text:
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
She was saying that while Marianne Moore was a Republican in the 1960s, that this was not necessarily bad. Back then, she said, the Republican party was the liberal party. She pointed to Mayor Lindsey Wagner, and said that he had been a Republican and a liberal, and that the Democratic party of the period were "party hacks."
Why did this change, or has it truly changed?
Who are the best people in the Democratic party from a Republican viewpoint?
Who are the best people in the Republican party from a Democratic viewpoint?
Who are the worst?
Rather than thinking of the two parties as monolithic pillars of good and bad (depending on where one stands), what do you think are the bright spots in the other party, and the worst part of your own party?
If you're an independent, or in a no-man's land and don't vote on party lines, what would pull you over to one party or the other?
What is your single biggest issue?
193 comments:
- G. M. Palmer said...
Can I have three that are all related?
My ideal party would deregulate everything. Yes I mean everything.
They would ensure our streets were free of violent crime. Yes the numbers are going down respective to 1990 levels but they aren't anywhere near delightful Victorian minimums. They would also ensure that no nation would attack us. Switzerland does very well on this front, as does Singapore.
They would decriminalize most activities. I don't care what people do to themselves or in the bedroom--and it's far more productive to have sin taxes than to outlaw sin.
I would also have them enforce contracts.
I don't like any politicians. Dr. Paul is pretty okay. - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 7:51:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Ron Paul made a lot of sense to me whenever I heard him speak last year. When I used to be to the left, I liked the anarchists but often voted Democratic. I think at this juncture I would probably like the libertarians but vote Republican.
- Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 9:04:00 PM EST
- stu said...
It's what I've been saying. The R's and D's changed places on civil rights during the 60's. I see the causes as (1) LBJ's decision to back civil rights legislation, and (2) Nixon's decision to exploit the resulting discontent via the "southern strategy."
Anyway, I've given a long train ride home thinking about Republican politicians that I admire. I'm assuming that we're restricted to politicians who are still alive (I'll note one recently passed Republican who seemed worth noting where my esteem might seem unexpected). This list is intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.
Class 1. Moderate Republicans
George HW Bush. A great CV: A WW II combat veteran, long history of service including Director of the CIA, a solid grasp of foreign affairs. Think about it: during his Presidency, we fought a major land war against an Arab state, and improved our standing in the Arab world, without undermining Israel. He was tone-deaf on economic issues (his downfall).
Colin Powell. Chairman of the JCS during Desert Storm; GWB's first Secretary of State. An effective manager, and a man of great personal integrity and presence. He could have been the Republican's Obama had he not been sabotaged by Cheney/Rumsfeld.
Jim Edgar. Illinois governor from '91 to '99. An effective manager, and an honest man in a state with a notoriously corrupt political culture. He was able to reach across the aisle, and achieve bipartisan support for the broad strokes of his policies. Unfortunately, he (literally) has a weak heart, and is retired from politics. If he'd have run for Senate this year, he'd might have taken half of the Illinois democratic votes.
David Souter. A middle-of-the-road jurist, and often a swing vote before Alito replace O'Connor. Pragmatic, principled, not an ideologue.
Class 2. Republicans of Principle.
Lindsay Graham. Although I consider the current Republican senate caucus to be guilty of maladministration through obstruction, Graham stands out as someone who might be able to get the caucus back in the business of serving the American people. Not always right, but a man of deep principle.
Bill Bennett. A tireless advocate for sound education. I think his fights with teacher's unions were unwise, and a better politician would have been more effective. But even his opponents admire his energy, as well as his goal of making US education the best possible. A serious man.
Jack Kemp (deceased). Jack was a hard-core Republican, but his efforts as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Reagan lead to a reshaping of our cities for the better. He moved us away from high-rise public housing.
George Will. But only when he's taking about baseball. - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 10:43:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
This is a very good strong list. I'm afraid I don't know the legislature very well, or the Supreme Court, for that matter.
I think in general I am green. It's hard to find the bottom prevailing values even in myself, but when I hear people talking race and gender, I see red.
But if I see them talking parks, I generally like that.
One of the things that once attracted me to the Dems was that they appeared much more green than the Repubs, who seemed to only consider the business environment.
Even now I am somewhat loathe to think of nuclear power as the answer to our energy needs. Part of the problem is disposal. I realize that they have a good process now where they cover the disposables in glass and sink them way down deep, but I still worry about ook leaking up.
And of course terrorism.
My concerns lean heavily toward things like the spotted owls.
And parks.
When Obama talks about wanting to jump-start green projects including solar, and wind, and other alternative forms of energy aside from fossil fuels, that's where I'm willing to listen.
I understand that wind towers wreck the visual environment. Here in the Catskills many villages have preemptively banned wind towers. They ARE colossal (thirty stories high), and they kill birds, and they can ruin the pristine view of a valley or a mountain. But I think they are kind of cool, too. I like how weird and big they are.
I don't understand the technical problems surrounding solar panels, or why we don't have solar-powered cars. They seem to work pretty well in pocket calculators, but perhaps the energy needs for pocket calculators are less than for locomotives. But that's outside of my ken.
It costs about 20 grand at present to put solar collectors on your roof. This will slowly pay off, apparently, and Obama has offered some kind of break for those who do this, but again, I don't know the details. 20 grand is pretty much outside of any kind of possibility for me so I haven't looked into it. Whoever installs it can wreck your roof and make it leak. Around here it's very difficult to find a competent person, and I probably prefer to leave my non-leaking roof alone.
My dad used to talk about the Eden Purification machine that he saw in some magazine. It warms up your house, using only the energy of a toaster, or so they claim. There is a company about an hour away that sells these. But they cost about 500 dollars, and I don't know if they really work. I think how it works is you warm up a big chunk of marble and since it's marble, it stays warm all day and night, slowly heating your house.
People tell me that organic farming is not sustainable in a financial sense as a cure-all for the environment, and if everyone did it we would starve to death. I don't know if this is true. - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 2:30:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
A lot of our food is probably ethically awful. I don't think we should be grinding up cows and buffalo and other mammals to eat them. On the other hand, most of these animals would never have lived if we weren't going to eat them. Chicken and fish have almost no brains, so I don't think they care what happens to them.
I used to think there was some kind of wilderness that should be left alone. Now I think everything has to be managed, even supposedly wild forests and tundra. We're even having to be concerned about the arctic and polar bears.
It's very difficult to think through these things, and there are so many variables.
I used to think that abortion was just obvious -- that it should be available in case of slip-ups. But I no longer think that this is such an easy problem. If you are willing to give animals rights, then why not babies?
I don't see any easy solutions to our major problems. Tilting the race and gender oppression the other direction is still oppression, and I don't see how two wrongs can make a right. The race and gender people form monolithic blocks now in many academic disciplines, and they are so certain of their superiority. I always think, let the one whose race and gender have known no sin throw the first stone. It is particularly comical to me when Hispanic and Asian and others get up and start screeching about how bad America has been. I always think: do you know anything about your country of origin? Apparently not.
We have too many people, but you can't just slaughter them all. there has to be competition, but how to make it fair? - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 2:49:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
If some groups really do have lower or higher IQs, should we spend money getting computer chips into their brains so that they can either think better, or think not as well, so we are all on the same starting line?
My top concerns have to do with green issues (I liked that Bush signed over a bunch of islands to some kind of forever wild agency two days before he disappeared from office), and with alternative forms of energy (I fear however that many green czars are really reds in disguise, and they just want to make a giant bureaucracy!).
I don't really know much about the legislature, and don't know where I would go to find this information. People seem generally so polarized. You get a list of saints on one side, and devils on the other. I doubt if there is a single objective news source anywhere in America.
One of the Democrats that I generally still like is Bill Clinton. When I heard he had heart trouble, I didn't want him to die.
I like his smiling face, and that he's not always mean, and can play at the centrist game.
the Monica thing and his eating habits (double cheesburgers) were probably unhealthy, but he could make sense and seems affable. I would like him as a person, I think..
I hope he can make some sense of Haiti. I think he has the ability to bridge the business world and the private realm of personal feelings fairly well.
Carter drives me bats.
Freedom of speech is an important value for me, and when people get demonized for speaking what to them is the truth, it turns me off against the demonizer. When Carter said that anyone who was against Obama was a racist, I more or less decided he was a wretched fool, and started looking forward to his obit. I recognize that's fairly severe, but I think anyone who tries to stop discourse should themselves be stopped in their discourse. at any rate, whenever he now appears anywhere, I flick the station, and just wish he'd stop being such a violent bigot.
I'm not really that interested in politics except insofar as it impacts beauty. Beauty really does interest me, whether it's natural beauty, or the beauty of a poem.
the race and gender people seem blind to beauty. for them everything is political power. It drives me out of my mind. The right is generally silent on matters of beauty, which I prefer to actively arguing that it doesn't exist and doesn't matter. It does exist and it does matter.
It's one of the reasons I like the church. It's beautiful, and a lot of it is about beauty. The prose of Old and New Testament is just plain heavenly. I like how people dress up a bit when they go to church.
The whole country has become so slovenly: t-shirts and bluejeans and rotten speech, and the obesity, and the viciousness, in every sense. - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 2:53:00 PM EST
- stu said...
You've put up way too many topics for a coherent response. Let me just take on green energy for now.
I too view myself as green, but green with a long horizon (unlike the Republican view, which views anything past next quarter's profits as irrelevant), and green with an understanding that technological alternatives need to be evaluated against one another (unlike the view of many leftists, who seem opposed to all alternatives).
Fossil fuels won't be with us forever. We're somewhere near "peak oil," and there's reason to believe it was in the past rather than the future. At the same time, other economies (notably China and India) are bidding against us for the oil that remains. Oil comes with a lot of advantages, including mature technologies and portability, but it's carbon impact is large and growing. And our dependence on oil has enriched many governments and people who are hostile to our interest. Where do you think bin Laden got his money?! From us.
We need energy technologies for a post-oil, post-coal era. Right now, we have a number of such sources, including wind, hydrodynamic, solar, and nuclear. As well as conservation technologies that will reduce our energy needs. They all have costs and benefits. I'd rather put wind turbines out in Nebraska and the Dakotas (where there's a lot of wind, and not a lot of people) than the Catskills. There are wind technologies in development that are safer for birds (e.g., vertical turbines). Wind generates electricity, and electricity can be moved great distances at relatively low cost, albeit with loss. Solar has some great advantages, but the materials science aspects are more daunting that you might expect. We have plenty of places to put solar panels, but do we have enough indium, gallium and selenide to build them? We're going to need more than one boat.
Nuclear energy has its problems to be sure, but (a) we've learned a lot since the design of Three Mile Island (and Chernobyl's designed instability can be avoided), and (b), it gets us a lot of power, albeit at some risk. Containment of spent fuel and contaminated equipment is a big deal. Entombment in glasses, especially if buried in geologically stable structures, is probably our best bet. The risk isn't so much that it will leak out, as it is that our descendants will inadvertantly dig it up. We don't know how to create warnings that will survive for tens of thousands of years. Nukes cause thermal pollution, and they're (I hate to say it) obvious terrorist targets. These days, the threat profile includes airplane crashes, which is a difficult threat to harden against. Possible, but difficult and expensive. And probably necessary. And making an argument that I've made before, I see in Obama's willingness to fund new nukes as evidence for the thesis that he's a pragmatic centrist. Leftists soured on nukes long ago, and continue to argue against them in isolation, rather than considering their technical strengths and weaknesses as compared to other technologies, and our energy needs.
My hope is that we'll find other, less problematic energy sources in the future. But we're not there yet, and getting there seems require bridging technologies like nuclear power. Conservation, solar, wind, and hydrodynamic power will mean we need fewer nukes, and we'll have more balanced risks.
But this all requires investment now. This is what Obama promised to do, and what he's doing. Seventy billion dollars of the stimulus were earmarked for green energy. He'd do more if there was less obstruction. The Bush administration did little, and there's little Republican support for long-term thinking on this or any other topic. - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 7:35:00 PM EST
- stu said...
In the meantime, I'm bemused that this article has been up a full day, and that with all of conservative commentators on this blog, there is only one Democrat (Clinton) for whom any sort of esteem was indicated, and him by you. I came up with eight very different Republicans all on my own. You guys aren't keeping up your end of the discussion.
- Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 7:35:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I think part of my frustration is deeper than the two parties, as they call themselves, but rather the way that the two have become polarized entities, each blocking the other. And it's now become a game of football, three yards and a cloudburst of blood, as lineback something brian? bosworth once famously said when he played for the Seahawks (about Oklahoma football).
I suspect the truth of any situation is individual and doesn't fit into any of the false dichotomies the press serves up hot, and which we eagerly now eat up, hatingthe other side, and incapable of thinking outside these binaries, and the two parties eating up our appreciation, and trying to pump up the fervor with O'Reilly on one side and Doberman on the other rah rah rah,w hen everyone is just barking amd,
And if there was any truth about anything it wouldn't find a reporter, and if it did, it wouldn't find an editor, and if it did, the editor would be fired, and if it made it into the papers no one would read it, and if they did, they wouldn't understand it because it wouldn't fit into one of the prevailing paradigms.
I'm sick to death of the whole mess.
And anyone who plays any of the more obvious cards.
This idea was formuloated when I got a note from an Iraqi academic this afternoon who said that killing Saddam was important because it brought in a hundred new Saddams.
That's a perspective I would have never heard before, and I suppose I came to the conclusion that no one knows anything except those on the ground in a situation, the smarter ones of whom will never be interviewed, and if they are, they are skewed into our grudge match, which this blog is beginning to resemble, but thanks to all for fighting that tendency, esp. Stu for trying to see the good of the other side.
I shall respond more tomorrow. Thanks again for trying to illuminate me, everyone. - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 8:48:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
I said specifically that there aren't any politicians whom I like with the possible exception of Dr. Paul. Just so you know.
For energy:
1) no one knows what "peak oil" means except it's a good political term to throw around
2) there is a lot of natural gas under Appalachia
3) Nuclear power is only an engineering and logistics problem--which has been mostly solved. Politics still gets in the way (thanks, Harry Reid!).
4) Solar and wind come with very big problems. I love the idea of solar power but the current manufacturing requirements of solar cells are even more repugnant and destructive than those for building CFL lightbulbs and Priuses. Wind farms destroy the landscape and kill lots and lots of wildlife. Yes, oil shipping (and shipping in general--which is where most of our engine exhaust comes from) can kill wildlife--but pipelines don't (and using only domestic oil can help take money away from Terrists).
Also, wind and solar don't work all the time.
5) Geothermal energy is nice if you can get it. What are we going to do down here in Florida? Harness the waves? Let me know when you make that work.
6) The real problem is that there is little to no power (that is, prestige or money) in real energy innovation. And there won't be unless someone really pulls off cold fusion or harnessing wave or lightning energy or something nigh-on-impossible like that.
Re: Civil Rights--again, LBJ passed the laws, Nixon enforced them. - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 10:42:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Gm, loved the response here. Lots of good sharp comments, no bad words, and a good opening for the Nixonians.
Nixon got a bad rap.
Was he all that bad? What were some of his good sides?
Marianne Moore wore a Nixon button.
He can't have been all bad.
I visited theNixon Museum once in Riverside, or near Riverside. It had wax panoramas of significant events in his life. I was 17 when I saw it. Back then I thought I knew everything.
Now I'm pretty much where Socrates ended up.
The world is a huge puzzle and I haven't a clue.
I just follow the ten commandments and the prevalent laws.
Was Nixon that bad, Stu? - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 11:47:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
I like Bob Gates.
When it came to the economy, Ron Paul was right about the problem in a lot of ways, but wrong about any sort of pragmatic solution.
I like to regulate corporate practices more than personal practices -
Let a man smoke a cig, but don't let a corporation lie about the health effects of its products.
Let a man gamble his life-savings away, but don't let banks do the same with yours.
I believe in pretty-radical personal freedom for those over the age of 18.
I believe that it's almost evil to legislate against practices that May harm someone else.
We have to punish action and effect, not potency and possibility.
I'm going to text while I drive, because I can do it without looking at my phone, while you over there in the car blow-drying your hair with the heater or flipping through your ipod playlist are swerving into my lane. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 12:40:00 AM EST
- stu said...
Was Nixon that bad, Stu?
Nixon was fraught with contradictions. At his worst, he was that bad: paranoid, criminal.
His "swift and honorable" end to the war in Vietnam involved a huge escalation, four more years, the expansion of the theater to include Cambodia and Laos, and still did not prevent the communist conquest of South Vietnam two years later. Anyone on the left, right, or center who was satisfied with that outcome needs their head examined.
He gets credit for having opened diplomatic relations with China. Of course, had anyone else done so, he'd have made them pay a terrible price politically.
He successfully negotiated the ABM treaty, avoiding an expensive arms race. He ended the college exemption for the draft, but also ended the draft itself, both positives in my estimation. He changed Social Security so that payments were indexed to the cost of living, and instituted wage and price controls to try to slow down inflation, and was criticized on the right for doing so.
Nixon did enforce civil rights legislation, endorsed the ERA, and was pro-choice. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 8:00:00 AM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
Democrat politicians that I like? That are still alive?
Is Sam Nunn still alive? Joe Lieberman is good on certain issues (he's at least serious about national defense.)
As far as 'worst':
I particularly hate politicians who cynically use race for their own benefit.
That doesn't sound like I'm holding up my side of the bargain, but I do have an explanation. I'm a small government conservative. I'm not aware of any small government Democrats. There aren't that many Republicans who fit the bill either.
My single biggest issue would be the size and intrusiveness of the federal government. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 2:16:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
As your local Austinite, and with all the recent "let's brand insane murderers as part of the other side" shenanigans this blog has going on, the tone and content of the suicide note of the crazy guy who hated the IRS and flew his plane into the building here mostly shows that, if anything, he listened to too much Alex Jones (local crazy radio/access TV talk show host...not right or left, really, but a conspiracy-theory and shadow-governmenty and we're-all-slaves wackjob).
So if we must, AlexJoneser is probably the most appropriate label.
That being said, it looks like our firefighters here kicked some ass. Wonder if my friend Dan is working it...
Pretty amazing that at most one innocent died. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:01:00 PM EST
- stu said...
You guys are really something. The task is to come up with people from the other party you like, and the conservative side comes up with
1) Ron Paul.
2) Bill Clinton.
3) Sam Nunn.
4) Joe Lieberman.
Paul is Libertarian who belongs to the Republican Party. Clinton and Nunn (and yes, he's still alive, and is working as an advisor to BHO) are Democrats. And then Lieberman, who is an "Independent Democrat," which as near as I can figure means that he sometimes caucuses with the D's, but always votes with the R's. You might call him a Democrat, but I'd call him an apostate. Naming Lieberman is the moral equivalent of me naming Jim Jeffords as my favorite Republican, which I pointedly did not do.
So I'd give you guys 50% on party identification.
Kirby notes that he doesn't know much about the Legislature or Supreme Court. He also says that he gets most of his news from FOX. It seems to me that these are not unrelated facts. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:27:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I am actually not very interested in the news, but I do listen to several other sources. I often listen to NPR when I'm in the car. I often read WSJ.
I often listen to an hour of the public TV station at night.
And I was a Democrat until at least 9/11, when I was already 45. Historically, therefore, I have always preferred the Democrats, and people to the left.
It's the race, gender, class thing that turned me off. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:42:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
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- Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:43:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
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- Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:44:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
Kirby, it seems that your shift had more to do with 9/11 than race/gender/class...
The Democrats are no more (and I would possibly say that they are Less) focused now on race/gender/class than they were for the previous 3 decades.
Or is there a link between 9/11 and race/gender/class that I'm missing?
It would seem to be that if 9/11 were your side-shifting moment, then security would be the issue, not race/gender/class. (arguments about whether or not the Republicans are better on security these days than the Democrats are for another time, no?) - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 10:16:00 PM EST
- stu said...
And I was a Democrat until at least 9/11, when I was already 45. Historically, therefore, I have always preferred the Democrats, and people to the left.
It's the race, gender, class thing that turned me off.
Your story is your story, but this doesn't cohere. You give the impression that 9/11 was somehow significant in your decision to switch from D to R, but that didn't have a thing to do with race, gender, or class.
Also, it seems a bit odd in that these days the GOP seems mostly to be an entitlement protective association for rich white guys and the hacks that love them, and hence the race, gender, class talk is coming more from your side than mine these days. YMMV, of course. It is different in the Humanities departments, I'll grant, but none of Sarah Palin's "real Americans" belong to Humanities departments ya' know, so what happens there doesn't matter to real America. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 10:34:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
I said, several times, that I like no politician. If I like any elected official, I like Dr. Paul.
This doesn't mean I can't identify who is a Republican or Democrat. - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 10:48:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Translating for Kirby:
9/11 was "The last straw." He had been noticing the Marxist entitlement crap coming from the left for a while but 9/11 made him rethink his political outlook & he decided he couldn't brook the whining anymore.
'Bout right, Kirby? - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 10:55:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Brett, what bugged me about the humanities when I went through the grad school was the sheer number of paramilitaries that had sprung up. There were feminist, black, Asian, etc., all of whom had a single issue, and no other. Or so it seemed. As I went to conferences and read the literature coming out, this seems to have become an enormous phenomenon. That is, single-issue paramilitaries had taken over the humanities. Now you read through a single lens: but is this book good for women, good for blacks, good for the disabled. It struck me as a vicious and stupid way to read, to reduce a book to how it treated a single issue, often sacrificing every ambiguity and sense of humor along the way. Part of this was the usage of American horrors as a backdrop for their own group's essential goodness. So we had now springing up the notion that America was the most barbaric nation on earth.
