Dr.Dipwad

Big Hollywood, and my Usual Fatwa Against Television

2009-01-10T12:33:00.004-05:00

So, over at Big Hollywood, Nick Gillespie discusses watching a current television show with his teenager, and finding out that it's "as boring as hell."

Yes. And?

I suppose the underlying question is:

What're all these presumably moral, perhaps even Christian, individuals doing spending their time watching television -- and mediocre television at that? Are their lives so dull, so aimless?

Is there nothing more enjoyable that could be done with that period of time, if one merely wants enjoyment? Nothing more informative, if one wants to be informed? Nothing more relaxing, if one wants relaxation?

I'm reminded of that bit in C.S.Lewis' The Screwtape Letters in which that sly devil boasted of his ability to tempt humans to do, not sinful things they actually enjoyed, but things they didn't even enjoy: "...as habit renders the pleasures...at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him." Screwtape boasts of a soul he tempted saying, on his arrival in hell, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked."

My usual, oft-repeated Recommendation: Cancel your cable/dish account. Get Netflix or some other subscription on-demand kind of membership which limits you to only a few hours' watching per week, which you must intentionally select from the last 50 years' output instead of passively receiving whatever happens to be on this week.

Result: Less watching, more entertainment while watching, and everything you watch comes from a voluntary prioritization of your time.

My family switched to this method oh, two years ago. We don't miss a thing worthwhile. And I can't remember the last time we had to sit through a television commercial. (That right there, when watching an "hour long" program, gives you back 17 minutes of your life.)

Oh, and it's rather cheaper.

And the only way Meathead's treacly moral puffery can water-torture your brain is if you voluntarily put "All In The Family" in your Netflix queue. (I don't know anyone who would...but if they did, at least they'd have Carol O'Connor to make up for it.)

All in all, it's the civilized, pleasanter way to watch, and only the habitual dullness of personal inertia keeps families from making the switch.

Kicking Against The Goads

2008-11-22T15:21:00.010-05:00

So, after the Proposition 8 vote, apparently some Christians were praying and singing, and some gay* folk attacked them.

Here is the Video.

Here is the Narrative.

Here is the Anchoress's take.

...and here is mine:

Some Gays In SanFran Find It Hard To Kick Against The Goads

Christianity offers a solution to those who have examined themselves (and human beings generally) sufficiently closely to understand that they have a problem in need of solving.

Humans often fail to do the good they know they should (or even wish they could) do. And humans often do the evil they know they shouldn't do, or wish they could avoid doing. That is the problem.

Now, Christ offers the solution...but He has absolutely nothing to say to those who don't yet know they have the problem. The antiquated way of saying it is that Original Sin permeates mankind, and that the insight that one is a sinner is a prerequisite to understanding the Gospel.

What, then, about homosexuals?

Well, just like the rest of us sinners, some know they have a problem, and others do not. And Christianity has absolutely nothing to say to those who don't know they have a problem.

But here we have some folks praying and singing, and the result is...what? How did this mere sight and sound affect gay onlookers?

Some (not all) gays felt compelled, by something within them, to kick, punch, molest, and steal from these folks who were singing and praying.

That's quite a reaction. What compelled it?

Sign Of Contradiction

The singers and prayers were being what Christians call "A Sign of Contradiction." Where Christianity makes itself noticed and its counter-cultural nature is revealed, it gets kicked.

The excuses used to justify the kicking differ in every age, and I understand well what they are in this age, but they are only excuses, and not the foundation of this rage. The foundation, the motivation to violence, is simple: It is fallen humanity's exasperation that, no matter how long one pushes back against the Truth of God, it adamantly refuses to go away, refuses to change for our convenience, refuses to stay out of sight. It keeps popping up in front of us, to our frustration, like a bubble of air under freshly-applied wallpaper.

As a man named Paul (earlier called Saul) might ruefully tell us: "It is hard to kick against the goads." (Another translation says, "against the pricks," but this leads to unfortunate misunderstandings....)

Some gays have not given in to the emotional urge to express their opposition to Christianity as physically as these described by Malkin and shown in the video. Some have managed to keep their cool, and perhaps as a result they still don't know they have a problem.

But what of those who saw this knot of folk praying and singing, and reacted violently? With jeers? With grabbing at body parts and pulling at clothing? With hurled insults and thrown punches?

With kicks?

They're probably discovering that it's hard to kick against the goads. They expressed what was truly inside them; and now that they have done so, do they like what they see? Do they know they have a problem?

Finding Out You Have A Problem

I think some of them do, now. So perhaps we need more street-corner singing and praying. It's quaint and unintellectual, sure. But one more easily sees that something is crooked by pushing it up against something that is straight. (The pun is unintentional; I don't mean sexually "straight," but morally straight, even logically consistent.)

When homosexuals encounter Christ, they encounter a Sign of Contradiction. They will kick against the goads. And they will find it hard. And if they look, they'll find something crooked in themselves. Not just their sexual problem; that's almost a symptom or manifestation. The something crooked is their fallen-ness.

And only then will Christ have anything more to say to them.

* Note: in the course of this post, I refer both to "gays" and to "homosexuals." In each case, I am referring to people who experience sexual attraction to persons of the same gender, which I hold to not be a sin per se, but a disordered personality trait and a temptation to sin. In no case am I using the term "gay" or "homosexual" as an epithet. Tone-of-voice is difficult to convey in writing but I ask readers to assume that my attitude is one of careful analysis without animosity.

Kill Your TV, again

2008-11-07T18:03:00.005-05:00

I think that our moral intuitions are strongly influenced by our sense of what is "normal" in society. (Types partial to High-falutin' language use the term "normative.")

Sadly, that sense is influenced by both those we know, and by popular media. The "peer pressure" aspect of the former has been a part of the human community forever. The influence of the latter has supplanted the oral and ecclesiastic traditions which once communicated cultural content from each generation to the next.

So whereas kids once absorbed the fireside tales of their parents -- who'd seen the difficulties arising from indiscriminate sex and would therefore not glorify it in their storytelling -- now they learn what life is like from popular media.

(They learn that good clergymen are always full of doubt, and clergymen who don't doubt their faith are either molesters or dangerous fanatics. They learn that generals are jingoistic madmen. They learn that newspaper reporters are heroes when they reveal government secrets, which are always dark and nefarious. They learn that Middle-Eastern Muslims never hold any beliefs incompatible with free societies, but that skinheads are the most significant source of terrorism in the world. They learn that businessmen are greedy crooks who'll murder for profit. They learn that Republicans hate the poor and Democrats love the poor. They learn that God doesn't exist and scientists are champions of truth and freedom. They learn that supernatural power, if it exists, exists in pagan magic, not in Christian prayer. They learn that religious people are bigots, wives are always smarter than husbands, teenagers see life more clearly than adults, and homosexuals are more emotionally healthy than heterosexuals. They learn that everyone is extremely thin and attractive, that an unattractive girl is actually just a stunner wearing glasses who'll inevitably become prom-queen after she gets a makeover from a knowing friend, that the prime nerd in high-school will turn out to look like a cover model for Men's Health once he's had a similar makeover, especially once he's undergone a training regimen made quick and painless by an inspiring rock music soundtrack, and that everyone has money to buy new stuff and to live in spacious surroundings, though one rarely sees them having to actually work.)

Anyway, the point is that when all that crap has already influenced one's sense of the normal, only a strong exposure to obviously contrary evidence in the real world will be able to make one's sense of the normal more realistic.

So, it would be one thing if kids absorbed all those skewed lessons from the modern world's equivalent of an oral tradition, only to find, when they talk to their friends, that not one of them has had premarital sex.

It's quite another thing when, after forty years of being saturated with those skewed lessons, kids have pretty much fallen into line with them, so that there is little contradictory evidence to be found anywhere.

Hence, it matters if all our friends are boinking like bunnies. It doesn't override our sense of free will, but it dulls our moral intuitions about what actually matters. It helps makes the grass seem greener on the other side of the moral code. And it reinforces the popular media's claim to be a trustworthy worldview.

