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« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 » August 31, 2007The Great Republican Hope
Of course, a lot can happen between now and November of 2008, but assuming for a moment that Thompson does in fact secure the nomination, the only remaining question is whether libertarian-minded conservatives such as myself should join his cause; whether we should consider him a true champion of the classic liberal ideology; or whether we should sit idly by, as we did in 2006, as detached spectators in a duel in which we lose either way. Since he began laying the groundwork for a campaign, Thompson has spoken eloquently and often about federalism, a marked difference from the current administration and the Congress that enabled it. Many of the most obnoxious actions of the Bush presidency - federal education policies, the erosion of civil liberties, the explosion in wasteful spending, etc. - can be traced to an ignorance of, or disrespect for, the conservative principle of federalism. By naming federalism as his first and foremost issue so far, Thompson is signaling that he may not be the sort of pseudo-conservative we've come to expect in many modern Republicans. Yet on another issue which looms large over the upcoming campaign like a dark cloud - foreign interventionism and preemption - Thompson gives us reason to pause. In a video for the "Citizens United Foundation," Thompson lends his support for an invasion of Iraq and ends the clip with this cryptic message: And when people ask what has Saddam done to us, I ask "What had the 9/11 hijackers done to us . . . before 9/11?"Take such reasoning to its extreme and any military intervention anywhere can be justified. And if such interventionist thinking applies to foreign regimes, might it also apply domestically on matters pertaining to civil liberties? To over-simplify matters, one might be able to label President Bush as a big government neoconservative; one might alternatively be able to label Thompson as a small government neoconservative. Thompson is an improvement, no doubt, but he still carries certain concerns. After years of Republican disappointments, the GOP now carries the burden of proof that it will deliver conservative policies. Yet Thompson has the capability, both with policy credentials and an impeccable magnetic personality, to energize and unify a broken and fractured conservative movement. With cautious optimism I look to Fred Thompson as the Great Republican Hope of 2008. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:55 AM | Comments (33) August 30, 2007Tearoom TradeJoe Carter makes the shocking observation that men are - gasp - more promiscuous than women. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 05:12 PM | Comments (10) August 29, 2007Michael Vick is Bantha FodderA Colts fan has written predictions for the 2007 NFL season cross-referenced with characters from the Star Wars universe with great results. The call for Cleveland (3-13) is spot on: "Jawas: They are small, brown, and constantly trading for junk." Posted by David Darlington at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) Overdressed: a review
Fans and critics alike should be pleased with Overdressed. I don't believe it has quite the same musical energy as previous albums, but it is a solid release nonetheless, featuring great songwriting and musical performances--from the catchy and uplifting "There Is A Reason" to the clever and challenging "Expectations" (which tells a story about someone attending a megachurch service after seeing its advertisement on a highway billboard). Overall, the album seems to have a mellower sound than some previous Caedmon's albums. Most of the songs have a simpler, more acoustic blend of instruments, inviting the listener to pay attention to the well-crafted lyrics. If you're interested in Christian music that is original and heartfelt, give Overdressed a listen. Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) August 27, 2007Wrongful Life Litigation, Anyone?From the Khaleej Times over in Dubai: A botched abortion in which a healthy twin foetus was terminated instead of its sibling with Down syndrome has reignited the abortion debate in Italy and raised allegations of eugenics.Sidestepping the saucy issue of whether the killing is a bona fide attempt at eugenics, a query for ITA's international law jurisprudents: Has there developed in Italy a cause of action similar to that of "wrongful life" which historically has not been well received (but in coming years may be) here in the United States? Further, in both the US and Italy, if it is possible for a parent to bring suit on behalf of his or her child and claim that the child had a right to die, i.e. to be aborted, may a parent claim the inverse on behalf of his or her child - that the child had a right to life? Posted by Seth Zirkle at 12:33 PM | Comments (1) Ray LaMontagneRay LaMontagne's first major job was at a a shoe factory where he worked 65 hours a week. One morning his alarm clock woke him up at 4 a.m. for the early shift to Stephen Stills' song "Treetop Flyer". Ray went on to buy the whole Stills album, Stills Alone, and was inspired to quit his job at the factory and begin writing and performing music. Ray's first album was released almost three years ago, but it remains one of my favorites. Below is a video of his biggest hit, Trouble. