Harmonic Miner

This site is moved

2008-06-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

This site is moved to:

http://www.harmonicminer.com

Going South

2008-06-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

Things are going south down south of here.

The state department travel alert of about two months ago is chilling, especially in "summer vacation" time in Mexico.

Armed robberies and carjackings, apparently unconnected to the narcotics-related violence, have increased in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007. Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas. [emphasis mine]

This is really encouraging. Although it may not be so different from Detroit, or Washington DC. Baghdad might actually be safer. Although perhaps I'm misjudging; maybe its just the excitement generated by those "after Cinco De Mayo" sales.

Criminals are armed with a wide array of sophisticated weapons. In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles. [emphasis mine]

Support your local fake police. And, of course, the fake troops.

Obviously, those gun control laws in Mexico are really working well. (Scroll to the 12th paragraph at this link.)

Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, Mexican police forces, criminal justice officials, and journalists. However, foreign visitors and residents, including Americans, have been among the victims of homicides and kidnappings in the border region. [emphasis mine] In its effort to combat violence, the government of Mexico has deployed military troops in various parts of the country. U.S. citizens are urged to cooperate with official checkpoints when traveling on Mexican highways. [emphasis mine]

Let me see if I understand this. US citizens are routinely murdered or kidnapped. The bad guys sometimes wear official uniforms. But if someone in an official looking uniform tries to stop you at a "checkpoint" on the road, be sure to cooperate.

I suppose that makes sense, state department style.

Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades. Confrontations have taken place in numerous towns and cities in northern Mexico, including Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California, and Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua. The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted. [emphasis mine]

You mean they don't have a schedule? What in the world is wrong with these citizens? Don't they understand they're supposed to announce public demonstrations of popular will? I'm just stunned that they would be so inconsiderate.

U.S. citizens are urged to be especially alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region. [emphasis mine] While Mexican citizens overwhelmingly are the victims of these crimes, this uncertain security situation poses risks for U.S. citizens [emphasis mine] as well. Thousands of U.S. citizens cross the border safely each day, exercising common-sense precautions such as visiting only legitimate business and tourist areas of border towns during daylight hours. It is strongly recommended that travelers avoid areas where prostitution and drug dealing occur.

Uh, not to be disrespectful, but.... we're talking about MEXICO here. Where, exactly, is it that prostitution and drug dealing don't occur? I'm sure there are such places. I'm also sure that no tourist is going to know where these things don't happen, short of never leaving the hotel (although I understand a Mexican concierge will get you nearly anything), even though there will be places where they obviously do, and which wise tourists will avoid.

Criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Tijuana. There is no evidence, however, that U.S. citizens are targeted because of their nationality. [emphasis mine]

Obviously, the people who wrote this howler think we're so drowsy by now that we just aren't paying attention. Exactly how many Swedes are driving US licensed automobiles into Mexico?

I have an idea. If you drive into Mexico, just don't look American! Wear a turban. Wear a burka. Wear a skullcap. Wear a spiked Prussian helmet.

Whatever you do, wear armor.

The Left at Christian Univs, part 3: Diversity

2008-06-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

If you care to understand the development of diversity as an ideological, political enterprise in higher education, you need to read this book.

Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, by Peter W. Wood, was published in 2003, in the same time frame as the Supreme Court's ruling in Gratz v. Bollinger, preceding by just a bit the ruling that outlawed University of Michigan's undergraduate racial quotas for failing to meet the test of being "narrowly tailored."

It is essential reading for anyone, right or left, who wants to understand the development of the diversity initiatives that are so popular in colleges and universities, as well as certain non-profits, government agencies and even some businesses, especially large corporations. It is very scholarly, dense with references (they don't get in the way of the narrative, but they provide sources for further study, or confirmation for doubters), historically grounded, yet highly readable and accessible to general readers. The author is a professor of anthropology, and former Associate Provost of Boston University. He's seen academia from the classroom and the administration building.

Better reviews than I would be likely to write can be found here and here.

Why it matters

As I discussed in The Left at Christian Universities, part 2, a trend for Christian universities and colleges seems to be to move left by adopting essentially secular enterprises. Diversity, as understood for the last 30 years or so, is one of these, regardless of how we adorn it. In an upcoming post, I'll very briefly review some that history. However, for the full story, from 19th century antecedents to 1970s court cases to 1990s academic dogma, this book is a goldmine.

lgf: 9/11 Truth Blogs, Marxists, and Terrorist Sympathizers Allowed to Remain at Official Obama Site

2008-06-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

lgf: 9/11 Truth Blogs, Marxists, and Terrorist Sympathizers Allowed to Remain at Official Obama Site: "The Obama campaign has been doing a lot of cleaning up and sanitizing at my.barackobama.com."

More at the link. This is a rookie mistake by Obama camp. But not one the main stream media are likely to hold them accountable for.

And in the meantime, it's all we need to know about Obama's fellow travelers, since these posts, now being removed are from authorized posters, not anonymous commenters.

The Left at Christian Universities part 2

2008-06-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

In The Left at Christian Universities part 1, I briefly introduced the observation that many Christian colleges and Universities seem to be moving gradually left. This seems especially true of those that:

1) experienced recent, fairly rapid growth
2) are trying to move up in rankings/ratings, such as in the US NEWS and WORLD REPORT
3) changed from a college to a university in the last 25 years or so (often a sign of the outworking of growth and ambition to be well-thought-of, and the reflection of that in marketing initiatives).

I suppose the first question is:

Why does it matter?

It matters because of what we've learned about the typical developmental trajectory of church-related colleges over the last 100-150 years.

Simply, colleges founded by churches rarely (if ever) become secular by moving to the right. (Perhaps you know of one that I don't. If so, do you know of two? Three? There are a lot of examples the other way.) These institutions become secular by moving to the left (the Christian left) and then it seems to take a generation or so to gradually shed the Christian identity in all but name. One may conjecture about the reasons for this, and about just how the mechanisms work.

It seems critical that we examine the historical sources of the ideas that are represented in and by the Christian left and right. If an idea or perspective can be shown on historical grounds to have arisen from sources which are anti-Christian (something more than merely non-Christian), we are correct to look with great suspicion on its current manifestations, regardless of how much God-talk we surround it with. For example, rules of logic developed from the writings of Greek philosophers are merely non-Christian, not anti-Christian. On the other hand, we should be deeply suspicious of a teaching about the value of human persons that flows in a logical way from the assumption that we are mere meat machines, an anti-Christian perspective that cannot possible lead to sound moral judgments.

This is not a violation of the “all truth is God’s truth” principle. We are not talking about denying the validity of science, or the rules of logic, or the fundamental principles of economics (if we can agree on what they are), i.e., theologically neutral propositions flowing from “the general revelation”. We are talking about the danger in trying to harmonize the perspectives of people who were specifically anti-Christian with Biblical teaching; drawing their viewpoints, flowing from anti-Christian stands, into the church’s teaching, perhaps because these viewpoints sound caring, or objectively rational, or appeal to us emotionally in some way; and then wrapping the entire affair in judiciously selected Bible verses so we can assure ourselves of our continued piety, while experience a chilly frisson of self-congratulation at our open-mindedness.

How concerned should a Christian be when he finds himself agreeing on policy matters and social issues with well-known atheists? The answer, of course, is it depends. It depends on whether or not the particular matter of agreement flows from a commonly held perspective or understanding that is itself more or less theologically neutral. On the other hand, it should evoke great concern when a specific anti-Christian perspective, flowing in a consistent way from an anti-Christian worldview, becomes something we adopt as our own, having decorated it with hermeneutic distortion of Biblical texts.

The Christian left seems more likely to ally itself with initiatives and perspectives whose origin is outside the church. These include abortion “rights” (flowing from Margaret Sanger’s eugenics views, among other places), certain views of science’s role in life and faith (especially sympathy with the neo-Darwinian synthesis), diversity, multiculturalism, sympathy with socialistic approaches to social problems, anti-military perspectives (natural for Christians from the Anabaptist tradition, but not so much for others), modern environmentalism as a near religion in its own right, suspicion of the profit motive, class warfare, preoccupation with “social justice” (not the simple Biblical concern for the local poor), “borderless nations”, disdain for the USA (expressing itself in inappropriate moral equivalence arguments relating the USA, and sometimes our allies, to other nations), encouragement for gay marriage (more than civil unions with associated “couple” oriented privileges, which seems acceptable to many on the right), etc. The list could be longer, but the flavor is here.

This is not to say that all of the Christian left agrees with all of these things. And it seems possible for perhaps one of these perspectives to find root in an otherwise Christian right perspective, though it is uncommon. However, where half or more of these perspectives are present in an institution or person, it seems reasonable to affirm identification with the Christian left.

With one exception, what all of these have in common is their origins not merely in non-Christian thought, but frequently in explicitly anti-Christian thought. The exception is the specifically pacifistic Anabaptist tradition, which can encourage a thorough-going withdrawal from all civil participation that has any aspect of violence implied in its function, though this is not always completely practiced by current descendants of the Anabaptist tradition. A simple test for the “theological authenticity” of a pacifist is how willing they are for the political state to tax and redistribute to cure social problems. The threatened violence behind the power to tax is anathema to many true Anabaptists, but not to many members of the Christian left, whose concern is not primarily refraining from doing evil with violence, but with effecting specific “cures” for society’s ills, which they are only too happy to do with taxes paid by other people.

The trajectory

Christian institutions of higher education have a way of starting as small bible colleges that will fail in a decade or two if they don’t mind their onions and focus on their main mission. Then they get a little bigger, and start trying to do other things… which is fine, as long as they keep their eye on the ball. But at some point, they find that they really want to be thought well of in the eyes of the world (the marketing/message/branding thing… must get that USNEWS and World Report rating) and begin trying to arrange adequate resources and public image such that even if they failed to carry out their primary mission for 20-30 years (or CHANGED the mission, gradually and subtly), they’d still survive, and maybe even thrive. Here is how you know you’re there: when the university creates a separate PROGRAM dedicated to carrying out its current understanding of the original mission, and then advertises that it’s doing this. (Imagine Ford engaging in an advertising program to tell the world that it was now trying to make good cars....) On the surface, this looks good… but it’s in fact an acknowledgment of serious “mission creep”… and unfortunately, the fix, mandated to create objectively observable and measurable results (of something that was never meant to be so measured... "Exactly how attractive is the curve on that fender?"), is often just another kind of “mission creep”.

Upcoming posts

I’ll try to pursue each of the “Christian left” perspectives above, and review the historical roots of each. Keep in mind that I’m not an historian, I’m just a musician who reads a lot. I've been in Christian academia for a long time, and have had the privilege of talking, in depth, with fine educators of both the Christian left and Christian right perspective, though of course I identify more with the latter. I expect the theologians, philosophers, biologists, physicists, historians and social scientists to point out all the ways I've misused their disciplines. So be it. Some of them are "hoist on their own petard", in that they have talked about interdisciplinary, integrative work so much that I have taken them seriously and am trying to do it.

The principles I’ll try to follow are simple. I’ll trace the antecedents of particular ideas that I have identified as being distinctively part of the Christian left. I'll be trying to make the case that most of them are secular, that is, flowing not out of the gradual development of the historical Christian traditions, but rather appearing discontinuously from secular, frequently explicitly anti-Christian sources.