When 9/11 came, the spark that lit my fuse was the Ward Churchill statement that the people in the towers were little Eichmanns. Churchill is often said to be a single anomaly but he is in fact representative of a vast state of mind in the single-issue paramilitaries that have turned our culture into a revolting Leastrygonian stampede of dumbness at least from the left. No one in Churchill's own department have disowned him,and to my knowledge no one in any Ethnic Studies department has ever disowned him. Those departments are legion.
So the two issues are connected.
On the other side you have the Palin hordes who have resurrected the flag, and with it, the charge of imbecile communism.
They are no more cultured than the Laestrygonians of the left, and perhaps even less so, if that is possible. But i prefer them because they love America and aren't so willing to turn it over to the single-issue militants and their Maoist hordes proliferating out of their programs with their screeching idiocy.
The Republicans have a single over-arching issue of their own: a better business environment. While I am not a businessman, I do think that Coolidge's statement, "Business is the business of American," is at least a decent overarching universal, and one that will keep America in the green, and black.
The other side is only too happy to put America into the red.
So I am not delighted by either side, but from where I sit, the right makes more sense. Business is a good thing.
Single-issue fanatics are a bad thing, especially insofar as they are untutored, uncultured, incapable of appreciating beauty (many of them actually believe it doesn't even exist, only power exists), and anything that can hasten their departure is a net good. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 11:01:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
GM's remark went through while I was typing my own remark. It wasn't just the whining. It was fear that America itself would go down the tubes.
I saw the hippy movement as a net good back in the day. But then it devolved into all these paramilitaristic groups. Feminism turned angry and ugly, and we got Val Solanas (and thousands of women who supported her when she shot Warhol). Black is beautiful, became instead The Black Panthers, and shooting police officers. The SDS split and turned intot he Weatherman, with people like Dorhn and Ayers actually going outside the law. The hippies themselves devolved into Manson.
And rock concerts went from Woodstock to Altamont.
Ginsberg started out putting daisies into the rifles of the National Guard. I appreciated that gesture. I thought it spoke volumes.Then at the end of his life it turns out he's a Nambla supporter.
I saw this whole arc as one thing, and turned against the Democratic party as having two faces. One is a beatific and utopian face that is all about children.
The other is a mean ugly mess that refuses to grow up. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 11:20:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
Kirby, I agree with most everything you said about paramilitary groups, especially as concerns literature...
I just don't agree that they represent much of the Democratic party, especially these days.
I really am not overly concerned with small sections of followers of a party - when it comes to politics, I don't care about identity, but about politics - 'policy,' as it were - By and large, I prefer Democratic policies to Republican policies...
Race and gender have nothing to do with it. Neither do vacuous terms like 'patriotism' and 'real Americans' as they are applied to certain identity-groups.
What makes sense, what doesn't, what works, what respects both the greatest good for the greatest number and the infinite value of the individual soul in a pragmatic, practical way.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Teapartiers when they actually run into having to deal with politics and policies... - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 11:35:00 AM EST
- Curtis Faville said...
The Founding Fathers imagined a political landscape in which competing interests could all be heard, and considered on the merits. I.e., the common man's interest and that of the factory owner's, should somehow intersect. The point of that intersection would be the ideal of governance, of right brought into realization.
But problems arise when people either aren't aware of the possible viewpoints, or what they actually mean or will result in. And, too, there are always winners and losers, and compromise is usually/should naturally be painful, to some degree. That pain--compromising on what you want--is the price of true democracy. No one should be able to avoid it completely. The rich should pay for being rich, and the poor should not demand charity as a birthright. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 11:41:00 AM EST
- stu said...
I'm actually with you on the single-issue thing. But I'll take this a few ways you don't.
First off, there are a lot of single-issue folks out there, and not just on the left, e.g., pro-life, free-trade, NRA. I think these are all dangerous, because they lead blocks of people to vote for dangerous fools just because they're "right" on the one issue that matters to them. As much as I hate litmus tests, single-question litmus tests are particularly abhorrent, and particularly easily gamed.
Second, I think that what bothers Kirby is not so much single-issue politics as it is identity politics, which is something of a special case. Here I have somewhat mixed feelings. If an academic wants, e.g., to make a speciality of African-American fiction, I don't see a problem there. It's the nature of academics to specialize, and there's nothing about the category of African-American fiction that makes it inappropriate to study or teach.
For my part, I think that people should be able to read and write well. They should be able to argue logically, and to be able to follow logical arguments. They should develop an aesthetic sense too. How they acquire these skills isn't as important as the fact that they do. We know that students who are well-educated in western literature and philosophy can do these things. It is certainly conceivable to me that students who are well educated in African-American literature and culture could too, although there's a burden of proof that needs to be met here (and for all I know has been).
Where I have a problem here is when one side takes the position that the other side isn't legitimate, and I see this on both sides of the fence. E.g., it seems to me that Bill Bennett and you would each advocate closing all African-American studies departments. This, to me, seems like an unwarranted abridgment of the legitimate academic freedom of other scholars. But at the same time, I think that scholars in these departments who view Classics Departments as vestiges of white oppression need to get a grip themselves. Western civilization has a long history, burnished by saints and tarnished by knaves (just like every other civilization known), and it remains an interesting and fruitful area of study, as well as a proven vehicle for developing the kinds of general academic skills I mentioned earlier. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 12:14:00 PM EST
- Craig said...
I still can't find the section in the rules of golf that addresses philandering. It seems to me it could fall under breaches of etiquette, or perhaps loco rules.
When Vijay Singh was accused of cheating it was because he entered a tournament and made the cut in a country where men are entitled to as many wives as can fit in their wallets. He spent three years doing penance at a driving range in a Borneo rain forest until a Malaysian woman took pity on him and married him. His own country disowned him on the say so of a sheik's nephew who didn't make the cut and wouldn't sign his playing partner's scorecard. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 12:26:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, I don't know as I would advocate closing African-american Studies departments or Women's Lit or any other single-issue lit department as opening them up to outsiders. That is, if you had Asians teaching in African Lit, and Africans teaching in Asian lit, and people wouldn't just scapegoat white America in those departments, they would probably offer something useful to students. But you need a variety of viewpoints competing with one another. Instead, those departments seem to invariably create Laestrygonians thinkalikes, or what used to be called groupthink, which then stamps new students, making them into red guards for their discipline, angrily chasing anyone who quesitons their orthodoxies.
When the best people in a field are paranoid nuts like Henry Gates, what are the worst going to be like?
I think the way into which you cordon off literature can create a Balkanization that was perhaps unintended.
Identity politics as it is composed in literature has created a Balkanization of literature, with tiny fiefdoms trying to carve out a niche for their righteous little bands of saints, making it necessary for American history to be painted in more and more drastic ways.
I wouldn't mind though if someone had a business in literature field.
I think business in general isn't nearly as bad for America as people seem to think.
I don't think every businessman is a little Eichmann.
As for the NRA people that you talk about, I guess this means folks like Ted Nugent, I don't know any of these people, and am not in contact with any of them, and they seem to live in Wyoming.
At any rate, they are not infesting literature departments, or asking me to count up the weapons in any given poem. If they were, it would bug me a lot, and I would want them out. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 1:43:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I don't know as I would advocate closing African-american Studies departments or Women's Lit or any other single-issue lit department as opening them up to outsiders.
This is a natural evolution. I think it is inevitable that the first scholars/proponents of a given culture will come from that culture. In time, though, any culture which is sufficiently interesting will bring in outsiders.
There was a sitcom years ago based on the delightful premise of a short, white kid from the suburbs who sought and got a job as a DJ at a Motown radio station. Having spent those critical years of puberty living in suburban Detroit, I could resonate very easily. The core tension that drove the show was his difficulty in getting his black employers and the occasional visiting artist to take him seriously. As is so often the case, the really hard problems of cultural accomodation are addressed first in comedy, and only then in the real world.
those departments seem to invariably create Laestrygonians thinkalikes, or what used to be called groupthink, which then stamps new students, making them into red guards for their discipline, angrily chasing anyone who quesitons their orthodoxies
It's not just those departments. And the word "groupthink" is still being used. But yeah, it's not an uncommon problem, and I see it in any situation where there is a reasonably well defined "us" vs. "them" dynamic going on. I suppose I'm just more optimistic than you are, in that I see the present dynamic as a temporary stage that many scholarly fields go through while they are in the process of self-definition and differentiation.
When the best people in a field are paranoid nuts like Henry Gates, what are the worst going to be like?
I would caution against judging a person on one episode, especially when it comes in reaction to being challenged by a police officer in your own house. Did Gates screw up? Sure. But if the same thing happens at Charston Heston's house, let's just hope the cop has a bullet-proof jacket.
I think the way into which you cordon off literature can create a Balkanization that was perhaps unintended.
I'm not doing the cordoning off here. Scholarly disciplines are largely self-organizing, and I'm just recognizing the divisions as they exist today. If we have English Lit departments and American Lit departments, I don't see anything wrong a priori with African-American Lit departments. I'd expect that most strong scholars in any of these fields would be in conversation with strong scholars from related fields, and that these groupings would change over time as other ways of partitioning the greater field came be seen as more important, e.g., hypothetically, I might imagine groupings around nonadaptive literatures (think books) vs. adaptive literature (think video games/hypertext).
I don't think every businessman is a little Eichmann.
Nor do I. Eichmann was a monster, and Churchill didn't just insult the honest workers at the WTC, he devalued the Holocaust by making it "ordinary."
Ward Churchill is an attention whore. Don't you realize that by getting wound up over him, you're giving him exactly what he wants? If you want to piss him off, ignore him. BTW, as near as I can tell, Churchill was eventually terminated for cause by the university (plagarism), acting on the recommendation of a faculty disciplinary committee. He sued for wrongful termination, and was awarded $1. This was appealed, and cash award was vacated, the motion for reinstatement was denied, but the finding of wrongful termination was not, and that is where things stand at the moment. I don't see why you think the process is broken. Would you have preferred a short drive to the country, followed by a pistol-shot to the head? I'd prefer the rule of law, myself. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 2:31:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, this was all fine, until your closing remarks. I never said anything of the kind that I wanted him terminated in THAT way. Goodness me.You seem to drop off the edge of the earth as well as any of the rest of us.
You may be right that the new disciplines founde don Marxist insights and us v. them will become less Laestrygonian over time.
I think on the other hand they will be likely to continue the Marxicization, and become ever more ready to pronounce scapegoats, and to go after them.
This is what happened in the USSR and other places founded on Marxism.
I see no reason why departments should act different than nations.
It was the Marxists at Duke who went after the lacrosse three.
It's what Marxists do.
Now if you started getting people with other philosophies in, this thing might dilute, or morph.
But I can't remember any point in Marxist history where they suddenly got pluralist, and started letting others of other persuasions in.
I think if you mentioned Locke as anything but an asshole, you'd never make it to tenure. You would get the equivalent of the long drive in the country, followed by a pistol to the temple.
A common practice in Marxist countries.
we still don't know what happened to lots and lots of poets and writers in the Soviet bloc, or in China.
Forget about N. Korea.
Make a joke of any kind in Myanmar about the government, and you will likely disappear.
Your optimism is notable.
But I think actual prevailing history of Marxist groups should indicate pessimism on all fronts cultural. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 2:41:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
I still find it so obvious that so much of Kirby's Kirbiness comes from his sheltered life - safe in the womb of liberal-entrenched jobs and environs.
He's never been to Wyoming!!! Or West Texas!!!
Never gone to Mardi Gras with southern frat boys who constantly complain about the 'nigs' from 'nigville' who don't know how to drive!
Never had his in-law's in-law tell him that he could 'solve' the socialist agenda of the Democrats with 'just one shot.' (I Wonder who That would be intended for?)
And he doesn't realize that the 'Southern strategy' that the Republicans used resulted in the largest identity-politics block we have in politics these days...
And he somehow thinks that Ward Churchill, who was kicked out of a liberal university (boulder=liberalsville, too liberal for my taste. yuck), is the exemplar of liberalness.
I have the feeling that if Kirby lived in 'Real America' he would really really hate it... - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 2:49:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
I think somebody should make a blog all about the oppression in NASCAR and Rodeo circuits, that they're all conservative and harming America with their one-sided viewpoints and lack of political diversity.
- Friday, February 19, 2010 at 2:50:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Oh, one more thing. Churchill is not the issue. I think Churchill himself is pretty much dead in the water as they say.
The issue is whether or not he is a general phenomenon or an anomaly.
I see there are 60,000 people like him in the teaching profession today, and they are going to create tsunami of ugliness among the youth.
Stu always attempts to isolate bad phenomenona. It's his rhetorical device.
I attempt to generalize it. It's mine.
I say that the low estimate is 50-60,000 Ward Churchills.
Churchill himself claimed that everyone in the WTC was a little Eichmann.
I claim that everyone in Ethnic Studies departments is a little Ward Churchill.
I cannot see how you will get from that type to a phenomenon of health.
I predict it breaks very badly, and I do see it already seeping up into the Democratic party's rhetoric -- esp. that of Howard Dean, but I have seen reflections of it in John Edwards, and even in B. Obama's rhetoric (but he's a lot more careful about this when he's on TV -- but you got traces of it in his condemnation of the hill people of PA as "clinging to God and guns").
Obama would have had to be brainless not to have picked this viewpoint up from Wright at church, and from his educational background.
Fortunately for him, he has a cover story that can talk business, too. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 3:02:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Brett, It's true that I can't stand to go south of the Mason-Dixon line and did drive through Wyoming once and it gave me the creeps. I stopped at a fly-infested gas station for refueling and wondered what on earth.
I've never been to W. Texas.
I can't stand the idea that one shot could ever solve ANYTHING.
One shot just creates a thousand more issues.
I hold to the liberal idea of open discussions, now and forever, and never should violence come between Americans.
I also think the Bush Baby blundered when we went into Iraq. It is a mess there. The libraries and museums are in terrible shape and warlords have proliferated.
This is not something I would have done as president.
I would have built up our spy network, and got more men and women into place, while all the while pretending I was doing zip.
what we need is better information.
This is missing, I think, in W. Texas, in Wyoming, and in the minds of Marxists.
It's very very hard to find good information.
all that which is coming out of Ethnic Studies departments is bad information.
All that coming out of the other places you name is also bad information, hopelessly compromised.
What we need is good information.
You won't get any of this from the MSM.
Fox is a little better. Hannity's interview with Obama Girl was fresh.
MSNBC just creates scapegoats: standard Marxist m.o.: "and now, for the worst person in the world award, ...."
And then you get the Marxist face freeze. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 3:10:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
The yellow journalist rags like the ones that broke the Tiger story are now the only places where something fresh will come in the print media. Most of our foreign news comes via the White House press corps. Almost no one can afford a foreign press officer any longer. So all the info we're getting is compromised by an agenda, and filtered through at least ten buffers. We know NOTHING of what's going on anywhere in the world as a result. Probably no one does.
- Friday, February 19, 2010 at 3:13:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Stu, this was all fine, until your closing remarks. I never said anything of the kind that I wanted him terminated in THAT way.
Uh, hyperbole?
I didn't expect you to answer my rhetorical question with a "yes." My point was really just this: if we accept the rule of law, we're going to have a process much like what actually occurred, and certainly not different enough to make you happy. But if you throw out the rule of law, where does it end? The pistol-shot to the head strikes me as the deep well at the bottom of a long slippery slope.
The point you raise about certain communist countries in this regard is absolutely valid, but what is its significance? I think it is that this slippery slope is real. If you set aside the rule of law, then you eventually get to that pistol-shot, whether that was your intent or not. And for the record I am and was quite certain that it was not your intent.
But I can't remember any point in Marxist history where they suddenly got pluralist, and started letting others of other persuasions in.
Look up Prague Spring. Yeah, it didn't end well, anymore than it did for the Hungarians the generation before. But this was a function of Russian paranoia in both cases, which is not necessarily communist in its origin (cf. the current ostensibly democratic Russian state, or the Czarist state before).
Your optimism is notable.
But I think actual prevailing history of Marxist groups should indicate pessimism on all fronts cultural.
I'm skeptical that these groups are pervasively Marxist in any deep sense. Oh, they're deep into the vocabulary of Marxism: alienation, exploitation, and all that. And not without cause. African slaves were abused, and racism been an enduring (albeit diminishing) part of the African-American experience. But I don't see a general interest in pursuing other aspects of the Marxist agenda. It seems to me that the overwhelming majority of African-American scholars want their people get ahead within the current economic and political system, and have no interest in replacing it with another system. The only thing that's revolutionary about them is their fervor to win on our terms. There are exceptions, of course. But that's why we call them exceptions. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 3:30:00 PM EST
- stu said...
The yellow journalist rags like the ones that broke the Tiger story are now the only places where something fresh will come in the print media.
Print media is in a bad place these days. Newspapers, it seems to me, are dominated by the need to generate news, which in the era of the internet is hard to do. It's more important to say what everyone else is saying today, than to wait and have something original (or even, perhaps, correct) to say tomorrow. An advantage that the "yellow media" has that they're working stories that will still be fresh if they're run tomorrow. After all, if Joe is sleeping with Jane tonight, he'll probably be sleeping with her tomorrow. And if not, the breakup is still hot news.
Most of our foreign news comes via the White House press corps. Almost no one can afford a foreign press officer any longer. So all the info we're getting is compromised by an agenda, and filtered through at least ten buffers. We know NOTHING of what's going on anywhere in the world as a result. Probably no one does.
These day's its easy enough to get news from outside. I have the BBC News service on my news reader. I check out Al Jazeerah from time to time. Google News hits on all sorts of extra-national sources. Of course, they have their agendae, too. Figuring out the speaker's/writer's agenda ought to be something that gets taught early and often. As should be testing your hypotheses about agendae against subsequent developments. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 3:48:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
You bring up an interesting issue, that of living amidst bad exemplars of a particular political or cultural stripe. I've never lived in an area that was heavily conservative. I've never lived in the South. I have, however, lived in France, worked in public schools and gone to an ELCA seminary. All of these experiences have convinced me that I can live alongside liberals without difficulty, but that I don't like their politics. I prefer living in an environment where different kinds of ideological fish can swim. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 4:16:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
A lot of the problems we're having in communication re: politics turns upon the word "Marxism."
I (and I believe Kirby) use it in the broad, literary criticism sense--that is, one "oppressed group" who "naturally should be in charge" or who "naturally does most of the work" should overcome the "evil oppressors."
This line of thinking was codified wrt workers & owners in Marx but has been co-opted as identity politics in general.
Sound about right? - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 6:48:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
That's how I use it, more or less.
- Friday, February 19, 2010 at 8:14:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
It also has to do with tryng to read through that lens, and correct anyone who doesn't. It drives me out of my mind.
- Friday, February 19, 2010 at 8:15:00 PM EST
- stu said...
All of these experiences have convinced me that I can live alongside liberals without difficulty, but that I don't like their politics. I prefer living in an environment where different kinds of ideological fish can swim.
I'm thinking that you're going to be very happy as the Pastor of an ELCA congregation. - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 8:39:00 PM EST
- Craig said...
If you read the introduction to Ben Hogan's Five Modern Fundamentals of Golf there's not much doubt that in the mind of Herbert Warren Wind, who wrote the intro, golf fifty years ago was an extended metaphor for maintaining a mistress. I think it's interesting there appears to be a one to one correspondence between the number of Tiger's mistresses and the major titles he has won.
- Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 2:31:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
I think that Marxism should be used as a term to describe the ideas of Marx.
So when you say Marxism, I think of the ten planks, and I think of communism.
That is first.
The fact that you call Marxist any oppressed group that seeks to be unoppressed? Is that what you're doing?
I don't know. I like using the word Marxism based upon the writings of Marx.
Everything else seems fuzzy and fruitless.
I don't think we should use the litcrit definition to talk about politics.
It's a false syllogism.
And on top of that, I think the lit. crit. definition is misguided, stupid language.
Just like most lit. crit.
How is it Marxist to read literature through a lens of feminism? That's idiotic. It has nothing to do with the state owning property, or abolishing freedom of press and religion.
Look - people-groups get oppressed. Then they form identity-groups to rise up from oppression. Then those identity-groups become entrenched and sometimes antiquated and view the world through too narrow a lens (become one-issue humans).
But it's really not that big of a deal, and it's not MARXism, so y'all should calm down about it, since the Democratic platform has a whole bunch of stuff in it that has nothing to do with race and gender and little to do with class.
Weird, though, that now the right is engaging in class warfare against 'elites,' which is more idiotic than having class warfare against the 'rich,' since 'elites' is more directly related to 'intelligent' than 'rich,' what with the possibilities of corruption, inheritance, and manipulation leading to richness.
Oh, and Andrew Joseph Stack was a terrorist, that much is clear. But Democrats don't want to call him one because that means there was a 'terrorist attack' under their watch, and righties don't want to call him one because he is frothing with some of the anti-government anger of the teaparty movement and they're afraid of that being a link.
Oh, and please don't pretend that identity politics is a tool of just the left - just look at Scott Brown's I OWN A TRUCK AND SO DO YOU VOTE FOR ME approach. And Bush pretending he lived on a ranch. etc.etc.etc.
