- Fiscally responsible leadership, for Alaska and the nation
- A vision and perspective from outside the Northeastern elite
- A pro-life vision which is not only political, but personal, as seen in the lives of her youngest son, Trig, and her grandson, Tripp
Republican stupidity continues
The silver lining to the storm clouds that washed away so much of the GOP in 2006 and 2008 is that in the process they washed away many of the people responsible for shipwrecking the party, and most of the illusions those people promulgated. Unfortunately, that’s only “many” and “most,” not all, and we do have some big-government Republican quislings still hanging around. One of those guys is Charlie Crist, governor of Florida; I cringed every time he was mentioned as a potential running mate for John McCain, I cringe every time I hear him mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2012, and with this latest stunt of his, he should be ashamed to call himself a Republican. I’d say he ought to just change parties and be done with it, except that I’m not sure the Democrats would want him either. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal sums it up:
Who needs Mother Nature to cause a catastrophe? Florida’s politicians are busy creating an unnatural disaster in their state insurance market that will blow away taxpayers when the next big hurricane hits. And we mean taxpayers across America.Last month State Farm pulled the plug on its 1.2 million homeowner policies in Florida, citing the state’s punishing price controls. The state’s largest insurer joins a raft of competitors that have already reduced or dumped their property and casualty business in the Sunshine State, including Prudential, Allstate, Nationwide and USAA. This is the inevitable result of Governor Charlie Crist’s drive to control property-insurance premiums. The Republican also lobbied his GOP legislature to make the state government a giant competitor in the market, undercutting private insurers. . . .Every month in Florida, State Farm loses $20 million. So it finally said, No mas.Meanwhile, Floridians have been signing up with Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run insurer that Mr. Crist unleashed in 2007. Because it has an implicit taxpayer guarantee, and because its actuarial assumptions are, well, loose, Citizens can offer lower premiums than private competitors can. Citizens has become the largest insurer in the state, with 1.1 million policies.Mr. Crist has thus guaranteed that Floridians, rather than the global insurance industry, will be on the hook for property damage when the next Katrina hits. Citizens is facing more than $400 billion in potential exposure, yet Citizens Chief Financial Officer Sharon Binnun was recently cited in the South Florida Sun Sentinel as saying it had only $3.4 billion in net assets. . . .Some 25% of the coastal property in U.S. hurricane zones is located in Florida, and another storm is inevitable. To pay for those claims when they come, Mr. Crist will either have to raise taxes on Floridians, or beg Congress for a rescue. . . .It’s scary to imagine the bill taxpayers will get when the next big hurricane hits Florida. It’s even scarier to think Mr. Crist is being touted as a potential GOP candidate for the White House.
No kidding.
Disproving Beethoven, and other failures of thought
My lovely wife has been sitting at her computer and intermittently reading me bits from an essay by Dorothy L. Sayers titled “The Lost Tools of Learning.” Like most Sayers, it’s thoughtful, incisive, pungent, and frequently funny. She identifies the problem with education in her time (a problem which I don’t think has changed all that much in the 62 years since she wrote this piece) this way:
Another quotation from the same issue of the TLS comes in fittingly here to wind up this random collection of disquieting thoughts—this time from a review of Sir Richard Livingstone’s “Some Tasks for Education”: “More than once the reader is reminded of the value of an intensive study of at least one subject, so as to learn ‘the meaning of knowledge’ and what precision and persistence is needed to attain it. Yet there is elsewhere full recognition of the distressing fact that a man may be master in one field and show no better judgement than his neighbor anywhere else; he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it.”
I would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which offers an explanation of what the writer rightly calls the “distressing fact” that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education are not readily transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired them: “he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it.
“Is not the great defect of our education today—a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned—that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning. It is as though we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play “The Harmonious Blacksmith” upon the piano, but had never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” he still had not the faintest notion how to proceed from that to tackle “The Last Rose of Summer.” Why do I say, “as though”? In certain of the arts and crafts, we sometimes do precisely this—requiring a child to “express himself” in paint before we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There is a school of thought which believes this to be the right way to set about the job. But observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman will go about to teach himself a new medium. He, having learned by experience the best way to economize labor and take the thing by the right end, will start off by doodling about on an odd piece of material, in order to “give himself the feel of the tool.”
