1. Biden and Israel.
2. A roundup from yesterday’s stage at le Tour.
3. This is not completely unrelated.
4. A post-theistic moral framework … which I plan to read carefully, but offer for discussion anyhow.
5. Some grist for the “smart” as a primary qualification for leadership roles mill.
6. Is our “stimulus” locally tailored?
7. Public healthcare and the UK.
8. What Obama plans to give up. But why?
9. A dissident passes.
10. First thoughts is going nuts on Charity in Truth (Benedict’s encyclical). That link is the first of many. How many secular or progressives will give it a serious reading and discuss online?
11. Beauty (and a foolish tree).
12. Wages, Wal-mart and choices Obama wants to take from us.
13. “There’s one piece of persistent dishonesty in the debate over health care that I would like to see vanish once and for all. It concerns the word…” and “hilzoy” didn’t get it. She has hers. I have mine … which is that private insurance isn’t the insurance I’ve paid for. I’d offer mine complaint is more common on her side than hers is on mine.
14. More skewed history from that man in the white house.
15. On Mr Obama’s South American mistake.

The Obama administration has finalized its rules regarding embryonic stem cell research.

The new rules, which go into effect on Tuesday, follow President Barack Obama’s March 9 executive order lifting a ban on embryonic stem cell research, an order that went into effect under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

They allow funding for research using human embryonic stem cells created by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) for reproductive purposes and no longer needed, in a departure from the Bush administration’s policy.

Not surprising.  We’ve known this was coming.  What I do find unbelievable is that the administration is still misrepresenting the debate, making it sound like Bush kept all this scientific knowledge away from us.

Bush barred federal funding from supporting work on new lines of stem cells derived from human embryos in 2001, allowing research only on a small number of embryonic stem cell lines that existed at the time.

Using human embryos for scientific research, which often involves their destruction, crossed a moral barrier and urged scientists to consider alternatives, the former president argued.

In reversing the ban, the Obama administration argued that the promise of medical breakthroughs through stem cell research could not go unexplored.

Unexplored?  Adult stem cells have been bringing us these breakthroughs for years, whaddya’ mean "unexplored"?  Adult stem cells have been coaxed into what amount to embryonic cells.  Unexplored? 

Obama wanted to restore science to its "rightful place".  I’d suggest he restore truth to it first.

1. Benedict’s encyclical is out. It’s on a topic of wider interest than just the catholic faithful … public charity.
2. Rot and the modern state.
3. A supporter of Mr Obama’s non-statements/non-action regarding Iran is not so appreciative of his error regarding Honduras. A non-supporter wonders what the heck he’s considering regarding Iran.
4. Obama in Moscow. More here.
5. Pro-choice and reality.
6. On Ms Neda the Iranian martyr and a question. Why were all the pictures cropped? Who did that? Why?
7. Cycling and pain … a very scientific (heh) explanation.
8. Evolution and a number.
9. Getting the music right.
10. On the Ms Palin stepping down kerfuffle.

My laptop’s disk controller died. The disk seems fine … but evening blogging might be sporadic for the next few days as my access to the family computer will face competition. Some random thoughts:

1. Our office decided (kinda on the spur of the moment) to enforce a “everyone must take one week of vacation” this month … because it looks right now like we’ll be real busy in Q3 and Q4 so it would be good to get some vacation out of the way. My eldest daughter is in summer school through July so I’m “flexing” 1 1/2 days per week for the final 4 weeks of July. I’m going to coordinate my schedule with the weather and my training. So it looks like I’ll come out of July in really good shape (and with a house projects done too).
2. On Le Tour, Mark Cavendish is unbeatable in sprint these days. On Sunday I read a report that Tyler Farrar, not a bad sprinter himself, was unable to hold his wheel when Cavendish let fly. That’s amazing. And no, I don’t think there is a “real split” in the Astana team. I think it’s a tactic to get everyone to waste energy and time watching Lance … who is not their main threat. Remember he was the fourth strongest Astana rider Saturday.
3. I looked over the “health care” site that the White House hosts. Remarkably free of actual concrete policy ideas. No mention of “vouchers” either, oddly enough (which came up in conversation today).
4. The day after I tell my wife that “I haven’t had a flat tire in over a year” is the day before I have a flat tire. If that happened in a film people would think the writer was overusing a cliché.

At least according to this article in The American Spectator, the answer is yes:

Stated or unstated, a driving force behind modern liberalism takes root in the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, in which abortion was legalized. The Court found a “right to privacy” guaranteed by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, saying that a woman had a constitutional right to abort her child up until the “point at which the fetus becomes viable.” The Court quite specifically defined viability as the point at which a fetus is “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.”