Now, one can't kill one's friends for being a bad influence.

One can, however, kill one's television.

Said it before; now I'm saying it again: Netflix. And/or Tivo. By means of technology, be selective, so that all the media-absorbtion of those in your household is heavily edited for content. Stock your Tivo with reruns from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and so on: Why not?

The sole reason "why not" is of course that one doesn't wish one's kids to become the moral equivalent of "The Boy In The Bubble" who had no immune system and could be killed by the common cold.

Therefore, one should consciously introduce the bad stuff. Get some swearing in there, some teen sex, some pedophile priests, some sadistic soldiers, some religious types who overdo it.

But keep it in proportion. This will have the salutary effect of (a.) creating a better sense of proportion in a kid's sense of normalcy, and (b.) constitute sufficient exposure to lies and temptations to thereby activate the moral immune system.

One hopes.

All this, of course, falls under the category of "coming up with a theory of what might help, implementing it, and praying for the best." Which, from what I see, is a large percentage of the experince of being a parent.

Congratulations, President-Elect Obama

2008-11-04T23:17:00.005-05:00

Observations:

1. President-Elect Obama deserves the respect due the office, and our prayers. Let us in particular pray for his physical safety.

2. President-Elect Obama deserves congratulations on a well-run campaign, in which he at least remained relatively classy. He was a bit thin-skinned and vindictive when he and his were questioned in ways he didn't like, and he sometimes raised race as an issue by saying that his opponent had done so, when he hadn't. But in the history of campaigning, that's small potatoes. It was in fact a pretty dignified campaign on both sides, and that's worthy of praise.

3. It is an exciting thing that we elected our first black president. And it is gratifying that our first black president is a man with class and good taste, rather than some aging civil-rights-era race warlord who speaks in cadences fit for the pulpit but not the podium. We thereby escaped, for the moment, cascades of race riots and interracial ill will.

In a nation like the United States, which is truly one of the most color-blind nations in the world but publicly gives itself a bad rap because of our tendency to claw at our own bellies over our grandparents' sins, the possibility of putting racial mistrust entirely behind us is something to savor.

Kids of different "races" (I use scare quotes because we're all human) grow up playing together; they work together; they marry and have children; my melanin-challenged five-year-old has no preconceptions at all about the melanin-rich skin tones of her friend from next-door except that it means her friend can get by wearing less sunscreen.

By the time she is twelve, I guess, my daughter will have heard rumors that there are people who think skin-color determines a person's worth, like a rumor of cannibals in the Amazon basin. But in her life, they'll likely be little more than rumors: What a marvel!

4. I hoped Obama wouldn't win, because, tho' I was tempted by the color of his skin, I dragged my mind forcibly back to his likely policies and found them deeply inferior to the alternatives.

But a person can surprise you, by being wiser than you expected. And events can surprise a president (ask G.W.Bush!), preventing him from enacting what he thought he'd enact. I will pray that either or both prove true of the Obama Administration.

5. It was unlikely Obama wouldn't win, because:

(a.) He's black, and there were (I'd guess) five times more people willing to vote for him for that reason alone, who otherwise wouldn't have voted for a man with his policies and history, than there were people who voted against him because he was black, who otherwise would have voted for a man with his policies and history;
(b.) Everyone's tired of the Iraq war, and even though an abrupt pull-out is now nearly the only thing that could possibly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, they expressed their impatience by voting for the guy who called for the more abrupt departure;
(c.) The credit crunch is not properly understood by most folks, nor is the limit of presidential power over the economy, nor is the profound impact of state and local government on business, so much of the electorate was likely to blame our economic difficulties, or even their local ones (my own state is doing fine) on the party in the White House; and,
(d.) The MSM voted early and often.

...and so, no big surprises tonight. Which is nice. The surprises came over the last two years, and I'm about worn out absorbing surprises.

6. In his Herculean effort to run a campaign which never came within miles of playing the race card, John McCain did well. He perhaps overdid it, in the sense that Obama's years of regular absorbtion of Jeremiah Wright's racially-divisive and theologically wacko screeds could legitimately have been made an issue by the McCain camp, who instead barely mentioned the topic. But the old war-hero, whose year was 2000 if it was ever his year at all, managed a campaign which, while not a nail-biter, remained pretty competitive until the end, against enormous odds. He deserves kudos, not the usual and more likely post-election blame-game. In that sense, he'll probably get less than he deserves. But from me, he gets my thanks.

Considering how I felt about his performance in the Senate, and how grudgingly he got my vote, it pains me to say it, but: He ran a perfectly decent campaign.

So, in summary:

Congratulations to the President-Elect, and by God's protection may he be kept safe, and by God's generosity may he be made wise, and by God's providence may the 99.9% of events which are utterly outside the control of the President of the United States conspire to help, not harm, the United States of America.

I Saw An Odd Assertion Recently

2008-11-02T00:48:00.004-04:00

Recently I saw someone -- someone intelligent and well-intentioned -- assert that the G.O.P. and conservatives were, in America, a force opposing the higher and finer bits of culture!

I don't see that at all. For I regard the Classical and Christian heritage of Western Civilization to be endangered, and not by the right, who go out of their way (Trivium homeschooling, private schooling) to get their kids to learn some Latin and to know about the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid and The Canterbury Tales.

If some of them never get past do-re-mi solfege and Shakespeare's comedies, that's still better than the alternative which the left purveys as "culture."

For it seems to me the left is the conscious enemy of what is good and noble in civilization, intent on tearing down all such heritage as being valueless because it was authored by "Dead White Men." They substitute instead screeds written by undisciplined 20th-century authors capable only of vomiting emotion on to the page, with a focus on Feminist Critical Theory, Gay Critical Theory, and so on.

When forced overlong to breathe the rarified air of urban art shows and poetry readings and dinner parties for publishers, one loses patience with the conceit (in both senses) that that crowd ever produced anything of cultural value. It is crap; the more entrenched in revolutionary class warfare it is, the more predictably and egregiously crappy it is.

A whole world of adjectives ("daring," "progressive," "provocative") exist to impute cultrual importance to such tripe as our forefathers would have stuck in a chamberpot. (Fitting, considering how the materials used by some artists are, precisely, those which belong in chamberpots.)

Against this backdrop, someone like Sarah Palin, who would react to it patiently but remain unimpressed by it, is found horribly gauche. Which I find delightful: She causes exactly the people who most need to get over themselves, to have a case of the vapors! This is a wonderful wicked pleasure.

But I myself would see the literary community, the arts community, the academic world, the independent "artsy" film community, and their hangers-on in urban journalism, torn to pieces until they find again their innocence.

For they grow weary of pornography, which is now too mainstream. Coprophilia palls, so they seek a new titillation; Snuff films, maybe, until they're eventually "mainstreamed" like porn. (Given the opportunity afforded by the legal system, it's odd artistically graphic depictions of abortion haven't caught on.)

Tear it apart. Let rebuilding start from innocence. Over decades, our culture could build from innocence toward excellence. But innocence should come first: Let us build on no baser foundation.

I'm not sure how that could be done. But in the meantime if Hank Williams Jr. and Thomas Kinkade grow rich while the pretentious grow obscure, well, I can see some cosmic justice in that. If an unpretentious person should have high political office: Good!

For the person who likes tractor-pulls and country music and formulaic pictures of fairy-cottages (or of Christ) does not lack for the real and wholesome and humble. They may, too, hold a nascent capacity to appreciate J.S.Bach or Rachmaninov, a capacity long destroyed in those who populate the "serious art" community. (Those folk have burned out their sense of taste on the caustic flavors of evil, and to their ears now "only the squalid seems strong.")

This is why intellectuals of the right sort -- those who aren't too much on their high horse -- aren't threatened by the G-rated "low" culture of the G.O.P., represented by reports of Palin family moose hunting in Alaska, or by Charlie Daniels, Sara Evans, and the other Americana musicians playing the Baseball-and-Apple-Pie-Circuit.