All ID politics. Don't be blind to it. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 3:29:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, there are probably many conservative congregations left in the ELCA. Many are trying to form some kind of splinter synod (unwilling or unable to go over to Missouri, or to Wisconsin, or any of the other extant synods).
I imagine that the rural/urban axis applying to conservative/liberal also applies across the board to ELCA congregations.
There are even probably some conservative Unitarian churches out in the hinterlands of America.
That's a stretch and you might have to get out the magnifying glass to find them, but I would bet a nickel that if you had a huge fund to identify a Unitarian conservative, you could probably do this, with enough time and personnel.
At any rate, Picklesworth has to keep his identity silent for just that reason. He may not find a church within the ELCA unless he pretends to be hogwild for Obama. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 12:05:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Brett, has a good point about ID politics at the end of his post. That coming off as a working class Texan, or even a working class Massachusetts guy (the kind of guys who film THIS OLD HOUSE, which I really like!, as it gives me some carpentry tips! while also revealing interesting interiors of surviving Boston-area housing stock!), can still work, because most people are still working class, and certainly those who vote, and can rally behind a candidate are probably interested in getting big government off their back, and keeping costs down, rather than pleading for a hand-out from the government they just want to do their own jobs, and keep the taxes down far enough so that they can pay their expenses, get their kids through school, and so on, without all the collapsed groups having a president who wants to redistribute the money of the working middle class and the Joe the Plumbers out of their pockets, and into the pockets of the people who would prefer to take drugs and stare at the ceiling.
A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by the government. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 12:10:00 PM EST
- stu said...
... there are probably many conservative congregations left in the ELCA.
You're missing my point entirely. There is considerable variation within a typical ELCA congregation. Indeed, my sense of things is that diversity within a typical ELCA congregation is broadly similar to that of the nation as a whole, albeit with less mass in the tails.
I imagine that the rural/urban axis applying to conservative/liberal also applies across the board to ELCA congregations.
Certainly, the distribution is a bit different. Liberal views are proportionately stronger in the urban areas, conservative views are proportionately stronger in the ex-burbs. Suburban and rural communities fit somewhere in-between.
It is true that the leadership (both ordained and lay) tends to be more liberal than the denomination as a whole, and the seminaries more liberal still. This is hardly a phenomenon that is unique to the ELCA—you might want to ask your pastor about what happened at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, in 1974. Or, when jh returns from his Lenten absence, ask him about Hans Küng or Edward Schillebeeckx as archetypes.
At any rate, Picklesworth has to keep his identity silent for just that reason. He may not find a church within the ELCA unless he pretends to be hogwild for Obama.
There may be a few ELCA congregations for which the political views of their pastoral leadership are important. It would not surprise me if this were the case in either congregations with large homosexual populations (and here, we're basically talking one or two such congregations per metropolis), or congregations with majority African-American or Hispanic memberships (and again, you'd expect a couple of each per metropolis). My current Pastor supported Obama, his predecessor McCain.
For many years, my Mom and Dad went to the polls, and with great civic pride and love for one another proceeded to cancel out each other's votes. So it is with our churches. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 5:30:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
My mom and dad also cancelled one another's votes all their lives. My dad was always a conservative, my mom a liberal. My older brother was always a conservative in his thirties and forties, and now he's a liberal. I was always a liberal in my thirties and forties, (anarchist in my twenties), and am now more and more conservative.
People bounce.
I think perhaps part of the reason I'm conservative now is that I'm around conservatives a lot, but they are very culturally brilliant conservatives. Retired pastors, retired profs, etc.
But slowly the poison of the IDENTITY politics crowd has risen and filled me with a bilious disgust that I can no longer brook.
It's like the sewerage of the left has gone up above my neck in the English departments. I don't think this is a matter of any specific individual. I usually like individuals on their own terms, and feel that each person generally has some positives.
But in aggregate, the world of English has moved way wild to the left, and it's careening toward a one-party absolutism of vision that I see reflected in the polity in general in the lacrosse incident, but in other words the poop has not spilled.
I do see it in Ward Churchill, and a few other entities who've gardned the public eye, but there are a lot of people who follow in his mocassins not because of any inherent belief, but now more and more because it's the status quo.
There are people who will walk on whatever path has been laid down, and I fear that the way of the Wards of the world will forever extinguish the Beaverish notions of my 50s childhood, to which I look back as not so bad as astonishing rates of sexual disease, divorce, crippling taxes, abortion, and other data that pile up, and that people now take for granted.
May the churches preserve some kind of Beaveresque norm against the Ward Churchills who are fighting against those norms on every beach and in the sea, turning the seas from lemonade to lemons. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 5:49:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I fear that the way of the Wards of the world will forever extinguish the Beaverish notions of my 50s childhood, to which I look back as not so bad as astonishing rates of sexual disease, divorce, crippling taxes, abortion, and other data that pile up, and that people now take for granted.
Well, as long as you're taking "Leave it to Beaver" as your history, I take your point. But in the real world...
The effective Federal tax rate (that is, the average rate paid by all tax payers) was about 18% in the 1950's, with a maximum marginal rate of 91%(!). These days, the average rate is about 20%. Not much difference, although the maximum marginal rate is now much lower (and oddly enough, is not paid by the highest earners). The effective tax rate for the very rich is currently 16.6%. The effective rates in between were typically a bit higher. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 6:21:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
What do you think of the flat tax that has been proposed in the past of about 25%? I think Forbes was big on that.
I always feel that when we're talking statistics you're probably going to play some tricks that would take me hours at least to undo, and I feel you are often just a tad diabolical.
On the other hand, I don't really know.
Perhaps taxes were worse in 1958 proportionate to relative salaries, but I doubt if sexual disease rates, abortion rates, divorce rates, and other symptoms of social decay were anywhere close to what they are today.
Picklesworth's job is to try to impose the notion of sin, and yet get paid for it, a hard job, I should think.
Probably most ELCA congregations don't want to hear about Hell at all. They may not be universalists as the Unitarians are, but they are probably close to universalists.
So where is the punishment notion that used to keep people in place? If anything, the ELCA is now supposed to sanction just about anything and its ministers are now yes-men for sin, I should think, as a result.
If Picklesworth is not willing to play the yes-man to liberal congregations and to cheerlead them in going outside the boundaries of the ten commandments, he's in a pickle.
Imagine Picklesworth going in and saying, anybody in this congregation who has either had an abortion or is about to have an abortion, should burn in hell forever.
And then starts painting wild versions of hellwith fire going up the flesh, burning, while the aborted babies are hung around the necks of their parents, yoked together by their common murders, saying, "Why didn't you love me enough to keep me, mom and dad?"
In my day, that was the kind of vision that was evoked, and I suppose to some extent, it was a bit of a Stephen King thing to go to church every week and to peer over the edge at the burning flesh of the sinners, and to hope to remain on the straight and narrow.
Now, of course, with all boundaries erased, and universalism in place, even the Devil himself will be rewarded with a halo and a bouncing ball. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 8:43:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Walking off the court in the afterlife, God and Satan will be arm in arm in the universalist notion.
God will say, "Nice job, Satan, you had me on my toes there for a while."
Things have slipped.
Picklesworth's job will be to get his congregation back to the other game, where one is susceptible to the eternal flame with a single slip-up.
Well, I'm not sure there are still any pastors that are like that in the ELCA congregations. That's what mine were like in the Missouri Synod side.
Frightened me half to pieces, but it also gave you a clear sense of the rules of the game.
I don't think anything matters any longer in terms of sin.
I'm not even sure universalists can have sin as a concept.
Anything goes, right? - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 8:48:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
It isn't like there wasn't a lot of suffering in that world. Beaver was always socially worried, for instance, and tiny peccadilloes mounted into desperate scenarios with which Wally would often help him.
Now even the Ramones or people like that are considered normal. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 8:50:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
I have to chuckle over the direction the conversation has turned. I was away for our staff/council retreat.
Stu's right about ELCA congregations. There's quite a range of political opinion, but it tends toward the middle. I have strong opinions, but I like living together and having respect for each other.
As for hell fire preaching? There's a lot of ways to go wrong, most especially from a Lutheran perspective. I don't relish the thought one bit, though I am most certainly called to preach honestly and forthrightly about sin. - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 11:05:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
The top 400 earners still pay proportionally more (nearly 1/3) than they earn. - Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 2:30:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Would you mind ranking sin for us?
Is homosexuality a sin?
I can't understand that particular scenario. I don't understand how someone can be attracted to their own sex, but if they are, is it their fault? Doesn't a sin have to be your own fault, to some degree?
I've known lots of gay people, and some are poets, for instance, who I find quite funny and intelligent.
All the different denominations vary on that particular front. Episcopalians and Unitarians have total acceptance now, and I think Baptists or at least some Baptists, are completely against.
Lutherans are somewhere in the middle, with the Missouri synod against, and the ELCA very friendly towards, this particular practice, or whatever it is.
Could you clarify your own stance? Since you have the cover of anonymity, perhaps you could give an objective account of where you place this, and what you think the rest of us should think about it.
would you ever preach against it from an ELCA pulpit?
what sins would you preach against in particular, and what illustrations would you give, and what suggestions for eternal damnation would you present? If any? - Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 9:49:00 AM EST
- stu said...
What do you think of the flat tax that has been proposed in the past of about 25%? I think Forbes was big on that.
Actually Forbes proposed a rate of 17%, with personal exemptions.
A Kinder, Gentler Flat Tax
I have mixed thoughts. On one hand, I think that the existing tax code is rendered unnecessarily complicated because there's so much social engineering built into it: incentives for this, penalties for that. The result is a tax system that is burdensome in unproductive ways. I typically spend about a day preparing my taxes (which is a de facto 0.5% increase in the effective tax rate), as well as paying close to $100/year for tax preparation software. On the other hand, because of the nature of social security taxes, this proposal would mean a much higher effective tax rate for low-income people than high-income people. This seems wrong to me -- the rich benefit much more in proportion from the things that government provides than the poor do.
At the end of the day, I prefer a simple, progressive system, and to leave any social engineering to the expense side of the budget. I'd also tax capital gains and dividends as income. And yes, I'd bend the marginal rate at the FICA cutoff so as to avoid de facto regressive taxes.
I always feel that when we're talking statistics you're probably going to play some tricks that would take me hours at least to undo, and I feel you are often just a tad diabolical.
I always try to be honest in argument, and this includes mathematical and statistical arguments. It seems to me that if you have to cheat to win a political argument, then you haven't won. And I will consider counter arguments and accept correction, which I believe is prerequisite to honest debate.
Perhaps taxes were worse in 1958 proportionate to relative salaries, but I doubt if sexual disease rates, abortion rates, divorce rates, and other symptoms of social decay were anywhere close to what they are today.
Sexual disease rates are hard to judge. In '58, they might have been lower. In '46, they were probably higher, as syphilis was essentially untreatable until the mid-50's and the development of effective antibiotics. In any event, record keeping of sexual diseases was and is problematic. Likewise, it's probable that abortion rates are higher now, but this is not as clear as you might think. There were no reliable statistics kept in the days when abortion was illegal, and contraception was more problematic. I'll note that our very existence is proof that sex was popular in the '50's, and indeed, it could be argued that there weren't as many other things to do.
Divorce is something for which statistics exist. The current marriage rate is 7.1 per 1,000 population, while the divorce rate is 3.5 per 1,000 population. How does this compare with historical figures? In '55, there were 9.3 marriages per 1000, and 2.3 divorces. In '50, it was 11.1 marriages per 1000, and 2.6 divorces. In '45, 12.2 marriages, and 3.5 divorces. These numbers do not look radically different, although what is notable is the change in ratio of marriages to divorces, which tells us something about the fraction of marriages that end in divorce, from about 1 in 4 in the '50's, to 1 in 2 today. Today's rate is certainly a social problem, and symptomatic of sin in our relationships. But the '50's were not some idyllic time in which all people went to church, all children were borne to happy couples that wanted them, and all marriages endured. They were, in fact, a lot more similar to today in these terms than is generally realized. - Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 4:06:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Not that you asked me (and we certainly discussed this before, though I think more on Stu's blog), but it's not that homosexuality is a sin--but actions taken because of it can be.
- Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 5:29:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
These numbers do not look radically different
They don't?
25% doesn't look "radically different" from 50%?
You know what the statistics are on children raised in broken homes. Yet you're willing to say that an increase of 100% in the proportion of these children (let alone an actual increase in number--what, 300%?) is somehow not significant?
A 25% divorce rate is better than a 50% one. Period.
p.s. Just a note, by the way--it's not that 50% of all first time marriages end in divorce, but 50% of all marriages--which makes the chance for first timers better than 50/50 for making it. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 8:51:00 AM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
Ranking sin? Sure.
1. Unrepented Sin: This is particularly bad and leads to death.
2. Repented Sin: This is bad, but it's covered and forgotten.
Homosexuality is no worse than disinclination to care for the widow, the orphan and the alien. Nor is it better.
I feel strongly about it not because it's worse, but because I perceive there to be a movement to call it something other than sin. This was what Theologians of Glory would tend to do, according to Luther. Whereas a Theologian of the Cross will call something what it is.
So, while I'm at it, the desire to rate sin is in itself sinful. So you are screwed Kirby. By means of the law you simply don't measure up. (...) It brings us through the wilderness, it is necessary, we dare not put it in the cupboard like some churches have, but it cannot bring us into the promised land. It is absolutely powerless to effect that change in us.
Gotta go, breakfast is on!!
Oh, and Jesus loves you! :) - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 9:27:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
I feel strongly about it not because it's worse, but because I perceive there to be a movement to call it something other than sin. This was what Theologians of Glory would tend to do, according to Luther. Whereas a Theologian of the Cross will call something what it is.
So, while I'm at it, the desire to rate sin is in itself sinful.
To which I add a hearty W00T. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 10:08:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
WB - there is deep hypocrisy in much of the right wrt homosexuality as a sin - it's easy to focus on because it's not something most people have to deal with personally.
Yet greed is seen as a virtue in much of the right...(just listen to Rush limbaugh, and remember that he has millions and millions of followers and that major conservative figures never want to cross him).
If Righties condemned themselves for their own greed as much as they condemn the small percentage of lefties who are gay, then I'd grant the right more validity in its anti-gay stances.
Too much of the right touts avarice and gluttony as a-okay while condemning homosexuality outright. So much of it seems like a self-serving game of pick-and-choose your sins to be upinarms against - I know that you personally don't fall into this mold - but it has tarnished the church and conservatism in this country, and muddied the waters in terms of how religion should or should not influence politics.
One of the things I like about Kirby is that he is at least consistent in bringing up gluttony as a sin on a par with homosexuality. That at least makes sense... - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 2:54:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Lest anyone be confused about just how the Left in America feels about marriage & fidelity, here it is from a member of the mainstream left:
Say It's So, Tiger.
Be sure to read the comments! - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 3:38:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Actually, Brett, I'm not sure what homosexuality is.
I really honestly don't understand how someone can be attracted to their own sex. It makes no sense to me.
I don't get it.
Gluttony on the other hand, I understand. That should definitely be stopped.
I don't think that people should practice destructive sex as in anal sex. I think that's a bad idea.
But hetero people do that,t oo.
It's bad for the receiving partner's rear end, I should think.
But as for me saying no one should be attracted to the same sex, I guess there are people who are made this way.
I think there are probably also people who are just plain fat. But if you look at photos from 40 years ago of street scenes, almost no one back then was fat by our standards.
I'm just confused at how all the norms and all the agreed upon distinctions are fading away.
But maybe every generation feels that way as they get older.
Still, I think it's wrong to allow yourself to get fat. No one is born fat.
Some people are apparently born homosexual.
When the doctor brings you the baby, instead of it's a boy, or it's a girl, the doctor might say, your child is gay. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 5:58:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
You seem to want to pin "greed" on the right. Harumph. Some of the greediest people I've ever heard in public life are the folks who say, "The rich don't pay their fair share!" Greed is not synonymous with wanting to keep what you earn. It is not a public policy position. It is a state of the heart. I'm not particularly tempted to pin it on either the right or the left. It is sin and we're all subject to it.
As for right wing hypocrisy vis a vis homosexuality...
Too much of the right touts avarice and gluttony as a-okay while condemning homosexuality outright. So much of it seems like a self-serving game of pick-and-choose your sins to be upinarms against
I think you are guilty here of what you decry. Are there self-serving and hypocritical critiques of homosexuality? Absolutely. (And I'll admit to you that I cringe when someone uses it as a campaign issue when it is clear that the politician is just pandering.) But here you are using the existence of such hypocrisy as an excuse to tar the whole Right with it. The Left dismisses conservatives as sexists, racists, warmongers and people who hate children so as not to pay any attention to actual policy arguments. Hypocrisy? You betcha.
Many politicians are shameless and phony panderers. There's no doubt about it. This affliction respects no ideological boundaries. They distract us with poo-flinging and we get enraged over the injustice and hypocrisy of the other side. "How dare they!"
Now I don't mean to be a populist. And I'm not willing to say that there is equivalency. I think the Left is worse about such things (because they can get away with it, not because they're actually worse people.)
Anyway. Blah, blah blah, warggarrbblllll is about all I can muster right now.
How's this? No matter how much fun it is to generalize, it gets us into all kinds of trouble. I'm guilty. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 7:19:00 PM EST
- stu said...
25% doesn't look "radically different" from 50%?
Actually, they don't. The point here is that if we'd have taken a poll and come up with our best guess as to what the divorce rate was in '55, I very much doubt that we'd have come up with 25%. Maybe 5%. Maybe.
Just a note, by the way--it's not that 50% of all first time marriages end in divorce, but 50% of all marriages--which makes the chance for first timers better than 50/50 for making it.
Yup, and this is part of my "not radically different." To a first approximation, married people fall into two classes: married once, never divorced, vs. married three times and divorced three times. If we plug the numbers, we see that 75% of today's first marriages survive, whereas 90% of first marriages in '55 survived. Not that different, and not necessarily worse (at least in my opinion), if most of the excess 15% were abusive. YMMV, of course.
A 25% divorce rate is better than a 50% one. Period.
I respectfully disagree. All things being equal, then clearly you're right.
God wants (1) us to be in relationship to him, and (2) to be in just relationships with one another.
Divorce is a consequence of human sin. It is a consequence of a broken relationship, and moreover at least one broken promise. These are the root manifestations of sin, out of which further manifestations like physical, psychological, and sexual abuse can take root. Divorce can prevent these further manifestations, or it can itself be a manifestation of sin, e.g., where one spouse uses it to renounce financial responsibilities towards the other spouse, or their children. So, is divorce good, or is it evil?
Some of both. Some of both.
Certainly, our modern culture encourages the worship of youth, and tells us all that we can be young, we can have the sexual energy of the young, and we deserve sexual partners who are themselves young. Such messages are undoubtedly challenges to weak marriages. But to associate this with liberal views is slander. The association belongs with advertising and marketing. Sex sells. Sex doesn't only sell sex, it sells cars, clothing, vacations, movies, oral hygiene products, power tools, paint, and asphalt. Advertising supercharges our economy, causing us to spend today money that we might otherwise invest, but the velocity of money through the economy is also the force that creates most of our jobs. So, is the love of money the root of all evil (per 1st Timothy 6:10, and Hebrews 13:5), or is it the root of our prosperity (per Kirby's hero, Adam Smith)?
Some of both. Some of both. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 7:39:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
I disagree, somewhat, that greed is a 'state of the heart.' What matters is actions, no? And greed can be seen in actions, eh? Though that's an ancillary argument.
Christians of a certain stripe talk way too much about homosexuality, and it's not just because there's a group of people promoting it - it's because it's a less-universal sin, so it's easier to judge others for. (unlike greed and gluttony, which the rightsies just let slip on by while their own talk radio hosts brag and boast about gorging themselves on material goods).
Garth Brooks is an abomination...
Of course the left has its own ways of avoiding policy debates and focusing on political footballs - (though I would argue that the right does this much more...or, at least, better...the recent health care debacle being a pretty obvious example. Obama did an awful job of playing political football, and now a healthcare bill that has Policies which Americans support has lost support among Americans because of the rightie wharrgarbl. Maybe it's just that the party out of power has more time to wharrgarbl since it has less responsibility to govern, and can criticize without having to provide reasonable alternatives that folks have to know all the details of...)
Saying that the right has certain hypocrisies does not mean the left is bereft of similar hypocrisies.
And Kirby - the norms aren't fading away.
They're changing.
Millenials are more pro-gay marriage and less religious (only 75% believe in God)...But I have a feeling that millenials will have a lower divorce rate than boomers.
we'll wait and see... - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 7:46:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
GM - nice fallacious labeling of 'mainstream left.'
Huffingtonpost is perhaps 'mainstream left' (though a little left of mainstream left).
I'll give you 10 bucks if you can find anything similarly objectionable on that website (and being that it's half-gossip mag, they have a lot of Tiger-woods commentaries and stories).
The percentage of lefties who view fidelity like that bozo you linked
is probably lower
than the percentage of righties who are birthers.
(about 1/3)
Don't be all Kirby-like, pretendin' the extremes are the middle. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 7:54:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Ted Rall is an established and respected leftist commentator, pundit, cartoonist, and author.
He is as mainstream leftist media as you can get.
Stu--how many abusive broken marriages end up with the abuser finding a new victim and the victim finding a new abuser? At least half? Probably more? In that case the "good divorce" is just spreading the violence around.
Luther was wrong to encourage divorce. - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 9:41:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
Glenn Beck is an established and popular commentator, radio talk show host, TV talk show host, and author. He was also named as someone Sarah Palin would consider a viable running-mate.
