[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#36  Ralph Reed. Political muscle  b.1961 

 Ralph Reed is “perhaps the finest political operative of his generation,”[1] and has certainly been the most bare-knuckled evangelical political brawler of the last 20 years. As executive director of the Christian Coalition (1989-1997), he built one of nation’s most effective grassroots organizations and played a pivotal role in the election of the first Republican Congress in 40 years. Under his leadership, the organization grew from 2,000 over 2 million members and supporters in 3,000 local chapters.

Reed’s departure from the Coalition to form his own consulting firm in Atlanta provided a vivid demonstration of the importance of leadership.  The group was never the same, and today it is a shell of the organization it was in its heyday. Reed went on to have a successful career as a political consultant to both corporations and candidates. He headed George W. Bush’s southern campaign and transformed the Georgia Republican Party, building first-time Republican majorities in the State House and capturing the Governor’s Mansion and both U.S. Senate seats. 

Reed made a run for public office, but he found that his work as a political operative and consultant involved associations and tactics that didn’t bode well as a candidate. As one of the toughest of the modern political players, the ugly and risky strategies he used in high-profile political races did not look statesmanlike (or of a high ethical standard) in the bright light of a candidacy, and he was soundly defeated in the Georgia Republican primary for Lt. Governor in 2006.

This surprised observers who had seen nothing but success from the the young wunderkind:

Many thought “the young man who at 33 graced Time magazine’s cover in 1995 as “The Right Hand of God” might appear there again, perhaps a decade from now, taking the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Instead, there was Reed, just 45 but with crow’s-feet carved gently into his temples, offering a meager group of supporters a curt concession speech in a hotel ballroom in Buckhead. He had lost the primary to a little-known state senator named Casey Cagle in a 12-point landslide, Reed’s once invincible lead in the polls and fund raising eroded by a year of steady revelations about his ties to the convicted former G.O.P. superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. In the political vernacular that Reed loves to employ, he was waxed.”[2]

Nonetheless, Reed remains one of the brightest and most sought-after political consultants in the nation and is extending his public voice through The Faith and Freedom Coalition advocacy group, which he started in 2009. He also published an insightful political thriller called Dark Horse that demonstrated Reed’s knowledge of both national politics and Christian conservatives. 

[2] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1218060,00.html

“Anaphylaxis is an acute multi-system severe type I hypersensitivity reaction.” Such a reaction is brought on by the human body reacting to an allergen, or allergens, which it perceives as poisonous. Those persons, who happen to have a hypersensitivity towards certain allergens, such as peanuts, will experience an allergic reaction upon exposure to said allergens. The reaction, which runs in a cascade manner, has the potential to progress into anaphylactic shock, a condition where the body’s airways are swelled and constricted, and cardiac arrest occurs. In other words, if left immediately untreated, a person going into anaphylactic shock will most likely die.

Enter a post at both hellinahandbasket and Chicago Boyz in which James Rummel likens the banning of peanuts from commercial airline flights as one example of our leaning towards a nanny-state environment. From the Chicago Boyz post,

I’m voicing my bemusement over this situation because I just heard that there are tentative plans to have the US government ban all peanuts on commercial flights.

No more peanuts for you, you healthy bastard! Your inflight snack, which is nothing more than an ounce or two of roasted nuts, might cause the poor bastard sitting next to you to keel over from the odor!

My private charity for 18 years was a free self defense course for violent crime survivors, and I specialized in the elderly and disabled. I don’t think anyone can credibly claim that I am unsympathetic to the plight of those suffering from disabilities.

But banning peanuts because someone sitting somewhere on an entire airplane might be allergic? If there are people out there that are so hypersensitive to something so prevalent in our society, then they should be living inside of a bubble somewhere. If the problem is so deadly, their bodies so sensitive, then they could be passing someone in the street who ate a peanut butter sandwich and die in their tracks!

Now I read James on a pretty regular basis. He’s very level headed. While I can understand his frustration at the notion of losing access to airline peanuts, albeit for a few hours at a time for however many (or few) times he travels by air, I do take exception towards his attitude about those persons who do have a medically confirmed hypersensitivity towards peanuts (to be specific). His expecting someone so hypersensitive to live in a bubble is tantamount to expecting his disabled, elderly students, confined to wheelchairs / walkers, to stay in their homes and not bother the rest of us able-bodied persons to accommodate them as we get on with our daily business.

