1. A comparison of Mr Obama’s acts put in Mr Bush’s shoes. I can’t really imagine an honest left leaning individual saying “no” to any significant fraction of those questions, although likely any number of those things were items they would (privately at least) condemn Mr Obama for doing.
2. I don’t know the contents of the ‘64 bill or the ‘57 for that matter … but as a for my conservative opinion I’d ask “did the bill improve the conditions for private citizens pursuit of happiness (=virtue).” I’d add that in ‘64 I was only 2 (3 in December) so my contributions would be minimal to the debate at the time.
3. Not exactly truly useful but … interesting nonetheless, my youngest daughter and my mother are knitters.
4. The Internet and beauty … and on Liszt, Verdi with his Requiem is another example of a secular (avowed atheist I think) producing moving sacral music.
5. This event was noted elsewhere as a set-piece staged political theatrical production (the town hall was packed with supporters), which if done by the Bush admin would likely have gotten a less salutary treatment by the press. Isn’t that bias?
6. Two articles noted in which Christian thought meets the cultural present.
7. The Hell’s Angels in Denmark. Denmark had a particularly ethical response to Nazi occupation and their seeking Jews for pogrom, so one might consider that their ethical antennae are not broken … which means that one might not want to generically dismiss their response to the spread of Islamic culture as a Neanderthalian move.
8. Judicial candidates apparently must watch their associations. I don’t know what this means … but it may resurface.
9. Ben Myers almost always has thought provoking things to say. Here he begins to consider the difference between writing and blogging in the context of theology.
10. This is a point which is not being defended by the left. Right now, with the left’s domination the public airwaves and much print media, ignoring objections is an effective strategy of theirs. But there is a disconnect between the economic situation which they (and everyone) admits is still fragile and the desire to tack on new economic burdens (the W/M bill and healthcare).
11. The allegorical hermeneutic is one I’m learning right now reading Origen for a class.
12. I suspect this discussion of happiness has at its root that the definition of happiness today is too often interpreted as a ‘feeling’.
13. Two teammates Armstrong and Contador of Astana, and I think that unless there is a mishap (crash) Armstrong really will be riding in support of Contador … and contrary to many predictions will finish outside the top 10.
14. An Israeli offers his opinions on Mr Obama’s policy toward his homeland … and conjectures it’s strengthening the resolve of the policy which (on the surface) he is supporting. Of course Mr Obama is supposed to be “very smart” so perhaps this was his intent. And I put scare quotes on smart not because I doubt Mr Obama is smart or not … but that I think that smart is a measurement that can be casually made. Modern politicians are primarily actors on a stage. An excellent actor may be very good at his craft, but that isn’t the same as what a physicist or mathematician would mean by the statement “he’s smart.”

Well, in a long conversation on the fragility of our civilization with commenter Boonton, one point of contention is apparent. Mr Boonton thinks that the “inflection point” in economic, i.e., the rise of technology in the late 19th century means that comparing today’s culture and civilization to those before is a apples/oranges comparison. Now, everything is different. I demur.

What features characterize today’s technological culture:

• It is highly interconnected.
• That interconnection is fueled and aided by high speed cheap transportation.
• Continued technological advancement is essential.
• Population levels are staggering when compared earlier eras.

Western Rome fell. It was highly connected and had, for its day, cheap transportation with the Roman road system. Yet it fell, and standards of living and population levels dropped precipitously. The statement “standard of living dropped” this cannot be emphasized enough. Roman era was quite wealthy. Technology that existed, for example examining simple wares like fine china was not eclipsed until the 18th or 19th century. Literacy was almost universal in Rome, even the poor and the slaves could read. Charlemagne was illiterate … and a king, the first “Holy Roman Emperor.” Literacy levels of the Roman era were also not eclipsed in the West until … the 18th or 19th century.

Examine the pottery situation for a moment in the Roman era. Pottery shards happen to be a refuse item which survives for archaeologists to find. In Britian, after Rome retreated something quite surprising happened. Pottery vanished. A potters wheel is conceptually quite a simple thing. But it takes a little time to master. It takes just a little infra-structure to maintain. But … the culture that survived in Britain in the post-Roman times had not the wherewithal to do so.

