1. Heh.
2. Hmm.
3. I read it and enjoyed it … it is not the first book in the series.
4. The work of Israel in economics.
5. Conrad.
6. Rwanda.
7. Lies.
8. Universality of humor.
9. A lesson for the TSA?
10. Zeitgeist.

I’m not a poet. Actually, a more candid statement more accurately state that I’m just about as far removed from being a poet and possessing poetic sensibilities as one might get. When I read prose fiction, I don’t see words … images and a sense of what transpires moves through my consciousness as my eyes and the reading process occurs at an unconscious level. When the story gets slow or I’m hurried by external circumstances, I turn the pages faster and the story picks up. Writing as a result comes very hard for me, as normally I don’t interact with sentence, phrase, and the art of the written word. Thus most of my reading misses and fails to perceive the quality and beauty of the prose. Narrative, yes, that I get, wordcraft not so much.

Similarly modern evangelical movements, especially in the US, are for the most part barking up the wrong tree. All to often they fall back on Pharisaic proclamations declaiming legalist standards regarding behavioural norms. There are indeed scriptural precedents for this. Scripture, for example Jeremiah and the minor prophets, abound in strong declarations of consequences of forgetting and falling away from God. But, for the most part, these same minor prophets are inspired by the Spirit of God and also promise reconciliation and a restoration of the covenant after a period of exile. I might suggest that few of those making those proclamations are in a position to offer the same promises, for they are not speaking as God’s prophets.

It is a Christian dogma that we come to Christ through the action of the Spirit of God working within us, drawing us to Him and to seek his Grace. So, how does that work? What does that action look like? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously remarked that the line between good and evil passes through every human heart, so too one might paraphrase this to offer that another line (perhaps with hook attached) can be found in every human heart, that being the one of the Spirit pointing out God to man. But unlike the more obvious maxim of Mr Solzhenitsyn it might be instructive to spend a moment considering what sort of features God’s hook in my heart looks like and what part in me it might be. Read the rest of this entry

1. Downhill from here.
2. A discussion of banks and credit.
3. Factoring economic growth with AGW.
4. Putting the finger firmly on what is not the problem, that is state entitlement obligations typically far outweigh their salary budget. A friend over break noted that NJ has a 10+ billion dollar budget deficit right now … total NJ state worker salaries are in the 3-4 billion range … so cutting them out completely will still leave a not inconsiderable deficit.
5. Oops.
6. Ugly practices.
7. A Saint I regard very highly noted.
8. On cognitive bias.
9. Hope and change denied.
10. Torture and Christian ethics symposium/roundup.

1. To start off, a little political satire.
2. N.T. Wright has a new book.
3. Men, women, and late-modernity.
4. Helping wrongdoers. Love thy neighbor?
5. Seeking Celts.
6. A quote on thinking about the unborn.
7. Texas doesn’t make sense to some.
8. Ms Pelosi bemused over Obama’s, well, lies.
9. The bombers will “always” get through.
10. Regarding the discussion over “hope/change” as lie … read the last paragraph, which puts it quite succinctly.
11. Ethics (rules) sinking the Democrats.
12. The three hierarchs and ecology.
13. Violation of some sort of separation of state and market.
14. The buck doesn’t stop in the white house apparently.
15. And to finish … a ski mask.

Commenter Boonton kindly and helpfully remarked that yesterday’s post was clear as mud. What follows is an attempt to clarify and expand on what I was trying to say.

In the book (Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More) that I was reading on the recent travels over break, I came across this passage (the first link is an Amazon book link, the second to a chapter provided on-line by the publisher … which you can likely also buy it from, but they won’t put any change in my tip-jar).

One of the central contradictions of socialism is a version of what Claude Lefort called a general paradox within the ideology of modernity: the split between ideological enunciation (which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment) and ideological rule (manifest in the practical concerns of the modern state’s political authority). The paradox, that we will call “Lefort’s paradox,” lies in the fact that ideological rule must be “abstracted from any question concerning its origins,” thus remaining outside of ideological enunciation and, as a result, rendering that enunciation deficient. In other words, to fulfill its political function of reproducing power, the ideological discourse must claim to represent an “objective truth” that exists outside of it; however, the external nature of this “objective truth” renders the ideological discourse inherently lacking in the means to describe it in total, which can ultimately undermine this discourse’s legitimacy and the power that it supports.

