Sarah Palin on foreign policy

I've been wanting to comment on Gov. Palin’s speech in Hong Kong, but I’ve wanted to wait until I could see a full text of the speech. So far, I haven’t seen the whole speech anywhere, but she has posted a section on her Facebook page. I’ll comment on it later, but first, here’s what she’s given us of the speech:

So far, I’ve given you the view from Main Street, USA. But now I’d like to share with you how a Common Sense Conservative sees the world at large.

Later this year, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—an event that changed not just Europe but the entire world. In a matter of months, millions of people in formerly captive nations were freed to pursue their individual and national ambitions.

The competition that defined the post World War II era was suddenly over. What was once called “the free world” had so much to celebrate—the peaceful end to a great power rivalry and the liberation of so many from tyranny’s grip.

Some, you could say, took the celebration too far. Many spoke of a “peace dividend,” of the need to focus on domestic issues and spend less time, attention and money on endeavors overseas. Many saw a peaceful future, where globalization would break down borders and lead to greater global prosperity. Some argued that state sovereignty would fade—like that was a good thing?—that new non-governmental actors and old international institutions would become dominant in the new world order.

As we all know, that did not happen. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of warning signs that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of history or the end of conflict. In Europe, the breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in brutal wars in the Balkans. In the Middle East, a war was waged to reverse Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. North Korea’s nuclear program nearly led to military conflict. In Africa, U.S. embassies were bombed by a group called al Qaeda.

Two weeks ago, America commemorated the 8th anniversary of the savagery of September 11, 2001. The vicious terrorist attacks of that day made clear that what happened in lands far distant from American shores directly affect our security. We came to learn, if we did not know before, that there were violent fanatics who sought not just to kill innocents, but to end our way of life. Their attacks have not been limited to the United States.

They attacked targets in Europe, North Africa and throughout the Middle East. Here in Asia, they killed more than 200 in a single attack in Bali. They bombed the Marriott Hotel and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Last year in Mumbai, more than 170 were killed in coordinated attacks in the heart of India’s financial capital. In this struggle with radical Islamic extremists, no part of the world is safe from those who bomb, maim and kill in the service of their twisted vision.

This war—and that is what it is, a war—is not, as some have said, a clash of civilizations. We are not at war with Islam. This is a war within Islam, where a small minority of violent killers seeks to impose their view on the vast majority of Muslims who want the same things all of us want: economic opportunity, education, and the chance to build a better life for themselves and their families. The reality is that al Qaeda and its affiliates have killed scores of innocent Muslim men, women and children.

The reality is that Muslims from Algeria, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries are fighting al Qaeda and their allies today. But this will be a long war, and it will require far more than just military power to prevail. Just as we did in the Cold War, we will need to use all the tools at our disposal—hard and soft power. Economic development, public diplomacy, educational exchanges, and foreign assistance will be just as important as the instruments of military power.

During the election campaign in the U.S. last year, you might have noticed we had some differences over Iraq. John McCain and I believed in the strength of the surge strategy—because of its success, Iraq is no longer the central front in the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is. Afghanistan is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and if we are not successful in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again find safe haven there. As a candidate and in office, President Obama called Afghanistan the “necessary war” and pledged to provide the resources needed to prevail. However, prominent voices in the Democratic Party are opposing the additional U.S. ground forces that are clearly needed.

Speaker of the House Pelosi, Defense Subcommittee Chairman Murtha, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, and many others, recently expressed doubts about sending additional forces! President Obama will face a decision soon when the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan requests additional forces to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. Last year, in the midst of the U.S. debate over what do to in Iraq, an important voice was heard—from Asia’s Wise Man, former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote in the Washington Post about the cost of retreat in Iraq. In that article, he prophetically addressed the stakes in Afghanistan. He wrote:

The Taliban is again gathering strength, and a Taliban victory in Afghanistan or Pakistan would reverberate throughout the Muslim world. It would influence the grand debate among Muslims on the future of Islam. A severely retrograde form of Islam would be seen to have defeated modernity twice: first the Soviet Union, then the United States. There would be profound consequences, especially in the campaign against terrorism.

That statesman’s words remain every bit as true today. And Minister Lee knows, and I agree, that our success in Afghanistan will have consequences all over the world, including Asia. Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan. That is why I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision.

That is why, even during this time of financial distress we need to maintain a strong defense. All government spending should undergo serious scrutiny. No programs or agencies should be automatically immune from cuts.

We need to go back to fiscal discipline and unfortunately that has not been the view of the current Administration. They’re spending everywhere and with disregard for deficits and debts and our future economic competitiveness. Though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!

First, the Defense Department received only ½ of 1 % of the nearly trillion dollar Stimulus Package funding—even though many military projects fit the definition of “shovel-ready.” In this Administration’s first defense budget request for 2010, important programs were reduced or cancelled. As the threat of ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and Iran grow, missile defense was slashed.

Despite the need to move men and material by air into theaters like Afghanistan, the Obama Administration sought to end production of our C-17s, the work horse of our ability to project long range power. Despite the Air Force saying it would increase future risk, the Obama Administration successfully sought to end F-22 production—at a time when both Russia and China are acquiring large numbers of next generation fighter aircraft. It strikes me as odd that Defense Secretary Gates is the only member of the Cabinet to be tasked with tightening his belt.

Now in the region I want to emphasize today: The reason I speak about defense is because our strong defense posture in Asia has helped keep the region safe and allowed it to prosper. Our Asian allies get nervous if they think we are weakening our security commitments. I worry about defense cuts not because I expect war but because I so badly want peace. And the region has enjoyed peace for so long because of our security commitment to our longstanding allies and partners.

Asia has been one of the world’s great success stories. It is a region where America needs to assist with right mix of hard and soft power. While I have so much hope for a bright future in Asia, in a region this dynamic, we must always be prepared for other contingencies. We must work at this—work with our allies to ensure the region’s continued peace and prosperity.

I know that you all—like all of Asia and indeed the whole world—has a keen interest in the emergence of “China as a great power.” Over the past few decades China’s economic growth has been remarkable. So has the economic growth and political liberalization of all of our key allies in Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Asia’s economic growth and political development, together with our forward military presence in the region and strong alliances, have allowed the region to prosper in peace for a long time. We hope that Asia will continue to be an engine of world economic growth, will continue to democratize and will remain at peace.

Our future is now deeply linked to Asia’s success. Our children’s future. We must continue to strengthen our key alliance with Japan, a country going through its own democratic change. Together the U.S. and Japan built the security umbrella under which so many Asians prospered. While there is so much attention to China these days, we cannot forget the importance of Japan in helping to make this the “Pacific Century.”

The recent elections in Japan demonstrated that voters wanted reform and an end to debt and stagnation. We have a substantial stake in Japan’s success—our alliance with must continue to be the linchpin of regional security.

With its open political system and vibrant democracy, South Korea wants to play a larger role on the international stage as well. Of course it wants us to work together toward a future where the peninsula is irreversibly denuclearized, and unified. But it also wants to play a global role. We need to work together with Japan, South Korea and our steadfast ally to the south, Australia, to make sure Asia remains peaceful and prosperous.

Australia rightly reminds us to keep our eye on Southeast Asia, where Indonesia has proved that Islam and democracy can co-exist. Indonesia has fought extremism inside its own border and is consolidating a multi-ethnic democracy that is home to hundreds of millions of Muslims. Those who say Islam and democracy are incompatible insult our friends in Indonesia.

Our great democratic friend India is also “looking East”, seeking a greater role in East Asia as well. Together with our allies we must help integrate India into Asia. If we do so we will have yet another strong democracy driving Asia’s economy and working on shared problems such as proliferation and extremism. And we must continue working with the region’s most dynamic economy, China. We all hope that China’s stated policy of a “Peaceful Rise” will be its future course.

You know better than most the enormous change that has taken place in China over the last thirty years. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been pulled out of poverty as China has undertaken economic reforms that have resulted in unprecedented growth. Even today, China’s economy is projected to grow by some 8%. It is helping to edge the world out of recession.

China has amassed huge financial reserves. Chinese diplomats are engaged on every continent and, through its vote on the United Nations Security Council, China has become critical in gaining UN support on multilateral issues from Darfur to Iran to North Korea.