I’ll discuss the Biblical references that are made by the Christian left to support these perspectives, but I will do so in the context of the Bible overall, what is known historically about the context of the times (and sometimes what is different about the times in which we live), the teachings/behavior of the early church fathers, and the continuing tradition.

I’m not sure how long this will take.... I’ve done a lot of the reading I need to do, but there is, of course, no end to it. So hang with me as we go. Suggest a book if you wish.

The first one will be on the topic of diversity and multi-culturalism. Look for it soon, I hope.

Obama's site gives Communists a voice

2008-06-08T22:57:00.000-07:00

Commies and Socialists for Obama, STRAIGHT OFF HIS WEBSITE!: "Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency. By no means is he a true Marxist, but under Karl Marx's writings we are to support the party with the best interests of the mobilization of the proletariat. Though the Democratic Socialists of America or the Communist Patty of America may have more Socialististic values, it is pointless to vote for these candidates due to the fact that there is virutally no chance they will be elected on a National level. The members of this group are not Leninists, Stalinists, etc. and do not support or condone the actions of North Korea, China, Cuba or any other self-procalimed 'Marxist States.' They do not in anyway represent the Marxist philosophy nor do they represent Socialism/ Communsim. We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!"

You can't make this stuff up. Some things are beyond parody. And, in another link from the same page:

Capitalism presents an interesting dilemma for the white, upper middle class male, a demographic that, unjustly, has been and continues to enjoy the ripest fruits of capitalism. On the one hand, a person like me (or anyone else who lives in the economically secure class of citizens of a capitalist nation, especially America) can sit back and enjoy and take advantage of the limitless opportunities afforded them. Thousands of universities, both domestic and international are within their grasp. After that, countless occupations with career paths that could lead them to even greater heights on the social ladder await.
But on the other hand, this education afforded them (hopefully) enlightens them to see the reality of the perverse economic system that got him or her to the position he now occupies. He sees a system that takes from those who have less and gives to those who have more. He sees a system that rewards unscrupulous rule-bending and breaking, a system that attacks the family, moral values, the environment, and even exploits every experience in life itself for money and profit. And while often isolated and removed from poverty and the uncertainty and paralyzing fear that accompanies it, the enlightened and idealistic youth knows it’s out there and wants that wrong righted. And so naturally, the youth attacks and turns against the system that caused the suffering to begin with.

It goes on to say, "Redistribution is not enough." I'll say: you have to have something to redistribute.

Change you can believe in.

hat tip: Little Green Footballs via Powerline

UPDATE: they will probably take the referenced pages down, just like they removed anti-Semitic materials that they had posted earlier (not just in comments, actually posted by Obama's own people). The picture at the top was made as a screen capture from Obama's site.

UPDATE: as predicted, the Obama campaign has removed the communist/socialist/marxist cheerleading page. Again, just to refocus: this was not something simply left as a comment by an anonymous net-lurker, it was an official post of the Obama campaign by an approved, authorized poster on the Obama website.

Invisible Link

2008-06-08T22:35:00.001-07:00

Today I sat in church with my 10 yr old daughter. Her mom is usually playing the piano, and so my daughter often sits between her grandmother and me. That way, we can both hear her sing. I don’t think the small vocalist knows that we sometimes just listen to her. She probably just thinks we’re tired by the second verse, if she thinks about it at all. Sometimes grandma and I make eye contact. We both know what we’re doing. We don’t talk about it.

Now, not to knock the sermon today; it was great, on Psalm 42. But attention can drift. I expect somebody dozed off during the Gettysburg address, or while Paul was waxing eloquent about unknown Gods. Especially while Paul was going on about unidentified deities. So my mind can wander now and then.

But partway through, I noticed an odd looking purple pen in my daughter’s hand. I don’t know where she got it.

She took my arm, and prepared to write something on it. I thought, oh great, now I’m going to have ink on my arm... But Dads will do anything for love of a child, pretty much, so I let her write. She seemed to write a short word, but apparently the pen wasn’t working... No ink, I supposed, or it was dried up or something.

I shrugged to her, and returned my attention to the sermon. She was doing something beside me, but I wasn’t paying lots of attention... Kids get squirmy in church sometimes, and she wasn’t making noise. Then she tapped my arm, until I looked down. She had turned on a small light on the end of the funny looking pen, and was shining it on my arm, the miracle of “black light”. In kid-scrawl letters, my forearm said, all in lowercase, “dad”.

Well.

I know this is probably silly, but the moment took on a luminescent meaning for me. There we were, father and daughter, bonded in many different ways, each partly defining ourselves in terms of the other. She was naming me for what I was to her, and applying the label... But only she could read it. And she wanted me to see the label, too. It was our secretly acknowledged non-secret.

Being metaphorically minded, I could not help but reflect on the invisible bonds in our lives. These chains bind us as surely as titanium steel twisted cable, as unexpectedly powerful as light-weight carbon fiber-reinforced Kevlar. We can stretch our bindings. But they’re still there, drawing us together.

As a father, I have tremendous freedom of action, befitting the responsibility that is mine. There are a thousand ways to be a good father, and about a million ways to be a bad one. It may be odd to say, and it is not usually expressed this way, but I am also her servant, working for her and for the One who put her in my charge, for a little while. Perhaps it is good for servants to wear invisible identification.

Her yoke is easy.

Slow learners

2008-06-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Michael Ledeen speaks about the fact that we know an enormous amount now about the rise of totalitarian states in the 20th century, and about why the rest of the world failed for so long to do anything effective about them, and eventually accepted that the only way to deal with them was war. It is now widely understood, despite the occasional revisionist, that negotiations could never have produced any good result with Hitler, Mussolini, imperial Japan, or Stalin. He discusses how badly we misjudged them, how little we believed their publicly stated intentions, and how poorly we were served by our "reasonable" approach to them, and how many lives were lost to remedy that error.

By now, there is very little we do not know about such regimes, and such movements. Some of our greatest scholars have described them, analyzed the reasons for their success, and chronicled the wars we fought to defeat them. Our understanding is considerable, as is the honesty and intensity of our desire that such things must be prevented.

Yet they are with us again, and we are acting as we did in the last century. The world is simmering in the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes – from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranian Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahhabis – who swear to destroy us and others like us. Like their 20th-century predecessors, they openly proclaim their intentions, and carry them out whenever and wherever they can. Like our own 20th-century predecessors, we rarely take them seriously or act accordingly. More often than not, we downplay the consequences of their words, as if they were some Islamic or Arab version of "politics," intended for internal consumption, and designed to accomplish domestic objectives.

Clearly, the explanations we gave for our failure to act in the last century were wrong. The rise of messianic mass movements is not new, and there is very little we do not know about them. Nor is there any excuse for us to be surprised at the success of evil leaders, even in countries with long histories and great cultural and political accomplishments. We know all about that. So we need to ask the old questions again. Why are we failing to see the mounting power of evil enemies? Why do we treat them as if they were normal political phenomena, as Western leaders do when they embrace negotiations as the best course of action?

No doubt there are many reasons. One is the deep-seated belief that all people are basically the same, and all are basically good. Most human history, above all the history of the last century, points in the opposite direction. But it is unpleasant to accept the fact that many people are evil, and entire cultures, even the finest, can fall prey to evil leaders and march in lockstep to their commands. Much of contemporary Western culture is deeply committed to a belief in the goodness of all mankind; we are reluctant to abandon that reassuring article of faith. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we prefer to pursue the path of reasonableness, even with enemies whose thoroughly unreasonable fanaticism is manifest.

This is not merely a philosophical issue, for to accept the threat to us means – short of a policy of national suicide – acting against it. As it did in the 20th century, it means war. It means that, temporarily at least, we have to make sacrifices on many fronts: in the comforts of our lives, indeed in lives lost, in the domestic focus of our passions – careers derailed and personal freedoms subjected to unpleasant and even dangerous restrictions – and the diversion of wealth from self-satisfaction to the instruments of power. All of this is painful; even the contemplation of it hurts.

Then there is anti-Semitism. Old Jew-hating texts like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," now in Farsi and Arabic, are proliferating throughout the Middle East. Calls for the destruction of the Jews appear regularly on Iranian, Egyptian, Saudi and Syrian television and are heard in European and American mosques. There is little if any condemnation from the West, and virtually no action against it, suggesting, at a minimum, a familiar Western indifference to the fate of the Jews.

Finally, there is the nature of our political system. None of the democracies adequately prepared for war before it was unleashed on them in the 1940s. None was prepared for the terror assault of the 21st century. The nature of Western politics makes it very difficult for national leaders – even those rare men and women who see what is happening and want to act – to take timely, prudent measures before war is upon them. Leaders like Winston Churchill are relegated to the opposition until the battle is unavoidable. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to fight desperately to win Congressional approval for a national military draft a few months before Pearl Harbor.

Then, as now, the initiative lies with the enemies of the West. Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s.

Read the whole thing.

Israel plays chicken

2008-06-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Jerusalem Post carries an article describing the experience at a single checkpoint, even as Israel is removing checkpoints to ease the lives of Palestinians who need to move from the West Bank into and out of Israel. These are the checkpoints put up to stop terrorists, after repeated bombings and shootings by Palestinians crossing into Israel from the West Bank.

An 18-year-old Palestinian was arrested Sunday afternoon at the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus after military police on duty discovered he was carrying six pipe bombs, an ammunition cartridge and bullets, and a bag of what appeared to be gunpowder.

Cpl. Ron Bezalel of the military police's Taoz Battalion told Army Radio that the youth had sent his bag through the checkpoint's X-ray scanner. When the explosives were discovered, the troops on duty immediately implemented the protocol for stopping a terror suspect.

'It's routine to find bombs at this checkpoint... every day, we find knives and other weapons,' Bezalel said.

The military said the Palestinian was most likely on his way to perpetrate an attack in an Israeli city. He was arrested and transferred to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) for interrogation.

Three weeks ago, another Palestinian carrying five pipe bombs, which he had attached and strapped to his chest in the manner of an explosives belt, was stopped at Hawara.

Earlier Sunday, the IDF announced that Israel had removed 10 roadblocks in southern Hebron."

It's worth reading the entire article. The short story is simple. Even as Israel is trying to strengthen Abbas with Palestinians, by making him appear partly responsible for Israel's liberalization in the matter of checkpoints, Israelis know that the attempts to sneak terrorists into civilians areas will not stop. In essence, Israel is playing a game of chicken: will Hamas kill too many Israelis to make a more moderate approach possible?

They are literally betting the lives of Israelis that Abbas might be able to rein in Hamas' worst activities, by trying to help Abbas with his own people.

I think it's a forlorn hope. So do many Israelis.

Almagor, an organization representing terror victims and their families, responded to Sunday's announcement in the form of an open letter to Barak written by Nahman Zoldan, the father of Ido Zoldan who was killed several months ago by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank.
"As someone who has lost a son near a road at the hands of Palestinian Authority members, I call on you to reconsider the decision and not to take at face value the Palestinian Authority's promise that it will take care of our security for us.
"I issue this especially ahead of the coming holiday, when tens of thousands of Israelis use these roads on their way to Eilat, not knowing that these roads are now totally exposed to Palestinian movement," Zoldan wrote in a statement issued by Almagor to the media.