Yet I would not call him mainstream-rightist...Though he did speak at CPAC. I'm sure mr. Rall never had such prestige in the Democratic party. I've ne'er heard of him...
I still hope that WB is vaguely close to what a mainstream rightist looks like.
Your point is moot, however, since Democrats have better stats when it comes to divorce rates...
Not that I care, really, but you seem to... - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:47:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
Oh, and Teddy has called for Obama's resignation...
doesn't sound very mainstream to me. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:49:00 AM EST
- stu said...
how many abusive broken marriages end up with the abuser finding a new victim and the victim finding a new abuser? At least half? Probably more? In that case the "good divorce" is just spreading the violence around.
About half seems like a plausible guess, although I'm aware of no empirical studies on the question. There's a hint in the fact that the divorce rate goes up with each successive marriage. Divorce is, after all, a manifestation of sin, and removing the context for its expression does not remove the essential rebellion. This is always a problem -- if we're the source of our own unhappiness, running away isn't going to help. But sometimes, we're not, and it really is the other person's fault.
But you would leave a person shackled to the sin of another, even sin that makes them a victim, and make God a party to their abuse. Let us recognize that God wants us to be in faithful, loving, life-long relationships. A life-long abusive relationship is not a better approximation of God's intent for us than a severed abusive relationship. At least the later provides some possibility of establishing a a faithful, loving, life-long relationship with another partner.
Luther was wrong to encourage divorce.
Where did you get that from? Luther did not encourage divorce, he forebade it. You obviously have a misunderstanding of the nature of Lutheranism. Luther is not our God. Lutherans have not replaced the trinity with a quadity. He was a man, a theologian, who restored to the church some valuable insights about law, sin, and salvation. His goal was never to create a separate church, but to restore the Catholic church.
Modern Lutherans are not bound to Luther's opinions and writings as if they were scripture. Luther, e.g., believed in the Genesis creation myth as historical truth, as did essentially all Christians of his day. Such opinions are not binding on modern Lutherans. Lutherans were even willing to debate the Augsburg Confession with the Catholics of their day, and entered those debates honestly, i.e., with a willingness to accept correction if indeed they could have been shown to be in error. This is why the Lutheran argument continued to be developed through the Apology to the Confession, the Formula of Concord, etc. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:00:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
and make God a party to their abuse
This is the 2nd time you've referenced God being responsible for human sin (the first was re: slavery).
Why not blame humans for human sin? Luther suggests in any case but adultery (or his ridiculous defense of leaving someone because of frigidity) a divorce result in a permanent separation but not remarriage. Perhaps that's how one should counsel abusers and the abused in order to break the cycle.
And Luther didn't forbid divorce rather he expanded it (see above comment) and supported bigamy, too. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:48:00 AM EST
- stu said...
This is the 2nd time you've referenced God being responsible for human sin (the first was re: slavery).
You're misunderstanding the structure of the argument. Please forgive me a couple of didactic paragraphs, in my persona as logician.
My arguments took the form of proof by contradiction, sometimes known as reductio ad absurdum. In such an argument, I begin by asserting the premise I intend to prove false. In my arguments, that premise has been that God wants us to remain bound in life-long relations that are intrinsically unjust, as in a slave in his slavery, or a wife in marriage to an abusive husband. From this premise, using logic and statements already proven/assumed, I infer another statement, in these cases, that God wills that we remain in abusive relationships, which contradicts an statement already proven or assumed, in this case, that God wants our human relationships to be just, and that he intends that marriage be a life-long, faithful, loving partnership. The result is a proof that the initial statement is false, or what is equivalent logically, that its negation is true, in these cases what is proven is that it is consistent with God's will that we sever relationships that are irredeemably unjust.
I'm glad that you recognize the absurdity of asserting that God is responsible for our sin. The question is whether or not you will take the next step that logic demands, and recognize that it is not God's will that slaves remain in their slavery, or wives (or husbands) remain as abused parties in irredeemably broken marriages.
And Luther didn't forbid divorce rather he expanded it (see above comment) and supported bigamy, too.
Let me suggest that it would be most accurate to say, "forbid with the traditional exceptions."
Luther, in the sermon you linked to, cited three permissible justifications for divorce: (1) physical incapacity to participate in marriage, (2) adultery, and (3) sustained refusal to be sexually available to one's partner. Moreover, Luther took the position that any of these three defects in the marriage relationship were the result of assignable blame, and only the innocent party was permitted to remarry. I see in Luther's position here a very conservative position. Yet I acknowledge that you were right to correct me, forbade is too strong. Strictly limited, in accordance with his understanding of marriage as part of the natural order, as the vessel for human reproduction, and his interpretation of Matthew 5:32, is more precise. Moreover, I acknowledge that this is not a quibble, the distinction you raise matters in the context of this discussion.
As for bigamy, you refer to notorious but essentially unique question of the marriages of Philip of Hesse. Luther certainly did not approve of bigamy generally. But he did believe that the royals are different from us, both with regard to their privileges and their responsibilities. Certainly, if you believe in monarchy (as you do), then you must accept that the first responsibility any monarch has to their people is to produce a legitimate heir, so there will be an uncontested succession. Philip and his first wife were not able to perform this (although the speculation subsequently been that the blame lay with Philip, who may have been infertile due to syphilis). The only feasible way for Philip to meet his princely obligation was to produce an heir through another wife (the "wife" part being essential to convey legitimacy for the purpose succession).
These days, the way out of this puzzle seems obvious to must of us. The warrior Saint George of Virginia established the principle that we do not need a monarchy to live well-ordered lives, and in this case, dispensing with the monarchy dispenses with the only condition under which Luther was willing to consent to bigamy. In any event, I am unaware of any bigamous marriage except for Philip's that had the blessing of any recognized Lutheran body. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 2:02:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
then you must accept that the first responsibility any monarch has to their people is to produce a legitimate heir, so there will be an uncontested succession
Except that I understand succession is the most difficult part of monarchy and don't necessarily support familial monarchy.
And if Luther thought the royals were different from us then he needed to reread Paul. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 2:56:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu reads the Phillip of Hesse debacle through the lens of the need for an heir.
But Luther also needed Philip's army, and so he bent the rules for Philip in order to avail himself of his army.
Since every other splinter movement had been crushed by the Pope's armies, it was wise of Luther to grant this divorce. Luther was one of the few theologians who had a pragmatic side that was as well-developed as the spiritual side.
If he hadn't done this, we might all still be paying for the indulgences of the Papacy.
It might be "wrong" to have done this, but in the light of history, one sometimes has to make battlefield strategic computations.
The Finns made an alliance with Hitler for instance against Stalin. Some purists still want to take the Finns to task for this, and yet if they had not, they would have been reduced to slavery under the Stalinists as were the Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians.
The Finns committed a small evil in order to see themselves through to the greater good.
This is what war is, in general. You have to see it as evil, of course, and it is only justified if it counteracts a greater evil.
One is permitted to tell white lies if it allows your family to survive (children are encouraged to say that a parent is home for instance in order to ward off a would-be burglar).
The police are permitted to shoot a mass murderer. It's not right to kill someone, but in this instance, it's the lesser of two evils, for if the mass murderer were to escape again intot he night, more people would be slaughtered.
This kind of pragmatic thought is also part of Lutheran thought. We are permitted to act as hangmen, for instance, and to execute an evil fool.
This is bad for that person, but it is good for the community, as it sends a message.
One always has to keep the larger picture in mind. It is ok to fight a war if the alternative is that all your men will be slaughtered and your children will be kept as slaves.
I think many people find it hard to do this comparative thinking, and to allow one evil in order to safeguard ourselves from a greater evil.
It's very important that we be able to do this.
Working for instance is a necessary evil for most people. However, it is in the greater good if it puts milk on the table for the children. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 3:16:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
t might be "wrong" to have done this, but in the light of history, one sometimes has to make battlefield strategic computations.
Yup, and Jesus should have had angels take him down from the cross, I suppose? - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 3:51:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
No, because again you have to see the larger picture in each instance. Jesus was sacrificed as part of a great and mysterious drama, and if he had used angels to get him down, then he would have f'd up the whole scenario because he wasn't doing what God wanted, so again, he had to put up with the smaller evil, in order to do a larger good.
You have a very hard time understanding this, for reasons that I find peculiar.
The Civil War was a vry hard time for every one. But it's the same idea.
Heroes in general can see the bigger picture and are always willing to sacrifice themselves for that larger picture. This is why Jesus was a hero. And why John Brown, too, was a hero.
Amy bishop, on the other hand, was not a hero. What she did was just plain awful, and didn't illuminate a larger picture.
The people who shoot abortion doctors are also not heroes, because they are not illuminating a larger picture.
In general, it's ok to sacrifice yourself for a larger picture, but the picture has to come into better focus after what you've done. If you scramble the picture, you're not a hero.
I think the Islamic terrorists understand this. They have to blow themselves up (people keep saying, why don't they figure out how to not blow themselves up at least?), but then they wouldn't be heroic from within their own culture's viewpoint.
It doesn't convey itself to us, and I think it's not winning hearts and minds in the pan-Arabic world, either, but that's at least the attempt. But you have to be able to think well in order to sacrifice oneself brilliantly.
Thinking well and thinking thoroughly is part of heroism. It might be the most heroic thing any of us can do. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 4:03:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Yes, Jesus had to put up with the evil of crucifixion to save us.
Luther, however, decided to become implicit in a great evil because what, he was scared? He thought of royalty as different?
If he wanted to make a sacrifice he could have told Philly to tell the truth. Instead he channeled the father of lies.
The only thing Luther sacrificed with Hesse was honesty and integrity. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 6:29:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Luther, in the sermon you linked to, cited three permissible justifications for divorce: (1) physical incapacity to participate in marriage, (2) adultery, and (3) sustained refusal to be sexually available to one's partner.
I assume you would agree in light of 1) that Luther would oppose gay marriage? - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 6:33:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
The Finns committed a small evil in order to see themselves through to the greater good.
Finland is a state, not a person. It can neither be saved nor expected to behave as if living in Christ.
Luther, on the other hand, was saved and was expected to behave as if living in Christ--which means not to lie.
One is permitted to tell white lies if it allows your family to survive (children are encouraged to say that a parent is home for instance in order to ward off a would-be burglar).
Permitted? By whom? Where? We frequently make un-Christ-like decisions in the name of pragmatism (no matter how personally important they seem). This does not make the decisions correct.
Then you go on to confuse sacrifice with killing. Many do this. They all are wrong. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 6:39:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Luther had responsibilities since he was the leader of the Reformation.
This required practical exigencies, not for himself, but for everybody that he would ever know who was affected by his decisions.
He had to think about what was best for everybody.
And defeating the Pope (Luther regarded the Pope as SATAN, and says so explicitly over and over, especially in the Smalkald articles) was a crucial part of freeing Germany from the bad Pope.
The Reformation had to succeed, and in the long run it meant literacy, and freedom, and joy, for everyone. Even the Catholics benefitted because ultimately their rules even had to allow them to read, write, and think for themselves: sacred values around here at Lutheran Surrealism. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:26:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I assume you would agree in light of 1) that Luther would oppose gay marriage?
Absolutely. As I've said, I'm not bound to take Luther's position on everything. In particular, we know a heck of a lot more about homosexuality now than Luther did.
BTW, AFAIK, no one has ever responded to my observation that the section in Romans often cites against homosexuality actually sites it as its own punishment. Why do you want to add punishment on top of what is already specified in scripture? - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 9:56:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I don't think anybody wants to punish gay people. No one that I know does, at least. I think everyone believes that all gay people deserve the same civil rights as everyone else with regards to the ability to live peacefully and hold jobs.
The one problem is that some denominations do not want them to pastor.
Some accept them as bishops.
I think that's the rub, if there's a rub.
Many states seem to be moving toward allowing marriage, or some kind of equivalent.
I think it's still baffling what it is. I don't understand how a person can look at a picture of their same sex and find it interesting. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:44:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
I don't want to add punishment; I also don't think that marriage should be the purview of the state.
I owe you both longer responses but I must to bed.
In short tho it seems like Luther used a lot of "exigency" to cover evil acts. Not okay. - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:54:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
Kirby, the Political rubs as of now are:
1) can gays serve openly in the military.
2) can gay people marry and/or have the privileges that come with marriage.
3) can gay people adopt
The rub Did, however, used to be
4) can gay people get fired for being gay
5) can gay people work as teachers.
(of course, long ago it used to be things like)
6) should we kill gay people for being gay.
Thank God for the progressives, since it'd be an abomination if the hardrighties won and gays couldn't teach (or work at summer camp)...
This sort of thinking is not that far removed from the way a fair number of people still think - when I was in college (2003), there was a slightly older gentleman in one of my classes who loudly and consistently argued that gay people should not be allowed to work as teachers - "I don't want them infecting my kids with their gayness" was basically his argument.
Kicking someone out of the army for being gay is punishment. Restricting what someone views as their civil rights seems like punishment, at least from a certain perspective...
Kicking someone out of their job, even if it's a spiritual one, seems like punishment.
Adulterous pastors get fired. If homosexual pastors get fired, that's the same punishment for a similar idea...punish the sinner for the sin.
Agree or disagree with the actions...but I don't see how there's not punishment in thar. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:56:00 AM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
Stu, your argument is noted. I would argue differently. Clearly homosexual behavior is hunky dory because we took a vote on it and it passed. Bring on the pornography!
- Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 10:21:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
In particular, we know a heck of a lot more about homosexuality now than Luther did.
We do? Like what?
Note--in order not to be accused of "trapping you," you are aware that the search for "the gay gene" has been called off, right? - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:32:00 AM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
You note a progression of societal treatment of gays. I think that's fair. What you don't do, however, is continue it. Further steps along that continuum might include: prosecuting pastors who refuse to marry gay couples, persecuting those who publicly disapprove of homosexuality.
I think homosexuality is an abomination and a sickness. I'm happy that society shows more compassion towards homosexuals than it once did, but we're well past that (in my opinion of course.) I think we're tearing society up in a thousand different ways and our reward is that people suffer, not least homosexuals themselves. Yippee. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:44:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Clearly homosexual behavior is hunky dory because we took a vote on it and it passed. Bring on the pornography!
Not quite. What we voted on was allowing individuals who are in long-term same-sex relationships (i.e., there has to be a mutual expectation of permanence) to serve as Pastors. In effect, we are applying to homosexual pastors the same standards of ethical sexual behavior that we apply to heterosexual pastors. We have not held, for example, that because it is o.k. for active heterosexuals to serve as pastors that all heterosexual behavior is o.k. Likewise, our historical willingness to accept that our pastors may be sexually active (with members of the opposite sex) has never been interpreted as licensing (heterosexual) pornography within the church.
There is something to debate here, but you raise too many straw-men here for this to be a useful start. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:20:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I wrote:
In particular, we know a heck of a lot more about homosexuality now than Luther did.
GM replied:
We do? Like what?
We know (at least in the sense that there is a scientific consensus, albeit not unanimity) that homosexuality is innate. We know that homosexuals who marry members of the opposite sex for whatever reason (social pressure, camouflage) end up with partners who are not sexually satisfied, and feel unloved. Moreover, these "artificial" marriages often crumble. In short, we know that homosexuality is not a choice.
Note--in order not to be accused of "trapping you," you are aware that the search for "the gay gene" has been called off, right?
I must have missed the memo. At this point, there is some evidence that homosexuality is tied to the hormonal environment of the fetus. It seems likely (to me, anyway) that there are genetic aspects to this, but it is clear that there cannot be a single gene that regulates homosexuality.
We know of lots of genetic switches, i.e., mechanisms in which a system that is apparently regulated by continuously varying chemical concentrations acts discretely. A good example is simple cell differentiation -- a single pluripotent progenitor cell gives rise to all of the differentiated cells of the human body. As each such cell arises by a process of cell division, in some sense, each cell of the body is that pluripotent cell, after having gone through a sequence of differentiating events that distinguish it from its sister cells. Human sexuality may well work the same way, and indeed, this appears to be the most plausible model.
And no where in this biology do the notions of good vs. evil, of free choice, of sin, or of rebellion enter in. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:33:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
W.B., I'm curious to know if you find that there's any difference between male and female homosexuality.
That is, do you find that one is more acceptable than the other?
Just wondering.
I think that since the women are not as likely to pass diseases, since they are more likely to be monogamous, and they are not doing anal sex, it's not as bad.
I think American - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:35:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I have a lot of respect for you, and intend no disrespect, but you've set yourself up for some very hard questions.
Do you think that Pastors should be allowed to refuse to marry interracial couples? Do you think it is appropriate for a Pastor to withhold the sacrament of Eucharist from a petitioner, because he/she believes that they are living in a state of unrepented sin, such as advocating a pro-choice position, or perhaps the abolition of the gold standard?
I believe that Pastors are under the obligation to follow synodical policies. Previously, e.g., homosexuals, even those in long-term faithful relationships, were not permitted to serve as Pastors, and any who were discovered were removed from Pastoral ministry. I don't expect that these decisions will be revisited. Previously, Pastors were prevented from marrying homosexuals, and those who did anyway were subject to discipline, even if they felt in good faith that they synod's position was wrong.
Our current policies recognize that there is disagreement within the church (and here I mean the ELCA specifically) over whether or not homosexuality is sinful. Therefore, I see no problem at present, nor am I aware of any policy, that would prevent you from expressing a public opinion on the matter. But as for the matter of marrying homosexual couples, there I think you are at risk. As I understand it, Pastors are not required to marry any couple who presents themselves for marriage. But it would be exceptional for a Pastor to decline to perform a marriage when at least one member of the couple belongs to the congregation, where the couple is willing to go through pre-marriage counseling, and where there is no manifest disqualification or state of unrepented sin. I believe that if you do decline based on a couple's homosexuality being an unrepented sin, you're in for a lot of trouble, and likely an unwelcome trip through the synodical disciplinary process. Do you perceive any of this differently? - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:50:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I wanted to conclude that all viewpoints should be ok, and no one should be criminalized for them.
After all, the exercise of religion requires that we follow what we think God has said.
This gets hard when we have more than one religious culture (witness clitorectomy in France!), but it's nevertheless something we have to try to understand.
I personally just don't know what it means to be gay, or why people arrive at such a state. As a young man I would have just said, ewwwwwww!
But I would have also said hi, and played along, focusing on the parts of another person that I considered healthy.
Most people do have some aspect of them that is healthy.
And there is no one who isn't at least a little sick. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 1:55:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
On a purely visceral level I find male homosexuality more disturbing and disgusting than lesbianism, but I don't think that there's actually a difference.
Another thought that occurs to me is how high we have elevated tolerance. It is difficult to write what I feel about homosexuality because it's so "mean." I think we are well on our way towards constructing a societal taboo against criticism of homosexuality. [This thought comes courtesy of "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor] I suppose some might think that this is good, that we are becoming more open. I think we are merely shifting the objects of our tolerance. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 2:38:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Picklesworth, can you shift over to Missouri Synod before it's too late?
I think your thinking is more in line with Missouri.
ELCA is going to make your life very very very hard unless you remain totally incognito about what you think and believe (Lord knows the other side did until they took over, and now they're going to make it doubly difficult for the other side on many questions to remain in the synod).
I think you should just switch synods, though it may be difficult to do that.
ELCA pastors cannot pastor Missouri congregations, and vice versa, I believe.
You may also be able to pastor a Catholic church. They are looking for a few good men, as the sign said.
As Stu said, all the decisions that have been made, now that the top guys finally got the answers they wanted, will never ever be allowed to be revisited, or even brought up. If they are, anybody who does so will be ejected from their official positions.
You have to run screaming when the "liberals" take over. They will not allow free thought. It's way too dangerous.
At any rate, the divides are such that it's just going to continue like this for a longer time until we can find a common scapegoat of some kind. A world war would do it, but I would prefer this Civil War, which at least rarely breaks out into shooting, and even the shouting is more or less limited to bumper stickers and the cold shoulders you might get at a supper party if you mentioned you dug Reagan, liked Bush, and yearned for the days of Hoover and Taft and Calvin Coolidge.
Even the left would have to agree that Lincoln was a good man, so it's no fun to bring him up. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 3:10:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
The topic of homosexuality has become surrounded by all manner of traps and difficulties. I will try to extricate myself.
I will not call active homosexuality anything other than what it is, sin. It is a sin, which like other sins, causes harm and heartbreak. I've been looking at the text for this coming Sunday (Jesus' lament over Jerusalem) and it's clear how much love God feels for us even and especially when we are mired in sin. The focus needs to be not just on the accusation of sin, but on God's graciousness. Grace and truth go together.
Most conversation these days seems to dichotomize the issue. Either you get sinners vs. non-sinners (conservative ditch) or haters vs. the compassionate (the liberal ditch.) Jesus both loved sinners and hated sin. Our challenge is to do the same. Quite clearly this is not an easy task.
Stu, I would allow myself to be disciplined or kicked out of the church, but I would not declare God's blessing on sin. I dare not do that. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 6:33:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Picklesworth, can you shift over to Missouri Synod before it's too late?
I think your thinking is more in line with Missouri.
Doesn't it seem a bit odd, that in a thread in which you decry people whose political identity boils down to a single issue, that you recommend to Mr. Picklesworth that he reconsider his synodical affiliation on the basis of a single issue?
