Standing Up for Nothing

World Ends--everyone else moves on

2006-11-29T23:09:00.000-06:00

Finally! We can stop worrying about global warming because the situation is hopeless!

Billions of people could be wiped out over the next century because of climate change, a leading expert said. Professor James Lovelock, who pioneered the idea of the Earth as a living organism, said as the planet heats up humans will find it increasingly hard to survive.
He warned that as conditions worsen, the global population which is currently around 6.5 billion, may sink as low as 500 million. Prof Lovelock also claims that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the
problem, merely buy us time.

He warned there are no simple solutions to global heating and there is nothing we can do now to "save the earth."

Well, glad that's settled. On to issues of true importance...

Should bad parenting be a crime?

2006-09-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

In yet another example of our bizarre culture in which companies are held responsible for how other people use their products:

Family members of three people slain by a 14-year-old on newsman Sam Donaldson's New Mexico ranch sued the makers of the video game ''Grand Theft Auto: Vice City'' on Monday, claiming the crimes would not have occurred had the teenager never played the violent game.

Here's an idea: the crimes would not have occured had the teenager never been allowed to play the violent game in the first place.

Violent video games don't kill people, kids whose parents let their video game playing get out of control kill people.

McFreakingRidiculous

2006-09-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

The "blame corporate America" mentality lives on. WORLD Magazine reports:

Hedgehogs 1, McDonald's 0. A group of environmentalists won a concession from the world's largest fast-food company when McDonald's announced it would redesign its McFlurry cup. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society complained for years that hedgehogs would come upon littered McFlurry containers, make an attempt to lick up the leftover ice cream, and get their heads stuck in the cup. In the redesign, McDonald's made the opening in the container too small for hedgehogs to penetrate, though the spiny mammals may have preferred a container with a mouth wide enough to permit easy access to the leftover ice cream without a danger of getting stuck.

Did anyone think to stop harassing McDonald's and start blaming the people who litter?

T-Shirt Slogan: "McDonald's doesn't kill hedgehogs. Discourteous, lawbreaking citizens kill hedgehogs."

[cross-posted at Critical Mass]

Are the terrorists getting smarter?

2006-08-24T09:31:00.000-05:00

I keep hearing that our terrorist enemies are getting smarter. This story about Arabic speakers learning Spanish and hiring "coyotes" to smuggle them across the border seems to support such a notion. Then again, how smart can they be if they are wearing patches like these on their jackets?

(Courtesy CNSNews .com)

[Cross-posted at Critical Mass]

French casualties in Vietnam

2006-08-06T15:51:00.000-05:00

A quick aside while I work on a Vietnam essay for class.

France had been in Vietnam for almost two centuries before the U.S. military set foot there. Occupation and control of the region was standard fare for the imperialists, but Vietnam had proved tricky for the French, both politically and militarily. An official war against Ho Chi Min's Vietminh fighters began in 1947 (46?). Here's what the book I'm currently reading on the conflict says:

By late 1952, the French dead, wounded, missing and captured totaled more than ninety thousand since the war had begun six years earlier, and France had spent twice the sume it had received in U.S. aid under the Marshall Plan (203) ... "Officers are being lost... at a faster rate than they are being graduated from officer schools in France" (193).

In a war of liberation (ie. against tyranny and imperialism), the U.S. has lost a little over two thousand troops. Sure, "war is hell." But anyone who thinks the conflicts the West is involved in today compare by any measure to the carnage inflicted in the wars of the last century is simply ignorant.

Tags: war, Vietnam, Asia, 20th century wars, France, U.S., Iraq, casualties, Vietminh, imperialism

Attack of the hammer-headed Iranian

2006-07-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

Iran is threatening to react militarily if Israel attacks Syria. Hussein Sif al-Din, a Hezbollah rep in Iran,

threatened that his organization planned to increase its attacks in Israel, until "no place in Israel will be safe." [al-Din also threatened that] "this war will be remembered as the beginning of the end of Israel."

The crazy Iranian regime apparently has enough ammo to arm Hezbollah. The terrorist group may one day have something more powerful than rockets. But at the moment, I believe I've discovered the secret weapon Hezbollah has been hiding: al-Din's forehead.

("Die, Zionist pigs!" head-but, head-but)

Tags: Iran, Hezbollah, Hizbollah, al-Din, Israel

Re-carve the map?

2006-07-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

The AP reports that Iranian President Ahmadinutjob

called for a cease-fire in Lebanon and criticized U.S. policy in the Middle East on Wednesday, saying Washington wants to "recarve the map" of the region with Israel's help.

Re-carve the map? Last time I checked, Hezbollah is not a sovereign nation. It has no borders and no legitimate authority. Israel’s stated intent is to disarm and/or destroy Hezbollah and then go home—leaving Lebanon a freer nation in the process, I might add. If anyone is a map-carver, it's Iran: Ahmadinutjob is the one pining for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Ahmadinejad's nation is a major backer of Hezbollah and a sworn enemy of Israel, but he denied that Tehran provides military support to the militant group.

And we all believe that one, right?

Tags: Iran, Ahmadinejad, Israel, Hezbollah, Hizbollah, Lebanon, Middle East

A victory of judicial restraint

2006-07-26T22:50:00.000-05:00

The Washington State Supreme Court upheld the state’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) today, arguing that the issue of marriage is a topic for the elected legislature to decide. What a breath of fresh air from one of the most liberal states in the union!

"While same-sex marriage may be the law at a future time, it will be because the people declare it to be, not because five members of this court have dictated it," Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the opinion.

Heck yeah, baby. That is the essence of conservative (and constitutional) jurisprudence. As long as the legal issues surrounding tax and inheritance benefits (which is the essence of marriage as far as the state is concerned) remain in that legal realm, rather than become a civil rights issue, then regulation of marriage is safely in the jurisdiction of the individual states. No doubt a few more states will mimic the Massachusetts approach to marriage, but the overall trend in the states is a vigorous defense of the traditional view: Around 20 states have passed (or will vote on) constitutional amendments protecting marriage, and more state are in the process.

Tags: gay marriage, DOMA, supreme court, Barbara Madsen, civil rights

Fair fight?

2006-07-23T19:41:00.000-05:00

I think it's fair to say this describes the situation pretty well. (Click to enlarge)

"A maiden is in a ring now"

2006-07-04T23:39:00.000-05:00

More details here, due to popular demand.

Blame the victim? Heck yes.

2006-06-18T21:39:00.000-05:00

This editorial in the LA Times tries to slip another liberal technique by us, one that Ann Coulter (albeit crassly and with overblown rhetoric) has exposed using her most recent media spotlight. The liberals' argument goes that because someone is a victim, we can't a) respond to their actions/criticisms, or b) hold them responsible for their actions due to their "victim status." Coulter's example was the Jersey Girls--the women who used their platform as grieving widows to denounce Bush and actively campaign for Kerry in the 2004 election; these ladies were vigorously defended by the media and leftwing pundits (ah, but I repeat myself) from virtually any criticism because of their victim status. The same happened with Cindy Sheehan, who the media proclaimed had "absolute moral authority": How can you criticize this poor woman? She lost her son in Iraq, for goodness sake! As ridiculous as this sounds, it happens all to often.

The latest occurrence of the lefties defending the unequivocally wrong actions of "victims" is the Katrina FEMA emergency funds abuse scandal. Turns out at least 16% ($9.6 million) of the cash cards handed out by FEMA to recipients of the hurricane were used for bogus purposes--everything from buying trashy videos and expensive liquor to funding vacations in the Bahamas. The Times editorializes:

Some misuse of the FEMA-issued debit cards, however, is hardly shocking. The aim of the $2,000 cards was to give individuals immediate aid to be spent according to his or her judgment, rather than earmarking items that the government guessed would be of greatest assistance. For every "Girls Gone Wild" video purchased, thousands of families used their cards for clothing, food and temporary shelter without having to deal with federal red tape. Bad spending decisions are an unfortunate side effect of a clever and responsive policy.

So because lots of recipients used their money wisely, it excuses the thievery of the others? Keep in mind the low estimate is 9.6 million bucks. But wait, it gets better:

It's easy, and necessary, to criticize FEMA's across-the-board incompetence in responding to the largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War. But obsessing about the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim.

Let me get this straight: FEMA did the virtuous thing poorly, while scores of Katrina victims did the immoral thing excellently, and we can criticize FEMA but not the thieves?

The notion of "blaming the victim" has potential merit only if one is blaming a victim for the actual event that made him or her the victim--which is why we don't blame New Orleanders for getting hit by a hurricane. What we can--and most definitely should--blame anyone for (Katrina victim or not) is thievery and deception. Suffering through a hurricane does not entitle anyone to take money given in good faith and use it for smut, booze and massages in the tropics.

Tags: Katrina, victims, fraud, deception, thievery, FEMA, LA Times, liberals, moral authority, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Coulter

World on Fire

2006-06-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

I was already a fan of Sarah McLachlan's music. Now I am impressed by her generosity and humanitarianism. This is old news (her video released last year), but I learned about it today from last week's Relevant Podcast. Sarah had $150,000 to make her music video for her single "World on Fire," but instead she spent just 15 bucks to make the thing, and spent the rest of it helping people all around the world. Besides the few frames of Sarah playing her guitar and singing, the video details how they spent the money--from providing 6 months' worth of medical supplies for 5000 people in Nairobi to funding an orphanage in South Africa, adopting the elderly in Easter Europe to providing scholarships for people in Ghana. Go here for the entire list of donations. Watch the video on Relevant TV (perhaps only until the end of this week); the permanent video link is here.

I am deeply impressed by Sarah's virtuous actions.

Late Tuesday on a late Thursday

2006-05-31T23:21:00.000-05:00

This week the latest CD from Late Tuesday arrived in the mail. The trio probably wondered who could possibly know of their music all the way down in Arkansas, considering that unless you live in the Pacific Northwest you probably haven't heard of Late Tuesday. What a shame--these phenomenal musicians deserve all the exposure they can get. Fortunately, someone higher up has heard LT: they have a song on the latest "Christmas in the Northwest" compilation CD, in the company of Harvey Danger and Dave Matthews. Let's hope it continues.

I don't understand why, but it seems these girls are still unsigned to a record company. It surely isn't for lack of talent, fan base, or good press. Perhaps they want to keep autonomy over their tunes, or rake in a few more cents per disc than a typical record contract allows (they've sold over 10,000 CDs since they formed in 2001). In any case, Late Tuesday has scored again with their latest disc.

"Drowning Out Love" was released this month, and if you were quick enough you got free shipping with your order. (Or, if you happened to have a birthday right around that time [ahem], you didn't pay a dime.) As I've listened to the CD in the last few days, I've reflected on Late Tuesday's musical journey.

The first song I ever heard by LT was "I Must Go," the stirring 6/8 piano melody from their 2001 debut release--I was traveling with a fellow Camp Firwood Summer Staff member who had the CD in her car. I was drawn in by the lush vocals and folksy acoustic sound. I can freely admit that I burned the CD from her because later I went out and bought it--that's how good it was. Indeed, some of us performed "I Must Go" at my high school graduation.

"Drowning Out Love" is the band's fifth release, if one includes their Christmas EP. Each full-scale project has been significantly different musically than the others.

"Drowning Out Love" is much closer musically to "Remember We Forgot" than their self-titled. In fact, the girls have almost left completely behind the folksy songs driven by acoustic guitars, mandolins and violins, apparently finding song-writing joy in the Rhodes electric keyboard tone--epitomized and prominently played in "To Not Be Let Down" from their second album, "Looking For Flowers Again." The first time I listened through "Drowning" I realized about the fifth song in that I hadn't noticed any significant acoustic guitar whatsoever. Even "Looking For Flowers Again," while definitely a style change from the self-titled album, had such guitar-driven songs as "Hallways" and "Home." Their latest release has little in that vein. This departure is not necessarily bad; it simply reflects the evolution LT has undergone musically.

One thing that hasn't changed is LT's unique ability to take a commonplace, ubiquitous chord structure and make it sound original. Typically this means inserting some chromatic movements instrumentally ("My Nice-Friend Face"), or throwing out some 6ths or 9ths vocally ("Simply Beautiful")--an inevitable tummy twirler, if you ask me. (Just listen to the vocals on their Christmas EP... ahhh, bliss). Indeed, my favorite thing about LT's music is their vocals. Sometimes they will leave me grinning for a solid minute as I bask in stacked harmonies and dischordant tension. Case in point: "Song of Songs" from "Drowning Out Love" is an incrediblel mixture of rich minor chords fleshed out with full harmonies sung to Biblical poetry. The incredible vocals in "Simply Beautiful" have at times left me gasping for air and wiping away tears. (In case the LT girls ever read this, one of my favorite vocal meshes ever is the thick major 9 chord [or something like that] in the a capella measures of "118." YEAH!!!)

These girls write wonderfully creative music, but one wonders what will happen once they finally find the love that's been eluding (most of) them. Sure, each CD has a "Song of Songs," or a "118," or a "103 and Other Things," but I doubt the band will have enough of those to fill an entire album once the void of heartache and yearning is filled. And we all know that post-marriage love songs, no matter how much stronger the love, simply aren't as good. Perhaps when that day comes they will prove again how truly creative they can be.

Their CDs are for sale here. Buy all of them. Each disc is unique, but they all have something in common: they are filled with incredible music you won't hear anywhere else.

UPDATE: another Firwood alumni weighs in on "Drowning Out Love."

Tags: Late Tuesday, music, album review, Drowning Out Love, Looking For Flowers Again, Remember We Forgot

Mulling over Mill

2006-05-20T17:08:00.000-05:00

On Friday OpinionJournal published a piece on John Stuart Mill in honor of his 200th birthday on May 20, tracing and commenting on the philosopher's ideas of utilitarianism, contained most famously and enduringly in On Liberty. Read the article here.

Utilitarianism as a moral code can appear reasonable, an objective standard; yet in the end it is as solid a foundation as relativism could ever hope for. Mill's moral code calls for protection of individual rights from the "tyranny of the majority." OpinionJournal notes:

This principle has a profound significance: It is saying that the purpose of law is not to uphold the will of the majority, or to impose the will of the sovereign, but to protect the will of the individual. It is the legal expression of the "sovereignty of the individual." The problem lies in the concept of harm. How can I prove that one person's action does not harm another? How can I prove, for example, that other people are not harmed by my public criticism of their religious beliefs--beliefs on which they depend for their peace of mind and emotional stability? How can I prove that consensual sex between two adults leaves the rest of us unaffected, when so much of life's meaning seems to rest on the assumption of shared sexual norms? These questions are as significant for us as they were for Mill; the difference is that radical Islam has now replaced Scottish puritanism as the enemy of liberal values.

Mill's philosophy is at the heart of the political/moral struggle today over sexual ethics and freedoms. Even some conservatives lean libertarian on these issues: Sean Hannity doesn't care what consenting adults do in their bedroom, as long as it stays there. The problem with this view is not just a moral one; it's a practical one. What happens in the bedroom inevitably effects the outside world. Thus, for moral and practical reasons, I support strong heterosexual marriages and healthy families.

The "harm" doctrine of "On Liberty" has been used again and again to subvert those aspects of law which are founded not in policy but in our inherited sense of the sacred and the prohibited. Hence this doctrine has made it impossible for the law to protect the core institutions of society, namely marriage and the family, from the sexual predators.

Tags: John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, morality, truth

The DaVinci Code is Cracking Catholics

2006-05-12T23:50:00.000-05:00

And they need to get a grip on themselves. Catholic voices ranging from Vatican officials and Nigerian Cardinals to church scholars have increased their attacks on Dan Brown's best-selling novel just in time for the film. How long will it take people to realize that loud denounciations and calls for boycotts do nothing to subdue a film's public-drawing power? In fact, typically the opposite happens. "The Passion of the Christ" comes to mind immediately: the feverished, whiney screams of anti-semitism about Mel Gibson's phenomenal film no doubt helped propel it to the greatest profits ever for an R-rated film.

Make no mistake: I have read The DaVinci Code, and I believe it to be a fascinating story with a lighting-fast plot; it's no wonder the book kept me reading late into the night. However, as literature the book is lacking. It is low on character development, and the writing simply isn't stellar. In addition, the characters and plot line in The DaVinci Code are pathetically similar to its prequel, Angels and Demons--which I blogged about last year. Yet there is a bigger problem with the book. I won't detail Dan Brown's deceit and dishonesty here--plenty of other have done that. This post concerns the folks who have crossed the line in their opposition to the book and the film. According to this article,

Cardinals, speaking with the authorisation of the Vatican, have called for the Hollywood version of Dan Brown's bestselling novel to be boycotted.

First mistake. A boycott will only increase peoples' desire to see the film, and those (Christians) who do abstain will only be shooting themselves in the foot by being ignorant of an important discussion. One Catholic got it half right when he described the novel as "stridently anti-Christian" and called for believers to "reject the lies and gratuitous defamation" in the book. Agreed: reject the lies, but instead of boycotting anything DaVinci, engage the discussion! The wimperings about attacks on Christianity, without being coupled with an intellectual response, harken back to the days of William Jennings Bryan, who said in the 1925 Scopes Trial, “I have been so well satisfied with the Christian religion, that I have spent no time trying to find arguments against it.”