Talks between Hamas and Fatah are producing essentially zero results. Why should they? Hamas has all the support it needs from bad actors outside Israel in terms of weapons (can anyone spell Iran? Syria? Al Qaeda?), and from sources that belie the Shia/Sunni divide that some in the West claim is strong enough to keep them from cooperating. Hamas protects its "brand" with Palestinians by acting as a humanitarian organization, and tries to prick western conscience with the needs of its people, while doing everything possible to make it unlikely that western aid will be given or deliverable. Hamas, despite being officially declared a terrorist organization by the UN, still has enormous sympathetic resonance with too many in the western media. They gain nothing by actually compromising on anything, now, and these pretend negotiations with Fatah are window-dressing. So they wait and see, knowing the short memory of the west, and the media in general, and knowing that surrogates in the west that pretend to be "moderate" are providing them public relations cover whenever possible, which is pretty often with a cooperative world media.

Look for upcoming elections in Israel to give a more definitive answer on how the Israeli people feel about removing the checkpoints. The main question is straightforward: will the first Israeli deaths from lifting the checkpoints come before or after the elections? As is so often the case, the election may turn more on emotional response to recent events than to sober historical judgment.

Events will trump policy in the end

2008-06-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

I commented here about short memory of the public, and the power of events to overwhelm policy and message.

This article argues that the "right" must craft a new message, a new set of outcomes, etc.

"While the factions of the GOP don't all have to agree on each bit of policy, there has to be more than a process we tend to agree upon - we need an outcome that a Republican government is working toward. When we were in power, when we had the reins, we failed to achieve outcomes that Americans wanted, and thus, as Winston's column notes, we were 'fired'. Luckily, we still have a chance to prove why we should be hired again."

It's worth reading the whole thing, but:

I don't think the woes of the right are about policy and politicians, at least not mainly. They are about events.

Republicans DID achieve outcomes during the Bush administration that Americans would have said they wanted in 2002. Americans would have said they wanted to prevent more terrorist attacks on US soil, they would have wanted a strongly growing economy to rebound from the effects of 9/11, etc. Americans got both of these things. A crafting of message that included both of those things in 2001 would have been perceived as a great success, for a few years, until it was overtaken by events that diverted the attention of the public.

But it was, after all, events that toppled the Republicans more than simple policy disagreements and message communication failure. Hard times in Iraq, high gas prices, specific scandals, economic woes, Katrina, etc. Yes, better policy in fighting the Iraq war might have reduced some the negative events. I don't know what the Republicans could have done about high gasoline prices, short of persuading enough of congress to vote for drilling and refinery construction. It's hard to survive personal scandals on the Right, simply because people expect more from the Right. And perhaps better managing of the message regarding the economy and Katrina would have helped... and it would have helped to send in about 100 helicopters dropping water and food in the first 12 hours, too. Still... no future oriented policy planner could have foreseen the fact of Katrina, and the success with which it would be manipulated to impugn Bush, and by extension, Republicans.

To put it simply, Republicans didn't lose the debate on the merits, they lost the public trust for failure to respond to events that were difficult or impossible to predict, and for being the event, sometimes, particularly in overspending, earmarking, scandals, etc., none of which were ever a part of policy as such.

$6.00 gas (or $8.00!), another serious terrorist attack, obvious success in Iraq (so extreme even the MSM can't ignore it), etc., will change things. And if the past is any guide, there will be events no one can foresee now, perhaps in categories we can't anticipate. The politicians who appear to have the strongest responses to these are the ones the public will follow, regardless of previous policy/message management. Witness how the public did follow Bush for a few years, even though his stated previous policy had been to avoid nationbuilding, overuse of the military, etc. He sounded almost isolationist at times, and was singularly non-muscular in his response to the Chinese forcing down one of our military planes and holding the crew. But Bush's new policy on terrorism, popular though it was at the time, did not insulate him from events, and his failure was in not responding to them correctly, not in his initial policy formulations.

The MSM can manage perception of events to a higher degree than we might wish, but they cannot insulate the political left from their effect permanently. The main "skill" strong Republican politicians need is the ability to respond to unexpected events from a principled understanding of their own policies. Policies planned years in advance, along with means of communicating them, are fine... but the lack of these is not what did in the Republican congress, nor what has torpedoed Bush's ratings.

So I resist the notion that Republicans have to craft a new message, new policies, new perspectives, though perhaps we need to demand that the Republicans we elect be more faithful to the old ones. And a better job of communicating, including permanent engagement with an often hostile media, is critical. But it needs to be more about communicating facts and concepts, and less about buzz terms and "crafted messages". We need a LOT more Tony Snows who believe it and sound like it, and a lot fewer Scott McClellans, who apparently didn't believe it, which is why he so often didn't sound like it.

It only takes about a minute to explain to anyone why rent control produces shortages in housing. It's as clear as two plus two equals four. Many issues are like this, but for some reason too many people on the Right feel like they must use the vocabulary of the left to defend themselves. They're afraid to be seen as mean if they turn to the short-term beneficiaries of rent control and say, "Why are you so selfish?"

The Left cannot be outdone in the implementation of smoke and mirrors, but it can be countered with facts and consistently strong perspectives on them, fearlessly communicated by people who believe in them. A "crafted message" by people who don't, and are trying to create something to engage the public superficially, just won't do the job.

hat tip: Powerline

UPDATE: Remember when it looked like Clinton was a goner in 1995, after the Republican takeover of Congress? He was able to resuscitate himself by his response to the Oklahoma City bombing, which allowed him to play to his greatest political strengths. He did not win re-election on policy, or even message, exactly, but by being himself in response to an event that didn't reveal his weaknesses, and emphasized his strengths.

Some changes

2008-06-06T11:23:00.001-07:00

I'm still working on the formatting, etc., for the blog. I've made a few
changes. Let me know what you think!

World War II: the Bad War?

2008-06-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson, the well-known historian, has written an article at Real Clear Politics, regarding recent revisionist attempts to criticize how the Allies got into World War II, as well as how they fought it, attempts being made both from the left and the right to create, without quite saying so, some kind of moral equivalency between the Allies and the Axis.

Essentially, the argument is that if the Versailles agreement that ended WWI had been more "fair", and if the Allies had not made unenforceable security guarantees to Poland, and more or less let Hitler have what he wanted, the war could have been avoided. After all, what interest did France or England have in defending Poland? Buchanan makes other, somewhat more subtle arguments, but they boil down to assessing Hitler as negotiable, or implying that the unfair resolution of WWI was the real culprit.

This all reduces down to an enormous exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking, combined with myopic hindsight (not 20/20, since those looking back in this way seem to be missing essential points).

Hanson's take on this:

Buchanan and others, for example, fault the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I as too harsh on a defeated Germany and thus an understandable pretext for the rise of the Nazis, who played on German anger and fear.

Those accords may have been flawed, but they were far better than what Germany itself had offered France in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, or Russia after its collapse in 1917 -- or what it had planned for Britain and France had it won the First World War. What ultimately led to World War II was neither Allied meanness to Germany between the two wars nor an unwillingness to understand the Nazis' pain and anguish.

The mistake instead was not occupying all of imperial Germany after the first war in 1918-19. That way, the Allies would have demonstrated to the German people that their army was never "stabbed in the back" at home, as the Nazis later alleged, but instead defeated by an Allied army that was willing to stay on to foster German constitutional government and its reintegration within Europe. The Allies later did occupy Germany after World War II -- and 60 years without war have followed.

Had Nicholson Baker been alive in 1942, I doubt he would have had better ideas of how to stop the Nazi and Japanese juggernauts that had ruined Eastern Europe, Russia and large parts of China and southeast Asia other than using the same clumsy tools our grandfathers were forced to employ to end fascist aggression.

A Nazi armored division or death camp stopped its murderous work not through reasoned appeal or self-reflection, but only when its fuel, supplies and manpower were cut off.

I am currently visiting military cemeteries in France, Luxembourg and Belgium, some of the most beautiful, solemn acres in Europe. The thousands of Americans lying beneath the rows of white crosses at Normandy Beach, at Hamm, Luxembourg, and at St. Avold in the Lorraine probably did not debate the Versailles Treaty or worry too much whether a B-17 took out a neighborhood when it tried to hit a German rail yard.

Instead, our soldiers were more worried that they had few options available to stop Nazi Germany and imperial Japan -- other than their own innate courage. The dead in our cemeteries over here in Europe never bragged that they were eagerly fighting the "good" war, but rather only reluctantly finishing a necessary one that someone else had started.

They and those who sent them into the carnage of World War II knew Americans could do good without having to be perfect. In contrast, the present critics of the Allied cause enjoy the freedom and affluence that our forefathers gave us by fighting World War II while ignoring -- or faulting -- the intelligence and resolve that won it.

Read the whole thing.

History has still not ended

2008-06-05T17:54:00.001-07:00

There's a lot of discussion here and there and other places about the future of the Republican party, and "conservatism" (not the same thing, of course). Some speak of the millennials as less interested in political parties, less ideological, etc. We hear that Reagan conservatism isn't going to sell anymore, and that it isn't just a matter of not having a great communicator anymore, but rather that the public just doesn't see things like it did.

Almost universally, the analysis seems to involve the assumption of stability in events, in anticipation of only small changes from current circumstances, and it assumes the ability of politicians and the media to manage message to the general public. This gives extraordinary power to the message deliverers, of course, and the better message deliverers are expected to win most of the time. In sum, this approach assumes that politics is about politicians.

But it isn't, in the end. It's about events, most of which are beyond the immediate control of any given crop of politicians.

People's memories are short. "We will never forget" has morphed into "maybe we weren't in so much danger after all". A decade ago, the left blocked drilling in Anwar and other places, because the oil wouldn't come on line for a decade, and, "It won't help us right now." But the decade has passed, and I just filled my tank with regular gas at $4.35 per gallon, self-serve. If they'd drilled then it would have helped now. Most people don't know that the two hottest years in the last century are 1934 and 1998 (1934 was the hottest, with a cooling period in between, and no one can claim the 1930s warming was due to CO2 emissions), and most people don't know that we appear not to be warming up since 1998, but cooling, if anything.

But there are likely to be developments that totally change the dynamic of things, and to quote our second president, "Facts are stubborn things."

When there is a major attack on US soil (inevitable, according to many serious observers), or possibly even on one of our allies, peoples' attention will be re-focused. If there is any obvious link between the left's less forceful approach to terrorists and their enablers (likely), there will be a re-energized right. Let's be clear: if Islamicist extremists do the deed, and if the left has curtailed programs that might have detected or stopped the attack, or removed pressure that would have diverted the attackers' attentions, or (shudder) if there is a nuclear attack carried out by anyone who got the materials to do it from an Islamic nation, the blowback will be enormous, and a very large price will be paid by the party that is identified in the public mind as having been asleep at the switch. Fool me once....