I certainly agree that it seems as if Mr. Picklesworth's stand on homosexuality is more in keeping with that of the LCMS than the ELCA, but this is just one of many differences between the synods. Other significant differences include: ordination of women, stance on the literal truth of the Bible, open vs. closed communion, stance on the authority of the Book of Concord (the "consistent if" vs. "consistent because" question), stance on church polity (i.e., are women voting members of their congregations), and a myriad of others. His position on most of these issues is unknown to us.
It may be, for example, that Mr. Picklesworth does not believe in young-earth creationism. The considerations of synodical polity that I mentioned before are not really different in the LCMS, and since young-earth creationism is a doctrinal stance of that synod, he would be obligated as an LCMS Pastor to represent it. He might find this to be objectionable. We don't know.
Of course, thing change, and the ELCA's stance on homosexuality has changed, and this might be an occasion for reconsideration. That must be his call. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 6:53:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, I think the gay issue is one of discipline and punish and the left can't wait to kick some ass on that front, and anyone who presents themselves in that line, will surely be brought to their knees and thoroughly scourged.
I do think the young earth thing is very very seldom brought up or of any interest to anyone. Hard to make it mean anything, and it doesn't matter much to anybody, although Obermann loves to screech that anyone who believes in it has a vestigial tail.
But I think that within the right there is a lot of room for doctrinal disagreement.
Within the left, none.
The leftis the most illiberal group extant, which is why I think it's funny they call themselves liberals. On most questions they are anything but.
Of course there are some liberals left within the Democratic group, but mostly they dare not speak. Open-mindedness seems in general to be a pattern that dare not speak its name.
There are probably righties like this, too, it's just that I never ever come across them.
But it may be that they are more prevalent down Brett's way.
I haint' never done been there. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 8:33:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
"But I think that within the right there is a lot of room for doctrinal disagreement.
Within the left, none."
Hogwash on the second sentence. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:02:00 PM EST
- stu said...
The topic of homosexuality has become surrounded by all manner of traps and difficulties. I will try to extricate myself.
A good idea :-).
Stu, I would allow myself to be disciplined or kicked out of the church, but I would not declare God's blessing on sin. I dare not do that.
I think that the only potential difficulty you're likely to encounter within the ELCA will be if a gay parishioner asks you to perform either a same-sex marriage (in a state that permits this) or a commitment service (in a state that does not). Whether or not this will be a real difficulty as opposed to a hypothetical difficulty will depend a lot on the couple in question, the stance of your bishop, etc.
My expectation for Lutherans specifically is that they're not disposed to making spectacles of themselves. If you've made it clear that you love the individuals, and that you're available to offer them pastoral care and access to the sacraments, but that it goes against your conscious-bound belief to solemnize their relationship, most will accept this. Most, but not all. I believe that the great majority of bishops, even among those who accept gay marriage, would honor your committed belief. Most, but not all. I don't think it's likely that you'll be put to any sort of test on this, but I don't think it impossible.
Please understand that from what I know of you, I see no barrier to you having a life-long ministry within the ELCA, and I hope that you do. If you're far enough along to be a Pastoral Intern, you've already been vetted by a rigorous discernment process, and deserve the benefit of any doubt.
Contrary to what Kirby says, I don't see anything in ELCA's action this past summer that leads me to expect that there will be an attempt to purge the ELCA of members or clergy who believe homosexuality to be sinful, and even though I fall on the liberal side of the underlying question, I would strongly oppose such an attempt. Variation of conscious-bound belief on this question is affirmed, not condemned in "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust." This is a most unlikely posture to take if the goal is to enforce unanimity of opinion.
Clearly, as a Pastor, you would be expected to provide pastoral care, and to provide the means of grace (which in a Lutheran context amounts to the sacraments together with Confession and Absolution) to all who are in your care. I don't have the sense that you'd find this to be the least bit problematic.
In the meantime, I sincerely applaud your willingness to take a stand on principle. From a Lutheran perspective, and as much as we avoid unilateralism in favor of a collegial approach to matters of belief, there is still only one possible answer to the question, "Can you alone be right?"
"Yes." - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:15:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Brett, give an example where there is more than one acceptable opinion in the left!
On abortion, you have to be for it.
On gay marriage, you have to be for it.
On u. healthcare, you have to be for it.
On war, you have to be against it.
I can't think of a single thing the left thinks about where there is not unanimity, and a totalitarian viewpoint that you have to either be for it, or you're out.
So give me an example, if that's not so.
Any value-laden question all leftists will automatically agree.
At least that's been my experience.
Righties don't care to agree. Even when dennis Miller and O'Reilly are talking, quintessential righties, they enjoy scandalizing one another by taking positions that the other one will find repugnant, and then laughing about the difference.
No two leftists can ever do that at least insofar as I've seen. They have to be as alike as two drops of water.
Even down to global warming, everyone on the left is identical. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:17:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
It often seems to me that the left doesn't even want to discuss anything. They just want to agree, and form a power-block against any opposition.
It's dangerous because it has led to groupthink in the past, and has done it again in the present.
On many campuses there is now one way to think, and if you don't think like that, you can't work there, or you are shunned. It's quite an incredible thing that has come to pass.
5000 liberals and one or two conservatives at Duke, and they say they are all about diversity. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:21:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
The natural tendency of the left is toward communism, and to smash or reduce its anarchist wing to splinters, especially when they are in the ascendancy. Freedom therefore disappears, while a ruby-scrum forms in which everyone shares everything, including thought. It's a Laestrygonian state.
Against this the right is naturally about liberty of every kind, and tends toward the libertarian stance of someone like Sarah Palin -- where everyone has rights, even the very smallest (babies), and the handicapped.
The group however takes precedence within the left, and the group is smashed down into a single individual generally taking on the form of the most powerful member's thoughts, with everyone lining up like magnets to either Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, or whoever else is dominant.
Socialism is just that: social, and the individual disappears.
On the right, the individual is foremost.
I prefer the right for that reason.
I think one of the greatest weaknesses of the left is that since no individual can speak, nothing in fact gets said, and it's the state that ends up doing all the talking, which means the most powerful member of the state does all the talking, and usually the talk is fairly stupid, and general, along the lines that Orwell drew in his volumes against the phenomenon. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:32:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Stu, I think the gay issue is one of discipline and punish and the left can't wait to kick some ass on that front, and anyone who presents themselves in that line, will surely be brought to their knees and thoroughly scourged.
I do think the young earth thing is very very seldom brought up or of any interest to anyone. Hard to make it mean anything, and it doesn't matter much to anybody, although Obermann loves to screech that anyone who believes in it has a vestigial tail.
But I think that within the right there is a lot of room for doctrinal disagreement.
Point of information: I do not recall any purges of seminaries or clergy within the ELCA, nor in the LCA or ALC (two of three predecessor bodies). Can you name any? Not hypothetical purges that might happen, but actual purges?
I do, however, recall with specificity a large scale purge of the LCMS seminary faculty, and essentially all of the seminarians, and many other clergy, in '74. Which is why the AELC broke off from the LCMS, and became in the process the third constituent body.
So the reality is that the thing that you're sure is going to happen has never happened, whereas something that is essentially equivalent to the thing that you say is very very seldom brought up and is of no great importance (in '74, it was whether or not Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale) has occurred. - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 11:38:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, as Johnny Carson used to say, looking out at the audience, when faced with a bird watcher or some other person with an unusual fact, "I did not know that."
Is there a history of these doctrinal disputes written down somewhere or is there passed down via the oral tradition?
I didn't know that the Jonah and the whale literalism became such a dividing point. It sounds like something someone made up, but you never know. If it's been written down by a credible witness somewhere, I would love to read it. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 11:57:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Jonah & Whale != young earth creationism. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 12:12:00 PM EST
- stu said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 12:48:00 PM EST
- stu said...
There's a brief history of the affair here:
Wiki: Seminex
The wiki article does not mention Jonah, but it does talk in a more general way about the growing acceptance of historical-critical methods by that faculty at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, the conservative reaction that lead to the election of Jacob Preus as president of the LCMS, and the actions that lead to the creation of Seminex.
The wiki article also presents the departure of Seminex faculty and students was voluntary on their part. That's not how I heard it, from several people who were seminarians there at the time. [Generally speaking, the seminarians who went from Concordia to Seminex entered the ELCA through the AELC, and a disproportionate number ended up in Metro Chicago.] Operation Outreach was hardly unmolested. The Preus wing of the LCMS made sure that the seminarians were greated by hostile committees, who were provided a list of literal tests that the seminarians had to pass before they were permitted to speak to the congregations directly. These questions included the notorious Jonah question, something that was universally reported by all of my informants. To remain at Concordia, the seminarians had to assent to a variety of biblical literalism litmus tests, Jonah included, and the great majority would not.
A quick web search revealed a biography for a candidate for the LCMS Presidency in '04, who specifically listed a belief that Jonah was swallowed by a big fish among his qualifications. It seems pretty clear to me that the Jonah story remains a part of the corporate memory of the LCMS. As such, I'd expect that your Pastor to be aware of it, and I expect he'd confirm the Wiki description of the controversy, as well as my additions. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 12:48:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Jonah & Whale != young earth creationism.
Both are indicative of hard-core biblical literalism that will admit no exceptions. Choice of pressure point is really just a matter of taste. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 2:09:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I didn't know about the Seminex controversy, and was interested to read more about it. I'm not sure what I think about it. As soon as you introduce science as the ultimate test of Scripture, the whole thing falls apart. That said, I'm not sure we should ban science. They seem to me to be separate ways of knowing.
Even Aquinas said that.
Even Avicenna said that.
Science is totalitarian and wants to argue that it's the only way to know anything, but I can't see how science really knows anything worth knowing.
Meanwhile, with the new ELCA ruling this last summer, there is going to soon be a fashioning of another hammer, a giant hammer that will smash anyone down who doesn't tow the line of marrying gays in their churches, and being what's called HIV positive (loving everyone with a fatal disease, and giving as many resources to those people as a church can possibly provide).
The hammer hasn't been fashioned yet, but you know that that is next.
Gene Robinson has already disciplined (ejected, I believe) a pastor or two in the NH bishopric who has refused to follow his law and hasn't married a gay couple based on conscience.
If I were Picklesworth, I'd see that as a precedent which will very quickly present itself on his path through life. I don't think pastors ever quite get tenure, so they are never safe.
It begins with some arm-twisting, like, what's the matter with you, are you sure you should be in the ELCA? And it ends with, you're out, unless you conform to our rules.
This is the way of institutions. They have to have some kind of conformity, and whoever manages to get the upper hand in them, sets the rules.
With Stalin, it was first a fairly vague paper saying that the Kulaks as a class posed problems. Within a year, they had been obliterated.
Clowns to the right of me, jokers to the left, and here we are, stuck in the middle with one another.
Oy vey, as they say.
I still think if I were Picklesworth, I'd go right, and stick with Missouri.
He's in a pickle, and I suppose there's another 10,000 people like him trying to thread their way through the seminaries, wary of the hammer and sickle to the left of them, and the cudgel of the right to the right.
I still say if you have to go between Scylla and Charybdis, stick with Scylla. Charybdis sucks everything down and kills everyone eventually, as we have seen repeatedly with the left.
Scylla just takes a few, so the odds are with Scylla.
right-wing societies tend to remain prosperous and functional, and liberty is at least to some degree allowed. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 2:19:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
All human societies appear to have scapegoats, according to Rene Girard.
He proposes Christ as the ultimate and end of all scapegoating.
I don't think it quite worked out.
But I think it's better to go with a society that has a few scapegoats, and leaves the main body of people relatively alone. Leftist societies don't work, because they aren't based on natural selection, and so the thing goes down the tubes. Leftism quite simply, like Charybdis, sucks.
Rightism sucks too, but generally only for the few who are scapegoated.
It would be nice to have a perfect society, but since we're a mess, I don't think we can have that. So the choice is between two evils.
Leftism by far is the greater of the two evils.
Veer to the right, say I, but only moderately. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 2:23:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I looked in amazon.com to see if there were any books on this topic and there appears to be one that is more or less similar to the Wikipedia page that Stu links to, it's by James Adams and is called The Great Lutheran Civil War, and costs 67 cents, and then there's one in reprint by Zimmerman, called Preus and the Fact-Finding Committee, which is apparently by an inside to the LCMS because it was published by Concordia. A brief synopsis:
"This book recounts events in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) leading up to the 1974 walkout at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis. Beginning with the 1947 division over church fellowship, the author sheds light on the numerous small controversies that culminated in charges against the faculty for teaching contrary to the LCMS position on biblical authority. Zimmerman shares his personal account of the Fact Finding Committee interviews, coupled with pertinent passages from convention documents, bylaws, and findings of the committee. This book includes the full report of the Fact Finding Committee, never before made public, and the -Blue Book,- the complete 1972 report of the synodical president."
This one sounds better to me, but the cheapest copy is about 35 dollars. I might get this one via interlibrary loan. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 2:32:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
I doubt I'll ever end up in the Missouri Synod. Not because I have a problem with them, but because it's just not where I come from. I'm more of a literalist than your typical ELCAer, but I would cringe at the idea of using that as a club or a litmus test. I think Missouri is just plain wrong on women's ordination, but I respect that they are trying to hold closely to scripture. It's a mixed bag.
The reason that I intend to stay is simple. I was called into this church. I will witness to the truth as best I can; I will love and serve the people of my congregation; I will try not to let church politics creep too near to the center of ministry. One ditch that respects no ideology is arrogance. I don't want to leave, saying, "I'm right and you're wrong." I might believe it, but woe to me if I don't realize even more strongly my own shortcomings.
One final thought. Christ must laugh at denominations. Or cry. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 2:48:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Picklesworth, I'm just glad I'm not a minister! I thought the pickles in English were hard to manage!
Theological pickles will really give you your money's worth.
Best to you, and best of luck.
I just thank goodness I was not called to the ministry. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 3:11:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Well, remember two kingdoms if you need to. Luther lied when he was in a pickle.
We can lie, too.
It's important to give yourself that out. Lying when you're under a constraint is ok.
The truth can always wait for a more appropriate day.
Even in Just War, we are not under the obligation to fight a stupid war and martyr ourselves and widow the wife and leave the children without a provider.
Choose your battles carefully, remain in the shadows, and you should be just fine. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 3:31:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
For the love of peanut butter, Kirby, the ELCA isn't Nazi Germany. There are a lot of good folks here. And being on the wrong side of the power equation isn't an awful thing either. One simply needs to follow Jesus Christ. If that gets you into a trouble, well, isn't that an honor? In any event, I certainly don't have any delusions of grandeur. A nice small parish in Iowa would suit me fine.
- Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 3:44:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I wouldn't have used N. Germany as the analogue. Something more along the long of Henry VIII's relationship with Thomas Cranmer, his wives, and so on, would strike me as being somewhat better. you're in good for a while, until the 800 pound gorilla wants something else.
I do notice that you are under a pseudonym here, as are all of my righties with the possible exception of Palmer.
This is wise, because the left loves blood, and have, ever since the Fr. Revolution. Nothing worse than to end up a basket case!
But I think that wanting a relatively quiet church in a relatively quiet town in a relatively quiet state like Iowa, and keeping your real name out of the proceedings, is probably also wise.
I also notice that all my leftists are more than happy to give us their full name. They have nothing to fear, after all, being the summation of all worldly virtue. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 4:32:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Gene Robinson has already disciplined (ejected, I believe) a pastor or two in the NH bishopric who has refused to follow his law and hasn't married a gay couple based on conscience.
Cite, please. I've searched and not found. I did find references that 20 Episcopalian Priests who resigned in reaction to Robinson's ordination were subsequently defrocked. In Virginia.
Note that Gene Robinson is an openly gay Episcopalian Bishop, and that the ELCA and Episcopalian Churches have very different conceptions of the office of Bishop. In the ELCA, the Bishops are analogous to LCMS Synodical Presidents: they're elected for fixed (but renewable) terms, and they're expected to lead by organizing consensus. Episcopalian/Anglican bishops are ordained for life, and they're expected to lead by dictating. It really is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
In particular, the ELCA's social statement actually acknowledged a broader variety of views (in effect, it noted a lack of unanimity on the question, rather than mandating unanimity on one position or the other). You trying to twist an intentional increase in permitted diversity of belief into an attempt to dictate belief. It is the LCMS that dictates belief on this question, by this is not a problem for you because it dictates the position you hold. But don't be confused as to which synod is doing what.
I do notice that you are under a pseudonym here, as are all of my righties with the possible exception of Palmer.
I've gone back and looked at a couple months worth of comments. The conservative side has been held up by: Kirby Olson, G. M. Palmer, W. B. Picklesworth, James DeLater, Emmy DeLater, John Hanson (who is sometimes to your right, and sometimes to my left), and Ed Baker (I'm not sure he's to your right). Have I missed any significant commenters on the right? I count one pseudonym here -- Mr. Picklesworth. But don't let mere facts get in the way of a good argument.
This is wise, because the left loves blood, and have, ever since the Fr. Revolution.
Extremists on both sides want blood. The closer you get to any extreme, the more likely you'll bleed. I don't think the left is any different than the right here. You say France, I'll say Argentina. I don't think you have a point here. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 6:34:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I put James to my right, but I don't think it's his real name. Also, Picklesworth, but that's not his name, I'm fairly certain. Is GM Palmer the real name of this person? Again, I don't think so.
I see John Hanson (JH) as being very far to my left (he is a huge Obama supporter), but then he also has one or two attributes of the right (anti-gay, anti-abortion) but he doesn't strike me as being very adamant about these aspects.
At any rate, I suppose we're all over the place, although it does seem that you, Stu, and Brett, are the most orthodox members of the left.
Tom is, too, and Stephen Baraban, but I admit they rarely show up. But when they do, real names, and super-far to the left.
There used to be a mathematician who was center-right named George Grady, but that was also not his real name. It's quite funny. Anyone to the right operates in secrecy, or so it seems.
This is why I more or less wonder at the huge Tea-bag rallies. These are people who are visible and get on the government photo records, and can be tracked down.
And yet they exist!
and people like Sarah Palin -- in spite of the gauntlet she has had to run through the left media, and the drubbing they have given not only herself and her family -- she loves the country enough to still say what she thinks, even though it makes her violently unpopular.
Gotta love a country where Madison still rules, and where faction still exists, even if most members of the righties' factions are more or less in the shadows. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 8:09:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, plus I'll have to do research on how Robinson disciplined a recalcitrant pastor within his bishopric. I believe that I read this in a church circular. I'll try to track this down, but I don't have a lot of time on the computer this week. I have four kids at home during a blizzard and they are glued to the computer screen, and I'm only getting a few minutes here and there to log on and push the comments through here and there.
Meanwhile, I am reading a book about Calvert Vaux (architect and chief designer of Central Park in NYC).
I'll try to find the Gene Robinson stuff soonest. My understanding is that he ejected a pastor from his church for refusing to marry a gay couple. This must have beenin New Hampshire, since his authority doesn't extend beyond that state?
I'm not sure about the exact boundaries of his bishopric, however. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 8:35:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, there might be something on this page that refers to it. In the five minutes I've had, this was the best possible source of a lead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_Anglicanism - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 8:43:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I looked, it doesn't seem to be there. I checked all of the occurrences of Robinson, discipline, priest, and marriage. No dice. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 9:28:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
Kirby, tea-bag? Why not scrotum sucking dick lickers? (Will I one day be haunted by having typed that?) Let's just let the term die like it should.
- Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 10:27:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I put James to my right, but I don't think it's his real name.
If it's not his real name, it's the name he's published under, and the name by which he was known at Hillsdale College. It is his professional identity.
Also, Picklesworth, but that's not his name, I'm fairly certain.
He's said it is not. It is his privilege to remain anonymous, and also something of an advantage (as you've observed on dealing with anonymous liberals like J). It is an advantage that he's not abused.
Is GM Palmer the real name of this person? Again, I don't think so.
He's published poetry under this name, and is listed as a editor of Strong Verse under this name. If it's a psuedonym, he's risking his professional reputation too.
At any rate, I suppose we're all over the place,
Indeed. There's not a monolithic left any more than there's a monolithic right.
There used to be a mathematician who was center-right named George Grady, but that was also not his real name. It's quite funny. Anyone to the right operates in secrecy, or so it seems.
I have the impression (perhaps mistaken) that Grady's in tenure push mode. He may be back, and may be more willing to be public once he's gotten tenure. - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 10:45:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Picklesworth, the name has two derivations, but the one from the Boston scenarios has more strength to my mind. The second one that you point out here is not worthy of an Iowan pastor even knowing about, much less spelling out, but what the heck.
I guess we all have to know about these things now, since they're "in our face" day and night now.
Stu, I will try to look up where Robinson disciplined someone in his bishopric tomorrow. I think for some members of the far left the whole idea is that there is only power. Power comes from the end of a gun, as Mao put it rather directly.
No, right is might for those guys!
Meanwhile, Robinson was more or less out since 1980 but never never disciplined.
I think the so-called right was more or less liberal, at least in the old-fashioned sense. The new left is more or less Maoist.
There are no rules in other words except decimate the enemy by any means necessary.
But as you point out there is a right that plays by those same rules.
It's like Oklahoma football as defined once by Brian Bosworth. Three years and a cloudburst of blood.
I am actually not playing that game, mainly because I lack the intestinal fortitude, and don't believe it gets anyone anywhere.
I think the name of the game has to be to open up discourse to anyone who's polite and has a brain, and hope to learn something new each day. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:08:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Years = yards.
