Sen. Scott Brown, ordinary barbarian?

It sure sounds like it to me. I will freely admit, up until a couple days ago I knew nothing about him except that he was trying to do the impossible: get elected to the Senate as a Republican in the Edward M. Kennedy Memorial Massachusetts Senate Seat. Having seen him do just that, and having had the chance to see and read his victory speech, I have to admit, I’m impressed. For video of his speech, go here; the text is below, courtesy of Charlie Spiering:

Thank you very much. I’ll bet they can hear all this cheering down in Washington, D.C.

And I hope they’re paying close attention, because tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken.

From the Berkshires to Boston, from Springfield to Cape Cod, the voters of this Commonwealth defied the odds and the experts. And tonight, the independent majority has delivered a great victory.

I thank the people of Massachusetts for electing me as your next United States senator.

Every day I hold this office, I will give all that is in me to serve you well and make you proud.

Most of all, I will remember that while the honor is mine, this Senate seat belongs to no one person and no political party—and as I have said before, and you said loud and clear today, it is the people’s seat.

Interim Senator Paul Kirk has completed his work as a senator by appointment of the governor, and for the work he has done, I thank him. The people, by their votes, have now filled the office themselves, and I am ready to go to Washington without delay.

I also want to thank Martha Coakley for her call of congratulations. A hard contest is now behind us, and now we must come together as a Commonwealth.

This special election came about because we lost someone very dear to Massachusetts, and to America. Senator Ted Kennedy was a tireless and big-hearted public servant, and for most of my lifetime was a force like no other in this state. His name will always command the affection and respect by the people of Massachusetts, and the same goes for his wife Vicki. There’s no replacing a man like that, but tonight I honor his memory, and I pledge my very best to be a worthy successor.

I said at the very beginning, when I sat down at the dinner table with my family, that win or lose we would run a race which would make us all proud. I kept my word and we ran a clean, issues oriented, upbeat campaign—and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

When I first started running, I asked for a lot of help, because I knew it was going to be me against the machine. I was wrong, it was all of us against the machine. And after tonight we have shown everyone that—now—you are the machine.

I'm glad my mom and dad, brothers, sisters, and so many family members are here tonight.

Once again, before I go any further, I want to introduce somebody very special . . . That is my wife, Gail.

And as you know, my wife Gail couldn't join me on the campaign trail because of her work as a Boston TV journalist. But I will let you in on a little secret. She didn't stay neutral today, and she voted for the winner. I rely as always, on Gail's love and support and that of our beautiful daughters.

Arianna will be returning a day or two late to her pre-med studies at Syracuse, because she’s been giving her all to this campaign. As always, Arianna and her sister Ayla have been a joy to Gail and me, and we're so grateful to them both. Even before her campaign performances, millions of Americans had already heard Ayla’s amazing voice on “American Idol.” As Boston College basketball fans know, she’s also pretty good on the court.

If the President thinks they’ve got basketball talent at the White House, I ask him to pick his best teammate and find some time to play two-on-two with Ayla and me.

I’m grateful to all those from across Massachusetts who came through for me even when I was a long shot. I especially thank a friend who was there with encouragement from the very beginning, and helped show us the way to victory—former Governor Mitt Romney.

I’ll never forget the help of another man who took the time to meet with me months ago - who told me I could win, and gave me confidence for the fight. It was all so characteristic of a truly great and heroic American, and tonight I thank my new colleague, Senator John McCain.

On a night like this, when so many people mark your name on a statewide ballot, you think back to the first people who gave you a chance and believed. For the trust they placed in me, and for all they have taught me, I thank my neighbors and friends in my Senate district and especially my hometown of Wrentham. The cause and victory that all America has seen tonight started right there with all of you.

Let me tell you when I first got the feeling something big was happening in this campaign. It was when I was driving along and spotted a handmade, Scott Brown yard sign that I hadn’t actually put there myself.

This little campaign of ours was destined for greater things than any of us knew, and the message went far beyond the name on the sign.

It all started with me, my truck, and a few dedicated volunteers. It ended with Air Force One making an emergency run to Logan. I didn't mind when President Obama came here and criticized me—that happens in campaigns. But when he criticized my truck, that's where I draw the line.

We had the machine scared and scrambling, and for them it is just the beginning of an election year filled with surprises. They will be challenged again and again across this country. When there’s trouble in Massachusetts, there’s trouble everywhere—and now they know it.

In every corner of our state, I met with people, looked them in the eye, shook their hand, and asked them for their vote. I didn’t worry about their party affiliation, and they didn’t worry about mine. It was simply shared conviction that brought us all together.

One thing is clear, voters do not want the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people.

This bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, hurt Medicare, destroy jobs, and run our nation deeper into debt. It is not in the interest of our state or country—we can do better.

When in Washington, I will work in the Senate with Democrats and Republicans to reform health care in an open and honest way. No more closed-door meetings or back room deals by an out of touch party leadership. No more hiding costs, concealing taxes, collaborating with special interests, and leaving more trillions in debt for our children to pay.

In health care, we need to start fresh, work together, and do the job right. Once again, we can do better.