Just four years ago, then-Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick urged China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. He observed the many benefits to China of a “benign international environment.”

The peaceful regional environment that China has enjoyed was created through the hard work of Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and Australians. Secretary Zoellick urged China to step up and play its role too. We are working with China to de-nuclearize North Korea. But to be a responsible member of the international community China should exert greater pressure on North Korea to denuclearize and undergo the fundamental reforms it needs. Zoellick urged China to play a greater role in stabilizing the international energy market by ceasing its support of dangerous regimes.

China could play a role in stabilizing its ally Pakistan, and working for peace in Afghanistan. There are many areas where the U.S. and China can work together. And, we would welcome a China that wanted to assume a more responsible and active role in international politics.

But Secretary Zoellick also noted that many of China’s actions create risk and uncertainty. These uncertainties led nations to “hedge” their relations with China because, in Zoellick’s words: “Many countries HOPE China will pursue a ‘Peaceful Rise’ but NONE will bet their future on it.”

See: this is the heart of the issue with China: we engage with the hope Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must takes steps in the event it does not. See? We all hope to see a China that is stable, peaceful, prosperous and free. But we must also work with our allies in the region and the world in the event China goes in a direction that causes regional instability.

Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia’s continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia “whole and free” – free from domination by any one power, prospering in open and free markets, and settling political differences at ballot boxes and negotiating tables.

We can, must and should work with a “rising China” to address issues of mutual concern. But we also need to work with our allies in addressing the uncertainties created by China’s rise. We simply CANNOT turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that can undermine international peace and security.

China has some 1000 missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer believes Taiwan poses a military threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia nervous. China provides support for some of the world’s most questionable regimes from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe. China’s military buildup raises concerns from Delhi to Tokyo because it has taken place in the absence of any discernable external threat.

China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program. The Chinese food and product safety record has raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the United States. And, domestic incidents of unrest—from the protests of Uighurs and Tibetans, to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully make us nervous.

It is very much in our interest and the interest of regional stability that China work out its own contradictions – between a dynamic and entrepreneurial private sector on the one hand and a one party state unwilling or unable to adjust to its own society’s growing needs and desires and demands, including a human being’s innate desire for freedom.

I do not cite these issues out of any hostility toward China. Quite the contrary, I and all Americans of good faith hope for the Chinese people’s success. We welcome the rise that can be so good for all mankind. We simply urge China to rise responsibly. I simply believe we cannot ignore areas of disagreement as we seek to move forward on areas of agreement. Believe me, China does not hesitate to tell us when it thinks we are in the wrong.

I mentioned China’s internal contradictions. They should concern us all. We hear many Chinese voices throughout that great country calling out for more freedom, and for greater justice. Twenty years ago, many believed that as China liberalized its economy, greater political freedom would naturally follow. Unfortunately that has not come to pass.

Ummm, in fact, it seems China has taken great pains to learn what it sees as “the lesson” of the fall on the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union: any easing of political constraints can inevitably spin out of control. But, in many ways, it is the essence of China’s political system that leads to concerns about its rise.

Think about it. How many books and articles have been written about the dangers of India’s rise? Almost as large as China—and soon to be more populous—virtually no one worries about the security implications of India becoming a great power—just as a century ago the then-preeminent power, Great Britain, worried little about the rise of America to great power status. My point is that the more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnicity will settle disputes in courts rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we will be concerned about its military build-up and intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is they we will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests.

I am not talking about some U.S.-led “democracy crusade.” We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that. They are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties. They apply to citizens in Shanghai as much as they do to citizens in Johannesburg or Jakarta. And demands for liberty in China are Chinese, not American, demands. Just last year, many brave Chinese signed Charter 08, a Chinese document modeled on the great Czech statesman Vlacav Havel’s Charter 77. Charter 08 would not be unfamiliar to our Founding Fathers and was endorsed by Havel himself. No, we need not convince the Chinese people that they have inalienable rights. They are calling for those rights themselves. But we do have to worry about a China where the government suppresses the liberties its people hold dear.

Nothing of what I am saying should be seen as meaning conflict with China is inevitable. Quite the contrary. As I said, we welcome China’s responsible rise. America and China stood together against fascism during World War II, before ravages took over in China—we were ready to stand together with China to shape international politics after World War II. Much has been accomplished since President Nixon’s fateful visit. And again, we stand ready to work with what we hope will be a more open and responsible China on the challenges facing the 21st century.

All of you here know how deeply integrated the economies of the United States’ and China’s are. We rely on each other, sometimes unfortunately in unhealthy ways. America spends too much that we don’t have, and then we go to China as a lender of first resort. Our fiscal policy, lately, seems to be “tax, spend, borrow, tax some more, repeat” and then complain about how much debt China holds. America needs to gets its own fiscal house in order. That’s a Common Sense Conservative perspective. We can hardly complain that China holds so much of our debt when it’s overspending that created the debt.

But here’s the reality. If in fact the United States does the “right” thing—if we spend less and save more—then China will also have to rebalance its economy. We need to export more to China—and we’d like China to consume more of our goods—just as we need to save and invest more. This vital process—so crucial to both countries—is impeded by problems of market access.

We must talk about these issues with more candor. If China adopts policies that keep our highest value products out of their markets, by manipulating technical standards or licensing requirements, our economic relationship suffers.

Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high-tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law and protect our intellectual property. We need to avoid protectionism and China’s flirtation with state-assisted “national champions.” On our part, we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end, though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.

I see a bright future for America in Asia. One based on the alliances that have gotten us this far, one based on free and open markets, one that integrates democratic India into East Asia’s political life and one in which China decides to be a responsible member of the international community and gives its people the liberty—the freedom—they so desperately want.

Sadly, however, our largest free trade agreement ever in Asia, with South Korea, sits frozen in the Congress. In contrast, China is behaving wisely in negotiating free trade agreements throughout Asia. We want an Asia open to our goods and services. But if we do not get our free trade act together, we will be shut out by agreements Asians our making among themselves.

All of you here follow global financial markets and economic policy closely, I know that it will come as no surprise to you that United States leadership on global trade and investment is being sorely tested at this moment.

We are struggling with a monumental debate on whether fiscal discipline, or massive government spending, will drive a sustained recovery. We are struggling to repair the excesses that grew in our own economy and served as a trigger to a catastrophic collapse in the global financial system. And we are attempting to do so under the weight of a global imbalance of debt and trade deficits that are not only unbearable for the world’s mightiest economy, but also unacceptable in that they foster tensions between global economic partners like the United States and China.

I am proud to be an American. As someone who has had the tremendous opportunity to travel throughout the United States and listen to the concerns of Americans in towns and cities across the country, I can tell you that there is a sense of despair and even crisis afoot in America that has the potential to shape our global investment and trade policies for years, and even decades to come. Never has the leadership of our government ever been more critical to keeping my country, and the world, on a path to openness, growth and opportunity in global trade and investment.

It would of course be a mistake to put the entire burden of restoring the global economy on the backs of America’s leaders. There is plenty of work for all of us to do in this matter. Governments around the world must resist the siren call of trade protection to bring short term relief during a time of crisis.

Those who use currency policy or subsidies to promote their nation’s exports should remain acutely aware that if there ever were a time in which such policies could be viewed as “tolerable,” that time has now passed. All participants who seek to find benefit in the global trading system must also take the responsibility of playing by the rules.

The private sector has responsibilities as well. For instance, it should not be the responsibility of government to dictate the salaries of bankers or the ownership of companies. And yet, due of the excesses committed by some, this is exactly where we find ourselves now because government now owns substantial portions of the private economy—even, unbelievably, in the United States.

These are challenging times for everyone, but we in the United States must humbly recognize that if we are to lead and to set the direction for the rest of the world, it must be by our example and not merely our words. And we must tread lightly when imposing new burdens on the imports of other countries.

Well, CLSA: My country is definitely at a crossroad. Polling in the U.S. shows a majority of Americans no longer believe that their children will have a better future than they have had . . . that is a 1st.

