Liturgy as the gospel form of worship

I've been meaning to post on Collin Hansen's interview with Brian Chappell (the president of Covenant Seminary in St. Louis) for several weeks now, ever since Jared posted a chunk of it on his own blog. The interview is in relation to the Rev. Dr. Chappell's latest book, Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice, which I have not yet read but definitely intend on reading, and allows him to make some good points on the subject. For instance, I appreciate his note that there is no such thing as "non-liturgical worship"—every church has a liturgy, only the form of that liturgy varies—and his insistence that what matters is whether the liturgy we use communicates the gospel and directs our attention to Christ.

Liturgy is simply another term for the order of worship. Every church has a liturgy, although it may vary from being quite simple to very ornate. Understanding the gospel-shape of worship allows us to make Christ-centered choices about how the aspects of each church's liturgy—an opening song, a prayer of confession, or a benediction—are furthering the gospel message in our services. There is no "one right way" to acknowledge the goodness and greatness of God. But knowing that the beginning of the service has this goal allows us to make appropriate liturgical choices about the songs sung, the scriptures read, and/or the prayers offered in the opening phases of a worship service. The same will be true for those aspects of worship that involve confession, assurance, thanksgiving, etc.

The key here is that worship is for God, and thus that everything we do in worship needs to serve that purpose. This isn't just a matter of the content of our worship, either, but also of its form; as Dr. Chappell puts it,

Christ-centered worship is not just talking or singing about Jesus a lot. Christ-centered worship reflects the contours of the gospel. In the individual life of a believer, the gospel progresses through recognition of the greatness and goodness of God, the acknowledgment of our sin and need of grace, assurance of God's forgiveness through Christ, thankful acknowledgment of God's blessing, desire for greater knowledge of him through his Word, grateful obedience in response to his grace, and a life devoted to his purposes with assurance of his blessing.

In the corporate life of the church this same gospel pattern is reflected in worship. Opening moments offer recognition of the greatness and goodness of God that naturally folds into confession, assurance of pardon, thanksgiving, instruction, and a charge to serve God in response to his grace in Christ. This is not a novel idea but, in fact, is the way most churches have organized their worship across the centuries. . . .

Just as the sacraments re-present the fundamental aspects of the gospel in symbol, and the sermon does so in words, so also the worship of the church re-presents the gospel in its pattern.

This means that our worship practices need to be based not on pragmatic considerations and personal preferences, but on the gospel. Dr. Chappell puts it well when he says,

If church leaders try to establish a style of worship based upon their preferences or based upon satisfying congregants' competing preferences, then the church will inevitably be torn apart by the politics of preference. But if the leadership is asking the missional questions of "Who is here?" and "Who should be here?" in determining worship styles and practices, then the mission of the church will enable those leaders to unite around gospel goals that are more defensible and uniting than anyone's personal preference. These gospel goals will never undermine the gospel contours of the worship service, but rather will ask how each gospel aspect can be expressed in ways that best minister to those present and those being reached for Christ's glory.

It's a great interview, with a lot of important insights. Go check it out.

Is President Obama not funny?

In response to my previous post, cyberfriend Doug Hagler suggested a couple reasons why late-night hosts haven't done much with Barack Obama up until he was (startlingly) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One, Joe Biden, I agree with; the VP is a walking punch line, giving them plenty of material to work with all by himself. Doug's right to call him a "comedic sacrificial lamb." He also has a point in noting that we're not that far into the Obama administration, though if you look back eight years, I think you'll find that that didn't slow the likes of Jay Leno much in going after George W. Bush.

His other suggestion, though, I think is off: that the President is "an articulate public figure" who doesn't give comedians many opportunities to poke fun at him. You know, the guy gives a good speech, but get him off his teleprompter and he's startlingly mortal—even Bush-like. Here's a few examples:

Austrian is a language?

Halting the rise of privacy?

When TOTUS fails:

Thinking on his feet:

57 of 59 states, one left to go:

None of this is to imply that the President is stupid, because he isn't; but were these lines all attributable to George W. Bush, they would have been fed right into the Bush-as-drooling-clown meme, and the jokes would have come cascading down. When Barack Obama says them? Crickets from the big guns of the media. Clearly, something's uneven here.

Now, I don't blame this on bias on the part of late-night hosts. I do think they're biased to some degree—because who isn't?—but I don't think bias drives their routines much at all; for those guys, the driver is getting a laugh, and they'll do anything within reason to get a laugh out of their audience. (And for Letterman—who's either the most biased of the group, I think, or just the meanest—maybe not just within reason.) They've tried telling Obama jokes, and studio audiences haven't responded. They don't want to tell jokes that leave the audience cold, and you can't blame them for that.

Part of this is that the President started off with such an elevated mood, with such elevated expectations, that many people didn't want to diminish that any by laughing at him; part of it is that over the course of the campaign, Barack Obama became increasingly unable to laugh at himself, and so far he's been running an administration that really can't seem to take a joke. That doesn't encourage public levity. It will be interesting to see if the laughter over the Nobel is an indication that public attitudes—as represented by talk-show studio audiences—are starting to change, or if it's just a blip. If it's the former, then the President had best relearn to take a joke, because as JibJab has known all along, he's plenty vulnerable to satire.

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The Nobel Prize for laughter

I have to say, the thing that has surprised me the most about Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has been all the laughter. Sure, I expected some people to laugh, but I wouldn’t have thought to see anyone literally doubled over and out of breath from laughter, and I have seen that. I would have expected more support from the decision around the world, instead of the incredulity that seems to be the general response from major global political figures. After all, someone argued that those who expected Copenhagen to hurt the President’s international prestige should similarly expect the news from Oslo to boost it, and that made a certain amount of sense; but it doesn’t seem to be playing out that way. And I thought that the Left would be pleased by the award, but so far, they haven’t been supporting it either.

Indeed, the late-night jokesters appear to have decided that this is something about President Obama that they can safely mock; and mock they have, with gusto. Here’s Jay Leno, for instance:

Congratulations to Barack Obama—he has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently, the Nobel committee wanted to recognize the president’s fine work in bringing peace to a black professor and a white cop through the strategic use of beer.

President Obama said he was humbled to win the prize. Not as humble as he was when Rio got the Olympics. But still humble.

That’s pretty amazing, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Ironically, his biggest accomplishment as president so far . . . winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama won another Nobel Prize today. This time in medicine for pretending to give up smoking.

The Nobel Peace Prize also comes with a cash award of $1.4 million. Apparently, this is President Obama's plan to finance healthcare reform.

And Conan O’Brien:

Today, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee said they gave it to Obama partly for his idealism and commitment to global cooperation, but mostly for calling Kanye West a jackass.

It’s a great honor for America that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, our economy is so bad, Obama’s already been forced to trade the medal in at “Cash 4 Gold.”

The Nobel Committee is saying the reason they gave Obama the Peace Prize is for reducing tension around the world. So, the runners-up for this year’s Nobel Prize were “red wine” and ”the Brookstone 3-Speed Massaging Recliner.”

Jimmy Fallon took the opportunity to skewer a rival:

Congratulations to President Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. That’s quite an accomplishment. I’m sure he’ll pick it up as soon as he’s finished fighting two wars.

Along with the Nobel Peace Prize President Obama also gets $1.4 million. Usually to get a check that big you need to blackmail David Letterman.

Jimmy Kimmel added a shot at the VP:

A day after declaring war on the moon, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Vice President Biden was awarded the Nobel Hair-Piece Prize.

And Craig Ferguson got off I think the best line at the expense of America’s best-loved losers:

The Chicago Cubs are filing for bankruptcy. They’re from Chicago; they’ve spent millions of dollars they don’t have . . . I smell Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m not sure if this means the President’s media honeymoon is wearing off, or just that the funnymen are that happy to have a “safe” way to get laughs out of him.