Not everyone has developed the ears to listen to Bach: But of those who have not, better the innocence of one who can still listen to Lee Greenwood, who could hear Bach with fresh if naïve ears, than the cultivated taste for poison of those who ape sophistication by becoming prigs.

Benefits of the Death Penalty

2008-08-11T03:06:00.004-04:00

Here is a clinching argument in favor of the death penalty: Jose Medellin, recently executed for raping and killing 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena and 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman.

Simply put, there was no other just response to the crime. Anything less would have been a profound miscarriage of justice: The kind that disheartens the good people of a society, and gives courage to the criminals and to those who "deconstruct" outdated notions like law, morality, justice, the notion that some crimes are heinous....

When these concepts are thoroughly deconstructed in the public mind, the result is a civilization without confidence in its own value system, or in the idea of objective truth. I think it is fair to say that the ruling classes of Europe are rife with this malady.

Which is why I add that the execution of this man had an incidental benefit, beyond its obvious justice: It was a slap in the face to the ideas of those who undermine the notion that there is such a thing as justice.

There's something satisfying about irritating all the right people, and Jose Medellin's execution irritated exactly the sort of "deconstructed people" described above. Persons of exactly this type representing Mexico, where Medellin became a bit of a folk hero, appealed through the International Court of Justice.

I was deeply satisfied to hear that the State of Texas responded to this appeal in a fashion which, while couched in the usual legal niceties, amounted to offering Medellin's apologists a fork, a knife, and a plate containing their Texas-sized undershorts.

God Bless the People, Governor, and Spirit of Texas.

Casual Sex "Not for everyone"

2008-05-07T11:30:00.002-04:00

I just located this bit of cotton-candy from FoxNews's "Sexpert,":

FOXSexpert: Casual Sex, Can You Handle It? by Yvonne K. Fulbright

Idiotic bit of ignorant puffery.

I've never had casual sex; my wife and I were virgins when we married. Do you think I missed out?

The plain fact is that casual sex is inevitably depressing. I can't say so from personal experience, thank God; but I can say so by observing friends and co-workers and the blogs of the singles around me.

Casual sex is inevitably a depressing outcome.

Think not? Consider that much of the excitement comes from doing something naughty, something risky.

Setting aside the question of whether THAT'S a healthy attitude, ask yourself what happens twenty years down the road. Thirty? Forty? Will the memory of, "wow, that was stupid of me" still bring pleasure at that point?

"Pleasure is only full-grown when it is remembered." The wise person sets about making the moments of his life have value. But casual hook-up sex is inevitably looked back on in a negative way. For either:

(1.) One looks back and says, "Wow, that was memorably great sex...."

(2.) One looks back and says, "Well, the notion seemed exciting at the time, but it really wasn't all that great."

And statistically, option 2 is far more likely. It's rare not to fumble a bit when first becoming physically involved with a new person.

But in either case, one knows that, as middle-agedness elapses, the likelihood of this kind of mindless rutting fades away along with the beauty and energy of one's twenties. One cannot live the club scene forever. "Sadder still to watch it die, than never to have known it / For you the blind who once could see, the bell tolls for thee."

In the meantime, pursuit of casual sex meant that one wasted one's time, energies, affections, and intimacies on people who weren't interested in pursuing a lasting and meaningful relationship.

So you find yourself: Thirty-eight, having never met the love of your life or even a reliable ally and partner against life's oncoming travails. And there WILL be travails, times of heartache. Who will you lean on during your first serious illness? The first death of a parent? Of your last living parent? The loss of your job...or your sibling?

We were meant to walk the path in tandem; it is a poor and astringent thing to watch one's age-lines deepen while alone.

Meanwhile, the people who (a.) didn't sleep with each other before getting engaged or married and (b.) consequently took personal relationships more seriously from the get-go are the ones who married in college, graduate school, or early adulthood. They now have children. They've outlasted the seven-year itch. They're less likely to divorce than other segments of the population. By age forty they have around fifteen years' shared experiences and have made a life together, and regularly pray that God will allow them to keep their health, so that each can have the privilege of growing old with the other, and so that both will have the joy, twenty years hence, of their married children's untarnished respect and the giggles of their grandchildren.

That's what I've got.

Anybody want to trade your memories for mine? Well, get over it. I don't care what hottie you've slept with; I won't trade my platinum anniversary for your fools gold.

The wisdom of your youth will determine whether you live the rest of your life in regret or fulfillment. And wisdom cries out in the street, begging young folks to pay attention before time is up.

But life is short; and youth shorter. Get wise while you can.

Motives of the Anti-Illegal Immigration Crowd

2008-04-20T17:56:00.005-04:00

Where I'm Coming From

I am an opponent of illegal immigration. I am a proponent of government activity to curb illegal immigration (whatever works), and a proponent of keeping legal immigration restrictions, but setting them far more permissively than their current levels.

I'm frequently outraged by the statements of those who oppose government activity to curb illegal immigration. My outrage stems from their insistence that anyone with my views is a racist, or a bigot, or prejudiced against Hispanics. This adds to my existing outrage at the whole illegal immigration situation.

For if the situation itself is frustrating (and it is), the slander of those who want it fixed with that all-purpose put-down of the modern era, "racist," is downright insulting.

No Klansmen Here

The vast majority of people with my views are neither racist, nor bigoted, and the vast majority of their prejudice against Hispanics is to pre-judge, perfectly logically, that most working-class Hispanics (a.) speak Spanish, but either don't speak English, or speak it with minimal fluency or a heavy accent; (b.) are very hard workers; and (c.) have a smaller sense of "personal space" than most Americans. It really is that benign.

"Nonsense," you say. "We all have a bit of bigotry in us, we just suppress it," you say. "You're underestimating the racism of those who share your views because you don't want to be associated with their disreputable attitudes," you say. "You're a Pollyanna if you think foes of illegal immigration aren't racists," you say.

Yes, most (all?) people have prejudices which they suppress, and perhaps acknowledge as sin, and perhaps confess to their priest. But that attribute is therefore not unique to foes of illegal immigration; how then is it an argument against their views? "Oh," you say, "it's because their views are caused by their bigotry; they wouldn't hold them otherwise."

Not so. There is a far more obvious cause for those views, as I'll show below.

And as for the few foes of illegal immigration who are racists, what does their existence show? No one can avoid sharing political opinions with some unsavory characters, no matter what those views are! Your views -- whatever they are! -- are likely shared by junkies or pedophiles or Marxists or Klansmen or some other sort of scumbags; will you therefore abandon those views? If you oppose the death penalty, you share that characteristic with (one assumes) 99% of death-row inmates. Does that mean the majority of death penalty opponents are violent criminals? On the subject of opposing illegal immigration, I'm not arguing that there aren't racists who agree; I'm arguing that 99% of those who agree aren't racist.

You see, there are few spheres of corporate life in which the American public has spoken more firmly and unanimously than on the topic of illegal immigration. Polls abound, but their findings can be summed up in this way:

Most don't mind hardworking immigrants who came in legally;
Most think it's immoral and criminal to enter the U.S. illegally, or overstay a visa, and that this crime should be prosecuted, with leniency for non-violent first offenders, and harsher punishment for repeat offenders, those with prior criminal records, and those who committed a crime while in the U.S.;
Most would be perfectly willing to allow more and longer work visas, and thereby increase the flow of legal entrants, if they could just be sure that illegal immigration would be stopped;
Most, in short, just want our guests to "sign the guest register on their way in."

That's not unreasonable, and the persons who hold these views are not unreasonable people. What, then has provoked all these reasonable people to outrage? Is it racism?

Of course not. The views described above are held by large majorities of American citizens. It is silly to believe that some 60%-80% (depending on the poll and the way the question is asked) of the American public, whose attitudes toward Mexicans have generally always been positive or neutral (especially when compared to attitudes toward outsiders from elsewhere...like, say, the French!) suddenly became raving bigots one day.

And am I a Pollyanna for saying so? Perhaps I look that way when I am compared to a cynic. For when you observe a man's actions and immediately assume that they stem from a dark and contemptible motive despite (a.) his denial, and (more importantly), (b.) his given motive being not only more noble but also a better explainer of his actions, then you are not being realistic. You're being a cynic; that is, you're being biased, and intellectually dishonest, and unloving to the man in question.