When members of America’s greatest generation—the World War II generation—lose their homes and their life savings because their retirement funds were wiped after the financial collapse, people feel a great anger. There is suddenly a growing sentiment to just “throw the bums out” of Washington, D.C.—and by bums they mean the Republicans and the Democrats. Americans are suffering from pay cuts and job losses, and they want to know why their elected leaders are not tightening their belts. It’s not lost on people that Congress voted to exempt themselves from the health care plan they are thrusting on the rest of the nation. There is a growing sense of frustration on Main Street. But even in the midst of crisis and despair, we see signs of hope.

In fact, it’s a sea change in America, I believe. Recently, there have been protests by ordinary Americans who marched on Washington to demand their government stop spending away their future. Large numbers of ordinary, middle-class Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from all over the country marching on Washington?! You know something’s up!

These are the same people who flocked to the town halls this summer to face their elected officials who were home on hiatus from that distant capital and were now confronted with the people they represent. Big town hall meetings—video clips circulating coverage—people watching, feeling not so alone anymore.

The town halls and the Tea Party movement are both part of a growing grassroots consciousness among ordinary Americans who’ve decided that if they want real change, they must take the lead and not wait to be led. Real change—and, you know, you don’t need a title to do it.

The “Tea Party Movement” is aptly named to remind people of the American Revolution—of colonial patriots who shook off the yoke of a distant government and declared their freedom from indifferent—elitist—rulers who limited their progress and showed them no respect. Today, Main Street Americans see Washington in similar terms.

When my country again achieves financial stability and economic growth—when we roar back to life as we shall do—it will be thanks in large part to the hard work and common sense of these ordinary Americans who are demanding that government spend less and tax less and allow the private sector to grow and prosper.

We’re not interested in government fixes; we’re interested in freedom! Freedom! Our vision is forward looking. People may be frustrated now, but we’re very hopeful too.

And, after all, why shouldn’t we be? We’re Americans. We’re always hopeful.

Thank you for letting me share some of that hope, and a view from Main Street with you. God Bless You.

Translucent concrete?

Believe it.

LiTraCon, short for light transmitting concrete, is an innovative new combination of optical fibers and light concrete. The resulting concrete is just as strong as conventional concrete, but it transmits light like glass. The optical fibers are small enough that they aren’t visible in the finished product; the surface of the concrete is homogenous while the structure remains sturdy.

Wow.

Politics, politicians, and the real story

Michael Wolff has a most interesting piece up today on Newser:

Barack Obama is an uplifting but, so far, ultimately boring story.

The greatest political saga, the one that has it all, that gets to the real heart of American politics, is the John Edwards story. . . .

The problem here, let me argue, is not John Edwards, but our inability to see politicians for who they are.

We reduce these guys to stick figures, either to boring, righteous leading citizens, or incorrigible grotesques. We’re not interested in the former, and not allowed to be interested, except as witnesses to a train wreck, in the latter. Hence, we can never really understand the nature of politics, because we’re not allowed to know the people who have, for strange and heroic and horrifying and, no doubt, emotionally unsound reasons, committed their lives to this business.

The John Edwards story, as it helplessly and haplessly unfolds and keeps unfolding, is a remarkable window, which we ought to look into with the greatest curiosity and awe. Edwards isn’t, I doubt, much of an aberration. He is the American politician. The only difference is that circumstances now find him beyond spin, truer, and more naked than perhaps any American politician has ever been.

I'll have to think about that; I think Wolff is on to something there. In the meantime, go read the whole post.

The self-esteem presidency

Those of us who support Sarah Palin are fond of, among other things, pointing out the various predictions she made during her RNC speech which are being realized during the Obama administration. There are a number of them, including her warning of higher deficits and her invocation of a candidate who couldn't bring himself to use the word "victory" when discussing Iraq and Afghanistan, but only when talking about his own campaign—that's why the speech makes such good material for Palinites now. Of all the things she said, though, I think the most important was this:

The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery."

I think that was an important line because whether that was Gov. Palin's insight, that of the scriptwriter with whom she worked, or came from someone else, it was the sharpest and most pointed insight offered during the campaign as to what we were really in for with an Obama victory. It was a fair shot from the McCain campaign; like him or loathe him, there's no question that along with arrogant ambition, Sen. John McCain is driven by a deeply-ingrained desire, even need, to serve this country. I don't question that President Obama wants to do what's best for the country, but I think he operates out of a very different spirit.

Back before she herself succumbed to the infatuation, Kathleen Parker dubbed Barack Obama "the Messiah of Generation Narcissism." In the process, she made a couple good points about him and what his ascent says about our culture—points which she would no doubt deride now were they to be made by, say, Gov. Palin, but hey, you gotta pay for that seat on Air Force Won.

To play weatherman for a moment, [Obama] is a perfect storm of the culture of narcissism, the cult of celebrity, and a secular society in which fathers (both the holy and the secular) have been increasingly marginalized from the lives of a generation of young Americans.

All of these trends have been gaining momentum the past few decades. Social critic Christopher Lasch named the culture of narcissism a generation ago and cited addiction to celebrity as one of the disease's symptoms—all tied to the decline of the family.

That culture has merely become more exaggerated as spiritual alienation and fatherlessness have collided with technology (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) that enables the self-absorption of the narcissistic personality. . . .

Whatever the Church of Obama promises, we should not mistake this movement for a renaissance of reason. It is more like, well, like whoa.

One factor Parker didn't mention in that column was the emphasis of the last few decades on artificially inflating the self-esteem of children, which has led to such things as grade inflation (including school districts that, as a matter of formal policy, forbid giving children Fs) and the philosophy that children should not be allowed to fail. This has been a crucial contributing factor to the culture of narcissism that Lasch identified, and has produced a great many chronological adults who believe success is a birthright which they should be able to achieve without trying too hard.

In light of that, consider this telling insight from a piece in the New York Review of Books:

It's apparent that Obama is still learning the differences between campaigning and governing. And sometimes his inexperience shows. His speeches on health care on Labor Day and before Congress a few days later drew on his old rhetorical skills and finally showed some passion, and the one before Congress was his most effective so far in combining both rhetoric and explanation. But it was of interest that Chuck Todd of NBC reported that before he gave those speeches Obama's staff had had to get him "fired up" to take on his critics. Obama, whose high self-esteem is well known among close observers, had previously assumed that a "following," a "movement," would be there without his having to do much to stimulate it.

We have a President who doesn't think he should have to work in order to achieve political victory. This might be why the only political victories achieved to this point under his administration have been the ones Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid could achieve largely without his help.

This really shouldn't be surprising, though; up through this past January, Barack Obama has been able to achieve most of what he wanted without really working all that hard. As Ed Lasky writes,

Barack Obama has displayed a disturbing pattern of work ethics: shirking work; claiming success when he was not entitled to do so; hiding his failures; and claiming the work of others as his own—when it was successful. These are not character traits that we should associate with Presidents.

This is, of course, a serious charge; but read the article, because Lasky substantiates it from case after case. Of those, the most speculative but perhaps the most revealing is the case of Dreams from My Father, the memoir (published when he was but 34) which has been used as one of the main pieces of evidence for President Obama's supposed superior intelligence. As I noted some time ago, there's good reason to doubt that he in fact wrote the book; the Anchoress captured it well when she pointed out that writers write, it's what they do—the demands of life have their effect, but when they can, what they can, they write—and that aside from that book, Barack Obama's life shows little evidence that he's truly a writer. Indeed, what we have of his writing from his time at Columbia and Harvard Law (what little we have) ranges from workmanlike to dismal.

That's why Jack Cashill of American Thinker has been arguing in increasingly greater detail, with mounting evidence, that in fact Barack Obama did not write Dreams from My Father—Bill Ayers did. Cashill's argument has now received unexpected support from Christopher Andersen's biography, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage. As Ron Radosh lays it out,

Andersen writes in his book that after Obama finally got a new contract to write a book, Michelle Obama suggested that her husband get advice "from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers."

Obama had not as yet written anything. But he had taped interviews with family members. Andersen writes: "These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers." . . .

Andersen also writes, quoting a Hyde Park neighbor of Obama: "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both." . . .

