April brings spring showers … and the great one day classics. The professional cycling calendar runs from, well, January through October. July’s big race, the Tour de France is known by everyone. Many people and all cyclists know that the Tour is one of three “Grand Tours” three week races with the other two being the Giro de Italia which begins in May and the Vuelta a Espana which begins in late August or early September. These three week races are complex events with many overall races within races occurring and complex strategies unfolding over three weeks of racing.

Stage racing is a major part of the professional cycling calendar but is not everything. There are also the one day races. The most prestigious one day races are the “classics”, four of which are coming up over the four weekends in April. In stage racing recovery is key, one can never go too far into one’s reserves of endurance and exhaustion because one is required to respond and be able to race well the next day. With one day races that is not a factor. The race is all or nothing with everything on the one finish. The Tour GC (overall time winner) can be won by a rouleur (time trial specialist) or a climber or a rider who is excellent at both. The spring classics are won by the “hard men” of the peloton. The spring classics are often cold and wet, littered with short steep climbs, and the road conditions often include Northern European cobblestones, or the pavé.

This weekend the first of the one day classics for this year will be held, the Ronde van Vlaandaren, or in English the Tour of Flanders. Here is a short interview with a former Ronde winner on this particular race.

Some Representatives who voted for the "AIG tax" privately expressed regret after the emotional vote.  It doesn’t look like it’s actually going to pass now.  Looks like we might have dodged that bullet.

Or not.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

(Emphasis mine.)  The bill passed in the Financial Services Committee on a nearly-party-line vote.  I’ll let you guess which party was for it and which against. 

The government is doing what government does best; increase its power.  When there is that much money flowing around DC, it is bound to become the tool used to that end.  Tax cuts and smaller government would reduce that ability, if not that propensity.  Our founding father knew this very well, which is why we started out with a more decentralized form of republic.  Over time, the federal government has indeed become powerful enough to buy into the public sector and start running the show, deciding who can work for your company and, if this passes, for how much.

Remind me again how these very fears were, and are still, labeled "paranoia"?

1. Ethics and the state.
2. Relativity and light.
3. From the other left coast.
4. Bubble as myth.
5. The War on Terror is over? Hmm.
6. Feds as super-CEO.
7. Who was Rambam?
8. Octopus orgy.
9. Talking Fireproof.
10. No … (as an answer to the lede … and following the essay concurs).
11. This is not, to my view, persecution.
12. A five favorites list.
13. I don’t know if spectacular is the adjective I’d use by it is impressive.
14. Data on AIDS, via Mr Dreher.
15. Yer nuts.
16. What is the why for Mr Obama? More here.
17. One wonders if as the President gathers even more power, if the Democrats realize that there won’t always be a Democrat in the White House?

Considering the amount of discussion that an offhand comment on fidelity and monogamy stirred up, I’m considering returning to a chapter by chapter overview/discussion of what I feel is the hands down best book on the subject of relationships, dating, and marriage. Namely the compilation by Amy and Leon Kass entitled Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying.

This book is not polemical or one which takes any position in particular. The purpose of the collection is not to drive the reader to any particular conclusion but instead provide a resource of thoughtful discourse on the insights of the great thinkers of the past on the subject. In that vein, it follows more in the line of a Great Books approach, and comprises with a few exceptions a fairly complete series of excerpts collected from the Western Canon which deal specifically with courtship, romance, and marriage. Each excerpt includes a brief half page to one page introduction describing the piece, providing some thoughts to motivate the reader, and in some cases assist the reader to penetrate the stylistic methods employed by the author. Contributors include Rousseau, Aquinas, Darwin, Shakespeare, and many more.

I began that endeavor a year or more ago but set it aside, should I return to it? Would that be interesting?

…when the President of the United States can do this:

The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said.

On Monday, President Barack Obama is to unveil his plans for the auto industry, including a response to a request for additional funds by GM and Chrysler. The plan is based on recommendations from the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, headed by the Treasury Department.