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:43 AM | Comments (0) August 25, 2007The Internet is Dead and BoringSo says Mark Cuban on his blog. Cuban argues that the web has stopped being innovative and the platform has reached a state of stability. Food for thought on a muggy Saturday afternoon. Posted by David Darlington at 12:51 PM | Comments (2) August 24, 2007This Book is Not Good[A]s Mark Twain once mused, give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep until noon. With God Is Not Great, a caustic polemic on the evils of religion, Hitchens has earned the dubious honor of confirming Twain's aphorism. Anyone expecting a masterful demolition of all things sacred will be disappointed. Bullying and shallow, God Is Not Great is a haute middlebrow tirade, a stale venting of outrage and ridicule. Beneath his Oxbridge talent at draping glibness in the raiment of erudition, Hitchens proves to be an amateur in philosophy, an illiterate in theology, and a dishonest student of history. Too belligerent to be nimble and too parochial to be generous, the once-captivating Hitchens demonstrates why he has forfeited any claim on our attention.From Eugene McCarraher's scathing review of Christopher Hitchens's God is not Great. Full text here. I think there's a good bit of truth in the assertion that "the new militancy of secularism" arose in response to evangelical political militancy at home and Islamic militancy abroad. Fortunately, it appears the next generation of evangelical leaders (like Rick Warren) are a bit more cautious when it comes to blowback in spiritual matters, God's Warriors notwithstanding. Posted by David Darlington at 05:03 PM | Comments (1) August 22, 2007Holy Cow!This is amazing. The O's should have had some fans pitch the 9th. They couldn't have done much worse. Posted by David Darlington at 10:41 PM | Comments (2) RevolutionariesBlog neighbor Joel Betow has penned a post at connexions (where he guest blogs for Richard Hall, a South Wales Methodist Minister) which extends a conversation following this post by Seth Zirkle. For some reason posts relating to United Methodists tend to spur a lot of discussion, and that in itself may make for interesting blog fodder. Yet the issue at hand is a different one and Joel sums it up like this: What really perplexes me is my inability to spur Josh to answer my claim that two goals he says he supports are in fact incompatible. Josh says he wants a diverse church and seems to support the "open doors, open minds, open hearts" theme. Yet, he places himself strongly on the side of the counter-revolutionaries, which are led by groups such as the Institute on Reilgion and Democracy, the Confessing Movement and Good News Magazine. Out of these groups have come strong movements to purge the UMC of liberal clergy by the establishment of one or more loyalty oaths, narrowed doctrinal standards, altered statements of faith (such as going from "Jesus Christ as Savior of the World and the Lord of All Creation" to requiring clergy to sign belief statements that there is no salvation apart from confessing Christ.) Further, many of these movements have advocated suing church officials for property on the basis that they aren't Bible believing and thus aren't Christians, which frees those suing from the restriction of Christian taking on Christian in court...The United Methodist Church (UMC) is like most mainline protestant denominations in that membership and attendance has waned in recent years, as has its societal influence. Many critics argue, with considerable justification, that vocal factions within the denomination have challenged the primacy of Scripture and Christ, thereby undermining the church's very foundations. As one British Christian put it to me, "if the pastor doesn't really believe what he's preaching, why bother going to church?" As a result a number of groups such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and the Confessing Movement have sprung up as a counter-force against this progressive movement. Although there is room to debate the tactics used by groups such as the IRD, I fully support their ultimate aim - defending "traditional Christian beliefs and practices in the spirit of the father of Methodism, John Wesley." So, I support open doors, but "open minds, open hearts" could, depending on its intent, suggest a far more lenient policy than I am willing to embrace. The UMC's doors should be flung wide open, but I do not and cannot support private versions of a faith that are not grounded in Scripture. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:00 AM | Comments (13) August 21, 2007CNN's "God's Warriors" begins tonightWere it not for an ad on a wire news story I was reading over lunch, I would have missed this, but CNN is airing a 3-part special this week called "God's Warriors." It begins tonight with a 2-hour segment on Judaism, then 2 hours tomorrow night on Islam, and finally on Thursday a similar segment on Christianity. There's a generous amount of preview material on the CNN web site, but it's hard to tell exactly what the overarching theme of the special will be. Will it push a politically-correct message of "there are extremists in every religion"? Will it attempt, Andrew Sullivan-style, to paint conservative Christians as just as frightening as Islamic In any case, the special promises to be interesting. The part on Christianity features an interview with Jerry Falwell shortly before his death, and a segment on the "Battle Cry" series of evangelical Christian youth conventions. Note: (August 22, 2007) Changed my characterization of Sullivan's rhetoric. Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:45 PM | Comments (50) August 19, 2007Rove AlongIn a nutshell, from Carl Cannon, "Rove's brilliance as a campaign operative did not translate to policy successes." Read the whole thing if you don't understand how encapsulating that sentence is. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:28 PM | Comments (2) August 18, 2007Cannibals Repent for Eating MethodistsTrue story. They're still unapologetic about eating Baptists though, who are delicious BBQ-style. Posted by David Darlington at 09:27 AM | Comments (3) August 16, 2007In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of Peter CottontailSt. Gregory Nazianzus theologized His full divinity. Yves Congar suggested that the Catholic Church give greater consideration to His role in the Trinity. He is one of the Men Don McLean admires the most. Rev. Nancy Bence would like us to think of Him as a bunny. Who? The Holy Spirit, of course. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) recently voted to continue its study of blessing same-sex unions. In the church's press release, Rev. Bence stated that "the rabbit is bounding through the ELCA," and that folks should put on their "running shoes and ... see where it is leading us." Forget the River Jordan and a dove; Nancy is on to something here:
Posted by Seth Zirkle at 02:08 PM | Comments (5) Christians Playing PokerThere have only been a handful of occasions in my life when I have gambled in any form. When I was at band camp in 9th grade, a friend convinced me to play poker for nickels, dimes, and quarters. He gave me a quick and incomplete outline of the rules and within a few hands had taken most of the pocket change I started with. I complained, he gave me my money back, and I haven't played since--even with no money at stake. David Heddle wrote in a recent post about winning a total of $560 the last three times he gambled (which was over the course of at least a year). David reasons that for Christians, "what is not explicitly prohibited is permissible with all the attendant caveats about idols, covetousness, making your brother stumble, and especially the lesson that all things should be done in moderation." I agree with that line of reasoning. So when is it OK for Christians to gamble, and when does it become sinful? I believe that gambling becomes sinful when it's about the money, and no longer just for fun. If you're wagering more than you would pay to play without any payoff for winning, then it's not just about the competition, is it? The Bible clearly condemns greed and get-rich quick schemes (see Proverbs 13:11), and praises earning a living through honest work. By this guideline, playing the lottery would be prohibited, as would be raffles for cash prizes. Betting on individual sports games would be out, but participating in a NCAA basketball pool or a season-long NFL pick'em competition would probably be acceptable. It all comes down to being honest with yourself about your motive for playing. Posted by Eric Seymour at 01:54 PM | Comments (5) Insider Navel GazingA bunch of GOP operatives/bloggers have been ruminating recently on the state of the GOP and the questions "what went wrong?" and "where do we go from here?" Check out posts from Patrick Hynes, Soren Dayton, and these two from Patrick Ruffini. Related ITA entries: What's in a Name? by Z. Wendling Posted by David Darlington at 09:11 AM | Comments (3) August 13, 2007The first one bites the dustTommy Thompson has dropped out of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination following a poor showing in the Iowa straw poll. Power Line has a good analysis of Thompson and the new qualifications for president. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:30 AM | Comments (14) The Annual Life Expectancy RankingsEvery year, and occasionally more frequently, a life expectancy ranking comes out which claims, as this one did, "Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries." Yet America's abnormally high infant mortality rate has a direct and significant impact on the life expectancy statistics. It isn't until the end of the article that is mentioned, almost as an after-thought. As I noted here in March, "better and more affordable medical care actually has worsened the rate of prematurity, and likely the rate of infant mortality, by making fertility treatment widespread." Moreover, the U.S. system tends to promote neonatologists where they aren't needed, resulting in infants "subjected to more intensive diagnostic and therapeutic measures, with the attendant risks." My point here is not to defend the American health care system, which has plenty of faults, but rather that we must take all comparisons of health care across countries with a grain of salt. There is nuance and the Associated Press article fails to fully capture that. Perhaps one of the best measures of access and quality of care is the death rate. If you become seriously ill, there are few better nations to get sick in than the U.S. Our death rate is among the lowest and sometimes the lowest for major illnesses. For instance, you are twice as likely to die from a hernia or intestinal obstruction in Sweden than in the U.S., three times as likely to die from