"Okay, dammit," you say, "What other motive could there be? How can anything other than racism and nativism explain the vivid anger, the emotional energy, of illegal immigration foes?"

The Reason For All The Vim And Vigor

Easy. It's outrage. It is outrage at the disrespect being shown for two things, two values. They are noble values, worthy of respect. They are values which Americans prize very highly; for they are values which are central to our self-definition as a nation. And on the topic of illegal immigration, Americans see these values as being disregarded, even spit upon.

They are: The Rule of Law and The Right of the Little Guy for His Voice To Be Heard.

"Okay, how," you may ask, "have the Rule of Law and the Right of The Little Guy To Have His Say been shown disrespect on the subject of illegal immigration?"

Here's how:

A Catalog of Outrages

(1.) Many elected representatives don't want to execute the public's will to enforce immigration laws. So they choose to ignore public will, or worse, to feign obedience until the public's attention is distracted, and then avoid follow-through. They thereby show disrespect not only for the law but for the public; they think we're "that gullible."

(2.) Many business owners don't care to abide by the law or encourage obedience to it when there's a bigger profit in violating it or encouraging violations of it. So they hire illegal alien workers, and market products and services to illegal aliens. They thereby show disrespect not only for the law but for their law abiding customers, who naturally enough conclude that they'd market their products to pedophiles, if the market were big enough to make it worth their while; the feelings of their other customers obviously don't matter a damn.

(3.) Illegal aliens have marched publicly in the streets of America, demanding more from the citizens of America than the jobs and government services they've already received. In so doing they spit in the faces of their hosts, showing deep ingratitude and answering hospitality with scorn, presumption, and peevishness.

The Nerve!

You'll notice that, of the three "outrages" listed above, the first two are committed by Americans; only the third directs any anger at the illegal immigrants themselves, and only in response to the marches and the use of political maneuvering. It's not the presence of the illegal aliens itself -- let alone their race! -- that provokes feelings of anger amongst American citizens. It is, in short, "the nerve."

The craven politicians were the first source of citizen fury. "Just allow us this one amnesty," they said back in the 1980's, "and we'll fix border security so it'll never be a problem again." Well, the citizens allowed that one amnesty, and nothing was done about the border, and here we are 20+ years later with a worsened situation, and here are the politicians trying the same line! "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice...." The nerve of those people, pulling the same stunt twice!

As for businesses, most Americans didn't mind their landscape work being done at low cost; they didn't mind their homes being built for low cost; they didn't mind their groceries being grown and harvested at low cost. But the low cost was not the only reason the business owners didn't come under much fire for hiring illegals. It was also because Americans acknowledged that if Contractor X were to not hire illegals, and Contractor Y did hire them, Contractor X would be out of business shortly thereafter. Who, then, could blame Contractor X for giving in and hiring them?

But that changed when credit card companies and banks began to target services and products and commercials at illegals. The average American doesn't see them as risking bankruptcy for doing otherwise. But here they were, rewarding scofflaws with special deals not available to the law abiding?! The nerve of those people!

And as for the illegal immigrants themselves, the "scofflaws?" Well, most Americans knew about illegal immigrants but mostly felt sorry for them, until they marched and made themselves into a special-interest group with grievances and a political lobby. Then the attitude changed.

Walk A Mile In American Moccasins

Imagine you wake up one night to find a burglar in your house. At first you are frightened; then you see it is some starving waif who wants food. Even though the sanctity of your castle has been violated, your mercy gets the better of your anger, and you give them some food. But then the burglar stands eye to eye with you, shoves his nose into yours, and defiantly shouts, "More!" Then he sits down on your couch, puts his feet up on your coffee table, turns on your television, and glares at you daring you to gainsay his actions. What cheek, what gall, what outrageous nerve!

Under the circumstances, I think you could be forgiven for having suddenly reduced sympathy for the burglar's hunger pains. Under the circumstances, I think you could be forgiven for kicking the bugger out. Under the circumstances, I think you could be forgiven for installing new deadbolts and a security system. And while you might relent and send a little money, or some food coupons, his way, you'd send them to his address.

If The Moccasin Fits...

The above scenario describes how Americans feel, not toward illegal immigrants who come, in dire need, asking for work, but toward illegal immigrants who come demanding government services and amnesty, using political lobbying tactics to force citizens to accede. That, then, is the source of the otherwise unexplainable ire. It is the source of the emotional language coming from foes of illegal immigration. They are fed up with American elites disregarding the voice of the public, fed up with flagrant disrespect for the Rule of Law, fed up with presumptuous demands made by people who had no business being here to begin with, and whom Americans would have felt willing to generously assist, until they began to show such disdain for their hosts.

(Don't disregard the importance to the Average American for respecting the Rule of Law. We are a nation of folks who stop at the red light at 3 a.m. when nobody is around for miles. And even when we're not, we think less of the person who runs the red-light. When we hear that a police car was waiting unseen nearby and that the person has received a ticket, we say, "Serves 'em right."

And the Law is Our Will. We The People make those laws -- yes, even the undeniably crappy ones, like our current dysfunctional mishmash of immigration laws -- through our representatives. Don't like 'em? Fine, tell us how to change them. That's the right way to deal with a bad law, you change it. But just ignore it? No. That's an outrage. Pretend that you're engaging in "civil disobedience" even though no rights of your own were at stake? Now you're insulting the memory of the civil rights marchers and the sit-ins. Don't even go there; your claim is nowhere in the same ballpark; it's not even in the same zip code.)

And, yes, there are other considerations (such as the horrible unfairness of the reality that, sans enforcement, it is the fence-jumper who is rewarded with a job in the U.S., and the law-abiding legal immigrant who is rewarded with a months- or years-long wait for a visa), but these are all secondary. They're not what prompts the most emotion from illegal immigration foes.

The real feeling of the foes of illegal immigration is that the elites are scoffing at the will of the public and calling them racists -- vicious slander! -- and that those for whom they were willing to show pity and mercy have in return shown them discourtesy and presumption.

Mad about it? You bet.

Stick To The Script

We Americans are a famously hospitable people. "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses," we say, and (please pardon the stereotype, but you know there's some truth in it) five Mexican landscapers at the end of a work day, all crammed in the cab of a pickup truck, certainly qualify. We want to welcome these folks! But we want them to arrive legally as, say, the Irish did, perhaps endure some early hardships (as the Irish did), put up graciously with the prejudices of the uncouth when necessary (as the Irish did), and eventually rise to become, at the second and third generation, part of the glue that holds America together (as the Irish did). Or, fill in "Poles" or "Swedes" or whomever in place of Irish. No matter the country-of-origin, it's the quintessential American story. We love seeing it repeated; it validates what we believe about ourselves.

But notice that the host and the guest both have roles to play in that story. Both sides must follow the script. Nowhere do we see the immigrant group using the greed of City Hall and Wall Street to override the will of the people. Nowhere do we see the immigrant group using identity politics and manufactured grievances to stage a media-managed coup.

When the guest goes off-script in this way, expect the host to do likewise. When the storied hospitality of America is so abused as it has been on this topic, it is only to be expected that we roll up the welcome mat, for a time.

Perhaps when we are no longer spit upon, by our elites or our guests, we'll feel better about putting it out again.

Citizen Warrior

2008-04-02T16:05:00.005-04:00

Some Interesting Links:

War Of Memes

The Terrifying Brilliance Of The Islamic Meme

How To Change Someone's Opinion

Recommended DVDs

and of course Fitna and Submission are to be applauded!

About Obama's $20,000 Contribution

2008-03-19T15:13:00.008-04:00

I find myself surprised and discouraged by one aspect of the conservative attack on Obama.

I'm not surprised or discouraged by the that they think Obama should disown Rev. Wright unless Wright himself disowns and apologizes for his profoundly false and unjust* rhetoric. All that is appropriate.