The White House confirmed Wagoner was leaving at the government’s behest after The Associated Press reported his immediate departure, without giving a reason.

General Motors issued a vague statement Sunday night that did not officially confirm Wagoner’s departure.
"We are anticipating an announcement soon from the Administration regarding the restructuring of the U.S. auto industry. We continue to work closely with members of the Task Force and it would not be appropriate for us to speculate on the content of any announcement," the company said.

The surprise announcement about the classically iconic American corporation is perhaps the most vivid sign yet of the tectonic change in the relationship between business and government in this era of subsidies and bailouts.

Don’t want to call it "socialism"?  Fine, but don’t call it "capitalism", either. 

I will note that this descent into "whatever-it-is-ism" was entered in mutually.  GM begged for money, the government gave it to them, and then government started pulling the strings.  Both sides contributed to this, but just because it was consensual doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. 

This is path taken by most anyone who takes money from the government, whether they be churches, schools, welfare recipients or major automakers.  When you surrender your self-sufficiency, you lose much more in the bargain than originally thought. 

Could companies be bailed out by the government without leaving capitalist, free market principles?  Possibly.  But is this move by the President in line with those principles?  Not really.  An underperforming CEO would be removed by any responsible leader…of the Soviet Union.  We should not be putting our President in the position of being able to do that, and he shouldn’t be accepting that position.

Don’t want to call it "socialism"?  Fine.  What do you want to call it?

1. Rome had hundreds of religions beneath its wings. Why kill the Christians?
2. A journal noted, Syriac Studies.
3. A great rider’s win noted.
4. Another coveted prize noted as well here.
5. Read the bill?
6. “Incite?”
7. That’s not what “persecution” means I think.
8. Mech-speak.
9. After the horror, the wife of the slain speaks.
10. Popular song as lede.
11. A short secular argument against abortion.
12. Imagining what it should look like.
13. A pretty bike.
14. Odd, the “bonuses” given to politicians like Obama aren’t mentioned in this piece, and many are larger than those mentioned here.
15. Beer. Map.
16. A tax noted.
17. I suppose actual mega-church members will disagree.
18. Obama’s buddy.
19. On drawing the line.
20. On extraordinary claims and evidence.
21. Freeman Dysan, two statements, here and here.

The phrase “In but not of” is heard in Christian circles, entreating and encouraging the Christian community to live and love their neighbors but to remember that many of the concerns of the secular community affect the faithful differently than the secular. Catholic Saint and Jewish philosopher Edith Stein had a sea change in her life. She went from being from one of the preeminent German philosophers and an atheistic Jew and converted to Christianity, becoming a Carmelite monastic and ultimately perishing in Auschwitz. According to the intellectual biography of her life by Alasdair McIntyre, her conversion was in a large part driven by the surprising (for her) reaction of her Christian friends to the deaths of family and friends during the trials of the Great War.

Apparently today we are undergoing great global economic trials. Our response to stressful times is an opportunity for martyrdom (which means witness). And it will be witness to our beliefs … or lack thereof. And, I suggest that if our reactions and our actions are indistinguishable from our secular neighbor … then our faith is indistinguishable as well.

Don’t believe what you hear about the decline of the evangelicals. 

There isn’t a more potent force in American life and society than active, believing evangelical Christians, marked by their vibrant faith, clear expression of their beliefs, biblically informed habits, and selfless and life-altering ministries.  Where can you find these believers?  They’re everywhere–in every town; nearly on every block.  Their numbers are increasing and their involvement in all aspects of national life and policy is growing and morphing and infiltrating like a viral storm.

Are evangelicals in decline, as posited by Rodney Clapp in Christian Century?  He writes:

[Evangelicalism is in] deep trouble because it faces a significant cultural and generational shift. Identifying itself with the wedge tactics of the political right, which is now falling (at least for a time) out of power, the movement cannot easily shake the image of being primarily negative and destructive. Indicators show that it is losing attractiveness not only among unconverted fellow Americans, but among its own young.