an ulcer in the U.K. than in America, and seven times as likely to die from prostate disease in Sweden than in the U.S. A good way to describe it is that if you survive to make it into a nursing home, your life expectancy in the U.S. is the longest in the world. But getting to that point is sometimes the issue, and sometimes the issue is simply a result of more care. Related ITA entries: Parsing the Numbers by J. Claybourn Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:43 AM | Comments (3) August 12, 2007They Heart HuckabeeHere are the results of the Ames straw poll, courtesy of Patrick Ruffini: Mitt Romney 4516 votes (31.0%) McCain, Giuliani, and Fred Thompson didn't participate, allowing Mitt Romney to walk away with a bought victory. Ron Paul didn't place as high as some predicted, coming in fifth. The real surprise is Mike Huckabee, who despite some strong reviews for his debate performances, has been stuck with the "three percent and under crowd" in the polls for most of the campaign. Hopefully Huckabee's strong showing will get the media to pay attention to someone who doesn't have the built-in celebrity of a Thompson, a Giuliani, or a McCain. Posted by David Darlington at 08:46 PM | Comments (2) PostSecretOne of the most interesting and powerful websites to emerge from the weblog era is PostSecret, a website which allows completely anonymous people to decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they have never before revealed. Since its creation in August of 2004, the website has displayed 2,500 original pieces of art. Generally the site is updated weekly, but this week its creator appears to have simply posted a short video, which I have embedded below. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:24 PM | Comments (7) August 10, 2007Methodists United Against Volvo"The Methodist Church has long valued and nurtured relationships with Jews around the world. The divestment action is supported by many Jewish organizations. It is aimed not at Israel or companies that do business there, but at companies that profit from the occupation, which is doing great damage to Israel."The New England Conference of the United Methodist Church recently held its Annual Conference, during which the Conference's "Divestment Task Force" delivered a report recommending divestment from Volvo and a number of other companies. As the Task Force states, "Volvo bulldozers have been photographed and videotaped destroying Palestinian homes. They have also been used in Israel's construction of the Separation Wall, which is on Palestinian land and has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice. Mayers Cars and Trucks in Israel is a Volvo distributor, and according to Israeli sources is one of the main providers of construction equipment for the settlements and the wall." Notwithstanding Israel's refusal to recognize the ICJ's jurisdiction regarding the legality of the Wall and the less dramatic language of the ICJ's advisory opinion ("contrary to international law" vs. "declared illegal"), this is serious stuff. Or consider the Task Force's bald assertion that Israel's occupation of the West Bank is responsible for a claimed 1.6 million Israelis who live in poverty. Notwithstanding an absent definition of "poverty" or, more astoundingly, any substantiation of this assertion beyond a non-working link to the left-wing New Israel Fund, this is more serious. Even the most ardent Zionist should pause. Bulldozing down Palestinian homes is one thing; vagrant Israeli children is too much. Apparently unwilling to let the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) corner the "divestment is for Israel's own good" market, the New England Conference wants the world to know that YHWH's Covenant with His People has entered an Age of Aquarius. Other items of business at the Annual Conference were resolutions on global warming and racism. Interestingly enough, no resolutions were passed or task forces assembled to address the UMC's precipitous membership decline - 71,000 in 2005 alone. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 12:58 PM | Comments (16) Alien Babies Crying EverywhereWeekly World News is going out of business. I guess I'll have to get the latest scoop on Elvis's negotiations with the alien invaders and Nostradamus from Fox News, just like everyone else. Posted by David Darlington at 12:24 PM | Comments (2) August 09, 2007Still Rock and Roll to MeA road trip to the Midwest two weeks ago gave me the opportunity to visit, among other things, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised with this monument to modern music. As a history snob, I certainly wasn't expecting much, and I've never been too impressed with celebrities and their trappings (hey look! It's Bono's "Mr Mephisto" costume!). The museum certainly started off on the wrong foot, as cameras were banned inside to accommodate some artists' wishes and the $20 entry fee for adults I felt was rather steep, but fortunately things got better. Though the genre is known for its self-centeredness, the museum did a good job recognizing rock's musical ancestors, namely blues (in its black and white variants), gospel, bluegrass, and the like. These disparate musical influences came together in the urban centers of immediate post-war America to create rock and roll. The most interesting exhibit was therefore the "cities of rock and roll" exhibit which presented the time