I will work in the Senate to put government back on the side of people who create jobs, and the millions of people who need jobs—and as President John F. Kennedy taught us, that starts with an across the board tax cut for individuals and businesses that will create jobs and stimulate the economy. It's that simple!

I will work in the Senate to defend our nation’s interests and to keep our military second to none. As a lieutenant colonel and 30-year member of the Army National Guard, I will keep faith with all who serve, and get our veterans all the benefits they deserve.

And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation—they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.

Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country. What I've heard again and again on the campaign trail, is that our political leaders have grown aloof from the people, impatient with dissent, and comfortable in the back room making deals. And we can do better.

They thought you were on board with all of their ambitions. They thought they owned your vote. They thought they couldn’t lose. But tonight, you and you and you have set them straight.

Across this country, we are united by basic convictions that need only to be clearly stated to win a majority. If anyone still doubts that, in the election season just beginning, let them look to Massachusetts.

Fellow citizens, what happened in this election can happen all over America. We are witnesses, you and I, to the truth that ideals, hard work, and strength of heart can overcome any political machine. We ran a campaign never to be forgotten, and led a cause that deserved and received all that we could give it.

And now, because of your independence, and your trust, I will hold for a time the seat once filled by patriots from John Quincy Adams to John F. Kennedy and his brother Ted. As I proudly take up the duty you have given me, I promise to do my best for Massachusetts and America every time the roll is called.

I go to Washington as the representative of no faction or interest, answering only to my conscience and to the people. I’ve got a lot to learn in the Senate, but I know who I am and I know who I serve.

I’m Scott Brown, I'm from Wrentham, I drive a truck, and I am nobody’s senator but yours.

Thank you very much.

Michelle Malkin’s comments here are apt:

Scott Brown quite noticeably didn’t mention the word “Republican” once during his prepared remarks. . . .

As I’ve said for many years, the Republican Party needs to clean its own house before it demands that the Democrats clean theirs.

The Brown victory was very clearly a strike against machine politics of all kinds and business as usual in Washington. That includes top-down meddling by tired old GOP operatives. The party bosses have tried to install their preferred Senate candidates in Florida, Colorado, and California. They will use Brown’s win to argue for more “mooooooderation.” As I wrote yesterday in my analysis of how Brown unified a center-right-indie coalition, that is not the lesson of the Massachusetts miracle.

Sen.-elect Brown will be responsible to represent the people of Massachusetts on Capitol Hill, and the people of Massachusetts as a whole are significantly more conservative than the national GOP; as such, obviously, Sen. Brown will presumably be on the liberal end of the Senate Republican caucus, representing a center-right perspective. Given his campaign, one expects he’ll be more to the liberal side on social issues and more conservative on matters of economic and foreign policy. That’s fine. The most important thing is that he stay true to his campaign promises to oppose backroom dealing and machine politics—of both parties. That’s the biggest thing this country needs from its politicians right now, and the biggest service he can provide.

Mr. Brown Goes to Washington

Not an original line, I know, but too perfect anyway. For the first time since 1972, Massachusetts has elected a Republican to the Senate—and pretty convincingly; the seat had had Edward M. Kennedy's name engraved on it since the 1960s, but a formerly-little-known state senator named Scott Brown knocked off his designated Democratic successor, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, by a decisive margin (52.3%-46.7% with 92% of precincts reporting). Sarah Palin's Facebook note nails it, I think:

Congratulations to the new Senator-elect from Massachusetts! Scott Brown’s victory proves that the desire for real solutions transcends notions of “blue state” and “red state”. Americans agree that we need to hold our politicians accountable and bring common sense to D.C.

Recent elections have taught us that when a party in power loses its way, the American people will hold them accountable at the ballot box. Today under the Democrats, government spending is up nearly 23 percent and unemployment is higher than it’s been in a quarter of a century. For the past year they’ve built a record of broken promises, fat cat bailouts, closed-door meetings with lobbyists, sweetheart deals for corporate cronies, and midnight votes on weekends for major legislation that wasn’t even read. The good citizens of Massachusetts reminded Democrats not to take them for granted.

Americans cheered for Scott Brown’s underdog campaign because they viewed his candidacy as a vote against the Democrats’ health care bill. You know that there’s something wrong with this legislation when opposition to it inspired a Republican victory in a state that currently has no Republicans in Congress and last sent a Republican to the Senate nearly 40 years ago.

Clearly this victory is a bellwether for the big election night ten months from now. In the spirit of bipartisanship, let me offer some advice to the Democrats on how to stem this populist tide. Scrap your current health care bill and start from scratch. We all want true reform, but government mandated insurance is not it. Scott Brown campaigned against this top-down bureaucratic mess. We need common sense solutions like reforming malpractice laws, allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, giving individual purchasers the same tax benefits as those who get coverage through their employers, and letting small businesses pool together to provide insurance for their employees. Focus your efforts on jobs, not on job-killing legislation. Such a change in approach would show Americans that you’re listening.

My best wishes to Senator-Elect Brown. When you go to Washington, may you never forget the ordinary citizens you met while driving that truck through the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

—Sarah Palin

Does this mean that Massachusetts has suddenly gone conservative? Not likely, though Brown ran a pretty conservative campaign, running against big government and ObamaPelosiCare; as Jay Cost has said, voter revolts of this sort are less about the agenda of the opposition party and more about voters looking for an alternative to the party in power. To quote Cost,

When the country is angry about the state of the union, and it feels that it's time for a change, it will vote for the opposition party as a "protest vehicle." Why? Because in our two-party system there is no place else for the people to go. They might not like the opposition, but it is a choice between them and the status quo. . . .