More significantly, evangelicalism is in deep trouble because the gospel really is good news, and reactionaries are animated by bad news, by that which they stand against. Undoubtedly Jesus Christ faced and even provoked conflict. But he embraced conflict as a path or means to the health and liberation—the salvation—of the world. And he hoped for salvation even, perhaps especially, for his enemies. If evangelicalism is innately reactionary, then it can follow Christ only by being born again.

Clapp pretends that the evangelical church is the same as the vocal evangelical politic whose public voice has been dominated by its most conservative leaders.  As a former senior writer at Christianity Today, he knows better; but the feigned confusion serves his purposes here.

The faithful and vibrant American Christian church that is evangelical in its beliefs, either as defined by Barna or by Gallup is very different from the evangelical politic.  While the two configurations align theologically and indeed in some key areas of public concern [Clapp calls them wedge issues], they are very different and the thriving church at worship, at life, and in service transcends and routinely ignores the residents in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

I have learned in 31 years consulting with Christian ministries and causes that while many activists wish that local evangelical churches and their members would be politically active, the vast majority of them are not.  Although they vote in high numbers, evangelical Christians are not particularly political and their churches rarely use facilities and services to advance any political positions. 

I know this is extremely difficult to believe for people whose understanding of evangelicals comes only from mainstream media, which portray evangelicals as heavily involved in partisan and issue politics.

There are evangelicals who are very active in politics. My wife, Debbie, and I have been quite active in partisan and cause-related political action.  But we are the exception, and friends and family often turn to us for readings on the political environment.  Our level of political involvement is extremely rare among our church friends and our strongly evangelical families.

The levers of institutional power and notably the microphones and gateways of communication of the evangelical politic have been controlled by politically oriented conservative evangelicals for some time (often to good effect, in my opinion, but certainly not always).  

The power of these leaders is waning as they age—many are in the 70s and 80s–and as the next two generations begin to be heard.  These new generations are open to many new areas of public concern, and yes they are generally more open to at least a new tone on issues such as gay rights.  I agree that if the NAE board was dominated by one generation removed from the present leadership, Rich Cizik would still be working the halls of power for the association. 

But to suggest that young evangelicals are politically and socially to the left of their forebears on most issues is wishful thinking by those who would benefit from that shift.  It’s much more complex than that, and on abortion, polls show that young evangelicals are more pro-life than their parents.  

While young evangelicals are more concerned about the environment than the previous generation, this is hardly a swing to the left.  As I have said previously, a green evangelical does not a liberal make. 

For a number of years the public relations firm I was with represented Jerry Falwell as public relations counsel.  We saw over and over how Falwell was featured and interviewed by mainstream media about topics on which he clearly was not the most qualified evangelical spokesman.  Jerry never met a microphone he didn’t love, and media loved to portray him as the face and voice of American evangelicals.

Of course he wasn’t, nor are many of the current common voices of the evangelical politic.  But they are presented as such, even as writers such as Clapp portray their declining influence as evangelical decline. 

In the recent national survey that found a decline in the number of people who call themselves Christian, the reach of evangelical belief spread.  One in three people in the country now consider themselves to be evangelical Christians.  But note the following from the study itself (I couldn’t find this in any media reports)–

[The study] “reveals the dimensions of a significant trend in “belief” among the 76 percent of contemporary Americans who identify as Christians. These respondents were specifically asked “Do you identify as a Born Again or Evangelical Christian?” No definition was offered of the terms, which are usually associated with a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ together with a certain view of salvation, scripture, and missionary work. As the table shows, 45 percent of all American Christians now self-identify in this manner and they account for 34 percent of the total national adult population. What is significant is the recent spread of Evangelicalism well beyond Christians affiliated with those groups that are members of the National Evangelical Association so that millions of Mainliners and Catholics now identify with this trend.”

The CNN story on the study said:

The survey also found that “born-again” or “evangelical” Christianity is on the rise, while the percentage who belong to “mainline” congregations such as the Episcopal or Lutheran churches has fallen.  One in three Americans consider themselves evangelical, and the number of people associated with mega-churches has skyrocketed from less than 200,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million in the latest survey.