No, what gets me down is that they refer to Obama's gift of $20,000 to Wright's church as being particularly indicative of Obama's support of Wright and of his rhetoric.

Twenty thousand dollars? A mere twenty thousand dollars? Is...surprising? Is indicative of wholehearted support? Shows Obama to be joined at the hip to this execrable clergyman?

Folks, we're talking about the donations of a Christian layperson to his church, here.

The normative (I do not say normal, because I'm well aware many fall short) practice in Christendom regarding church contributions is something called tithing. For those of you who sleep in on Sundays, it means you give ten percent of your pre-tax income to your local church, to assist it both in (a.) its operation costs, and (b.) in funding its own ministries to the needy in your local community and in the world.

Now, before anyone with theology degrees starts to hammer me with explanations why God does not require ten percent and how that's a mis-reading of Scripture, let me preempt that discussion by saying I'm aware of all that. It doesn't change the fact that ten percent is (a.) reasonably common among the faithful; (b.) a measure of a person's trust in God and awareness of God's sovereignty -- including ownership -- over all there is; (c.) is considered a low-ball figure for people who are particularly wealthy, as Americans in general and the Obamas in particular unquestionably are.

C. S. Lewis wrote that, when it comes to giving to church and charity, he felt the only "safe" approach was to give more than he felt willing to give, more than he thought he could afford without discomfort. Another, similar, approach is stated this way: "The responsibility of the believer is to keep his church operating and to provide for the poor, and to do so generously, even up to the point -- though not past the point -- where he himself thereby would become unnecessarily dependent on others."

A few paragraphs ago I used the phrase "a mere twenty thousand dollars." Sure enough, $20K isn't "merely" anything for me. But my income is, uh, rather less than that of Obama and his wife, which has tended to hover at well over $750,000 per year for a long time.

If Obama and his wife made only $200,000 in a year, then a $20,000 gift to his church would be ten percent: One year's normal gift. Of course, the word "normal" in that sentence should be read: "normal for folks who aren't particularly blessed with high incomes." Since the Obamas would unquestionably be considered high-earners even if they were only (!) making $200,000, a tithe of $20,000 would probably be considered a bit stingy by common Christian standards.

And for a man whose household income sometimes tops $1 million, a $20,000 check is, well, extremely underwhelming as a sign of fervent support. It is, in fact, a sign of a lukewarm, rather than firm, attachment to Wright and his church.

All of the above assumes, of course, that Obama does not regard tithing as merely his religious duty owed directly to God, rather than a way of expressing how he feels about each Sunday's sermon. If that is the way Obama thinks about his contributions, why then, the whole discussion of the number "twenty thousand" is completely irrelevant to Obama's approval or disapproval of Wright.

So when I've seen some commentary from conservatives referencing this amount, I've been surprised and discouraged. Why should they regard this amount as so unusual, unless...unless they themselves are unfamiliar with trusting God with their financial needs, and giving generously to church and charity? Is the problem that they think of their church contributions as just a way to "tip" the pastor for a good sermon? Is the problem that they, some of them with six-figure incomes, contribute to their churches by dropping a fiver in the plate every once in a while when they feel like it, and can't contemplate why anyone would do more?

I've noticed, on occasion, some of those same conservative authors referencing C. S. Lewis in such a way as to suggest they thought highly of the man, even considered him something of an example. Well, Lewis sometimes gave half of his income away in various charities. That is the Christian perspective on such deeds.

Excited exclamations over Obama's $20,000 gift?! Pah. Someone isn't thinking straight.

* Note that my choice of adjectives for Wright's rhetoric was "false and unjust" not "divisive" or "hateful" or "racially inflammatory" or other such formulations. Such formulations may accurately describe Wright's rhetoric; however, sometimes things must be said, because they are truths which need facing, despite their sounding hateful or divisive or even racially inflammatory. So those adjectives themselves are not definite arguments for Wright keeping his forked tongue behind his teeth. But Wright's words, in relevant part, were false and unjust, and saying them represents an evil act by Wright on that basis alone.

The Absolute Best Quote re: Obama's Speech About Wright

2008-03-19T12:51:00.001-04:00

A reader e-mailed Jonah Goldberg with the following statement:

"Obama - I smoked Pastor Wright's sermons, but I didn't inhale them."

Sheer perfection.

The Left Parses Pastor Wright

2008-03-18T10:12:00.005-04:00

So: Here is Andrew Sullivan's defense of Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/the-fore-runner.html

The utter craziness of the Frederick Douglass comparison (Pastor Wright's speechifying is apparently to be regarded as an updated version, and therefore equally valid) astounds me.

To "damn" something or someone has a very specific meaning in Christianity. "God damn X" means: May X be utterly destroyed in the fires of hell. It is the type of thing that one says about sin, about institutionalized evil. You can't, in fact, wish anything worse on anyone or anything.

It is never the type of thing that one says about a sinner -- who ought to be loved, and for whose redemption we hope, despite the damnation of his sin.

"America" is a word also having meaning. America is her ideals -- including some that are only honored in the breach -- and her people -- even those who don't espouse her ideals.

Frederick Douglass would, I am certain, be aware of the distinction. He would likely call "damnation" on slavery, on segregation, on racism. All that is appropriate. But to call "damnation" on her people, generally? On her ideals, generally? On, in short, America?

This, if we are to take his words as meaningful, is what Wright has said: Freedom of Speech: Send it to hell! A Congress instead of a King: Send it to hell! Defense of the Liberty of Europe: Send it to hell! George Washington: Send him to hell! Thomas Jefferson: Send him to hell! Abraham Lincoln: Send him to hell! Thurgood Marhsall: Send him to hell! Rosa Parks: Send her to hell!

Frederick Douglass was a class act. Frederick Douglass would have been deeply ashamed of himself to say, would have considered it psychopathic to say, even in the era of slavery, let alone segregation, the particular curse against America that Wright has said, today, when those things are long gone.

"No, no, no," says the left: "You're parsing Wright's words as if you thought they all, individually, had meanings you could look up in the Oxford English Dictionary. That's not the way that black preachers talk. They're more emotional. They aren't a bunch of over-parsed Anglican bishops. When you listen to a black preacher you're supposed to absorb emotion, not meaning."

Oh, I see. So the reason some leftists are okay with this statement is not because they believe or agree with its actual content, but because they think it has no actual content.

In short, the attitude of the elite left toward the blacks who slavishly elect them is, as it has always been: "Aw, let 'em rail. Blacks haven't got the sophistication to actually mean anything by it, and their ardor is entertaining, as long as it favors us in the next election."

The elite and "softly bigoted" left views Wright the way they always viewed Sharpton and Jackson: That it's just a black preacher getting uppity, and whaddaya expect?

Blogging Is Dangerous

2008-02-22T23:29:00.003-05:00

What will you do when you want to express what you're really thinking, without much self-censorship?

Is it wise to do so on a blog?

Probably not.

If anyone knows the blog is yours, then potentially everyone does. That which you say can come back to haunt you.

So...which is the most troublesome, most immoderate, thing I've blogged?

I suppose one day I'll find out.

UPDATE: I just (3/18) said something fairly immoderate on the Wright controversy...

Turnabout Is Fair Play (re: the Qur'an)

2008-02-13T18:33:00.012-05:00

Turnabout Is Fair Play.

Having criticized the content/meaning of the Qur'an (while allowing for the possibility that its content is delivered with excellence from a literary/artistic perspective), it is only reasonable that my own sacred cow be subjected to the meat-grinder:

"What about Christian Scriptures? Are they superior to the Qur'an with regard to message? Are they just as bad? Are they not, in fact, inferior, saying all the same things with regard to content, but lacking any comparable attempt at artistry?"

To that, my response is: Christian Scriptures do not, in one way, compete on the same playing-field as the Qur'an, and are not subject to the same requirements. But in another way, they do compete directly with the Qur'an, and come out vastly superior.