A common response to Christains' claims about The DaVinci Code is that the book is only fiction. Indeed, the film's star came out with such a defense:

[Tom Hanks said] the story we tell is loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense...If you are going to take any sort of movie at face value, particularly a huge-budget motion picture like this, you'd be making a very big mistake.

That's exactly the point: this "loaded with hooey" story (the book, at least) is packaged as factual, which it most definitely is not. Even the mainstream media has researched and exposed as false some of the basic historical assertions in the novel. Yet many religious leaders (especially Catholics) have called for measures against the film that would be completely counterproductive; some have even called for legal action!

[Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze said] Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and forget. Sometimes it is our duty to do something practical...Some know legal means which can be taken in order to get the other person to respect the rights of others.

Oh, please. Legal action because a movie innaccurately portrays Christianity? This is perfect fodder for the lefties who claim equivalance between Christians and the Islamic response to the Danish cartoons. Riots are quite different from threatening legal action, obviously, but any unreasonable response by Christians to the DaVinci controversey reflects negatively on them. Fortunately, there are plenty of reasonable responses to this issue. Three off the top of my head: Josh McDowell's book, pastor Mark D. Roberts' blogging on the subject, and Focus on the Family's roundup of valuable articles.

Of course, not every Christian leader opposed to the film/book do so for the standard reasons, or so goes the claim:

Another eminent Catholic, socialite Claus Von BÃ¼low, said: "I am not going to see The Da Vinci Code. This has nothing to do with its historical claims but because I found the book unreadable."

I find that hard to believe.

Tags: DaVinci Code, Dan Brown, Catholics, Christians, Tom Hanks, Angels and Demons, Josh McDowell, Mark D Roberts, Focus on the Family

Who poses a threat?

2006-05-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

As anyone who has ever watched South Park before, the show is ruthless to Christians. Of course, the hit comedy feels free to lampoon absolutely anything, so I know I'm in good company.

Oops, let me rephrase that: South Park feels free to skewer anyone and anything--except Islam. Since the show often gets its material from the latest headlines, the Mohommad cartoons debacle was ripe for ridicule. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show's primary writers, served up an episode mocking Islam. Comedy Central blacked those parts out. Never mind the fact that this same episode, as WORLD notes, contained a "blasphemous scene involving Jesus, the American flag, and President Bush," none of which the network elected to censor. WORLD's analysis is spot on:

Comedy Central could have axed the entire show and initiated a policy of respecting all religions. But instead, the network made Islam off-limits for satire, while letting Christianity be fair game. This privileging of Islam over Christianity came not because the TV execs are more sympathetic to the Muslim religion. They acted out of sheer fear. They knew they had nothing to fear from offending Christians, but that Muslims really might kill them.

Why is the left so fearful of the Christian right, yet wants to reach out to the so-called "religion of peace"? Sure, non-believers don't want to be told to change their lifestyle. I understand that. But a political system in America dominated by Islam would re-define the idea of "cramming your religion down my throat." The moment I try to force-convert you or attempt to lower your citizenship status because of our religious differences, then you can be worried about the oppressive Christians. But for now, the left is choosing its enemies poorly.

Tags: Islam, Christianity, South Park, WORLD Magazine

Of Swords and Plowshares

2006-05-07T17:36:00.000-05:00

My mind converged on a realization today as I was listening to music. The first thing I noticed was a line in the second verse of Don Henley's "End of the Innocence":

O’ beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They’re beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

It's a beautiful song, with sad and poetic lyrics, but I recognized something today I never had before. I knew I'd heard plowshares and swords put together before. After about 2 seconds, I knew it what it was--Les Mis:

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom
In the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plough-share,
They will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward.

My first thought was, "Wow! Don Henley knew Les Mis!" Then I realized how unlikely that was, so I wondered where else this idea came up. I googled it, and lo and behold, the concept is taken from a verse in Joel:

Beat your plowshares into swords
and your pruning hooks into spears.
Let the weakling say,
"I am strong!"

The search results turned up other uses of this verse (knowingly or not is not always easy to tell), including an essay about John Brown (the civil war-era abolitionist), a blogger's post about Russia's recent arms deal with Algeria, a politically-motivated inversion of the phrase by a Christian musician, a 1977 Time Magazine article about American farmers, a 1997 news article about Iraq's military build-up, and plenty of book titles.

Ooo, turns out Wikipedia has a useful entry on the phrase: "

"Swords to ploughshares" is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications. The plowshare is often used to symbolize creative tools that benefit mankind, as opposed to destructive tools of war, symbolized by the sword, a similar sharp metal tool with an arguably opposite use. The common expression "beat swords into plowshares" has been used by disparate social and political groups. The term's origin is a number of biblical quotes:

Wikipedia lists two other verses beside Joel that the concept is found in--two almost identical passages in Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3 (hey, isn't it nice to read something from Micah besides "He has shown the..."?)

He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

I just skimmed through the first 10 pages of search results. Wow. I wonder how many other things that we don't even recognize give testimony to the profundity and ubiquitousness of the Scriptures in culture? Who would have thought a single thought process could take me from Don Henley and Les Mis to Iraq and the Scriptures!

A Day Without Miranda Rights

2006-05-03T21:16:00.000-05:00

Scott Ott just keeps 'em coming:

(2006-04-28) — As May 1st draws near and America prepares for the hardship and suffering of “A Day without Illegal Immigrants”, the Justice Department announced today plans to mark the protest movement with its own act of civil disobedience.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he’ll encourage federal, state and local law enforcement on Monday to respond to illegal immigration rallies by observing “A Day without Miranda Rights” followed by “A Month without Habeas Corpus” and “A Year without Bail.”

I just about fell out of my chair when I read that. Hat tip: Cody.

The Rise, Purpose and Threat of Modern Progressivism

2006-05-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

[The following is an adaptation from a paper I wrote for my Law and American History course. The paper was about the relationship between law and society in general, and the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in specific. Unless otherwise noted, all citations refer to historian Jeffrey Moran's book, described below.]

Some media, instead of defining progressivism, are defined by it. At the time of the Scopes trial, the New Republic, while opposed to the Butler Law [a Tenessee statute that barred public schools from teaching anything which contradicted the fundamentalist view of the Genesis creation story], argued that the state legislature was the place to correct a bad law, not the court system. Better to leave popular sovereignty intact, even if it means allowing a bad law to remain on the books (Moran 38). The magazine in essence argued that society changes law, not the other way around: “Courts can no more make us wise and tolerant and eager for the truth than they can make us kind or generous. No community can become enlightened by having enlightenment judicially thrust upon it” (Courts Should Not Rule over Legislature 138). Today such a view would place one squarely in the conservative camp. The New Republic and other liberal or progressive publications in 2006 would most likely argue the exact opposite point.

Historically, progressivism has backed some remarkable ideas. One could say the movement was principled. Yet today it risks defining its principles not on an objective standard of morality, but on the concept of pursuing whatever the next unattained idea is. When the rights of the British colonies were endangered, progressive-minded people took the lead in implementing an idea never successfully accomplished before in human history. When America was entrenched politically and economically in slavery, progressives were the first to call for a stop to that moral evil. When women lacked the right to vote, progressivism advocated universal suffrage. When big cities had major health and sanitation issues with their poor populations, progressives started and supported places like Hull House and advocated for better treatment of the “least of these.” Progressives were behind the Civil Rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. These were all good ideas, and they were all moral. But modern progressivism, or modernism, or liberalism, seems to have reached a limit. Modern progressivism supports ideas that go beyond what the moral standards of America have historically restrained. Modern progressivism is where one finds support for gay marriage, abortion rights, unlimited and inconsequential sexual freedom, euthanasia, multiculturalism and moral relativism. But the value of an idea is not found in its not being reached yet. Progression for progression’s sake is dangerous, especially if that progression leads in the wrong moral direction. Some may say that we are in a cultural shift similar to the ones in the 1920s or the 1970s. Indeed, the following quote is from the second decade of the last century, although it just as well could have been published today:

Finally, we come to religion. The younger members of society have thrown religion overboard—that is, religion as conceived by their elders. No longer do we believe in a Deity moulded [sic] in the form of a police inspector. But out own faith in an Infinite Being possessed of infinite comprehension is too great to leave us stranded high and dry on the rocks of unbelief. As we sought, and are finding freedom in other channels, so will we find it in religious ones. (Malone 202)

The decline of fundamentalism in America began, at the most basic level, with the type of un-helpful rhetoric that William Jennings Bryan [chief prosecutor in the Scopes trial] personified. In reacting to his non-believing contemporaries who expressed skepticism for Christianity, Bryan seemed to dismiss skepticism altogether, in any form. Indeed, he readily admitted the following the Clarence Darrow [Scopes' chief defense lawyer]: “I have been so well satisfied with the Christian religion, that I have spent no time trying to find arguments against it” (Did the Flood Wipe Out Civilization? 152). Bryan clearly illustrates the difference between the blind-faith believer, irresponsibly untroubled by any hint of paradox or inconsistency within his faith, yet who viciously reacts to any skepticism (honest and defamatory alike), and the believer who struggles honestly with his faith, asks questions and seeks wisdom, yet in the end is bound, despite his uncertainties, to the salvation granted to him by faith and the drawing of the Holy Spirit. Bryan’s lazy brand of fundamentalism no doubt festered due to a lack of significant intellectual opposition and historical entrenchment. When finally challenged, the believers, rather than engage in a legitimate dialogue, took the attacks personally and chose to cry “martyr!”

Interestingly enough, the challenge to complacent and lazy thinking has come full circle. Evolutionists are the majority today, yet conservative Christians are launching an intellectual and scientific attack on what has morphed into more than just a theory, but rather an ideology and a philosophy. The ideas of evolution, which have fomented in America over the last hundred years or so, have contributed to the naturalist worldview that a significant population shares. It came about by the victory of socially liberal thought over fundamentalism, and the latter’s consequential decrease in social authority. The basic, original tenets of fundamentalism—the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus to atone for human sins, the miracles or the inevitability of Jesus’ return to earth to usher in a millennium of peace (Moran 12)—remain solid, even if the intellectual and cultural connotations of such a term remain pejorative. The orthodox, Biblical approach to discerning truth, combined with a healthy dose of skepticism and intellectual training (the missing ingredient in the past), can successfully compete with the now dominant cultural forces of evolutionism, naturalism and secularism.

Progressivism should always strive for what is better, not just what is new and different. The cultural changes it pursues should be qualitative. Fortunately for the movement, most of its historical causes up have fit within a correct view of morality and its restraints. Now it has surpassed those constraints and abandoned its moral authority. There is no right or wrong answer about the relationship between law and society, because both affect each other. Indeed, people often argue one over the other in order to fit a certain political or religious ideology: One argument against the re-criminalization of abortion is that women would get abortions anyway. In other words, they are saying that a law banning abortion would not significantly affect society’s views on abortion. Perhaps the only supporting argument for this point is the fact that, despite abortion having been legal for over thirty years, most Americans remain opposed to certain abortive procedures. However, I doubt the abortion supporters are itching to use that fact to boost their case. In contrast to abortion, many people believe that legalizing gay marriage and publicly affirming the homosexual lifestyle will lead to more social acceptance for homosexuals. Obviously, those folks believe that changing the law would influence society. Ironically, it is safe to assert that most Americans who agree with one of the above views agrees with the other as well. This simply illustrates the inextricable nature of law and society; the cause-effect relationship is mutual. A perfect recent example is the “public domain” case of Kelo v. The City of New London, Connecticut. When the Supreme Court ruled, in essence expanding eminent domain latitude to claiming privately-owned land and re-selling it to businesses in an effort to bring in more tax dollars, a flurry of legal activity erupted across the states. Already, many states have enacted legislation aimed at limiting Kelo’s power. It is a fascinating example of the intertwined relationship between law and society. The bottom line is that law will always influence society, and society will always influence law. The exciting next step is to look to the future and attempt to take part in the process.

Moran, Jeffrey P. The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s. New York: 2002.

Regina Malone. “The Fabulous Monster,” Forum, July 1926. As published in The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents. By Jeffrey P. Moran. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. p 201.

Tags: progressivism, liberalism, modernism, William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, Scopes Trial, New Republic, Kelo, law, history, society, evolution, creationism

The "Dumb and Dumber" Generation

2006-05-02T12:28:00.000-05:00

Recently, National Geographic polled 510 people between ages 18-24. Here are some results.

One-third of respondents couldn't pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable to locate Mississippi.
Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.
Two-thirds didn't know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.
Six in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.
While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia. [are you freaking kidding me?]
While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East.

Can these morons even spell their own names? Forget "Generation Y." I'm dubbing my peers "Generation Dumb and Dumber."

Now let's work on fixing the problem.

I say we pour more money into the public schools.

When it rains it Snows

2006-04-27T02:31:00.000-05:00

Going only from the information contained in this story, it seems the MSM is trying (yet again) to fabricate a story out of thin air in order to smear a conservative. Tony Snow is reported to have said in 2003 that "racism isn't that big a deal anymore."

There are two things Mr. Snow could have intended with such an assertion. One, that racism is unimportant, that racial issues don't matter. If that was his intent, then I vigorously disagree with Mr. Snow. Simply watch "Crash" and tell me there aren't significant racial issues in America. However, it seems clear to me that this view of racism is not in fact Mr. Snow's. The second possible meaning of his statement is explained by his further comments, also quoted in the article:

Snow argued that "no sensible person supports" racism, arguing that the problem is "quickly becoming an ugly memory."

It seems clear (and the video the DNC put out confirms it) that Snow is saying that racism is no longer important in that nobody actually supports it anymore. This is a legitimate point.

Racism has been society's standard fare for most of American history, both in the North and the South. It was even written in to our Constitution (the three-fifths clause). One impassioned Mississippi preacher spoke out against the impending loss of the Civil War: “If we cannot gain our political, let us establish at least our mental independence [sic].”

A 1954 neighborhood study of race relations within a large city, published in the American Sociological Review, found that the local whites formed a Civic Club with the “main purpose…[of] keep[ing] up the bar against the colored element moving in here. That was the purpose when it was first organized and that is still the purpose today...[W]e are interested in keeping this community white..."

Situations like these are almost impossible to find anymore. Today, people argue heatedly over what is or isn't racism, but nobody argues that racism is good. It seems clear that was Mr. Snow's point. Not that the media cared.

There's no news like made up news.

Tags: Tony Snow, racism, media bias, democrats

My influence grows

2006-04-25T22:41:00.000-05:00

It seems my actions have had repercussions in our nation's capitol.

Last week a member of the U.S. House of Representatives visited my history class and allowed us free reign to question him on virtually anything--Iraq, oil prices, immigration, etc. Before the class began, some of us were goofing off with the professor. (And by "some of us," I mean me.) I showed the class the spoof VW ad that depicts a suicide bomber's explosion foiled by the "small but tough" VW Polo. I blogged about it last year.

So I get into class today (it meets once a week) and our prof tells us that Mr. Representative thought the video was so hilarious that it made the rounds in Washington all last week!

This goes to show that if you want to have an impact in Washington D.C., just show a mildly-offensive, politically incorrect video clip to your local representative.

[cross-posted at Critical Mass]

It ends in victory...

2006-04-14T23:05:00.000-05:00

That was the phrase which reverberated through my mind as I left church tonight, teary-eyed, after having watched "The Passion of the Christ."

It ends in victory.

IT ENDS IN VICTORY!

The truth about guns: Arm the good guys!

2006-04-06T00:55:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine wore a t-shirt the other day which had a picture of a gun on it and the text, “Guns don’t kill people. People with mustaches kill people.” Obviously, that is absurd. Another absurd idea is that that guns, rather than people, are the problem behind violence, yet such reasoning is taken seriously by many on the left. They apparently don’t see the connection between, for example, the high homocide rate in Washington, D.C., and the fact that 30 years ago all private citizens were barred from owning a gun. In 2005 the Metropolitan Police Department recovered 2,316 guns. How many of those came from law abiding citizens, do you think?

A case can be made for legal gun ownership (and no, I’m not making a 2^nd Ammendment argument here). Typically, crooks would much rather target a weaker party, someone who won’t put up a fight. D.C. city official Sandra Seegars, who lost one brother to a treacherous partner in crime and another brother to a 20-year prison sentence for murder, says, “I know from my brothers being criminals that they like easy targets.” Seegars, head of the D.C. Taxi Cab Commission, has long been an advocate of gun rights in our nation's capital. Specifically, she supports allowing taxi drivers to carry handguns in their vehicles, and advises them to avoid certain neighborhoods. However, would more guns on the streets actually deter crime?

John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute thinks so. He and Bill Landes of the University of Chicago Law School compared “multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 and [found] that when states passed right-to-carry laws, these attacks fell by 60 percent. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 percent.” Indeed, the story linked to above details how one man’s defensive shooting of a criminal “saved lives…[e]veryone here agrees”:

When [attacker] Arroyo faced the choice of continuing to shoot others or defending himself [from the private citizen fighting back], he was forced to defend himself. Making Arroyo's attacks more risky caused him to change his behavior.