Yet, why the push for banning allergens, such as peanuts, from airline flights? In a word, time. As I mentioned earlier, the anaphylactic shock reaction is a cascade function, which is neither initiated or limited simply by the amount of allergen perceived. Therefore, reactions can occur with minute contact and reactions, once started, can progress into full anaphylactic shock. Once such a reaction occurs, treatment with epinephrine must be immediate. Those individuals who are diagnosed with hypersensitivity typically carry two doses of epinephrine with them at all times. However, while these injections provide immediate reversal of the allergic reaction, their effectiveness is limited in time (~30 minutes). Hence, it may be necessary to provide the individual with additional medical care.

This is why you see advocacy for limiting or banning allergens from airline flights and you don’t see advocacy for banning peanuts from, say, baseball games. I doubt that people, who are hypersensitive to peanuts, would choose to attend a major league baseball game, what with the bags of peanuts flying about. However, if they were to make the poor decision to attend such a game, and if they were to find themselves in anaphylactic shock, then a call to 911 would typically find paramedics at their side within minutes. The differences between the airline flight and the baseball game should be clear:  need vs. want, non-accessible vs. accessible medical facilities.

A commenter, emfdl, at hellinahandbasket, states,

Ban ‘em for all I care; I take my own peanut butter crackers with me when I fly. And I’m sorry, but if someone has that big a problem with an allergy, best they should stay in their air controlled bubble and let the rest of the world get on with life.

I don’t know who the person is, but if he truly believes that statement, then he’s an ignorant fool. And heaven help the likes of emfdl if they take that attitude while amongst me and my loved ones who suffer from allergic hypersensitivity.

Whenever I’ve heard of someone suffering a heart attack, while onboard an airline flight, it seems that the flight always diverts to the closest airport in order to provide that individual with the care they need. Rather than write-off individuals, with medically confirmed hypersensitivity, shouldn’t we extend them the same level of concern we do to other disabilities?

Also ref: The Peanut Allergy Answer Book

Good morning.

We are being fed the line from the Administration and Keynesian/neo-Keynesian economists that what we don’t need now government spending sanity, but more stimulus. So here’s the background and then the question …

A leading if not the primary cause of the current recession is the result of 20 years of government stimulus in the form of the government push for low/middle income housing. Now the difference there is during the last 20 years the government stimulus has been in the form or high risk loans which were then repackaged and sold to large banking establishments and foreign investors. This is to be distinguished from the current stimulus which comes in the form of government giveaways which are underwritten by large banking establishments and foreign.

Just had to point this out.  Since at least January, Glenn Reynolds has been noticing how often the term "unexpectedly" keeps showing up in news reports about the economy, either by the administration or by the reporters themselves.  Examples:

Jan. 8:  Employers unexpectedly cut jobs in December, even after the stimulus.

Feb. 4:  The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week.

Mar. 31:  Private payrolls dropped unexpectedly fell in March.  (Though at some point, the word "unexpectedly" was excised later.  Perhaps they realized Glenn was on to them.)

Jun. 5:  The withdrawal of federal tax credits for home buyers led to a steeper-than-expected [aka unexpected] plunge in May home sales in much of the U.S., as the housing market struggles to wean itself from government support.

Jun. 11:  Sales at retailers unexpectedly fell in May.

The first few pages of this search will give you an idea of how often this comes up.

Y’know, after all this "unexpected" bad news after the stimulus, you’d think that they’d try something different.  Instead they want to do the exact same thing.  That’s government for you.

Good morning.

 [I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

37.  Richard Cizik. Renegade  b.1951 

After nearly five years of tweaking conservative evangelical leadership on a variety of issues, but most pointedly global warming, from his post as the vice president and chief Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik finally accomplished what his persistent Christian adversaries could not. He self-destructed on a national radio program, stepping beyond NAE dogma not on an environmental issue, but on same-sex unions. After a run as one of the most-quoted evangelicals, occasionally taken to the woodshed by his NAE bosses but frequently glorified in mainstream media, Rich Cizik was fired by the association and found himself in the evangelical wilderness, with invitations and job offers only from his secular admirers and the most progressive evangelical allies.

 Cizik has been an honest and valuable voice for evangelicals for nearly 30 years, twisting the arms of politicians on issues important to the movement, such as abortion, pornography, religious freedom, AIDS, and—more recently— human trafficking, global poverty, climate change, and torture. The issues that gripped him broadened over the years, and while he remained theologically conservative and pro-life, the matters that began to stir his passions shifted from the historic issues of the culture wars to the causes usually championed by the evangelical left and progressives generally. 