First, order of business then is to unpack this a little. The Lefort paradox is sort of a political analogue to Gödel’s incompleteness. It is (the author and presumably Mr Lefort) an observed quality common to ideological regimes. What it claims is that there is a operational split between “enunciation” and “rule”. The enunciation comprises the principles and philosophical grounding that forms the basis of the regime. For example, the Soviet regime was based on Marxist principles and dogmas. The rule then is then the implementation. The point is once a regime is established those involved in the regime can no longer actively question and modify the enunciation.  The ancillary point is that as a result of this paradox ideological regimes are fundamentally unstable. They are rigid because of this separation and unable to adapt in a changing world and circumstance. The book noted above makes a direct connection with the instability of the Soviet state with this paradox. It is a feature of ideologically based regimes.

Now, there are those (particularly Marxists and others) who often claim the governing ideology of the Western democracies and specifically the US is an ideology of market capitalism. But the question of whether market capitalism is in fact an ideology or not (and I don’t think that it really is an ideology) is not one which is germane to this point. For I think that the state set up by the founders is non-ideological … or at least it should be but very often isn’t. Market capitalism or consumerism or whatever are not encapsulated and defined by or within the Constitution. The US Constitution and government does not assume or enshrine marketcapitalism or in fact any particular ideology.

What sorts of governments are non-ideological? A government which is defined by structural and/or procedural elements are non-ideologically defined. Many governments of many types in the past were of this sort, being defined by procedural elements and all of these have been far more long enduring that the flash in the pan 19th and 20th century ideological experiments. So, if one measure of a good government is sustainability and durability, then defining ones state procedurally and not ideologically would seem to be a good thing.

The government as Constitutionally set up (and as well by the Declaration that preceded it) is non-ideological and instead is procedural. It provides a framework within which ideologies can co-exist. The Constitution sets up regulations and restrictions on the federal government which are routinely ignored by Congress, the SCOTUS, and the President. But, the point is if they chose not to ignore the Constitution (for example all rights not enumerated in the Constitution are not available to the Federal government) then some states (or small municipalities if given that freedom) could in fact become socialist, technocratic, theocratic or whatever they chose. Marxism for example is on the whole compatible with the US Constitution. Laws and structures could be set up by the state to support the tenets and dogmas of Marxist polity within the framework of the Constitution.

However, given the instability of ideologically based states, it would follow that enshrining and establishing ideological law on a Federal basis should be regarded as problematic and therefore avoided.  For this makes the state susceptible to the Lefort paradox and the accompanying problems. In fact the founders foresaw that and provided us with the 10th Amendment reserving what rights and powers not explicitly granted to the federal government to the States and the people. Alas, the time for the 10th arguably has come and gone, for de facto if not de jure this Constitutional provision has been repealed by rapacious erosion of the federal expansion/explosion in the 20th century.

Now, right and left, especially in the last decades have been becoming more and more ideologically separated and forceful. “Universal” healthcare is just the latest example (from the left) of this trend. Universal healthcare is ideologically motivated. It is part and parcel of a particular ideology.  Installing it on a federal/national level will enshrine ideology nationally. Now this statement will undoubtedly bring up a plethora of examples of federally mandated instantiation and promotion on ideological ideas and dogmas from the right. And yes, that’s right, this notion condemns those as well. And note, as well, an establishment of Universal healthcare violates the 10th Amendment, my right to not purchase healthcare is not one which is enumerated within the Constitution therefore it is reserved to the people.

So, if you’re for universal healthcare and specfically the bill being pushed in Congress now … you should be ashamed of yourself, it’s an un-Constitutional travesty (which is as well infected with the Lefort paradox) and furthermore ultimately it threatens the durability of the nation as constituted by the founders. If your response to that in turn is “so be it” recall that the corollary is “for only a short time.”

1. Anger management and more.
2. Well, those statistics mostly make sense if you consider that a grandmother from Iowa is just as big a threat as a foreign national from the Middle East. Of course when “they” figure that out, then they’ll jump to recruiting grandmothers from the heartland so profiling naturally is just stupid. And if you believe that ….
3. Problems with measuring growth.
4. Of art and work.
5. Two against torture (and the right), here and here.
6. A righteous leper.
7. Climate and lies.
8. Krugman skewered.
9. Nihilism. Yes, the “pressure” is off, but are you finding happiness?
10. Mortgages and the state.