If I were a thug I would definitely think twice before holding up some guy in an alley if there was a good chance he was armed. Wouldn’t you? Here's a new tagline: "Government doesn't keep our neighborhoods safe. Armed citizens keep our neighborhoods safe by deterring crime." Doesn't have the same ring to it. Shoot.

[cross-posted at Critical Mass Blog]
[cross-posted at Right Way Show]

Tags: gun control, gun ownership, crime, 2nd ammendment, deterence, Sandra Seegars, John Lott, Bill Landes

Are Muslim countries ready for democracy?

2006-04-04T20:00:00.000-05:00

The featured article on today's Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page is a response by Peter Wehner, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, to three conservative—and one ex-conservative—pundits who are "harsh critics of the Iraq war." They are William F. Buckley Jr., George Will, and Francis Fukuyama, respectively. While I support the war for various reasons, I found myself defending the war critics. Below are some selections from Mr. Wehner's article, and my thoughts.

Does Mr. Fukuyama believe Iraqis prefer subjugation to freedom? Does he think they, unlike he, relish life in a gulag, or the lash of the whip, or the midnight knock of the secret police? Who among us wants a jackboot forever stomping on his face?***[T]he critics of the Iraq war have chosen an odd time to criticize the appeal and power of democracy. After all, we are witnessing the swiftest advance of freedom in history.

What Wehner really means is that we are witnessing the swiftest advance of democracy in history. And perhaps he is right. But since democracy does not equal freedom, Wehner's claim is beside the point.

Of course, implicit in Wehner's praise of democracy is that we support it only if we approve of the results. After all, just as democracy brought Hitler to power, so could it usher in Islamic (Shariah) Law to Muslim nations. In fact, this is the danger in Afghanistan: Abdul Rahman was charged with converting to Christianity, a capital crime, and only avoided conviction on a technicality (i.e. international pressure). Fortunately, he is now safe in Italy. Here is what the judge said during the trial: "We have the perfect constitution. It is Islamic law and it is illegal to be a Christian and it should be punished." What good is a democracy that chooses to impose on itself a strict totalitarian religious law oppressive to women and other minorities?

The problem with Iraq, Mr. Will said in a Manhattan Institute lecture, is that it "lacks a Washington, a Madison, a [John] Marshall--and it lacks the astonishingly rich social and cultural soil from which such people sprout." There is no "existing democratic culture" that will allow liberty to succeed, he argues. And he scoffs at the assertion by President Bush that it is "cultural condescension" to claim that some peoples, cultures or religions are destined to despotism and unsuited for self-government. The most obvious rebuttal to Mr. Will's first point is that only one nation in history had at its creation a Washington, Madison and Marshall--yet there are 122 democracies in the world right now. So clearly founders of the quality of Washington and Madison are not the necessary condition for freedom to succeed.

True, not every single free nation needs their own Founding Fathers of America's caliber,but I would venture a guess that most modern democracies have a stronger historical foundation in natural law and the idea of human rights than most Muslim countries have today. Democracy is not simply the silver bullet to the world's problems. Democracy is arguably the best method to achieve a society that respects the rule of law and lives according to it; it also serves well as a check against the government gaining dangerous levels of power. Once again, if a people vote in a vile dictatorship, what good was the democratic process?

If cultures are as intractable as Mr. Will asserts, and if an existing democratic culture was as indispensable as he insists, we would not have seen democracy take root in Japan after World War II, Southern Europe in the 1970s, Latin America and East Asia in the '80s, and South Africa in the '90s. It was believed by many that these nations' and regions' traditions and cultures--including by turns Confucianism, Catholicism, dictatorships, authoritarianism, apartheid, military juntas and oligarchies--made them incompatible with self-government.

Perhaps, but it seems glaringly obvious that not a single one of these examples is a Muslim nation. (I'm not sure of this; correct me if I'm wrong. The place where I may be wrong is likely a South African country. However, the influences of the European empires--most notably the British--is a unique contributor to a foundation in natural law.) The standard example in rebuttal to the claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy, natural law and/or human rights is Turkey: democratic, a prime minister, elected legislature, civil law system, universal suffrage at 18, independent judicial branch, high literacy rate for both sexes, and 99.8% Sunni Muslim. Honestly, I don't know why Turkey is the exception, but whatever they've got seems to work. NRO's Jim Geraghty currently blogs from Turkey, and apparently he hasn't been imprisoned or killed for speaking from a western, non-Muslim perspective.

[Culture] matters a great deal. But so do incentives and creeds and the power of ideas, which can profoundly shape culture.

Indeed, the supreme question is whether the ideas of natural law and human rights are powerful enough to gain support among those whose religion promotes Shariah law. And that is where I doubt. President Bush has declared that all people desire freedom, that it is a basic and universal part of humanity. I may agree with that. But if history (and psychology) has shown us anything, it has proved that man is incredibly adept at denying, suppressing, or alternately fulfilling certain "natural" instincts or desires (especially inconvenient ones). Ted Bundy's desire for sexual fulfillment, which was fed and twisted by the evil that is violent pornography, led to rapings and killings of innocent girls. Corrupt leaders often speak in the words of equal rights and natural law, yet their own greed and/or lust for power informs decisions which directly contradict their public presentation. Every religion tries to answer certain questions about man; all faiths besides Christianity are alternate fulfiller which ultimately fail. Back to government: this ability and tendency in man is exactly why checks and balances are necessary in our democratic system, lest a small group of leaders lets their so-called "basic human desire for freedom and equality" morph into a power-grab.

What has plagued the Arab Middle East is not simply, or even primarily, culture; it is antidemocratic ideologies and oppressive institutions. And the way to counteract pernicious ideologies and oppressive institutions is with better ones. Liberty, and the institutions that support liberty, is a pathway to human flourishing.

True, but forcefully giving people a choice when they don't even understand the options is not actually giving them a choice. I refuse to believe that any people group that truly understands the undeniable truths of natural law, human rights, and equality, would ever purposefully choose totalitarianism. Did the Afghanis truly get what their options were? I doubt it. Perhaps they were too afraid to vote right, or a convoluted form of self-interest prohibited them. How many Muslim men, immersed in the Shariah culture, would choose to lessen their power over their wives and children? And how many Muslim women, oppressed and--perhaps happily--subservient to men, would choose to vote for their rights if such a vote was in violation of their husbands' will?

Despite my uncertainty about all this, I still support the Afghan and Iraq wars. The former was a necessary response to 9/11, and the latter I still believe was necessary from a national security standpoint. Indeed, more information continues to be unearthed about Saddam's terror connections and his pursuit of WMDs, including nukes, and at least we're fighting terrorists overseas instead of on American soil. Who knows if the goal of a western-friendly democratic Iraq will pan out. Maybe Iraq will make a correct choice and make itself look more like Turkey than what Afghanistan seems to be headed for.

Democracy and the accompanying rise of political and civic institutions are the only route to a better world [in the Middle East]--and because the work is difficult doesn't mean it can be ignored. The cycle has to be broken.

Agreed. The question is how. It remains to be seen if simply blowing away a murderous regime, rebuilding a country and training a home-grown Iraqi military is enough to convince the Iraqis that natural law and human rights should be their vote. (Apparently that's already failed in Afghanistan.) The point could be made that we shouldn't even give them their chance to choose until we know they'll choose right. But what would that look like--an increase in Voice of America broadcasts into Muslim countries? Dropping millions of pamphlets about natural law on the citizens of oppressed nations? No, that seems ridiculous and unfruitful. Is the best strategy for gaining a natural law-friendly Middle East to encourage democracy in the region (with possible military force), let nations make mistakes, and hope for the best? Even if Iraq ends up not choosing the way we would want, they sure are a heck of a lot closer to that ideal than they ever would have been under Saddam. Is that progress? Only time will tell.

[cross posted at Critical Mass]
[cross-posted at Right of Way Show]

Tags: Iraq, Wall Street Journal, Peter Wehner, democracy, freedom, muslim, shariah, totalitarianism, conservative, Abdul Rahman, Christianity, religion, Ted Bundy, Afghanistan, George Will, Fukuyama, President Bush, arab, middle east, Saddam Hussein, WMD

Swinging from one pole to the other

2006-04-04T01:29:00.000-05:00

Five Saudi Arabian women, tired of the ultraconservative patriarchy of their Islamic country, decided to swing as far left as one can go (so far, anyway) for a solution, and got sex changes.

Al Watan newspaper said the five women underwent sex change surgery abroad over the past 12 months after they developed a "psychological complex" due to male domination.

Women in Saudi Arabia, which adopts an austere interpretation of Islam, are not allowed to drive or even go to public places unaccompanied by a male relative.

The newspaper quoted a senior cleric as saying the authorities have to fill what he described as a legal vacuum by issuing laws against sex change operations.

An interior ministry official told al Watan such cases are examined by religious authorities, and sometimes by psychologists, but those who undergo sex change are never arrested.

Just when you thought there wasn't anything else the Muslims could get mad at western culture about...

I tell ya what: women always screw things up. Uh, even if those women are men.

As the world turns: the life and death of bloggers

2006-04-04T01:00:00.000-05:00

Let us have a moment of silence for a blogger no longer with us: Frank Castle over at Obviously Pseudonymous has retired from the blogosphere. His site, while completely devoid of any personal information that could give away his age or location, consistently had solid analysis and thoughts on the political and cultural issues of the day. He will be missed.

Yet, just as a new pheonix rises from the flames of destruction, so does my blogroll both lose and gain a member. Frank is gone, but Cody is here. A good friend of mine, Cody is a "conservatarian," a fellow Bible-believer, a solid thinker, and he's the head honcho at Believing in Thinking. Perhaps his blog is not as solid as Frank's was, but Cody is new to the blogosphere, so we'll cut him some slack. Anyways, welcome!

Howard Dean opens his yapper again

2006-03-31T23:07:00.000-06:00

Howard Dean, in typical fashion, is off his rocker again.

[A]t a speech in an Oakland union hall, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate sought to tie Bush to a much tougher House bill that would tighten borders and make it a crime to be in the United States illegally or to offer aid to illegal immigrants. Bush does not back the House bill.

Translation: the bill would make it a crime to committ a crime! Oh, horror! But wait, there's more:

"This is a nonsensical proposal put out by far right-wingers in the Republican Party who have been endorsed for re-election by the president of the United States," Dean said. "The president has a moral obligation to rein in the right-wing extremists in his party and stop this divisive rhetoric about immigrants."

Did Howard Dean just use an argument from morality in the public square? Oh no! Actually, Dean probably didn't even know he used moral language, considering his favorite New Testament book is Job.

Dean accused Bush and fellow Republicans of demagoguery in the immigration debate, saying it fit with a long-standing pattern. He cited the president's opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative-action program and Bush's decision to "pick on" homosexuals--an apparent reference to the gay marriage issue in the 2004 election.

If defending traditional marriage is picking on homosexuals, then it wasn't just Bush. It was also the voters in 13 states who ammended their constitutions to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

[cross-posted at Right of Way Show]

Tags: Howard Dean, democrats, impeach bush, marriage, immigration

Federal Court to the ACLU: "Shove it"

2006-03-31T00:27:00.000-06:00

Not quite a direct quote, but close enough.

Today I was alerted to yet another ACLU suit against a public display of the Ten Commandments. Nothing to see here, right? Almost. The case was decided in late December, and the court sided with the defendant, Mercer County, KY. The judge who wrote the opinion had some great words for the ACLU:

The ACLU's argument contains three fundamental flaws. First, the ACLU makes repeated reference to "the separation of church and state." This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state.
***
Second, the ACLU focuses on the religiousness of the Ten Commandments. No reasonable person would dispute their sectarian nature, but they also have a secular nature that the ACLU does not address. That they are religious merely begs the question whether this display is religious; it does not answer it.
***
We will not presume endorsement from the mere display of the Ten Commandments. If the reasonable observer perceived all government references to the Deity as endorsements, then many of our Nation's cherished traditions would be unconstitutional, including the Declaration of Independence and the national motto. Fortunately, the reasonable person is not a hyper-sensitive plaintiff.

Translation: ACLU, lighten up and go home.

Ha! I love it.

[cross-posted at Right of Way Show]

Tags: ACLU, separation of church and state, Establishment Clause, Ten Commandments, 10 Commandments

Faith, Reason, and Western Civ

2006-03-29T00:21:00.000-06:00

[I sent the following email to a few of my favorite professors:]

I ran across a couple fascinating articles which I believe you, the faculty with whom I have the most contact with and/or most enjoyed over my college career, may be interested in. No doubt other colleagues would enjoy it as well. Perhaps some of you are already aware of what I am about to describe. Noted sociologist Rodney Stark (credentials here) has written a book entitled, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005). It is noteworthy that Stark is not a Christian (or so he claims), and in researching his book he actually intended to prove the opposite--that Christianity was not the driving force behind the West's growth and dominance.

For those who don't want to buy the book (or, like me, are simply too cheap), The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an article by Stark, located here, that summarizes his points. The Boston Globe interviews Stark here.

In contrast, Alan Wolfe, writing in The New Republic's January 16 edition (subscription required; however, I have a digital copy of the text if desired), mercilessly tears Stark apart. Since my knowledge of history and theology from both the Christian and pagan realms is meager, I cannot know if or when Wolfe is right or wrong. However, my initial reaction to Wolfe's rebuttal to Stark was that, although occasionally mean (and definitely sarcastic), Wolfe seemed to know his stuff better than Stark. On the other hand, some of his statements directly contradict what I know to be true not through science or history, but through my faith and theology. I'm curious what the experts (uh, that would be you guys) have to say.

Are we safer?

2006-03-28T13:03:00.000-06:00

A new Gallup poll supposedly shows that "the availability and affordability of healthcare" is now a greater concern to Americans than "the possibility of terrorist attacks in the U.S"--68% to 45%, respectively.

First off, who knows how reliable this poll is; there is much documentation on how polls can tell the media whatever the media wants to report. That said, assuming the poll is accurate (actually, even if it isn't), the Democrats will likely cheer that Americans are caring less about the issue that Bush and the Republicans are strongest on--national security. True, healthcare is a thornier issue for the right than for the left, but my take on the poll is different. The way I see it, if fewer Americans are worried about domestic terrorism, it's probably because they see it as less of a threat--in other words, that the government is doing a better job at protecting us. We have not been attacked in almost 5 years. Can we infer from this poll that Americans do in fact believe we are safer today than we were before or right after 9/11? Or before Iraq? Here's another thought: more Americans today have a negative perception of Islam than immediately after 9/11, yet we also are less concerned about domestic terror. Is that because we believe the administration's policies have helped, and not hurt, us?

UPDATE: After looking at the specific poll data, my analysis may not mean much (whoa! alliteration alert) after all: Since 2001, the public's concern over healthcare has been in the 60s, with the exception of 2002 (56%) and 2003 (55%). Concern over domestic terror has stayed in the 40s since 2001, with a high of 49% in 2002 and 2003. Neither has changed much, and in fact healthcare has always been of greater concern to Americans than domestic terror, even post-9/11.

Tags: terrorism, healthcare, polls, Gallup, Iraq, national security, September 11

The Hierarchy of Biblical Revelation: A Theology of a Gay Student

2006-03-11T17:41:00.000-06:00

Life presents me with decisions every day. Some are obviously inconsequential. Others seem important but actually aren't. Still others seem unimportant but are in fact what define my character and integrity, for better or worse.

What informs my decisions, especially the important ones? Of the many inputs I can consider, which are higher than others? All these possible influences can be divided into three categories: Scripture (the Bible), Tradition--the historical belief and actions of the Church over the centuries--and personal conviction or feeling.

For example, I believe the Bible explicitly commands Christians to give to the poor. In addition, I know that historically the Church has striven to do such a thing, with varying degrees of success and failure. Finally, I know from personal experience that helping the poor, while often sacrificial and difficult, is ultimately rewarding. Of the three reasons for love and service, which is the most important? What if the Bible said something different about helping the poor? Would it be all right to adhere to Tradition instead of Scripture? If my personal experience shows me that giving to the poor is not rewarding because every homeless person I give money to uses it to buy drugs, would I be justified in quitting it despite Scripture's mandate to continue?

Orthodox Protestant Christianity believes that the first and foremost source of revelation for living is Scripture, followed by Tradition and personal experience/conviction. A corollary issue is the relationship between dogma, doctrine and opinion. Dogmas are beliefs that are absolutely essential to true, orthodox Christian belief. For example, the Trinity (God is one God dwelling in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Doctrines are beliefs that, while definitely important, are not absolutely essential to orthodox Christian belief. Most denominations are split along various doctrinal lines, such as infant baptism or the level of inspiration given to the Gospel writers. Thirdly, opinion issues are those which may not have an explicit Biblical basis, and which are definitely inessential to orthodox Christian belief. For example, the so-called Age of Accountability (which attempts to answer the question, "If a baby dies before it can understand, and therefore accept, the Gospel, will it go to hell or heaven?).

Back to the hierarchy of revelation. Getting this issue of Scripture/Tradition/personal conviction right is incredibly important to a life lived theologically correct, and that is where I believe Michael Guinn misstepped.