Does anyone think that Congress will be able to resist public demand for drilling when gasoline is $6.00 per gallon? If so, how about $8.00? $10.00? At some point, the dynamic changes. Sure, the left will try to pin the blame on the evil oil companies, and that miserable resource hog, the American driver. And that works for awhile, when people aren't paying that much attention. But at some point, instead of just wondering why prices are so high in a vague sort of way, people are going to DEMAND to know. There will be debate, and the old answers will be trotted out, but inevitably someone is going to get peoples' attention with the simple idea that as demand goes up and supply doesn't, the prices will rise. Few people want to drive less.

So, I think drilling is going to happen. It's just a matter of time, and public desperation. And the party that had a history of blocking it, and fights it to the end, is going to suffer, for awhile.

By the end of an Obama administration (two terms to 2016!), if we have not had a year hotter than 1998, it will be impossible to claim global warming is even real (with a straight face, anyway), let alone caused anthropogenically. (The activists have begun to suspect this... that's why they've changed the scare-phrase to "climate change", which works no matter what happens, since the climate always changes.) If the left has forced a very costly scheme to control carbon emissions in the meantime, and the economy has suffered because of it, gas prices are higher, etc., then the campaign slogan for the conservative candidate in 2016 could be, "WHAT global warming?"

None of this will stop Obama from getting elected this year, unless the terrorists are stupid enough to mount an attack on US soil before the election, or gas goes up to $6.00 per gallon immediately. I expect neither to happen immediately.

Unfortunately, I expect both during Obama's presidency, though this is one time I'd love to be wrong.

The only (very cold) comfort will be that the winds of politics will probably change direction again... for awhile, at least. It will be too late to immediately undo Obama's disastrous effect on the courts, the economy, and our national security... but it may bring an opportunity to staunch the bleeding, at least. Until, of course, the stupid Republicans who come to power in the reaction get complacent, fat and greedy, like the last crop that just lost Congress in 2006.

Pray for McCain to win, but the nation will weather an Obama administration, painfully.

Future Undetermined... Partly

2008-06-04T22:10:00.000-07:00

Greg Boyd is the author of God of the Possible, a book that introduces the "open view of God", or "open theism", or the "open view of the future". Of these three expressions, I like the last one the most, although aspects of the others also make some sense.

In many ways, this entire approach is an attempt to be as literally faithful to scripture as it is possible and prudent to be. There are places where scripture is clearly metaphorical, poetic, and the like, but when there is no obvious reason to interpret scripture in those ways, then a "literal" approach is at least worth considering, i.e., maybe it means more or less what the words say in a simple understanding of the text.

So, to the meat of it, Boyd's idea is that:

1) God knows all possible futures, but not every single detail of which of an infinite number of paths will actually occur. This is not a limitation on God's knowledge in the sense of His ability to know what can be known, but is rather an observation about the nature of the universe which God created. God created the future to be largely unknowable, because that was the way He chose to make it possible for His creatures to make real choices that actually changed things.

2) God has predecided what certain features and events will be in the future that eventually happens (prophecy of specific events, "election" of certain people, "predestination", etc.), but has not decided exactly how He will bring about those features and events, because he doesn't yet know what humans will decide to do, which will affect how He will need to respond in order to bring about His intentions.

3) God actually responds to us. That is, God is not completely unchanging, but actually can be surprised, change His mind, actually feel emotion, etc. All those scriptures that seem to say exactly these things are not to be taken metaphorically, or interpreted as anthropomorphized texts, but rather mean what they say. God DOES have expectations about what humans will do, and is sometimes surprised when they do something else.

4) When a prophecy is made, the complete path from the time of the prophecy to its fulfillment is not usually specified, and is not part of the prophecy unless it IS so specified. So, most prophecies should be interpreted as God stating what He intends to bring about as an outcome, in the understanding that God, Who knows everything that can possibly happen, has already planned in advance for what He will do in response to each individual possibility, so that His decisions will come about. For example: Jesus' betrayal was a necessary part of the prophesied plan for salvation, but the fact that Judas would do it was not. God, knowing humanity, knew that regardless of all human decisions up to the point of the betrayal, there would be someone around who was willing to do it. He knew this not in a mere probabilistic manner (i.e., humans are flawed, so someone will betray) but very specifically he knew WHICH human would do the betrayal in all possible future timelines, possibly including humans that never in fact existed, because the events required for them to be born never happened. And, he knew exactly what He would do to be sure that the betrayal ("committed to" by the person in whichever timeline actually happened) would be done in the necessary circumstances for His purposes to be served.

And so on. I find the entire idea very interesting, and while I haven't really decided just what I think of it, it makes some very persuasive points, and does a reasonable job of resolving conflicts that are hard to resolve any other way without essentially interpreting some scriptures out of existence. I am waiting to see what others whom I respect might have to say about it, so that I can weigh their points pro and con.

A frequent criticism is that this view of God "limits" God by limiting His knowledge. However, the open view requires a God with an infinite number of possible futures all in mind, and with the power to bring about His purposes in any one of them, and therefore not dependent on simple decree, but with the power and knowledge to work His will in ANY of them, so that we can trust His promises, even though the exact path by which they will be carried out is not pre-determined. It is hardly credible to assert that the open view of God makes Him smaller or less powerful and knowing than earlier views expressed in Christian history.

This entire approach seems to do a better job of reconciling God's knowledge with human freedom than any other I've seen, though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, if someone has the goods.

The book is a short read, and there are other books on the topic: just do a google or amazon search for "open theism" or "open view of God". Wikipedia also has some introductory material on "Open Theism", including information about its critics.

Peter Schweizer: Conservatives more honest than liberals?

2008-06-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

A new book by Peter Schweitzer, "Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less ... And Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals", asserts that conservatives are simply different, on average, in the values they live by, and not in ways that are particularly complementary to liberals. As with all books of this sort, it won't do to apply statistical averages to individuals. We all know honest liberals and dishonest conservatives, and vice versa. Schweitzer's point is the trend, and the norms. So the "I know some honest liberals" disclaimer is unnecessary, and does not really blunt the point.

In the Los Angeles Examiner online edition, Schweitzer says: "The honesty gap is also not a result of “bad people” becoming liberals and “good people” becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective."

Read the whole article, and notice the sources he quotes. These are not unsupported assertions, but peer-reviewed, prestigious journals, supplying his data.

I just ordered the book.

Stoopid flies live longer

2008-06-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

Idiots with multifaceted eyes live longer: "Scientists Tadeusz Kawecki and Joep Burger at the University of Lausanne said Wednesday they had discovered a 'negative correlation between an improvement in a fly's mental capacity and its longevity'."

I've wondered for some years now how it is that Robert Byrd has lasted so long in the Senate. Perhaps now I understand.

Healthcare for everyone sounds good, but....

2008-06-03T23:34:00.000-07:00

A young friend of mine (a graduate student in music) recently sent me an email, detailing his conversation with a friend on the virtues of government (universal) healthcare, and his sense of having inadequate answers to his friend's points, even though my musician friend is generally conservative in his approach to most things.

Herewith, his questions, and my responses:

1. What would be the ideal solution for the healthcare situation?

This is the wrong question, if you believe that society has to look for a perfect solution in which everyone has all the healthcare they want or need. It is simply unattainable. I didn’t say hard, I didn’t say expensive, I said unattainable. Not a single society has managed it. What in the world makes anyone think we can? In Canada, people often die of cancer waiting for an MRI to diagnose it. Or, if they get the MRI, they die waiting for the surgery. Read here.

Do a Google search for various combinations of the words, “death, Canada, medical, wait, surgery, MRI” and any other words that come to mind. That’s how I found the link above. I didn’t know about it before beginning this post. It took about 25 seconds to find. There are others.

The choice is simply NOT between what we have now and perfection, because perfection (if defined in terms of the result that “everyone has all the healthcare they want or need at a price they don’t really notice”) is simply not available.

Let me put it another way: expensive cars tend to be safer. Many people died last year because they drove a cheap car. Some died because they rode a bike (couldn’t afford a car trip) and got hit BY a car, cheap or otherwise. What would happen if we decided, as a society, that everyone should have the same level of car safety, no matter what decisions they make personally about what they’re willing to buy?

You know, and so do I.

Right now, it is in line with the conservative principles of "Free Market" but it's going terrible thus making this Universal Healthcare disaster look all the more appealing! Are things the way they should be?

No, things are not as they should be. The government has affected the way healthcare is distributed in the USA in several ways, some good, some bad, some indifferent. I’ll focus here on the bad, since we’re wondering how things “should” be.

First principles: when more of something desired is available at no apparent cost increase to the consumer, more of it will be used. When something desired costs the consumer in proportion to its use, less of it will be used than if the consumer pays no cost difference.

The first major way the federal government screwed up healthcare coverage was during World War II, as an unintended consequence of wage fixing in a limited labor market. Employers had to compete to find workers, because so many were off fighting the war, yet the government forbade them to raise wages, so they introduced the notion of “fringe benefits”, including health coverage. Since this coverage was pooled among all an employer’s workers, the net result for any given employee was a disconnect between how much health care they consumed and how much they paid for out of pocket. Providers of health care discovered they could charge a bit more without losing customers, because the cost was “spread around”, and wasn’t felt much by any given individual. That was the beginning of our current problem with prices.

When social security was created, there was no official “retirement” age. The age of 65 was chosen to begin benefits, because very few lived that long. It wasn’t going to cost much to fund, and everyone felt good about knowing someone’s grandma was getting money from the government (read, all of us). The result is that by the 1950s age 65 or so had become the EXPECTED retirement age. Yet, people were living longer and longer, and consuming more and more healthcare, during the period of time AFTER retirement when they no longer had “employer funded” healthcare. In any earlier time, more people would have worked longer, keeping their medical coverage if it was “employer funded”.

So, the combination of wage fixing/labor shortage leading to “employer funded” healthcare, and the effect of Social Security on retirement expectations combined with longer life spans, was that “more old people couldn’t afford healthcare”, whose prices had been steadily rising precisely because costs were hidden from the people actually consuming the healthcare, allowing providers to jack up prices a little at a time.

This led Congress to react by creating Medicare for the elderly (read, age 65, after employer health coverage stopped), which FURTHER insulated people from the effect of providers charging more. A hospital could get away with billing unnecessary charges, because no individual cared that much about controlling it. So could doctors. In fact, they could get away with setting fixed prices (HIGH ones) for particular procedures/tests, whether or not there was any direct relation between the expense of the test and the expertise and time it took to do. Have you seen those fixed prices in your automotive repair garage, “Brake jobs: $119 front disc”? Did you ever see a sign like that at the doctor’s office, or in the hospital? People USED to ask what something would cost, and providers USED to bargain with patients. These days, that happens precious little. Medicare really boosted the ability of providers to disconnect their pricing from consumer awareness and reaction, a guaranteed way to increase usage (demand), and therefore encourage prices to go even higher.

And when the standard Medicare price for, say, an xray became a certain amount, that amount became the FLOOR for pricing the same test for other patients who weren’t on Medicare. And so it went.

Now people live longer and longer, and retire sooner and sooner, and spend more and more time on government funded healthcare, and the predictable result is that ALL of our prices go up. We’ve increased demand, but not supply. It’s really pretty simple.

In addition, by regulating (FDA) the release of new medications so severely (and expensively), making it easy for patients to sue providers for outrageously out-of-proportion awards, and generally discouraging people from acting like actual consumers with choices based on price and need, we’ve seen a great deal of damage from government involvement in healthcare.