In the book (Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More)I was reading on the recent travels over break, I came across this passage (the first link is an amazon book link, the second to a chapter provided on-line by the publisher … which you can likely also buy it from, but they won’t put any change in my tip-jar). 😀

One of the central contradictions of socialism is a version of what Claude Lefort called a general paradox within the ideology of modernity: the split between ideological enunciation (which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment) and ideological rule (manifest in the practical concerns of the modern state’s political authority). The paradox, that we will call “Lefort’s paradox,” lies in the fact that ideological rule must be “abstracted from any question concerning its origins,” thus remaining outside of ideological enunciation and, as a result, rendering that enunciation deficient. In other words, to fulfill its political function of reproducing power, the ideological discourse must claim to represent an “objective truth” that exists outside of it; however, the external nature of this “objective truth” renders the ideological discourse inherently lacking in the means to describe it in total, which can ultimately undermine this discourse’s legitimacy and the power that it supports.

Now, there are intellectual currents that would claim the governing ideology of the Western democracies and specifically the US is market capitalism, which some shoehorn to fit the definition of a ideology. Yet, I think that the state set up by the founders is non-ideological … or at least it should be but very often isn’t.

The government as Constitutionally set up (and as well by the Declaration that preceded it) is, as I see it, non-ideological. It provides a framework within which ideologies can co-exist. The Constitution sets up regulations and restrictions on the federal government which are routinely ignored by Congress, the SCOTUS, and the President. But, the point is if they chose not to ignore the Constitution (for example all rights not enumerated in the Constitution are not available to the Federal government) then some states (or small municipalities if given that freedom) could in fact become socialist, technocratic, theocratic or whatever they chose.

Universal healthcare is an ideological construct. It makes ideological assumptions about choice and freedom and government responsibility which fit within a “ideological enunciation”. It’s implementation will be direct violence to the intent and content of the Constitution. The right for me to choose to have health insurance (or more specifically to not have the same) is not enumerated in the Constitution, therefore by the 10th amendment this is a right not permitted for Congress to abridge.

So, if you’re for universal healthcare and specfically the bill being pushed in Congress now … you should be ashamed of yourself, it’s an un-Constitutional travesty.

1. Dem “merely Christian” Christians should “get out of the hall.”
2. An influential 19th century Russian Saint noted.
3. Canada and a cover-up.
4. State humor in Russia … a change noted.
5. Tick Tock.
6. Why some like higher taxes.
7. Mad (?) Hattery.
8. While I might question the opening statistic … an interesting point is made.
9. Not unrelated to the above, but from more philosophical stance.
10. Fundamentalism and danger.
11. Some advice for listening to a homily, much of which can be also applied to being attentive to rest of the liturgy as well.
12. A comparison made.
13. A birthday noted.
14. Eros crucified.
15. A thought experiment (#1?) on race.

1. I realize I’m not engaging the main thrust of Mr Niven’s post by this remark … but it seems to me that the statement “but what she can’t say is that utilitarianism itself has problematic theoretical consequences” is not correct. For certainly one can in fact make that claim. Perhaps what he meant is that the person he is criticising didn’t establish that point and should have made such an argument (first).
2. Devilish details.
3. Palestine and right of return (HT: Mr Loziwick)
4. Confession … not done right.
5. New decade or not. One way to think about it is, that those claiming to that this is the new decade count “like programmers”, who dance the waltz (queue some Strauss) counting 0-1-2 … 0-1-2. Do you start counting at 0 or 1. If you start counting things at one then this is not the turn of the decade. If you’re a programmer and normally do start your counting at 0, just look at the for loop idiom in C, Java, or C++ … then go for it … celebrate the change of decade. Oh, that post mostly looks not at the decade/not-decade discussion but the important maths advances of the last 10 years.
6. Evil.
7. What adjective would you use for these guys?
8. Considering humor.
9. Death and taxes … and the consequences of tax law and death (and end-of-life care).
10. I am noticed in a salutary list. Thanks.
11. Terrorism and myth … well, at least, “and a fisking.”
12. A bigot speaks.
13. Terrorism and intelligence considered.
14. Questioning response times and what that might suggest about priorities.

1. VDH offers a prediction.
2. From the “every disaster in Iraq was good news department” comes a demonstration that the chattering/political classes are cut from the same cloth.
3. #2 of 12.
4. Impending big noise.
5. Color me unsurprised.
6. Werewolves in London, err, Constantinople.
7. Science or not?
8. Teaching.
9. Killing time in Afghanistan.
10. Belief replaced by meta-belief, which is not uncommon (mostly on the left). In part I think that explains their envy of those who have strongly held convictions. People will not sacrifice much for a meta-belief.
11. For the right sort …
12. The administration can’t use google?