If it's a choice between the status quo and an opposition party that has disappointed in the past, sometimes circumstances demand the opposition. Historically speaking, that's simply a true statement. There have been multiple periods in our country's history when the people have swung back and forth between the parties, casting about for somebody—anybody—who could manage public affairs competently. The most violent swings came in the 1880s-1890s as the country struggled through the latter phases of the industrial revolution, but we saw a more recent one in 1974-1982. In both periods, neither side had given the people much reason for confidence, but that did not stop them from using both as "protest vehicles."

What this election says about Sen.-elect Brown's ability to hold the seat when the term expires in 2012 is, honestly, not all that much; if 2010 and 2012 play out for the GOP like 2006 and 2008 did for the Democrats, he'll probably win re-election, but under normal circumstances, there's no way he wins election from Massachusetts. For now, though, Scott Brown is playing Paul Revere, heralding a backlash against the Democratic Party and the way they've been governing since returning to power.

The interesting thing will be to see if the White House and the party establishment take that seriously and make substantive changes in the way they've been doing business. So far, it doesn't look like it; from their public comments, they seem determined to blame the defeat all on Coakley, and to refuse to consider the possibility that the President has lost his mojo. If their public face accurately reflects their private perceptions, November could indeed be a bloodbath for the Democrats, because their top leadership won't take the threat seriously until it's too late.

The risk for them is especially great given that Barack Obama went up to campaign for Coakley—the White House had initially decided that he wouldn't unless she was likely to win, in order to protect the President's political prestige; when he went up and gave a speech for her, lackluster though it may have been, he upped the ante. With her defeat, his image and credibility have taken a hit. If he and his advisors don't accept that fact, it's going to skew their perceptions of what they can accomplish politically, and how. That will only worsen the odds for Democratic candidates this fall.

All of which is to say, Scott Brown has proven himself a very impressive politician, and may well have a bright future despite being a Republican from Massachusetts; but he's less interesting for himself than for what he represents, and what his election may portend.

Not a good bargain

The notion that the IRS should be able to seize your assets if you don’t arrange your health care to the approval of the federal government represents the de facto nationalization of your body, which is about as primal an assault on individual liberty as one could devise.

—Mark Steyn

That captures the core issue here—and my most basic philosophical reason for opposing ObamaPelosiCare—about as well as can be done. Though Benjamin Franklin comes close:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Credit to the White House

This was a good and wise and humane decision:

extending temporary amnesty to Haitians who were illegally inside the U.S. before this week's catastrophic earthquake. Some 30,000 Haitians had been awaiting deportation but will now be allowed to stay in the U.S. and work for another 18 months. . . .

We hope even the most restrictionist voices on the right and in the labor movement will understand the humanitarian imperative. The suffering and chaos since the earthquake should make it obvious that Haiti is no place to return people whose only crime was coming to America to escape the island's poverty and ill-governance.

For that matter, we don't mind if they stay here permanently. Haitian immigrants as a group are among America's most successful, which demonstrates that Haiti's woes owe more to corruption, disdain for property rights and lack of public safety than to any flaw in its people. Their remittances to Haiti also help to sustain the impoverished population. Haitians received some $1.65 billion from overseas in 2006, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

The President and his advisors have reason to be proud of themselves.

To know nothing but the gospel

I heard a sermon recently which infuriated me, and the less said about what, where, and why, the better. It sparked a number of reflections, though, on which I've been chewing in the time since, so it wasn't a total loss. In particular, it provoked this thought: anything which is not the gospel can become an idol. Seriously, anything. Even good things, like love of country (as I've written more than once) or love of our family; even godly things, like faithfulness, or holy living, or salvation. Anything which is not the gospel—however close it might be to the gospel—can become an idol, because anything which is not the gospel can be made to be all about us, in one way or another. Only the gospel is purely about Jesus Christ; only the gospel focuses our attention entirely on him; only the gospel tells us that it isn't about us, it's all about God. It's only by making our churches all about the gospel that we can keep them free of the idolatries that will otherwise, inevitably, seep in. Any other focus makes idolatry inevitable, because if we have the opportunity to make church all about us, we'll take it. Every time.

Happy New Year!

Here’s hoping that 2010 is for you a time of great growth and blessing, when all the seeds of good things in your life begin to bear fruit, while the weeds in your life wither.

That was the year that was

Well, with all due apologies to T. S. Eliot, this is the way the whirl ends—not with a bang but a whimper. It's been two years since I posted that little in a month, and while I don't apologize for that, I don't want to make a habit of it, either. The discipline of writing has been good for me, and the discipline of thinking probably even more so; I know it's helped my sermon preparation, among other things.

I suppose the question is, has the blog been worth anything for its own sake? I think it has, though I might be biased on the subject. Obviously there were a lot of posts that simply took note of something or posted a video or were just for fun, but even those have their value; and I think that occasionally, at least, I managed to contribute something to the larger conversation. It may well be that the ultimate validation of this blog will come (or not) in whether I'm able to take any of the ideas that have sparked along the way for me and develop them further; but even if not, they're out there, and maybe they'll do some good.