If not, what is the conservative solution to the absurd prices and difficulty in obtaining coverage for many?

Different consumers make different judgments about how much and what kind of healthcare they want to pay for. The common statistics about how many people are “uninsured” do not account for all the young, healthy adults with jobs sufficient to buy health coverage, but simply choose not to, in order to have a more luxurious lifestyle. It’s always a gamble, of course, but if a person is in their 20s and healthy, they may elect to buy a fancier car instead of health insurance they don’t expect to use much. Also, there will be young people in good health, just starting out, whose first job or two won’t offer health insurance as a benefit, but who will move up to a job that does.

These statistics also don’t account for other people who simply choose to take the gamble, preferring to buy lifestyle instead of insurance. The stats don’t account for people who are simply between jobs, with healthcare in each, but are currently uninsured, perhaps for a few weeks or months (and by the way, even though people often decide not to pay for it, coverage is available for such people, by federal law).

There are also people (including children in poor families) who cannot buy health insurance privately, but are currently covered under a federal or state program anyway. They are counted as “uninsured”, though the reality is different.

The BIG LIE is simple: it is that those millions who are currently uninsured are ALL people who can’t afford it now, and won’t be able to afford it next year. This is simply NOT the case. There is a group of “hardcore” uninsured adults who cannot afford to buy any level of health coverage, but it is far smaller than most people think.

I invite you to try to find true numbers that account for all these factors. It will be harder than you think, because the advocacy organizations who bandy about the stats don’t really want you to know. For example, they will say that some number, say, 45 million, were uninsured “sometime in 2005”. They don’t separate out the various groups I mentioned above, because it would RADICALLY change the numbers, and since it doesn’t help their case, they just don’t mention it. If you subtract illegal immigrants, young people who don’t need it or choose not to buy for reasons of their own, people who are between jobs at the point of measurement, etc., the number is around half of what they report. And a very large proportion of them are children who are covered by various existing government programs, but are still listed as “uninsured".

So, does that mean ALL those people were without coverage ALL YEAR, and did not make economic decisions on their own, valuing other things over health insurance?

Of course, it does not.

2. In a debate on the universal healthcare issue with a staunch liberal, I was stumped when he cited the success of governmental control over such intities as Gas, Water, Electricity and the successful regulation of these utilities. He explained that we are all safe because the government sets standards concerning what can be in the water and how much of it etc. Is it good that the gov. is involved in these things?

Your friend is misinformed, or is distorting the situation, I’m not sure which, since I didn’t hear exactly what was said. I certainly agree that we need some reasonable set of standards for what constitutes safe drinking water. However, is there any reason to believe that private companies, suitably licensed, couldn’t do it as well? One of the characteristics of privately owned enterprises is competition, which includes a constantly improving product quality. Our water, however, is worse than it used to be in some ways, is it not? Regulation (and the stagnation it encourages [pun intended]) often means setting a lowest common denominator above which no improvement is likely.

What would happen if private water companies had to bid, maybe every 3-5 years, for the contract to put water into the public system? What if the criteria involved some combination of quality improvement and minimum price? And what motivation does ANYONE now working for or managing a public utility, with a guaranteed market and no competition, have to even adhere to current standards, let alone aspire to higher ones? Of course, they don’t do it REALLY badly, or they’d lose the gig... But they can be minimally sloppy about it all with no real consequence.

There is an extensive literature on privatization of public utilities, some pro, some con. Just type “public utility privatization” into Google. I think the pro position is winning on points. Britain (land of socialized medicine!) privatized many utilities under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. They actually improved on the US situation, with less regulation, and as a result there is actually some price competition and incentive to be more efficient.

3. Electricity was regulated in California until Enron people lobbied to degregulate and allow the free market to handle it. Then the Enron scandal was born and we are still paying the inflated Electricity prices today. What can we as Free Market advocates say about this? Or about the deregulation of the airline industry that is reported to be unsuccessful my some. Or the horrible gas prices of today?

It is a mistake to confuse simultaneity with cause and effect. It is a mistake to evaluate a reasonable policy by the results achieved when corrupt people implement it.

California was DUE an electricity crisis, with or without regulation, because it wasn’t building generation stations, but was increasing demand. The deregulation initiative was partly to try to allow the market some flexibility to deal with the fact the California simply wasn’t making enough electricity, and needed to get it from other states (trust me, I live here, and California wasn't suddenly overcome at the state level with conservative economic sentiment... they were grasping at straws). But this is like using a generally good health strategy, such as eating right and getting exercise, to treat a serious disease that arose from previous BAD health habits. You will still be sick, and may get sicker, but if you blame your new health regimen for the disease, you’ll be seriously confused about cause and effect.

The reason California wasn’t building new generation stations was REGULATION, on many levels. It takes time for the market to undo the damage done by years of regulation. De-regulation is not a “quick fix”, it’s an overall good strategy for developing sufficient capacity and getting it where it needs to go.

Enron was a special case of corporate skullduggery combined with influence peddling and willful conspiracy on the part of certain government actors. Others have written about this in some detail, and I defer to them. There is a case to be made that Enron was unmasked in spite of regulation and government influence peddling, not because of it, and that de-regulation had nothing much to do with the timing of the debacle.

But, just to test the idea: if a large pharmaceutical company was found to be doing something illegal like deliberately cheapening its medications in a way that made them ineffective, and selling them as the original item, and cooking its books and lying about its financial status, and perjuring itself about its business practices, and lying about the scientific tests demonstrating the efficacy of its medications, would that be grounds for nationalizing all the OTHER pharmaceutical companies? That is essentially the argument being made by someone who says that the ENRON debacle proves we need to regulate the utilities and keep them in public hands.

We are still paying high electricity prices for several reasons: we haven’t built and gotten online enough plants in CA to keep up with demand, the price of oil to generate electricity continues to climb (along with everything else affected by the price of oil... Meaning almost everything, period.), and so on. But: as a percentage of my income, I pay less for electricity now than I did at the age of 25, per kilowatt hour (though I use more hours... And that’s part of my point; when demand goes up, supply has to go up, or prices will.). And we STILL do not have adequate competition in the generation/distribution business.

Similarly, we have high gas prices for very simple reasons: we have more people wanting oil (around the world and in the USA), but haven’t increased the supply, either of crude or refining capacity. We haven’t increased the supply of oil because Congress won’t let us drill on the north slope of Alaska (affecting about 1% of the “pristine tundra”), or off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington, or in the Gulf of Mexico, or for shale in the West, or develop coal to liquid technologies, or about twenty other things. And they’ve made sure that we have to burn oil to create electricity by making it essentially impossible to build a nuclear power plant.

Ask all the MILLIONS of people who have been able to fly (not just at lower prices, but fly, period) since airline deregulation, if they think the prices should have been kept artificially high, with no competition between the airlines.

Other factors

Without question, one contributor to costs in healthcare is the proliferation of new and expensive tests and procedures, many of which, though wonderful, are simply far beyond the scope of what medicine could do in some earlier era when medical care cost less. For these tests and procedures, it is even more critical that consumers know what they cost, and pay more to get them. But the current system tries to provide 21st century top flight care to everyone when most people still want to pay 1950s prices. One reason many procedures cost more than they used to is because the excess charge is used to fund the losses incurred by newer procedures whose cost cannot be fully passed on to the consumer and insurer. It’s hard to quantify how much this effect is, but it’s there, and won’t be solved by any amount of government intervention or regulation.

Medical science is going to advance. It is not beyond possibility that methods for extending life to a couple of centuries will be available in a few decades (I think I’m being conservative, actually). If those methods are very expensive, will the government decide that everyone must have them, regardless of cost? This is just not realistic. The economics of medical care can’t be ignored anymore than the economics of automobiles. We can’t all drive the safest car, and we can’t all get the best medical care, and that will be true essentially forever, or until such incredible advances in efficiency exist that medical care is a negligible part of the budget for almost anyone. After all, we CAN all drink the best cola beverage.

Conclusions

The bottom line for all of this: it’s very difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. The people have been misled about what it is reasonable to expect. They have been duped about the real cost of things. They are told the government is helping them, when nearly the exact opposite is the case, in terms of long term effect on the experiences of most people.

In very many ways, the government and regulation IS the problem in health care delivery. It is beyond me to explain why anyone would consider MORE of the same to be the solution, when it has created many of the problems in the first place.

We are going to have people who don’t get as much care as they need, or want. Period. The only question is whether they are “the uninsured” in our current system, or are on a waiting list in a nationalized system. But there will be people who don’t get the care they need when they need it, and people who get much more than they need, regardless of what system we adopt. The "uninsured", in our system, at least have a chance of changing some of the aspects of their lives that have resulted in them being uninsured. People on a waiting list in a nationalized system have no options at all... except, perhaps, to come to the USA and buy the care they need.

In the meantime, there is simply no question that the USA is the world leader in healthcare innovation, and the reason is because the government isn't in charge of all the research, and companies who DO the research stand to make some money from it.

Unfortunately, there will always be imperfect results in the world. And if we act prudently, and try to move the USA healthcare system away from the regulatory precipice, there will be people who individually experience negative effects from the change. Nevertheless, it is the right thing to do, for all those people who will positively benefit from making our system more efficient, not less, and more competitive, not less.

We can, however, create a great deal of suffering by trying to repeal the laws of economics.

The Left at Christian Universities part 1

2008-06-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

I will be starting a series of posts on "the left" at Christian universities. It is widely assumed, I think, that most Christian universities are made up of faculty with a right-leaning tilt. While that's certainly true for some, it is not nearly true for all, and the trend-line is definitely leftward.

There are several dynamics at work in this. Over the next few weeks, I'll try to unpack my ideas about this, based on many years in the Christian academy, and some research I've been doing into trends at various institutions.

I promise, there will be something to offend nearly everyone.

For now, I will say that two clear signs of the leftward move are the creation of administrative posts to promote "diversity", and a more-or-less uncritical acceptance of the standard environmentalist narrative, particularly anthropogenic global warming.

But we'll talk.

Frankie and Jeremiah: The "Wright stuff" nobody needs

2008-04-27T23:07:00.000-07:00

I had a lengthy discussion with a friend on the Frankie Shaeffer assertions comparing his father to J. Wright. As a result, I did a little research into it. If you’re interested, read on... Otherwise, just hit the delete key! I wrote all this to put up on a blog I’m working on.

Transcripts and audio here, providing all the context we need to judge the good reverend's loopy elocutions... And the context is worse, if anything, than the original quotes.

Is there really anything this incendiary from Francis Shaeffer?

Some quotes made by son Frankie from Francis Shaeffer's A Christian Manifesto:

If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.

Would like to see more context... Maybe I'll get a copy of the book, I'm curious. But, on it's face, it's true, is it not? Though I suspect the context when the brackets enclose the US government reference....

In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....

This is essentially true, is it not?

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

Again, I harbor some suspicion at the elipsis ... Used to associate phrases that may not be so clearly associated in the text.

On the other hand, what would Reinhold Neibuhr have to say about abortion? I wonder.