Finally, Christopher Andersen concludes: "In the end, Ayers's contribution to Barack's Dreams From My Father would be significant—so much so that the book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writing."

Now, it is of course true that (like everyone else these days), Andersen is working from unnamed sources (though he has said that he confirmed this information from two independent sources in Hyde Park); this could prove to be as bogus as the claim last year that George W. Bush had the CIA fabricate evidence justifying the war in Iraq. That said, Andersen is only substantiating an argument which can already be made, and made quite well, from evidence in the public domain; "the book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes" do in fact "bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writing." As such, while we cannot take the point as proven, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that the balance of the evidence supports the conclusion that Barack Obama probably was not the primary writer of Dreams from My Father—that this is, rather, yet another case of him taking credit for someone else's work in order to make himself look good.

What we have here, I think, is a man who does what he likes to do and just never really gets around to buckling down to do what he doesn't like to do. He does what makes him feel good, but doesn't have the appetite for the hard, grinding work that is usually necessary to produce real accomplishments. As such, the only real accomplishments he has to show are the ones he can produce by doing what he likes. He likes going around and talking to people, he likes kicking ideas and arguments around with people who agree with him, and so he's an effective and energetic campaigner; as such, he has the accomplishments that can produce—namely, election to various offices. If people question his résumé, he embellishes it. When it comes time to do the work for the offices to which he's been elected, he "works from home," takes credit for the accomplishments of others, votes "present" to duck the tough questions—and when things go badly, covers it up or finds someone else to blame.

The end result of all this is someone who'd rather campaign for President than be President; and since he was elected nearly eleven months ago and took office eight-and-a-half months ago, this is a problem. Even liberals are starting to complain about it. But no one should be surprised; this is a man of high self-esteem who expects success to come to him because he's wonderful, not because he's worked hard for it. Maybe the light will come on and he'll rise to the demands of the office yet, who knows; but for now, given his résumé, what other sort of presidency should we have expected?

We should have seen it coming. Gov. Palin certainly did.

(Cross-posted at Conservatives4Palin)

Update: Add SNL to the list . . .

Scandalizing the church

Over a couple weeks of being head-down with the congregation, one of the things I didn't do was keep up with Jared Wilson's blog, The Gospel-Driven Church; so now I'm catching up. I was interested to note that at the top right now is a post, which I think is a repost, dealing with the need to convert the church to the gospel. As Jared sums things up,

We are in a weird—but frequently exhilarating—position where the gospel is scandalous even to Christians.

The main thing I would suggest is that you go read the post—and also the one a couple posts down, which is a critical evaluation of Rob Bell's statements in a recent interview, because I think they really tie together. Why is it that the gospel is scandalous to many in the church? Why is it that people have learned to look to the church for things other than the gospel? Because we've had an orientation in the American church for several decades now toward focusing on and addressing felt needs, whether in individuals (the conservative wing) or in society (the liberal wing), which makes people comfortable (and thus more likely to come, give $$$, etc.), rather than challenging people and making them uncomfortable by driving them to consider their true, deep need: their total inability to do anything on their own to please God, and their total need for the gospel of salvation through the grace of God alone, by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, through the power of the Holy Spirit alone, "not by works, lest anyone should boast."

What's the solution? Well, to complete the trifecta, I think Jared lays it out well in the next post down, a comment on his approach to preaching:

I believe our flesh cries out for works, we are wired to worship, and we want to earn salvation, so we know what deeds are good deeds. And we need to be helped with specific advice in specific situations and we need to be reminded to do good, but our most pressing need is to be challenged on that which we forget most easily, which is not more tips for a successful life, but that we are sinners who need grace to have life in the first place.

We all know what good works look like. We just don’t want to do them. And that is a spiritual problem exhortations to good behavior cannot solve. The clearly proclaimed gospel is God's prescription for breaking a hardened heart. . . .

What I strive for (imperfectly, fallibly) in my teaching is to uphold Jesus and his atoning work as all satisfying, all sufficient, all powerful, all encompassing, and call others to uphold it as such in their hearts. My belief is that when someone really loves Jesus and has been scandalized by God's grace, they will really follow Him into a life of scandalizing others.

Some will contend that spending most preaching time calling for listeners to savor the work of Christ, cling to the cross, find satisfaction in Christ's work alone, and trust His grace for salvation does not offer real help because it doesn't give a "takeaway," it doesn't tell people what to do. I say it does tell people what to do: it tells them to savor, cling, find satisfaction, and trust. That is real help. And that's what I want people to take away. And my trust is that if people are actually doing that, because their affections have been transferred in repentance from self to Christ, their repentant hearts will bear the fruit of a living faith, by which I mean a faith that proves itself with works.

That's right on.

On the liberal use of racism

Lloyd Marcus writes,

I am so sick of the Left being allowed to make the rules. Imagine the absurdity of a competition in which one side is allowed to set the rules against their opponent. The Left tells us what is racist. The Left tells us what we can and cannot say. The Left published a cartoon depicting former black Secretary of State Condolezza Rice as an Aunt Jemima; another depicted Rice as a huge-lipped parrot for her Massa Bush. Neither were considered racist by their creators or publishers, or even widely condemned on the Left.

In opposition to black Republican Michael Steele's campaign to run for U.S. Senate, a liberal blogger published a doctored photo of Steele in black face and big red lips made to look like a minstrel. The caption read, "Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house". Not one Democrat denounced these racist portrayals of black conservatives.

And yet, a sign seen at a tea party depicting Obama as a witch doctor is considered by the Left to be beyond the pale and obviously racist. Why is the Left, given their track record of bias, granted final authority to determine the intent of the sign? Why do we conservatives so quickly and easily allow ourselves to be put on the defensive?

The rules set by the Left are extremely clear. Racist images of black conservatives and negative images of Bush are fair game. Even a play about murdering President Bush was called "harmless art". Meanwhile, all unflattering images of Obama are racist, and constitute dangerous, potentially violent hate speech.

Now, before you dismiss Marcus' critique as sour grapes, consider this:

I am a black conservative singer, songwriter, entertainer and columnist. Liberals have posted comments all over YouTube and C-SPAN freely using and calling me the "N" word. Because they are libs and I am an uppity, off the liberal plantation, run-away black, all tactics to restore me to my owners are acceptable.

The truth is, in the current political environment, "racist" actually has no concrete, objective meaning. As all derogatory terms eventually are, it has been debased from a meaningful descriptive term to a mere swear word, one which only has one true significance: to denigrate anyone who opposes liberal dogma. "Racist" is to a liberal fundamentalist what "heathen" is to an old-style Christian fundamentalist, and nothing more; it means only the Other, the hated Them, They Who Must Be Condemned.

Now, in one sense, this is a normal linguistic process; but it has been accelerated for the sake of political expediency, and that isn't a good thing at all. In fact, this sort of tactic carries serious consequences for our society, which its practitioners should carefully consider. Cornell law professor William Jacobson put it well:

While the false accusation of racism is not a new tactic, it has been refined by Obama supporters into a toxic powder which is causing damage to the social fabric of the country by artificially injecting race into every political issue. . . .

Not surprisingly, the pace of racial accusations has picked up as opposition has grown. Just in the past few days the usual and not-so-usual suspects have been seeking to out-do each other in making accusations of racism including Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, Jimmy Carter, Rep. Hank Johnson, Chris Matthews, a wide range of Democratic politicians, and of course, almost all of the mainstream media.

The effect of these accusations is poisonous. Race is the most sensitive and inflammatory subject in this country. By turning every issue, even a discussion of health care policy, into an argument about race, liberals have created a politically explosive mixture in which the harder they seek to suppress opposing voices, the harder those voices seek to be heard. . . .

We are seeing for the first time a strong push-back against the race card players. And that reaction is visceral, much like an allergic reaction, from people who have been stung before.

What's more, as Mark Steyn points out, the real racism and sexism here isn't what the Left is saying it is:

Nobody minds liberal commentators expressing the hope that Clarence Thomas "will die early from heart disease like many black men," etc. Contemporary identity-group politics are prototype one-party states: If you're a black Republican Secretary of State, you're not really black. If you're a female Republican vice-presidential nominee, you're not really a woman. What's racist and sexist here is the notion that, if you're black or female, your politics is determined by your group membership.