 Cizik is described as one of the “new breed of evangelicals,” a label made popular by the New York Times[1] to give sashay to evangelicals who began to add their voices to those of progressives on topics such as the environment. He was on the point for this new part of the movement, but he outran his cover and left himself vulnerable to his adversarial brethren. Although evangelicals have been embracing many new missions, they aren’t moving as fast as Cizik or as far to the left.

 I’ve seen all of this happening while working at Rich’s side in the evangelical environmental movement, and as our public relations firm, Rooftop, represented him and the NAE government affairs office in the final years of his tenure. I have found Rich to be devout, earnest, ambitious, and slightly reckless.

 Cizik can easily be seen as one strand of a thread extending from the generation’s beginnings, in the tradition of Francis Schaeffer and Carl Henry–evangelicals who were strictly orthodox, but advocated a broad engagement with the world. “I’m not some upstart who’s trying to conjure up a new vision,” Cizik said. “This goes back a long way.”[2] His errors are tactical rather than theological.

More than anything, Cizik has been driven by this moral necessity for Christians to fight climate change.

He thought little about climate change until 2002, when he attended a conference on the subject and heard a leading British climate scientist, Sir John Houghton, a prominent evangelical. “Sir John made clear that you could believe in the science and remain a faithful biblical Christian. All I can say is that my heart was changed. For years I’d thought, ‘Well, one side says this, the other side says that. There’s no reason to get involved.’ But the science has become too compelling. I could no longer sit on the sidelines. I didn’t want to be like the evangelicals who avoided getting involved during the civil rights movement and in the process discredited the gospel and themselves.

“As a biblical Christian,” Cizik said, “I agree with St. Francis that every square inch on Earth belongs to Christ. If we don’t pay attention to global climate change, it’s pretty obvious that tens and or even hundreds of millions of people are going to die. If you have a major sea-level rise, then Bangladesh becomes uninhabitable. Where do you put its 100 million people? Do you put them in India? In China? They’d have no place to go.”[3]

In 2006, Cizik was part of a group that organized the Evangelical Climate Initiative[4], a major statement from 86 key evangelical leaders that described climate change as an urgent moral issue for Christians and called for the government to act on it. Cizik was part of the group of four people who planned ECI and made waves with its launch. (I was part of that group and served as campaign director for two years.) The real mastermind of the initiative, though, was Jim Ball, who for the last 15 years has been the progressive, intellectual glue for environmental work among evangelicals (now climate director for the Evangelical Environmental Network). It is Ball who mentored Cizik and taught him most of what he knows about both the science and the biblical basis for climate work. Ball, however, is a far more cautious operator, and while cheering Cizik’s progress on environmental issues, constantly counseled him to be more careful about his public statements on climate change as an NAE spokesman.

That counsel, as well as similar advice he received from Rooftop and others, went unheeded. 

It is a shame that Cizik is currently too toxic to have influence among mainstream evangelicals, for his instincts and convictions are important among a profusion of concerns. That may change as he continues to work within his new organization: The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, and as the disagreements on some issues begin to lose their edge. Also, while some of Cizik’s most virulent critics are in the final years of active ministry, he is a relatively youthful 58.

[2] Newsweek. January 28, 2010  http://www.newsweek.com/id/232669

[3] http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-27-jesus-climate-change-journey-of-evangelical-leader-rich-cizik/

[4] http://christiansandclimate.org/

Equal pay for equal work is something I think we can all get behind.  But feminism, at least on the liberal side of the equation, has come to mean that sexual equality is more important than nurturing as a mother.  Originally trying to get men to not think of women as sex objects, today’s liberal feminist is doing precisely that.

Lori Ziganto has the scoop: Empowerment: Women Now Choose Objectification Over ‘Creepy’ Breastfeeding.

When Sonia Sotomayor was questioned by the Senate before her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice, she sounded positively conservative.  As Don Surber notes:

A year ago, as senators were deciding whether to confirm her appoinment, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy asked: “Is It Safe To Say That You Accept The Supreme Court’s Decision As Establishing That The Second Amendment Right Is An Individual Right? Is That Correct?”

Then-Judge Sotomayor replied: “Yes, Sir.”

NewsBusters has the video.

However, she voted against individual gun rights a couple of days ago.

In her dissent against the finding that the city of Chicago’s ban on handguns is unconstitutional, Justice Sonia Sotomajor said: “I Can Find Nothing In The Second Amendment’s Text, History, Or Underlying Rationale That Could Warrant Characterizing It As ‘Fundamental’ Insofar As It Seeks To Protect The Keeping And Bearing Of Arms For Private Self-Defense Purposes.”