Christian Scriptures simply do not claim to be dictated by God. Various types of claims of inspiration are made by different Christians. The term "Word of God" is applied to Christian Scriptures, and this results in such great confusion in the minds of non-Christians and of less-informed Christians alike that these less-informed Christians begin to treat the Bible (for the purposes of hermeneutics) in much the same way that Muslims treat the Qur'an, and the non-Christians, looking on, understandably take this mistreatment of the Christian canon as canonical Christianity!

But the two stances differ, and the difference may be summed up as follows:

Any time that the Qur'an asserts/assumes Fact X and exhorts/approves Behavior Y, it must be assumed that the assertion/assumption and the exhortation/approval are from the mouth of God Himself. If the assertion or assumption turn out to be objectively incorrect, it can only be because (a.) God made a mistake, or (b.) the Qur'an is not authored by God. If the behavior being exhorted or approved turns out to be less than entirely moral, it can only be because (a.) God is not perfectly good, or (b.) the Qur'an is not authored by God.

Now Christian Scripture does not experience anywhere close to the same threat of self-nullification. For the Christian Bible is a collection of writings, selected on the basis of their ability to edify people on spiritual matters, given special authority by the doctrine that the writers were inspired by God during the writing process (to a degree sufficient to avoid spiritual error), and that those responsible for "editorial selection" were similarly inspired by God (to a degree sufficient to avoid spiritual error).

In such circumstances, what can a Christian conclude if a Biblical Author says that, say, there were exactly 23 years between Historical Event X and Historical Event Y, but archeology or other methods conclusively prove otherwise? Is the Christian in the same bind that the Muslim would be? The answer is: No. He can assert that the Biblical Author was incorrect, and repeating the belief of his time, but that this has no bearing on spiritual lessons and says nothing at all about the infallibility of God.

Ah, but what about moral teachings? Can St. Paul engage in what appears to be sexism ("women should be silent in church") without thereby suggesting that either God is a sexist, or the Bible is faulty? Answer: Yes, he can. The Christian can (and in the aforementioned case, does) assert that some teachings of St. Paul, while not erroneous at the time, were intended for that time and circumstance, and are not necessarily universal in application. (Christians are helped in this by the fact that St. Paul sometimes says specifically that a teaching is solely his idea, and that on other occasions he asserts divine teachings with the phrase "Thus saith the Lord.")

In any case, while there are parts of Christian scripture which, if proven false from a factual or moral standpoint, would thereby undermine Christianity altogether, they are a far more narrow set than in Islam, where "the set of all verses able to invalidate the entire religion through the tiniest error" is identical to "the set of all verses in the Qur'an." So, because Christian Scripture does not make precisely the same claim as the Qur'an, it is on a more secure footing. The claim of the Qur'an is not merely dubious because of the flaws in Qur'anic teaching; it is dubious because of the claim itself.

Let me now address my second point: That in some ways, Christian Scripture does compete directly with the Qur'an, and when it does, comes out the better of the two.

Christian Scripture, like Muslim Scripture, produces doctrine and behavior. No doctrine may be Christian if it is utterly contradictory to Christian Scripture; nor can a doctrine be Islamic if it contradicts the Qur'an. And while both Christians and Muslims (being men, not angels) behave in ways which are contrary to their religious teachings without thereby necessarily invalidating those teachings, it is fair to compare their behavior when they are being good Christians and good Muslims, and ask whether "good Muslim behavior" is inferior, equal, or superior to "good Christian behavior" (however rarely either is practiced).

This, of course, brings up the question of whether, for example, suicide bombings of Israeli pedestrians are in fact "good Muslim behavior." My own rough guess is that 80% of Muslims 'round the world hold that they are not. The Qur'an, however, leads me to put Muhammad himself among the 20%, not among the 80%. The occidentalized Muslim is a benefit to his society, I think: But I do not think he is an orthodox Muslim.

If Muhammad's teachings include such notions as "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but unto God that which is God's" they are extremely well-hidden. The notion that conversion by the sword is a theological impossibility because "God looketh at the heart" may be present in the Qur'an, but if so, the corollary that one should therefore never attempt conversion by the sword can only be pried out by some allusion or figure of speech which is completely opaque to both myself and to the vast majority of all the Muslims who have lived at all times in history. For, two hundred years ago, the founding fathers of the United States found, in dealing with the Barbary Pirates, that they were jihadists; and centuries before that, the defenders of Vienna nearly lost their city twice to jihadists, and a long while before that, all southern Spain fell to jihadists and France would have fallen too except for Charles the Hammer, and in still earlier centuries Alexandria and Constantinople and Jerusalem fell to jihadists, and at the start of it all Muhammad was saying, echoing every comparable warlord from every other epoch in every other continent, that those unbelievers who did not convert should be destroyed or enslaved. It is not the jihadist whom Islam calls "heretic."

Meanwhile from Christianity comes that liberty of the soul which culminates in the liberty of the ballot-box. The Christian scriptures begin by announcing that man is made in God's image: relational and free-willed. The former means "able to love" and the latter means "able to choose to love, or not." The message of Christian scripture from that point forward is: God pursues man with his love; man may accept it or reject it. The prophets of Israel show Yahweh as the lover scorned by his beloved; the husband cuckolded by his bride: For man may either choose to love God, or not. The climax of the Christian story is: God gives his life for man out of love; man may accept it or reject it; God defeats death and offers victory over death as a gift to all; but man may accept the gift or decline. The final pages of the book predict a glorious new heaven and new earth, sealing the free choice of all souls with a profound finality: Any who wish heaven may have it; but it is not forced upon those who would rather "reign in hell than serve in heaven."

From this I surmise that while Christianity can survive under any form of government; when Christians construct governments they are apt to be more liberal (in the now-antiquated sense which means "free") than that which preceded them or would otherwise have been formed. History, I think, bears this out: Notions which otherwise would never have arisen in Europe did arise under the influence of Christian teaching; they did not arise where Christian teaching did not prevail, and liberal representative democracy, that manner of government which is worst in the world save all the others, was the result.

And where Islam was taught day and night? Well, so long as the Caliphate could continue to conquer, it could enrich itself with the intellectual and material and cultural treasures of those outside its borders. Once its advance was stymied, it had to rely on its own intellectual capital. The result: slavery, genocide, corruption, despotism, illiteracy, poverty, decay, resentment, stupefaction.

Now, the generalizations made above are so vast and vague as to be worthy of derision were they not, in the main, plainly true. For every cry of "what about injustices during the Crusades?" or "what about the Spanish Inquisition?" or "what about witch-trials?" or "what about the more moderate Muslim states?" or "what about Voltaire?" or "what about Galileo?" there are responses which can be given: A hundred admissions of Christian guilt limited only to certain individuals, a hundred qualifications that the events are misremembered in popular imagination, a hundred notations of worse things happening under similar circumstances when the perpetrators were anything other than Christians, all of which sound evasive and mealy-mouthed and worthy of scorn.

So the Christian apologist is obligated to hang his head and exhibit remorse on behalf of his unwise or corruptible co-religionists of previous centuries, and to agree with both his God and his accuser that, yes, all those things were perfectly horrible, and yes, there are occasions of Jews getting better treatment by Muslims than by Christians, and yes, there have been Atheists who weren't such utter scoundrels as some of the Christians whom they opposed. After this admission the argument is assumed to have been won by those who hold that Christianity isn't so great a thing after all.

But the argument is entirely separate from the admission of sin and the repentance toward righteousness. If we are in the business of confessing and repenting, then of course Torquemada was an evil sadist and so far as our reputations are sullied by his distant and heretical behavior, we loudly deplore it, offering no excuse for it.

But when we are in the business of arguing whether Christianity, founded in her Scriptures, has produced better behavior overall and that the bad behavior is exhibitive not of orthodoxy, but of heresy, then all those qualifications apply. In that context they are not a weasely shirking of responsibility but a sober evaluation of historical detail. And in that context, the history of Christendom, for all its (admitted! repented!) outrages and disappointments, shows itself superior not only to Islam but to every other tradition in the world.

Embryos as Living Human Organisms

2008-02-13T18:29:00.002-05:00

A Link to a debate in mid-stream:

Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, authors of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, reply in National Review Online to William Saletan's critique of their arguments.