Faith against the grain

I made the point in a post Monday that faith works—that faith in God, by the essence of what it is, produces action. It’s not just a matter of mental assent; it’s not enough just to agree with the proposition that God exists—the demons believe that more strongly than anyone, and they’re certainly not saved. Their faith, if you want to call it that, doesn’t change anything for them, except to cause them great fear. True faith, by contrast, changes everything, because it’s not just believing with our mind, it’s believing with our whole being. It produces action in the same way that acorns produce oak trees—it’s simply the nature of the thing. If someone claims to have faith in God but shows no evidence of it in the way they live their lives, that faith is like a body without a spirit: dead.

This is not, however, the common understanding of faith in this country, even among many in the church. In truth, this understanding of Christian faith is really quite countercultural these days. The idea is widespread nowadays, even among Christians, that our faith should be a private matter, between us and God, which really shouldn’t mess up our public lives. It’s fine to be a Christian and go to church and all that if that’s what works for you, but people around you shouldn’t have to deal with that if they don’t want to; out in the “real world,” you ought to go about your business the same way as everybody else.

This is the way of thinking James calls “friendship with the world,” living in such a way as to keep the world happy; and as he makes clear, this is the exact backwards of the way of life to which God calls us. True faith cannot be merely a private matter; it cannot be something we keep restricted to safe times and places when there’s no one around who might object. It changes everything we say and everything we do, at every time and in every place, in every aspect of our lives. True faith isn’t concerned with whether we’re telling people what they want to hear, it’s concerned with whether or not we’re being faithful witnesses to the truth and the life of Jesus Christ—who, after all, often made people thoroughly uncomfortable by telling people exactly what they didn’t want to hear, because it was the truth they needed to hear.

(Excerpted, edited, from “No Private Matter”)

On agenda-driven orthodoxy and the need for humility

In addition to my snark in the previous post, I do have a serious comment on the BBC's admission that the Earth has been cooler since 1998—or perhaps I should say, sparked by that article. The remarkable thing about that article is that it's a deviation from the liberal political orthodoxy on global warming (and it is a political orthodoxy, for all that it claims scientific status), which is not the sort of thing one expects from the BBC. Of course, it was a deviation driven by the facts; the author of the article did his best to uphold the global-warming storyline anyway, but facts are hard things to get around.

Which brings up the problem I have with the global-warming orthodoxy: it's an orthodoxy based on an agenda. The agenda itself is not necessarily bad; in fact, I agree with its declared goals, though I disagree with the socialist/big-government approach to reaching them. From both a theological and a public-health perspective, as well as with an eye to future unexpected consequences, it's obviously important that we continue to reduce pollution; I just think that encouraging innovation rather than regulating it is likely to be more productive in doing so.

The problem is, rather, that what we have here is an agenda in search of a crisis, because whipping up a crisis and motivating people by fear is considered to be the quickest and most effective way to drive action, particularly when that action involves expanding government control over the economy and people's lives. The agenda comes first, and it looks for a plausible threat to which to attach itself, so as to be able to tell people that they must enact the agenda or Bad Things will happen. This is what we might call the Houghton Strategy, after Sir John Houghton, the first person to chair the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”

Now, the problem with that is that even when it finds success at first, that approach will ultimately collapse. Eventually, as even a global-warming believer like Gregg Easterbrook recently noted, the facts refuse to cooperate, and the truth becomes inconvenient for the agenda. That's when you get people rooting for disaster, because they'd rather be proved miserably right than happily wrong; getting their own way is the most important thing to them, and they react accordingly.

That's when orthodoxy gets ugly, and when it fails. I am, obviously, not opposed to all orthodoxies as such; I believe there's such a thing as truth, and that fact provides at least a philosophical and theoretical justification for orthodoxy (and, in my view, a good bit more than that). Humble orthodoxy that arises out of the search for truth and that recognizes that it is at best an imperfect grasp on that truth is, I firmly believe, a good thing; it's also a flexible thing, able to discern what is truly essential and what isn't. Orthodoxy that arises out of an agenda, however—that exists in service not to the truth and the desire for understanding, but to the desire to do certain things—is of necessity dogmatic and inflexible; it also tends to end up being shrill, because it's forced to defend itself and advance its cause through denunciations and alarmist statements. By its very nature, it's committed not to understanding what is true, but to winning the argument—and when winning is everything, it very quickly becomes the only thing, and all other concerns (such as truth and fairness) fall by the wayside, leaving behind only a naked power grab.

This applies to orthodoxies of all types—political, religious, cultural, scientific, legal, you name it. You can meet this in the church (whether the local congregation or the international denomination), in politics at every level, in business, and indeed in most spheres of human life. You can find it among the cynical and power-hungry, and in the hearts of the most selfless and altruistic. It is a universal danger for all of us who are strongly committed to any belief or set of beliefs: are we truly seeking to under-stand the truth, to pursue it and stand under it and allow it to shape us, or are we concerned with winning the argument, with being acknowledged to be right, whether in fact we are or not?

BBC admits: world stopped warming 11 years ago

Their admission threw the planet into a drastic cooling trend, as Hell promptly froze over.

HT: The Anchoress

Prayer in the Roman world

[Jesus said,] “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

—Matthew 6:7-8 (ESV)

This evening, my lovely wife discovered what looks like a fascinating blog, For the Sake of Truth, by a Ph.D. student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary named Josh Mann. I'll have to explore it a bit to see if I want to add it to the blogroll, but I can already say that the current top post, “How to Pray: Two Ancient Views,” is a keeper.

Commentators generally understand Jesus’ condemnation of “using meaningless repetition” (βατταλογήσητε) and “many words” (τῇ πολυλογίᾳ) as either (1) formulaic and legalistic repetition of intelligible prayers; or (2) pagan magical incantations (probably unintelligible gibberish). I lean heavily toward the first view, not least because of the prevalence of repetitious intelligible prayers carried out in the Roman culture (both private and public).

He then goes on to lay out examples of that (including a remarkable quote from Pliny the Elder), concluding,

It seems that in the Roman view, strict adherence to a formula would obligate the god or goddess to respond in kind.

This, of course, stands in the sharpest of contrast to the view of prayer taught by Jesus:

One should not think to obligate God by some formula. Rather, one ought to pray to God as a dependent child makes request to a Father (Matt 6:9-13). In my view, Jesus gives a model for prayer (rather than a strict formula!), but in any case, he clearly commands that prayer be done with sincerity and humility, recognizing one’s needs and the ability of the Father to provide for such needs. Prayer is no doubt petition at its core, but in Matthew 6, Jesus challenges the crowds regarding the attitudes and motives underlying prayer.

It’s a great post; go read the whole thing.

Faith works

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? . . . Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

—James 2:14,17 (ESV)

One of the main emphases for those of us in the Reformed stream of the Christian faith is that salvation does not come by our own effort in any way, but is purely by faith, which itself is a gift from God. We know that we can’t earn our salvation, because we can’t live up to God’s standards; rather, we receive it as a free gift—what we cannot do, God did for us in Jesus Christ. This was a major theme of the Reformation, as Martin Luther and John Calvin challenged a Catholic Church that had grown corrupt, because it’s a major theme in the letters of Paul; it was a significant recovery for the church, for all the conflicts that came along with it.

Unfortunately, one of the divisions that arose, in the mind of Luther—and among Catholics as well—was between Paul and James. Luther saw James as contradicting Paul, and dismissed the book as “a right strawy epistle.” He didn’t quite go so far as to leave it out when he translated the Bible into German, but he’s said to have ripped it out of his personal Bible. His objection was based, however, on a misreading of the book.