It does establish "an individual right" but doesn’t protect "private self-defense purposes".  Right.  I’m not a constitutional law scholar, but what tortured reasoning can you have in mind when you agree with the first statement, and then make the second statement?  Or is it just out and out lying? 

And now Elena Kagan is in front of the Senate, and Paul Mirengoff notes, "As with Sotomayor’s articulated vision, Kagan’s could have come from the lips of John Roberts."  Is this what we can expect from Obama nominees now and in the future; not just a resistance to being pigeon-holed, but being completely evasive to the point of mischaracterizing their own views? 

I hate to have to wind up with two justices that are not at all what they sold themselves to be in order to find out how true this may be, but this does point out how important elections are.  The enduring legacy of Obama, besides the enormous debt we’ll be saddled with, are Supreme Court justices that are entirely, 100% political, willing to say whatever it takes to get their job.

 [I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#33.  Richard Land. Lobbyist  b.1946 

 Conservative evangelicals are inclined to oppose East coast elite, Washington insider, Princeton-Oxford educated, career lobbyists. That is unless he’s their lobbyist.

Enter Richard Land, the chief Washington lobbyist of the Southern Baptist Convention and a key part of the fixed conservative set in the culture wars.  Land has presented what he sees as Southern Baptist interests to policymakers and media for more than 20 years. Land is clear where the bulk of Southern Baptists will come down on most issues. But except for the convention resolution process once a year, there is really no mechanism for Land and the SBC agency he heads, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC)—the official policy voice of the SBC—to derive the SBC position. Land often develops his own position and builds support from key players in the denomination. He knows well what will sell in the SBC, which helps him steer clear of positions that would attract the ire of Baptists across the country.

Land is a formidable public spokesman and culture warrior. “People think they’re going to be dealing with some bootstrap preacher,” said Larry Eskridge, a the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College. “But he can match pedigree and training with the best of them.”[1]

He helped stop the 16-million-member SBC’s  slide to the left in 1979, and he has a hand in most of its key policies, from its 1995 apology for having supported slavery, to its 1998 statement that wives should submit to the leadership of their devout husbands.

While most ERLC positions are predictable—most recently its stubborn opposition to even nuanced climate change legislation—Land does occasionally surprise.

In 1994, he was a signer of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document,  not a popular expression of ecumenism in the SBC.

 In 2010, Land announced the denomination’s support for establishing a path to U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrants. Land said that after borders are secure, there needs to be a way for them to pay back taxes, take a civics course and get in line with others seeking legal status. Similar to many ERLC positions, the reasoning on immigration is both spiritual and political.

The spiritual: “It is love your neighbor, do unto others. This is a kingdom issue. They are disproportionately suffering because they are forced to remain in the shadows because of their illegal status.”

The political: “Hispanics are hard-wired to be social conservatives unless we drive them away. They are family oriented, religiously oriented and pro-marriage, pro-life … tailor-made to be social conservatives.”[2]

 Land’s positions are not always the winning ones within the convention. In 2010, he took a hard line on responses to the Gulf oil spill; one writer called him the “drummer in the right-wing parade of blame” of the the environmental movement and the Obama administration, while treating British Petroleum gently.[3] A more balanced resolution for SBC action passed overwhelmingly at the 2010 convention and although Land later expressed his support, he privately sought to undermine it at the committee level.

 Land, who Time magazine called “God’s Lobbyist,” exercises great power because of his intellect and persuasive skills, but also because of his ability to choose his tactics as a SBC powerhouse—either leading (in times when he has deep personal convictions) or following (when he can claim to be only a spokesman for the denomination).

 He’s done both with great effectiveness in a generation of public evangelical engagement in the halls of power.

[2] Tennessean.com, June 8, 2010

[3] http://baptistplanet.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/richard-lands-misanalysis-of-the-deepwater-horizon-catastrophe/

Good morning. 

1. Cinema.
2. Bucks and babies.
3. 12 billion down the rathole.
4. “Jewish” encylopaedia, whatever that means.
5. Mr Benen and Mr Obama offer to cut down on breathing, you know, to set an example for the rest of us.
6. The judiciary.
7. Bikes, zooom … and right back at ya!
8. At the end of the fast, here and here.
9. After publicly complaining about the substance in the review process. Ms Kagan follows suit, hypocrite.
10. Truth and Ms Kagan.
11. Legal metalinks.
12. Heh.
13. Re-segregation considered.