And get rid of the comma after No,
As in,
No "right is might" for those guys.
In a rush. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:11:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Regarding names:
James DeLater was "outed" a while ago--perhaps by J? I don't really remember. Certainly he owned up to it. Technically Emmy is using a pseudonym, having not met her, I can't swear she's an Emmy.
Yes, I have published under my name. The name I go by among friends is taken by a popular novelist and a terrible l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poet (though, really, I suppose he's a great language======= poet and it's just language======= poetry that sucks). I used to publish under G. Michael Palmer but it was too much of a mouthful.
As a teacher I use Michael and avoid the G.M. as I don't think that many of my political opinions would be popular for a public school teacher to have. If I get a popular book of poetry out I suppose that will change but there's little chance of that happening, right?
Besides, Kirby, I emailed you my snail mail address. You can even look my house up online. Which is, I suppose, a little creepy.
Kirby--just because Luther lied doesn't make it right. As Stu said, Luther isn't your God.
Stu--ah but I don't have a problem with the Jonah story--just like I don't have a problem with Daniel & the lions or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo in the furnace. Miracles, what. Young-earth creationism is, to my mind, amusing. Honestly the entire field of paleohistory (is that what one would call it? Heck, trying to give time numbers to stuff that happened before writing) I find quaint and amusing. It's all guess work and I think that if the good doctors would admit such they'd have a better time making guesses at what came first, the big or the bang. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:32:00 AM EST
- Craig said...
My great great grandmother is buried in the cemetery of a church that's now Missouri Synod Lutheran. A descendant of the stone mason who supervised construction of that church, now a national landmark, has a picture of the Turner Hall in downtown Milwaukee as a recent post on his blog.
Apparently the hall is now a concert venue for folk-rock musicians and in need of some restoration, though it too is a protected landmark. He says his great grandfather lived a block from the Turner Hall in Milwaukee and was five years old when it was built in 1882.
It got me thinking about my great grandfather's older brother who built a few flour mills with adjoining bakeries. His mill in Findlay, Ohio burned to the ground in 1898, but it seems the bakery survived and became part of the Stolzenbach chain that gradually merged with Nabisco and made Conrad Stolzenbach a Lutheran tychoon. Carl married the daughter of a man named Guth who owned a lumberyard and served as an officer for the Turnverein in Kewaskum when that town built its hall.
If you type Stolzenbach into Google the top result is a church called Trinity Lutheran in Zanesville, Ohio. The church has been there since 1845 and my guess would be that the family bakery went up about the same time as the church. I think they may be charter members of the Missouri Synod. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 5:55:00 AM EST
- Craig said...
People going west before 1850 took the National Road from Wheeling, West Virginia to get to St. Louis. Zanesville, on the Muskingum River in Ohio, was the first real town to spring up on the highway. My great great great grandfather was a doctor in Zanesville until 1848 when he moved to Wabash, Indiana. He was still there in 1882 when they put incandescent bulbs on each corner of the town hall and ran a wire to a generator in the basement powered by corn squeezings.
Conrad Stolzenbach and his wife celebrated their golden wedding anniversary as a family reunion in 1902. My mother's grandfather also took part in a family reunion in 1902. It was in South Bend and was a golden wedding anniversary for his wife's parents. Now when I look at the pictures of that occasion I wonder if it might have been inspired by the Stolzenbach reunion and golden anniversary celebration.
The current post on the blog called Nate's Dad is a picture of a hair wreath that hangs on the wall in the blogger's office. He says he thinks most of that hair belonged to his great great grandmother, but there are strands with a number of different hair colors woven into the wreath, so it's possible it includes hair from some of her close friends and neighbors.
"Liberty, against all oppression; Tolerance, against all fanaticism; Reason, against all superstition; Justice, against all exploitation!".
I'm told that's the motto of the Turnverein. They were a force to be reckoned with in St. Louis and around the country in the years leading up to the Civil War and for several decades afterward. I'd guess there's some Turnverein hair woven into the Missouri Synod's wreath. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 5:56:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
o hai.
This is relevant (hah!) to my comments re: the quainticity of so much scribbling.
Assumptions can (and are often) wrong by trillions of orders of magnitude. And that's on something we should have been able to measure for at least a decade or so--but no one did because they figured their original assumptions were "right" (cough *hockey stick* cough)--so like science, it's like often wrong and shit. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 7:58:00 AM EST
- stu said...
Regarding "teabaggers." Not the term and its etymology, but rather the movement, which I gather you have some identification with.
It seems to me that this movement takes the fuel of fear and anger, and rather than turning into a positive force for change (like the civil rights movement, or the movement that swept Mr. Obama into office), channels it into blind hatred.
This is a movement that has defined me and people like me as people to be hated. People with education. Professors. I think this is clear even bits of ambivalence that Kirby shows the 'baggers. His rock-solid conservative credentials are worthless, because he's a professor, and therefore a symbol to them of a culture that is supplanting theirs.
I respect and have a great deal of compassion for many of the people who make up the movement, people who feel economically vulnerable, people who are finding it difficult to comprehend, let alone adapt to, a culture that is changing at an unprecedented rate. People who grew up in a culture where it was possible to prosper despite insularity, where hard work was a precondition to economic well-being, but education was not, and where it was possible to live in insular communities of the likeminded. People who believed in that the world would conform to their life plans. These are sheep who need good shepherds, and I hope you'll prove to be one.
But I have only contempt for wolves who are in fact leading them, wolves who are channeling the fears and angers of these sheep into hatred. Wolves who have none of the experiences of the sheep that they're "leading." I look forward to the day when the sheep who make up the movement realize that their "leaders" do not serve them, but rather wolves who foreclosed on their houses, wolves who "downsized" them out of jobs in order so that the next quarter's statement would get them that nice seven-figure bonus, wolves who denied their medical claims, and then finally cancelled their insurance.
In the meantime, perhaps you'll have some sympathy for the notion that I see little reason to show warmth to a movement that defines me as an enemy, and which refuses to show respect to any but it's own. And in the meantime, I am not intimidated by the 'baggers. Hatred and ignorance are not coin in my world, they are debt.
No doubt, you see this movement differently. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 9:46:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Lots of stuff here, but first I guess I should apologize. I hadn't figured in J. and Max (think-a-likes that prove that some weak minds think alike), as part of the masquerade here -- they are in fact true blue leftists, and are certainly incognito whereas I had made the claim that the right has to go incognito due to the depradations of the left.
I guess I want to amend this, and think: people who are either not going to be reasonable, or who are afraid that other people are not going to be reasonable are the most likely to go incognito.
In Nazi Germany as well as Mao's china as well as the French Revolution there was a high price for dissent.
I think there should be no price for dissent, but the dissent can't preclude reasonable discussion.
Craig, there's a funny series of letters in Irving's Garp from a woman in Findlay, Ohio, who throws a fit over one of Garp's early novels and its light depiction of adultery. She gives it to him good, but is presented as a mindless jerk. Apparently Irving was a big fan of adultery. He presents it in all the novels of his that I have read as a very minor indiscretion and one that everyone should wink at.
In Garp of course all hell breaks loose but it's still looked at in the narration as undeserved.
Stu and Picklesworth -- I'm not following the teabagger debate from the left viewpoint. I hear them speaking on Fox and a few other places, and they strike me as downhome tradespeople like Joe the Plumber who don't believe that the wealth they've built up should be redistributed.
They may paint the entire professoriat as leftist, but then, so do I. It is, outside of a very few bastions of the ultra-right like Brigham Young, Liberty, and Regnery.
But there are also some reasonable people in the professoriat, esp. outside of the humanities. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 11:21:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Why Missouri Synod doesn't allow women pastors. It's not because they don't think that women are intelligent, or that they can be faithful. It's that if the Bible is followed as precedent, then the Bible must be followed as the sole precedent. Once you allow reason, and thus science, to slip in, all revelation disappears, and suddenly science is the sole arbiter of everything. If you allow women in, then you have to allow the gays. If you allow the gays, you have to allow the midget warlocks. If you allow the midget warlocks, you might as well let animals pastor.
But animals can't talk, some will say!
Yes we can! The animals will then say, you just don't listen!
And by this chain of devolution we'd end up with ladybugs at the altar, with people and magnifying glasses attempting to interpret scripture through their movements.
Finally why not let viruses and bacteria pastor?
Why not let Nothing itself pastor? What, are you so biased in favor of Something that you are close-minded in the face of Nothing?
I think a similar progression is feared when reason takes too high a hand in interpreting Scripture. If a man can't fit into a whale's belly, then Jesus was not God, and God doesn't exist, and science has suddenly swept all revelation off the map, and we have science again as the sole arbiter.
Problem with science is that it doesn't offer any values. It is empirical, and values are not empirical.
Philosophy went this way under Hume and ended asserting that causality didn't exist.
Kant tried to rebuild it, and even again put an Author back into the world, but most Kantians today climb up the ladder but get off at the 99th floor, since reason won't allow them to make the final step into unreason, and into beauty, and morality, and the existence of God.
If you're going to believe in God, then you have to go all the way and pay the postage. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 11:28:00 AM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
You are correct that I see it very differently. In fact, your description of it is unrecognizable. And you underscore the reason why it has a populist bent. Mainstream Americans who identify with the Tea Party, are sick to death of being told that they are sheep, that they don't understand how things really work. They can see perfectly well that continually spending more money than we have is going to land us in a disaster. Your comment insinuates that Tea Partiers are generally less educated, less skilled workers. I'm sure that some such people are enthusiastic supporters, but I hardly think that they are emblematic of the movement.
I presume this "hatred" that you talk about is something other than the media narrative that's been pushed. You wouldn't be so foolish as to take that at face value.
I'm also curious why you would hold such antipathy towards a group that has been criticizing Republicans and Democrats alike for their fiscal irresponsibility. Do you think that Tea Partiers hold education in contempt? Do you think they are particularly close-minded to different opinions? I've seen absolutely no evidence of either of these. I have seen, however, a disinclination to accept "authority." That is to say, they are not interested in hearing the same platitudes coming from government. They have heard them before and they know it's a load of garbage.
I will freely admit that Tea Partiers are not immune to hatred, stupidity, foolishness, etc... But that's obvious. They're people. As the movement goes forward there is no guarantee that they won't veer off into a ditch. It could happen. And it's also clear that there will be folks who try to attach themselves to them movement. For goodness sakes, Michael Steele was trying to call himself a Tea Partier and that's pretty laughable.
At its root, the defining characteristic of the Tea Party is classic American individualism. And they want government to live within its means so that it doesn't choke that individualism. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 11:38:00 AM EST
- stu said...
Stu--ah but I don't have a problem with the Jonah story--just like I don't have a problem with Daniel & the lions or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo in the furnace.
I find this to be ambiguous. Do you mean that you have no problem viewing these as myth, in the technical, non-pejorative sense of a shared story that conveys group identity and values? If so, you don't meet the LCMS definition of a biblical literalist. Or do you mean that you believe that you have no problem viewing these as factual narratives?
Miracles, what. Young-earth creationism is, to my mind, amusing.
This suggests the former, but is not determinative.
Honestly the entire field of paleohistory (is that what one would call it? Heck, trying to give time numbers to stuff that happened before writing) I find quaint and amusing. It's all guess work and I think that if the good doctors would admit such they'd have a better time making guesses at what came first, the big or the bang.
One of my colleagues refers to the astrophysicists as "the theologians of the division," which is essentially the same complaint. But the paleontological record (what is sometimes called the geological column) cannot be reconciled with Genesis absent screwball special pleading (the omphalos argument). It seems to me that the stories the good doctors are telling are converging, and that they have an evidentiary basis. Whether they will actually converge on truth (i.e., did it actually happen that way) is harder to say, as the tests of scientific truth are always in their ability to make predictions rather than to explain retrospectively.
Regarding the incorrect prediction made by general relativity: Don't you understand that the remarkable think here isn't that the prediction was off by 17 orders of magnitude, it is that the predicted effect was observed? And of course, this is just the first such test, and it will need to be confirmed by other experimentalists. But scientists will now use these observations to refine the underlying theory (probably by tweaking the value of a few constants, or maybe adding a term or two to the equations). And if they can't, then someone will come up with a fundamentally different theory. That the world has the ability to surprise us is part of what makes science so exciting. AFAIK, no one who is actually doing science believes that science is done. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 11:45:00 AM EST
- stu said...
Why Missouri Synod doesn't allow women pastors. It's not because they don't think that women are intelligent, or that they can be faithful. It's that if the Bible is followed as precedent, then the Bible must be followed as the sole precedent.
Actually, it's because the LCMS is confused. The notion of sola scriptura, the doctrine that scripture is the only infallible and inerrant
authority for Christian faith was a foundational principle of the Protestant Reformation broadly, but it is not a foundational principle of Lutheranism per se. The phrase simply does not occur in the Book of Concord, where sola fides and sola gracia do, nor does the Book of Concord every commit to the principle in other words.
Whatever the LCMS thinks it is doing here, it is not Lutheran.
And even if you accept sola scriptura, then you have to deal honestly with the textual problems. The simple truth, demonstrated conclusively by the study of ancient manuscripts including papyrii, is that we do not have the original texts of the books, and that the differences in some cases are significant. And even when we're pretty sure we have the text right, there is still the problem of how to interpret that text. Our understanding of ancient languages has improved over time, while the language in which we speak has proven to be strangely plastic. Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost?
Scripture is merely the sand from which we fuse the hard glass of our faith through prayer, consideration of the wisdom of our predecessors, and our direct experience of God. Trying to build on scripture alone, well, you know the parable...
If you're going to believe in God, then you have to go all the way and pay the postage.
I don't believe that faith in God, i.e., belief in God, and belief that he will stand by his promises to us, requires that we check our brains at the door. On the contrary, I believe that our intelligence is one of the tools (not the most important, but not the least) that God gives us to understand our world, and the place that he intends for us in it. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:01:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Well, Luther did say that reason was the devil's whore.
This doesn't mean you have to check your brain at the door, but it means that the heart trumps the brain, perhaps, in certain circumstances.
At any rate, I'd have to read the book on Seminex from inside the LCMS to get a better sense of their own defense. I'm sure those guys think about twelve times as well as I do about what they are doing. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 2:20:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Thank you for your note. Certainly, one of the things that has perplexed me is your identification (strong or weak as it may be) with the Tea-whatever movement. Clearly, you had to have a very different view of it than I have, and I'm glad to have your view. How I'll incorporate it into my world view is harder to figure out.
Mainstream Americans who identify with the Tea Party, are sick to death of being told that they are sheep, that they don't understand how things really work.
I think they understand some things, but not others. They certainly feel cheated, and in many cases with justification. But I also think that they've been actively mislead in terms of who's been cheating them, and how. To that extent, I believe that the criticism that "they don't understand how things really work" has some traction.
I'm not claiming, btw, that "government == good," and "corporate == bad." But certainly putting things the other way around is wrong too.
They can see perfectly well that continually spending more money than we have is going to land us in a disaster.
Case in point. The US national debt has been growing exponentially, but so too has the size of the US economy, and with it the means that the government has for servicing that debt. So to know whether things are getting better or worse, you have to actually compare the exponentials, not just look at one or the other in isolation. In broad strokes, the debt/gdp ratio has been declining since WWII, when it was at an all-time high. It's true enough that we've had a bad year in this regard, and don't expect next year to be much better. But we are very far away from historical debt/gdp maximums.
The point is that spending more than we have does not necessarily land us in a disaster. For most of us, buying a house meant spending a lot more than I made or had, but the expenditure was justifiable as an investment, and for the intrinsic value of home-ownership. The question I'd ask in evaluating an increase in debt/gdp is whether or not the increase has the character of an investment for the people of this country. E.g., building the national highway system (something initiated during the Eisenhower administration) was very expensive, and many of the highways were financed through bonds based on gasoline taxes. Was this a reasonable thing to do? Certainly, transportation played a major role in revolutionizing our economy, so it seems to me that the answer was yes. These days, meaningful parallels might be found in health-care informatics.
And here is the question. Is this a reasonable argument? I'd submit yes, based on a great deal of corporate experience in this country. Would a tea-bagger accept it? I think the answer is clearly not, per your framing above.
It seems to me that the movement has already veered into a ditch.
At its root, the defining characteristic of the Tea Party is classic American individualism. And they want government to live within its means so that it doesn't choke that individualism.
I actually think that individualism is a good deal. But when you have a crowd that is biased demographically towards the older, poorer, and whiter lobbying against governmental social expenditures, when to a first approximation those expenditures consist of social security and medicare, it's hard not to believe that they're being manipulated. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 3:16:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
A couple points... I understand that the debt/gdp ratio was much higher after WWII. But we had just fought a rather large, expensive, and necessary war. It was a massive undertaking. What is our excuse today? I would suggest that this health care "reform" is scaring Americans for a very good reason. It's expensive and, as we have found with social security and medicare, it is difficult to get rid of, not least because it changes people's relationship to government (they don't call these things entitlements for nothing.) The people I know are asking themselves the question, "Is it wise to increase the size of government when we can already see that government has become larger than we'd like?" Clearly the answer is "no" for many people.
I'll admit that the whole defense of medicare aspect to the conservative opposition to Obamacare strikes me as opportunistic on the one hand and confused on the other. Personally, I would like to see the program scrapped entirely. This wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be popular and I doubt it will happen. Nevertheless, it suits my beliefs about the role of government and I think it would be better for Americans, both from a fiscal and a moral point of view.
As for Tea Partiers not understanding certain things, let me just ask you if there is some comparable group of Americans who have a universally rational platform? Of course not. Rare is the person, much less the movement, that has an internally consistent platform/set of beliefs. I think their basic ideas are fairly consistent though. Smaller government, smaller taxes, more opportunity for people and small businesses basked on free market principles. It's basic Reagan/Hayek/Friedman stuff. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 4:38:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
James de Later said he was a Tea Partier, as was his wife, Emmy.
I think they are both quite well-educated.
Sarah Palin has a college degree and was a governor as well as a mayor.
The media presents these people as if they are zombies that climbed out of some trash can, "white trash" being one of the last evil epithets that can be stuck on someone, even though it's an obvious libel and slur.
The media presents the tea partiers as people who don't even know where to go to the bathroom, and are just berserk clodhoppers, lurching from one bowel movement to the next, while fecal matter screams from their throats.
Sarah Palin is presented in more or less the same light.
To me they are just middle-class folks. They may not have a Ph.D., but they have good common sense, good work ethic, and they can all read and write and do arithmetic.
and the numbers aren't adding up for them, as Picklesworth contends.
This exercises Stu, and I'm sure it exercises Brett.
I'm sure it has Obama in a snit.
Especially because the movement appears to be gaining in steam. I think that Scott Brown's election is part and parcel of that growing steam, and part and parcel of the growing sense of rejection of the Marxist professoriat led by the President and his advisors like Ayres, and his horde of angry Czars. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 5:51:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
A direct link between teapartiers and Scott Brown is more tenuous than the media - story-whores more than anything - would lead us to believe.
Witness his 'betrayal' of those who supported him monetarily as he voted for the 'jobs bill.'
The Teapartiers saw someone who wasn't Democratic, and thought they had someone who was on their side.
Not Quite the case.
The Glenn-Beck sponsored teaparty movement is an interesting phenomenon...My guess is that as teapartiers actually have to come into contact with real politics - policies - their steam will dwindle.
W.B.'s abandoning Medicare is the logical point of view for this movement - but when they actually have to face these sorts of details, well they ain't gonna wanna.
That, and they have no real coherent platform in terms of policy except for a feeling of anti-gvmtness.
The Ron Paulers and birthers and truthers all think that the teaparty movement is theirs...
They can stand next to each other and chant 'obama is a socialist,' but when they turn to face each other and describe their views on policy, they're going to splinter and have all sorts of fun infighting.
The Republican's job is going to be to try to convince the TeaPartiers that they're a TeaParty too, and then govern in a way that is totally not Teapartyin'. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 7:22:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
http://tinyurl.com/yeesnja - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 7:26:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
Brett, you write:
they have no real coherent platform in terms of policy except for a feeling of anti-gvmtness.
What large movement has anything like internal coherence? Democrats? Republicans? Of course not. Any large group is going to have a range of belief within its ranks. It's beyond me why you think this is particularly impressive amongst Teapartiers.
This movement is reacting to something they do not like. There are different manifestations of this "thing" (government health care, cap and trade taxes, government takeover of GM and Chrysler, the specter of higher taxes, deficit spending, Keynesian spending instead of belt-tightening) but the common thread is the skepticism towards [further] government problem solving. They don't want radical solutions (like my medicare "reform"), they want government to take a step back and behave more modestly.
I do not notice any "hatred" in any of this. This is clearly a smear from people who would love to discredit a movement that has at least some (and seemingly) growing influence.
Brett, as far as the Scott Brown thing goes. I'm sure there were some people who were disappointed with his vote on the "jobs" bill. That's pretty silly in my opinion. Political reality intrudes. If he at least gets some of the votes right, it will have been an important victory.
Will their steam dwindle? My guess would be yes, at some point. It's always easier to be enthusiastic when your back is against the wall and when you are fighting against something specific. After the next elections, power in Washington will be more divided and the fierce urgency, to borrow an expression, will abate. It remains to be seen just how much influence they will have. If their only badge is having killed Obamacare (if indeed it dies) then it will have been worth it (to them at any rate.) - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 9:42:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
I mean I have no problem accepting these stories as literal.