The main issue with Michael is not that he has a homosexual orientation, or that he is vocal and perhaps militant about it. It's not about his dressing in drag, or posting on Facebook that he likes men, or acting especially flamboyant. Michael's core problem is a theological one: the hierarchy and authority of revelation, of theological sources.

From what I've read, seen and heard of Michael, his basic defense whenever he's presented with the Biblical basis for why his lifestyle is immoral is something to the effect of, "Well, I know that God's got my back on this, and I know that he loves me, so even if you all don't understand, I know that God and I are tight." Here are some direct quotes (original format and spelling):

[T]he only sin is in the sexual side of being gay...in my opinion and through the many hours of prayer I've spent with the Lord since I became a christian [sic], I believe whole heartedly that I'm not sinning just because I'm gay, that is not where the sin is...homosexuality is not a perversion of love, not only do i resent that statement but it hurts me deep in my heart when i have someone tell me that the love that i feel for another human being that when i see someone [that] i want to live with for the rest of my life that that love is a perversion...that cuts deep! and you can say what you will but i will swear til the day that i die that love between two gay [people] is soo far from being a perversion. and while this will probably stary up an entire other conversation... the god given love between two people, cannot be a perversion, and i WHOLE HEARTEDLY believe that!!!

Sorry, Michael, but feelings should never be the basis for theological belief if Scripture (and Tradition, I might add) explicitly teaches otherwise!

you tell me that i act as if i know better than god, but you do the exact same thing to try and say that you know FOR SURE that what i do is wrong! the fact is that that is what you believe...you don't know it for sure... none of us will know these things for sure, none of us can say to another one that any of us are necessarily wrong or right... only God can say that what is wrong and right we can only pray and hope that what we interpret god to say is correct.

While there is some truth to the idea that there are certain things we cannot know with absolute certainty, if we took Michael's argument to its logical conclusion, we would never decide on anything! There are concepts in Scripture that we can definitively affirm: worshipping idols is absolutely and in all situations completely wrong; looking lustfully at a woman is equal to committing physical adultery with her. Simply at face value, these two examples are unequivocal in the Scriptures. There are countless, more complex theological conclusions in Scripture which it is reasonable to assert are knowable.

until the day I'm judged by God himself, I can only strive to live my life in the best way possible to be his child and to love and adore him in everything I do.

The "best way possible" to live our lives is to search the highest level of moral authority over us--Scripture--and try to live by it! The bottom line: Scripture comes before personal feelings. Scripture is the basis for orthodoxy (correct beliefs) and orthopraxy (correct action).

Michael, I hold nothing against you personally. Assuming you have truly accepted the free gift of salvation from the Lord--which only you and He can know for sure--I believe you to be a child of the Living God who will never leave you nor forsake you. Thankfully, His mercy abounds enough to envelope us in our times of theological wanderings. I pray you find the Truth someday.

Related Posts:
Michael Guinn: A massive round-up
Michael Guinn scales the media mountain...

Tags: theology, scripture, tradition, conviction, revelation, dogma, doctrine, opinion, Michael Guinn, homosexuality, gay students

Michael Guinn scales the media mountain...

2006-03-09T00:00:00.000-06:00

...and makes it to the cover of USAToday.

Michael Guinn is the gay student dismissed from John Brown University in January for failing to adhere to the school's lifestyle agreement. Back in February I posted a massive round-up (with commentary) of what the blogosphere had to say about the Guinn controversey.

The broader theme of the USAToday cover story is students and online privacy. It reports on the growing trend of students across the country getting into trouble based on what they post on various personal sites, from MySpace to Xanga to Facebook.

In the past few months, college, high school and even middle school students across the USA have been suspended or expelled, thrown off athletic teams, passed over for jobs and even arrested based on their online postings.

For example, the story reports that an employer at Vermont Technical College changed his mind about hiring a student after seeing his Facebook profile. A prospective student at Reed College in Portland, OR, was refused admission after the dean found defamatory comments about the school on the student's LiveJournal blog.

The story affirms that private institutions are well-within their rights to make their own rules and to punish, dismiss or refuse admission to students who don't follow them.

In general, students at private schools or universities are bound by the rules of their institution and not protected by the First Amendment right of free speech. Students enrolled at public universities have more latitude to express themselves.

Another, related debate current raging is whether public high schools and middle schools have disciplinary authority over their students' activities when they occur off-campus and during non-school hours. One (male) middle school student in California started a social group on MySpace which directed profane and violent language towards another (female) student. The school suspended the student who posted the group, but also suspended 20 other students simply because they viewed the website.

[District assistant superintendent Bob] Metz said the students' suspensions in mid-Febuary were appropriate because the incident involved student safety. Some parents however questioned whether the school overstepped its bounds by disciplining students for actions that occurred on personal computers, at home and after school hours.

Michael Guinn claims his situation is different because he was dismissed for reasons other than civility or safety: namely, that he had incompatible theological differences with the school that weren't dangerous, and that he failed to adhere to the lifestyle agreement he signed.

I would understand if a student was saying, "I want to rob this gas station," but when they're not breaking laws or hurting themselves or someone else, I don't (think) colleges should use the Internet against their students.

For now, however, schools' use of internet journals to keep track of student behavior is here to stay. The safest bet for students is to realize that blogs and other online journals are in the public domain, and post (or refrain from posting) accordingly.

UPDATE: Keep track of the USAToday's online poll about this issue.

Related posts:
Michael Guinn: A massive round-up
My comment on the USAToday site

Tags: Michael Guinn, blogs, blogging, school discipline, first ammendment, civil rights, gay students, homosexuality, John Brown University, JBU, MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, LiveJournal

Google "GDrive" a strike-out

2006-03-08T23:14:00.000-06:00

"Google is planning a massive online storage facility to encompass all users' files," according to various reports.

The GDrive, previously the subject of chatroom rumour, would offer a mirror of users' hard drives, Reuters said.

The [Google] notes said: "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including e-mails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc; and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)."

This strikes me as a dumb idea. The last thing I want is my entire hard drive's contents sitting on a foreign server, even if I can access them from anywhere. USB key drives and flash memory technology are rapidly advancing; soon I'll be able to host all my important files (music, documents, backup stuff) on a USB drive attached to my key ring. In fact, some new USB drives allow you to install software on them, enabling the user to effectively use his programs on any computer and leave no trace on the machine. With a cheap and portable physical drive, my data is safer and accessing my files won't require internet access (like the GDrive), which would be limited to broadband or faster for practical reasons.

Sorry Google, I'll pass.

Tags: Google, GDrive, flash memory, USB

Gargoyles, Munster and Walgreens

2006-03-08T23:08:00.000-06:00

A Palm Beach woman is suing Walgreens over insulting and embarrasing comments written on her prescription, reports the Florida Sun-Sentinel:

For years, Janey Karp has battled depression and anxiety with the help of prescription drugs. Though millions of Americans do the same, Karp admits she is intensely private and can't help but feel stigmatized for needing medication to feel normal.

So when the 53-year-old Palm Beach resident read the Walgreens printout attached to her prescription last week for the sleep aid Ambien, she couldn't believe her eyes. Typed in a field reserved for patient information and dated March 17, 2005, was "CrAzY!! [sic]" In another field, dated Sept. 30, 2004, it read: "She's really a psycho!!! Do not say her name too loud, never mention her meds by names & try to talk to her when ... " The information continued onto another page but was not attached.

"I was devastated, humiliated and embarrassed," Karp said. "I honestly couldn't speak. I was trembling."

Karp filed suit Tuesday against Illinois-based Walgreen Co., accusing the nationwide retail chain of defamation, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

My, how the prospect of suing a giant retailer can overcome one's fear of the world knowing you need meds to be normal.
"Lively said the notes would not be an issue if the entry contained something helpful, such as the patient requests not to call out her name."

Was it irresponsible for employees to write those things? Sure. Were they ever intended to be read by the customer? No way. This is nothing new; commentary about customers goes on in businesses everywhere. A friend of mine at a bank finished handling a difficult customer, then shot off an email to her coworker about it. A few minutes she realized--when she got a reply email--that she'd send it to the customer instead. After a profuse apology, things were resolved--without a lawsuit. There's a lady who comes into my workplace regularly whose driver's license picture looks like a gargoyle bred with a Munster. If she found out I had described her that way, should she be hacked and embarrassed? Definitely. Lawsuit material? Nah.

The way I see it, if the woman suing Walgreens is comfortable enough broadcasting her problems to the world through a lawsuit, I doubt the stigmatization she claimed of her meds is as severe as she reports.

Tags: Walgreens, gargoyles, Munsters, medication

Rubarb Ruminations

2006-03-06T20:11:00.000-06:00

At work on Friday some kid puked all over the lobby floor. The kid and parent combo scrammed before anyone even knew what happened. They must have thought we'd make them clean it up or something. As the lone male working in that building, I was designated to get rid of the, uh, orange-and-brown-colored mess on the floor and the corner of the entry mat.

After rolling up the sleeves to my dress shirt, putting gloves on, and grabbing my weight in paper towels, I sopped up the nasty barf and disposed of it in a trash bag. Then I mopped the floor while my queasy boss hovered around spraying disinfectant everywhere.

Here comes the good part of the story. My boss was so impressed with my clean-up skills that she offered to make me any dessert I wanted. Without skipping a beat I replied, "I would love you forever if you made me a rhubard pie." Despite the mixture of quizzical and disgusted looks from my peers, I resolutely declared my love for that delicious dessert. "How about strawberry-rhubarb?" by boss asked.

"Even better."

When I came into work today, my first words as I came through the door were, "Any more puke-and-runs for me to clean up today?" I went into the back room and there, in full glory, sat my strawberry rhubarb pie. And boy was it delicious.

I enthusiastically dug in, and encouraged my coworkers to take advantage of a tidbit so ~~sinful~~ heavenly. (I have a theory that rhubarb--in pie form, of course--was the forbidden fruit that Eve simply couldn't resist) I relished every bite of the ~~three or four~~ one piece consumed.

The snotty coworker of mine who the previously Friday had testified (without tasting it) to the disgusting nature of rhubarb pie, was converted today when she tasted it. Ahh, vindication is sweet. And so is rhubarb pie.

Tags: rhubarb pie, desert, sin, puke, barf

Would you like fries with that bribe?

2006-03-01T14:10:00.000-06:00

California Republican Randall "Duke" Cunningham was recently exposed as one of the most corrupt public officials in American history. Turns out his solicitation of bribes is even more sensational than previously thought. The guy had a menu of bribes. That's right, a menu--complete with supersizes and extra value combos. Cunningham was even bold enough to print his menu on a congressional note card.

The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe.
The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.
At one point Cunningham was living on a yacht named after him, "The Dukester," docked near Capitol Hill, courtesy of a defense company president.

This level of corruption is sickening, but hardly surprising. Man is sinful, and lust for power and possessions clouds his judgement. For the benefit of being made an example, and simply for punishment for his actions, Cunningham should serve the maximum 10 years. He has been publicly repentant (no need to get the PR folks' advice on that decision), and his lawyers are positioning for a lighter sentence. Not a chance, bucko.

Stick a fork in him and be done with the whole thing.

Tags: Cunningham, corruption, sin

Against the Wind

2006-02-27T19:21:00.000-06:00

I got home from work today wanting (for some reason) to listen to Bob Seger's "Against the Wind." While listening, I was reminded of the graphic design project I did last year which incorporated the lyrics of the song. It still ranks as one of my favorite projects. Click the picture below to view it full-size.

The best, most honest line in the song:

I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

Thanks to DJS for introducing me to this song and so many phenomenal others.

Tags: Bob Seger, Against the Wind, classic rock, graphic design

So Are You To Me

2006-02-26T23:43:00.000-06:00

by Eastmountainsouth

As the music at the banquet
As the wine before the meal
As the firelight in the night
So are you to me

As the ruby in the setting
As the fruit upon the tree
As the wind blows over the plains
So are you to me

As the wind blows over the plains
So are you to me
So are you to me

Michael Guinn: a massive round-up

2006-02-24T00:33:00.000-06:00

The controversy of the gay student dismissed from JBU raged blue-flame hot for a while, but now has toned down to a moderate red-orange bake. The local/regional media has reported on it, and it has generated some scuffling in the far corners of the blogosphere. Most bloggers I've encountered so far range from mild opposition to Guinn's dismissal to outright anger and "I'll never send $$ as an alumnus ever!" What follows is a round-up of the story as it touches the mainstream media and bloggers.

For a roundup of the official media stories, go here.

JBU Press Release from the President, January 25, 2006

Keep track of blog posts with a Technorati search.

47 JBU Alumni signed a letter protesting the school's decision (txt file here)

Lucas Roebuck, former JBU student and now a columnist for the NW Arkansas Times, penned a phenomenal editorial defending the administration. Roebuck argues that, since we know little of what actually happened between Guinn and JBU, the best bet is to understand their policy of discipline--which focuses on redemption before punishment:

In my conversations with JBU student life staff (I am even married to a former residence hall director) and from my own observations as a student and as an occasional adjunct instructor, JBU has a policy of redemption. If a student gets caught, for example, smoking pot or viewing pornographic material, there is no automatic expulsion. There is no automatic punishment. Instead, the student life staff will confront the student and find out if that student has remorse for the violation. If a student is truly sorry, then they will work to reconcile the issue.

Charles Sebold, a blogger and former JBU-er, also composes coherently on the subject. Sebold, while agreeing with the school's conservative (and correct) theology on homosexuality, questions whether JBU should have admitted an openly (militantly?) gay student in the first place. Matt Glum, another JBU grad, ponders the Guinn situation; his post also contains a nice round-up of media stories. A commenter at Glum's post, calling himself Bill McNeal, criticizes Roebuck's editorial (see above). Dean Ruesser (JBU '94), in addition to posting identical comments defending the administration here and here, emailed me his comment after reading the one I left at Slice 'O Life, another blog run by a JBU grad.

A JBU grad and former 3-Fold-Advocate staff member praises JBU's original decision to admit Guinn was "progressive," but laments that the school's discipline process needs revision.

Finally! A blogger (user katiebaskins) recognizes that 1) the facts she does know are hearsay only, and thus not fully reliable; 2) that JBU is well-within its legal bounds as a private institution, and 3) that JBU is not my any means a radical school (you'll have to scroll through the comments; idiotic Xanga doesn't provide links to individual comments).

The ringleader of the alumni letter, the one who was outraged enough to start compiling signatures and begin crafting the letter, is a JBU grad who I knew of but didn't know personally. She always struck me as sweet, and I believe she still is. But the way she has acted concerning the Guinn situation is abysmal. She feels like "JBU has been burnt down":

From my research [aka hearsay] I have gathered that Michael is a Christian who seeks a Christian education, and JBU has refused to give it to him based on his sinful nature, a nature that all humans, grace notwithstanding, share. As Christians we are called to forgive, to show compassion and mercy to one another, to build one another up in the name of Christ, to leave the judging up to God, and the administration at JBU has failed this calling in a big way.

When a student is actively promoting a lifestyle/orientation that is undeniably unbiblical, and is not "struggling" with it but rather embracing it, the discipline necessary for that situation is different from the homosexual who has correct theology about his orientation and is actually striving to live right.

Positively, I do admire "the ringleader" for doing what she thinks is right, and agonizing over the pain she might cause the school.

Another JBU grad, former Advocate writer, and supporter of the alumni letter, has a wide range of comments spreading across multiple blogs. I admired her uncertaintly to judge the situation without knowing all the facts. Unfortunately, her treatment (scroll down) of Jason Hough is obnoxious: apparently, his letter in support of the administration's decision means that

He always panders to administration. I love the ol' slippery slope arguments. So silly... It bothers me that he is supposedly the authority on homosexuality.

I remember looking at the chapel schedule and seeing "Hot Topic: Homosexuality" and knowing Jason Hough would be speaking and making it a point not to go.

I like him fine, and I even managed to somewhat enjoy his classes, but this business about him being the only person who gives two shits about homosexuality and understands it better than the rest of the world is bullshit.

Understands it better than the rest of the world? Who knows. Understands it better than likely every single person at JBU? Most definitely. If the opinion of the recovering homosexual on campus--and a professor, no less--doesn't have any credibility or moral authority, what does?

Yet another JBU-er (semi-graphic picture alert) profanely and crudely rips the administration, showing his lack of understanding of the core issues involved (cross-dressing in goofiness=drag for real; or that drag was even the real issue at hand).

The common themes of most of the anti-administration responses are:

assuming a peripheral issue (such as a drag photo) is the central issue in Guinn's dismissal (which I believe to be his flagrant advocation of a lifestyle clearly unbiblical)
setting up a straw man by simplifying the issue ("Guinn is gay, therefore JBU booted him"), and then tearing the straw man apart
assuming they know all (or enough) of the details of a privately-dealt-with situation to properly judge it
beginning from the assumption that the administration is likely to be in the wrong

"What are they teaching in these schools?"

Trying to make a point about the relative unimportance of homosexuality to Christianity, an otherwise intelligent blogger and JBU grad asks:

On a side note, did you know the Bible only mentions homosexuality like five times? What about poverty? That's mentioned hundreds of times.

Here's one I came up with: How many times is the word Trinity used in the Bible? Zero. How important is the Trinity to orthodox Christian theology? Infinitely.