The only holdout and exception then is technology. How fragile then is technology. It is assumed by many that text and our written records, which are in fact robust and repeated and kept in many places, will insure that our technological advancement and prowess is secure. Things however may in fact not be a secure was we imagine. For it is not the written record on which most of our technology rests but instead of on the unwritten and ineffable expertise of those keeping industrial technological machines running and improvements coming. Michael Polanyi notes the example of the German sale to Hungary of a light bulb manufacturing process. The machines were duplicated, the process written down, and training was completed. Two years after the installation was completed … the machine still had yet to produce a single working bulb. Why? Because the people running the machine were not able to transfer the knowledge of how to run the machine elsewhere.

Our industrial processes and indeed our academic scientific culture is ineffable. It is a culture transmitted by master to apprentice. It depends not only on the skills transferred but cultural norms and values which have to be assumed successfully by the student in order for the continued progress of technology, of science, and academic excellence.

Additionally there are hundreds of thousands, if not many milions, of interlocking industrial components which are required for our civilization to continue. Most of these have multiple sources. Many of these (thousands) are essential, the loss of just one, for example high power/voltage step down transformers, would spell disaster. It is likely that many of these thousands of essential cannot-live-without components, of which we are not really aware in our daily lives, depend on just a few experts to continue their production maintenance, and improvement. One pandemic could wipe out a number of experts in many of these components and … it is not implausible that for some few components the expert base might be lost. Then the social unrest of the pandemic would be acerbated with a failure of one or more key infrastructure components keeping things running. Which in turn causes, because of our very high population levels, starvation and deprivation … which causes the loss of more components and bam! Most of us, just like the survivors of the Western Roman region will be back at pre-civilization early iron age levels.

It might not be a pandemic of course. Our worldwide economies are tightly linked. A monetary crises might cause civil unrest. The resultant violence might leave us missing the people needed to replace the lost infra-structure in the wake of just that. Right now there are some who suggest that the academic industry is the next bubble, which might pop under the stress of the current economic woes. This might not leave the scientific culture which in part depends on university cultural elements intact. If advancement of technology ceased … do we depend on continued technological improvement or not? Our culture is dependent on cheap oil. While it is a matter of debate how long cheap oil will persist … it is not really a debate over that it will at some time cease to be cheap. When, is debated. That it will become dear is not. The unrest that might arise on transition from an oil based civilization to a petroleum-is-expensive one, like the other events noted above could be the proverbial straw, breaking the back.

The point is that there are still striking similarities between our culture and the Roman one. It failed … and perhaps a lesson there to be learned is that our time of peace and prosperity is not likely to be as permanent, nor is as robust as we pretend.

1. Surprise!
2. Construction in the US.
3. Hypocrisy.
4. Theodicy and history.
5. Hostile questions.
6. I’m opposed to Federal (and State) regulation of marriage (and a regular reader)… does that count?  Because that policy would certainly result in some areas not allowing it and other to do so.
7. Zoooom!!!
8. Ownership.
9. A young lady.
10. Sub-4. And media bias (assuming Fox = “the media”). And speaking of bias, the second link put scare quotes on the categorization of Ms Palin as a runner, a sub-4 hour marathon means that yes, indeed, she is a runner … scare quotes are inappropriate.
11. South America and some coup history.
12. Lessons for the rich.
13. Exactly.
14. Crises.
15. A film.

Chantal Delsol has a prior book to go along with The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century, a book titled Icarus Fallen. Tonight, I’m reading.

I did have a quick remark, which may or may not spur discussion. It seems to me Congress is becoming less and less influential? But is that because the Federal government in general is gaining power and that Congress is not doing so as quickly as the other branches so it only appears to be losing in influence? Rome as we all know had its Legislative body subsumed by the Executive. Why do we think that will not happen here?

If anti-abortion protesters threw stink bombs into abortion clinics, and threatened to demolish the building, what would happen to those protesters?  Well, they’d probably get thrown in jail and decried in the media.  (Perhaps get called a "Christianist" by Andrew Sullivan.)