If there is national evangelical leadership, it has shifted to the megachurches, but it is largely pastoral, not political

Certainly, all is not well. There is work to do on the image of evangelical Christians, as explored by Gabe Lyons and Dave Kinnamen in UnChristian.  Their introduction: 

Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of . . . unChristian.

Groundbreaking research into the perceptions of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds reveals that Christians have taken several giant steps backward in one of their most important assignments. The surprising details of the study, commissioned by Fermi Project and conducted by The Barna Group, are presented with uncompromising honesty in unChristian.

But those who follow Christianity closely know that the true heartbeat of evangelicalism isn’t behind microphones or plying the halls of Congress.  If you pay attention, you hear the heartbeat of evangelicalism:

• In the villages of Angola, where Christians involved with Living Waters International have provided clean water to thousands of people in recent years in a country where 56 percent of the people don’t have clear water.
• In an abandoned building that now serves as a school and clinic for rescued child soldier girls just north of Gulu, northern Africa, where young woman and their babies born in captivity are given the basic building blocks of new lives they never thought they’d see by a group of Christians operating under the name ChildVoice International.   
• In a series of gers—round teepee-like structures—in northern Mongolia, where Christians in a group called LifeQwest houses hundreds of orphans that they swept off the brutally frigid streets of Mongolian cities to literally save their lives and give a future vision to children of an ancient people.   
•  In the homes of staggering Atlanta neighborhoods, where Christians in the Charis Community Housing group help families purchase and care for homes in ways that will help them recover from the foreclosure crisis that has hit the inner cities far worse than the cushy suburbs.   
• In a large churchyard garden in Boise, Idaho, where a retired Christian farmer helps dozens of church volunteers grow fruits and vegetables, “producing and giving away over 20,000 lbs. of produce, feeding approximately 1281 families, representing around 4108 individuals.” 
• At an unimpressive building on New York Avenue in Washington, D.C., Christians at The Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center take in down-and-out drug addicts and rather than just getting them off drugs, they get them into a new relationship with Jesus Christ—and the recidivism rates are dramatically better than run of the mill recovery centers.

The heart of American evangelicalism beats in places and ministries such as these, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of other places in this country and around the world. 

We see faithfulness in small group meetings in the homes of millions of Americans that are opening their Bibles and searching together for the way God wants them to live their lives.  Yes, the heart beats in worship in churches blanketing the country—most small, 75-200 members, and in some very large.  People eschewing an extra hours sleep on Sunday morning to point to their Creator and give praise and to listen to a minister trying to help them in their walk with God. 

Don’t believe that evangelicalism is fading.  It’s changing to be more relevant to the problems of a new time, just as it has for millennia.  And its political power rises and falls and stagnates.  But bellicose commentators and lobbyists are not the church, and they never have been.  Prescient observers know that.  Many just won’t tell you.

Reports the Washington Post:

In his prime-time news conference Tuesday, Obama pushed back against bipartisan criticism of his plan, which is included in his budget blueprint, by saying that "there’s very little evidence that this has a significant impact on charitable giving."

No, actually there is evidence.  (Hat tip: Betsy’s Page.)

But a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said total charitable contributions would decline by about 1.3 percent, while the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University calculated that overall giving would drop by 2.1 percent. The highest-income households would decrease their giving by 4.8 percent, or $3.87 billion, the latter group found.

"Charities and the public need to understand that in the current economic environment, which is creating difficulty for some nonprofits and their constituents already, this public policy change is likely to have an additional negative effect," said Patrick M. Rooney, the philanthropy center’s interim executive director.

When you penalize something, you get less of it.  It’s a truism that Democrats like Obama have yet to figure out, but churches and soup kitchens are well aware of it.

The classic example is taxing yachts to soak the rich.  During the first Bush administration, a tax on yachts over $100,000 was instituted to try to increase the already huge percentage of the federal treasury that came from the rich.  The result was that middle-class ship builders lost their jobs because the sales of yachts sank by 70%, significantly faster than the overall boat market.  So President Bush came to their rescue and rescinded the tax. 