Other people's work

I've been meaning to repost this poem my wife posted a while ago, one which she found on the group writing blog Novel Matters; it's by one of the contributors there, Latayne C. Scott. I lack the talent to be a professional musician—and, to be honest, the practice habits—but I love music, and one of the best things about living in Winona Lake is getting to hear some of the best musicians in the world play to the glory of God. Souls in their fingers, indeed.

Opus Envy

I watch his fingers
Teasing the piano
As he caresses the ivory teeth
It purrrrrrrs
Harder now—he strikes
A glancing blow off the black fang

An answering roar

ah Rachmaninoff
just because my soul is not in
my fingertips does not
mean I do not have
one

Climategate and the fundamentalist spirit

One of the most interesting stories of the past couple of months has been the whole Climategate scandal. I'm not going to dig that up and rehash the substance of it (though if you didn't see Bill's posts on the Thinklings about the lousy quality of the computer models behind the anthropogenic global-warming argument and the dubious nature of the standard assertions that the results of such models are truly properly peer-reviewed, you ought to), I just wanted to throw an observation out there. To wit, I recognized the spirit in those leaked e-mails, with their insistence that the theory must be right regardless of the data, and their willingness to adjust the facts as needed to fit the dogma: it's the spirit of fundamentalism. It's the exact same tone one meets in people arguing that the Earth must be only 6,000 years old and therefore, whatever facts that would seem to indicate otherwise must be incorrect.

Now, to call someone a fundamentalist doesn't mean they're wrong, by any means. I don't happen to believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and I don't happen to believe in AGW, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one or both couldn't be correct. But the spirit in which many who call themselves Christian fundamentalists argue (which is not, be it noted, equal with fundamentalism itself; one can hold to fundamentalist positions without this sort of attitude and approach) is one which is absolutely certain it has discovered the truth, unquestioningly convinced of its own rightness, and thus is committed to maintaining its position by whatever means necessary. This is the sort of spirit one also finds in Islamic fundamentalism—and it's the spirit that's in view as well in Michael Mann and the leaked CRU e-mails.

Again, that doesn't mean their position is wrong; to argue that would be to commit the genetic fallacy. It does, however, give the lie to their claims that they alone are scientific and their opponents are anti-science. In truth, what we have here is a religious dispute, complete with threats by the high priests against the heretics; and the pretensions of those high priests to be above ideology, their insistence that they are disinterested seekers of the pure flame of fact, have been shown to be a sham. This will be, I think, the long-term effect of Climategate: it's knocked AGW proponents off their pedestal, and I don't think they're going to be able to climb back up.

Thought on Gov. Palin

So Gov. Palin went out on her book tour, all over the media, attracting huge crowds, driving the Left to invent new “facts” with which to attack her (and also driving her book to the top of the bestseller list), and I had nothing to say about it. Of course, as noted, I haven’t had much to say about anything else, either, in this space for a while; in particular, what with one thing and another, I just haven’t had the energy or the time to spare to engage with political goings-on the way I typically do. This is especially true given the goings-on that are going on; I know where the Anchoress was coming from last month when she wrote,

I didn’t even give the news more than a passing glance because it was all so depressing.

Before that, though, I had a couple folks accuse me of hero-worship for Sarah Palin, and I’ve been wanting to respond to that charge, because it isn’t true. I’m convinced that the secret of Barack Obama’s success is that he tapped into a deep latent hunger (and not just on the Left) for a secular Messiah—and that as such, his success contains the roots of his failure, because he isn’t up to the task, as no mere human being could be—and I want no part of it. I do have people I consider heroes, but I don’t even feel hero-worship for them; and Gov. Palin isn’t in that category anyway.

However, I do have a tremendous amount of respect for her, and I support her staunchly, not as a hero or some sort of saving figure, but as I believe the best and most promising leader in the American political landscape. She isn’t perfect, but no politician is—indeed, no leader in any walk of life is; what folks like USS Mariner’s Dave Cameron have argued with respect to baseball managers (that there are few who significantly improve their teams, a lot more who really hurt their teams, and the vast majority in the middle who have little effect) seems to me to apply to politicians as well. The thing is, for various reasons, I believe Gov. Palin to be one of the relatively uncommon politicians who has done and will do real good, and so I support her.

First among those reasons is the fact that I agree with her political philosophy and positions. It’s a simple thing, but not a small thing: what she has done during her time in politics so far and what she has argued ought to be done agrees quite closely with what I believe ought to be done. I’m sure there are areas in which I am not in agreement with her positions, but in the areas in which she’s made her own position clear (as opposed to supporting John McCain’s agenda during her time as his running mate), I really haven’t found any yet.

Second, I believe Gov. Palin to be a person of strong personal integrity and character. This is not to say she’s sinless, which would be an incredibly unreasonable expectation of anybody; but it is to say that she has shown the character to resist significant political temptation, and to hold fast to her beliefs and convictions even in the face of hostile opposition. The fact that she has endured the slings and arrows of outrageous media over the past year and remained pretty much the same person with the same set of beliefs is strong evidence for this conclusion. The fact that she showed with her resignation that she has higher priorities than holding political office, with the power and perks that go along with it, is further evidence.