It’s easy to see where that came from, as both Paul and James talk about faith and works and salvation; superficially, they sound very similar in their language, and seem to be addressing the same issues. If you read a little more closely, though, you see that though they use the same words, they aren’t talking about the same things. When Paul talks about faith versus works, he’s talking about “works of the law”—that’s his phrase; his point is that you can’t earn your salvation by keeping the law, because you can’t possibly keep it well enough to satisfy God. His focus is on the most basic level: how are we saved? How do we enter into the life of the kingdom of God?

James, by contrast, isn’t talking about “works of the law” at all—he never uses the phrase. Rather, he’s talking about works of faith. He’s not talking about how we get saved, about how we lay hold of the life of God—rather, he’s talking about what that life looks like, and about true faith versus false faith. Where Paul’s argument deals with what we can do, or can’t do, in order to be saved, James’ concern is with how our lives should look because we have been saved. Like the whole rest of the book, this is about what it means to live the Christian life—to live the life of God in this fallen world. All he’s really doing in chapter 2 is restating and expanding on a point he made in chapter 1: it’s not enough for us to hear the word of God, we need to submit our lives to its authority and do what it says, if we want to call ourselves Christians.

(Excerpted, edited, from “No Private Matter”)

On this blog in history: April 17-21, 2008

Holy discomfort
On Pope Benedict and his critique of the selfish, reductionist individualism of our culture.

The old made new—not replaced
All things will be redeemed, including the works of our hands.

The Ascension, the body, and the kingdom of God
Our bodies aren't temporary.

Meditation: on barbering churches
Is the church defined by its edges? If so, how?

Brief meditation: on art
Considering art, God, mediation, and the problem of definition.

Skeptical conversations, part IV: Considering humanity
On what it means to be human.

There are days, and there are days

Some days you're born to win; some days you hope to place; some days you just want to get out alive. There's no shame in that—it's just the way life goes.

We need an extraordinary savior

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 16
Q. Why must he be truly human
and truly righteous?

A. God's justice demands
     that human nature, which has sinned,
     must pay for its sin;¹
     but a sinner could never pay for others.²

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

This is the keystone of the dilemma: no one who is not truly and fully human, fully participating in human nature and human life, could possibly serve as the mediator we need and pay the penalty for human sin—it had to be one of us; what human beings had put wrong, another human being must put right. At the same time, no one who participated in human sinfulness, no one who was himself or herself guilty of sin, would have the ability to pay that price. "Pretty good" isn't good enough for the salvation we need; not even the best human being we've ever known or heard of is up to the task. No one less than a completely perfect human being could do it.

Q & A 17
Q. Why must he also be true God?

A. So that,
     by the power of his divinity,
he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity
     and earn for us
     and restore to us
righteousness and life.¹

Logically, then, we need a savior who is both fully human and fully God, since only God can be perfect enough to satisfy his own demands. And yet, there's more to it than that. Only God could bear the weight of what had to be done; only God could endure bearing the near-infinite guilt of all human sin and suffering. Only God could lay down a life of infinite worth, in a deliberate choice of infinite love, as an act of infinite grace, to wash away that near-infinite guilt.

A benefit to the Obama victory I hadn't considered

If you're familiar with the history of Hawaii, I'd think you'd likely agree that the annexation of the islands wasn't exactly America's finest hour. On a rational level, one could debate whether Hawaiians are better off as a part of the USA than they would be as an independent nation, but national pride and the sense of national identity doesn't operate on a rational level, or at least not only so; there's still a lot of resentment among many Hawaiians that the US didn't play fair back in the 1890s, and many who would rather have had their independence back in 1959 than statehood. Of course, tourism is a major part of the Hawaiian economy, and tourist economies tend to generate a lot of resentment of the tourists anyway, and those two things no doubt work to reinforce each other.

Apparently, though, that's being mitigated somewhat by Barack Obama's ascension to the presidency, as having a Hawaiian in the White House—even if he hasn't lived there full-time in many years—has created a lot of pride. My in-laws just returned from a trip, and one of the points that really struck them was how every place President Obama lived, went to school, etc. was pointed out to them; from the comments people made, it sounds like his election has given many in his home state a new sense of ownership in America, a new sense of being Americans as well as Hawaiians. That can only be a good thing. I tend to think the US government ought to offer Hawaii the chance to regain its independence if the Hawaiian people want it—no doubt the feds would insist on retaining military installations, but one imagines a deal could be worked out, if a constitutional means for such a plebiscite could be found—but given the unlikelihood of such an act, it is well that Hawaiians at least have more reason to feel like they belong to the country of which they are legally a part.

So much for the post-racial presidency

From America's most accurate pollster, Scott Rasmussen:

Just 60% of U.S. voters now say that American society is generally fair and decent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

That’s down nine points since late August and the lowest measure since President Obama took office in January, fueled in large part by growing unhappiness among African-American voters.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) of all voters say U.S. society is basically unfair and discriminatory, up six points from late August and the highest level measured since December.

Only 14% of African-Americans now feel society is fair and decent. That number has dropped 41 points from 55% a month after Obama took office. Sixty-six percent (66%) of black voters think society is unfair and discriminatory, up 26 points since early February.

The majority of white voters (65%) say society is fair and decent. Seventy-two percent (72%) of all other voters agree.

John Hinderaker comments,

It's interesting that Latinos and Asians evidently have a higher opinion of the decency of American society than whites. But the main point here, obviously, is the dramatic shift among African-Americans. What could have caused it?

The only possible answer is that many Americans have opposed President Obama's policies. But why would that cause African-Americans to think that our society is "discriminatory" rather than "decent"? No mystery there: in a well-coordinated campaign, the Democratic Party has relentlessly portrayed all disagreement with the Obama administration's policies as "racist." That contemptible and divisive tactic had seemed to produce no results, but we now see that it had one consequence: alienating African-Americans from their country.

Some "post-racial President."

As I noted a week or so ago, drawing on a post by Cornell law professor William Jacobson, and as I touched on again a few days ago, using the accusation of racism to demonize anyone who dares disagree with the President's agenda is a toxic tactic that will only sicken this nation. I think Rasmussen's polling is picking up the first symptoms of that illness.

Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

The story from Reuters; Phil at The Thinklings has some good comments, as does the Times of London. For my part, all I have to say is that Morgan Tsvangirai was robbed.

On abortion and the political divide

I was thinking this morning about one of the odder facts of recent American political history: the flip-flop in positions on abortion between the parties. Up into the ’60s, the Democratic Party was firmly pro-life, as hard as that may be to believe now. In large part, I imagine, that was due to the fact that Catholics were as firmly in the Democratic camp as blacks are now, and the Catholic Church has always been strongly pro-life—in fact (here’s another thing that sounds bizarre now), when Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, the decision was applauded by the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention(!) on grounds of religious freedom. Abortion was seen as a Catholic issue; the SBC interpreted Roe as a victory for Protestants over Catholics, and thus (by their anti-Catholic logic) as a freeing of the law from Catholic influence. Beyond that, though, it was generally understood that the logic of liberalism and its emphasis on social justice meant defending the rights of the unborn.

Within a very short time, though, that all changed, and the pro-life movement found itself entrenched within the Republican Party instead. Why? Well, part of that is probably the rise of the Catholic Right—noted traditional Catholic William F. Buckley launched National Review in 1955, and though not an overtly Catholic magazine, it’s always had a definite Catholic character to it—but the shift came nearly two decades later; at most, the rise of the Catholic Right gave Catholics who left the Democratic Party someplace to go. It doesn’t explain why they left, nor why many non-Catholics went with them. Take the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, who as a Lutheran pastor in NYC was a leading intellectual light on the Left in the ’60s, involved in the civil rights movement and an intimate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; how is it that by the ’80s, he was one of the most influential thinkers and leaders in this country on the Right?