Taxes are not behavior-neutral.  They will affect the actions of those who are affected by them.  Democrats only seem to understand this when they do things like raise taxes on gas to try to reduce consumption, but they conveniently forget it when they trumpet how much they’re trying to help the little guy.  Problem is, their actions often hurt the little guy in the end, and the rich just do without one more yacht in their marina. 

1. OK. Bullet proof them … then what?
2. Succinct advice.
3. Chicago corruption coming to the beltway … or what?
4. Alternative answers to warming trends.
5. Classically speaking slavery has not just been about labor and wages.
6. Tiring.
7. Links? Notes? Both at once, courtesy of Brandon (on happiness too).
8. Epistemology of dreaming.
9. LOL.
10. Exactly right.
11. Big tent verse.
12. Lies.
13. China and power projection.
14. Coincidence.
15. Big rig efficiency.
16. Worst person? Now … love him.
17. New car access ideas.

What I’d really really like to see sometime is the following:

Ayn Rand and discussions of John Galt and her Atlas Shrugged abound everywhere these days. For a while, every time that I saw someone mentioning Ayn Rand I’d pop in with “did you ever read Matt Ruff’s Public Works Trilogy?” Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy is an absolutely hysterical book. It’s just a little dangerous … in the “you’ll laugh so hard you’ll be in danger doing harm to yourself and those around you.”

So, what would I like to see. I’d like to see someone take my advice and read this book and then tell me how much they enjoyed it. I’ve lent it to people and they’ve really liked it. Libertarians and the like are enamoured of Ms Rand it seems. Do they not have any sense of humor. Why does it seem that they’ve never heard of this book. And why do they ignore the chance to read this escapes me.

So humor me. Read the book, and when people start talking about “going John Galt” we can mutter about, “By which you really mean Harry Gant.”

1. Zoom. And Whack.
2. Defense of labor.
3. A question for the latest “great” plan.
4. A dissertation recommended … and now online.
5. A links post with an awesome title tag.
6. Octo-bots.
7. A question.
8. Exactly. That headline might make a better slogan than “abstinence education” for educational aim and program.
9. A reaction to our President.
10. An uncharity request for donations.
11. An interesting essay.
12. Confessions.
13. An important list.
14. Considering condoms.
15. One more lie.
16. I really really hate the illustrative use of equations. It bugs me and mathematically speaking is virtually meaningless.
17. Cool (and wet).

Henry Neufeld, long time blog neighbor, owns a small publishing firm. Quite surprisingly (to me), he offered to send me a pre-publication copy of a book which he is releasing shortly, more specifically on April 15. I readily agreed and here is a short review of the book he sent me. This book, Preserving Democracy by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. will be released next month. Mr Neufeld locates this as “a conservative” book, and I’m not entirely sure I agree with that assesment. First, bear with me for a quick overview of the book (my impression at any rate from a somewhat cursory/quick read) after which I’ll explain what I mean by that that claim.

Mr Hushbeck’s book is an eminently readable exposition detailing point by point what might be described as political or cultural catchpoints with each chapter addressing a different catchpoint. These catchpoints are issues which, if matters go unchecked might be seen as most likely stumbling blocks for our American political experiment. Taxes, Law, Central planning, Voting, Language and other issues are covered succinctly and simply. The language is plain spoken and non-technical with liberal illustrative examples from current events and past history. Graphs and charts are frequently used and contain no evidence of the sorts of trickery used to mislead via manipulation of axis, the data is honestly presented (and the source data cited).

Another item which I must praise highly is that Mr Hushbeck doesn’t fall into the all to common “Thomas Paine” fallacy. John Adams, according to his biographer, praised Mr Paine for being very good at “tearing down” and assisting the American efforts at Revolution but noted that Mr Paine was not well suited for “building up.” It is terribly easy to criticize. But criticism is incomplete without an offer of a solution. Mr Hushbeck in each of his chapters in which a catchpoint for our society is identified and located also then briefly sketches a way to avoid or steer clear of the problem.