I’ve often thought that the church’s rhetoric on abortion doesn’t match its action, as far as that goes. If there was a place in Victorville where I knew that people could take their four year olds in to be murdered, and it was legal, and people were actually doing it, I would be a good deal more active than I am in fighting abortion (in which I am somewhat active... We can talk about that sometime). I don’t see the people who say “abortion is murder” doing the same things they’d be doing if the murder of 4 yr olds was legal and common and advertised in the yellow pages.

The question for me: is this failure to act because of lack of courage, or because we don’t really believe what we say?

One of Frankie’s own statements in his Huffington article, including my inserted responses in CAPS

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," [IT SURE IS] has become "Sodom" by coddling gays [IT’S MOVING QUICKLY IN THAT DIRECTION, SOME WOULD SAY QUITE FAR ALREADY], and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists [UH... THEY ARE] and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children [WELL... NOW THAT YOU MENTION, THEY ARE]. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." [I’M AFRAID THAT MIGHT BE SO.... I HOPE FOR REDEMPTION, BUT WE HAVE SURELY SQUANDERED MANY OF OUR BLESSINGS]

I guess, from my point of view, the paragraph above, even though stated in the most incendiary way possible, is arguably true. I didn’t say that it is absolutely demonstrably true, but a reasonable person could make the argument that it is, and have quite a bit of evidence to make the claim.

Here is the transcript link again for Wright:

In contrast: Jeremiah Wright tells vile lies mixed in with some truth, and those few truths give the lies the sheen of believability. Yes, America has been racist, but it is less so all the time. Yes, some awful things have been done. On the other hand, America has done a great deal of good, which he doesn’t mention. But: absolutely no credible person can try to make (apparently gullible) people believe that the US government invented AIDS to kill blacks. (Although the love of abortion by Margaret Sanger and her ilk has certainly helped keep the black population down.) His anti-military rhetoric is inexplicable... Without the Civil War, he would have been a couple of generations closer to being a slave (assuming the South would have been shamed into ending it sooner or later). Pacifist blacks in general always stun me on this point.... His comparison of Al Queda to the USA as morally equivalent is simply repugnant, an assertion that could only be made by a moral idiot, or worse. He tells the big lie that the war is “about oil”, but we haven’t had a drop from Iraq yet... We surely could have, if we chose. He makes the most vile assertions imaginable about all kinds of people and institutions, and because about 10% of them might be true, his audience laps it up. I won’t go through all the lies here... Read it yourself, if you wish, it’s at the link above. The thing is, he’s consistent, at least, since this is all the straight liberation theology rhetoric, slanted for American blacks of a certain ideological stripe.

He teaches hate and encourages class warfare and jealously and anger, pure and simple.

I don’t think you can say that about Francis Shaeffer.

And I think the fact that Obama calls this man his mentor and “spiritual leader” (even as he backpedals recently) tells me all I need to know about what animates Obama... And really helps to explain why Obama’s wife is proud of America for the first time THIS YEAR... Because Barack is doing well in the primaries. Her statement makes perfect sense in the light of the ideology she apparently bathes in.

I’m willing to make a bet: that in all of Francis Shaeffer’s recorded speeches, sermons and books, you won’t find anything even close to this stuff from J. Wright.

It is a bit sad that Frankie Schaeffer can’t tell the difference between assertions backed by evidence and plain lies. The Orthodox are big believers in rationality, along with their mysticism, having imbibed a good deal of the Greek philosophical tradition... It seems not to have sunk in. Frankie Shaeffer can’t tell the difference between a criticism of the USA and a simple lie about it. Francis criticized, accurately, from an ideological perspective that one may disagree with, but can’t totally discount as non-factual. Wright simply tells lies... BIG ones, evil ones, guaranteed to make his parishioners angry (if they believe him) and to distort their attitudes towards white people and the USA in general.

Wright knows it isn’t true, of course..... I’m sure he’s a smart guy. The mere fact that he’s still around running his mouth is proof of the benign intentions of the government he so calumnies.

Musical GOD is back here for now

2006-10-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

Due to hosting problems, MUSICAL GOD has returned to blogspot for now.

Hopefully it won't be here too long, and apologies to all whose comments from the past don't show here.

Look at it this way... we all need a chance to make a fresh start now and then.

Mindless reading is fundamental

2006-07-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

Stop the presses! Absolutely mind-blowing, stunning new research has been done that will pave the way for tremendous new strides in understanding why some people don't learn as much from reading as others. Or not.

It seems that "checking out" while reading, or "zoning out", may have bad effects on how much the reader retains:

"For the first time, researchers have demonstrated the ill effects of mindless reading — a phenomenon in which people take in sentence after sentence without really paying attention.

Ever read the same paragraph three times? Or get to the end of a page and realize you don't know what you just read?

That's mindless reading. It is the literary equivalent of driving for miles without remembering how you got there — something so common many people don't even notice it.

In a new study of college students, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of British Columbia established a way to study mindless reading in a lab.

Their findings showed that daydreaming has its costs.

The readers who zoned out most tended to do the worst on tests of reading comprehension — a significant, if not surprising, result. The study also suggested that zoning out caused the poor test results, as opposed to other possible factors, such as the complexity of the text or the task.

The researchers hope their work inspires more research into why zoning out happens, and what can be done to stop it.

Well, now... Maybe we could all, oh, I don't know, pay attention?

I can see it all now... a new diagnosis for people who zone out while reading, complete with prescribed therapies, required interventions by schools, new state and federal codes that define procedures for dealing with the "zoners", etc. People will discover they've been "zoners" for years, and just didn't know it, and now they understand.

I wonder how many new Ph.D.s in education will be awarded for people who study "zoners", create new methodologies for teaching them, and design new curriculum to inculcate "zoner frendliness" into the next crop of educators. I'll bet there will be a state mandated inclusion in all teacher ed programs, covering "zoners" and their needs.

Quickly now, close your eyes... what did you just read?

Nepal faces uncertain future with rebels - Yahoo! News

2006-06-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

There seems to be an agreement between the rebels and the government of Nepal, which has had a violent revolution recently.

Those Maoist rebel "democrats" have what they wish. Are they ready for it?: "All that ended June 16 with an agreement to establish an interim government to replace the current national parliament as well as the 'people's government' that rules territory under rebel control.

The Maoists say they will abide by the decisions of a yet-to-be-formed constituent assembly, which will decide what type of government Nepal will have.

But after so many years of living as guerrillas, fighting the government and demanding goals steeped in a Marxist ideology much of the world has long forgotten, the big question is what their leader, known to all as Prachanda, wants for the nation.

The schoolteacher-turned-militant has few democratic credentials, tolerating no dissent as the leader of the guerrillas who call their overriding philosophy 'Prachandapath' — 'Prachanda's Way.'

In interviews since he emerged from hiding, his pronouncements about Nepal's new government have been vague and sometimes contradictory.

'There shouldn't be parliamentary republicanism' in Nepal, he recently told the weekly magazine Nepal. He ruled out an autocracy, but said that 'we need a republicanism of our own kind.' He didn't elaborate.

His plans for the struggling economy are equally hazy.

Despite the basics of the creed named after Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist leader, Prachanda says the rebels will encourage industry, job creation and the quest for profits.

"

I'll believe it when I see it.

Left to Right: the American way

2006-06-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

Conversion from life in the real world of the CEO of Whole Foods Market: "Excerpt Of The Day: Business Is Not A Zero-Sum Game"

'At the time I started my business, the Left had taught me that business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation of consumers, workers, society, and the environment. I believed that 'profit' was a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole. However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong.

The most important thing I learned about business in my first year was that business wasn't based on exploitation or coercion at all. Instead I realized that business is based on voluntary cooperation. No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the market place; employees have competitive alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliers — they all need to cooperate to create value for their customers. If they do, then any realized profit can be divided amongst the creators of the value through competitive market dynamics.

In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win, win game — and I really like that. However, I discovered despite my idealism that our customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines, and taxes.

Were we profitable? Not at first. Safer Way managed to lose half of its capital in the first year — $23,000. Despite the loss, we were still accused of exploiting our customers with high prices and our employees with low wages. The investors weren't making a profit and we had no money to donate. Plus, with our losses, we paid no taxes. I had somehow joined the 'dark side' — I was now one of the bad guys. According to the perspective of the Left, I had become a greedy and selfish businessman. At this point, I rationally chose to abandon the leftist philosophy of my youth, because it no longer adequately explained how the world really worked.' -- John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market"

Help the terrorists resist interrogation!

2006-06-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

We don't want to surprise the terrorists with any of our interrogation techniques.

Pentagon won't hide interrogation tactics : "Under pressure from Congress, the
Pentagon has dropped plans to keep some interrogation techniques secret by putting them in a classified section of a military manual, defense officials said Tuesday.

...descriptions of interrogation techniques initially planned for the classified section are either being made public or are being eliminated as tactics that can be used against prisoners.

...Military leaders have argued that disclosing all the interrogation techniques public would make it easier for enemy prisoners to resist questioning.

...any interrogation technique not included in the manual would be considered illegal."

This is, of course, in response to the law passed last year, championed by McCain and others, to criminalize "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners by U.S. troops."

Let's hear it for giving terrorists a chance to practice their resistance techniques. We wouldn't want USA interrogators to have unfair advantage or anything.

Reuters roots for Islamic militia in Somalia?

2006-06-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

Experts say US funding Somali warlords - Yahoo! News: "(Reuters) - The United States has been funneling more than $100,000 a month to warlords battling Islamist militia in Somalia, according to a Somalia expert who has conferred with the groups in the country."

Reuters' leftist slip is showing, as usual. The USA is funding "warlords", but the Islamists are "militia"... how noble of them!

Reuters names only one source, John Prendergast, a Senior Adviser at the (non-profit) "International Crisis Group." Prendergast worked in the White House and the State Department in the Clinton administration from 1996-2001, a bit of information Reuters omits, but which bears on the objectivity of Prendergast as the only named source. All the other sources are "anonymous".

Reuters seems to think it's bad for the US to fund anti-Islamist groups in Somalia, and implies the UN is investigating US provision of arms to Somalia "warlords". Outside of the hilarity of the UN investigating anything at all, the obvious point is simple.

Shouldn't the US do what it can to prevent an Islamist takeover of Somalia, with all the potential for Taliban-style rule that would be a certainty?

The Left and the Right

2006-05-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some quotes from the online presence of the Communist Party and the NAZI Party in the USA:

Communist Party USA Online -: "A Call to Action: Defend Democracy, Change Congress in the 2006 Elections!
by CPUSA National Committee, 03/10/2006 15:11
The Bush-Cheney Administration has plunged our nation into the worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War. The abuses of power they have committed are legion: an illegal pre-emptive war, lying to Congress and the people, warrant-less spying, mass incarceration of innocent people here and around the world, torture, corrupt no-bid contracts with crony corporations like Halliburton, criminal negligence in abandoning the victims of Hurricane Katrina..."

The American Nazi Party: "The year is 2025, White people HAVE become a MINORITY in America. On our streets hang Aryan men who refused to accept the 'New Way,' or perhaps they just looked too White. Perhaps they never thought MUD RULE would really come.
White girls who refuse the advances of Negroids, are publicly gang-raped so as to serve as examples to other shuddering Aryan females. Children are now taken from their houses, by force, to be brought up in a 'Multi-Cultural' home of Negroids, Arabs, Muslims and Gooks, all in the name of 'brotherhood and love'...