UPDATES:
A.W. Griffin has some criticism. I respond here.

A JBU grad from Morocco reports that there is chatter at the University of Arkansas to ban JBU-ers from its graduate program.

This blogger supports Michael but feels little sympathy for him because he knowlingly put himself in the situation.

Blogger I Speak of Dreams has a solid round-up of the story so far.

3/9/06: Michael Guinn makes it to a USAToday cover story. My related post is here.

6/2/06: The ringleader of the alumni letter found this post, and she finds it "unflattering." The comments section is quite interesting.

9/9/06: Michael Guinn and another blogger discuss the matter.

Tags: Michael Guinn, JBU, John Brown University, homosexuality, gay, discipline, theology, blogging

Speed Bumps

2006-02-23T01:43:00.000-06:00

This is hilarious. Via the AutoBlog:

The government of Dubai installed a rather large speed bump on a street that locals had developed a habit of travelling on at very high speeds. Only one minor problem, the government didn't tell anyone it had installed the speed bump. Without a sign of warning vehicles hit the mound and leave terra firma, only to land in a shower of sparks as their suspensions bottom out. The final car in this video, a Lamborghini Gallardo, nearly flips tail over nose when it hits the speed bump...

View the video here.

Rednecks and racing

2006-02-20T19:31:00.000-06:00

I occasionally find my way over to blogger Jeff Harrell's site Shape of Days. I enjoy the way he writes and, after stumbling on his site again after a long hiatus, my enjoyment was reconfirmed. This post is a friendly reminder not to judge folks based on stereotypes, focusing especially on rednecks and NASCAR. The best part is the end, where he whips out the tongue-in-cheeck sarcasm that makes me grin every time:

It’s your life, you know? Do what you enjoy. The fact that you like to do things that I don’t like to do doesn’t make me a better person than you, and acting as if it does would just make me look like an idiot.
Now, if you’re one of those people who rolls his eyes at those poor redneck NASCAR fans who just don’t know any better, then yeah. I’m basically a better person than you. Because you suck. Seriously.

Nice one.

Tags: Jeff Harrell, NASCAR, Shape of Days, stereotypes, blogging

Mcdonald's sued for following the law

2006-02-20T19:28:00.000-06:00

Three different parties are suing McDonald's for health reasons after the worldwide symbol of Americana updated its website to reveal that its french fries contain wheat and milk.

Debra Moffatt from Illinois, a sufferer of celiac disease, which is triggered by eating gluten, is seeking unspecified damages for gastrointestinal symptoms that she claims resulted from eating McDonald's chips.

LA vegan Nadia Sugish is also suing the hamburger chain, claiming that she would not have eaten its chips had she known they contained milk.

And a couple from Florida are also taking legal action, claiming that their wheat-intolerant five-year-old daughter, Annalise Chimiak, was made seriously ill after eating the firm's fries.

McDonald's updated their website for a specific reason:

The changes to the company's website were made following a revised labelling rule from the US Food and Drug Administration that requires firm's to disclose common food allergens in their products.

Which means that McDonald's was not legally obligated to disclose such information before the FDA requirements were revised.

I support Mickey D's on this one. As long as their executives aren't snagging those Boardwalk and Park Place pieces from their Monopoly game, I've got no beef with them--pun intended.

Tags: McDonald's, FDA, frivolous lawsuits

Don't question my patriotism...

2006-02-20T11:20:00.000-06:00

...but I have complete freedom to question yours! So whines the Democratic Party in Minnesota. Some Iraq veterans have appeared in some local television commercials discussing the good things happening in Iraq, and the Dems are calling them un-American. Nick Coleman, the Mineapolis Star-Tribune's star liberal columnist--and a total asshat (thanks, Temujin)--has joined in the attack on our soldiers with two columns so far. I've interacted with this nutbag before.

Powerline is covering this story very solidly:
Listen to Col. Stephenson and judge for yourself
The Complete Democrat Disgrace
Shut up, they explained

Let me get this straight. It's OK for Democrats to oppose the war and scream bloody murder if somebody questions their patriotism, yet they feel no qualms about calling not just war supporters, but Iraq veterans, unpatriotic for their support of it? It's OK for families of soldiers to speak out against the war (Cindy Sheehan), but not for families who support it?

I'm glad I'm not involved with a party that bases its political hopes on the failure of democracy abroad and the inability of an opposition administration to protect Americans from terrorists.

Tags: liberal hypocricy, iraq, patriotism

Homeschoolers don't need socialization!

2006-02-20T10:46:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine, the ridiculously intelligent Trent, unashamedly homeschools his kids. Whenever he informs someone of that, he gets the inevitable question (which I must admit I have posited myself at times): "What about socialization?" Trent's response:

Fortunately, we found a way our kids can receive the same socialization that government schools provide. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I will personally corner my son in the bathroom, give him a wedgie and take his lunch money. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my wife will make sure to tease our children for not being in the 'in' crowd, taking special care to poke fun at any physical abnormalities. Fridays will be 'Fad and Peer Pressure Day.' We will all compete to see who has the coolest toys, the most expensive clothes, and the loudest, fastest, and most dangerous car. Every day, my wife and I will adhere to a routine of cursing and swearing in the hall and mentioning our weekend exploits with alcohol and immorality.... And we have asked them to report us to the authorities in the event we mention faith, religion, or try to bring up morals and values.

Bwaaaahaaaa!

Tags: homeschooling, homeschool

Al Qaeda pays poorly

2006-02-18T01:16:00.000-06:00

Think the minimum wage is too low? Here's something that might put it into perspective: Al Qaeda's salaries for low-position jobs. According to the Al-Qaeda By-Laws document (pg 18), one of a slew of documents released by the Combating Terrorism Center at Westpoint, here is the payroll hierarchy of the most evil organization on the planet:

A- Official payroll
1- Cook: 1,500 Rupee , Assistant cook: 1,300 Rupee
2- Driver: 1,400 Rupee
3- Houseboy: 1,300 Rupee
4- Clerk (with high school): 1,800 to 2,000 Rupee
B- For the above, an annual pay increase of 10% of the original salary is to take place.

1500 Pakistani Rupees equals roughly $25 U.S. I believe these figures are monthly salaries.

These positions are hardly glamorous, let alone high-paying, but I'd be willing to bet they have a lower turnover rate than the "martyr" suicide bombers...

H/T Austin Bay, via Powerline

Tags: al qaeda, islam, terrorists, combating terrorism

Incoherent Islam

2006-02-16T00:51:00.000-06:00

"It's a little hard to wrap your mind about that one: Freedom of speech is a form of terrorism. This is a point of view that makes compromise difficult."
~ John at Powerline

Thanks to Frank Castle for alerting of a very important committment:

Tags: Islam, danish cartoons, cartoons, intifada, denmark, free speech

Big Brother of the private sector

2006-02-07T15:15:00.000-06:00

Are we beginning a new age where economics force healthy living? Some employers are considering banning smokers from their payroll because they cost so much more in insurance.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said smokers ring up $1,600 more per year in medical bills than nonsmokers and they miss more days of work.

Why not? It might motivate folks to end that disgusting habit. A similar issue looming on the horizon is employment and obesity. I may be perfectly qualified for a job, but the employer may hire the guy next to me, who weighs 150 lbs, instead of 240-lb me (theoretically). From a purely economic standpoint, this makes perfect sense.

But it raises significant questions about how much an employer can dictate your personal life if you want to keep your job. How far will companies go? Sex life, reading habits, political views. What should be on the honor system, what should be investigated and monitored? Insurance companies use complicated mathematical formulas to calculate various costs. How long until an employer uses economic statistical data to justify not hiring someone because, statistically, his time per week playing video games indicates a tendency towards anger in the workplace? What if a statistical link is established between drinking 3-6 cans of Pepsi a week to poor productivity and low work ethic?

A danger of a capitalistic mindset is that productivity trumps all. Efficiency is important, but so are people, and as technology and science advance, we will be confronted with new and ethically complex questions about employment, childbirth, eating and drinking, and other issues yet unforseen.

Bathroom humor

2006-02-05T22:26:00.000-06:00

I remember thinking my freshman year how stupid it was that we didn't have soap provided in our dorm bathrooms... Apparently Clinton Taylor thought the same thing:

Permit me to gloat. I started as a freshman at Yale in 1992 and was appalled by the fact that this ancient institution was unable or unwilling to provide soap dispensers in the dormitory bathrooms. Furthermore, if you tried to leave a bar of Irish Spring in the bathrooms, the custodians were instructed to throw it away. As this is an amenity I take for granted even in the most isolated rural convenience store, I was less than impressed by its absence and complained about it to the folks in charge, who politely told me to deal with it. Which I did, carrying my shaving kit and soap with me each time. (What worried me was my fellow Yalies who didn't carry soap with them.)

Actually, that's the funniest part of the whole sad spectacle. From the first day I showed up, Yale was showing us how to use condoms, reminding us to use them, and gleefully giving them away everywhere on the theory that if access to condoms was ubiquitous, we'd use them and thereby prevent disease. Meanwhile, actually giving us SOAP to prevent disease was too damn proletarian or something.

Yale has given in. I'm still waiting.

Olberman 1, O'Reilly 0

2006-02-02T01:00:00.000-06:00

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I usually am a fan of Bill O'Reilly, but I've also noticed, along with many others, how Bill can get ridiculously whiney about his personal treatment by the media. (Good gravy, Bill, suck it up.) So I just loved it when MSNBC's Keith Olberman covered Bill's Talking Points with a 4-minute retort that had me grinning ear to ear. Watch it. It's hilarious.

Was Olberman's retort actually broadcast? Seems hard to believe for how irreverant it was. Great, nonetheless.

Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olberman, MSNBC, Fox News

Alito's Reign of Terror...

2006-02-02T00:32:00.000-06:00

...didn't begin quite how the left expected after all. He sided with five justices against the conservatives--Roberts, Thomas and Scalia:

Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri's last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.

On the other hand, maybe the Kos Kids are frantically thinking, "If Scalito would spare the life of a convicted murderer, he'd definitely vote to protect the life of the unborn! AHHHHHH!!!!"

We had Post Election Stress Syndrome (PEST). I'm waiting for another befitting psychological diagnosis for the left: Alito Stress Syndrome (ASS).

Tags: Alito, Supreme Court, Dems, Post Election Stress Syndrome, Alito Stress Syndrome, Kos

All the news that's fit to print further our agenda

2006-02-01T19:20:00.000-06:00

The AP ironically reports where Justice Alito will sit on the bench:

In the courtroom, [Alito] will take the seat at the far right [pun intended?], the one for the court's newest member. He will sit next to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a one-time women's' right attorney who was President Clinton's first Supreme Court nominee... Alito and Ginsburg have a few things in common. Both have two children, a daughter and son. Both are from the East Coast: Ginsburg from New York, Alito from New Jersey.

Hmmm, I wonder why it took until after Alito's confirmation for the press to report on anything he has in common with the most liberal judge on the bench.

That's what I'm talking about!

2006-02-01T19:18:00.000-06:00

The government is developing a new weapon that could potentially eliminate collateral damage. It's sounds like it was cut-and-pasted right out of a sci-fi film, but this time it's real: a laser that "could literally obliterate enemy ground targets with a laser beam."

The laser could have tremendous repercussions on the battlefield, particularly in urban warfare in such countries as Afghanistan and Iraq. "It's the kind of tool that could bring about victory within minutes," an official said.

And get this. The sucker's got an expected range of 10 miles. That's right, 10 miles.

Watch out Iran, Al-Qaeda, and Cindy Sheehan. (I know, I know, but she would believe it!)

Republican conspiracy theories on "24" -- almost

2006-01-31T23:36:00.000-06:00

***SPOILER ALERT: 24 Season 5 (11am-12pm)***

Whoah. Political Correctness Alert. 24's latest episode reveals a (Republican) plot to allow terrorists to steal WMDs to justify a continued presence in the Middle East, with the end goal of maintaining the U.S. supply of oil. Former 24 president David Palmer, who uncovered and tried to stop the plot, was a Democrat, while current President Logan is a Republican.

Gee, isn't this plot convenient? In a Hollywood culture where Bush lied, made up WMDs, and went to war for oil, this hardly seems coincidental.

However, I don't believe it.

Subtract the possible jab at Bush and Republicans, and we have a generic plot which could be very probable. As the President said in his State of the Union speech tonight, we are addicted to oil. It's not unlikely that some future administration would seek to manipulate terrorists in order to secure our oil supply. In addition, since the writers of "24" in the past has been very apolitical, I am inclined give them the benefit of the doubt on this one (for now). After all, Palmer was most definitely a hawk, while Logan is a weakling who can't make any decisions, so neither the stereotypes nor the analogies to our current president are valid in this case.

My other "24"-related posts:
"24" - The moral implications of the best show on television
The Moral Implications of "24" revisited
Republican Conspiracy Theories on "24"--almost

UPDATE: Some interesting "24"-related links:
David Palmer for President (spoiler alert)
The World According to Jack Bauer (explicit language)
Blogs4Bauer (major spoilers)

Tags: Jack Bauer, 24

Alito Confirmed

2006-01-31T12:11:00.000-06:00

Reuters:

A sharply divided U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, backing a second conservative nominated by President George W. Bush in his effort to move the nation's highest court to the right.
The largely party-line vote was 58-42 to replace the more moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor with Alito, a federal appeals judge since 1990, and came four months after the Senate approved Bush's first Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts, as U.S. chief justice.

And I'm glad it's over. No doubt the Democrats within the Kos-Krazy left's headlock will craft a new target for their "the-sky-is-falling" hysteria, but this battle is over, and the left is no stronger. Chuck Schumer echoed the increasingly annoying Dem talking point when he whined that

The union would be better and stronger and more unified if we were confirming a different nominee, a nominee who could have united us more than divided us.

I wonder, when will the left realize this country is not as pro-abortion as they think it is? The number of Americans who oppose abortion-as-birth-control is on the rise, and a definitive majority oppose partial-birth abortion. Abortion may be "settled law" and an inherent right in the constitution to the Kos Kids, but if that were so, why is there still such a debate about it? Nobody argues anymore whether blacks or women should have the vote because there's no longer any controversy. Not so with abortion, and despite the fiery rhetoric about back-ally abortions and "turning back the clock," the left is slowly but steadily being forced into retreat.

Tags: alito, supreme court, democrats, left, kos kids, abortion

Hugh Hewitt's prophet was Michael Crichton

2006-01-29T23:58:00.000-06:00

Hugh Hewitt is widely recognized as the "godfather of the blogosphere." This guy has a vision for the incredible potential of the new media form called blogging, and he had it literally before anyone else did. His book Blog is a quick read jam-packed full of the brief history of blogs, the incredible power they've already wielded, and advice for blogging's future. Trust me, Hugh is riding the first wave of this phenomenon. And incredibly enough, he is a living example of how a Bible-believing Christian can be great at what he does (blog, author books, host a syndicated radio show, teach Con Law at a university) and lead the way in innovation, creativity and style.

Hugh's biggest discussion topic is the slow but steady decline of the traditional media and the upsurge of power and influence in the blogosphere. He is a true pioneer of the "new media."

Funny thing is, this was prophesied over 10 years ago by someone else: Michael Crichton. Just listen to a few excerpts from a speech of Crichton's from 1993:

The media has always been driven by technology, but it's surprising how many of its attitudes and terminology are very old. Stereotype and cliche are eighteenth century printers' terms, referring to metal type. The inverted pyramid story structure was a response to the newly-invented telegraph; reporters were not sure they could get the whole story in before the telegraph broke down,a nd so began to put the most important information first. The first image broadcast on television was a dollar sign, setting the tone for the future of that medium.

But the modern thrust of technology is radically different, because it is changing the very concept of information in our society.

Crichton notes his observation of the increasing bias and poor reporting in the media. Then he predicts the solution.

But what if somebody offered a service with high-quality information? A service where all the facts were true, the quotes weren't piped, the statistics were presented by someone who knew something about statistics? What would that be worth? A lot. Because good information has value.
[...]
Today's media equivalent of the old telephone operator is Dan Rather, or the front page editor, or the reporter who prunes the facts in order to be lively and vivid. Increasingly, I want to remove those filters, and in some cases I already can.
[...]
[Now,] my ability to view C-SPAN brings us the third trend: the coming end of the media's information monopoly. For two hundred years, since the inception of our nation...the media has been able to behave in a basically monopolistic way. The media has treated information the way John D. Rockefeller treated oil - as a commodity, in which the distribution network, rather than product quality, is of primary importance. But once people can get the raw data themselves, that monopoly ends. And that means big changes, soon.

Crichton/Hewitt have directly pinpointed the problem with the MSM: reporters' biases and lack of understanding of the issues leads to poor questioning and bare-bones reporting. Switching to the perspective of a journalist, Crichton writes:

I can frame very general questions and get away with doing [my job poorly]. How do I justify my position? Well, I can tell myself that I'm too busy to do better, because the news rushes onward. But that's not really satisfactory. Better to say the American people don't want details, they just want "the basics." In other words I can blame my own shoddy behavior on the audience. And if I hear the audience criticizing me, I can say I'm being blamed as the bearer of bad news. Instead of what is really going on - which is that my customers are telling me that my product is poorly researched and often either uninteresting or irrelevant. It's junk food journalism. Empty calories.