Other people except these stories as literal but I accept 'em.
Why? you might ask--certainly I can play the "what's-my-IQ" game with just about anyone on the skreet so why would a college ejucated 31 year old like myself believe in fairy stories like Jonah and Shadrach, Meshach, and the big Negro?
Slightly more than that, though--cause:
1) God: God can do anything, yo.
2) All kindsa crazy shiite has happened that once was thought to be BS but is now preeeety accepted as trueff (oh, like Troy & the Flood [even if "localized"] and Giants & Hobbits).
3) Dem myths gots to come from somewhere. I tend to think they come from stories that actually happened-like.
Now to shift gears:
Heck no I don't think it's amazing they measured the force. If the force existed they should be able to measure it. I'm surprised about two things:
1) it wasn't "averaged away" like ether
2) people aren't crying to the rooftops about an estimated force actually being 2 quintillion orders of magnitude higher than estimated.
'cause that calls into question--oh I don't know--like every theoretical measurement.
Why are galaxies moving faster than the speed of light?
Well, if that's a constant (is it? oh--who knows? Sciency folk have been able to stop photons, so really--hm. . .) then Occam's razor tells us either our observations or wrong or our processing of them is.
Now, if the measure of the gravito-magnetic field is off by more digits than the universe has light years, I think we might be in a bit of trouble. But that's just me.
And since last I checked you think AGW is a threat, it's amusing you think that building interstates was a good idea. Tee hee. - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 9:58:00 PM EST
- stu said...
I do not notice any "hatred" in any of this.
Glenn Beck referred to progressivism as "cancer" at CPAC. And you don't see hatred? - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 11:13:00 PM EST
- stu said...
A few quick notes.
1) Lots of crazy stuff has happened. Granted! But stories get passed around, embellished, etc. And we're only really beginning to learn about ancient fiction.
2) If you want to believe in Jonah, that's your prerogative. If you want to say that major theologians are in error because they don't, you're overreaching. I'm not saying you do, but the LCMS did.
Heck no I don't think it's amazing they measured the force. If the force existed they should be able to measure it.
IIRC, it was about one one hundred-millionth the magnitude of gravity. Getting to eight places of precision in experimental measurement is pretty close to state of the art.
I'm surprised about two things:
1) it wasn't "averaged away" like ether
I actually work in the building that has Michelson's 2nd ethernet drift experiment built into it. Was just showing it off to a visitor today. 'Tis a small, strange world.
2) people aren't crying to the rooftops about an estimated force actually being 2 quintillion orders of magnitude higher than estimated.
Did you notice the '06 copyright on that article? Checking for followup, I found this. Cute idea, and it (a) both explains the Tajmar effect in terms of known physics, and (b) suggests a reasonable followup experiment. This has an '09 copyright, so I'm thinking that the proposed followup will get done in the next year or two.
Why are galaxies moving faster than the speed of light?
This is easy. Superluminal motion is apparent velocity associated with objects where the component of their velocity in our direction is a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Even modest tangential motion will appear to be faster than the speed of light because we're greatly underestimating the amount of time involved. This doesn't require relativity -- just geometry together with an understanding that the speed of light is finite.
Well, if that's a constant (is it? oh--who knows? Sciency folk have been able to stop photons, so really--hm. . .)
In a vacuum. Einstein-Bose condensates aren't a vacuum. For crying out loud, you do know the derivation of Snell's law (refraction) from the time minimization principle, right? This is driven by the fact that the speed of light is slower in the more refractive medium. Likewise, Cerenkov radiation is caused by particles that are moving faster than the speed of light through an insulator at faster than the speed of light in that medium. There's no contradiction, because the particles in question are slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.
And since last I checked you think AGW is a threat, it's amusing you think that building interstates was a good idea.
And it was. Of course, we didn't know then what we know now. But the road themselves aren't adding carbon to the atmosphere, and I'm confident that we'll come up with alternative drive systems. In the meantime, the highways drove decades worth of economic activity. But yes, not all of the costs were apparent at the time.
You're diverging... - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 11:50:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
"I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." -Howard Dean
Voila, Democrats are all about hate. I just proved it. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 11:43:00 AM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Stu--yes on pretty much everything--though I wonder how you feel about the interstate system vs rail & light rail? Certainly had the 1940s and 1950s progressed differently we would all still be "riding the rails," which would be far better for teh environment.
- Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 12:05:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
George Will's column of July 18, 2008, closed with a few interesting paradoxes:
"The Episcopal Church once was America's upper crust at prayer. Today it is "progressive" politics cloaked — very thinly — in piety. Episcopalians' discontents tell a cautionary tale for political as well as religious associations. As the church's doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted. It celebrates an "inclusiveness" that includes fewer and fewer members." - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 12:34:00 PM EST
- Conservotarian Emmy said...
"It celebrates an 'inclusiveness' that includes fewer and fewer members."
It is no accident that the of the world's religions the fastest growing ones are religions that provide a firm moral and ethical framework, and are the surest of their own doctrines.
Churches that are "ex"clusive, in that they require a certain moral standard or abstinence from certain pleasures or require certain beliefs are the ones that are doing well.
One cannot be a Muslim without confessing that there is no god but God and that Mohammed is his prophet. There's no wiggle room there.
Religions that have standards, and say you must do X,Y,and Z and believe A, B, and C if you want to be a Catholic/Muslim/Mormon/ Lutheran in good standing, tend to draw greater memberships.
People need rules and guidance. They don't need another group-hug kumbaya session. They get enough of that in the secular world. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 2:02:00 PM EST
- stu said...
"I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." -Howard Dean
Voila, Democrats are all about hate. I just proved it.
Not the most politic words ever spoken, but it seems to me that there are substantial differences. What you do with a cancer is to cut it out, to kill it. Calling progressivism a cancer is a call to murder, and don't act innocent when it happens. Arguably, it already did in Texas (and I think Brett's analysis of the suicide attack on the IRS is by far the most sensible and on target of any). That murder is the first fruit of your beloved movement. It will not be the last.
The repeated "Obama is a socialist" meme is a lie intended to inflame, specifically intended to plant the seed for assassination. And if you think I'm exaggerating, then you grew up in a different country than I did.
Thoughts? - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 2:03:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, Brett isn't necessarily the most reasonable, he's just the closest to your political position.
There are going to be people who kill people of other political persuasions, and this will continue. But there's a difference here. Glenn Beck is a rabble-rouser on a TV station.
Howard Dean is the head of the Democratic Party.
What we have to watch out for is not individual rogue terrorists, but the parties themselves declaring war on the other parties.
So far there has been no actual hits, insofar as we know, by any one party of another party's candidates. And generally there is respect between the parties themselves.
Howard Dean's comment represents a departure from that stance. It isn't necessarily a call to murder the other parties, but it's fairly close.
What Beck is doing is again not quite the same thing. Beck is saying that "progressivism" is a disease. He's not naming anyone specific. Inside the Democrat party are more than a few conservatives.
Beck also isn't calling for people to slaughter progressives. He's arguing that we ought to try and change their ideas, by arguing with them.
Beck has progressives on his station, as do O'Reilly and Hannity and others. They may roll their eyes. But they don't punch them or shoot at them.
Ideas can change.
Dean is saying that he hates every member of the Republican party, and everything they stand for. He's saying that he hates specific people.
Beck is complaining about the quality of certain ideas. Dean is the more hateful because he's demonizing people.
Beck is only demonizing ideas, but also indicating that he thinks those ideas can be changed, or at least cordoned off (it's possible to treat cancer in different ways).
At any rate, Beck is not an elected official.
Dean is.
Dean ought to obey a higher level of diplomatic tradition.
Beck calls himself a rodeo clown. He is one.
Even regular Fox News watchers like myself regard him with a certain amount of dismay. He occasionally has brilliant insights, as when he got the Maoist in trouble as Obama's green czar. He saw stuff before anybody else did.
He also sees all kinds of stuff that isn't there. He's a bit delusional at times. But his main virtue is that he can be exotically humorous.
Dean doesn't have that. He's never deliberately funny. He's overly earnest, and I think he's a true kook, and in a very high position of power in the Democrat party. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 2:47:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
O'Reilly has amazing kooks from the left on his show. He very frequently has as guest an African-american Marxist fellow who used to teach at Temple but is now at Columbia. The man is extremely cordial with O'Reilly, but is very far to the left. He's openly Marxist.
O'Reilly and this guy (I can't recall his name) are very friendly, and allow each other to make good points from time to time.
But again this is largely entertainment.
Howard Dean is not an entertainer and he has no excuse for making such a violent statement. He is also the titular head of your party. I'd be far more ashamed of Dean, and far more worried about him. He isn't even pretending to be liberal. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 2:51:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
B as in B. S as in S. It's convenient to try to attach the suicide pilot to the Tea Party movement, but if you read his rant, he's angry at a lot of folks like George Bush and the Catholic church. It's guilt by association except that there's very little association.
As for assassination rhetoric, you can go back a few years and find explicit calls for Bush's assassination in plays and in print. Your connection between "Obama is a socialist" and some supposed clamoring for assassination is incredibly weak. Trying to make that connection is worrisome because it sounds an awful lot like, "Don't criticize our guy or we'll smear you."
Just for the record, I'm appalled at anyone calling for, or expressing approval of, any president's assassination. Clearly it is evil, full stop. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 3:04:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Stu--yes on pretty much everything--though I wonder how you feel about the interstate system vs rail & light rail? Certainly had the 1940s and 1950s progressed differently we would all still be "riding the rails," which would be far better for teh environment.
Great question, although your history is a bit off. The interurbans were killed in part by the great depression, and in part by the automobile industry (which often bought them and shut them down to "encourage" car purchases). According to Wiki, the Chicago/Joliet line closed in '33. This isn't to say that all of the interurbans died. I remember as a kid living in suburban Philadelphia taking the P&W's (we called them "Piggy and Whistles) all over.
For myself, I take the Metra Electric (medium rail) line from home to work in Chicago, and seldom drive. Rails are great.
But the rails weren't trouble-free. The first problem with the rails is that rail lines (like roads) are comparatively few, and this meant that there were de facto transportation monopolies in each market. What (public) roads meant more than anything was an elimination of the railroad monopolies, and the emergence of meaningful competition in the long-haul continental interior transportation market. The second problem is that rails are relatively inflexible -- they don't go nearly as many places as the roads do, and they never did.
Looking forward, I see different futures for passenger and freight rail. The critical distinction here is that passenger trains are much shorter, and much more frequent, than freight trains, and this requires more intensive scheduling. I expect that we'll see an increased public transit capability, and that urban light rail, and regional high-speed rail, will be important components of this. These will be quasi-governmental, as they are now. As for freight, I'd like to see public ownership of the roads, but private ownership of the carrying capacity. The private operators would bid for time/distance/weight on the rails, and compete against one another for freight, essentially replicating the way the trucking market works. And I see containerized rail freight as the long-haul component of a more integrated transportation network in which trucks handle local distribution, just as bus systems are often the "local leg" of integrated public transit systems. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 3:13:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Stu, Brett isn't necessarily the most reasonable, he's just the closest to your political position.
Go back and read what he wrote. Yes, Brett is close to me in some ways politically, and distant in others. But I was talking specifically about what he wrote w.r.t. the Texas suicide attack.
He talked about why neither Democrats nor Republicans want to call the Texas suicide attack "terrorism." It was honest, insightful, and balanced. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 3:17:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Trying to make that connection is worrisome because it sounds an awful lot like, "Don't criticize our guy or we'll smear you."
Calling Obama a liberal, a big-government big spender, etc., even though these are not particularly accurate, are at least arguable. These would not be an incitement to assassination. Socialist? Communist? Death Panels? Creating a false panic over the availability of ammunition? Where exactly do you think such overheated rhetoric is intended to lead?
BTW, abridging Dean's quote so as to change its sense is a questionable tactic. Here's the full quote:
"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization."
So is this praise of Republican discipline, or criticism of their beliefs? In context, it was more of the former than the later, and this is particular clear in light of Dean's subsequent organizational efforts within the Democratic party.
Perhaps there is a larger context in which you would like to place Mr. Beck's remarks. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 4:03:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Sorry to butt in, but I think it's defeat at the ballot box that is intended by the remarks on Obama's socialist tendencies.
Unless someone actually commits a political murder, or actually orders one, they can't be held responsible by a court of law.
We still have first amendment rights.
At any rate, we've already discussed which side is more prone to political assassination, and while we haven't been able to create a perfect tally, it is readily apparent that both sides have this history, but only among their fringe elements.
The kook that shot Garfield, the one that shot McKinley, the one that shot Reagan, were all lefties, but none of them had the assent of any party leaders.
No responsible people anywhere are going to shoot any president. It's unthinkable for most of us to want to actually hurt someone, much less to go to the extraordinary length of committing such a thing, when a person's family would suffer on both sides.
I do think that Hitler should have been shot, and Lord knows there were some 43 attempts from within Germany, some missing by a hair, but even this was awfully tough.
In spite of the rhetoric, we all know that none of our leaders is anywhere near as bad as Adolf Hitler. Our population is made safe by our government, and no concentration camps exist, and we still do have freedom of speech.
as long as two sides exist and they harm each other only with perceptions of one another's doings, I think we're fine.
The guy who shot Harvey Milk was apparently a Democrat.
Nancy Pelosi got that wrong, as she gets everything wrong.
But we will only have to put up with her and Reid for another few months if you believe the polls.
The only people who are responsible for killing people are the killers and the ones who order them to kill.
No one wants killings done in their party's name or on their budget. That's one line I hope that no party in America will ever cross. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 4:45:00 PM EST
- stu said...
We still have first amendment rights.
A good thing that. A sign like this, it's just good clean fun, right boys?
Course, call a 'bagger a 'bagger, now that's offensive. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 5:44:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, there's plenty of loose talk.
The sign, I think, implies a defensive action.
At any rate, as long as people are shouting, and not shooting, things are going to be fine.
It's the people who aren't saying anything that you mostly have to worry about.
(Sometimes you do have to listen if someone is making a specific threat against a specific individual.)
Amy Bishop is a Democrat. But if she goes to prison, you'll lose her vote. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 6:00:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Amy Bishop is a Democrat. But if she goes to prison, you'll lose her vote.
Not to mention the three votes of the people she shot. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 6:09:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Can't vouch for them, but it's unlikely those four would tip Alabama one way or the other.
Perhaps it'll make a few more question the 2nd Amendment one way or another (she didn't have a permit for the gun, and I don't think the gun has yet to be traced?), but there is probably some question going on down there wrt gun control on both sides.
I think what happens in Alabama seems peculiar to that area. Things that happen in the north seem more general of America's drift.
Stuff that happens in Alabama is almost as if it's taking place in a separate country, even if they still do get to vote in national elections (which I approve).
Do we know if the three that she shot were all Democrats?
I would bet a nickel that at least two of those were probably Democrats, but you can never be sure.
There's a growing contrarian trend in African-american circles. It's now over 10% that define themselves as conservative in politics.
On some issues, such as gay marriage, it's almost 90% on the conservative side if Proposition 8's numbers were accurate.
From memory, I do think that one of the three who were shot was African-American, one sounded vaguely like an Indian-American (if that's a category), and one sounded unhyphenated, or without an obvious hyphen.
Details from that quarter have stopped coming.
But let's not be too certain about their political affiliations based on ethnicity.
I'm not even sure we can know their ethnicity so swiftly.
People are lots of different stuff, like Tiger, now.
Of course, people are less anxious to claim him for their identity group about now, but even when he was at the height of his popularity, it was hard to parcel him out percentage-wise.
Just another rabid golfer, I'd say.
(instead of by race, let's classify people once more by the sports they enjoy!) - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 6:44:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Do we know if the three that she shot were all Democrats?
I don't, but you've claimed that 99.9% of all academics are Democrats and/or Communists, and if I can't take that at face value, what can I? This is Alabama, so it's pretty certain that if they were Communists, someone would have shot them beforehand. So I'm thinking Democrats. Especially because it's a biology department (which is a non-clinical pure science department). If this was the surgery department, it would have been a different matter. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 7:01:00 PM EST
- J A DeLater said...
Naturally I agree with your and WB's sensible general assessments of the tea-party participants rather than stu's oddly hysterical jeremiads about them.
Em and I found the tea-partiers (on two occasions, one at the capitol building in Lansing and one in Brighton) to be civil, courteous and good-humoured, but spirited, and the groups included blue and white-collar workers, lawyers, physicians, business-owners, etc.--and very often whole families. We spoke a bit with one PhD environmental scientist standing close to us who told us how her and some of her colleagues' work had been improperly skewed to produce bureaucratically approved AGW results. In any case, nothing like some of the actions of leftist rabbles I've seen or heard of--anti-war, anti-WTO, anti-Israeli, pro-gay activist, etc.
Since there have been so many references to the TV-radio talker Glenn Beck (stu's bete noire), I listened recently to a few minutes of his week-end radio show (we haven't TV) in which there was an amusing parody of the PBS "Frontline" expose programme, replete with the hyper-grave voice-over and sinister background sound concerning what extreme measures tea-partiers should adopt--for example, WRITING LETTERS TO LEGISLATORS, or even RINGING THEIR OFFICES to protest excessive taxation, federal regulation, bureaucratic indifference, the culture of dependency and entitlement, etc., or even, or even, LAWFULLY ASSEMBLING IN GROUPS WITH SIGNS expressing their views. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 7:39:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Calling Obama a liberal, a big-government big spender, etc., even though these are not particularly accurate, are at least arguable
Say what? Those appellations are exceedingly accurate.
He is a liberal in the current sense. He is a big-government big spender--managing to outspend Bush.
Surely you are joking. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 7:41:00 PM EST
- W.B. Picklesworth said...
Liberals wear bikini shorts backwards, but only when protesting the low cost of garbanzo beans.
Clearly the ox was confuzzled. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 7:46:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Stu, if it was an English department, even there in the deep south, I'd say it was 99% Democrat or further left (some green).
I'd doubt if there is a single Republican in any English department anywhere in America who's at a major university.
If there is such a thing, I'd be stunned beyond stunned.
But biology, I don't know. Since they think that Darwin is right, they might believe in competition, and survival of the fittest, and other stuff besides bailouts.
I haven't met any people like that.
But one thing that does interest me is how people probably all have an admixture of liberal and conservative traits.
This is why the Proposition 8 vote in Cal. cheered me up. African Americans who are generally thought to be solidly on the left supported the anti-gay marriage bill at about 80+%.
And I imagine that in gay white circles (many gays are upper middle class) I wouldn't be surprised if they were against handouts to the very poor in large numbers.
I do think that probably no individual is just one thing, as much as we might like to compress someone down into a cypher, and make all people alike in the sociological sense.
Or that there are two Americas.
There are 300 million Americas, and counting.
We should really try to see each other as complex and shifting individuals, kaleidoscopic, and peculiar, and kind of beautiful, and endlessly wondrous.
We were, after all, made in the image of God. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 8:28:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
The least we can say is that Obama wants a one-party monopoly, and is very unsure how to deal with any kind of dissent.
He wants a government monopoly on healthcare and doesn't want anyone or anything to have any different opinions.
He's basically a domestic dictator, albeit a hugely unsuccessful one who is going to get his butt kicked in a tidal wave of rejection in November.
But he doesn't understand this.
It doesn't make any sense to him that monopolies can be bad no matter who's running them.
He did have a talk with the Reps this week about healthcare.
They could say yes or no about his agenda.
They couldn't talk about the agenda or in any way re-begin the discussion. He had set the discussion, and he was going to finish it.
The guy is just ridiculously handicapped, and the tea party people are showing it to him (hello again to Jacques! and Emmy!), and he misreads every alternate viewpoint as something terribly suspicious and dangerious, which will lead to his assassination.
It will, in a sense, but only at the polls.
No one would waste violence on this dude(or so I dearly hope, since it would be not only mean (he has kids) but he can dream on that someone would care to hurt him or Pelosi or Reid in an extralegal fashion. This is just part of their delusional nature..
He's toast.
I mean Scott Brown won in a walk in Mass.
The whole country is going to flip in November. Everyone knows this but him. - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 8:49:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Liberal side of the debate is down to just Stu with JH out.
Anyone care to switch sides to make it more even at this point?
I think Brett is busy watching the Olympics.
Finland down 2-1 in their Bronze match with Slovakia in men's hockey, but we have a four-minute penalty for high-sticking against the Slovaks so there's hope!
No icing, Finns! - Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 11:25:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
Not watching the olympics - in the city of angels, visiting friends...and just had an interview at the AFI. Went well, I think - they did all the talking, selling themselves to me as opposed to trying to make things the other way 'round, and lauded my Faulkner and Eliot fandom.
That being said, a few clarifications:
Stu's arguments about assassinations are hyperbolic - of course there are those on the right who (either maliciously or out of a sort of predetermined worldview) call obama a socialist, communist, etc., and talk about death panels. (and by malicious, I mean they do so in order to make him unpopular so that he won't win elections and that the Dem party will grow Weaker).
To insinuate that the motivation for this is so that people will want to kill Obama - well now, that's quite the fallacious leap.
To say that these viewpoints might incite some to have unnecessarily antagonistic and angry feelings toward Obama - and that these might lead some to want to kill him - well, that's a different, possibly relevant, argument.
To be honest, I don't think that the rhetoric from the right is all that different in venomousness than the rhetoric that was from the left (HItler stashes on BUsh's face were just as common)- I think we all just have the tendency to take the worst of the other side and label it as representative of most of the other side.