This is, I think, very much to the point even today—and that despite a great deal of talk from educators about “teaching children how to think, not what to think.” The reasons for that, and her proposed solution, she lays out in the body of the essay. As to the evidence of the continuing accuracy of her diagnosis, I offer the utter familiarity of this episode from over six decades ago:
We find a well-known biologist writing in a weekly paper to the effect that: “It is an argument against the existence of a Creator” (I think he put it more strongly; but since I have, most unfortunately, mislaid the reference, I will put his claim at its lowest)—”an argument against the existence of a Creator that the same kind of variations which are produced by natural selection can be produced at will by stock breeders.” One might feel tempted to say that it is rather an argument for the existence of a Creator. Actually, of course, it is neither; all it proves is that the same material causes (recombination of the chromosomes, by crossbreeding, and so forth) are sufficient to account for all observed variations—just as the various combinations of the same dozen tones are materially sufficient to account for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and the noise the cat makes by walking on the keys. But the cat’s performance neither proves nor disproves the existence of Beethoven; and all that is proved by the biologist’s argument is that he was unable to distinguish between a material and a final cause.
You could replace “well-known biologist” with “Richard Dawkins” in that paragraph, and nobody would bat an eye.
Yet at present
We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified:
“What is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the angels;
you crowned him with glory and honor
and put everything under his feet.”
In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says,
“I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.”
—Hebrews 2:1-12 (NIV)
In checking to see if Calvin had started posting audio and video from this year’s Symposium yet (they haven’t), I was reminded that there were a few from last year’s that I’d really wanted to post, and that I had forgotten to do so. Of those, the one I most wanted to post was Scott Hoezee’s sermon from the opening worship service, on which I commented briefly last January; a brief comment just doesn’t do the sermon justice. It’s been rattling around in my mind ever since, and when I listened to it again this evening, I knew I still wanted to post it. I can’t embed it, but the link to the audio is above; it’s a powerful statement of hope in Jesus Christ in the midst of the brokenness of our world. I encourage you to listen.
Photo © 2012 Flood G. License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.
A modest proposal on the definition of marriage
I offer this with two notes. First, this isn’t a “modest proposal” in the satirical sense, along the lines of Jonathan Swift; I am serious. Second, this isn’t my own idea; I ran across it some years ago and no longer remember who came up with it. That said, here is the proposal.I would be willing to support same-sex marriage given two conditions:
the abolition of no-fault divorce and the recriminalization of adultery.Those who argue that it’s absurd for heterosexuals to oppose redefining marriage to include homosexual couples on grounds of the sanctity of marriage while tolerating divorce for non-biblical reasons have a point; where they go wrong, in my judgment (and, I believe, on the biblical standard) is in arguing for combining the two. The best course, I think, would be to hold the line on the definition of marriage while reversing the no-fault revolution—but I don’t expect that to happen. (To tell the truth, I don’t expect to see my own proposal realized either, but we’ll get to that.) As a realistic matter, politics is a matter of tradeoffs (except for short periods), and you have to give something to get something. Given that, I think that no-fault divorce and the lifting of formal societal sanction on sleeping around have done more damage to the institution of marriage than would inclusion of same-sex couples in that institution, and so I think the tradeoff would be, on the whole, beneficial.Including the recriminalization of adultery in this deal would also ensure that those homosexuals who supported it were actually serious about marriage. There are those who argue that the true agenda behind the push for same-sex marriage is the desire to bring down the institution of marriage, or at the least render it irrelevant; and I’m quite sure there are those for whom that’s true. I’m also sure there are those for whom it isn’t. The willingness to advocate and enter into legal marriage on grounds that would make that marriage much more consequential (and the violation of it much more consequential) would draw a clear and unambiguous contrast between the two groups.As noted, I would be very surprised to see this proposal enacted, since there are a lot more heterosexuals who would be inconvenienced by it than there are homosexuals whom it would benefit. I suspect for instance that most liberal heterosexuals, if these were the only terms on which they could win marital status for same-sex couples, would refuse. Their attitude, I think, would likely mirror that of New England environmentalists who are eager to see species in other parts of the country added to the threatened and endangered lists, but much less eager when it’s a species like the New England cottontail; easy to stand on your principles, after all, when it only inconveniences other people.I also suspect that many conservatives would dislike my proposed deal. Part of that is that many would disagree with my arguments for it; just because I believe that it would, on the whole, strengthen the institution of marriage doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree with me, or that I’m necessarily right. Part of it too is that, given the divorce rate among evangelicals and fundamentalists, you have to figure that even many conservative Christians would balk at reversing the no-fault revolution.I don’t know how prominent people of homosexual inclination would react if this modest proposal were ever seriously debated; I suspect some, at least, would advocate for it with a certain sardonic humor, pleased to see the onus put on heterosexual America for once. I do think, though, that if people were forced to discuss it seriously, the conversation would be both enlightening and entertaining; and who knows? We might even learn something.