But, change the cause, and those tactics become, as the LA Times says, "compelling" television.  Yes, terrorize for the right cause, and you get your own TV show.

Jill Stanek has the details on "Whale Wars", a Discovery channel show documenting the life and times of an crew of anti-whalers.  I saw an episode where they made it appear that they were going to ram the offending ship.  If people trying to save babies tried this, they’d be pilloried (by, no doubt, the LA Times). 

But do this in the name of animals, and the Left and the media put you on a pedestal.  Priorities, folks.

1. Four links on Iran.
2. 2009 Bulwer-Lytton noted.
3. The too many regulations and laws problem.
4. Victims strikes me as the wrong word.
5. Tax and oppression … is this where the left wants to go?
6. At least some on the left are unimpressed with Mr Obama’s tactics.
7. I think in some way those on the left who are pleased as punch with Mr Franken’s win betray themselves as pure partisan animals. After all, Franken is basically the left’s less talented equivalent of Ms Coulter. If she had won a highly contested Senate seat … how would they view those on the other side of the aisle praising that event?
8. Health care and the Baucus plan.
9. Consequences of policy.
10. Virtue leaves the room.
11. Bigots in places of power.
12. This keeps happening …
13. I’m not catholic but that’s a debate I’d enter.
14. Cars and US manufacture … and party … which I link as a GOP supporter driving a VW (diesel) and two Honda Insights (original version) which we got used.
15. A geek debate.
16. In which “possible worlds” means ones which are not in any way realistic.
17. Marriage.
18. Culture and Orthodoxy.
19. For the 4th. Here too.
20. And some patristics.

An interesting interview of Michael Horton on the Stand to Reason weekly radio broadcast, on June 8th (rss feed for weekly podcasts).

Horton, the author of Christless Christianity: the Alternative Gospel of the American Church, made some claims about Charles Finney that were quite astounding. In discussing the premise of the book, namely, that the American church has pushed Jesus aside and essentially put a self-help, therapeutic gospel in His place, Horton alluded to the theological stance of Finney, that which Horton posits is more tuned in with Pelagianism than with Arminianism. From the book,

As I will make clearer throughout various points within this book, ever since the Great Awakening, especially evident in the message and methods of evangelist Charles G. Finney, American Protestantism has been more Pelagian than Arminian.

In his essay, The Legacy of Charles Finney, Horton is more blunt,

Thus, in Finney’s theology, God is not sovereign; man is not a sinner by nature; the atonement is not a true payment for sin; justification by imputation is insulting to reason and morality; the new birth is simply the effect of successful techniques, and revival is a natural result of clever campaigns.

…

Needless to say, Finney’s message is radically different from the evangelical faith, as is the basic orientation of the movements we see around us today the bear his imprint: revivalism (or its modern label, ‘the church growth movement’), Pentecostal perfectionism and emotionalism, political triumphalism based on the ideal of ‘Christian America,’ and the anti-intellectual, anti-doctrinal tendencies of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It was through the ‘Higher Life Movement’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Finney’s perfectionism came to dominate the fledgling Dispensationalist movement through the auspices of Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Seminary and author of He That Is Spiritual. Finney, of course, is not solely responsible; he is more a product than a producer. Nevertheless, the influence he exercised and continues to exercise to this day is pervasive.

Wow!

I’m certainly not an authority on Finney, but an initial hearing of Horton has revealed many issues with which I agree on. That American evangelism, in the alleged Finney sense, could be the catalyst for many of the ills within the church, as well as cults outside it, which we see today, is astonishing.

From Politico (HT: Holycoast), former Governor Mark Sanford writes,

Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign - as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise - that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes - but that if my spirit wasn’t right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Well, Sunday afternoon I worked for a while on this essay, tonight I’m returning to it to flesh out the missing paragraphs. The first draft is now complete … editing will now commence. It’s a little long soooo … below the fold Read the rest of this entry »

Jump over to La Shawn Barber’s Corner and watch the latest in a long line of videos catching Planned Parenthood in the cover-up of statutory rape. 