There are, it seems to me, two main points to be drawn from this mess. The first is that whatever they might say, the Democratic leadership is worried about a conservative resurgence; to quote Steyn again,

What does the frenzy unleashed on Sarah Palin last fall tell us? What does Newsweek's "Mad Man" cover on Glenn Beck mean? Why have "civility" drones like Joe Klein so eagerly adopted Anderson Cooper's scrotal "teabagging" slur and characterized as "racists" and "terrorists" what are (certainly by comparison with the anti-G20 crowd) the best behaved and tidiest street agitators in modern history?

They're telling you who they really fear. Whom the media gods would destroy they first make into "mad men." Liz Cheney should be due for the treatment any day now. . . .

The media would like the American Right to be represented by the likes of Bob Dole and John McCain, decent old sticks who know how to give dignified concession speeches. Last time round, we went along with their recommendation. If you want to get rave reviews for losing gracefully, that's the way to go. If you want to win, look at whom the Democrats and their media chums are so frantic to destroy: That's the better guide to what they're really worried about.

The second is that the Democratic leadership in D.C. cannot win the battle of ideas, or at least don't think they can. Now, there's an important distinction to be drawn here: that does not mean that their ideas are wrong; the most brilliant ideas and the most basic truths can still be made to sound utterly unconvincing in the mouths of defenders who don't really know how to argue for them. I happen to believe their arguments are wrong, but their competence or lack thereof in presenting them is no proof of that either way. The point is, rather, that whether they ought to be able to win the argument or otherwise, the leaders of the Democratic Party cannot, and so they feel the need to try to win by rhetorical thuggery what they cannot win by rational appeal. Dr. Jacobson's summary is apt:

The increasingly hysterical use of the the race card by liberal columnists, bloggers and politicians reflects the last gasps of people who, being unable to win an argument on the merits, seek to end the argument.

In the last analysis, all of this is a blot on Barack Obama. No, it isn't reasonable to expect him to fulfill the post-racial promise of his campaign; the only thing that was unreasonable was him using that to help sell himself as a candidate. However, he is allowing this to happen, and he could stop it if he wanted; and Jules Crittenden is right, he needs to make it stop.

Obama can let a growing chorus of prominent Americans call his failure racism and his opponents racists, a development which is itself driving a deeper partisan wedge and heightening the rancor and bitterness. He can let it further demean our national dialogue and intimidate speech. He can let it be his excuse, a smear in the history books. Or he tell America and the world firmly that in this country, political dissent does not equal racism. He will then have shown himself to be a statesman, who is worthy of respect no matter whether you agree with his politics and policies or not.

It is time for President Obama to take the race card off the table.

Here's hoping—for his sake, for the country's sake—that he does. Soon.

On this blog in history: April 12-16, 2008

Further thoughts on the Ascension: the value of our humanity
On the significance of the fact that Jesus is still the carpenter from Nazareth.

Score one for SCOTUS
Standing up for national sovereignty and the proper separation of powers.

On praying for heart attacks
"Make them stop or make them gone."

What shall we do with a Christless preacher?
A few thoughts on the matter from a working pastor.

Iraq as a litmus test for presidential seriousness
Several truths that are well worth remembering as the President wavers on Afghanistan.

William Safire, RIP

William Safire, who died this past Sunday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79, was probably most significant as a political figure; he won enduring fame when, as a Nixon speechwriter, he coined the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativity," then spent over thirty years as a political columnist for the New York Times. Generally described as a conservative stalwart, he really wasn't all that conservative; what he was, as the Times obituary rightly says, was "a pugnacious contrarian" who never backed down from a fight he could pick.

And oh, how he fought! The Times aptly calls him "a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns, like 'the president's populism" and 'the first lady's momulism," written during the Carter presidency." This led him, quite reasonably, to his other major column: "On Language," which he wrote from 1979 until earlier this month. In the larger scheme of things, I suppose Safire the linguist, lexicographer, and arbiter of usage was probably less important than Safire the political writer—but in my book, his work on language was more interesting, and is more likely to endure, not only for the work itself but for all those whom he encouraged to follow in his footsteps. As one such author, Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus, writes,

On hearing of his passing, fellow maven Paul Dickson remarked to me that Safire "opened a door which a lot of people got to walk through and play with words as a vocation." That was certainly true in my case. . . .

After becoming editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press, I fielded occasional queries from Safire and his research assistants (on everything from "go figure" to "fire wall"). He was always quick to give credit where credit was due, and he also enjoyed coming up with warm-spirited epithets for those who helped him. (I was on the receiving end of "that etymological Inspector Javert," "netymologist," and "longtime capo of the Phrasedick Brigade"—sobriquets that I will always treasure.)

For all his feistiness, Safire was a man who inspired personal as well as professional admiration; Zimmer describes him as "an extremely generous man, both publicly in his philanthropic work with the Dana Foundation and privately with friends and colleagues," and concludes, "He will be remembered fondly for his openness, humanity, and thoughtfulness." Tevi Troy relates a priceless and revealing anecdote that begins in Safire's speechwriting days:

The day before Yom Kippur, Safire left the Agnew campaign for 36 hours to fly cross-country to Washington, arriving at Adas Israel synagogue on Connecticut Avenue just in time for the Kol Nidre service that signals the onset of the holiday.

Unfortunately, the synagogue's rabbi considered himself a bit of a political speechwriter as well, and gave an overly political and unbecoming sermon that evening condemning "those who would use alliteration to polarize our society." As Safire put it in his book Before the Fall, "that's all I needed; the 'nattering nabobs of negativism' was not a sin I had come to atone for." Yitzhak Rabin, who was the Israeli ambassador to Washington at the time, comforted Safire after the sermon and later told the rabbi that he felt the attack was inappropriate, something for which Safire was forever grateful.

Two and a half decades later, Safire and Rabin were reunited at a dinner at the Israeli embassy. The two men got into a heated discussion about the Oslo peace process and, according to Safire, "the man sitting at the table between us—Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who never breaches protocol—blanched at the seeming heatedness of the exchange." Rabin then told the story of that long ago Yom Kippur and explained to Christopher, 'That's why we can get angry with each other today without getting angry with each other."

We aren't islands—we should act accordingly

Tyler Dawn has a very good post up today, one which I encourage you to read, that reminded me of this wisdom from the preacher-poet Dr. John Donne:

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. . . .

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

In keeping with this, I also note Tyler Dawn's most recent post; I'll be praying for her, and I hope you will be too.

The key to victory: don't lose your nerve

If Obamacare doesn't pass, it will in the end be because the Democrats forgot that rule. Granted, they have some reason—right now, 2010 isn't looking like a great year for them. Support for the President's health care "plan" (one has to put it in quotes because there is not in fact one coherent plan) is down to 41%, with 56% opposed, and the numbers are even worse among senior citizens; perhaps more importantly, the sense of inevitability is gone, with a slight plurality of voters saying no health care bill will pass this year (and a majority of independents—58%). The President's approval rating continues to sag as well. Still, his Approval Index is somewhat better than it was earlier this year, and the Democrats have pulled to within two points of the GOP on the generic congressional ballot; and perhaps most importantly, the Democratic caucus on the Hill has the votes to pass any bill it pleases with no help whatsoever from the Republican minority. In short, if the Democratic Party actually believes in its declared principles, all its leaders have to do is stick to their guns and they can do what they believe to be best.

Will they? Well, if Rich Lowry is to be believed, maybe not:

That's the prediction of a source in the Senate. He thinks Reid will certainly vote for cloture, but that the bill will be so unpopular—and his own standing in Nevada so precarious—that he'll vote against it on final passage, especially if—as seems likely—the sweetheart deal for Nevada on Medicaid is eventually stripped out.

If—and it seems implausible, but if—one of the two primary legislative leaders of the Democratic Party is in fact prepared to bail on the most important element of his party's political agenda in a bid to save his own skin, then combined with the Senate Finance Committee's decision to euthanize the "public option," one would have to conclude that we're seeing a major failure of nerve. Barack Obama may well need to pull a mighty big rabbit out of his hat if he wants to win this one—and given that he hasn't managed that yet, and seems to have no real idea how he might, I don't know where he's going to find one.