My only criticism of the book is that some of his historical allusions to highlight a modern problem gloss over historical details perhaps stretching some points in order to make a point. Allow me to give one example, in the first chapter in a long historical overview of the (Western) Roman progression from Kingdom to Republic to Empire … Mr Husbheck notes that:

It was only with the fall of the Roman Empire 500 years later and the subsequent rise of Christianity that a new set of values would dominate the culture and slavery would be questioned

and to this a footnote expands

Slavery did disappear in Europe following the rise of Christianity, only to reappear following the Renaissance as the Church’s hold on the culture weakened and Europeans explorers started sailing down the coast of Africa encountering and then becoming part of the slave trade.

I’d take issue with that reading of the history of slavery and the Christian influence … setting aside the very Western reading of Christianity in general as an member of the Easter Orthodox tradition myself as well, e.g., Rome finally fell in 1453. It might be argued that the timing of slavery disappearing from the West in a large part coincided less with the spread of Christianity than with the economics of Western Europe. Western Europe slid back into late Bronze age subsistence economic and social conditions. Organized and widespread slavery needed a higher level of culture and standards of living in order to exist. When economic and social conditions improved … slavery returned. This aside is a brief sidelight to the main point of a brief summary of Roman political history. My only point is that Mr Hushbeck in painting the historical situation with a broad brush, well to be frank, paints with a broad brush and in doing so occasionally makes claims which when examined in detail are questionable.

Aside from that (minor) criticism this book makes for a very readable overview a number of issues facing America today. However, in conclusion I’d like to return to the claim that this book is not conservative. The issues chosen are in fact issues which conservatives would identify as the most serious issues facing our nation today. However by and large the methods used to address these issues and way in which these issues are framed are not “conservative” per se, but more aligned with classical liberalism. Mises and Hayek, the Founders, Locke, Smith and so on (for example) are quoted as much if not more often by Libertarian writers as conservative and these sources are used liberally in this book. I don’t see a Libertarian or Conservative disagreeing with much that is said in this book. What exactly a liberal/progressive would disagree with … that might be a task more suited for a different reviewer. 🙂

Lila Rose has been doing a great service with the Mona Lisa Project, exposing Planned Parenthood as the abortion mill it is.  In video after video on their web site, they expose cases where PP clinics have a "hear no evil" approach to statutory rape. 

Ms. Rose and other pose as minors who say they’ve been made pregnant by their adult boyfriend, and their hidden camera videos show PP employees ignoring this law that is to protect these children.  But no investigation of this corrupt organization. 

Stop the ACLU notes that PP gets, in addition to their profits, $300 million of federal taxpayer dollars every year.  And yet, no national investigation of laws being broken in California, Arizona and Indiana.

Phone conversations included PP employees telling her how to cover up the rape, and how to give money for the abortion of just black babies.

Regardless of your political party or stand on Roe v Wade, this is simply outrageous.  Why this organization has not come under investigation, by any administration or Congress, is beyond me.

1. Office rules, some years back.
2. Echo.
3. Mr Obama’s notions of bi-partisanship.
4. Mr Obama’s promises.
5. And a little “if Bush did” what Obama’s doing exercise.
6. Joy and life.
7. Intelligence reports in the UK.
8. Al-Qaeda.
9. Data loss.
10. A feast tucked in the midst of a season of repentance.
11. Or it might be just a failure of imagination? Take the wished for “third way” noted in that piece for the low impact lifestyle has to be imagined as better in tangible ways before people will really embrace it. On the other hand some have opted for the radical solution.
12. Cops.
13. Money for blogging?
14. Does the left have no shame?
15. One response of Mr Obama at South Bend.
16. Amazing animal.
17. Of sex and abstinence.
18. So, for the pro-choice/pro-abortion crowd … explain your defense of the protest here?
19. Of word and deed … and the Word.
20. Heh.