Again I ask, how long before these places get investigated on a nationwide level? 

Front-page Daily Kos writer SusanG is exuberant about the energy bill that recently passed in the House.

In an unprecedented move, the White House retracted yesterday the embargoed text for the president’s usual weekly address, which it generally sends to news outlets the evening before the official Saturday remarks are posted on the White House website. The first address sent was focused on health care reform; the replacement discussed—and praised to the heavens—the energy bill that passed the House yesterday afternoon.

Clearly, the measure’s passage prompted a nimble switch in presidential priorities for the address, which President Obama often uses as the first salvo in setting messaging for the coming week—and for putting friend and foe alike on notice about what’s on the administration’s upcoming agenda. In fact, he’s so adamant about pushing his slant on the energy bill that today’s weekly address is mostly a reprise of a speech he gave earlier in the day yesterday, with a framing he clearly wants to drive home:

It’s all about the jobs, baby.

In the very first sentence, in fact, the President doesn’t just refer to the measure as an energy bill—it’s a piece of legislation that "will open the door to a clean energy economy." In fact, this is—make no mistake, he says—a jobs bill.

Yup, he talked about jobs.  He called it a "jobs bill".  And merely saying that makes things all golden.

‘Cept he said the same thing about the stimulus package, and we all know how that turned out.  A reminder:

Yeah, the President called the energy bill "a jobs bill".  After the last "jobs bill", unemployment rose to a point higher that he said we’d hit if we did nothing. 

But hey, he said this would be a "jobs bill".  For the Left, it appears that’s all that really matters.  Results?  Meh.  Intentions are everything.

• Bias.
• In which “Decades of affirmative action have done little to fix that” … where a thing not working don’t result in the obvious questioning of the method. Einstein had a pithy remark on that sort of thinking.
• I think it’s a mistake too if he’s recovered from his injury.
• Konkatsu.
• On Russia. More here.
• St. Paul’s relics dated plus unintended consequences of birth control medication.
• Can’t admit them as being evil if you want to negotiate … history repeats? Likewise.
• Economic foundations.
• That’s funny.
• Aging.
• Projections. And remarks on the same … or all they just lies, damned lies and you know … statistics.
• Race ya (dad?)!
• Pedophilia and numbers.
• Honduran considerations.
• Of Dickens and Trollope.

1. Climate anyone?
2. Credit and the meltdown.
3. Heh.
4. Art, modern.
5. On marriage vows.
6. Brandon has some good links.
7. Race and the court.
8. A shirt.
9. Favorite heresies?
10. Interesting ink.
11. A cricket race.
12. Iran and the view from the right.
13. Reading a book of note.
14. Almost colliding with the privacy/personal space contradiction of the pro-choice crowd.
15. On Mr Jackson, two links … one and two.
16. That GOP war on science.

This is the first draft of an essay for our parish newsletter. The topic is on “science and religion.” Given my short “dread bullet list” of ideas on the essay of last week, Brandon (of Siris) suggested helpfully that I try to make clear in the essay what specifically of “religion” and “science” I’ll be trying to identify and discuss, as both topics are huge and more than a little slippery. There was another suggestion that the “three stages” seen so far in our understanding of nature (the second bullet list item) was the most interesting. So without more ado, here is a preliminary draft, i.e., it is a little incomplete … however I offer it at this point for additional comments. It’s a little long so find it below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember when candidate Barak Obama said that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year?  That promise may not last 6 months into President Obama’s tenure.  George Stephanopoulos reports:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won’t rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.

"The president had said in the past that he  doesn’t believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here.  He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we’ll wait and see.  The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We’ve gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year — despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.

"One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other.  And you don’t get anything done.  That’s not the way the president approaches us.  He is very cognizant of protecting people — middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy.  And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.

So if you expect Obama to keep his promises, you’re just a stick-in-the-mud.  According to Axelrod, any line drawn stops the talks, and thus everything is negotiable. 

Well, at least we know where the administration stands now.  All the tough talk and "yes we can" talk were all just suggestions.  Hope for change, and such.