I could have pulled that out of Hugh's daily perspective on the MSM, and probably almost word-for-word.

Mr. Crichton, your prophesy is coming true, and Hugh Hewitt is riding that wave.

Tags: blog, blogging, blogosphere, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Crichton, MSM, media bias, bias, journalism

An inconsistent ethic of death

2006-01-23T23:07:00.000-06:00

"If there's any chance whatsoever that the convicted death row inmate is innocent--as DNA testing may prove--we shouldn't risk killing him."

So goes one of the arguments on the left against capital punishment. And truly, it's not that bad of an argument, even if I disagree with it. The purpose of this post isn't to argue for or against the death penalty; rather, it's to point out that the left refuses to apply its own standard to other situations of equal moral weight.

The left is quick to use even the smallest possibility of innocence to oppose the death penalty--"What if we're wrong?" they cry hysterically. Yet they refuse to even consider restricting abortion on the grounds of the smallest (and increasingly bigger) possibility that the fetus is human, and therefore deserving the full protection of constitutional rights.

And the humanity of the fetus is all the left is hanging on; once that blob of tissue is established as an individual human life, the left's cover will be blown and they will be forced to change or admit that, to them, convenience and the vague "right to privacy" actually trumps the explicit constitutional right to life.

When it comes to abortion, the left likes anecdotes, especially emotional ones that really get your tear glands working overtime; ones that almost make you think, "Man, her situation was so bad, she just had to get an abortion!" Well, I've got an anectdote for you lefties, and this one is an example of how good came come out of even rape:

Raped and pregnant at 17, a senior in high school in a small northwestern Minnesota town, Staci Jenson had some big decisions to make.
The summer before her senior year, she was hanging out at the local fair and was given a nonalcoholic drink by someone. "I don't know what happened after that," she said. When she woke up she realized she had been sexually assaulted...

But even many opponents of abortion say they make an exception for a woman who is raped. Jenson doesn't. "I was given the gift of pregnancy," Jenson said.
Despite the fact that she was pregnant by a man she didn't know who raped her, Jenson said she never considered abortion. She grew up in a family that attended a nondenominational church, and her Christian upbringing reinforced in her the idea that abortion was wrong, Jenson said.

She herself almost shouldn't be here, Jenson said. With two older children and a marriage that was not going well nearly 30 years ago, Jenson's mother, pregnant again, thought it was too much."My mom went to get me aborted, but she stopped."
She did think about adoption. Her father even found a family in Thief River Falls who was looking to adopt privately.

"I chose not to terminate my baby," Jenson said. "I chose to keep my baby. That was my heart."

Her son will be 10 years old in March. When talking about him, Jenson has to pause to regain her composure.

"I couldn't imagine terminating him," she said in a quavering voice.
She has begun speaking publicly about her experience and counsels other women facing difficult pregnancy decisions, Jenson said.
"I tell them it's not just about her," Jenson said. "There's so much more involved...I had a living baby growing inside of me. What is more precious than that?"

Tags: abortion, death penalty, rape, pregnancy, democrats, liberal hypocricy

First Sharon, now this

2006-01-23T14:26:00.000-06:00

The terrorist group Hamas is using the democratic process to advance itself, and the Palestinians seem to be buying it. In probably the most misinformed quote of the day, a Palestinian voter describes his dissatisfaction with the ruling Palestinian Authority and his new support for a group whose business is killing innocents:

"Fatah [the ruling party of now-dead terrorist Arafat] is in my blood," he said, displaying a scar from an old bullet wound suffered in a clash with Israeli troops in the first Palestinian uprising. "But now I want a change. We want someone new, with clean hands."

This is the same Hamas whose mission is to kill Israelis, even innocent civilians. In fact, the terrorist group's charter holds a pretty strong view on the Palestinian peace process:

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors" (Article 13).

Just when you think the Middle East can't get any hotter. Sharon is gone for all practical purposes, a terrorist group might be elected into power in Palestine, Iran is being run by a crazed Holocaust-denying Islamist, and the U.S. is raping Iraq of its oil and other resources.

...

Well, at least the last part isn't true.

What about the freedom from nudity?

2006-01-23T14:08:00.000-06:00

A federal court struck down as unconstitutional a local Daytona Beach law outlawing public nudity. The reason? It's a violation of freedom of speech rights.

So, according to the courts, the right to air certain political ads within 60 days of an election is speech not worth protecting, but women walking around topless in a public place is? I bet Pee Wee Herman is hacked that he didn't wait just a few years to pull his exposure stunt .

This is why I'm glad to have Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and (likely) Alito on the Supreme Court.

How "Halo" helps the troops

2006-01-22T18:15:00.000-06:00

According to former defense advisor and wargame designer Jim Dunnigan:

American troops appear to have a considerable advantage because most of them grew up playing video games and using PCs. More and more military equipment uses computers, or are basically electronic gadgets. American troops require a lot less time to learn how to use this stuff, and tend to be very good with it. This extends from fire control systems in armored vehicles, to new radios, electronic rifle sights and training systems (which are very similar to those video games.) Many other countries have to spend a lot more time training their troops to use this stuff, and the proficiency of the troops is never particularly good. This effect is often seen when this high tech American equipment is provided to foreign troops who didn’t have such an electronic childhood.
Another big American advantage here is that U.S. troops can quickly get into the computerized training systems and further enhance their combat skills. A major problem with computerized simulators and wargames is the time it takes to learn to use them. But most American troops see this stuff as just another computer game, and get right into it. Whoever thought all those hours spend playing videogames would prove so useful on the battlefield.

Until further notice, I am suspending this blog to devote myself to video games--for purely educational purposes.

H/T Instapundit

Tags: video games, military, halo, technology, jim dunnigan

Treating the symptoms

2006-01-21T14:25:00.001-06:00

There is a war going on in Britain: a war on incivility. The Economist reports that since "coming to power in 1997, the Labour government has honed weapons against anti-social behaviour that are unmatched for severity in the western world." It continues:

The most potent of these is the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). This can be handed out for conduct that causes, or even contributes to a general sense of, “harassment, alarm or distress”. On the slenderest evidence (including hearsay), perpetrators as young as ten years old can be banned from entering an area, wearing particular clothing or even speaking certain words. Breach the terms of the order, and the maximum sentence is five years in prison. Some 6,500 ASBOs have been imposed since they became available in 1999.
They are enormously popular, as are other powers, such as curfews and “dispersal orders”, which can be used to break up groups. MORI, a pollster, found last year that ASBOs were opposed by just 4% of people.

This strikes me as somewhat ridiculous. If these are the methods that a secular society comes up with to abate its social ills, Britain has a tough road ahead. The root of all these problems is the abandonment of traditional morality, or at least the divorcing of it from the rationale behind social operations. The British city of Camden maintains "'youth-inclusion support panels' which try to quell anti-social tendencies before they reach the point where tougher measures are required." Not so long ago--as few as 50 years--the obvious solution to so-called "anti-social tendencies" would be better parenting. But with parents now lacking a traditional morality, what do they have to raise their kids with? They see the surface problem--and euphemize it with psychobabble--but fail to recognize the inner need for a) better parenting, c) traditional morality, and c) spiritual salvation and renewal in Jesus Christ.

Another problem Britain has is its slow and covert infiltration of Muslim immigrants. Immigrants in general, Muslim or otherwise, are not a threat if they desire to contribute to society and learn the laws and customs of their new home. This is why immigration has worked rather well in the U.S., and why we also have problems due to the "black culture" or the "Latino culture." Integration into society must go hand in hand with immigration, or a country runs the risk of being overrun by dissidents. This is happening in Britain (Mark Steyn):

According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?

Europe is under seige by secular and religious forces alike. In a nutshell, they both have the same solution--a return to traditional Christian morality. Truth is truth, and it matters. The need for better parenting can't come unless folks realize objectively bad parenting in the first place. Psychobabble terminology is great for eliminating personal responsibility for behavior, and the term "anti-social tendencies" helps to accomplish that--for the bad kid and the bad parent. In addition, traditional morality allows culture to objectively judge and define good cultures and bad cultures. Obviously, Western culture is decadent in many, many ways. But when you compare the freedoms and relative peace in the West with the first things that come to mind when Islam is brought up (religious intolerance, brutal religious punishments, no political freedom, oppression towards women), which would you rather have? Finding common ground is valuable, but multiculturalism equates cultures to such a degree that it blurs Truth.

Truth is truth is truth. It deserves defending.

Tags: truth, multiculturalism, parenting, islam, britain, england, anti-social behavior, civility, incivility, muslims

The moral implications of "24" revisited

2006-01-21T14:25:00.000-06:00

Last spring I posted about the moral implications of "24." Season 5 began with a two-day, two-hour-each season opener on Sunday and Monday nights. I missed them. Both of them. I almost cried. Right now I'm trying to find someone who taped them... (Maybe Blogs4Bauer can help)

To my great delight, I recently discovered that the godfather of the modern blogosphere got hooked on "24" as well, and he linked to some another blogger's comments on the show. Ms. Penner's thoughts are along the same lines as mine, but much better written. We have a slight disagreement concerning my description of the show's moral system as utilitarian:

Some have mistaken the choices in “24” to be utilitarianism or situational ethics. But those are specific moral systems. Utilitarianism is the view that what is right depends only on the consequences, and usually a specific kind of good is defined as the goal. Situational ethics is one rule: Always do the loving thing. But in “24” the ends don’t justify the means, but the ends are taken into consideration when the moral rules conflict.

I suppose my only defense is that I wasn't necessarily using the term 'utilitarianism' to encompass an entire moral system or situational ethics. I simply used it to refer to the many, many, many situations in "24" where, in order to accomplish the greater/greatest good, Jack Bauer uses tactics that would make Dick Durbin faint. [mild Season 3 SPOILER ALERT] Decapitating a convicted murdurer in order to get in undercover with his enemies is not justified for police work. But in order to save millions from a nuke? I think we can overlook that one...

Later on I discuss why utilitarian morality, in the end, doesn't work:

...without God there's no reason to hold innocent life in such high regard (the millions of potential casualties from the nuke or virus). Why go to virtually any lengths to stop the slaughter of a city unless you acknowledge the fundamental value of life? Sure, there's a place for utilitarian arguments, but the very concept itself presupposes a hierarchy of importance and inherent value in things, which can only be sourced back to God.

Don't get me wrong; there is definitely a solidly defined right and wrong in "24." The show just doesn't mention it explicitly. Ms. Penner is right to observe that

Morality is black and white in “24.” There are right choices and wrong choices, not that they always get it right. The characters are also clearly drawn: The bad guys are bad, not conflicted morally that we nevertheless want to root for. There is no rooting for the villains on “24.”

One of the best parts about "24" is the way it makes the viewer really struggle through the moral implications of the show. Few other shows are so adept at combining nail-biting entertainment with difficult, but genuinely positive, moral discussion.

NOTE: Another provocative ethical analysis of "24" is available here.

My other "24"-related posts:
"24" - the moral implications of the best show on television
The Moral Implications of "24" revisited
Republican Conspiracy Theories on "24"--almost

Tags: Jack Bauer, 24, Utilitarianism

Allah Akbar (now with AIDS!)

2006-01-09T11:45:00.000-06:00

The latest addition to the Al-Qaeda manual is to intentionally recruit people with AIDS or other blood-transferrable diseases to be suicide bombers. This would increase the "kill rate," since

[e]xperts have found that bones and other blood-spattered fragments from a
suicide bomber could penetrate the skin of a victim 50 metres away and infect
them.

As morally reprehensible as this is, it doesn't surprise me. Yet I get very outraged about it either. Biological warfare has been around a long time, and it's not a technique reserved only for Islamic terrorists. It was not uncommon for American colonists to take the blanket of an infected person and place it in the forest for the Indians to find. They didn't know the chemistry of the situation, but they knew the blanket caused something, and that the Indians had a deadly lack of tolerance of European diseases.

[S]oldiers are warned to wear special protective clothing when on guard duty or if they have to deal with casualties in the event of an attack.

In addition, all soliders should be advised that, if they have any sexual intercourse with terrorists or potential terrorists, make sure and protect themselves by wearing a condom.

Idiot of the Day

2006-01-09T11:43:00.000-06:00

The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

Talk about an absolute moron. There is a distinct difference between criticism and legitimate policy disagreement, and ridiculous ad hominem attacks that advance no argument whatsoever and only serve to make one look like a fool. Reminds me of that old song, "Everybody plays the fool. No exception to the rule."

I guess this proves that age (Belafonte is 78) does not necessarily imply wisdom.

Murtha and Moran: Leaders of the Defeatist Democrats

2006-01-06T23:03:00.000-06:00

John Murtha, the Democrats' lead advocate for total surrender in Iraq, is on a roll. Earlier this week he spoke out against the military, saying he would not join today:

"And I think you're saying the average guy out there who's considering recruitment is justified in saying 'I don't want to serve,'" [said] the interviewer. "Exactly right," said Murtha.

Well gee, this has been true since 1973, when the national draft became nonexistent. Nobody questions the right of a citizen to decide not to join the military--except kookish lefties like Michael Moore who do exactly that and confront public officials--Republican ones specifically--about the decisions their children have made concerning military service.

Fortunately (and for a bureaucrat, surprisingly) somebody at the Department of Defense observed the same thing:

Asked for comment, a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. John Skinner, said: "We have an all-volunteer military. People are free to choose whether they serve or not."

Duh. Next point, Murtha.

Now Murtha's worried that a slow withdrawal of U.S. troops will make it look like we are victorious. You heard that right. Oh no!! What a devastation that would be to the hopes of Democrats everywhere! At a meeting promoted by the kook fringe lefty group MoveOn.org, Murtha said:

A year ago, I said we can't win this [Iraq conflict] militarily, and I got all kinds of criticism...I worry about a slow withdrawal which makes it look like there's a victory when I think it should be a redeployment as quickly as possible and let the Iraqis handle the whole thing.

Another elected official, Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, was Murtha's companion at the meeting. Moran is the guy who blamed the Jews for the military offensive in Iraq. This keeps getting better and better. James Taranto is right to ask, "Does anyone still want to say it is unfair to characterize Murtha as rooting for American defeat?... The good news is that the 'antiwar' movement is not serious. If it were, it would not have to rely on fringe figures like Murtha, Moran and Cindy Sheehan."

Amen to that.

politics, democrats, liberals, john murtha, jim moran, kook fringe liberalism, iraq, defeatism

Ridiculous item of the day

2006-01-06T21:14:00.000-06:00

In what should be a piece in The Onion, Italian courts are set to rule on the historical existence of Jesus. One man sued a Catholic priest, alleging that the Church has falsely asserted the existence of Christ. Says plaintiff Luigi Cascioli, a "vocal atheist":

In my book, The Fable of Christ, I present proof Jesus did not exist as a historic figure. He [the defendant] must now refute this by showing proof of Christ's existence.

Never mind the intellectual contradiction of using moral standards such as justice or right/wrong without a belief in a God who gives those standards...

At a minimum, the guy's got a sense of humor: "It would take a miracle to win," he joked.

Steyn on the greatest threat to Western Civ

2006-01-05T23:11:00.000-06:00

Mark Steyn is one of my favorite political commentators, not only for his sharp wit and fine skill at skewering liberals, but also for his clarity, accuracy and readability. Go read his latest contribution to intellectual thought--it is phenomenal. Long, but worth it. Some highlights and basic points:

That's what the war [on terror]'s about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.

...

The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.

...

Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along.

...

That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste.

...

The annexation by government of most of the key responsibilities of life--child-raising, taking care of your elderly parents--has profoundly changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. At some point--I would say socialized health care is a good marker--you cross a line, and it's very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government largesse to cross back. In National Review recently, I took issue with that line Gerald Ford always uses to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." Actually, you run into trouble long before that point: A government big enough to give you everything you want still isn't big enough to get you to give anything back. That's what the French and German political classes are discovering.

...

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization.

...

[Preserving the West and fighting Islamic expansion] ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going to be the first victims of the West's collapsed birthrates? Even if one were to take the optimistic view that Europe will be able to resist the creeping imposition of Sharia currently engulfing Nigeria, it remains the case that the Muslim world is not notable for setting much store by "a woman's right to choose," in any sense.

The greater threat to the left's "progressive" social agenda is not the right, but Islamic expansion. Steyn notes:

By prioritizing a "woman's right to choose," Western women are delivering their societies into the hands of fellows far more patriarchal than a 1950s sitcom dad. If any of those women marching for their "reproductive rights" still have babies, they might like to ponder demographic realities: A little girl born today will be unlikely, at the age of 40, to be free to prance around demonstrations in Eurabian Paris or Amsterdam chanting "Hands off my bush!"...Bottom line for [insert crazed pro-abortion lefty here]: There are worse things than John Ashcroft out there.

...

Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?

Not good.