The answer is that after Roe, the parties reconfigured themselves. As Princeton’s Robert P. George tells the story,

Neuhaus opposed abortion for the same reasons he had fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. At the root of his thinking was the conviction that human beings, as creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of God, possess a profound, inherent, and equal dignity. This dignity must be respected by all and protected by law. That, so far as Neuhaus was concerned, was not only a biblical mandate but also the bedrock principle of the American constitutional order. Respect for the dignity of human beings meant, among other things, not subjecting them to a system of racial oppression; not wasting their lives in futile wars; not slaughtering them in the womb.

It is important to remember that in those days it was not yet clear whether support for “abortion rights” would be a litmus test for standing as a “liberal.” After all, the early movement for abortion included many conservatives, such as James J. Kilpatrick, who viewed abortion not only as a solution for the private difficulties of a “girl in trouble,” but also as a way of dealing with the public problem of impoverished (and often unmarried) women giving birth to children who would increase welfare costs to taxpayers.

At the same time, more than a few notable liberals were outspokenly pro-life. In the early 1970s, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for example, replied to constituents’ inquiries about his position on abortion by saying that it was a form of “violence” incompatible with his vision of an America generous enough to care for and protect all its children, born and unborn. Some of the most eloquent and passionate pro-life speeches of the time were given by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In condemning abortion, Jackson never failed to note that he himself was born to an unwed mother who would likely have been tempted to abort him had abortion been legal and easily available at the time.

The liberal argument against abortion was straightforward and powerful. “We liberals believe in the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the human family. We believe that the role of government is to protect all members of the community against brutality and oppression, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. We do not believe in solving personal or social problems by means of violence. We seek a fairer, nobler, more humane way. The personal and social problems created by unwanted pregnancy should not be solved by offering women the ‘choice’ of destroying their children in utero; rather, as a society we should reach out in love and compassion to mother and child alike.”

So it was that Pastor Neuhaus and many like him saw no contradiction between their commitment to liberalism and their devotion to the pro-life cause. On the contrary, they understood their pro-life convictions to be part and parcel of what it meant to be a liberal. They were “for the little guy”—and the unborn child was “the littlest guy of all.”

It seems strange to think that some of the justices who crafted Roe and its successor decision, Doe v. Bolton, were considered conservatives and considered themselves to be acting on conservative principles, but it’s the truth. The decision, however, galvanized reactions, as all major decisions do, producing shifts in the political landscape:

By 1980, when Ronald Reagan (who as governor of California in the 1960s had signed an abortion liberalization bill) sought the presidency as a staunchly pro-life conservative and Edward Kennedy, having switched sides on abortion, challenged the wishy-washy President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries as a doctrinaire “abortion rights” liberal, things had pretty much sorted themselves out. “Pro-choice” conservatives were gradually becoming rarer, and “pro-life” liberals were nearly an endangered species.

This, combined with the movement to re-ideologize American politics that began in earnest in 1968, is probably the most important fact in creating the political landscape as we know it.

One further thought: what of the Rev. Dr. King? He was a man who knew his history, who knew that part of the drive behind Planned Parenthood and the promotion of legalized abortion was the eugenicist impulses of white racists like Margaret Sanger who believed that “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated”; he was also, inarguably, a man of great moral courage. He’s generally thought of now as a man of the Left, and certainly had moved in that direction in a number of ways in the last few years of his life—but would he have followed the Left’s migration on the abortion issue, helping to realize Sanger’s vision of a self-inflicted black genocide? I could be wrong—I could always be wrong—but I don’t think so. Whether he would have shifted rightward with his friend the Rev. (and later Fr.) Neuhaus on economic issues is an imponderable, but I believe the man who stood so powerfully for the civil rights of people with dark skin would have stayed with Fr. Neuhaus in standing powerfully for the civil rights of the unborn. It may well be that the greatest loser in the Rev. Dr. King's assassination was the pro-life movement then still unborn.

Speaking of conservative idolatry

here's an example that's every bit as sickening, in a different but equally serious way, as the Obamadolatry we've been seeing: the "Conservative Bible Project." What an astonishing fusion of conservative Bibliolatry with conservative patriolatry . . . just look at this:

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias . . .

4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle". . . .

7. Express Free Market Parables: explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story . . .

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Several things are clear at this point. In the first place, these people clearly know little or nothing of what they would need to know to produce a useful translation of the Bible—just enough to be dangerous, at best. (I'll duel any of these fools—and I use the term advisedly, in its full biblical sense—over the authenticity of John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery; there is no good reason to call it inauthentic, though on my judgment, it was probably originally a part of the gospel of Luke.) In the second place, their work is—deliberately—every bit as agenda-driven as the "liberal" work they condemn (much of which isn't liberal at all).

And in the third place, their professed interest in the Bible is a sham and a delusion. They may well believe it to be sincere—they may well be self-deluded—but it's a sham and a delusion nonetheless. Their whole approach demonstrates that they only care about the Bible as a tool to be used for their purposes; and that's about as unbiblical an approach as there is. It's also, I confess, an approach which I find completely intolerable. As I wrote recently,

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.

I suspect from their comments that the folks doing this "conservative Bible" would assert that their project is necessary because liberals do this; but while I agree that liberals very often do, the answer is not for conservatives to do the same! That only worsens the problem, it doesn't help it. This sort of exegetical obscenity is intolerable in the service of any agenda. The Bible isn't "conservative" or "liberal" in the sense that it's about any human agenda, for any person or group of people; the Bible is about God's agenda, and his agenda alone, to which we're called to submit ourselves. To do otherwise isn't to "translate" the Bible but to distort and deform it.

One wonders why these fools can't get this. Rod Dreher does, calling the project "insane hubris"; so does Ed Morrissey:

However, if one believes the Bible to be the Word of God written for His purposes, which I do, then the idea of recalibrating the language to suit partisan political purposes in this age is pretty offensive—just as offensive as they see the "liberal bias" in existing translations. If they question the authenticity of the current translations, then the only legitimate process would be to work from the original sources and retranslate. And not just retranslate with political biases in mind, but to retranslate using proper linguistic processes and correct terminology.

The challenge of Christian believers is to adhere to the Word of God, not to bend the Word of God to our preferred ideology. Doing the former requires discipline and a clear understanding of the the Bible. Doing the latter makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around.

It can't be that difficult to understand that replacing liberal bias with conservative bias doesn't make for better Bible translation, doesn't it? Is "two wrongs don't make a right" really that hard a concept? For my part, I'm with the Anchoress (whose post is a must-read) on this one: This is where I get off the boat.

On partial-birth abortion

No, it isn't all Doug Hagler all the time around here (though I should probably declare this "Doug Hagler Week," and send him a thank-you card for giving me so much to post about), but he did say something in his post on George W. Bush that I think requires a response. To wit, here was the first point he adduced in President Bush's favor:

Bush banned what is often erroneously called partial-birth abortion, or more accurately late-term abortion. I'm not sure what the moral argument in favor of late-term abortion would be.

Now, there are several things that need to be said here. First, I do agree completely with the second sentence. Second, Aric Clark tried to counter that sentence by misrepresenting late-term abortion (the abortion industry is actually woefully under-regulated, and notorious for fighting any regulation on proclaimed ideological grounds). And third, none of that is actually germain to the point, because Doug's first sentence here is almost completely wrong. On a technical level, President Bush didn't ban partial-birth abortion, Congress did, though under his leadership. On a semantic level, the term "partial-birth abortion" is not in fact erroneous. And on the level of content, "partial-birth abortion" does not mean "late-term abortion," it means something very particular.