Political psychopathology
That wasn’t the title of Peter Berkowitz’ recent column on “Bush hatred and Obama euphoria,” but it might have been. (Although “pneumatopathology,” a pathology of the spirit, would really be more to the point.) This is not speaking, of course, to opposition to one and support of the other, or even to intense dislike of the policies of one and strong approval for the policies of the other, but to something which goes beyond both. As Berkowitz writes,
Bush hatred and Obama euphoria—which tend to reveal more about those who feel them than the men at which they are directed—are opposite sides of the same coin. Both represent the triumph of passion over reason. Both are intolerant of dissent. Those wallowing in Bush hatred and those reveling in Obama euphoria frequently regard those who do not share their passion as contemptible and beyond the reach of civilized discussion. Bush hatred and Obama euphoria typically coexist in the same soul. And it is disproportionately members of the intellectual and political class in whose souls they flourish.To be sure, democratic debate has always been a messy affair in which passion threatens to overwhelm reason. So long as citizens remain free and endowed with a diversity of interests and talents, it will remain so. . . .In surveying the impediments to bringing reason to bear in politics, it was not [Alexander] Hamilton’s aim to encourage despair over democracy’s prospects but to refine political expectations. “This circumstance, if duly attended to,” he counseled, “would furnish a lesson of moderation to those, who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right, in any controversy.”As Hamilton would have supposed, the susceptibility of political judgment to corruption by interest and ambition is as operative in our time as it was in his. What has changed is that those who, by virtue of their education and professional training, would have once been the first to grasp Hamilton’s lesson of moderation are today the leading fomenters of immoderation.Bush hatred and Obama euphoria are particularly toxic because they thrive in and have been promoted by the news media, whose professional responsibility, it has long been thought, is to gather the facts and analyze their significance, and by the academy, whose scholarly training, it is commonly assumed, reflects an aptitude for and dedication to systematic study and impartial inquiry.From the avalanche of vehement and ignorant attacks on Bush v. Gore and the oft-made and oft-refuted allegation that the Bush administration lied about WMD in Iraq, to the remarkable lack of interest in Mr. Obama’s career in Illinois politics and the determined indifference to his wrongness about the surge, wide swaths of the media and the academy have concentrated on stoking passions rather than appealing to reason. . . .By assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life. . . . They infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers.
Kentucky as test case: the rhetoric/reality gap widens
Of course, the storms that passed to the south of us last week didn’t only affect Kentucky, but that seems to have been the worst-hit state, so it stands in for the whole mess (just as Katrina hit Mississippi, too, but you didn’t hear nearly so much about that because unlike Louisiana, Mississippi had a competent [GOP] state government that managed the disaster effectively); and that mess, it seems to me, is important for understanding what we can expect from the Obama administration in times of crisis—and this is definitely a crisis, with over a million people suffering, and a number of deaths. For those not used to dealing with ice storms, J. G. Thayer explains:
The problem with ice storms is magnitude. They cover vast areas, and the damage is systemic. They can wreak havoc on electric grids. Utilities can find themselves having to deal with thousands of broken lines and hundreds of broken poles. . . .It’s been about a week since Kentuckians got pounded, and they’re still digging out. Half a million people were still without power as of Saturday night, and almost half that many have no water. Emergency shelters are still open, and the governor has mobilized every single member of the National Guard to assist.
Now, by way of comparison, here’s Barack Obama in May 2007:
In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed.
Actually, the death toll was 12, so then-Sen. Obama overstated the magnitude of the tornado’s damage somewhat, but that’s still a tragedy; he certainly didn’t apologize for using it as an opportunity to bash the Bush administration for sending the Kansas National Guard to Iraq:
Turns out that the National Guard in Kansas only had 40 percent of its equipment and they are having to slow down the recovery process in Kansas.
Now, here’s this from the Obama White House website:
President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims.