line of rock history through the cities that contributed various sounds: from Memphis in the 1950s to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Liverpool, and Detroit in the 1960s, to London and New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s (punk), and finally to Seattle in the early 1990s (grunge). It was a pretty thorough journey through rock history aided by pictures, recordings, documents, and artifacts. I was also impressed with the briefer displays on music and technological history, namely changes in the radio and recording industry, the importance of the invention of the sound board, and advances in personal music devices (one display showed the progression from the photograph to the iPod). But something was odd while I was there, and my brother and I talked about it a bit. The museum's displays made it seem like rock's heyday was back in the 1960s. "Rock is dead" is of course one of the biggest cliches of music journalism, but there may be something to it. The bulk of the innovations in rock seem to have occurred the 1950s and 1960s, while the punk era (late 70s-early 80s) and the grunge era (late 80-early 90s) came across as conservative "back to basics" rebellions against annoying prog rock and cheesy hair bands, respectively. The museum's displays stop around 1995 or so. Did rock cease being innovative or important on a culture-wide scale when Kurt Cobain put a gun to his head? If so, what is its successor in importance, or is there even one? Here's another way to think about it. Rock is supposed to be about youthful rebellion, self expression, sexuality, and upsetting the squares. What offends the taste of the squares (Bill O'Reilly) more these days: rock or hip hop? It seems to me that if you really want to upset the parents today, you put on a 50 Cent CD instead of the newest Metallica. Sometime recently and without notice, probably during my high school and college years (the 1990s), hip hop became the medium of youthful rebellion. And at this point, with hip hop being around for over 20 years now, I'm willing to bet that this is a permanent change rather than a temporary dalliance. And yet, does hip hop presently have the reach that rock did in its heyday? Of course I wasn't there, but it certainly doesn't seem like it. Or yet another angle: where are the great anti-war anthems of this era? Rock certainly created a few in the Vietnam era, but aside from Green Day's American Idiot album, I can't think of any in response to our current, just-as-unpopular military venture in Iraq. I'm willing to admit I may be out of touch on this one, but I don't think I am. Where's the great anti-Iraq War anthem. Is there one? Does it exist in a different genre? Or is popular music just not that important anymore? Posted by David Darlington at 10:51 PM | Comments (13) CatCam!A day in the life of a cat, as seen from a tiny camera attached to its collar. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:32 PM | Comments (0) Face ValueNow Bruce Bartlett knows better than me. A couple weeks ago, I noted that David Brooks figured out that we should not ignore what politicians say just because it sounds like nonsense. Sometimes, that nonsense reflects what they are thinking, and Bush is a chilling example of this. Bartlett, on the other hand, didn't quite so much ignore Bush as disregard him: My own excuse for not predicting the disaster that Bush's presidency has been is that I simply didn't believe a word he said during the 2000 campaign. I assumed that every word out of his mouth had been put there by Karl Rove and it was all based on polling and focus groups. I knew that Bush is a bit of a dim bulb, so it never occurred to me that he actually had any ideas of his own.via Kevin Drum Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:31 PM | Comments (1) August 08, 2007Talking to OurselvesI'll take the lack of comments as a sign that you all silently assent to our brilliance, a tacit aknowledgement that our words need no augmentation. OR we'll let you know when they are working again. Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:27 PM | Comments (2) Kling's Iron TrilemmaArnold Kling comes up with a new one: insulation, unrestricted access, and less stress over rising healthcare costs -- pick two. For more on "pick two," see my previous post. Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:56 PM | Comments (2) Unadvanced PlacementPosted by Zach Wendling at 07:34 PM | Comments (1) What's Wrong With the National Republican Party?Robert Novak let's us peek into the mind of Karl Rove, the Republic political "whiz": Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.This is laughable. More likely, Rove wants corruption to be the issue because it is the lesser of all the GOP's troubles. Which is not to say that the current culture in the Federal City is trifling; rather, of all the messes Bush and his Congressional enablers have gotten us into, corruption is the only one upon which upcoming candidates can offer some credible solutions (and even then, this will be pretty thin stuff). Everything else is intractable, and candidates are better off avoiding anything that will emphasize how painful our problems have become. If this accurately reflects Rove's thinking, then it illustrates just what a weak position the GOP is in. Another reason why Rove's advice won't work is that it is almost impossible to tease out just one of the