For those who are pro-life and squeamish, you might not want to read further, especially if you already know the score on partial-birth abortion. If you're pro-choice and squeamish, I would suggest that you do read on, so that you understand what it is you're defending. And if you're pro-choice and not bothered by the details, then may God soften your heart.

To the jump . . .

*********

Partial-birth abortion is a particular procedure, technically known as intact dilation and extraction (as well as by other, similar terms) and often referred to as D&X. The Free Dictionary describes the procedure this way:

According to the American Medical Association, this procedure has four main elements.^[8] First, the cervix is dilated. Second, the fetus is positioned for a footling breech. Third, the fetus is extracted except for the head. Fourth, the brain of the fetus is evacuated so that a dead but otherwise intact fetus is delivered via the vagina.

Usually, preliminary procedures are performed over a period of two to three days, to gradually dilate the cervix using laminaria tents (sticks of seaweed which absorb fluid and swell). Sometimes drugs such as synthetic pitocin are used to induce labor. Once the cervix is sufficiently dilated, the doctor uses an ultrasound and forceps to grasp the fetus' leg. The fetus is turned to a breech position, if necessary, and the doctor pulls one or both legs out of the birth canal, causing what is referred to by some people as the 'partial birth' of the fetus. The doctor subsequently extracts the rest of the fetus, usually without the aid of forceps, leaving only the head still inside the birth canal. An incision is made at the base of the skull, scissors are inserted into the incision and opened to widen the opening^[9], and then a suction catheter is inserted into the opening. The brain is suctioned out, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the birth canal. The placenta is removed and the uterine wall is vacuum aspirated using a suction curette.

The AMA doesn't acknowledge the term "partial-birth abortion," but that's not because it's factually inaccurate; to the contrary, it's descriptive and evocative, which is precisely why the AMA resists it. Nor is it true to say that the procedure is only used in "rare and terrifyingly ugly situations," as Aric Clark claimed; rather,

Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (a trade association of abortion providers), told the New York Times (Feb. 26, 1997): "In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along."^[35] Some prominent self-described pro-choice advocates quickly defended the accuracy of Fitzsimmons' statements.^[36]

This is nothing less than the torture-murder of innocent human beings for no more crime, in most cases, than being inconvenient to the mother—or to people whom the mother is unwilling to challenge. You may well argue that opposition to abortion requires pacifism, opposition to anything one might call torture, and the like, and you might well be right (though at this point, I'm not convinced; I intend to argue through some of these things in the near future)—but it seems to me far stronger in the other direction: the arguments for pacifism and for the condemnation of such things as waterboarding apply with even greater force to abortion. To call oneself a pro-choice pacifist is to be logically and morally incoherent.

The demon parade

I just put up a post arguing that hero worship really isn't a normal part of politics in this country, and that started me thinking: what is "just part of politics" in this country anymore is the opposite of hero worship—what we might call villain demonization. I think the first place we really see that in recent American politics was in Edward Kennedy's decision to throw out truth and civility in order to destroy the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; that was succeeded by the attempt to do the same to Clarence Thomas, which failed when Anita Hill didn't hold up as a credible witness. When Bill Clinton won the White House, those two things, combined with the memory of the Iran-Contra investigation, had the Right out for blood, and what Hillary Clinton would dub the "politics of personal destruction" were on in earnest. I do believe the impeachment of President Clinton was justified—perjury is a major felony; it is to the justice system what counterfeiting is to the banking system—but I don't believe the investigation that produced the circumstances under which the President (stupidly) perjured himself was justified by that point, if indeed there had ever been sufficient justification for it. (Those aren't weasel words—I simply don't know the facts of the matter well enough to say one way or the other.)

From there, we got the disputed 2000 election and the outrage of a Left that had never seriously considered the possibility it might lose, and thus refused to accept that it had (a refusal which did, at least, produce the single most brilliant political bumper sticker I've ever seen: "Re-Defeat Bush"); this would, over time, build to a crescendo of political filth such as I don't think the US has seen since the 1860s, with shots like "BusHitler" and "Chimpy McHitler" aimed at the President, and considerably worse insults directed at VP Cheney. We saw the Left advance from the level of abuse directed at the Clintons to language actively designed to debase and dehumanize President Bush and his administration—with the worst of it (aside from that dumped on the President and VP) unloaded on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom the good old Southern plantation racism was dragged out, used for the exact same purpose against her as it had been back in the day. She might well have said, as entertainer Lloyd Marcus recently did, "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." If she had, however, I doubt she would have gotten any consideration from the Left, only more ridicule.

One advantage to the election of Barack Obama to the big chair at 1600 Pennsylvania is that his status as the first person of African descent (though not of slave descent; that breakthrough hasn't happened yet) to assume the Presidency has made the use of that sort of vitriol against him politically disadvantageous (for now, at least), and has thus walked back the level of nastiness in our political discourse. Unfortunately, the Left seems firmly intent on undoing that advantage by treating any sharp opposition to the President and his policies as if it were that bad, or worse. Thus, for instance, the howl over Joe Wilson's inappropriate (though arguably true) outburst—you'd never realize, listening to the sanctimony oozing from the lips of Nancy Pelosi and others, that the Democratic congressional caucus as a whole had treated President Bush far worse, and on more than one occasion. Thus as well the debasement of the words "racism" and "racist" into mere political swear words for liberals to hurl at conservatives. Thus, ultimately, the deliberate effort to exacerbate the inflammation in the American body politic for political gain, rather than allowing it to subside somewhat and hoping to draw advantage from that.

This is not to say that there haven't been inappropriate and outrageous things hurled at President Obama (though the most ubiquitous, the Obama-Joker poster, was created by a liberal Palestinian supporter of Dennis Kucinich); but it is to say that in their efforts to paint seemingly every criticism directed at him with that brush, Democratic leaders are guilty of both the rankest of rank hypocrisy and an appallingly cynical and short-sighted attempt at political manipulation. Honestly, while the Right needs to continue to work to marginalize and weed out the nasty folks, most folks on the Left really don't have a leg to stand on to complain about the nastiness. If they want to publicly repent of calling George W. Bush "Chimpy McHitler," Dick Cheney "Darth Vader," Condoleezza Rice "Aunt Jemima," and Michael Steele "Simple Sambo," then I'll welcome them complaining about a portrayal of Barack Obama as a witch doctor. Until then, what more are they saying than "It's only racist when you do it"? They'd never tolerate that sort of special pleading from the Right; why should they be allowed to get away with it?

Hero worship?

I posted below what I labeled three parts of a four-part response to Doug Hagler's comments on my post "The self-esteem presidency." Those parts were, respectively, a post noting mistakes Sarah Palin has made, one listing positive things about Barack Obama, and one listing positive things about the overly- and unfairly-vilified Dick Cheney. Being all of the same kind, detail posts, they quite properly went together. There is, however, a broader response that I think needs to be offered. Doug kicked the conversation off not just with a challenge, but with an assertion:

See, my theory is that hero-worship is just part of politics, and my guess is that it is just as operative with Palin supporters as it is with Obama supporters.

I think the best that can be said of the first part of this statement, the general theory Doug propounded, is that to the extent that it's true, it's not meaningful. On the one hand, I don't know that we can rule out all hero worship for any significant politician—heck, I can think of one or two people who could be accused of that with respect to John McCain, though not for anything he's done in politics. (Come to think of it, though, that same qualifier could be applied to most of Barack Obama's adoring fans.) On the other, however, and more significantly, large-scale hero worship for politicians is a very rare thing. Take John Kerry, for instance (I'm tempted to say, "Please!"): he certainly tried to create an heroic image for himself, but I don't think even Democrats bought it on a visceral level. They staunchly supported him, but for ideological reasons—and for emotional reasons that had nothing to do with Sen. Kerry, on which more in a minute. Hero worship of Ol' Long Face was simply not in evidence.