The answer to the dilemma

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 13
Q. Can we pay this debt ourselves?

A. Certainly not.
Actually, we increase our guilt every day.¹

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references (does not work in IE 6).

God's justice must be satisfied; restitution for our sin must be made. Unfortunately, it's beyond us to do it—we can certainly work to improve ourselves, but we can never even get to the point of perfection in this life, let alone become good enough to start paying the price for past sin. If we're going to get out from under this debt, we're going to need help. But from whom?

Q & A 14
Q. Can another creature—any at all—
pay this debt for us?

A. No.
To begin with,
     God will not punish another creature
     for what a human is guilty of.¹
Besides,
     no mere creature can bear the weight
     of God's eternal anger against sin
and release others from it.²

In other words, nobody and nothing else in this world is able to pay the price for us either. Which leaves . . . who?

Q & A 15
Q. What kind of mediator and deliverer
should we look for then?

A. One who is truly human¹ and truly righteous,²
yet more powerful than all creatures,
     that is, one who is also true God.³

This is the crux of the matter. If there was ever to be any hope for our salvation, it could only come from God; if anyone was ever to satisfy the demands of God's justice and deliver us from the penalty due our sin, it could only be God himself.

Caesar worship is alive and well

It's interesting to me how people who screamed bloody murder whenever George W. Bush used a phrase that was even vaguely religious have no problem with religious ceremonies, led by clergy, wearing clerical robes, using the traditional forms of the Christian liturgy, to pray to Barack Obama. When I talk about personality cults and political idolatry and the messianic temptation of the Obama campaign, this is the kind of thing I'm thinking of—except a lot worse than anything I've thought of to this point.

The great political temptation from which Judaism and Christianity delivered us was the worship of human beings; during the medieval period, whoever came up with the idea of the "divine right of kings" brought that partway back, but never all the way. Now, in their reaction against Christian faith and their denial of their need for a divine Messiah, folks on the Left are trying to turn a Chicago machine politician into a secular messiah. It will never work. Put not your trust in princes.

HT: Kevin Carroll, via Toby Brown

On another note

Randall Munroe has a good point here:

Yes, yes, your sugar is a fat-free food. So's everybody else's. Go away.

Can you say "personality cult," boys and girls?

One of the things I missed last week was the creepy little story of New Jersey elementary-school kids being taught songs in praise of Barack Obama. I'm sorry, that's just un-American; in this country, we don't venerate our leaders until they're safely off the stage, and usually dead. This sort of engineered adulation belongs in places like North Korea, not here. I'm with Tyler Dawn—I'd find this just as creepy and just as nauseating if it had been for President Bush, or President Reagan, or anybody else.

Incidentally, for all the folks who were having hysterics and mocking conservatives for their reaction to the President's school speech—granted that that reaction was in many instances excessive—stuff like this is the reason for it. It wasn't that the President was speaking to our kids, it was the suspicion that he wanted to politicize them and turn them into Obamabots—and that the public-school system would, in large part, gladly go along with that agenda—that sent so many people up in flames; and garbage like this only reinforces and aggravates those concerns.

Now, obviously, it's not likely that this was directly orchestrated by the White House; but it's all of a piece with the politics-by-personality-cult approach Barack Obama and his campaign have taken all along. It's the sort of thing that prompted even a liberal like Doug Hagler to complain about the messianic tone of the Obama campaign, which went along with the candidate's apparent messianic view of his own leadership. This isn't even the first creepy video this has produced—not by a long shot.

The problem of filtered reality

All hail the Volokh Conspiracy:

I then said something like—“but it does seem like the overall level of defense is improving all over—I see so many great plays these days . . .” before I recognized how stupid a comment that was. Of course I was seeing more great defensive plays than I had 10 or 20 years before—because 10 or 20 years before there had been no Sportscenter (or equivalent). In 1992 (or whenever exactly this was), I could turn on the TV and catch 20 or 30 minutes of great highlights every night, including 5 or 6 truly spectacular defensive plays; in 1980, or 1960, to see 5 or 6 truly spectacular defensive plays, you had to watch 20 or 25 hours of baseball, minimum. [That’s what ESPN was doing, in effect—watching 10 or 12 games simultaneously and pulling out the highlights]. It was just my mind playing a trick on me; I had unconsciously made a very simple mistake. The way in which I was perceiving the world of baseball had, with Sportscenter, changed fundamentally, but I hadn’t taken that into account. . . .

I call it the ESPN Effect—mistaking filtered reality for reality. We do it a lot. All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right. It is true that we’re seeing more crazy people doing crazy things on the other side (whichever side that may be, for you) coming across our eyeballs these days. But that’s all filtered reality; it bears no more relationship to reality than the Sportscenter highlights bear to the game of baseball. My very, very strong suspicion is that there has never been a time when there weren’t truly crazy people on all sides of the political spectrum doing their truly crazy things. Maybe 1% or so, or even 0.1%—which is a very large number, when you’re talking about a population of, say, 100 million. They didn’t get through the filters much in the Old Days, but they do now. All this talk about how extreme “the debate” is becoming—how, exactly, does anyone get a bead on what “the debate” really is? In reality?

HT: bearing blog, via my wife

I think David Post has an important point here—though I will note one somewhat countervailing point: the people on the right to whom liberals point are generally folks whom most others on the right, and certainly the leading voices on the right, would also disavow, and consider something of an embarrassment; they are truly a lunatic fringe. As the case of Van Jones demonstrated, and as the President’s ongoing campaign organization keeps demonstrating, the folks conservatives point to on the left are usually people whom liberals consider mainstream, at least until there’s some sort of hue and cry to make them pretend otherwise. That’s why Mark Steyn went so far as to say,

what is odd to me, if you look for example at the way Republicans are always being called on to distance themselves from their so-called lunatic fringe, the pattern here is that on the other side of the aisle, there is a lunatic mainstream. ACORN should not be a respectable group, and should not be anywhere near the United States Census. But as we saw with the Van Jones story, no matter how radical you are, on the left, it’s very easy for the most extreme radical to get right up close to the levers of power in the United States. That is where, unfortunately, that is where Obama’s lived most of his adult life, and that is where most of his associations are.

None of this invalidates Post’s point; but I do think it modifies it somewhat.

Honestly?

My wife has a good post up on honesty, commenting on a post by MckMama; I think she has a lot of good things to say (which would be one of the many reasons I married her), but I particularly appreciated this:

We want honesty, but we're not prepared for it when we get it. It's too raw. Too scary. Too boring. Too threatening. We want to think we understand. Honesty shows us we don't. We want to think we have the answers. Honesty shows us we don't. We want the world to be a safe, manageable, controllable place. We know that we ourselves are buffetted and thrown about, but we want to think that someday, somehow, we'll get to a place of answers. But when we really interact with each other, we discover that none of us is one self-help book or one good sermon, or one inspirational song away from having it all together. We discover that giving or receiving a bellyful of honesty requires humility and commitment far beyond what most of us are willing to give most days. It means saying things like "I'd never thought of that before," and "I don't understand, but I'd like to." It means expecting to find that we're all sinful, complex, broken people in a sinful, complex, broken world.

Too often, when we say we want honesty, we just want to be voyeurs. Too often, when we get honesty, we try to trim off the edges so that it will fit back in the box. But we were made by a God bigger than we are, who placed us in a world too complex for us to understand. And he made each of us unique. Different. Should it be any surprise to us when other's individual experiences and stories seem alien to us? When our finite interactions with an infinite God seem too big to handle and comprehend?

Read the whole thing.

Shameless plug o’ the week

Well, things did in fact slow down after Thursday, but not so’s you’d know it by here, since I haven’t really had the time to write the last couple days. I have, however, been able to bring one of the projects I’ve been working on has come to fruition. Our congregation voted last month to change its name, a vote which was confirmed by our presbytery a week ago yesterday; and as part of all the advertising we’re launching to publicize and build off the name change, our Session voted to lay out the funds to build a new website. I’m proud of them for seeing past the cost to the value of that step.