Republican worries in isolation. Ross Douthat comments, "The important thing to recognize is that all of the GOP's problems in '06 - Iraq, Katrina, and scandals in DC - reinforced one another, fitting easily into a single overarching narrative of misgovernment, incompetence, fecklessness and corruption." This integration of these shortcomings had been so seamless that it is easy to conclude that Republicans, if not "conservatism" itself, are inherently unfit to govern. Chris Atwood explains why this is so: This is the key: the Bush presidency failed in ways that exactly fit the stereotypical image of the Republican party. (And in the mass view, the Republican party=conservatism, just as the Democratic party=liberalism.) It's that congruence of his failure with the perceived failings of the party that makes his failure "stick" to the party. Each party/movement is susceptible to different such besetting sins. Had Bush been a Democrat, his polls would still be in the 20s, but the Democrats would still have a significant chance to win in 2008. Why? Because his failures aren't "Democratic" mistakes, they're "Republican" mistakes.Read the whole thing for more great insights into the stereotypical policy failings of each party, how they've played in historic realignments, and what the GOP needs to do to escape the trap. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:33 PM | Comments (0) And We're BackAfter a brief outage caused by migrating to new snazzy servers, ITA is back up and running. Apologies for the delay. I should also take this opportunity to point out a new feature. Zach and I use the wonderful Google Reader, which allows you to read, track and share blog posts from across the net. News and posts we find interesting can be found to the right, and will be updated regularly. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:34 PM | Comments (1) August 07, 2007Another politically-micromanaged war?Elan Journo of The Ayn Rand Institute recently penned an op-ed critical of the US military's rules of engagement in Iraq. Specifically, he criticizes rules against responding to Molotov cocktails or chunks of concrete dropped from overpasses or upper floors of buildings, and against firing into mosques often used as cover by insurgents. I'm not sure it's a good idea to authorize deadly force against Iraqis who throw stones and bottles of gasoline--neither are really deadly weapons against armored vehicles. But overall, Journo's piece does paint a disturbing picture of political considerations hamstringing the ability of our soldiers to protect themselves and defeat the enemy--one of the key elements to our defeat in Vietnam. Posted by Eric Seymour at 08:42 AM | Comments (2) August 03, 2007Minnesota Bridges"This is the point in the story where we start to debate what's news, and what's just disaster-pr0n." Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) The UMC's Surgeon GeneralDr. James Holsinger, the President's new nominee for surgeon general, made headlines a couple weeks ago following revelations of a controversial paper he penned in 1991 titled, "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" (pdf). Here's a widely quoted portion: "...the logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other. When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur...."I noted the news at the time, but it was only recently that I discovered Holsinger is a member of the United Methodist Church (UMC) and that the paper was actually written for the Methodist Committee to Study Homosexuality. In the UMC, the second largest protestant denomination in the U.S., practicing homosexuals and others who are sexually active outside marriage may not serve as clergy. Pastors and clergy may not celebrate same-sex unions. Church funding for pro-homosexuality advocacy is prohibited. Nevertheless, the UMC - which has adopted a slogan of "Open Hearts, Open Minds" - has in recent years been accused of sliding into liberalism. Since its inception, the UMC has taken stands on social issues of the day, yet it has somehow managed to remain a big tent of sorts. After all, both the Bushes and Clintons have membership in the UMC, and it is not uncommon for UMC churches to span the spectrum of beliefs. Over time the UMC's position has teetered and reflected the natural tension in a big tent. The church affirmed Holsinger's stance in 1992, but in 1996, sixteen bishops publicly urged the General Conference to change the UMC's teachings on sex. First Lady Hillary Clinton even addressed the convention and urged the delegates to "throw open the doors of our churches." In 2000, however, the General conference elected Holsinger and other conservatives to eight-year terms on the church's highest court, the Judicial Council, which is charged with upholding church law. Two cases came before the council involving lesbian pastors and the Judicial Council (including Holsinger) affirmed the defrocking of the pastors. Later the council also affirmed the discretion of local church pastors in deciding who is ready for church membership; that decision permitted a pastor to delay membership to an openly homosexual man. Holsinger now says his prior positions do not represent his current views, his 1991 paper was not intended to be published, and the paper was not "an example of my scientific work." It is not clear if this is merely a reflection of Holsinger's lack of principle, or if it is perhaps symbolic of the UMC's fragile patchwork of believers. Holsinger's fate hangs in the balance, but so too does the UMC's. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:00 AM | Comments (3) Can We Stop This?Please, it only encourages them. Posted by Zach Wendling at 09:43 AM | Comments (0) August 02, 2007LaddersI'd hate to see what the chutes look like. Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:37 PM | Comments (1) Whither Fiscal-Conservatism?During the 2004 Presidential campaign, many commentators remarked about how Howard Dean was a "fiscal conservative," including Dean himself. This bothered me because it seemed like the bar for being a fiscal conservative had been set pretty low. To give the devil his due, Dean did have an impressive record of 11 balanced budgets in a notoriously, er, Left-leaning State. But this is mere fiscal responsibility, not conservatism. To be sure, responsibility with public finances is admirable, and we should welcome its embrace by the Democratic Party. Fiscal conservatism does include responsibility, but it also holds something more. It includes shrinking government by keeping taxing and spending to the lowest levels. This is imperative because of an inherent deference to the market and non-profit sectors and an awareness of the distortionary nature of government interference in the economy. Of course, some Democrats may acknowledge, even in a limited sense, both of these reasons, but in public discourse from the Dean campaign onward, fiscal conservatism only means balanced budgets (Dean hardly made shrinking the size of Vermont State government a priority). If I can strain this analogy a bit further, the GOP could have sued for trademark infringement. Except trademarks expire through non use. And in this respect, Republicans are playing it smart. The public's demand for government is actually quite high, and so government is big. Their last, half-hearted suggestion that even made an appearance of scaling things back, Social Security reform, went nowhere. To switch parties for a second, Harry Browne had a standard line he presumably thought would win him converts: think of your favourite Federal program -- would you give it up if it meant you never had to pay income tax again? My guess is that most Americans would say No. Despite animosity toward things like the Bridge To Nowhere, Americans like government programs, especially the big things that count the most: national defense and entitlements. The GOP aren't going anywhere making a full-on assault on spending until those cultural attitudes change. One thing they can knock around are taxes. Cutting taxes has been pretty popular, but Republicans didn't just do it for the votes. There's also the theory, backed by some luminaries, that if you cut off the revenue stream, you can starve the beast. Pretty sneaky, eh? Except some tentative new research says it doesn't work. From the Economist's Free Exchange: The fact that government spending has grown at practically bacterial rates since then has done more than a little to discredit the idea among moderate conservatives. But that could be an anomaly, caused by some odd political circumstances or the War on Terror. Now a new working paper by the husband and wife team of David and Christina Romer, both of the University of California-Berkeley, tests the Becker and Barro premises with a fresh look at the data, and discovers that the beast continues to eat quite well in the wake of tax cuts.As spending continues to skyrocket and the Bush tax cuts grow less popular, fiscal conservatism seems headed toward defeat at the national level. What role can it now play except pleading for . . . a balanced budget? Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:29 PM | Comments (5) August 01, 2007LolpresidentzThese LOLPresidentz. Let me show you them. Posted by Zach Wendling at 11:38 AM | Comments (2) When Protestantism Was Still a RebellionToday marks the 110th anniversary of Militantis Ecclesiae, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical on the legacy of St. Peter Canisius (1521-1597). Delivered on the third centenary of Canisius' death, Militantis Ecclesiae regales his life and efforts to stem the spread of Lutheranism throughout southern Germany. It was an age when doctrinal error was still described as an illness, and Canisius was nothing less than its physician, that "Lutheran rebellion...[a] poison spread to most of the provinces and infected all classes" (n. 5). While the pontificate of Leo XIII witnessed many advancements in the Church - Leo's reassertion of the scholastic tradition; the Curia's increasing support of democracy; and, most importantly, the promulgation of Rerum Novarum, which continues to serve as a hallmark in Catholic social thought - the "Prisoner in the Vatican" mentality that wrecked Pius IX's (Leo's predecessor who experienced first-hand the travails of the Risorgimento) pontificate continued. This creeping isolationism is evident not only in Leo's curt appraisal of Lutheranism - a theology that had become, de facto and de iure, the religion of more than half of Europe - but also his insistence that Catholic children refrain from attending "mixed schools" (n. 16). In conversation some have suggested that the Church's aggiornamento of the past forty years has been more of a surrender to modernity than a conversation with it. While I would suggest that there certainly have been some defeats along the way, contemporary Catholicism's engagement with the world represents a via media of sorts, preferable to both the "Catholic ghetto" of yesterday and the "one chruch among many" of the hoped-for tomorrow. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 11:27 AM | Comments (6) Speaking of Bill O'ReillyA recent study at the alma mater found that Papa Bear, "called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night." The study also found that he frequently employs seven devices identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in the 1930s. Strangely, the study doesn't cite any references to bears. Posted by Zach Wendling at 11:25 AM | Comments (9) Iraq: Time to Go IIIWhen I was in graduate school, the joke was that the only conclusion a policy analyst could make was that he needed more data. This pretty much sums up my current thinking on whether it would be wise for us to leave Iraq. Richard Posner explains: If the nonmonetizable costs of continuing the war are ignored, either on the ground that the best guess is that they are likely to be a wash or that they are unquantifiable because no one can predict the consequences of our withdrawal, then the case for withdrawal becomes compelling: on one side would be costs probably in excess of $200 billion a year and on the other side no calculable or even probable benefits. Moreover, there are nonmonetizable costs to our continued involvement in Iraq, in particular the distraction of our government from other foreign policy problems and perhaps domestic problems as well.Read the whole thing. Previously Iraq: Time to Go Posted by Zach Wendling at 11:07 AM | Comments (2) What Else is in a Name?The Economist's Blog Free Exchange picked up on a theme also shared by one of our readers, "whatever conservatives have done to the word liberal is as nothing to what American liberals have." They are speaking of the wide shift in meaning liberalism has taken over the centuries, from, say, classical liberalism to modern American liberalism. (This kind of definition wrangling is a common low hurdle in Poli Sci 101.) Classical liberals have solved this problem by calling themselves libertarians (emphasizing the small L) -- an early rebranding. This is a cumbersome term, but better than the alternative: conservative. In the introduction to Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman remarks: Because of the corruption of the term liberalism, the views that formerly went under that name are now often labeled conservatism. But this is not a satisfactory alternative. The nineteenth century liberal was a radical, both in the etymological sense of going to the root of the matter, and in the political sense of favoring major changes in social institutions. So too must be he modern heir. We do not wish to conserve the state interventions that have interfered so greatly with our freedom, though, of course, we do wish to conserve those that have promoted it.And so conservatism was left to the conservatives; to continue the marketing analogy, the trademark was safe. But what happens when a brand suffers a major public relations disaster? More directly, now that conservatism has been sullied by the corruption, hyperpartisanship, pandering, and incompetence of the national Republicans, there is no suitable term under which ideological conservatives nicely fall. I have trouble identifying myself as a conservative because that label no longer carries the content I intend. The Left decry that liberal was besmirched by Republican thugs. If they can see the distinction, perhaps they can take some comfort in the fact that the hacks corrupted conservative, too. It is time to rebrand the Right, but, unlike the Left, we don't have a ready alternative. Friedman also anticipated this: Moreover, in practice, the term conservatism has come to cover so wide a range of views, and views so incompatible with one another, that we shall no doubt see the growth of hyphenated designations, such as libertarian-conservative and aristocratic-conservative.Add to these the recent crop of hyphenations: neo-cons, paleo-cons, theo-cons, metro-cons, crunchy-cons, etc. The problem is, besides being ridiculous, they are also all pejorative. More traditionally, there have been social-conservatives and fiscal-conservatives. The former are now the rump of Bush supporters, and the latter are among the fringes in elective office, manifest only as the Quixotic Porkbusters. The lifespan of compassionate-conservatism was mercifully short, enough said. And even though it is symmetrically appealing, I don't think calling ourselves regressives will be very catchy. Ultimately, we're faced with the chilling thought that without a brand, we're out of the market. The progressives should count their blessings. Posted by Zach Wendling at 09:01 AM | Comments (27) |
In less than a week former Senator Fred Thompson is expected to formally announce his intention to run for the office of President of the United States. Depending on the poll you look at, Thompson is either first or second in the aptly named horse race for the Republican nomination. His chief opponent, Rudolph Giuliani, will never capture the heart of GOP primary voters, making Thompson the most likely nominee for the Republican Party. (
The announcement this spring that Derek Webb was rejoining Christian folk/rock band |
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