Capitalistic greed as our problem? I’ve been hearing a lot of that lately. Especially when traversing topics such as the BP oil spill or nationalized healthcare. Add to it the bit about inequality among the masses and you’ve usually put the cherry on top. Self-deprecatory statements, such as,

Moreover, I am also enraged by the sheer amount of greed, which exists in our country today—and not just our country, but it is passing onto other nations too.

seem to make it pretty clear – it’s the fault of those greedy, capitalistic Americans.

If greed was truly the problem, then we should all become sincere communists (I know, that’s an oxymoron). But greed isn’t the problem… it’s selfishness. Selfish rich, selfish poor, selfish capitalists, selfish communists, etc.

And there’s no human way around that.

###

And about those rich folk… in the Bible. Interesting thoughts at Stand to Reason.

###

NOTICE – No Guns Allowed A law, in New Mexico, is going into effect which will allow concealed carry weapon (CCW) permit holders to dine in establishments which have a beer & wine license. Restaurant owners do have the prerogative, however, to not allow such permit holders to bring their weapons into the restaurant, simply by posting a notice on the premises. From the Santa Fe New Mexican,

The law, passed by the Legislature this year, will allow people with concealed-carry licenses to take their guns into restaurants with beer-and-wine licenses. However, restaurant owners have the right to keep guns out of their establishments. All they have to do is post a sign.

Wow. I had no idea it was so simple to keep guns out of an establishment! Maybe someone should start posting these types of signs at bank entrances?

###

Too bad they didn’t have a “no guns allowed” sign. From the Orange County Register,

Police are looking for a male suspect in connection with an armed robbery that took place in Yorba Linda on Sunday.

The robbery occurred around 12:54 p.m. when a lone man walked into the Round Table Pizza on Yorba Linda Boulevard near Lakeview Avenue, brandished a black handgun and demanded money from the cashier, Brea Police Sgt. Bill Smyser said.

###

The unengaged president. Mark Steyn provides, as always, a good read. An excerpt,

To return to Cohen’s question: “Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?” Well, he’s a guy who was wafted ever upward – from the Harvard Law Review to state legislator to United States senator – without ever lingering long enough to accomplish anything. “Who is this guy?” Well, when a guy becomes a credible presidential candidate by his mid-40s with no accomplishments other than a couple of memoirs, he evidently has an extraordinary talent for self-promotion, if nothing else. “What are his core beliefs?” It would seem likely that his core belief is in himself. It’s the “nothing else” that the likes of Cohen are belatedly noticing.

Good morning.

1. Of COIN and Koran.
2. Boom.
3. Guns. Here and here. As a recent purchaser of firearms myself, I’d note I got two .22s because the .22LR costs about 3.5 cents a round instead of 50 … and all the books all say you need to fire thousands or rounds to get familiar and accurate. The 22 is affordable.
4. Yah think?
5. I thought Thomas was the die hard originalist not the whole court.
6. Odd crossword word.
7. How to burn your phone.
8. Why do no people wonder about the reverse that “protected” race based and gender based groups can be led by those they’d wish to exclude?
9. Love and sand.
10. Well, as an ex-protestant and non-Anglo Saxon … I suppose I should applaud (and yes, I remain white). 🙂
11. Mr Obama’s rights record.
12. Mr Krugman, here and here.

A little personal story … and the outcome I blame on long time commenter, JA aka the Jewish Atheist.

About a month ago, after dinner with my wife and youngest daughter, we stopped in a sporting goods store with an eye to pricing camping equipment. The store didn’t have a good selection of “real” (backwoods, hiking/canoeing) gear but my youngest announced she needed a new swimsuit.

Blam! I was trapped. Time just gets sucked away when two women start shopping. The two of them dived into the suits picking out various ones and trying on a vast array of offerings. So I was left to wander the store. I didn’t find much. An odd or end to help clean the pistol (.22 caliber Ruger Mark III) we use for our weekly range outing. The only other thing I found (and purchased) was an inexpensive Buck folding knife. Which … my eldest daughter then appropriated for herself. Hmmph.

Now, some months ago, JA had recommended a Spyderco “Sharpmaker” for keeping kitchen and other knives sharp. I had taken it to a family gathering some time ago and whiled away some hours gainfully sharpening our hosts cutlery and as a tool it’s worked quite well.  Anyhow, having had one knife snatched like that led me to shop for another … and I picked up a book on “whittling” from Amazon (The Little Book of Whittling) after all you can’t do anything without more books. 🙂

Seeing that Spyderco made a sharpener so I checked and lo and behold they make knives too, e.g.,   the Spyderco Tenacious. I got this one. Which was then appropriated by my youngest daughter. In (mock) desperation, I purchased a third which I claimed for myself by calling it a “father’s day” present (specifically this one, Spyderco Dragonfly).