It’s now up; it isn’t completely done (we still need some more pictures up, and another page or two), but it’s pretty close, and I think it looks really good. Most of that isn’t to my credit (I didn’t design it; we purchased the website and the hosting from a company called Clover, with which I’m quite pleased), and my part of the work will no doubt come in for a fair bit of improvement over the next couple months, but for a start, I’m still quite happy with it. In particular, I’m happy that this website includes an integrated calendar, which will be helpful for us, and that it includes a built-in audio player for uploading sermons.

Which means—and I feel rather silly, but this does make me grin—that I now have sermon audio up. Not much as yet, just the first three sermons of my current series on James (I don’t even have this morning’s up at the moment), but the rest will be coming as I can get it uploaded. The quality, alas, isn’t as good as I could wish, since the congregation is still catching up on the technology, but it’s workable. Which is progress, and I’m pleased.

Doers of the word

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

—James 1:22 (ESV)

It isn’t how much we know that matters most (or how much we think we know), or how good we are at talking the talk, when it comes to the Christian life; what matters isn’t how much of God’s word we’ve read, or how much we’ve studied, or even if we have a degree it. What matters, really, is how much the word has changed us, how much it’s expressed in our lives. Are we people who just hear the word of God and then go on about our business, or are we doers of the word?

It’s not a tough question to answer, really; but it’s an important one, because James says, if you’re not a doer of the word, you’re only deceiving yourself. Put another way, if you say you believe the gospel, and it doesn’t change your life, you don’t believe it. If you listen to the preaching of the word, and you nod your head and say, “Good sermon,” and you don’t go out and put it into practice, you don’t believe it. If you read the Bible, and you understand what it’s telling you, and you don’t do everything you can to live accordingly, you don’t believe it. It’s not enough to say the right things, it’s not enough to sing the hymns, it’s not enough to repeat the Creed, it’s not enough to think all the right thoughts—if you don’t do it, if you don’t live this book, then you’re missing something. You might be saved for later, you might have your ticket to heaven punched, but if all this never leaves your head, if it never reaches your hands and your feet, then you aren’t living God’s life now.

We aren’t here just to think certain things, or even to say certain things; it’s not enough just to know God’s word. That phrase “doer of the word” is an odd one—James here is writing in Greek, but he’s thinking in Hebrew. The Greek verb there is poieo—the noun version, poiēma, is the word from which we get our word “poem”; it can mean “to do,” but its basic meaning is “to make,” and in normal Greek, this would have been read as “maker of words”—in our terms, “wordsmith,” or “poet.” To take the typical Hebrew phrase, “doer of the word,” and just import it into Greek the way he does creates a very interesting bit of wordplay—and a profound one, I think. As Christians, we’re called to be in a very real way God’s poems, to write out his words with our lives, so that people who look at our lives can read his message to them in us.

Put another way, we’re supposed to incarnate the word of God—to make God’s word real in our lives, to wrap the flesh of our lives around the bone of his will and his commands, to become walking examples of his teaching; as we follow Christ, who was the Word of God incarnate, we are called to be “little Christs”—that’s what “Christians” means—to be copies of Christ, copies of the word of God, walking around in this world. The Bible is the word of God written, presenting us with Jesus Christ, the word of God made flesh; and our job is to become the word of God acted out, lived out, in 21st-century America. It’s true, as many have said, that you are the only Bible many people will ever read; it’s also true, says James, that that ought to be enough. If you are the only Bible people have ever read, that ought to be enough to tell them who God is, and who Jesus is, and why they ought to follow him. That’s what it means to be a doer of the word, and not merely a hearer of the word. That’s what it means for your life to be a poem for God. That, says James, is what it means to be a Christian.

(Excerpted, edited, from “The Poem of Your Life”)

Just a quick note

to prove I'm still alive . . . this week has been absolutely crazy; I've been head-down in church stuff, and what energy I've had left over from that has gone to family. I think after today, things should slow down a bit, though. I feel like the prairie dog crouching in the hole, wondering if it's safe to stick his head up.

On a random note, one of the businesses I pass on my way to work is a storage company, one of the local places to rent storage lockers. Out front this last week or so they've had one of those rented message boards with the built-in arrows; the arrow has been pointing to one of their buildings, and the message reads, "FUTURE HOME OF HIDDEN TREASURES." Maybe it's just me, but if I had a storage locker there, I'd be a little worried . . .

On the socialism of big-time sports and the distribution of freedom

I recently ran across a fascinating article by Brian Burke at Advanced NFL Stats on the power law. He uses it specifically with respect to such things as coaching tenure and distribution of Pro Bowl selections in the NFL, but along the way he uses such things as the financial crisis that hit last fall to illustrate and explain the power law, and that's what makes the article interesting (at least to me). For instance, Burke writes,

Our current financial crisis was in part caused by a fundamentally wrong assumption about risk distributions in the debt markets. An oversimplified explanation is that investment companies made lucrative but risky investments, and then hedged against their failure by buying insurance in the form of complex derivatives in case they went bust. These companies thought that they had cracked the code and solved the problem of risk once and for all. (One of the reasons the company AIG is central to the problem is that it's the company that led the selling of all that insurance.)

The problem was that the insurance was priced based on an assumption of bell curve distributions of market risk. A model known as the Correlated Gaussian Copula was developed by a Chinese mathematician named Li, and it was widely used throughout the financial industry for measuring and pricing risk. Unfortunately, financial markets act more like earthquakes than normally distributed phenomena like rainfall or human height. There are lots of minor fluctuations but occasionally the bottom drops out. The power law distribution has a ‘fatter tail’ at the extremes than the normal distribution, meaning extreme outcomes are considerably more likely.

As Burke explains, power law distributions tend to arise with networks, especially complex, self-organizing ones; thus, he writes,

Power law distributions are noteworthy because they are the signatures of mature self-organizing complex systems. It’s also a feature of ‘rich-get-richer’ systems. So when we see power law distributions, we can make some qualitative inferences about the system we’re observing. For example, the BCS system is certainly a rich-get-richer organization. We can even quantify just how hierarchical it is and how difficult it is for second-tier teams to break into the elite.

The problem with the BCS isn’t just that it’s a rich-get-richer system. That’s just the natural way of the world. Even in supposedly ‘egalitarian’ systems like socialism, the rich still get richer. The difference is that initial outcomes in socialist systems are based primarily on one’s political connections, where in a free market they tend to be based on how productive or innovative one is. The problem is that the elite ‘nodes’ of the BCS have colluded to preserve their status on top, preventing a natural churn in who the elite are.

This is, among other things, an excellent succinct explanation of why socialism doesn't produce the beneficial equality it promises: it actually increases the opportunities for elites to collude to preserve their status on top. The freer the market, the freer the society, the fewer levers they have to do so and the more opportunity there are for upstarts to upstage them and push them out of the way. The more controlled the market, the more controlled the society, the more levers the elites have, and the more ways and opportunities they have to use that control to keep anyone from breaking into their circle and taking their place.

Receive with meekness

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore
put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness
the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

—James 1:19-21 (ESV)

The world tells us, if you want to understand yourself, if you want to know yourself, look at yourself—look at your desires, your impulses, your strengths, your weaknesses, and go from there. But while all of that is valuable, the Bible tells us we need to begin not with ourselves, but with the God who made us. If we have indeed been given birth through God’s word of truth, then to know who we are and how we should live, we need to under-stand that word of truth; which is to say, we need to stand under it, to place ourselves in position to receive and accept it. We must be quick to listen and slow to speak; we must receive and absorb the word of God, chew on it and swallow it and let it change us, rather than spitting it out whenever we don’t care for the taste.

Too often, however, we reverse this—we’re slow to listen and quick to speak. Too often we see ourselves not as the receiver but as the judge, standing over the word of truth to critique it. There are, for instance, those who feel they have the right to disregard or reject the parts of Scripture that say things they don’t like; but really, you can’t do that without rejecting all of Scripture, because the Bible itself won’t let you do that. Once you start doing that, you have rejected the word of God as the word of truth, and have instead set it up as something to be used when convenient to support what you already believe, or would like to believe. Others of us, though we might not go quite that far, still have something of that spirit in us as we read the word—we just resist more subtly, is all.