OK, so the point appears to be clear: the Bush administration didn’t care about disaster victims and didn’t do enough to respond to their needs. Can we do better? Yes We Can! Which offers a not-so-implicit promise: We will.In Kentucky, we have the first test of that promise, and so far, Barack Obama is failing. Miserably. Under the Bush administration, FEMA was savaged for its poor response to Hurricane Katrina; so, did they respond quickly and effectively to help those suffering from this storm system? No. Why? Because it might be dangerous and difficult. According to FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak, “We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions.” I’m sorry, but that’s just pathetic. For crying out loud, it’s a natural disaster—of course there will be limitations. You find a way to overcome them, or you aren’t doing your job. That’s the standard to which FEMA was rightly held in 2005, and it’s the standard to which they need to be held now.Also, the White House website trumpets the fact that in 2005, Sen. Obama visited the area hit by Katrina several times; has he bothered to go to Kentucky? No, though he did find time to throw a Super Bowl party (with strips of $250 a pound Wagyu steak). He did get around to declaring a federal disaster area—two days after the storm went through, and only after he’d been asked to do so by Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear. Compare that to the way the Bush administration and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal handled Hurricane Gustav, essentially pre-positioning the federal response. For all that the current administration brags that they “have learned the lessons of Katrina,” they clearly haven’t learned them as well as the Bush administration did. Their rhetoric, as always, is fabulous; their follow-through, however—as is the emerging pattern—doesn’t measure up.And then, of course, there’s the press. Have they been on top of Barack Obama on this the way they were on top of George W. Bush? Well, as the Anchoress writes,
Americans are freezing and dying but I guess I’ve missed Anderson Cooper flying to the midwest and crying and Geraldo shouting, “where is the help?” I guess I’ve missed members of the press demonizing President Obama for eating steak and having cocktails with the press while people are freezing and without food.When a million people in flyover country are suffering, and 42 people have died, we don’t hear much about it. If this was New York, Washington, Boston, (or if the president had an R after his name) you’d see non-stop reports, and the press would be roundly criticizing FEMA’s absence, and the White House’s disregard. Right?
Right. Or as John Hinderaker put it,
Is Barack Obama an insensitive lout who serves $100 per pound steaks to his elite guests and turns up the heat in the White House high enough to grow orchids while a million of his countrymen are without power and dozens are freezing to death? If not, why not?Solely because that is not the story the media want to tell. Many on the web—but no one in the mainstream media—have commented on the fact that Obama has not even pretended to do anything about the massive ice storm that has disabled much of Kentucky and neighboring states. It took days for FEMA to swing into action. Why is that not a scandal? Days went by before Kentucky’s governor called out the National Guard. Why did no one blame Obama for failing to call out the Guard sooner? Probably because he lacks the constitutional power to do so; but the Constitution hasn’t changed since 2005. . . .A basic reality of our time is that our mass media are monolithic, and what they choose to report (or not report) depends on what fits the narrative they are pushing on the public. If our reporters and editors wanted to portray Obama as clueless and out of touch with ordinary Americans, he has given them ample opportunity to do so. But because they are Democrats and he is a Democrat, they have no desire to tell that story. So “let them eat steak” is not a theme you’ll be seeing on the evening news.
If George W. Bush’s handling of Katrina was really such an executive catastrophe, then President Obama’s indifference to the suffering of Kentuckians is unforgivable. But since no one is objecting this time around, what does that say about the motives behind the outrage over Katrina?
Memo to Kentucky from the MSM: we don’t actually care about your suffering, we care about its political value. Since it has no political value, never mind.The fact of the matter is, this won’t be President Obama’s Katrina moment (whether or not it should be), because the MSM won’t let it be, and it’s just not big enough or horrifying enough for those not directly affected by it. But if he and his administration aren’t shaken up by their poor response to this storm and its aftermath, and if they don’t learn the necessary lessons from it, they will have one. Something will come along from which their media lapdogs can’t save them, and whether they believe it possible now or not, the Obama administration will be broken just as the Bush administration was. Right now, they’re sowing the wind; if they don’t make some major changes, the time will come when they reap the whirlwind.
Is the Crystal Cathedral about to shatter?
Maybe, if the AP story has it right:
The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt. Revenue dropped by nearly $5 million last year, according to a recent letter from the elder Schuller to elite donors. In the letter, he implored the Eagle’s Club members—who supply 30 percent of the church’s revenue—for donations and hinted that the show might go off the air without their support.