And yet, some fight back! Alone or in small cells, Aryans...men and boys...but most of all women who stand the most to lose, since the decline of real men among the White Folk, strike back...at night and with any weapon near at hand."

Aryan Attack (a publication of the National Socialist Movement, a NAZI organization):
"A nation’s economy dramatically influences the daily lives of all of its citizens. Today we suffer under a greed based Jewish economy. From the Jew Alan Greenspan, who heads the nation’s financial decision making body, the Federal Reserve, to the average sheeple who’ve bought into the Jew lie of Wall Street swindler and Jew Ivan Boesky that “greed is healthy,” altruism and the good of the whole is a dead thought. What’s important in today’s society is greed and its accompanying individualism. “It’s all about me” is the prevailing attitude.

In sharp contrast to this self-centered destructive worldview is National Socialism. National Socialism offers the only long term workable economic system. And it’s proven. When the world was suffering through a terrible economic depression, National Socialist Germany was not! What made the Nazi economy work, while the Jew based economies of the rest of the world failed?"

It's pretty common to talk about the Democratic Party in the USA as "the left" and the Republican Party as "the right".

From where I sit, it looks like the Democratic Party is attuned to the very, very far left, the Republican Party sits in the center, and their is no mainstream party on the "right" at all.

Click the links above. Read the sites. Notice how much Democratic rhetoric closely follows the Communist Party, and how distinct Republican rhetoric is from the NAZI Party.

Draw your own conclusions...

Democracy Loving MAOist rebels for democracy... sure, I believe that

2006-04-18T23:12:00.000-07:00

According to the AP, in today's article "Rights groups urge sanctions against Nepal leaders", the King of Nepal is a really bad guy. May well be... but does the AP expect us to take seriously the notion of MAOist rebels for democratic rule in Nepal?

Here's a map showing Nepal's proximity to China.

According to the AP:

King Gyanendra sacked the government and assumed full power in February 2005, vowing to crush a decade-old Maoist revolt in which more than 13,000 people have died.

At least five people have been killed and hundreds wounded in police action against pro-democracy protesters, who are into the 13th day of a general strike that has brought the impoverished nation to a standstill.

And:

King Gyanendra has offered to hold elections by April next year, but activists say he cannot be trusted and should immediately hand over power to an all-party government.
....
The United States and India, Nepal's giant neighbour, have both called repeatedly for the restoration of democracy.

This is typical MSM reporting, casting MAOist (likely Chinese backed) rebels as pro-democracy insurgents, and providing no background that really helps anyone to understand the players. Does the USA really back Maoist "freedom fighters"? Doubtful.

Would it help our understanding of the context if the AP bothered to report on which nearby government is supporting the Maoist fighters?

Are there any good guys here? Possibly not... but the wide eyed innocent face value acceptance of Maoist insurgency as "pro-democratic" is laughable.

Air America: Air Ball?

2005-07-04T00:27:00.000-07:00

I listened to Air America all day today. I know, I know... but sometimes I just need to know what the chattering class on the lefty side is saying.

Here is what I learned:

There's no point in impeaching Bush (still laughing at that one), since then Cheney would be president... and if he was impeached, it would be that creepy Speaker of the House, Haffert (no kidding, that's what the hosts said, and no one called in to correct them). So congratulating themselves on their hardheaded realism, both pundits and callers bravely moved on to more practical affairs... after discussing it for two hours. Good decision.

Cowboys were probably often gay in the old west, since women were in short supply. Further, those cowboys had a gal inside, just trying to get out. Some guy who styles himself a scholar (scholars rarely claim it for themselves....) even sang a song about it, while complaining that the FCC wouldn't let him air the true lyrical triumph in the song, the F-word. Too bad... it would have been the highlight of the song.

Now that Bush will appoint at least one new supreme court justice, personal liberty in America is under great threat, and the rights of minority groups and poor people will be trampled, with a probable reversal of the all the gains of the last 40 years... what paltry few have been made, of course.

Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, .... well, you get the idea.

Black people who choose not to carry "Black Power" signs (or Al Sharpton for president signs) in lefty protests outside black churches are "house negroes"... according to the two black hosts, of course. Clarence Thomas would be the worst possible Chief Justice.

The is no source of compassion, love, justice, etc., in the universe, except in so far as people "act" that way. Todays Unitarian Universalist clergy member/talk show host informed us that good only exists when people do it.

Bush gave his recent foreign policy speech about the Iraq war to the Fort Bragg special forces troops because they would applaud out of fear of reprisal. What can you expect from the worst president in history?

Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, ....

War is evil..... all war is evil.... of course, evil can't actually be defined, just as good can't be defined..... but all war is evil. Why DO those wascally tewwowists hate us so much? Well, mainly because Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, ....

The United States is an imperialist power with a history of doing evil around the world and to its own people, and most especially to all minorities. The United States is bent on seeking world domination, through a conspiracy of evil corporate giants, the military, and political insiders.

The newly refurbished, kinder, gentler left no longer hates the troops... just those nasty higher ups who manipulate them into serving on foreign shores.

40,000 troops (!!!!) have come back from Iraq with disabling physical injuries, mental illness and emotional distress.

Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar, Bush is a liar,

Well, some commentary on all of this:

It was truly thrilling to hear the left put up its best, if indeed that's what I heard today. These talk hosts make no attempt at all to educate their audiences with specifics. (I think some of them might excel at re-education... but that's another topic.) I must have heard the Bush-is-a-liar mantra hundreds of times in a few hours... with no specifics except that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (making liars of the entire world, of course).

There was not a single disagreeing caller, or maybe an actual conservative, on any of the shows I heard today. Not one. Does that mean we fascist types just don't listen? Or just can't get through? I don't know... but the contrast with center-right talk radio, which positively courts disagreeing callers, is huge. There is an enormous sense of preaching to the choir, and not working at making a case for the unconverted.

It seems to be enough to call names at the other side, repeat a few talking points, face no actual disagreement (reasoned or otherwise), take a few cheerleading calls, and call it a day.

No wonder Air America is going under, subsidized as it is. Perhaps center-right successful talk hosts should consider some discrete anonymous donations to keep it on the air.... since the comparison to the pros on the right is so much in their favor that Air America boils down to free adversting for the right.

Faith-Learning Integration and Music

2005-05-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

I am the "faith integration mentor" for the School of Music at Azusa Pacific University, where I teach music theory, composition, commercial music and music technology.

I have several problems to solve in this role:

1) How to do it (faith integration in music) myself!

2) How to help my fellow music faculty navigate the institutional pressures to do this in some recognizable way while retaining their own personal integrity and professionalism in teaching.

3) How to communicate to faculty from other disciplines that, for the most part, approaches to faith/learning integration they've used won't work in music, or will work to music's detriment.

Along the way, some related issues arise:

What IS faith integration in music? Is this any different than the use of music as an evangelistic tool? Or is it just a theology of music?

There seem to be lots of people who are willing to say what faith integration is NOT, but aren't willing to say just what it IS. Why is this?

Over the next weeks, I expect to put several small postings here, discussing various aspects of all of this.

A starting supposition from which I'll proceed: music is utterly unique in the disciplines, in several ways, that make it unable to profit very much from approaches to faith integration that are used in other disciplines. Music is already so inherently integrative an activity (more about this in later posts) that in comparsion to already fragmented disciplines, music looks very integrated from the top.

We'll see how this goes... consider it an experiment in blogging.

I hope I don't blog down too soon.

W and the evil Wead

2005-02-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

President Bush is heard on an audio tape acknowledging in a private conversation with (advisor to former President Bush) Doug Wead that he used marijuana but wouldn't admit it publicly for fear that a child would imitate his errors. Preliminary quotes are at Political Gateway. According to that site, Bush said:

"I woudn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

I see nothing in context here that is particularly troublesome for Bush, given the certainty of the drunk driving arrest, and the possibility of cocaine use... neither of which have proven especially problematic for Bush, politically, although the timing of the release of the drunk driving charge (by a Dem operative) surely helped make the 2000 election dangerously close.

A point frequently missed by the left (when charges like these are surfaced by hopeful Bush-bashers) is that the religous right believes in forgiveness, in the presence of obvious repentance. That doesn't mean that private sins must be publicly confessed in detail... thank God.

No one will be surprised that Bush smoked weed sometime, or that he chooses not to answer direct questions about it now. Is this a big revelation?

The tape transcripts I've seen so far reveal what we knew already.... that Bush is a man with ideals, who has practical perspectives on how to pursue them. Bush is tough and means what he says. He gets to the point. In other words, his current *public image* seems to fit the *private image* shown on the tapes.

In the meantime... I wonder if Doug Wead did weed? Sorry... couldn't resist.

The Bear Dances and Sings

2005-01-30T01:41:00.000-08:00

CNN and FOX are covering the election in Iraq.

I can only stand in awe of the courage of these determined voters. Their sheer guts and commitment to show up at all should be a lesson to nay-sayers everywhere about what people in this part of the world really want. How many voters would show up in, say, Chicago, in a similar situation? I don't know... but these Iraqi voters deserve our very highest respect.

CNN's current online headline is "Iraqis vote amid scattered attacks". Roughly half the TV coverage from CNN seems to be about the attacks today, but a solid half is about the vote itself.

FOX's headline is "Iraq's Historic Vote Begins". The first paragragh tells of attacks, but also provides context: lots of voters, and many foiled attacks, as well as some successful ones. FOX's TV coverage is stressing the protection provided by Iraqi forces, police and military, directly around the polling places. FOX has shown many entire families, from elderly to young children (presumably not voting yet...), walking together to polling places... in some cases carrying Iraqi flags, showing thumbs up to the camera, etc.

Both cable networks have provided reasonable coverage on how many Iraqi women are voting, although it seems to have been inadvertent in one CNN report, where the reporter could not be heard over all the women talking in the polling place.

ABCNEWS is carrying a story stressing the attacks, predicting lack of Sunni turnout, stressing how bad the result of a low Sunni turnout will be, etc. Big shock. Little mention of who is providing the election security... mostly Iraqis around the polling places. All attacks listed in GREAT detail.

Another ABC article, IRAQI HISTORY MAY COLOR VIEWS OF ELECTION tries to downplay the importance of a successful election. I consider this to be evidence that the election must be going well in the eyes of the editors.

Rauch's Arithmetic

2005-01-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

Hugh Hewitt has now posted the full text of Jonathon Rauch's article in Atlantic Monthly on the divisions in American political and social life. He's also posted Mr. Rauch's confession that some of his language in associating religious conservatism with violent behavior was, uh, intemporate. Kudo's to Mr. Rauch for admitting that, and doing so quickly.

I don't think his sorta mea culpa is adequate to explain his presentation, however, and in the quote below, I think he digs his hole a little deeper.

Mr. Rauch's article attempts to make the point that America is less divided than it seems, and that the two main political parties are more centrist than they seem at times, while remaining capable of absorbing those with more extreme views at election time.

Mr. Rauch makes some interesting points. Much of his position seems to be based on simply using different polls than are used by those who assert the deep division hypothesis, and by interpreting some of the same polls from a different perspective. Some of his points come from "focus group" studies that he thinks are superior to polls, at least some of the time. As always, what passes for the peculiar art of "qualitative research" is up for grabs... but Mr. Rauch seems to me to be cherry picking the data that fits his notion.