If you look at the major politicians out there, at recent presidents and presidential candidates, Sen. Kerry was in that respect the rule, not the exception. Granted, Sen. Kerry was at the uncharismatic end for a politician, and thus unusually unlikely to inspire adoration—but not even Bill Clinton, the most charismatic of a remarkably unappealing set of presidential contenders over the last quarter-century, never inspired anything remotely approaching true widespread hero worship, let alone anything one might think to call a cult of personality.

This past campaign was the exception. Under normal circumstances, Hillary Clinton would have run away with the Democratic nomination, because she came into the campaign generating far more passion than any non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate of the preceding 45 years; in some cases, I think you could fairly call that hero worship, of a purely ideological sort. As it was, though, she got blown away by somebody who could also generate that ideological sort of hero worship, but who also had the charisma and political skills to create much more—and took full advantage of them, even amplifying them by using quasi-messianic language of himself in his speeches.

This, of course, created a hunger in the Republican base for a candidate of their own who could do the same—and when Sen. McCain found one to be his running mate, the base went through the roof. There were a couple things, however, which mitigated against the development of the same sort of personality cult around Gov. Palin that had developed around Sen. Obama. The first, of course, was the fact that the McCain campaign didn't want any such thing to happen; indeed, once they realized just how big a tiger they'd gotten by the tail, their main concern the rest of the way appeared to be keeping Gov. Palin from upstaging Sen. McCain. I wouldn't say the GOP candidate was actively trying to squash support for his running mate, but he and his staff were definitely working to prevent it from developing in ways that wouldn't benefit him directly.

The second, on the evidence of her own writings and speeches since the campaign, appears to have been that Gov. Palin wasn't interested in any such thing happening either. Not only did she not make any "elect me and everything will be wonderful" types of statements during the campaign, she hasn't made any since, or indeed done anything close. She has not adopted a strategy of offering herself to the nation, and there seems to be no reason to think that will change. Nor has she tried to organize, or indeed offered any support to, the community of online communities that have developed around her; in fact, the only acknowledgements I can recall from her staff of sites like Conservatives4Palin and TeamSarah have been vaguely unflattering.

The upshot of all of this is that, while there are no doubt a lot of people out there who could be fairly accused of hero worship with regard to Gov. Palin, whose view of her is unreasonably positive, there's none of the fawning over her that one gets over the President, even from her most prominent supporters. There are no clergy offering prayers to her, no celebrities making music videos offering prayers to her, no school districts teaching their students to sing worship songs about her, no "Palin Youth" to match the "Obama Youth"—none of that, nothing of the kind. And certainly there's no other politician, now or in living memory, who's ever gotten that sort of treatment. The Obama phenomenon (Obamanomenon?) is and remains sui generis—at least outside countries like North Korea that can compel it.

Now, I can understand Doug's desire to argue otherwise, since I know the personality cult of the Obamessiah doesn't make him any happier than it does me; I can understand why he would want to be able to argue that this is just par for the course in politics, not something of which the Left has become uniquely guilty. In the end, though, the facts just won't sustain that argument; this is in fact something unique to the Left in American politics. I continue to believe that there's good reason for that, that this is no accident but rather is the result of the secular Left's search for a secular messiah to replace the one it has decisively rejected. For all the temptation to political idolatry on the Right (something I've certainly written about often enough), that particular temptation doesn't exist there, as religious conservatives already have a Messiah and non-religious conservatives tend to be quite consciously anti-messianic. Here's hoping that doesn't change.

This is just brilliant

Thanks to Toby Brown, the Classical Presbyterian, for pointing me to this one—it's the funniest thing I've seen in a while, possessed of a certain wonderfully delirious logic.

My own personal bailout

Despite the fact that I'm only 35, I'm an old folkie at heart; I suppose that's what comes of growing up with a father who started at Stanford in the first heat of the Kingston Trio's success. I remember, for instance, a 1983 folk music reunion concert that we taped while we were living down in Texas—I remember it quite well, in fact, having rewatched it more times than I can count. One of my favorite songs from that concert, one by Tom Paxton, has been coming back to me as once again eerily appropriate:

I Am Changing My Name to Chrysler

Oh, the price of gold is rising out of sight,
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight;
What the dollar used to get us
Now won't get a head of lettuce—
No, the economic forecast isn't bright.

But amidst the clouds a spot is shining grey;
I begin to glimpse a new and better way.
And I've demised a plan of action,
Worked it down to the last fraction,
And I'm going into action here today.

I am changing my name to Chrysler;
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me.
I am changing my name to Chrysler;
I am headed for that great receiving line.
So when they hand a million grand out,
I'll be standing with my hand out,
Yes sir—I'll get mine.

When my creditors come screaming for their dough,
I'll be proud to tell them all where they can go.
They won't need to scream and holler—
They'll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow.
I'll be glad to tell them all what they can do;
It's a matter of a simple form or two.
It's not just renumeration—it's a liberal education;
Aren't you kind of glad that I'm in debt to you?

Chorus

Since the first amphibian crawled out of the slime,
We've been struggling in an unrelenting climb;
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking,
And it said that failure is an awful crime.
It's been that way a millenium or two,
But now it seems there is a different point of view.
If you're a corporate Titanic and your failure is gigantic,
Down in Congress there's a safety net for you.

Chorus

Words and music: Tom Paxton
©1980 Accabonac Music (ASCAP)

Does Sarah Palin make mistakes?

Of course she does; but judging by his comments on an earlier post of mine, colleague and friend of the blog Doug Hagler appears to think that I don't think so. Now, I don't do dares—that's been a personal policy of mine for a long time—but since Doug responded so admirably to my counter-challenge, making the effort to find ten positive things to say about George W. Bush (whom he normally tends to describe in terms that suggest the devil incarnate), I'm happy to respond in kind. Herewith then, are a dozen mistakes Sarah Palin has made. (It wasn't a hard list to put together; I've touched on most of these before, here or elsewhere.)

1. Trusting Frank Murkowski. It all worked out for her in the end, but trusting Gov. Murkowski enough to accept an appointment as ethics commissioner and chair for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission put her in a very difficult and vulnerable position. She'd already found herself pitted against one political mentor; given that Gov. Murkowski had already gone the nepotism route in appointing his daughter Lisa to fill his Senate seat, one would think she should have been more suspicious as to whether he was really on the up-and-up.

2. Failing to include a sufficient breach-of-confidentiality provision in the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Given the circumstances under which she ran for governor, it's understandable that Gov. Palin made an ethics law for the state's executive branch a priority. Unfortunately, she failed to insure that it included a provision parallel to that in Alaska's Legislative Ethics Act, which specifies that if an ethics complainant breaks confidentiality on their complaint, that complaint is automatically dismissed. This protection against politically-motivated frivolous complaints would have prevented the EBEA being turned into a political weapon against her.

3. Failing to include provision in the EBEA allowing speaking, etc. outside of Alaska. Given that Gov. Palin has been involved in national politics (primarily through the National Governors' Association, at first) from quite early in her time in Juneau, this was a definite lack of foresight.

4. Failing to include in the EBEA any provision that persons filing complaints judged to be frivolous would be required to reimburse the state for the cost of the complaint. Again, such laws need to include teeth to insure that only people who have real and substantive complaints file them. Failing to provide for this resulted in a considerable cost to the state of Alaska over the course of the previous calendar year.

