allies and critics alike.

Shoe leather is a term that comes to mind, and doggedness, and very hard work. Bob had a deep distrust of government. But even during the Reagan years, when I confess to being a source, Bob would write tough stories about the administration he supported. That was the thing about Bob: He was both a conservative icon in terms of his unswerving political beliefs, and a journalistic icon in terms of his unyielding tradecraft. . . .

Over the past twelve years Bob became a strong and devout traditional Catholic. He converted at the age of 66 as he came to grips with faith and embraced Jesus Christ. He did so on very personal terms, without any drama, but his belief was strong and deep. He came to believe that Christ died for us and our sins and for our salvation. As he looked back on his own life, and his several brushes with death, he came to understand that Jesus saved him and had a purpose for him.

Requiescat in pace, Robert Novak.

This is what happens with a mind set on “shuffle”

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My dear wife, knowing that I was stopping by the store on the way home from work to pick up some more distilled water for the church, asked me to pick up a few things for her as well—including ice cream for the brownies she was making for dessert (courtesy of a good friend down the street). My brain started spinning this out to a familiar tune, and before long had produced this:

Brownies and ice cream and water in kettles,
Jewel-eyed reptiles made of precious metals,
Clockwork automatons trying their wings:
These are a few of my favorite things.

I suppose it says something about the contents of my brain that it moved so quickly from my shopping list to a sort of steampunk-fantasy thing; I have to admit I find the juxtaposition of that with Rodgers and Hammerstein amusing, but your mileage may vary. I may keep playing around with this for my own amusement; if anyone wants to try a verse, feel free to post it in the comments.

Worthy of Honor

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(Deuteronomy 19:15, Deuteronomy 25:4; 1 Timothy 5:17-6:2)

One of the subtler issues facing the American church is the way we regard our leaders. This is one of those areas in which we’ve so internalized the world’s values and ways of looking at things that not only are we not aware of the problem, it’s not even easy to see when it’s pointed out. You see, we tend to look at our leaders—even those of us who are leaders do this—from a human perspective, the same way we look at leaders in any human organization. We look at pastors as professionals, or employees, or experts, or whatever—and we pastors tend to look at ourselves in the same ways, and at our calling as a career, to be pursued accordingly—and we look at elders and deacons as just another set of volunteers. And there is some truth to that; but it’s not the most important truth, and focusing on it leads us into bad habits.

What Paul understands is that leading the church isn’t the same as leading any other organization; to be a deacon, or an elder, or a pastor, is to accept a very different sort of responsibility. (Paul is talking about everybody in this passage; the word translated “elder” here seems to have been an umbrella term covering both overseers and deacons.) Those called to lead the church aren’t called to run it like a business, or according to any standard set of worldly principles. Rather, God calls us to lead his church according to only one thing: his will. Elders, deacons, pastors, all of us, it’s not our job or our place to decide what we think ought to be done, much less to insist on what we want done—our job is to discern, together, what God wants us to do, and where he wants the church to go, and then to follow as he leads us, leading the church to follow him as we follow him. Our job is to be, collectively, the voice and the guidance of God for the people of God.

That’s why Paul is so concerned about those leaders in Ephesus who are misusing their position to mislead the church; and it’s why he lays out such careful instructions here as to how to handle this situation. Yes, those who have sinned must be disciplined—publicly, not sweeping anything under the rug, since their sin has had public consequences in the church—but notice his overarching focus here: this must not be allowed to weaken the rest of the leaders in the church in Ephesus. For one thing, it must not become an opportunity for people to work out grudges by making false accusations; and at a deeper level, there’s the danger that the congregation will end up disgusted with all their elders and deacons, and that can’t be permitted either. Even as Timothy is trying to deal with the false teachers in his congregation, he must work to build up and support those elders and deacons who have remained faithful to the gospel and to their calling as leaders in the body of Christ, or else the church will only be worse off in the end.

Thus Paul sets out certain rules for how Timothy is to proceed. First, he says, don’t listen to any accusation against a leader of the church unless it’s supported by two or three witnesses. No hearsay, no whispering campaign, no anonymous charges, no chance for one disgruntled person to pop up and ruin someone they don’t like—these kinds of things are how the world takes people down, and are not to be allowed to happen in the church. When you’re talking about an elder or a deacon, Paul tells Timothy, you don’t even listen to a charge unless you have strong evidence, and two or three people who are willing to step up, put their names on the line, and testify.

Second, this applies especially to Timothy, who must not play favorites. There were no doubt leaders in the church in Ephesus whom he liked quite well, and others with whom he didn’t get along, but Paul tells him he must be careful not to let that get in the way. Paul underscores this point by invoking the heavenly court, the presence of God and his angels; he reminds Timothy that to use his authority unjustly, to favor some or to hurt others, would be a sin, and that God would judge him for it. It doesn’t matter how Timothy feels about anyone; the only thing that matters is the truth, and Timothy is called to find and uphold and proclaim the truth, wherever it may lead.