The topic merits further review at a later time.

Amazed by the Qur'an

2008-02-13T13:07:00.004-05:00

I've been keeping up with Robert Spencer's "Blogging the Qur'an" on a semi-regular basis.

As the weeks have gone by, and sura after sura has been considered, I have formed an overall reaction to the Qur'an as scripture:

The Qur'an is Amazingly Bad.

More specifically:

I am amazed at how shallow and ill-considered it is. I am amazed at how repetitive it is. I am amazed at how decidedly uninspired and uninspring it is. I am amazed that anyone could think it authored by God, and can only conclude it is through lack of imagination (or actual exposure) which would allow them to perceive how much higher the cognitive quality of genuine divine revelation would be.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that the Qur'an apparently changed over time and is not, in its current form, identical to its original form, I believe that the greatest argument against its divine authorship is in its content.

If the Qur'an were, as claimed by Muslims, the result of divine dictation, then apparently God had nothing better to say to man than:

(1.) You all lack free will, but I'll punish you for rejecting me anyway;

(2.) My followers should use force and connivance against all non-followers, with only a fig-leaf's worth of limitations;

(3.) I hereby endorse some of the sillier superstitions of the average 6th-century unlettered Arab tribesman; e.g., wash out your nose so the devil can't crawl up in there;

(4.) This book is perfect and you shouldn't question it;

(5.) Muhammad is the highest example of human behavior, and don't you dare question that;

(6.) Non-believers are icky and bad and merit only contempt and emnity;

(7.) Did I mention don't question this book? Or Muhammad?

(8.) Non-believers are really very icky;

(9.) So are women, but at least they aren't non-believers;

(10.) Don't forget: You can't question this book or Muhammad!

(11.) Correct moral behavior consists of mindless ritualism, so long as it is the particular ritualism described in this book;

(12.) Ain't this book great? (Don't question it!)

Muslim apologists offer the inimitability of the Qur'an as miraculous evidence of its divine authorship. The book itself endorses this view, challenging the reader to find anything comparable, any "sura like it."

Now that I see what it is actually like, my reaction to these challenges is: Who'd waste his time trying to generate an imitation of such a flawed and distasteful original? An art forger might copy a Monet, but he won't waste his time and skill copying a five-year-old's stick-figure.

Indeed all these challenges strike me as little more than the smack-talking that goes on in a rap competition or a game of "street hoops." Muhammad has depicted a God who busts out with, "I'm the biggest baddest m********** on the block, and you can't top my rhymes -- uh, that is, my suras -- so don't get all up in m'face, or I'll beat ya' down."

I will however qualify my judgment of the Qur'an with the following caveat: I cannot read Qur'anic Arabic. Muslim scholars put huge emphasis on the literary perfection of the Qur'an when rendered in the original Arabic. I will grant, therefore, that as regards poetic style, it may be exceptional.

But even then, I find it impossible to regard excellent literary qualities alone as a plausible argument for divine authorship. The Book of Kells, on the strength of its extraordinary artistry, was described by one observer as seemingly (if you didn't already know better) not the work of a man, but of an angel. But had the Book of Kells' actual meaning been as mind-numbing and insipid as that of the Qur'an, I gather this observation would have been made in an ironic tone instead of a reverent one.

If indeed the linguistic style of the Qur'an is superior, then, having learned more of its content, I can only say: What a waste of an artist's skill!

Ideas Have Consequences

2008-02-12T11:09:00.000-05:00

Ben Stein's complaint, expressed in this film, and the ongoing efforts of FIRE against this kind of thing, and the desire of the global warming crowd for a technocracy, all come as no surprise.

Men oppress other men. It is a result of man's natural attitude toward other men. (Christians call it original sin, but as this is often inexplicably confused, in non-Christian sources, with something about sex, I'll avoid the term in this post.)

Man in his natural state tends toward oppression because he wants what he wants, and the differing opinions and contrarian activities of other men stand in his way.

A man who, to any degree, views other men as intrinsically valuable, meriting every bit as much expression of their free wills as he does of his, will naturally be willing, to the same degree, to curtail his insistence on getting his own way in favor of other individuals being able to simultaneously get theirs. Free societies result from this stance.

But a man who lacks any reason to view other men (and the expression of their free will) as intrinsically valuable will take a different approach, striving for the maximum expression of his own will, and hoping to enlist or subdue the activity of all other men in support of his own ideas or desires. Oppressive societies are the result of this attitude. In such societies, whether Khomenist or Maoist, every man struggles for that position within the mechanism of the state which will most effectively allow him to pursue his agenda while using force to prevent any other man from interfering with his agenda. When possible, he will make himself dictator; where that is not possible, he will maneuver himself into a cadre of ruling elites (sometimes clerics, sometimes bureaucrats).

The attitude toward other men which produces oppression is the natural outgrowth of any philosophy which views man as essentially mechanistic and without free will. (For, if men are merely machines influenced by external reward/punishment stimuli, why shouldn't I alter those stimuli to nudge society in the direction of serving my own goals?)

This is not to say that persons who accept the view that men are purely mechanisms without free will will always support oppression. If they have been raised in a society which has only recently adopted the mechanistic view, then they will likely have been taught at their mother's knee to respect the free will of others, and they will continue to be influenced by this view even when their own philosophy undercuts it.

But by the third or fourth generation of a society in which men are universally viewed as mechanisms to be shoved about according to our own designs, this anachronistic view will be forgotten, and oppression will emerge, or begin to emerge. For ideas have consequences and when they are sufficiently widespread they always are reflected in the behavior of society's institutions.

Meanwhile, free societies, and such declarations as "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with...inalienable rights" are the result of a philosophy which holds that men are more than biological machines, and that their Creator, while hoping for them to freely choose that which is good and true, values their free will so much that He will risk them choosing that which is evil and false, so long as their freedom of choice is at least partly preserved.

It is notable that not all Theistic creeds hold the view that free will is valued by God, or even exists. Certain philosophical threads in Islam are quite amenable to the man-as-machine-sans-free-will view. That Iran and Saudi Arabia are as oppressive as Mao's China is expressive of their particular philosophical approach to Theism, not of Theism per se.

And it is also true that men can sometimes make decisions which are contrary to their own philosophies, if they would only examine their philosophies closely enough to see it. For just as philosophical Materialists who view men as machines will sometimes behave morally even when their own self-interest is not thereby served, so too will Theists who view free-will as among the greatest gifts of God to humanity still sometimes use force or fraud to override the free-will of their fellow men in pursuit of their own interests.

But, again, ideas have consequences, and exceptions to the rule will ultimately have less power to shape society than the rule itself. Even a Christian culture which sometimes produces Inquisitions will eventually produce the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence, as a consequence of ideas. Even a political movement undertaken with the intent of building a "worker's paradise" will produce poverty and slavery when the individual workers are viewed as mere cogs in the great socialist machine.

And even an academy founded on freedom of inquiry will forcibly silence all critics and dissenters, both the wise and the foolish, if it holds that these critics and dissenters are made purely of mud with no spark of the divine. Ideas have consequences.

So, again, Ben Stein's complaint, expressed in this film, and the ongoing efforts of FIRE against this kind of thing, and the desire of the global warming crowd for a technocracy, all come as no surprise.

Is "calling a spade a spade" Christlike?

2008-02-09T10:34:00.000-05:00

So, here's the news article:

Lawmaker apologizes for calling unmarried pregnant teens "sluts."

Words have meanings. They also have cadence, nuance, emotional and ideological overtones: An adjective tells us not only about the noun which it modifies, but about the speaker who uses it.

What, then, to say about a lawmaker who refers to unmarried, pregnant teens as "sluts?"

If by "slut" one means simply: "A person who engages in illicit sexual activity which, had it taken place between a married couple, would have been entirely appropriate" then the lawmaker has used the word correctly, given his assumptions about morality. Moreover, his use of the word tells us what those assumptions are: Persons should not have sex unless married.