Robert H. Schuller, who is of course the church’s founder, handed over the senior position at the Crystal Cathedral to his son Robert A. Schuller a few years ago; after a while, though, it appears he decided he didn’t like what his son was doing, because last fall he removed his son from the television broadcast. After that, the younger Schuller’s resignation as senior pastor (which was announced last November 29) was inevitable, merely a matter of time. The resulting upheaval, of course, has badly damaged the organization. I was particularly struck by this comment:
Melody Mook, a 58-year-old medical transcriptionist from El Paso, Texas, said she stopped her $25 monthly donation and is looking elsewhere for her spiritual needs. She said she dislikes the guest pastors. “I feel hurt and confused, and I’m not sure that I want to sit and watch when I know there’s problems beneath the surface,” she said. “You feel like you’re in somebody else’s church every Sunday.”
I read that and I have to wonder, didn’t she realize it’s been “somebody else’s church” the whole time? She lives in El Paso, for crying out loud—she’s not a part of that congregation, and never has been.I have mixed feelings about this situation. On the one hand, this could have and should have been avoided; after all, it’s not as if no one saw it coming. The transfer of power from elder to younger Schuller has been planned since 1997 or so, and for that whole time, people familiar with the situation have been saying it wasn’t going to work. I remember being a part of a conversation in the summer of 1998 among folks from various parts of the Reformed Church in America in which people expressed two main concerns: one, that Robert A. Schuller didn’t have the gifts for the position to which his father wanted him to succeed; and two, that Robert H. Schuller would never really be willing to let anyone else run the show independently, not even his son. As a consequence, I doubt many close observers of the situation are surprised at how the transfer of authority has played out. I realize there was no way that the RCA’s Classis of California was going to tell the elder Schuller “no,” but they should have.On the other hand, maybe it would be for the best if the Crystal Cathedral did shut down. It’s generated a lot of money and a lot of publicity over the years, but to what real benefit to the kingdom of God? Maybe it would be better to shut the doors, let the property revert to the Classis of California, and let the classis and the Synod of the Far West figure out how best to use it. I know there’s been some discussion in the past about starting a new denominational seminary in the West; the campus could be used for that purpose, and you could probably cover a lot of the expenses of starting and running a new school by renting out the great glass sanctuary itself to some other church for Sunday services. Or maybe it would be better just to sell the whole thing and use the money to fund church plants all over southern California. I don’t know, but there would be lots of options.The bottom line here, I think, is that this is what happens when you build a church on a personality and a media strategy rather than on the gospel of Jesus Christ. If the driving force in a church is anything other than the gospel, and if the congregation’s chief loyalty is to anyone but Jesus, that church is built on the sand, and it cannot and will not endure.Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.—Matthew 7:24-27 (ESV)
An observer’s guide to the “new politics”
Since we’re now into February and the new administration is underway, it seems a reasonable time to stop and evaluate what Barack Obama’s “new politics” look like so far.
- Announce strict new rules on the hiring of lobbyists—then refuse to apply them to anyone you actually want to appoint.
- Declare a new era of transparency and accountability—then stop posting transcripts of the daily White House press briefing (and, in fact, remove the old ones), irritatedly duck questions you don’t want to answer, and allow your appointees to lie to the Senate.
- Declare that along with transparency, the rule of law will be one of the touchstones of your administration—then appoint people to your cabinet who don’t pay their taxes until they get a cabinet appointment (or perhaps some time after that); throw in the fact that one of those appointees, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (whom even liberals think is a sleazebag), was named to regulate an industry which paid him more than $220,000 over the last two years.
- Declare an end to the Bush administration’s approach to dealing with terrorists—such as “the imposition of stringent limitations on the ways in which U.S. agents can question terror suspects, an executive order mandating the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and the freezing of all detainee prosecutions”—but leave enough loopholes to ensure that the rules don’t have to be applied if they’re ever inconvenient.
In short, posture a lot about things like “the greatest ethical standard ever administered to an executive branch,” “bringing change to Washington,” and “the moral high ground” to cover over the fact that the reality is just D.C. business as usual. Funny, but the “new politics” looks just like the old politics.Update: Including the fact that the American people will only put up with so much. Tuesday afternoon, Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination.
A quick reader’s guide to postmodernism
courtesy of Brad Holland. This was published in 1996, so more has happened since then, but mostly, it still applies.