Now, none of this is to say that we have to believe everything anyone tells us is biblical; clearly, there are a lot of bad interpretations floating around out there along with the good ones. It is, however, to say three things. First, even when confronted with a view of Scripture which we think is false, we should listen carefully, to see if perhaps there’s a grain of truth to it which we haven’t considered; which is often the case. It’s only the arguments opposed to our own, after all, which can show us the flaws in our own views. Second, we aren’t free to resolve our issues or problems by throwing out the Scripture, for to do that is to hush the voice of God in our lives. Third, in all of this, we must be slow to anger, as James says, for human anger does not produce the righteousness of God. Anger over disagreements, anger over being challenged, does not lead to right relationships, either with God or with each other, and must be set aside in the normal course of life. Therefore, James says, we must put aside everything in us that resists the word of truth and receive it meekly—we have already been given it, but we must open our hearts and welcome it, and the transformation it brings.

(Excerpted from “The Poem of Your Life”)

Playing politics with the troops

Check this out:

Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides when they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”

Jim Geraghty, commenting on this, writes,

The base of the Democratic party is fundamentally pacifist and isolationist and has extraordinary, although not complete, leverage over this White House. They want the rest of the world to go away so we can focus on creating the perfect health-care system. . . .

We now know liberal bloggers never meant what they wrote about Afghanistan. We will soon know if the president meant anything he said about that war on the campaign trail.

On that, the Anchoress is skeptical. Sure, six months ago, the President said that the war in Afghanistan is one we must win and could easily lose, that it would be a Very Bad Thing if we did, and thus that we needed to send more troops and push harder; now, though, he has Secretary of State Clinton telling our military commanders that we don’t need to send more troops because the situation really isn’t that bad. (Umm, politicians with no military training or experience who are half a world away from the combat zones interfering with the military commanders on the scene . . . I thought the idea was not to have another Vietnam. Was I wrong?) As the Anchoress sums it all up,

The Afghan war, the “good” war, the “war that needs winning” was—it turns out—just one more hammer meant to beat up Bush.

Now, the Anchoress sounds mostly resigned about this, I think because she never expected anything better out of the Left. Others, though, are less so; Ace, for one, is utterly furious:

But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?

You . . . um . . . voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?

We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.

Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.

I think Ace is right to be furious at the sickening dishonesty, hypocrisy and cynicism evident here, as these people berated George W. Bush to high heaven for “playing politics with people’s lives” and “using war for political gain” even as—indeed, as the very act of—doing the exact same thing. I agree, if that’s what President Bush was doing (and I didn’t and don’t agree that it was, either by intent or in practice, which is why I supported him), it was reprehensible; but doesn’t that make his critics, who are now admitting to doing so, at least as reprehensible?

Still, I don’t have the energy even to reach, let alone to sustain, Ace’s level of anger; in large part, I suppose, because I too never expected anything better. It would have been nice to believe that President Bush’s critics were all operating out of the degree of moral seriousness and geopolitical awareness they claimed; but in truth, the only ones I ever believed to be sincere were the ones (like Doug Hagler, I believe) who were just as opposed to Afghanistan as to Iraq. I thought (and still think) they were wrong and unwise, but I trusted them to be honest, as I did not trust the posers. As such, I am not surprised, nor even truly dismayed, for the reality merely matches my expectations.

Failure isn't all it's cracked up to be

HT: The Kloska family via The Anchoress

Mary Travers, RIP

It's been a bad month for musicians, I guess (at least those in the folk-pop-rock range); I missed this, but Mary Travers died last Wednesday at the age of 72 after a five-year battle with leukemia. She was of course best known for her time with Peter, Paul and Mary, which was one of the premier groups of the American folk-music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and which is credited with helping to boost Bob Dylan's career. I grew up on their music, and I still love it; all things in this world come to an end, but it's still sad to see it happen.

HT: Jerry Wilson

In honor of Kerry Livgren

Thanks to a commenter on the previous post for tipping me off: Livgren suffered a major stroke three weeks ago. It was bad enough that he had surgery that morning to remove a clot from the language centers of his brain; the surgery went well, and the reports on his recovery (posted on Kansas' official band website; click on "Kerry L. update") are positive. Please be praying.

Since I've been on a Kerry Livgren kick anyway, I thought I'd post a few more videos—this time from the AD phase of his career.

Progress

The Fury

Lead Me to Reason

Carry on

It's way too early in the morning to be up, especially after a long and draining weekend; but up I am, watching Kansas videos on YouTube and working my way towards doing something productive with the time. For the moment, though, I'm just happy to have found these:

Carry On Wayward Son

Point of Know Return

On this blog in history: April 7-11, 2008

Respect: the lubricant of good politics
We should take our political disagreements seriously—but we need to remember that ultimately, we're all on the same side.

The life of faith vs. the life of politics
On the temptation to try to achieve the kingdom of God by political means.

Skeptical conversations, part I: Who is God?
Skeptical conversations, part II: What is God like?
Skeptical conversations, part III: The problem of evil
The first three sections of my credo—think of it as a brief survey of all the things I believe about God, the world, the church, and so on.

The church, the prophet, the whale—and God
On the ways we try to sanitize the story of Jonah, and why we shouldn't.

From stick to Starbucks

Someone could probably get a pretty interesting research project on the correlation between the declining number of manual-transmission automobiles and the rising number of cupholders per vehicle. Or something like that . . . it's not cupholders per se that interest me, but cupholders as a proxy for all the things Americans hold in their hands these days when we drive—coffee cups, fast food, cell phones—I've even seen women applying lipstick while driving. We have become a nation of one-hand drivers; if it were not so, would we have drive-through Starbucks?

In any event, it seems to me there has to be some sort of connection between the freeing of the right hand from working the clutch and the increasing occupation of the right hand with non-driving activities. Where the causation lies, I have no idea; but if anyone ever looks into it, I'd be interested to see what they find out.

Are you sure you're looking for the right thing?

There are scientists who like to insist that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence." At least, there are those who like to do so when the subject is the existence of God; I don't know if they chant the same mantra with regard to SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). Certainly, though, there are many outside the scientific community who consider SETI a waste of time and money, and who make essentially that argument against it—and not without scientific support (see for instance the Fermi paradox).

Against that, though, xkcd's Randall Munroe raises an important question: are we looking for the right sort of evidence? Can we really say that the evidence for which we're looking is sufficient to draw any conclusions about the existence of extraterrestrial life? Put another way, do we know so much about extraterrestrial life that we can be certain that any such beings would necessarily produce evidence of their existence that meets our pre-determined criteria? Or are we, like these ants, looking for the wrong sort of thing?

This is a cluster of questions deserving serious consideration—and not only when it comes to the existence of extraterrestrial life, but also with regard to the existence of God. As the philosopher Edward Tingley has pointed out, much of the argument offered for atheism rests on the dogmatic insistence that if God exists, he must necessarily be subject to scientific proof based on evidence deemed acceptable by people who are philosophically and emotionally committed to atheism. The insistence is, essentially, "Prove yourself on our terms"; which is, essentially, a justification for the fixed intention to disbelieve. God didn't take that from the Pharisees, and there's no reason to think he has any interest in taking it from the scientific community, either. One suspects he probably has that in common with the aliens, if there are any.

Grace in action

Thanks to Doug Hagler for tipping me off on this one—it's from a while ago, but I had indeed missed it the first time. :)

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

If you're not familiar with the story, read the whole thing to see what happened. Grace doesn't come with a money-back guarantee—people don't always respond—but when they do, God does wondrous things.

A brilliant parody of scientism

courtesy of that consistently brilliant parodist, John Cleese—who truly is, as my wife says, at the top of his form with this one. (Scientism, if anyone is wondering, is the dogmatic faith in science which folks like Richard Dawkins use to replace faith in God.)

The great thing about Cleese, evident here, is his unflagging willingness to skewer everybody, including himself and those with whom he agrees. For an instructive comparison, check out Christopher Hitchens' biting critique in the latest Atlantic of folks like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Al Franken, who (though they consider themselves satirists) are unwilling to do so.