Mark Steyn, muslim extremism, islam, immigration, population, religion, liberty, freedom, abortion

Christmas with Saddam

2005-12-09T11:49:00.000-06:00

My dorm's annual Christmas party was last night, and every year there is a suite-decorating contest. Yes, our idea was actually "Christmas with Sadaam." We cleared the main suite area clear of everything except for a cot (futon sans mattress) with a blanket, a half-eaten meal of nasty looking soup, and had Arab music playing in the background. My roommate--who bears a surprisingly striking resemblance to Sadaam Hussein--sat in a corner on a wooden chair, dressed in ragged camo pants and a dirty undershit, reading a book. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we had jumper cables attached to the metal cot frame for torturous effect and shock value.

People walked in and immediately started laughing. They loved it. My RD (resident director) called our exhibit "genius." Unfortunately, we lost to suite 14, decorated as a lodge. Oh well. Despite having lost, we all agreed that nobody would be talking about "The Lodge" in the future. But "Christmas with Saddam"? May it never be forgotten.

Saddam, Saddam Hussein, torture, Christmas, college humor, interrogation, jumper cables, arab music

Wait--Saddam is complaining about torture?

2005-12-07T00:46:00.000-06:00

You got it. Saddam Hussein, that rambunctious-yet-nicely-dressed Iraqi (who also happens to be a murderous former dictator), keeps getting himself riled up in court. At one point he told the judge to "go to hell," and threatened not to return to the court he complained was unjust. Not that Saddam saw the irony in whining about fair courts. No wonder he doesn't recognize one when he sees one--a fair court in Iraq under Saddam's reign was about as scarce as those WMDs are today.

And yet, amazingly, an even greater irony topped the one I just described.

Saddam, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt and clutching a Quran, complained that he and the seven other defendants were tired and had been deprived of opportunities to shower, have a change of clothes, exercise or go for a smoke.

"This is terrorism," he declared.

That merits repeating: Saddam, complaining of lack of showers, changes of close, excercise, and smoke breaks, whines that he's a victim of terrorism.

Let's send him over to Club Gitmo, whose detainees get all the above and more. I bet the U.S. government would be happy to provide Saddam with one of these to quench the evil dictator's thirst:

Saddam Hussein, Saddam, Club Gitmo, Iraq

A sheltered lifestyle

2005-12-07T00:17:00.000-06:00

A buddy of mine from school and work told me a great story today. On his way back from Thanksgiving Break in Colorado he was rear-ended and got caught in a blizzard. The highway patrol closed down the interstate, and he and about 75 others were stranded in a shelter for the next two days. "How were the people at the shelter?" I asked. "What did you guys do for two days?" His answer was classic male.

"Somebody found a bag of Chex Mix, so we emptied it out, divided the pieces up, assigned them denominations, and played poker for two days!"

That. is. freaking. awesome.

Where's Dick Durbin when we actually need him?

2005-12-06T23:35:00.000-06:00

It appears that China rivals Guantanamo Bay in human rights abuses:

The use of torture in China is widespread, and frequently carried out by police who exercise “wide discretion” within the country's under-developed legal system, a United Nations special envoy said on Friday.

Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture, said police often resorted to torture in the early stages of detaining subjects as they came “under heavy pressure to produce confessions”. Techniques such as beatings and sleep deprivation by police and other security authorities focused on “breaking the will” of individuals, thus creating a “general culture of fear”, he said.

[Nowak's findings found] poor legal protections for detainees, who often include ethnic minorities, political dissidents, religious activists and Falun Gong believers.

Mr Nowak said China still did not exclude statements made as a result of torture, presume innocence, allow avoidance of self-incrimination, permit habeas corpus or even have a system for lodging complaints.

Somebody call Dick Durbin. I'm sure he'll want to condemn China's policies and compare them to those of fascist dictatorial regimes.

Dick Durbin, China, torture, interrogation

Firefox "problem" is nothing new

2005-12-06T21:42:00.000-06:00

Some folks are upset that upgrading to Firefox 1.5 (which came out last week) is "taking one step forward and two steps back":

Firefox blocks the installation of an extension if it is incompatible with that version of the browser. From a technical perspective, this compatibility requirement is a good idea, preventing the browser from operating unreliably due to incompatible extensions. From a user perspective, it's an unpleasant surprise to learn of diminished functionality only after the upgrade.

Is this anything new? Over the last year or more, as I've upgraded Firefox from 1.0 to 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 all the way up to 1.0.7, and finally to 1.5, I've encountered this problem every time. There's always some extension that isn't compatible with the latest version I just installed. Big deal. I learn to live with it, and anyways, the odds are in my favor that the maimed extention will be upgraded very shortly. The article/blogger casts Firefox as "blocking the installation" of incompatible extensions, but this is not true. If an extension won't work, it won't work, and Firefox recognizes that. It doesn't delete the extension, and as soon as an upgrade is available, it will work again.

Why are people treating this like a new problem?

firefox, firefox 1.5, browser

Call me Uncle Moneybags

2005-11-30T19:47:00.000-06:00

I had a scary experience at work today. (I just started as a teller at a local bank) The nice thing about living in a small town with a church on every other corner is that more people are honest. I found that out today.

I had unclipped a stack of 25 fifty-dollar bills and counted out a few for the customer in the drive-in lane. After I gave him the cash, he counted it and told me it wasn't all there. Oh yeah, I realized, I'd counted out a seperate stack of twenties and forgot to put them in the little paper slip. I grabbed the stack in front of me, gave the guy his cash and sent him on his merry way.

But he returned about 2 minutes later. "Umm, I think you gave me a little extra," he said. The girl next to him chimed in sweetly, "Yeah, like $300 extra!"

My jaw dropped, yet I managed to grab my heart before it leaped completely out of my throat; simultaneously I pinched my lower cheeks to avoid a major accident. As I composed myself physically, I was trying to avoid the mental image of the inevitable firing that I just had just been rescued from.

For the third time, I gave the guy his money, thanking him profusely for being honest.

I don't think I looked up from my computer for at least 10 minutes. Not bad for my seventh day of work.

They aren't evil, just misunderstood

2005-11-30T11:33:00.000-06:00

AFP:

Baghdad - The Iraqi army said on Thursday it had seized a number of booby-trapped children's dolls, accusing insurgents of using the explosive-filled toys to target children. The dolls were found in a car, each one containing a grenade or other explosive, said an army statement. The government said that two men driving the car had been arrested in the western Baghdad district of Abu Ghraib. "This is the same type of doll as that handed out on several occasions by US soldiers to children," said government spokesperson Leith Kubba.

Now read this.

If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil. They just have a different perspective. The smartest people understand the enemy's point of view, because they understand what's driving them.
~ Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball

And the left just keeps on sinking... If we lose the war in Iraq, it won't be for lack of military might, but for the external attempt by the terrorists to wear our support down by a continual insurgent presence and the internal attack by the left that sabatoges a war and its leader for political gain.

There are times I want to believe the left is actually pro-America. Too often they show me I've simply "misunderestimated" them.

chris matthews, hardball, iraq, iraq war, insurgents, loony left

Likeable Democrats are a rare breed

2005-11-29T23:50:00.000-06:00

But there is at least one in Washington these days, and his name is Joe Lieberman:

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

Is the modern church known by love or glitz? Part II

2005-11-17T01:01:00.000-06:00

(Click here for Part I)

This post is a continued discussion of my first post concerning the Church and how it focuses its (especially financial) resources. Anonymous posted a very provacative response, which I will use pieces of in this post.

Haseltine’s argument hinges on one crucial point—that the church has bought a lie.

The lie is that technology, entertainment and comfort are core necessities to tell the Gospel story.

I have never heard a person in remembering their journey from fear to faith recall the types of screens, the light show, the fabric colors or thread counts, or even how techno savvy the sanctuary was or how the conveniences of great coffee and high-speed Internet access stirred their heart to a place where they could examine their life and soul and see that they were a wretch and that God alone could save them.

True, but how many folks never would have come into the church if those things hadn’t been there? This raises a number of questions:

Is preaching the gospel with financial efficiency the end goal? Or should cost be irrelevant? Or should it be somewhere in the middle? (Hmmm, Aristotle’s pesky golden mean thing.)

Is the “bait and switch” approach to ministry—“hey, come to church for pizza and xbox!”— legit? Is it honest?

My mind has swung both ways on this issue before. The thing is, there will always—always—be other valid ways to spend money. Is food for starving African children the only legitimate way for a church to spend its money? No. Is it poor stewardship to buy 50 cans of spam for a youth group game on Friday night? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.

Haseltine writes that God is still a God of relationships, and

the Gospel does not need our technological wonders and brilliant sanctuaries to enhance it or make it relevant.

Very true, but are churches who invest in technology or coffee bars or youth expenses really making the argument that these things are necessary to “enhance” or “make relevant” the gospel? Or are they simply argue that they’re useful to draw people in to hear the gospel, people who wouldn’t normally come to a “typical” church? What should the Church’s theology on 'advertising' be?

The danger with Haseltine’s kind of approach is that it’s too simplistic. Church leaders are not gathering together, dumping the offering plates into a pile, and saying, “OK. We’ve got 10 Gs here to spend on either SPAM for youth group games or starving orphans in Africa. What’s it gonna be?”

Haseltine comments that the dollars spent on church construction in a year is 1/7 of what it would cost to end poverty in Ethiopia. My first reaction: “ending poverty” is not solved by money alone; throwing cash at Africa’s problems has proven to be one of the least effective solutions. Second reaction: is Haseltine really saying that churches which spend money on construction aren’t following God’s will? Anonymous writes:

What criteria should a leader use to decide where to spend ministry dollars?

This brings up the most important and basic question yet: What is God’s will concerning the Church? Or better yet, is there a specific will of God?
We discussed this in class earlier this week. My prof described five different situations from the last two years in which he and his wife were absolutely positive were the “will of God,” yet God shut the door on all five. My prof described a student he had a few years ago who was a phenomenal youth minister; this guy had multiple job offers in his senior year, but he turned them all down because he was too scared to choose wrong and “be outside of God’s will.” The point of this is that we all concluded that there is no “perfect will of God,” no specific roadmap of who to marry, what job to take, where to live, etc., which will fulfill God’s checklist before he blesses us. No matter where you are, or what you are doing, the difference between serving God and serving self is the status of one’s heart.

The most important part of Anonymous’ comment reflects my final point:

When you observe a church or an individual Christian consuming (or ministering with technology) at a certain level, how do you know what criteria they used to make their decision? If we start asking one another, we will probably uncover some waste or inefficiency. But we also just might learn something about how the Lord has led another person. That would be a win / win / win. (The third win is for those who’d benefit by the extra resources freed up for additional ministry because we asked the questions.)

At a minimum, these questions illustrate how impossible it is to discern a “perfect will of God.” (By the way, even if financial frugality is established as the highest good, there are still a million different ways to be a good steward.)

CONCLUSION – Churches, there is no perfect way to spend your money; your heart, intention, and purpose (combined with reason and at least some semblance of fiscal responsibility) are most important. Just as God has no “perfect will” for our lives, neither is there a “perfect spending plan” for such-and-such Baptist church in Podunkville, Ohio, or Super-Mega-Church in Dallas. Should the Church actively pursue all of its callings (discipleship, missions, social justice, etc.)? Yes. Is there a specific formula for that pursuit? Nope.

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

church, discipleship, dan haseltine, social justice, evangelicalism, god, christianity, love, church spending, theology, will of god, youth ministry, stewardship

Christmas solutions for the whacky environmentalist

2005-11-12T23:16:00.000-06:00

Got a whacky far-left relative you've gotta shop for this Christmas? In the past have you resorted to giving Earth Day t-shirts? This year, for "the woman who wants to stay both warm and environmentally conscious this winter," look no further than the Eco Bra! Turn down the heater in your house this winter to preserve energy, simply microwave the Eco Bra for a few minutes, and waalaa! you're warm for the rest of the day! **Microwave not included.

MORE GIFTS FOR THE ENVIRO-CONSCIOUS
Top 10 Gifts for Your Environmentalist Friends
Save the Environment: Re-use Condoms t-shirt
Keep the Earth Clean: It's not Uranus button
Have you hugged a tree today? t-shirt
Bio-Hazard thong (no pun intended)
I went to Louisiana and all I got was herpes t-shirt
Support the troops? Ditch that SUV! t-shirt

UPDATE: Loyal Achates alerted me to the perfect gift for that shallow-thinking, stereotypical, I-only-respond-to-slogans Christian teen: Abstinece Underwear!

MORE GEMS OF CHRISTIAN MARKETING:
Get Stoned...Like Paul! t-shirt
Allfaith: You're in Good Hands t-shirt
Jesus the Sin Exterminator t-shirt
My Posse's Ready for Spiritual Warfare t-shirt
Christ Cafe: Open 24 Hours, Forgiveness Anytime t-shirt
Pope John Paul II: Fighter of Communism t-shirt (huh?)
I'm Pro-Choice: I Choose to Keep My Pants Up! t-shirt
What is the greatest nation on earth? The Incarnation t-shirt

environmentalist whackos, eco bra, christian t-shirts, cliched christianity

Scrap Roe?

2005-11-12T19:34:00.000-06:00

Living up to his name, A Wiser Man Than I posts a phenomenal intellectual defense of overturning Roe v. Wade, that bane of existence for conservatives and beacon of light for liberals. And he does it "without mentioning God or quoting the Bible. Prepare to be dazzled." Indeed. My favorite part:

If there is even a possibility that the fetus is a child, we must react with restraint. The burden of proof is not on the pro-lifers to prove it is a human being, it is on the pro-choice movement to prove it is not. Intellectually honest individuals must grant that point.

roe v wade, abortion, liberals, conservatives, roe vs wade

Is the modern church known by love or glitz?

2005-11-12T01:33:00.000-06:00

A buddy of mine in his youth ministry internship stopped by tonight, and we talked about the Church, his in particular--how it too often treats youths as numbers and doesn't follow up with discipleship. This church spent twenty grand--that's $20,000--for its youth ministry worship facility. He listed off all the cool equipment they've got, and I just sat there, gawking. Every time I get into a discussion about the church, a column from this summer's Relevant runs through my head. Dan Haseltine has got a point, I think. Please read the whole thing here.

Is there a voice speaking into these tragic and inexusable corners of the globe where thousands of children die in the war for a louder voice? It is a real fight to have a scream or a cry louder than the one telling us which creature comforts and luxury items we do not possess and NEED. It is the struggle to yell above the noise that has distracted and bent the ear of the Church into justifying an expedition of technology, trends, fashion and indulgence at the cost of thousands of lives each and every day.

In our world today nearly 200,000 people die from CURABLE diseases and other factors surrounding extreme poverty. About 6,500 people die every day from AIDS, a preventable disease that finds its greatest and easiest prey among those who live on less than $1 a day. And that kind of prey is abundant for the feast. Millions of people live without access to safe, clean water sources. In the United States, we, the body of Christ, have taken steps that ensure these kinds of troubling statistics will keep on growing. The contemporary Church has found ways to look into the eyes of a starving child and say, "We have done enough," and our church community needs a new coffee bar and comfortable seats.

The Church has been sold a lie that they are now investing in and perpetuating across the Western world. The lie is that technology, entertainment and comfort are core necessities to tell the Gospel story. The problem with this thread of thought is that it just is not true. I have never heard a person in remembering their journey from fear to faith recall the types of screens, the light show, the fabric colors or thread counts, or even how techno savvy the sanctuary was or how the conveniences of great coffee and high-speed Internet access stirred their heart to a place where they could examine their life and soul and see that they were a wretch and that God alone could save them.

Our God is still a God of relationships. He has set forth a Gospel that thrives in the rich dirt of one person loving and serving another with the help of compassion and mercy. And the Gospel does not need our technological wonders and brilliant sanctuaries to enhance it or make it relevant.

And we can sit on hard chairs or put our worship lyrics up on an ancient overhead projector or drink bad coffee or find ways of captivating hearts through genuine and authentic expressions of the Gospels that affect the lives of sinners without the laser show. We can live... (and "live," being the vital word in this phrase) without the latest creature comforts and trendy entertainment gadgets and even without a huge magnificent church building... if it means that lives will be saved, that children will be pulled out of forced prostitution, that babies will not die from drinking unclean water or that an HIV-positive mother would not have to pray that her HIV-positive children would die before she died for fear of leaving them as orphans.

There is a cost to end poverty... and many of the contemporary churches today spend that on an electric bill every month. There is a dollar amount that gives an entire community freedom from the deadly effects of malaria, and I have been in churches where that dollar figure is spent on sound systems and state-of-the-art concert lighting. It would cost roughly $3 billion to keep all the people in Ethiopia free from famine. We have spent nearly seven times that much on new church construction in a year. Can we make better choices? Do we trust God and believe the Gospel is powerful enough on its own? The Gospel speaks with a voice so authentic it needs no comforts or displays of trendy brilliance to swarm the hearts and minds of weary souls. If we believe this to be true, we must examine the reasons for our spending and choose to become the voice for better stewardship."

As an evangelical, social justice is hardly my strong point. But I am slowly realizing how imporant it is when used Biblically. (Thank you Dan Lambert and Richard Foster.) Make no mistake, I don't think that what the church currently spends its money on is unimportant, necessarily; the approach just isn't holistic enough for its entire calling. Sure, spending money on internal church needs is totally acceptable. But when American Protestant churches spend 2 cents of every incoming dollar on missions, as opposed to the 70 cents per dollar that a Korean church gives, something is wrong.