Third, while I don’t claim that she’s a genius, I believe Gov. Palin is plenty bright enough to be President, and more importantly has shown herself to be a sufficiently quick study to stay abreast of the information flow that runs through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Fourth, Gov. Palin isn’t just a thinker, she’s a doer. Even having left the governor’s office in Juneau partway through her one term, she accomplished quite a bit; and since leaving office, she has exercised considerable influence on the political conversation in this country through the decisive stands she’s taken and the arguments she’s offered for them.

Fifth, it was once said of Grover Cleveland, “They love him most for the enemies he has made,” and something of that sort might be said about Gov. Palin as well. The fact that she clearly worries the hardline Left more than anyone else on the Right suggests that she is truly the natural leader for the American Right at this point in time; the fact that she is scarcely less disturbing to the inside-the-Beltway “conservative” elite says, I believe, much the same thing. I have argued more than once that the divide between the elite political-media complex and the rest of the country is at least as important as our left-right divide, and that our country really needs leaders to emerge—preferably in both parties, from both liberals and conservatives—who actually represent ordinary barbarians and not just the groupthink of our incestuous media-political class, with a perspective that reaches beyond the Potomac and the Hudson. At this point, the only major political figure who answers that is Gov. Palin—and I fear that if our elites succeed in squashing her, there won’t be another for a long time, if ever.

And of Gov. Palin’s faith? No, that isn’t a major issue for me. The fact that she clearly sees religious beliefs as equally valid with any other type of belief to be held and argued in the marketplace of ideas, and to be used to support platforms and positions in the political marketplace, is a good thing, but she need not be an evangelical Christian to understand that. As to the content of her faith, I know she is conservative and everything I see seems to confirm that it’s real, but I have no idea whether the churches that have formed her have truly been Christ-centered gospel-driven congregations, or simply preaching a mishmash of morality, patriotism, and can-do spirit. I don’t know what she thinks of Joel Osteen or if she’s read John Piper or Tim Keller (or, for that matter, Jared Wilson). As such, I can’t say that I know enough to say anything about her faith one way or the other.

And besides, I’ve always thought that Martin Luther had the right of it: better to be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish saint. I won’t be voting to send representatives to a church council next November, nor will I be voting for a Theologian-in-Chief in 2012; rather, I will be voting for politicians, and ultimately for a Commander-in-Chief. As such, I don’t want to confuse the issues; what matters most isn’t who’s the best Christian, but who’s likely to serve this country best in a given political office. My conclusion remains that the answer to that question for the 2012 presidential election is, at this point, Sarah Louise Heath Palin—and that’s why I support her.

Merry Christmas!

May your celebration of the Incarnation be filled with the joy and power of the Resurrection and the love and grace of the living Jesus.

Reflecting

As I noted last week, I've been sick, tired, and busy, which is a bad combination; at this point, there's nothing for it but to punch through Christmas, and then I can take some time to rest and recharge. Thinking about it, though, I realized that that's not the only issue: this interruption has knocked me off the discipline of writing. When I took up the thought of blogging as a spiritual discipline, that made a major difference in the frequency of my writing (as a look at the blog archive clearly shows), and I think it's done me some good; and part of that has been the most basic part of the discipline, that of just sitting down and posting something, even if I don't have anything particularly profound or significant to say. I've lost that in the last several weeks, and unfortunately, the last seven days of Advent aren't a great time to recover it, especially with a wedding to do right after Christmas. That, I think, will need to be part of my more general recovery time through the Christmas season proper. That discipline has been too valuable for me—I don't intend to let it go; and if it's occasionally been valuable to others as well, then so much the more reason.

So, yes, I'm still around, still breathing, and still experiencing an occasional flash when one neuron is willing to talk to another; and while I can't claim I'll be back to normal posting frequency tomorrow, I fully intend to be soon. In the meantime, God's richest blessings be upon you this Advent.

The things you see at the grocery store

I was doing a bit of shopping a few days ago, walking through the grocery store, when I looked up and saw a guy carrying a hand-written cardboard sign—the sort of sign you see people hold up when they're begging for money. Nothing unusual about that (though I've never seen someone holding one in a grocery store before), except for what the sign said:

Family kidnapped by ninjas—need money for karate lessons.

I should have gotten a picture. That was just so out of left field, I didn't react fast enough.

The unemployment statistics are worse than they look

The New York Times ran an article last Friday proclaiming good news:

In the best report since the recession began two years ago, only 11,000 jobs disappeared last month, the government said on Friday, and the unemployment rate actually dipped, to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent the previous month.

Leaving aside the question of when the recession actually began, this doesn’t actually support the piece’s positive-thinking opening paragraph:

The nation’s employers not only have stopped eliminating large numbers of jobs, but appear to be on the verge of rebuilding the American work force, devastated by the recession.

"The rate of job destruction slowed" does not equal "the jobs are all about to come back," even on its face. And here’s the kicker: what the numbers seem to say on their face isn’t what they actually say when you look at them closely. Rather, thanks to Simpson’s Paradox, the nature of aggregate statistics means that the overall unemployment rate makes things look better than they are. The Wall Street Journal explains:

Is the current economic slump worse than the recession of the early 1980s?