5. Initially supporting the Gravina Island bridge. This one isn't really all that surprising; for all the ridicule in the Lower 48, why shouldn't the people of Ketchikan have a bridge to their airport? The problem isn't the bridge's location, but its cost, which is why after her election, Gov. Palin killed the project (a fact for which the Alaska Democratic Party gave her full credit). If she'd looked into the details more closely during the campaign, she could have come to her mature conclusion sooner and avoided support that would later be mildly embarrassing.

6. Not insisting that Trooper Mike Wooten be fired for cause. Given that this guy was her ex-brother-in-law, it's understandable that Gov. Palin would want to avoid the appearance of using her office for political gain; but there was far more than enough justification for his firing, given some of his actions, and the fact that he's still an Alaska State Trooper does not reflect well on the state. At the same time, she ended up tarred with that appearance anyway. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat and just do what's best, regardless of how it looks.

7. Not simply firing Walt Monegan rather than attempting to allow him to save face. He was an at-will employee who was undermining the governor's agenda for the state and defying direct orders. The face-saving offer of another position accomplished nothing except making it look like Gov. Palin was trying to placate him, and he didn't need placating.

8. Not doing something more drastic about Levi Johnston when he started hanging around her daughter Bristol. What, I don't know, but the dude's a classic good-looking loser; while the Palins were by no means as blasé about it as Johnston has liked at times to pretend, one wishes they had managed to keep him from taking advantage of their daughter the way he did.

9. Allowing herself to be staffed with McCain hand-me-downs after accepting the VP nomination. John McCain may well have run an even more dysfunctional campaign than Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that's saying something. You can see why Gov. Palin would have simply accepted the staffers the campaign gave her, but that was a mistake; some of those folks were good and had her best interests at heart, but some weren't and didn't, and this made her vulnerable to them later on. She should have taken control of her own staffing from the beginning.

10. Allowing the McCain campaign to try to squeeze her into its mold with such things as the infamous $150,000 wardrobe makeover and the decision to control her press availability. That hurt her image and muffled her political voice and virtues. That leads to

11. Not "going rogue" sooner and more decisively. She did better when she went back to her own clothes, when she started slipping the leash and talking to the press on her own hook, and when she started showing her independence. As soon as it began to become clear that the way the McCain campaign was using her wasn't working, she should have broken loose. Perhaps most importantly, when they wrote off Michigan, she should have followed through on her instincts and gone campaigning up there on her own hook.

12. Letting pique get the best of her in the Couric interview. That made her look bad and gave critics and comedians fodder to beat her up with; no woman as well-read as Gov. Palin actually is should have let irritation drive her to blow off a question about what she reads. If she were going to give vent to irritation, there would have been far more productive ways. Clearly, and by her own admission, Katie Couric and her attitude rubbed Gov. Palin very much the wrong way—but she was old enough and mature enough to have dealt with that rather than giving in to it.

Now, Doug may complain that I have listed no character flaws here—which is more or less true, though #12 does offer something of an indication. That she has character flaws and besetting sins, I do not doubt, since she is human as are we all; but I only observe her at a distance, and trying to get a feel for someone's flaws at a distance requires either a) direct testimony, b) a long record from which to deduce them, or c) both. In my post "The self-esteem presidency," for instance, I referenced both statements from Obama insiders—not direct quotes, but reported by the Obamaphile media, so I see no reason to doubt their veracity—and a number of pieces of evidence, plus a long piece by Ed Lasky, which draws on considerable evidence in its own right, to offer what I think is a reasonable conclusion about one aspect of the President's behavior patterns. People allege other, more serious, character flaws, but I just don't see sufficient evidence to sustain the charges. Similarly, while people have accused Gov. Palin of all sorts of character flaws, to this point, there has been little or no evidence to support their claims (and much of the so-called "evidence" offered has been untrue), and thus no real justification for any conclusions.

10 positive things about Barack Obama

This is the second part of a four-part response to cyberfriend Doug Hagler; I'm putting up the first three all together, posting them in reverse chronological order so they'll be in the right order going down the page. In his collection of (mostly) positive statements about George W. Bush—for which I give him credit despite the ridiculous hyperbole of describing Bush 43 as "perhaps the worst presidency in American history"; sorry, Doug, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding say hello—he made the following statement:

I imagine praising Obama is at least as painful for Rob as the following was for me.

The truth is, it's nothing of the sort. I like praising Barack Obama, for a couple reasons. One, I'd always rather believe the best of people, if they give me a chance; two, my optimistic side delights in the opportunity to tell my pessimistic side that things are better than I think they are; and three, as great a disappointment as he's been to me, I can't help liking the guy and wanting to be able to respect him and think well of him. And for that matter, four, he's my president, too, and the more that can be said well of him, the better for the country. So, herewith and forthwith:

1. He's a loving, devoted husband.

2. He's a loving, devoted father. Those are two separate things, but they go together; and lest anyone try to dismiss them, I think they're profoundly, profoundly important. My biggest problem with Bill Clinton was that he showed himself repeatedly to be a man who would betray his nearest and dearest and his most important vows for the sake of the needs and desires of the moment; that, in my book, called into question his right to be his country's greatest servant. I cannot believe we will ever have that question about Barack Obama.

3. He had the guts to tell the Left that we need to make room for religious faith in our political conversation. That was the point when I really began to have high hopes for him; it was a critically important message that still needs to be reiterated.

4. He prevented the character assassination of Cambridge Police Sgt. Jim Crowley. He may well have had ulterior motives involved in that, but regardless, that bespoke a personal nobility that I appreciate.

5. He authorized the use of force against the Somali pirates, which was the right and necessary thing to do. (Side note: Doug tries to only give me half credit for this, because in that post I also pointed out something with which I disagreed with. So, what's the deal, Doug—only uncritical cheerleading counts? A trifle inconsistent, aren't we?)

6. He clearly wants to build support for America in the Muslim world. I disagree with a lot of his assumptions in this and the way he's going about it, but even so, the goal is an important one. It would be too easy for American foreign policy to lapse into a simplistic "Muslim = enemy" equation—so far, we haven't had any leaders who wanted to go that way, and here's hoping that doesn't change.

7. He's not afraid to dream big. If he were, he wouldn't be in the White House.

8. He would make a wonderful dinner guest. Or so, at least, is the sense I get. Don't dismiss this—it's a more important statement than you probably think.

9. He has overcome a great deal. Abandoned by his father at a very young age, dragged off to Indonesia when his mother remarried a man from whom she would also end up divorced, then shipped back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents . . . I've said more than once that his record of real accomplishments is paper-thin, but the truth is, given his personal history and the damage divorce does to children, it's nothing short of amazing that he is where he is.

10. He appears to have come through the Chicago machine without becoming personally corrupt. I've faulted him in the past for being a go-along-to-get-along politician, a creation of the machine, and someone who wanted reformist credentials without actually confronting the machine that made him; but whatever my concerns about him as a politician, though I think he stained himself somewhat with Tony Rezko on the house deal, it seems clear that he managed to stay out of the corruption in Chicago. After all, you can bet that if Rod Blagojevich had anything on Barack Obama that qualified as dirt, he would have used it. This might sound like faint praise, but it's really not; when all is said and done, President Obama may well be the only major politician to come out of Illinois during his time there of whom that can be said.

10 positive things about Dick Cheney

This is the third part of my response to Doug Hagler, who also issued this challenge:

I am constitutionally unable to come up with 10 positives about Cheney—and I challenge anyone who is not a sociopath to do so.

That's unjust, so I had to take it up.

1. He's a loving, devoted husband.

2. He's a loving, devoted father. See my comment on Barack Obama.

3. He's absolutely dedicated to serving his country. You might disagree with how he thought best to do that, but this is still a profoundly important and positive statement which cannot be made about all too many of our politicians.