Lots of people on the left have made stupid comments about being okay with Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney dying from health issues.
That being said, Kirby is of course way off base with all of his Obama wants to be a dictator talk.
Simple fact is that Obama has policies, that he campaigned on, and was elected for, and he wants to enact some of them.
He's doing so, especially wrt healthcare, in a way that is overly bipartisan and is taking way too long.
If Obama was anything like the wannabedictatorofheftyleftiness you claim he is, he would have tried to push through a single-payer healthcare system from the get-go, back when he had the 60 votes.
Instead, he has taken a backseat (until just recently), letting the legislative branch of government legislate. Unfortunately for him, his trust in those branches was a bit ill-advised, and they've created a muddled mess, and the narrative has been defined by the other side, and so people have a false impression of what's in the bill and of how 'extreme' it is.
It's to the right of Hillarycare, and not far away from Dolecare.
Obama is not a partisan fighter - he did not sell himself as such, and what we've got is what we've got.
If lefties wanted someone to come in to use political muscle to push through lefty agendas, they shoulda voted for the Clinton.
Funny thing about all the EVERYBODYHATESOBAMANOW Wharrgarbl is that his approval ratings are over twice that of what Bush's were just a year or two ago...
Dems will probably lose some seats this fall. But it's way too early to declare him a one-term president. - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 1:01:00 AM EST
- stu said...
But biology, I don't know. Since they think that Darwin is right, they might believe in competition, and survival of the fittest, and other stuff besides bailouts.
Yes, but they also believe in evolution, which about half of your side doesn't. This does not sit well in the basic science departments. The clinical departments are different.
The least we can say is that Obama wants a one-party monopoly, and is very unsure how to deal with any kind of dissent.
Actually, Obama has been trying very hard to be bipartisan, but your side has decided on obstruction. He has been much more interested in healing the divisions of the country, but isn't getting anything from your side, which believes it can prosper by widening those same divisions.
I think the time has come to stop pretending that the current opposition party wants a constructive role in government. 'twas clear they weren't constructive while they were in power, don't know why it would be any different when they're out.
They couldn't talk about the agenda or in any way re-begin the discussion. He had set the discussion, and he was going to finish it.
Translation: he did not give in to killing reform through delay.
It will, in a sense, but only at the polls.
Just remember, our numbers are low. Yours are lower. And the polls are still running "generic" (i.e., unnamed) Republicans against specific Democrats. We'll see how things look once the choices are made in the primaries.
Finland down 2-1 in their Bronze match with Slovakia in men's hockey, but we have a four-minute penalty for high-sticking against the Slovaks so there's hope!
Congrats on the Finnish broze! - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 8:14:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Glad to hear from Brett and Stu, and wish JH was still with us.
Yes, the finns won the Bronze but in a very uneven style. I think what counted was when the Slovak whose name I forget high-sticked Jokinen it fired him up, and then he came back with two goals.
You can't play a mild or rational hockey. You have to play with fire every second of the game or you'll lose.
I believe the commentator said that the Finns are the only team to have won a medal in hockey in the last five Olympics.
The wife was delighted to have wrested this medal from the Slovaks although we both felt bad about the devastated Halak (Slovak goalie) sitting in a forlorn state against the side of the rink after the game.
A great game. - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 9:45:00 AM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Re: Obama v. Bush. It depends on how you perceive their motivations.
I see the Democrats as working on base and ignoble motives of trying to carve out a piece of the pie for their hyphenated group, and caring almost exclusively about that. I trace that back to the Civil War when the Democrats were doing more or less the same thing.
I see the Republicans as working on larger and universal principles, and trying to put those in place -- higher motives, which are scurrilously and scandalously misread by the Democrats who see everyone as working on their own level.
I don't think Brett and Stu are doing that, but I think they don't see the larger principles as they are working themselves out.
I see Republicans as very much in the line of Lincoln as trying to spread human rights and democracy around the world, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrats only care about themselves, and can't understand why anybody would do anything for anybody else or why work for a larger principle.
Democrats are about some kind of survival mode.
Republicans are idealists.
At least that's how I see it.
I confess when I see Obama's politics I only see ignoble motives.
The one thing I can't explain is his very cute and well-behaved children. It makes me think he must have a good side at least at home. someone loves those kids, and it is probably he and Michelle. - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 9:58:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
to be honest, I can't for the life of me see the hard evidence for all of Obama's ignoble motives that you mention in such a general and offhanded way.
From my point of view, the only logic I can see comes from predetermined worldviews that say 'anything to the left of me is bad, therefore anyone to the left of me in politics is going to have bad motives.'
If you could give some specifics of the ignoble motives that are somehow unique to his presidency.
(the right has done a helluva job of labeling normal things that happen under a presidency as 'radical' under Obama. Watch Newt talk about how Obama is a 'radical' for reading Miranda rights to the underwear bomber, when Bush's folks did the EXACT SAME THING with the shoe-bomber. It's this sort of unreasonable, historically-inaccurate, obviously-ill-intentioned argumentation style that bothers me profusely). - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 2:48:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Obama makes more sense to me as a big-government socialist than he does as a go-between amongst the two parties, working for reconcilation.
First, the so-called "dialogue" or "debate" between the parties over stealthcare was completely one-sided until last week. Not one Republican idea was permitted to enter, as the Democrats thought they had a lock on the legislation and didn't need the Republicans.
Once this turned out to be false, Obama did in fact pow-wow with the Republicans, but wouldn't allow any new considerations into the bill, meaning once again that he didn't really do anything but pretend to talk with the Republicans.
Now his party is considering using some kind of system that allows them to have a simple majority that would again bypass bipartisan input.
Obama wouldn't even allow the Republicans to READ the 3000 page bill before the vote last time, as he didn't want any of its contents to leak to the public.
Then he paid the senator of Louisiana, and the senator from Nebraska, with egregious bribes, to get it passed.
The whole thing reeks.
Obama is a very one-sided and paranoid individual who will not play fair and then he talks about he is the most transparent of all presidents in all of history.
It's just so much balogna, but now that we're seeing the sausage-making, it's getting even worse.
I don't think that Obama has any sense of how he's being perceived at this point (he understands how Democrats will see him, and can play to them) but he has no inkling of the Republican mindset: its notion of universals, or its notion of fairness, or its notion of work ethic first.
He's rotten to the bone.
The Democrats are absolutely used to this, but it strikes the rest of the country as foul play.
I'm not saying by the way that the Bush Baby was perfect by any means. He was fine until he took the country into Iraq. I still think that if we can hold on to Democracy in Iraq for two more years the whole entire Islamic world will want it.
No one realizes that that was Bush's real plan -- to put showcases for Democracy on both sides of Iran, and then let the Iranian students undermine their own country and take it back, thus getting a dramatic reversal of the Iranian Revolution.
This is working, and would have been achieved by now had McCain been the president.
Because Obama doesn't really understand democracy or freedom, and is really a one-party demagogue, it didn't work out as well as it might have had McCain and Palin been in office, but it's still causing lots of tension in those parts.
If the whole entire Islamic world converts to Democracy and we have only lost what 5000 soldiers it will be a mark of the Bush Baby's genius.
Lincoln lost 6 times more soldiers in one battle in early July 1863.
I know I know the left doesn't think Democracy is a big thing, or that it is much. But the right believes that all men the world wide are created equal and in the eyes of God, and so this is the obvious outcome -- world democracy.
Democrats just want their slice of the pie and then to go home and batten on it. - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 5:39:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
"rotten to the bone" is not a useful phrase, or a useful point of view. If you think that, then there's no way you ever have the chance of viewing anything Obama does as anything but rotten.
Your points about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem weird - Obama's policies in Iraq continue Bush's successful end-of-term approach, and his policies in Afghanistan show a much stronger commitment to victory there than Bush's lack of attention to the war.
You also generally say that Iraq was a mistake.
So you're internally inconsistent.
There are dozens of Republican ideas in the bills...I don't know where you've heard otherwise, but it's true!
"Obama is a very one-sided and paranoid individual who will not play fair and then he talks about he is the most transparent of all presidents in all of history." Huh?
"Then he paid the senator of Louisiana, and the senator from Nebraska, with egregious bribes, to get it passed."
Obama did this? No. Obama did not do this. Do you understand the separation of powers?
Obama has helped get rid of some o' these iffy deals...
So there you have it! - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 6:12:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Brett, I think this boils down to two points of view, but I appreciate your sweetness, especially at the end!
I hope you're well!
I will let others jump in. My time is at an end for today, and boy am I whipped -- a whole day of novel-writing, and article-writing, in addition to checkin' in here at LS! - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 6:55:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
Brett, I toss and turn between different ideals.
One is that it was too much too soon to go into Iraq. It wasn't surgically planned. We wrecked their libraries and museums.
There is no exit strategy.
On the other hand, it must be exciting to be able to vote, and to be able to begin the process of self-determination with the departure of Saddam and his sons.
Of course, as I heard from one Iraqi scholar, there are now "200 Saddams."
But that, in a sense, is better, as it is the beginning of pluralism. To some extent they contradict and counteract one another. What we don't want is all power consolidated in one bigoted fool.
Better to have 200 bigoted fools.
As for stealthcare, my understanding was that the Repubs weren't even permitted to see the 3000 page plan (there are two plans) until two days before the vote.
Now Obama is saying there has been too much discussion already, and he wants to move toward another vote, without opening up the documents.
They ought to cut the thin down to the size of the Bill of Rights, at least.
He did this before with the bailout.
He's a sneaky guy.
I wish it wasn't true. - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 11:30:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
The Health Care debate has been going on for an entire year.
You've been sold a lot of hogwash from righty commentators who make a big deal out of the way the government generally works (big issues have big bills).
Obama has done a pretty good job of opening up the debate to the wider public, and allowing members of congress to read and debate and fuss over the issue.
Of course, this was not politically efficient of him - he's just now taking the reigns on healthcare, which is why it's taken so damn long.
But that's the messy nature of a bipartisan approach.
And the way you tack All democratic decisions and mistakes onto Obama is interesting...
His encouragement has reversed some of those poor decisions.
And it's simply not true that the Republicans haven't been heard, or that their ideas haven't been included in the bills.
The bills may not be something Republicans are willing to vote for - but substantive ideas of theirs have, in fact, been included.
Such it is, so it goes.
Obama's not 'sneaky' wrt to health care.
The process has been out and in the light of day to a much greater extent than what other presidents have done.
I mean, we've been talking about it forEver.
It's just gotten muddled because Obama wasn't leading the charge.
Now he is, and things are becoming a bit clearer.
The plan has adopted conservative ideas, but will not be scrapped totally the way conservatives want.
This is in no way a 'sneaky' or dictatorial or whatever silly adjectives you want to use approach.
It's actually pretty darn as bipartisan as it can be.
Sorry that it's easier to attack the strawman of Obamaisadictatorwhowon'tlistentoanyoneelse.
But a Democratic president and a Democratic congress will want to enact Democratic legislation.
And just as in Clinton's first years, the Democrats will pass good laws that are politically unpopular...
So they'll lose some support initially
And then gain support when the fruits of their laws fruitify.
At least Obama's more popular than Reagan was at a similar juncture in his presidency. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 3:55:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
And the bailout was a Bush thing, remember?
- Monday, March 1, 2010 at 4:08:00 AM EST
- J A DeLater said...
I read your remark that:
"Watch Newt talk about how Obama is a 'radical' for reading Miranda rights to the underwear bomber, when Bush's folks did the EXACT SAME THING with the shoe-bomber. It's this sort of unreasonable, historically-inaccurate, obviously-ill-intentioned argumentation style that bothers me profusely)."
Didn't the Richard Reid shoe-bomber case in December of 2001precede the establishment of military tribunals for trials of terrorists and unlawful combatants? - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 9:01:00 AM EST
- stu said...
Didn't the Richard Reid shoe-bomber case in December of 2001precede the establishment of military tribunals for trials of terrorists and unlawful combatants?
Yes, we still had a functioning constitution at that point, and had not yet scrapped the rule of law on the altar of public safety.
There is little doubt in my mind that some of the anger that comes from the right is due to the fact that it is now Mr. Obama who is exercising some of the extra-constitutional precedents that Mr. Bush established back in the days when people thought that the concept of a "permanent Republican majority" might actually hold. It never actually occurred to them that it might not be one of their own.
And the Republicans are conflicted on two quite different bases. The first is that Mr. Obama is in fact exercising some of these powers, and this makes them feel just as uneasy as liberals did when Mr. Bush was the one doing so. These powers have including domestic surveillance, and I think it is reasonable to suspect that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was/is being done. The second is that to the extent that Obama has partially dismantled these extra-constitutional powers, he gives the lie to the notion that they were needed in the first place, and makes it self-evident how extensive the Bush administration power grab was. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:18:00 PM EST
- J A DeLater said...
As you probably know, President Obama exercises what you call those "extra-constitutional" surveillance powers under the Patriot Act for pursuing the war against terrorists (and the Obama administration seems at last to be adjusting its language in more accurately referring to the nature of the threat) with the sanction of a more than three-to-one bipartisan majority in the House and an undebated voice vote in the Senate. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 1:48:00 PM EST
- G. M. Palmer said...
Or you have people on the right who were mad as hell at Bush and now continue to me bad at Obama.
- Monday, March 1, 2010 at 2:12:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
The phrase 'military tribunal' sounds tougher than 'criminal courts,' but that doesn't mean it is.
The Bush administration adjudicated only three terrorists (all of whom were detained abroad) in military tribunals, and 2 of those who were tried in military tribunals got less than a year in prison as their punishment.
They tried hundreds of terrorists in criminal courts.
And praised themselves for doing so.
I'm cool with it!
I think it worked out pretty well for the most part! I like our justice system. Things like law Work in America...
And it's intellectual dishonesty for the right to claim that Obama's very-similar approach to dealing with terrorists is somehow weaker...and it's pretty foolish to call him 'radical.'
Now, if those who condemn Obama as radical for doing the same things Bush did also call Bush a radical, then they're intellectually consistent.
Otherwise, I'm sorry, but the rules of logic and love and life make that particular argument pigswill.
Which isn't to say that All Republican talking points or criticisms Are pigswill.
But that one?
It self-evidently is. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 2:13:00 PM EST
- stu said...
Or you have people on the right who were mad as hell at Bush and now continue to me bad at Obama.
Point taken, but the same holds w.r.t. the left and Obama. His approval numbers early on were boosted by the fact that he was not G. W. Bush, whom the nation could not spit out quickly enough to suit it. Whereas Obama's approval numbers right now are depressed by the fact that he actually is a center-left pragmatist rather than a miracle worker or political warrior for the left, and so he's being measured not against possible alternatives, but instead against the idealized image that many people had of him.
The healthcare numbers are a great illustration of this point. To a decent approximation, the country is divided in thirds w.r.t. HCR. One third does not want any HCR. One third wants Canadian style health care (i.e., private providers, but single payer), a.k.a., universal Medicare. One third wants HCR in the context of strong private payer options, and is ambivalent or opposed to the public option. Obama's health-care approval numbers reflect the fact that the first two groups don't like what is happening, but for very different reasons.
This is why I'm sanguine about Obama's current approval numbers. The people who oppose Obama from the left are to a certain degree victims of projecting their own beliefs and priorities onto him. It's not surprising that in many cases they're disappointed. But their disapproval hardly translates into a realistic electoral chance for a hypothetical Palin/Beck ticket. Quite the contrary.
Give the opposition a name, so that the choice is between individuals rather than between an individual and an ideal, and the left will be back in Obama's camp in a heart-beat. It will take another generation before the left will Nader the Democratic candidate. Whereas I think it is very likely that an establishment Republican candidate will be Tea-bagged. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 3:30:00 PM EST
- stu said...
As you probably know, President Obama exercises what you call those "extra-constitutional" surveillance powers under the Patriot Act for pursuing the war against terrorists (and the Obama administration seems at last to be adjusting its language in more accurately referring to the nature of the threat) with the sanction of a more than three-to-one bipartisan majority in the House and an undebated voice vote in the Senate.
Yes and no. Some of these surveillance powers do come from the Patriot Act. But some derived from the theory that if the President does it, it's not illegal. The absurdity of the later is self-evident, but even the former is no guarantor of constitutionality.
The Fourth Amendment outlaws "unreasonable search and seizure," mandates warrants, and requires that the warrants be based upon probable cause. The "warrantless surveillance program" self-evidently did not depend on warrants. It was, to a first approximation, an exercise in large-scale data-mining that touched every form of communication this side of face-to-face meetings.
In short, none of the protections or procedures required by the Fourth Amendment were used. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 3:58:00 PM EST
- J A DeLater said...
Details of the cases you referred to should include the fact that the Australian Hicks (taken into custody by US forces in Afghanistan in 2001) was sent home and served less than a year in an Australian prison after he was accused of training with al-Qaida. The military commission actually sentenced him to seven years, though his sentence was reduced upon repatriation.
Osama bin Laden's driver's defence was successful in deciding the commission to convict him as a minor though material "player." He was sent back to Yemen over a year ago after his US sentence was reduced to time served--he was released shortly after his return to Yemen.
The third case (al Hamza al Bahlul) was convicted on various charges, including conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and solicitation to murder. He was sentenced to life in prison and now is a denizen of Guantanamo Bay.
Not sure if your aim is to compare the proposed KSM and Nigerian bomber cases with those.
In any case, more terrorist suspects would certainly have been tried in military tribunals had the Bush administration been able to counter the interminable challenges presented to them by defence attorneys opposed to the commissions.
There are many problems associated with bestowing the legal advantages afforded to citizens on captured enemy combatants or terrorists, including the presumption of innocence, security cconcerns, classified info leaks and monetary costs. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 4:08:00 PM EST
- Kirby Olson said...
I'm hoping for Repub candidate along the lines of Romney.
Good looks appear to be essential.
Obama certainly looked better than Mrs. Clinton or John McCain (in their own day neither was one bad, but the edges of either one are gone, and the middle is crumpled by now).
Romney has his looks, as does Scott Brown.
Palin is a good-looking woman, but she can't be counted on to speak diplomatically, and tends to fire up the opposition.
Running the two-year gauntlet to the presidency requires the ability to be cool and to make friends with the press. Bush 2 was very good at that, and could wiggle his ears on command to make them laugh.
What we don't need is someone who absolutely hates the press. The press is crucial.
Obama coddled them nicely.
McCain and Palin didn't know how to do this unless they were on Fox where they were adored.
Obama has been found out by the Millenials, where his support is dropping. He wants to make them pay for a huge part of his healthcare deal, dragooning them into paying for something that won't pay off for them for at least forty years.
The Millenials are still brainwashed by their college educations into thinking that race and gender is all they should be thinking about, and the simplistic Yes We Can! was meant to make them feel historic. It worked, but they may want something substantial next time around -- something more than a cheap slogan and the notion that they can get some demagogue of color into office.
They may also want to limit government bureaucracy so that it doesn't become a permanent nest of ninnies dragging the whole economy down into a pestilential swarm of laws and nitpicking that threatens to get them locked up for any of a variety of new reasons (some of the HC demands stipulated prison sentences for those company officers who failed to redistribute the income on cue).
After a few hundred millenials end up doing time on such charges I think their whole generation might cool toward expanded government interference in business, already mushrooming under the Stimulus Plan which has ensnared innumerable banks and other enterprises in its web of unsustainable fussbudgetry. - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 6:00:00 PM EST
- Brett said...
The details you cited are interesting, JADL, but they don't really change the fact that Bush did what Obama's doing, and the right's calling Obama a radical for it, and that's...
illogical and wrongheaded.
I was just bringing them up because Bush hardly ever used military tribunals, and when he did, the results weren't exactly 'tough.'
But the right is selling the line that Obama's weak and giving comfort to the terrorists by not using military tribunals enough...
Things so obviously don't add up from this in my brain. Don't they esplode in yours too?
There are problems with criminal courts, there are problems with tribunals. They have both been used by this president and by the previous president.
Your concerns about security seem unwarranted, and bely a lack of faith in America.
We can handle terrorists in our prison systems and in our courts. We kick ass.
We tried Moussaoui. We've got our shit together. Back in the day the Republicans were all gungho about proving to the world how awesome we are with our awesome kickass courts. The Dems seemed to go along with it...
Now the Republicans're all like 'we don't kick ass anymore, tribunals sound tougher, yada yada yada'
The cost of these trials may be an issue...
But Bush only used the tribunals three times.
Out of hundreds of folks tried for terrorism.
As you should be cool with Obama using criminal courts. Less often than Bush did, but still using them.
You have to admit that the 'this proves Obama is a radical, and is giving comfort to the terrorists' talking point from the right is wrongheaded. Right? Don't you just Have to admit that on this point? I can't see a glimmer of a hope of any other possible response.
If your personal feelings are that both Obama and Bush should have pushed for more tribunals, even though there are obstacles to doing that from defence attorneys... I'm cool with that. That's consistent.
But you also can admit that the right's talking heads have been deceptive and hyperbolic by using this issue as a stepstone to calling Obama a radical who's comforting the enemy... Right?
Were you anti-criminal courts when Giuliani was boasting about how it was good to try Moussaoui in American courts?
I want to make clear - You, JADL, May have a consistent viewpoint on this.
But Newt et al. do not. - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 2:42:00 AM EST
- Brett said...
Kirby - millenials' prices will be going down...You know, being able to stay on their parents' insurance longer.
- Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 2:43:00 AM EST