Measured by unemployment, the answer appears to be no, or at least not yet. The jobless rate was 10.2% in October, compared with a peak of 10.8% in November and December of 1982.

But viewed another way, the current recession looks worse, not better. The unemployment rate among college graduates is higher than during the 1980s recession. Ditto for workers with some college, high-school graduates and high-school dropouts.

So how can the overall unemployment rate be lower today but higher among each group? The anomaly is an example of Simpson’s Paradox—a common but misleading statistical phenomenon rooted in the differing sizes of subgroups. Put simply, Simpson’s Paradox reveals that aggregated data can appear to reverse important trends in the numbers being combined.

The jobless rates for each educational subgroup are higher today, but the overall rate is lower because workers are more educated. There are more college graduates, who have the lowest unemployment rate. And there are fewer high-school dropouts, who have the highest unemployment rate.

"It’s the magic of weighted averages," says Princeton University economics professor Henry Farber. "We have more skilled workers than we had before, and more-skilled workers are less susceptible to unemployment." Still, he adds, compared with a similarly educated worker in 1983, "the worker today has higher unemployment at every education level."

In other words, regardless of the overall statistic, whoever you are, your chances of being unemployed now are greater, the unemployment rate is higher for people like you, now than in the depths of the recession of 1982-83. Which suggests that before you buy into the NYT’s optimism, you might want to look into the underlying numbers and see if they bear that optimism out.

Diminishing returns on the Obama foreign policy

As a presidential candidate, Sen. Obama was firmly convinced (and convinced a lot of people) that the reason for America's unpopularity in some parts of the world was George W. Bush and his conservative policies. A vote for Obama, we were assured, would make the world like America again.

Roughly eleven months on from his inauguration, the bloom is well and truly off that rose, at least in the Arab/Muslim world.

He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.

There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies—he has already done that. He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled "Arab street" that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands—he has already done that as well. He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam—he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again. . . .

In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.

There are various reasons for this. One, which Fouad Ajami notes, is that anti-Americanism in that part of the world is useful—perhaps, indeed, psychologically necessary—as an alibi for the political and economic failures of those nations and a pressure release for the tensions and frustrations created by their autocratic, self-interested governments; having someone to blame for all that is far too valuable to be let go in return for a few pretty speeches.

As well, Ajami explains, the President's confidence that he could make everything better by apologizing for America to everyone in sight betrayed a fundamental failure to understand Arab culture.

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.

It also didn't help that in Iran, when the President was offered the choice between standing with the Iranian people protesting their oppression or standing with the anti-American religious tyrants who oppress them, he chose the tyrants. That, one suspects, will not be soon forgotten, and it's impossible to know what the long-term effects might be.

Some might be surprised that President Obama's approach to foreign policy is not yielding the promised results; but students of history shouldn't be. How many horror movies do you have to watch before you learn to expect that the pretty cheerleader going alone into the dark house on a stormy night is going to end up dead? I don't even watch horror movies, and I can see that one coming. This administration's foreign policy is just a remake of a movie we've seen before; it debuted roughly 33 years ago, it was called Carter, and as Bret Stephens pointed out a couple weeks ago, it didn't end well then, either.

An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever.

No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.

Stephens explicates this through an examination of the 1979 battle over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, an incident remembered little (if at all) in this country, and its aftermath—an aftermath we're still dealing with today.

Among Muslims inclined to favor the U.S., the Carter administration's instincts for knee-jerk conciliation and panicky withdrawals only had the effect of alienating them from their ostensible protector. Coming as it did so soon after Khomeini's rise to power and the revolutionary fervors which it unleashed, the siege of Mecca carried the real risk of undermining pro-American regimes throughout the region. Yet American embassies were repeatedly instructed not to use their Marines to defend against intruders, as well as to pull their personnel from the country.

"The move didn't go unnoticed among Muslim radicals," notes Mr. Trofimov. "A chain of events unleashed by the takeover in Mecca had put America on the run from the lands of Islam. America's foes drew a conclusion that Osama bin Laden would often repeat: when hit hard, America flees, 'dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.'" It is no accident, too, that the Soviet Union chose to invade Afghanistan the following month, as it observed a vacillating president who would not defend what previously were thought to be inviolable U.S. strategic interests.

Here's hoping that if and when America faces another such incident in the Muslim world, that the administration has the courage, will and wit to react in defense of American interests and allies, rather than to follow the Carter path of trying to be as inoffensive as possible. I am not, however, optimistic.

The old pastor didn't do it that way . . .

Carol Howard Merritt put up an interesting post early last week about intergenerational differences in work style and approaches to getting things done, and the ways in which those differences affect our churches.

Work looks different. And sometimes it pesters the intergenerational tensions like a chigger just below the skin. There is something annoying and wrong, although we can’t figure out just what it is. Older generations of people cannot point to anything that their younger pastor is not doing. In fact, the church might even be growing, but there is a difference in the manner in which she is getting it done that vexes them.