4. He took his oath of office seriously. He didn't do his job for the fun of it, he did what he thought was right and necessary to protect and defend the lives of people in this country.

5. He's candid about his beliefs and positions; he doesn't pretend to believe what people want to hear, he just tells them what he thinks, whether they want to hear it or not. That sort of candor is all too rare on our political scene, because it's not the easiest way to get elected.

6. He never tried to win a political argument by obfuscating his positions. Actually, as a politician, Cheney has a strong resemblance to a bulldozer; that's why he ended up so unpopular. A little tact probably wouldn't have hurt.

7. He's consistent in his beliefs and positions; he doesn't compromise for political gain. Politicians who actually have principles rather than just poll-testers are important for the health of the nation.

8. He's willing to be unpopular to do what he believes is right. The name for that is "moral courage"; it's an unfortunately rare quality.

9. Indeed, he's been willing to endure abuse, slander, and unjust calumny to do what he believes is right. That's a rare degree of courage in American political history, or indeed in history more generally. He's not Darth Vader, nor is he a sociopath (and waterboarding isn't torture, nor did anybody ever call it so before that became a political weapon of expediency against a Republican administration), but he's had to endure all that for the sake of keeping Americans from being butchered by their enemies. The irony here is that those who use debasing, dehumanizing language (such as "monster") to describe him are guilty rhetorically of exactly the same thing of which they accuse him; the difference is one of degree, not of kind.

10. He defends his people, rather than scapegoating to protect himself. Had he been willing to play the blame game (like, for instance, our current president), he probably could have ended office a fair bit more popular than he did; but he has refused to do that, which is admirable.

Even defeat has its silver linings

I'm on vacation right now, because my father and brother are out; and they came out for a couple things, one of which was to go down with me to see our Seahawks play at Indianapolis. Given the relative strength of the two teams at this point this season, the outcome was predictable, and it followed the prediction: we got crushed. The score was 34-17 Colts, and the game was nowhere near that close; it could have been 42-3 if Indianapolis had had some reason to want it to be. They didn't, because they're a classy franchise. Similarly, their fans proved what I've been telling people my whole time here, that this state has good people; out of the thousands of Colts fans we saw, we only ran into two jerks, while there were a number who wandered over to have friendly conversations with us about our team, and theirs, and the league in general, and the city, and whatever else came up. (And to the one jerk who tried to heckle us and asked why we came to "his" stadium when our team "sucks": I'll tell you again, we came to see our team play. Why was that so hard for you to understand? Would you only want to see your team if they were good? If so, that says something pretty sad about your supposed fandom.)

Anyway, yesterday was a very long day. Aside from the result of the game, though, it was a good day to spend with family and meet some of my brother's good friends—good people all around. Now today I get to catch up on the things I wasn't doing yesterday when I wasn't home.

Our hands-on God

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like
shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth,
that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

—James 1:16-18 (NIV)

The Father gave birth to us, says James; this is strange, striking language, designed to catch the ear and grab our attention. We shouldn’t press it too far, as if we might claim to share God’s DNA; one of the reasons the Bible uses male language for God is to keep Israel and the church from moving in that direction. Goddess worship tends to follow that track to its logical conclusion and assert that we ourselves are divine, gods and goddesses in our own right, and there’s just no room for that here—the Scriptures are careful not to leave any room for that at all.

And yet, it’s quite easy to fall off the way of truth in the opposite direction, into what we might call the equal and opposite heresy of distancing God from his creation. This is the heresy of modern Western rationalism, which might believe there’s a God in some abstract sense but feels free not to give a rip about him on the grounds that he really doesn’t give a rip about us, either. To this, James’ language gives the lie. How we imagine a father giving birth, I’m not sure, but this makes it very clear that God is personally, intimately involved in our creation, both our physical creation and our spiritual re-creation. He isn’t God at a distance; he’s God right here with us.

(Excerpted from “The Poem of Your Life”)

Thoughts on the President's Olympian effort

So, the President and his wife flew to Copenhagen (spending, I might note, a fair bit of money, and producing quite a lot of greenhouse gases) to lobby for Chicago for the 2016 Olympic Games; the IOC was so impressed, they awarded the 2016 Games to Rio (which, I think, was absolutely the right move, for all sorts of reasons). There has been much gnashing of teeth in some quarters, and a fair bit of schadenfreude in others; I can't remember ever seeing this much commentary on an Olympic decision, which of course is all due to the participation of the Celebrity-in-Chief.

The question is, does this actually hurt him? After some reflection, count me in with those who think it does. Granted, the matter was relatively trivial in the geopolitical scheme of things, but the fact remains: President Obama injected himself into the competition, trying to use his influence to bring the Olympics to Chicago, and that influence was rejected. Decisively. That’s why the Times of London opines, "Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency."

There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.

Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good—but carries no heft.

If they actually meant "grandiloquence"—which means "pompous or bombastic speech or expression"—rather than "eloquence," that’s a remarkable slap. In any case, the perception to which the Times refers is clearly not just its own creation, judging by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's recent comments at the UN; and its conclusions echo Fred Barnes’ observations in the Weekly Standard:

When an American president voluntarily takes up a fight and loses badly, it’s a big deal. Obama could have stayed out. Having the summer Olympics in Chicago doesn’t involve the national interest. But he thought the matter important enough to fly to Denmark and make the pitch for his hometown in person. He put his prestige on the line, only to be slapped down. He can’t blame George W. Bush for this one, though his minions may try.

We know the world loves Obama. What the action by the International Olympic Committee demonstrates is that being loved isn’t the same as being influential or taken seriously or respected or feared—the traits of many of Obama’s predecessors in the presidency. If he can’t deliver on a vote of the IOC, does he really have the clout to pressure the mullahs in Iran into giving up their nuclear ambitions? Maybe not.

Along with this, Barnes asks a pointed question:

Where was the charisma, the skill in persuading people to see things Obama’s way? The media has built Obama up as a communicator who’s the equal of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. True, he’s delivered several fine speeches, but all of them before he became president. Now he’s either lost his touch or never was the orator the press said he was.

A persuasive president is one who can move people and poll numbers his way. Obama hasn’t managed this as president. Last month, he spoke in prime time to Congress on health care, appeared on five Sunday interview shows, and showed up on the David Letterman show. The result: zilch. Support for his health care policy rose ever so slightly, then settled back to where it had been.

The biggest question I have is, why did he put his prestige on the line like that? Barnes suggests that the White House "thought the IOC was poised to ratify the president’s bid for a Chicago Olympics"; I suppose that’s possible, but if so, it argues for a remarkable degree of poor judgment on their part (which is exactly Barnes’ conclusion). If that’s the case, it also suggests a fair bit of cynicism, that the President and his staff thought he could swoop in and cherry-pick the credit for a Chicago win.

The other suggestion I’ve seen—which, to be honest, seems more likely to me—is that he was doing it as payback for support received from the Chicago machine. Chicago has done a lot to push him to the top of the political heap, after all, and turnabout is fair play; from their point of view, they helped him get there, and now it’s his job to help them out. Didn’t work, but that’s the way Chicago does business.

The amazing thing to me is, judging by the reaction shots, Chicagoans really thought the President had put it in the bag for them; which makes me wonder, could this be the first real crack in the Obama mystique here in the States? Sure, the White House is saying "it’s only the Olympics," but people can be funny about sports sometimes; and after all, if the President doesn't get a health care bill passed this year, there’s always next year, but Chicago only got one strike, and they’re out. It will be interesting to see if people really buy the "no big deal" line from the White House on this one, or if they end up holding it against him.