The Church spends a fortune to create the perfect setting for non-believers to "experience the Gospel." (As if we have anything to do with it!) We Christians are quick to give a meaningful head-nod and an amen to the idea that what truly impresses non-believers is our behavior--for good or ill. So what if we decided to toss that plan for new comfy pews and a $2000 projector--you know, for those obligatory movie clips--in favor of some uncomfortable wooden benches and an overhead projector, and use the money instead to provide fresh water and medicine to starving orphans in Africa, or to pay for two months' worth of food at the local rescue mission? It may hurt our "presentation," but would it really hurt our witness? Then the next time a non-Christian wonders aloud why our church doesn't have that glitzy, "seeker-friendly" atmosphere, maybe--just maybe--he'll be impressed by our explanation, and maybe he'll know we are Christians by our love and not our coffee bar.

UPDATE: Is the modern church known by love or glitz? Part II

church, discipleship, relevant, relevant magazine, dan haseltine, social justice, evangelicalism, aids, africa, rescue mission, god, christianity, poverty, love

The Bush Complex: saving those you hate

2005-11-12T01:12:00.000-06:00

James Taranto notes that the NY Times notes that New Orleans may now be the safest city in the U.S. because all the drug dealers and criminals were washed away by Katrina, and few if any have returned.

So let me get this straight, Democrats. Bush caused Katrina. Bush also hates blacks. Katrina resulted in a less crime in New Orleans. New Orleans is predominantly black. Most black people vote for Democrats. Therefore, Bush is indirectly responsible for lowering crime in a city filled with his hated political enemies?

Now that's compassionate conservatism!

democrats, bush, katrina, blacks, taranto, new orleans, crime

Veteran's Day

2005-11-11T16:01:00.000-06:00

A fitting quote from today's Breakpoint by Charles Colson:

I love the way the late historian Stephen Ambrose once wrote about World War II: "The most terrifying sight to most civilians was a squad of armed teenage boys in uniform." Whether it was the Red Army in Warsaw, the Japanese in Manila, or the Germans in Holland, this sight always meant trouble. There was one exception to this rule. "Everywhere in the world," Ambrose wrote, "the sight of a twelve-man squad of GIs brought joy to people's hearts." Why? "Because the sight of those American kids meant cigarettes, candy, c-rations, and freedom. They had come not to conquer or terrorize but to liberate."

Today we honor those who have fought for freedom.
Veteran's Day, soldiers, freedom, chuck colson, charles colson, breakpoint

A fascinating article on Harry Potter

2005-11-09T11:44:00.000-06:00

I am always happy to encounter a Christian (and intellectual at that!) reader and enjoyer of Harry Potter. The most recent example is Alan Jacobs, professor English at Wheaton. He writes in the Nov/Dec issue of Christianity Today a piece entitled "Opportunity Costs: What does it profit a man to defeat the Dark Lord but lose his soul?"

Tags: Harry Potter, Christianity Today, Alan Jacobs, Wheaton

This post is written mostly for Doug and ~~Music Nazi~~ Ben--the two guys from T-town who occasionally check this site--and I trust they will pass it on to the other HP fanatics:

Pureblood Prince
C Mang
Prince of Spades
Drama (and grammar) Queen
...and everybody else...

My favorite paragraph (only relevant if you've read the preceeding paragraphs):

But I do not think that Joanne Rowling wants to say that adulthood consists in foregoing all delight, all leisure and playfulness, and that young people had better get used to it. Rather, she is showing that there are times when some people, at least, must forgo such pleasures so that they may be retained, or regained, by others. And it is at this point that the comparisons between Rowling's books and The Lord of the Rings—comparisons that I have tended to dismiss— begin to ring true. Reading the last pages of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I found myself hearing in my head some of the last words Frodo utters to Sam: "I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them." Harry has indeed given up many things: all the delights of Rowling's imaginative world that I have mentioned, and many more. We are left to wonder whether he must give them up permanently, or whether, his quest complete, he will remain whole enough to reclaim them.

Harry Potter, Christianity Today, Alan Jacobs, Wheaton

Geico's regret

2005-11-08T22:16:00.000-06:00

Finding an occupied parking space: $2 bus fare.
Molotov Cocktail: $7

The faces of the Geico executives who offered savings of 15% or more on car insurance: priceless.

There are some cruel ironies life just can't predict. For everything else, there's Platinum Mastercard.

geico, mastercard, spoof, molotov, molotov cocktail, paris, riots

Idiot of the Day

2005-11-08T21:50:00.000-06:00

Reuters:

A hand grenade being used instead of a ball in a game of catch exploded early on Saturday killing three youths in this Bosnian town, police and news agencies said.
Two youths aged 19 and 20, one of them from neighboring Croatia, were killed instantly while a 20-year-old woman died on her way to hospital, police said. Her sister was slightly injured but two other youths suffered serious injuries.

ONASA news agency quoted witnesses as saying the youths tossed the hand grenade to each other before it exploded in the hands of one of them.

Darwin Awards candidate, anyone?

idiot, hand grenade, bosnia, darwin awards

Huh?

2005-11-07T02:45:00.000-06:00

These should never go together. It's crazy.

Must be global warming. :)

What a riot

2005-11-07T00:06:00.000-06:00

There is a new "British Invasion," and the threat is relevant to all of Europe.

Britain has avoided military invasion since 1066, and it has seldom had to worry about such an attack since. Today, however, Britain has been successfully invaded by a new enemy--one silent, legal, and perhaps the most dangerous yet. Yes, the current threat to Britain (and the rest of Europe) is its Muslim population. Approximately 2 million Muslims currently reside in Britain, making up about 3 percent of the overall population. Authorities estimate that up to 3,000 of those are terrorists, many of whom actually have received combat training from terrorist camps in places such as Afghanistan, or real-life experience from Iraq.

The Muslim population in Europe is growing (France has 5 million), due to immigration and to a higher birth rate among European Muslims than the rest of the population. Also, support among European Muslims for radical action (i.e. terrorism) is growing.

Most folks who emigrate do so for positive reasons--to escape tyranny, religious freedom, or job opportunities. America was built on immigration; it is part of what makes us great. So what's the deal with the Muslims in Europe? They are separatist, despise western culture's decadence (despite participating in it, many of them), and many even actively "seek to destroy it."

The riots in France are simply an explosion of social unrest boiling beneath the surface. Who or what is to blame for this? Unemployment is high among French Muslims, low income is widespread, and there is little integration; in fact, many--if not most--Muslims in France don't even consider themselves French, despite being natural born citizens. The world's beacon of journalistic integrity attributes the riots to "Muslims...who have never been integrated into French society." Which begs the question: Who is responsible for integration and assimilation--the immigrants, the host country, or both?

One Canadian blogger thinks the school system is the best tool of integration. Lack of education is definitely a root cause of poverty and unemployment; the trickier matter is deciding whether to blame the people themselves or the education system. According to this, both are to blame: the Muslims themselves because of their hijacking of the state-funded school system, and the schools for catering to the hijackers. (H/T WMD)

Another blogger jokingly blames the riots on France's universal healthcare system, which consists of "a kit containing a band-aid and a shot of whiskey" (H/T Temujin).

Of course, at some point one must stop playing sociologist trying to understand the riots and simply condemn the acts for what they are--evil and irresponsible, no matter what the driving force behind them. Dousing a handicapped woman with gasoline and lighting her on fire is unacceptable, I don't care how poor, undeducated, discriminated against or oppressed by the white Frenchies you are. Acts like these deserve swift and sound retribution.

Fortunately, some in the Arab world have the right perspective (H/T The Tar Pit):

Local leaders and the young people themselves must bear some responsibility for their hopeless lives. Certainly nothing can justify their going on destructive rampages.

The first mistake by the French was the very existence of a "no-go" area for the Parisian police. (By the way, Mr. Chirac, it would have been better to condemn "no-go" areas before the riots actually began, since doing so afterwards is stating the painfully obvious.) The origins of the culturally homogeneous "no-go" areas go all the way back to WWII. Writes Ed Morissey:

The riots typify French reaction to Islamism, and spring from a European approach to the Islamic wave of migration into Europe. After WWII, the French built so-called "sink estates" for the workers they encouraged to emigrate to help rebuild the nation, as did Germany. Most of these workers came from Turkey and colonies in North Africa. Instead of planning for their integration into society, however, the French allowed these communities to grow and fester in economic and social isolation. After two generations, the sink estates have proven to be nothing more than preplanned ghettos, and the workers have no future except as second-class citizens of the nations they helped rebuild from devastation...Even absent radical Islamism, the French should have foreseen the disaster that has presently come upon them, and had a plan to handle it.

So what to do about this insurrection? There's a fight in the upper echelons of French government. Chirac, pressured by other politicians, finally condemned the riots publicly. 2,300 police were sent in to reinforce those already there.

Police? How about the military? The situation is only escalating. It's expanding to other cities across France. Apparently the "youths" are feeding off each others' excitement. The French have got a big problem on their hands. I'm extremely curious to see how they resolve it.

riot, Paris, Paris riots, muslim, immigrants, Chirac, police, France

Harry Potter, Jedi Master?

2005-11-06T16:51:00.000-06:00

Voldemort: "Harry, I am your father!"

Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jedi, Jedi Master, Daniel Radcliffe, Goblet of Fire

Did Bush lie about WMDs?

2005-11-04T11:12:00.000-06:00

[T]he whole idea that the administration would use Iraq's WMDs as a "pretext" for war is stupid. If the administration knew Saddam didn't have the weapons, then it also knew its "pretext" would be exposed as soon as the invasion was complete. No one would be dumb enough to go to war on the basis of a claim that was not only wrong, but would quickly be shown to be wrong.

~ Powerline

wmd, weapons of mass destruction, iraq, bush lied

Canada foils terror plot

2005-11-04T01:57:00.000-06:00

Our friends up north caught up with a terror cell in Toronto. They arrested four Algerians, including an al-Qaeda bomb-maker.

All the more reason to secure the borders. H/T LGF

terrorist cell, terror cell, toronto, canada, terrorism, algerians, al-qaeda, al aqeda

Quote of the Day

2005-11-03T18:09:00.000-06:00

An inspirational quote from Teddy Roosevelt's speech in Paris, "The Man in the Arena." (H/T Mudville Gazette)

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, inspirational quote

Democrats believed in WMDs before Iraq, too

2005-11-02T22:40:00.000-06:00

Just in case you were beginning to be convinced that the Dems doubted the evidence for WMDs before the war began--thus making their self-righteous opposition credible now--think again.

Tran Sient has a great collection of relevant quotes from our buddies on the left.

democrats, wmd, war on terror, iraq, libs, liberals, dems

Racist Ridiculousness

2005-11-02T22:17:00.000-06:00

is the title of Frank Castle's post over at Obviously Pseunonymous. He tackles the incredible racism of black Dems in Maryland.

The problem of enemy combatants

2005-11-02T18:18:00.000-06:00

The subject of what the U.S. should do--or can do--with enemy combatants is a tricky one. Should we bring them onshore, where our laws are more likely to be applied? Do the combatants have rights at all, or do they give them up by virtue of being enemy combatants? Is strict adherence to the Geneva Convention the highest good when weighed against other issues, such as intelligence-gathering which may result in foiling a terrorist plot? On the other hand, other argue that intelligence gathered through brutal interrogation methods is secondary in importance to creating and maintaining alliances with other nations to fight terror. Obviously, Bauerism is not a universal good. Let me just say I'm glad I'm not the policy-maker.

It seems evident to me that sometimes the CIA just has to do what it has to do. I know that sounds awfully ambivalent. It is. But considering the people we're fighting, I don't see any other way. I definitely don't want the courts sticking their grubby hands in interrogation business. I think the CIA sees this as well, which is why it maintains offshore prisons for enemy combatants to avoid the domestic legal issues. Of course, these prisons' host countries may eventually decide it's incongruous to proclaim human rights while allowing a free-for-all on their soil by the CIA. Perhaps "plausible deniability" plays a role in all this...

To try and craft a domestic policy of enemy combatant interrogation would be an absolute nightmare. The moment we give terrorist access to our rights and laws, it will be a free-for-all by the left to defend and protect them.

Any details we dig up about these off-shore prisons won't be pretty. Why keep digging? I don't say this because the Bush Administration committed some crime which I'm trying to cover for. The reason this should be avoided is because it will hurt the prosecution of the War on Terror--something that will continue across administrations. There are certain dark corners that should never be lit up, or we risk darkening other already-lit corners.

UPDATE: [H/T Powerline] President Bush has articulated in the past that America's policy for any enemy combatant, off-shore or otherwise, is humane treatment:

I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world because, among other reasons, Al Qaeda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva.
Of course, our values as a Nation...call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment...As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.

This point was reitterated earlier this week:

President Bush's directive banning the torture of terror suspects applies to all prisoners - even if held in a secret prison reportedly set up by the CIA for its most important al-Qaida captives, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
...

[National Security Advisor Stephen] Hadley said that "while we have to do what is necessary to defend the country against terrorist attacks and to win the war on terror, the president has been very clear that we're going to do that in a way that is consistent with our values."

"And that is why he's been very clear that the United States will not torture," Hadley said, responding to questions at a White House briefing. "The United States will conduct its activities in compliance with law and international obligations."

Asked about secret prisons, Hadley said, "The fact that they are secret, assuming there are such sites, does not mean" torture would be tolerated.

enemy combatants, terrorist, cia, geneva convention, offshore prisons, off-shore prisons, war on terror, enemy combatant

The beginning of a 'distasteful relationship'?

2005-11-02T15:42:00.000-06:00

Some bloggers in Texas found my little corner of the blogosphere, and they are excited...

...to rip into me, that is. It must be easy to do so when one simply mischaracterizes my positions and creates my opinions out of thin air. I must admit I'm not upset. Actually, I'll let Frank Castle articulate my exact feelings:

"there is no such thing as bad press, just make sure you spell my name right whatever you have to say about me."

It appears the specific blogger who found me has an extremely wholesome sense of humor and a talent for meaningless partisan barbs:

He's also a complete moron and a Republican (the worst kind too...you guessed it a christian conservative).

Let's hope the rest of these guys take Clay Ellis' philosphy of criticicm.

I do not mock people based upon their association with any political party.

Time will tell. Honestly, I think these guys are intelligent; perhaps we'll have some reasonable discussion.

blogging, blog

Australia's terror threat

2005-11-01T23:27:00.000-06:00

is very real, according to Prime Minister John Howard. My very first inclination while reading this was to worry about the use of fear and "we're running out of time!" arguments to pass anti-terror legislation. This is a genuine concern of the Patriot Act here in the states (although I do support it). However, I'm also inclined to trust Howard because of his solidarity with the U.S.-led War on Terror. I guess we'll see soon enough. I'm praying Australia doesn't get hit.

OneTrueGodBlog - because theology matters

2005-11-01T23:04:00.000-06:00

I have a feeling I will spent a growing amount of time at the OneTrueGodBlog--initiated/moderated by Hugh Hewitt and contributed to by Al Mohler (President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), John Mark Reynolds (philosophy prof at Biola), Mark D. Roberts (pastor and author), Amy Welborn (free-lance writer), and Dr. David Allen White (a literature prof). Hugh throws out a question, and these folks discuss. It's fascinating. Here's the philosphy of the blog:

Why? The answer is because theology matters. A lot. I have asked these five excellent minds to ponder occasional questions from a layman that the layman thinks would be of interest to many more layman. I have discovered after 15 years in broadcast journalism that such questions and the answers they elicit are of great interest to the general public.

Hugh posted a request for each contributor's top 5 reading list for college students. The answers given are interesting; they range from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables to Lee Strobel's Case for Christ. Go read Roberts' post here, and White's post here.

Pork Watch and Senator Watch

2005-11-01T20:44:00.000-06:00

I have already begun keeping track of pork spending. So have the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem and a ton bloggers. So I'm joining up. I support the Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package.

I wonder if the next big success of the blogosphere (post-Alito) will be a crackdown on pork.

pork, spending

Supreme Court Makes Pact To Lose Virginity By End Of Year

2005-11-01T20:37:00.000-06:00

Although the funniest thing in the next couple of months will no doubt be the Dems hilarious attempts to smear Samuel Alito, here's a smiler that everyone can enjoy.

My eyes are glued to the monitor screen

2005-11-01T00:40:00.000-06:00

Wow. According to this,

American workers would waste the equivalent of 551,000 years during 2005 reading blogs, online web diaries and gossip sheets, which have exploded in numbers in recent years.

About 35 million workers - one in four of the labour force in the United States - spend 3 1/2 hours, or 9 per cent, of their working week on blogs, the survey found.

Although I'd quibble with the word "waste"--as do the guys at Powerline, I'm not the least bit surprised at this. But as I tell my girlfriend, at least I'm doing something productive, right? She doesn't buy it.

Clinton checks out Mrs. Alito

2005-10-31T23:38:00.000-06:00

Via Reuters:

Is it just me, or is Bill Clinton checking out Mrs. Alito?

Just when I thought the good 'ole days were behind us...

Alito, Scalito, Samuel Alito, nominee, supreme court, court, nomination, Clinton, Bill Clinton