She lays out differences in the ways we study, the ways in which we communicate, and the work which we do; and though every pastor and every church is different from every other, as generalizations, I think the differences she identifies are quite perceptive. (Certainly her first point is all too familiar to me as something that got me into trouble at the last church I served.) It's not a long article, but you'll likely spend more time thinking about it than you do reading it.

Oh, and as a side note, you might pray for the Rev. Merritt, who fell last Wednesday and dislocated her shoulder.

Note

Obviously, I haven’t been around much the last few weeks; between being busy, being short on sleep, and being sick, I’ve had little time or energy to be. I hope to have more time to write in the next couple weeks; we’ll see how that plays out. I certainly have things I want to write about, if I can get the brain space and schedule space to focus on them. In the meantime, at least I finally have audio for the whole James series posted over on the church website, so that’s something.

A day that shall live in infamy

68 years ago this morning, Japanese forces under the command of Admiral Chuichi Nagumo launched an unprovoked sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II (though what would have happened in the Atlantic had Hitler not declared war on the US is hard to say). I appreciate Sarah Palin’s comment on this anniversary:

On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on the U. S. Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in which thousands of Americans lost their lives and our naval fleet was severely damaged. The events of that day, which President Franklin Roosevelt vowed would “live in infamy,” proved for many Americans that aggressors would not simply ignore us if we ignored them. The attack on Pearl Harbor launched America into the Second World War, and our Greatest Generation did not hesitate when asked to sacrifice for their country. American men enlisted in droves, American women went to work in the factories that became our “Arsenal of Democracy,” and many Americans gave what little money they had to buy the war bonds that funded it all. They stormed the beaches at Normandy and fought on little known islands in the Pacific in the name of liberty. They don’t ask for our thanks, but I hope we will continue to give it because the sacrifice that began at Pearl Harbor is one of the many events that have defined the United States of America as “the last best hope of man on earth.”

—Sarah Palin

I agree wholeheartedly with that. The lesson of Pearl Harbor, I think, is that in this fallen, broken world, sometimes war is necessary to prevent the triumph of evil and tyranny; it wasn’t actually Edmund Burke who declared that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” but whoever said it first was wise (and in line with Burke’s thought).

Our refusal to fight others will not result in their refusal to fight us; there are nations in this world that are ruled by evil people, and if we are seen to be weak (in their terms), such powers will only be encouraged to aggression. Thus has it ever been, throughout history; thus will it ever be, until Jesus comes again. The curse of Santayana lays on all who do not accept that fact.

Hymn for Advent—more than I knew

Of the Father’s Love Begotten

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!

He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

This is He Whom seers in old time chanted of with one accord;
Whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long expected,
Let creation praise its Lord, evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing, evermore and evermore!

Righteous judge of souls departed, righteous King of those alive,
On the Father’s throne exalted none in might with Thee may strive;
Who at last in vengeance coming
Sinners from Thy face shalt drive, evermore and evermore!

Thee let old men, thee let young men, thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens, with glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!

This text (with one slight alteration on my part to adjust the rhyme scheme for shifting English pronunciation) is courtesy of Dan Clendenin. All I’ve ever seen in hymnals is verses 1, 6, and 9 of the above; it’s interesting how much theology they cut out, and how much deeper is Prudentius’ exploration of the mystery of the Creator becoming the created. I admit, you’re not likely to get most congregations to sing nine verses of a hymn . . . but it’s too bad.

The original of this hymn is a Latin poem from around the turn of the fifth century; I presume the above text is all John Mason Neale’s translation. Of the poet, Aryeh Oron writes,

Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (whose name is some times shown with a prefix of “Marcus”) was a Roman Christian poet. He was born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis (now Northern Spain). The place of his birth is uncertain, but it may have been Caesaraugusta Saragossa, Tarraco Tarragona, or Calagurris Calahorra. He came of a distinguished Christian family and received an excellent education, studied law, became an office-holder and rose rapidly, was twice governor of a province, and finally received high office at the court of Theodosius. Towards the end of his life (possibly around 392) Prudentius retired from public life to become an ascetic, fasting until evening and abstaining entirely from animal food. He decided to devote himself to poetry in the service of religion and the Church. He collected the Christian poems written during this period and added a preface, which he himself dated 405.

Neale set this text to a plainsong melody from the 11th or 12th century; the tune is now usually referred to as DIVINUM MYSTERIUM (Divine Mystery), though the CCEL page identifies it as CORDE NATUS EX PARENTIS, after the first line of Prudentius’ poem.

The pursuit of God

I would be willing to bet that if you read the Bible much, you have a favorite part. For some, it will be the letters of Paul; others love the gospels best, for their stories of Jesus; and still others are drawn first to the Psalms. For my part, I love all those, and others, but I go first to the prophets, and especially to Isaiah. I’m not sure why that is, but I think our vacation to the canyonlands of Utah and Arizona a few years ago gave me an insight: like standing on the rim of Bryce Canyon or inside Double Arch, in the prophets I am captured by the power of God’s imagination, and the power with which it communicates his love and his beauty.