So now we are all spending some quantity of spare time with our new hobby making pieces of wood smaller and trying not to nick our fingers too frequently. I did in fact buy more bandages just last week.

Timothy Dalrymple, in his second article of a series on the Tea party, asks this question.  (His first was; is it a social justice movement?  More are coming.)  He asks this particular question because of a similar question asked by Jim Wallis, he of Sojourners and the Christian Left. 

Dalrymple notes that, for starters, that for a guy who doesn’t like to be caricatured (and who does?), Wallis certainly uses it to make his points.  Some excerpts from Dalrymple:

The first sleight of hand comes in the phase, "Tea Party Libertarianism." Wallis poses the question: "Just how Christian is the Tea Party movement — and the Libertarian political philosophy that lies behind it?" Yet not all Tea Party supporters are Libertarians, and Wallis twists the Libertarian "political philosophy" beyond recognition.

[…]

How, then, does Reverend Wallis describe the "political philosophy" of the Tea Party? Wallis likens the Tea Partiers to the murderous Cain, who believed or pretended to believe that he was not his brother’s keeper.

[…]

Finally (I will deal with the racism charge in the third part of this series), Wallis condemns the Tea Party’s "preference for the strong over the weak" through its "supreme confidence in the market" — indeed, in a "sinless market" that has no need for oversight or regulation. The values of the Tea Party do not honor "God’s priorities" but "the priorities of the Chamber of Commerce."

These are powerful claims. They are also patently absurd. Only those who are already conditioned to expect the worst of political conservatives can believe that this represents a fair and honest account of the beliefs and values of the Tea Party movement. Would any Tea Partier — any single one, out of the millions across America who support or participate in the movement — actually accept this definition? It is an astonishing distortion of the Tea Party message to reduce it to "just leave me alone and don’t spend my money."

Rather than painting the movement with the brush of Rand Paul, Reverend Wallis might have consulted the polling data that shows what the majority of Tea Party supporters believe. He would have found a reality that defies the caricature.

Dalrymple proceeds to deal with these caricatures one by one, showing that Wallis either has no idea what the Tea Partiers really stand for, or who they really are.  Dalrymple does a good job of being moderate in his pronouncements, noting, in many places, that neither side, Wallis nor the Tea Partiers, inhabit the extreme positions they each are often accused of, and does a great job of explaining what’s really going on in conservatives’ heads.  Example:

What also needs to be refuted is the notion that resistance to higher levels of taxation is necessarily selfish. To resent a tax hike (or the prospect of one) is not to neglect the needy, and to wish to retain control over the funds one has secured in order to care for one’s family is not necessarily selfish. Conservatives generally are more generous with their giving than liberals, yet they resent it when a distant bureaucracy extracts their money in order to distribute public funds to the special interest groups on whose votes and donations they rely. Conservatives would prefer that care for the needy remain as local and personal as possible. Jobless Joe is more accountable to use the money he is given wisely, and to strive to become self-sufficient as swiftly as possible, when he receives that money from the members of the church down the street. This is not to deny that government services are needed, but it is to refute the notion that "taxed enough already" is a slogan of economic narcissism.

So, is this a Christian movement?  Dalrymple’s answer is a solid "yes and no".  I’ll let you read the whole thing to get his complete take on it, but answering this provided another point of moderation between the two sides.

In the New York Times poll, 39% of Tea Party supporters identified themselves as evangelicals or "born again," and 83% identify as Protestant or Catholic. If Wallis were correct in his description of the philosophy that undergirds their movement, then these conservative Christians would be abandoning the essential ethical principles of their faith. Yet this is hardly the case. What separates Jim Wallis from the Tea Partiers is not a difference of moral quality, or the presence and absence of compassion, but a different vision of the society that biblical love and justice require.

This is a much more sober description of the differences that in Wallis’ article.  In it, he labels some of the (supposed, caricatures) values of the Tea Party as "decidedly un-Christian", while at the same time saying he wants to "have the dialog".  In reality, he’s made up his mind already.  Dalrymple, arguing from the Right, gives both sides a benefit of the doubt that Wallis doesn’t seem to be willing to do.