Everyone knows that polls are virtually never done in an ideological vacuum. With any polling question, it is possible to make some good guesses about assumptions that underly the question that the pollster is ostensibly asking. The biggest weaknesses of polls are that they have poor mechanisms for measuring how *strongly* a participant feels about an issue, and polls usually make little attempt to measure what a participant actually knows about the issue before eliciting an opinion.

Similarly, who ran the focus groups? What was their orientation politically/socially? Were two sets of focus groups run in parallel on the same topics, by people of oppositie perspectives? Were contrasting results tossed out? As a university professor who is exposed to all sorts of things that are called "research", I remain skeptical about all of the above.

It is possible, however, to infer some things from the polls that really matter, the elections, and from some pieces of data that no one disputes on either side of the political fence.

1) African-Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic, regardless of what individual answers they give on single topic polls. So do certain other ethnic groups, though the divide may be smaller.

2) Church goers (and those who identify strongly with religious traditions, even when their participation isn't perfect) vote two-to-one for Republicans.

3) The reverse (two-to-one non-church goers for Democrats) is also approximately correct.

Mr. Rauch says:

"The Republican Party has acquired its distinctively tart right-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed (in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with) the religious right. As Hanna Rosin reports elsewhere in this package [elsewhere in the same Atlantic Monthly issue], religious conservatives are becoming more uniformly Republican even as their faiths and backgrounds grow more diverse."

Mr. Rauch seems to be trying to have it two ways. On the one hand, he wants to identify the "religious right" as occupying an "extremist" position in the Republican party, somewhat analogous to what he wants us to think of leftists like Michael Moore in the Democratic party. (This seems to exclude members of the religious right from consideration as "centrists", or, as Hugh likes to say, members of the "center right".) On the other hand, he seems to undercut his own position (fatally, I think) by acknowledging that what he calls the "religious right" has unprecedented power in the modern Republican party, and is indeed now the ideological center of that party... as Democrats keep pointing out (in their confusion, thinking it benefits them).

Where is Mr. Rauch's observation that "the Democratic party has acquired its distinctively tart left-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed (in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with) the secular left"? Well... he didn't make it. But I just did... using his words from the quote above.

Mr. Rauch does not mention a single example from the left of a "fringe group" being welcomed into the Democratic party and becoming its new center. That's because no such example exists. It is difficult to *name* an ideological center to the party, other than the phrase "secular left", which is rejected by party mavens as pejorative. All that is necessary is to note the willingness of the "religious right" to accept *that* label, and the identity crisis of the left is made clear.

Underlying all of this is a significant problem for Democrats, namely that there is no true ideological center that unites its various factions. It frequently appears to be a coalition of single issue voters, each with a particular complaint against the traditional American status quo, whose single issues are not related in any obvious way. There seems very much to be an attitude of "I'll cheer for your single issue if you'll cheer for mine".

What will happen in modern electoral politics if even one third to one half of *church going* African-Amercians begin to vote with their natural ideological allies, namely the modern Republican party? Or if religious Hispanics do the same?

The MSM has done a fabulous job of controlling the information received by these groups up to now... but that dominance of communication channels is fading, and as these "minority groups" come to realize that Republicans offer school choice and other education reforms, real economic opportunity, strong family policies and life affirming attitudes, some in these groups can (and I think will) change their voting patterns.

I'll be interested to read Mr. Rauch's response to that change... in about 10-20 years. Who will be the "moderates" then?

I'd be fascinated to see Mr. Rauch rewrite his article (if he really believes his thesis) in the way I rewrote his quote above... just reversing all the language referring to parties and left/right labels, and see if he can find examples that make it all make as much sense to him as those he used. If he can't do that.... well, maybe the differences are as real between the "centers" of each party as it seems to some of us. The fact that he didn't do it that way in the first place, regardless of his protestations of human frailty now, is telling.

Jonathon Rauch's Innumeracy

2005-01-24T22:42:00.000-08:00

Atlantic Monthly's Jonathan Rauch (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200501/rauch) appears to struggle with basic arithmetic.

“On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.”

This seems to be a peculiar sort of innumeracy. "Religious conservatives", by Mr. Rauch's definition, make up about half the modern Republican party.... or more. Their influence is not proportional to their willingness to do violence as a disgruntled minority (or it would be exceedingly small, since only the very crazy few are violent.... and they are by definition not really "religious conservatives," anyway). Instead, the influence of "religious conservatives" is proportional to their numbers, i.e., a majority of the party, or something very close to it.

"Religious conservatives" did not attain their influence through marches (though some have marched, in both the civil rights and pro-life movements). Nor was power gained by intimidation, the promotion of any kind of violence, or any other sort of "acting out." Mr. Rauch seems to assume some kind of proportionality of the number of (presumably conservative right) potential abortion clinic bombers to (presumably liberal left) street fighting war protesters of bygone years.... some of whom are back.

Hmm... if this proportionality were true, few abortion clinics would have been left standing in America even before the 1994 Republican congressional victories, after 20 years of having been mostly "ignored" by both parties.

Some leftists will paint pro-life demonstrators with the same brush as the 1960's anti-war activists... as if there were some moral or tactical parity. The fact seems to be that main-stream media have given mostly negative coverage to pro-life "protest", while positive media coverage of the perspectives of anti-war activists is a large part of what led to their (execrable) successes.

Mr. Rauch tries a real fast one in his commingling of civil rights protests with anti-war protests. The former had a high proportion of "religious conservatives" and were virtually non-violent on the part of the protesters (in no small part *because* of religious belief), while the latter emanated largely from the left, clearly used violence and provocation of it as a tool, and were part of the early "culture wars."

The comparison of the influence of "religous conservatives" in the Republican party to Michael Moore's reception at the Democratic convention is *exactly* backwards. In contrast to "moderate Democrats" grumbling about (extreme leftist) Moore, it was Republican conservatives grumbling about the lionizing of "Republican moderates" at the Republican convention.

Mr. Rauch can't count, apparently. He also doesn't appreciate the fundamental position of people who believe in something as quaint as right and wrong... namely that they are unwilling to do wrong in order to achieve what is right.

John and Ken look kinda stupid today

2004-11-03T12:57:00.000-08:00

David Dreier Wins Big!

And John and Ken of LA afternoon drivetime radio must be a bit, uh, disappointed.

They had targeted Dreier (Rep.) as a "political human sacrifice" because of his supposedly poor record on fighting illegal immigration, a big issue in California. John and Ken pride themselves on their "political independence", having also fought in the battle to unseat former Governor Gray Davis.

The story was like this: since Republicans don't do any better at stopping illegal immigration than Dems, why should we vote for them just because we hope they will? So John and Ken tried to get Republicans to vote against Dreier, just to "send a message" that poor performance on the issue would no longer be tolerated.

What John and Ken don't get: the major media is a MUCH larger problem than the politicians in this arena. The vast majority of news coverage is sympathetic to illegals, not to those who are hurt by the illegals being here.

J&K made much of the fact that Dreier stopped coming on their show to be assaulted by them.

I'll be really impressed when they get the editors of the LA Times and network news shows to come on for hour long to segments to be grilled on their news coverage re: illegals.

In the meantime, Dreier proved that such stunts don't work, by winning handily with an 11% margin over his nearest opponent., 54% to 43%. Hopefully, J&K will eat some humble pie on air, and then invite the major news bottleneck guardians to come on and talk about the issue. I doubt they'll get a lot of response from them, though....

John and Ken are right that the Republicans talk a lot more than they act on the issue. They need to use their clout (of which they do have a little, in spite of failing here) to attach the real problem.

Radio's John and Ken miss the point

2004-10-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

John and Ken have a radio show in LA.

A couple of days ago they blasted Hugh Hewitt for supporting David Dreier in his re-election bid to the House of Representatives. Dreier is the target of John and Ken's "political human sacrifice" in their anti-illegal alien campaign. Their point, true as far as it goes, is that Republicans don't have a greatly better record on handling the illegals problem than Democrats, though they talk about it more.

The segment I heard blasting Hugh was followed by a segment on the initiative to weaken California's "three strikes" law in various ways. They had an academic from a local university on the show, who pointed out the reduction in the crime rate that seems associated with the current three strikes law. One of their questions to the academic was, "Why does the public seem to support this weakening of the current sentencing laws, when they have clearly worked to reduce crime?"

The answer from the academic, and a telling one it is, was this: 90% of the media coverage of the current three strikes law is negative towards the law, full of unusual cases of people getting long sentences for stealing pizza, etc., even though there are few problems of this sort in the application of the law (what if the pizza thief had multiple prior major crimes?).

The radio boys failed to make the connection to the issue of Republican action regarding the problem of illegal aliens, namely that whenever a strong action is taken by any Republican, the media is full of mostly negative coverage. When elections hang by relatively slim margins, this makes it hard to convince Republicans to do what they'd like to do in their hearts, namely take strong action to police the borders and round up illegals for deportation, and punish employers who knowingly hire them.

So, hey, John and Ken: If you REALLY feel as strongly about the issue of illegal aliens as you say, then lay off the relatively easy target of politicians who don't always walk their talk, just for awhile, and concentrate on who intimidates those politicians, namely the major media. Feeling your populist oats, boys? Impressed with the fervor you can whip up? Why not take on someone who has as much access to the public ear as you do (which almost no politician does, which is what makes them relatively easy targets for you), and go after every single article or news broadcast that unfairly slants the coverage in favor of illegals?

You've discovered by now that politicans you help elect, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, don't always (or often?) do what you hoped. They same will be true of Dreier's replacement, if you're successful.

Political behavior of this sort is the symptom, not the root of the problem, as long as the main stream media get away with murdering the facts.

I'll take you seriously when you spend as many on-air hours on poor news coverage of the illegals problem as you spend on your little political stunt... In the meantime, Hugh's show comes on at the same time as yours...

Not even close

2004-10-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hugh's symposium question this week:

"Vox Blogoli IV: Why vote for Bush, and what's wrong with Kerry?"

I'm pro-Bush because:

1) He'll do a better job of making terror attacks on the USA less likely in the short term, because he gets it, because he puts it before his poll numbers, and because he sincerely seeks God's help.

2) He'll do a better job of continuing processes he's already begun (that Kerry doesn't even understand) to reduce long term risks of Islamic extremism, by attacking the very roots of it with "liberty-imperialism."

3) On the domestic front, reducing taxes, judicial activism and the school dropout rate are all good things.

I'm anti-Kerry because:

1) He doesn't get it in the war with Islamic extremism.

2) He apparently does very little without calculating personal benefit in the polls. He'll say anything to get elected. He seems to have no long-term plan to reduce the danger.... except to recycle old plans that have already failed.

3) He is for more taxes, more judical activism, and maintenance of the status quo in education.... all recipes for disaster, short and long term.

Some of it boils down to this: I trust George Bush to do his very best, even when he is at political risk, and to learn on the job. John Kerry has already proved that he doesn't learn on the job, and will do exactly what he thinks is indicated for his short-term political benefit.

A penny for my thoughts

2004-10-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

Well... it doesn't even cost that much.