When anyone is disciplined, Paul says that their discipline is to be public; and there are, I think, a few reasons for this. One, which Paul notes explicitly, is the deterrent effect on others in the congregation. Two, if you have to punish someone publicly or not at all, you’re going to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing, and make sure you’re justified, before you go forward; kangaroo courts are impossible under those circumstances. And three, this is all part of keeping things above board. You don’t charge people in secret, you don’t allow anonymous complaints, and you don’t punish people secretly, either; everything must be done openly, so that the congregation knows what’s going on and everything may be scrutinized. That’s how the church is supposed to conduct its business.

We have to do this because pastors, deacons, and elders are sinful human beings just like everyone else; ordination does not remove sin or make us immune to temptation. Unfortunately for Timothy, he was confronting the kind of situation no pastor ever wants to face: a group of elders who were in full revolt, not against him—that would have been a personal matter, not necessarily a sin issue—but against God. That was far more serious, and it had to mean disciplining some people, and removing them from office; which, obviously, would also mean finding new elders to replace them. As a consequence, Paul gives Timothy one other major piece of advice: don’t ordain anyone hastily, but make very sure you know them first. Choose people who have a track record, who’ve been around long enough for both their sins and their good works to come to light, so that you know who they are and what they bring to the table. People always retain the right to surprise you, but the idea is to keep the unpleasant surprises to a minimum.

Now, it’s painful to have to discipline a leader of the church; we, sadly, have reason to know that. God willing, we will not become experienced in that pain. Even so, there are a couple important principles for us to take away from this passage. The first, as I noted earlier, is Paul’s concern that the church conduct its business openly—not that every detail has to be published, certainly, but that what can be fairly and reasonably told must be told; the picture we give people, however incomplete, must be true and sufficient as far as it goes. Lies breed in the shadows, but we are called to be a people of truth and light, and we should do our business accordingly. There should be no room in the church for anonymous complaints, backstabbing, or any of those other things so characteristic of our world; we should make decisions openly and honestly, or not at all.

Second, the work of the leaders of the church is worthy of honor, and they are worthy of honor for doing it. As I said earlier, we tend to get this subtly wrong, because we tend to look at their work from a human point of view; it’s not that we don’t honor our leaders, but that we tend to honor them for their importance, or because we agree with their decisions, just as we would honor the leaders of any other human organization. As chapter 6 makes clear, however, this isn’t the way we ought to look at things.

If you were wondering what those verses about slaves are doing here, or what they have to do with anything else, the best answer to that question is that Paul is still talking about elders and deacons in the church. Specifically, he’s offering a comment addressed to elders and deacons who were slaves, commanding them to treat their earthly masters with honor and serve them faithfully; at the same time, as Paul has said, their masters were to treat them with honor, as leaders of the body of Christ. What really mattered wasn’t their status as servants to the people who owned them under Roman law; what really mattered was their status as servants of Christ, called to lead the people of God according to his will.

Those whom God has called to lead his church are worthy of honor because they are his representatives to his people, called to lead in his name and for his sake; and those who lead well, Paul says, are worthy of double honor. Interestingly, in the Ephesian church, part of that honor was monetary; at least some elders and deacons were paid for their service to the church, and it’s clear from verse 18 that Paul felt they deserved it if they did their jobs well. We don’t know if they were all paid, or how much, but it’s an interesting point to note. Beyond that, Paul makes clear that those who lead well deserve the respect of the church—this, too, is part of fair compensation for the job.

Which raises the question, who are the elders who rule well? What does that mean? Well, flip back to chapter 4—if you were here three weeks ago, you may remember me saying (I hope you do) that being a good leader of the church is first and foremost about being a good follower of God. As I said then, this is captured in Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” Leadership is about imitation, because the Christian life is not merely a series of dos and don’ts that can be taught in a classroom—it’s a way of life which must be lived to be fully understood. To learn to follow Christ, we need to see the lives of others who are following Christ. Good pastors, good elders, good deacons, are people who set good examples—and in particular, a good pastor is one who helps the elders and deacons set good examples and thus be good elders and deacons. That’s something I only realized recently, that part of my job is to disciple our leaders as leaders, to lead them well to lead well.

So does this mean that the only good leader is a sinless leader? No; which is a good thing, because there aren’t any of those. Rather, the point is that those of us called to leadership in the church need to have our eyes, our minds and our hearts, firmly fixed on Jesus, and to be dedicated to putting to death the sin in our lives, as Paul commands in Romans 8:13. We need to be all about Jesus and the gospel and the ministry of the kingdom of God, not about ourselves and what glorifies or satisfies us. We need to model in our lives the hard work of spiritual growth—of honesty and repentance when we sin; of the willingness to humble ourselves to make things right when we do others wrong; of resisting temptation rather than just giving in to it; of putting our money and our time where our faith is, setting aside the first portion of both each week for God rather than spending it all on ourselves; of spending time studying the word of God; of asking God to search out the darkness in our hearts and our minds, and to show us what he sees. We need to be people in whose lives others can see what it means to follow Christ, and that for all the struggles that come on that journey, there’s great joy in it; we need to be people whose lives draw others to follow.