At the same time, though, reading the prophets can be more than a little frightening. I say this especially as a preacher, for anyone who stands to preach the Word is exercising a small part of the prophetic ministry and calling (which is one reason why preaching is such a dangerous act, at least for the preacher). The prophets are people who have been captured by God to a greater degree than almost anyone else, and in their impassioned calls to the people of God, we see the gulf between our sinfulness and God’s holiness more clearly than almost anywhere else. We also see, just as clearly, God’s absolute determination to cross that gulf with his love and redeem us despite ourselves, a determination which led to the birth of the Son of God, and his death on the cross.

And of all the prophets, I think we see most clearly the lengths to which God will go—and to which he will command his prophets to go—in Hosea. This is a deep and remarkable book, and a remarkable story. It begins with this command: “Go marry an adulterous woman and have children of adultery, for the land has been unfaithful to Yahweh.” So he goes and marries Gomer, and they have a son; and then she has two more children, and while we can’t be sure, the text suggests that maybe they weren’t Hosea’s. Things escalate, and she abandons her husband and children for her lovers; and in all this, God tells Hosea, the pain and hurt of the prophet’s experience, the betrayal he suffers, mirror God’s experience with Israel. Just as Hosea’s wife has gone chasing after other men—pretty much any man she thinks she can get something from, it sounds like—so Israel has gone chasing after other gods.

Now, we know how this sort of story ends—in divorce court—and that’s pretty much how it ended in Hosea’s day, too. But that’s not what happens here. Instead, we see Hosea’s determination to woo his wife back, to repair a relationship which had been, it would seem, irreparably shattered, and to rebuild their marriage into what it should have been; and through him, through this acted parable, this enacted prophecy, of the love of God, we see God’s determination to do the same with Israel. And so God tells Hosea, “Go love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as Yahweh loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods”; and so he does.

I have to wonder what Gomer thought of this. Here she’s run away from her husband, she’s living with her lover, and one day her husband shows up on the doorstep and says, “I’d like to buy my wife back.” And what does she hear from the guy? Protestations of love? Demands that Hosea leave and never come back? No, she hears, “Sure—how much?” That can’t have been good for her ego. But on the other hand—she’s left her husband, she’s shamed him before all his people, she’s run off to be with another man—and yet, despite all that, her husband not only still wants her back, he’s willing to pay a steep price to get her back. That had to have made her look at Hosea in a new way.

So what does she make of it all? How does she respond to this costly demonstration of her husband’s love? We don’t know. We know what Hosea tells her, but we don’t know how she responds—we don’t know what becomes of them. We’re given the assurance that at some point in the future, Israel will return to God, that that relationship will be restored; but whether the same applied to Gomer and Hosea, we aren’t told. We’re left hanging, the story unfinished, wondering what happened next.

Now, strange as that is, I think there’s good reason why Hosea’s story stops in the middle; and if you’ve been wondering why we’re talking about this on the first Sunday of Advent, here’s the reason. You see, Jesus does much the same thing in the story of the prodigal son and his brother—we’re left hanging at the end with the father’s appeal to his older son, with no hint given of the older son’s response. The reason for that was that the older son represented the Pharisees and their allies, and it was up to them to make that response. The story—the real story—wasn’t finished. In the same way here, the deeper story wasn’t finished; telling the end of Hosea and Gomer’s story would have given it a false sense of closure. But this way, we’re drawn in to try to finish the story ourselves.

That’s important, because the deeper story here is the story of Advent. Remember, the season of Advent is a season of waiting and preparation for the coming of Christ—preparation to celebrate his first coming, which we do on Christmas, and preparation for the time when he will come again. The cry of Advent is “Come, Lord Jesus! Come, O come, Immanuel! Come and buy us back, come and set us free!” And the message of Advent is that he did come and buy us back, at a far greater cost than just silver, barley, and wine—he bought us back and set us free at the cost of his own life; and having done so, he is coming again to take us home with him.

Now, we all know this, or at least, we’ve all heard it before; but I wonder if we’ve ever thought about what this really means for our lives. I hadn’t, until a colleague of mine gave me a copy of the book Furious Pursuit. I have a number of quibbles with the book, but I still highly recommend it, because the audacious truth at the center of this book is something we desperately need to hear: Christianity isn’t about us chasing God, it’s about God chasing us. It isn’t about us earning his love, it isn’t about us being good enough or obeying hard enough; to pull from another colleague of mine, from a sermon that nearly put me on the floor, “We hear God saying, Obey me, obey me, obey me, but that’s not right. Yes, God wants our obedience, but that comes later. What God is really saying is Trust me, trust me, trust me; and as we learn to trust, we learn to obey.” Christianity isn’t about you straining every muscle to hold on to God, it’s about the fact that God will never let you go—never—and that whether you run to him, run away, or just try to ignore him, he will never stop pursuing you, because he loves you.

That’s what Advent is about. It’s about a God who loves you so much, who loves all of us so much, that even though we had rejected him, he came down to this earth, looked the devil square in the eye, and said, “I’d like to buy my people back.” We were in rebellion, we had set ourselves against him as his enemies; despite all that, at the right time, he died for us, to repair a relationship which had been, it would seem, irreparably shattered. The Son of God traded in his throne and his crown for dirty straw and dirtier diapers; he gave up all the wealth of heaven for the poverty of homelessness; he set aside all the power and honor of deity to accept the powerlessness and shame of a criminal’s execution on a torture device. And he did it all for you.

What will you do?