Well, the TSA objective of making transportation safe is back on the front-burner. Now the TSA screening is a poor seive. It is a largely static target and is very costly, the largest cost of course is in the lost time that travellers endure in negotiating long security lines. Furthermore, it is likely that much of their efforts are counter-productive. For example, making box-cutters freely available and common on flights would make it harder, not easier, for a terrorist or terrorists to hijack a flight. The “rules” of engagement with those who would interfere with the operation and direction of airplane do not get time to negotiate or to “make demands” known like they might do in the 20th century. Once a person is identified as hostile (a prospective anti-martyr) that person is quickly neutralized by his fellow passengers. The age of passive passengers has past once the 9/11 event occurred.

However TSA has a purpose. It is visible and reactive. It can take the appearance of being the primary and front line defence in a strategy to identify and interdict prospective anti-martyrs. War and espionage (to which this anti-martyr interdiction campaign is related) is in part one of misdirection. To that end, the TSA screeners take a very public and obvious role. They (might) be the public and obvious strategy which is a counterfeit. If indeed the TSA plays such a role, we as the voting public will not know that for as soon as it is common and public knowledge that the TSA is a large noisy feint … then their will be an outcry to remove it and an alternate deception will be harder to enact. Read the rest of this entry

1. ABC falsified?
2. A contrary man.
3. Not Stalin’s Russia anymore.
4. Heh.
5. On free choice and reason.
6. College and cost.
7. I’m unclear on what Jeremiah or one of the 12 literary prophets might offer regarding that suggestion, but I suggest they might not remain silent.
8. Connecting the dots?
9. The fall of Rome (the Western Empire).
10. “Acting white” = “Applying yourself in academically”. Hmm.
11. Sea ice, 3 megayears ago.
12. PC silliness. Almost 30 years ago, our dorm had t-shirts with the slogan “Where men are men and sheep are nervous” … I wonder if that would pass muster today.
13. Mr Obama and the Doctor.
14. A man and his job, this day in history.
15. A challenge for the science bloggers.
16. Anger management.

Today the church remembered the “slaying of the holy infants”, a voice heard crying in Ramah. Today living in as we are in the period of late modernity in the shadow of the great ideological killings of the 20th century (and likely waiting in the lull before the great ideological murders and atrocities of the 21st) this remembrance has no little relevance to our life today.

A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.
– Matthew 2:18 –

Recently I viewed the Polish film-maker Andrzej Wajda’s film Katyn. Like the verse above (and unlike much of the remembrance of the atrocities of the 20th century) the focus is not on the event and the slaying but on the impact on the families and specifically the mothers (and women married to those ) who were killed.

This raises for me a question, to which I will not offer any answer. When we remember the slain would it be better for our remembrance to concentrate our attention not on the specific details of those slain and their particular lives but to focus instead our attention on Rachel, i.e., the mothers and wives of those slain. For example, in our recent US history, the 9/11 monument and memorials to not denote and focus on those who were killed but those who mourn and are left behind?

1. In favor of theological ambidexterity.
2. More theology and the vampire myth.
3. Fasting?
4. Homosexuality and the church in Finland.
5. Stalin … still ruffling feathers.
6. Signs and signals.
7. Weather and climate.
8. A defense of Mr Polanski defused.
9. The AP ordinal lists and notions of athlete questioned.
10. Avatar discussed.
11. Stimulus and broken windows noted.
12. An economics essay recommended.
13. Mr Obama urges “learn” … lesson to be learned perhaps not the one he intended.

Mr Turk makes an interesting point in the conversation about ecumenical conversations, although I’m not entirely sure it’s the point he wants to make. A week or so ago he offered that those of other denominations, specifically the Roman and Easter churches were right with God only if they (accidentally) held to a Evangelical belief/approach to the Gospel. I think this point of view is held far more often by most people in every church/denomination. That is to say that any Christian church X thinks that members of church Y are in the soteriological pink inasmuch as those members in church Y (accidentally) hold to beliefs that are held in church X. That is, Mr Turk as an Evangelical thinks that the Catholic and Orthodox are saved if they hold an Evangelical understanding of the Gospel and those in the Roman hold that the Evangelical and Eastern are likewise correct when and where they (accidentally) hold to the Roman understanding of Gospel. And so on. Now I had been under the impression that I was “above the fray” in this regard. But on reflection, I am not. Read the rest of this entry