Quite aside from the political acrimony the Roe decision has generated from the day it was issued, the hot debate over President Obama’s health care proposal alters the abortion debate in a fashion quite unintended. If passed, ObamaCare could instantly set up a legal confrontation between the principle behind President’s health care system — and the principle undergirding Roe v. Wade. Which in turn would launch a political battle royal between proponents of government health care and abortion rights.

Why?

A reading of the Roe decision leaves no doubt whatsoever of what abortion advocates have claimed ever since the opinion was handed down. To quote the Supreme Court decision directly:

We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life.

If, as Roe clearly states, “the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health [emphasis mine] of the pregnant woman” — why doesn’t it have “an important and legitimate interest” in protecting the health of the rest us?

The article goes on to point out that the fundamental premise behind universal health care is that the government could be deciding who gets what medical care thus taking the decision-making process out of the hands of the patient and putting into the hands of bureaucrats. If that’s so, you can be sure that abortion advocates will be at odds with those who want a single-payor health system.

1. Foreclosures and the economy. Plus rightful blame regarding selling the stimulus and the aftermath.
2. Hmm, if Mr Obama nominated Moses I wouldn’t support that either. Uhm, newsflash but Moses is dead.
3. Sexual slavery.
4. Pope Benedict’s next encyclical is to be out soon.
5. This is another locus of fragility in our society.
6. The upside of a layoff.
7. It’s diet, dude. Diets differ.
8. Socialized medicine.
9. Indurain won a few tours as a ITT specialist, Cancellara could too, with the right team support. More here.
10. On weak man arguments.
11. Obama lying to the American public? Say it ain’t so.
12. More waste.
13. Obama getting Honduras wrong may have repucussions.
14. A film.
15. Ms Delsol predicted this sort of thing.

So Mr Obama wants a national healthcare plan. The right opposes this and the left is doing it’s best to shut down debate and shunt discussion aside, because the objections are strong and many. However, the right might be using the wrong tactic. Perhaps the best tactic is to embrace the dark-side.

Mr Obama points out that with a National Healthcare plan that people like himself, i.e., the wealthy, would as he did for his grandmother still be able to pay for the care of their loved ones directly out of their pocket. Yet this is very problematic for his vision of nationalized healthcare. For it provides the essential loophole the rest of us need.

The rest of us, that is the normal working stiffs while on the first glance don’t have the wherewithall to have the ready cash to pay for emergency healthcare do in fact have the same. For, we are currently paying for all of our healthcare. The solution goes something like this:

1. An enterprising group of ordinary middle class people, who realize they can’t pay for emergency medical care which isn’t or is poorly covered by government coverage (or for example to skip to the head of the queue like the wealthy will be doing) will do what free people have done from the start. They’ll organize (an activity oddly enough Contitutionally protected).
2. By organizing in groups, collectively people can, uhm, spread their risk. Each will make monthly contributions to a collective pool, managed financially by a small number of administrators, who will figure costs, apportion and manage benefits, and invest funds. In fact there is a word for such organizations, they were formerly known and health care insurance companies. You might even find employers adding supplemental health care as a benefit to attract qualified, skilled, and attentive labor. I’d even go so far as to suggest that health care companies currently in place might jump at this market.
3. Mr Obama suggested that you can keep your current insurance. But this is not in fact what will occur. Your current insurance will magically transmute itself to be just supplemental insurance. If Mr Obama and the left decides this is dirty pool, it will become black market dirty pool, and I for one see know reasonable argument for why a person could not participate in such a market. If Mr Obama can use his ready cash … any schmoe should be able to join a risk pool to effectively do the same.
4. There is in fact a big fat plus to this plan. Supplemental insurance of this sort and in this market is completely (so far as I know) unregulated. It’s new unplowed ground. Unregulated health care markets are in fact exactly what Mr Obama thinks his plan is avoiding and also (not?) oddly enough exactly what I happen to think the health care market needs. Health care needs wild wooly unregulated markets to spur innovation. The unanticipated unregualted supplemental insurance market might provide at least a small sampling of this very thing.
5. Thus perhaps the best thing for the right to do is cede the healthcare proposal but fight for realistic cost controls and appraisals. That the taxes for this boondogle will not get out of hand, which will in turn cause the government insurance to cover and provide for in actuallity very little in the way of health care in the absence of supplemental income. This is actually what the right argues for, very minimal bare coverage for all and abillity to pay provides the caps on health care for the rest.

So the only stumbling block for this argument is one I don’t see as of yet. Is there any argument that would prevent supplemental insurance from springing up? Realistically I don’t see any difference between Mr Obama paying for his grandmother’s care and a group of people, in free association, collecting to provide the same and spreading the risk.

Have a great Independence Day!

– image: © 2009 A. R. Lopez; Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Missouri

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.