Is that all there is to the subject? Should we endorse the lawmaker? He has apologized for the statement; should he instead have defended it as accurate?

I don't think so. He may not have known exactly why; in fact he may have been insincere, but his apology was appropriate. His statement was sinful and if he is a Christian he ought to recognize that. We must hope he has sought the forgiveness not only of unmarried pregnant teens and their sex partners, but also of his maker.

Why? Doesn't Christianity hold that sex outside marriage is a sin?

Why, yes, it does.

And if the correct definition of the word "slut" is that given above, then isn't using that word to describe unwed mothers and their sex partners merely an honest, accurate description? Isn't it merely "calling a spade a spade?"

No. It may be those things, but it is not "merely" those things. There is such a thing as being sensitive to both the "fundamental" and the "overtones."

In music, a vibrating string produces a recognizable note (the fundamental), but hidden in that sound is the same note, one octave higher, and another note, an octave and a fifth higher, and the original note two octaves higher, and more notes in still higher octaves displaced from the fundamental by intervals of a major 3rd and a minor 7th. The loudness of these overtones greatly influences the timbre of the instrument and, thereby, the role it can play in an ensemble.

The word "slut" is an abrupt expectoration of a word; it is like a pistol-shot, and its use in a sentence has overtones of verbal violence. It is difficult to use without sounding hateful.

I do not argue that a Christian should never express hatred in a sentence. Sometimes hatred has a proper object: Lies, Hypocrisy, Addiction, Cowardice, Foolishness are justly hated by the Christian. Aversion to such things is what hatred was made for. But Liars, Hypocrites, Addicts, Cowards, and Fools are not appropriate objects of hatred: They are children of God, made in his image, and we are exhorted to "hate the sin, but love the sinner."

The lawmaker, whose name I have not used here because he is far from alone in his error (I, at least, have made similar errors) and because the lesson is general in application, did not say that teens having sex out of wedlock are children of God behaving in a slutty manner. He said they were sluts.

The lawmaker, then, has made the error of describing a fellow human being as nothing more than the sum of his/her sin. This is a non-Christian attitude, and is itself a sin, requiring repentance and reconciliation to the injured, and to God.

I would add that other overtones are present in the use of the word "slut" here: The lawmaker sounds holier-than-thou, self-righteous. This is sadly the norm among American evangelical Christians in the public eye. (I do not say "among American evangelical Christians, generally" because the media have a habit of only reporting stories which fit a pre-existing narrative; their narrative about evangelicals is that they are self-righteous prigs; therefore, those are the only Christians who make it into the papers.)

If the lawmaker is actually a self-righteous prig, then of course that too is a sin and a particularly deadly one. If he is actually a humble sort who sounds like a prig through poor word choice, then he has accidentally contributed to the discrediting of the cause of Christ, but at least does not suffer from the soul-cancer of Spiritual Pride.

In either case, God forgives him and we must, also (else we have no promise that our own sins will be forgiven; see re: "The Lord's Prayer"). But where he has stumbled, we can hope to walk straight.

Unwed sex partners are behaving in a slutty fashion, male and female. Fair enough; let us say so, but in a way which shows compassion, which distinguishes between the sin and the sinner. If we've been prissy Pharisees, condemning those around us while our hearts are full of rot, then let us repent and learn humility, humbling ourselves before Our Lord sees fit to humble us! And as illicit sex is apparently a perennial symptom of human frailty in a fallen world, let us be seen adopting not only the children born of such mistakes but the children of God who made them, drawing them into our families and friendships for the sake of their own hearts' healing.

God, I'm fairly convinced what I just wrote was correct. If I have erred, show me how; if not, then give me the grace to live up to these ideals, which are so far above me. Amen.

Educating the Public: The Laffer Curve

2008-02-02T09:23:00.000-05:00

Some concepts are so obviously correct, and so vital to the understanding and selection of public policy, that we should take every opportunity to educate our friends and neighbors about them.

One such concept is The Laffer Curve

Watch the video. If you don't, and are not already aware of its implications, the Doctor hereby revokes your authorization to vote in elections to national office.

Conservatism Is...

2008-01-21T15:26:00.000-05:00

The most amazingly accurate description of conservatism comes from John Hood at NRO Symposium:

The conservative movement constitutes an alliance of those who accept unchangeable facts rather than trying to wish fantasy into reality, remake human nature, or avoid economic tradeoffs. Traditionalists embrace timeless morals, even when they deny one immediate gratification. Libertarians embrace the sovereignty of consumer demand and the sometimes-disorienting effects of technological change, even when the result isn’t to one’s personal liking. And hawks embrace the reality that America lives in a dangerous neighborhood, one full of bullies, pirates, and fanatics who respond to gestures of good will with contempt, larceny, and brutality.

As Mona Charen says on The Corner: "Clip that paragraph and keep it in your wallet as a reminder during the challenging times ahead. "

A Balanced View Of Evangelicals In Politics

2008-01-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

The hysteria amazes me.

In the current political book market, it is more popular (because it is better-selling) to write polemics which "preach to the already converted" than to write books intended to convince those who are as yet unconvinced. So, to borrow a relatively fair-and-balanced pair (in that the excesses of one are matched by the excesses of the other), Al Franken's Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right and Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot, and Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism and Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism are big sellers, whereas Cal Thomas' Public persons and private lives: Intimate interviews and John Dickerson's On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star, or pieces with topical or historical interest such as Eric Burns' Infamous Scribblers or Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong remain comparatively unobserved, or less so.

So it is perhaps understandable that those outside the culture of Christians in the U.S., looking in through the window to examine the habits of its occupants, would not wish to write books with dull or merely topic-announcing titles. After all, one must sell a copy or two.

But what rubbish has emerged in the last several years!

Ross Douthat helpfully lists some of the offending manuscripts in First Things, in a piece titled, Theocracy, Theocracy, Theocracy. His list includes American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion,Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us by James Rudin, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, and Thy Kingdom Come: How The Religious Right Distorts the Faithand Threatens America: An Evangelical’s Lament by Randall Balmer.

The titles are the giveaway, especially Kevin Phillips'. These are not intended to be books which an Evangelical Christian could read and, in it, recognize himself and his co-religionists. These are intended to be read by non-Christians with little other contact with or reference to Christianity as practiced in the U.S., preferably all negative, who are in the bookstore actively searching for a diatribe to thrillingly confirm their existing dark suspicions about Christians. For only such an audience will be convinced by the hyperventilating text contained therein; other readers will either know better from experience, or find the authors' conclusions suspect on the basis of common sense.

Ultimately, the works listed above trace minor intellectual movements within Christianity, few of which are concerned with politics or weild any sort of clout in Christian circles, interpret phrases used by their adherents in the darkest possible way, match them to similar phrases used by conservative-leaning politicians, and make the following conclusions:

(1.) Evangelical Christians are harbor totalitarian tendencies; and,

(2.) Evangelical Christians, if they gain enough political power, will express those totalitarian tendencies by transforming American society and government into Margaret Atwood’s dystopic “Republic of Gilead” from The Handmaid’s Tale. According to James Rudin, as quoted by Ross Douthat...,

“All government employees—federal, state and local—would be required to participate in weekly Bible classes in the workplace, as well as compulsory daily prayer sessions,” as would employees of any company or institution receiving federal funds. There would be a national ID card, identifying everyone by their religious beliefs, or lack thereof—and “such cards would provide Christocrats with preferential treatment in many areas of life, including home ownership, student loans, employment and education.” Non-Christian faiths would be tolerated, “but younger members . . .would be strongly encouraged to formally convert to the dominant evangelical Christianity.” Gay sex would be prosecuted, and “known homosexuals and lesbians would have to successfully undergo government-sponsored reeducation sessions if they applied for any public-sector jobs.” Political dissent would be squashed, religious censors would keep watch over the popular culture, and “the mainstream press and the electronic media would be beaten into submission.”

As if.

The reality is that the closest thing to theocracy remotely likely in future of U.S. politics -- say, what would happen if the number of combined Evangelical Christians and Traditionalist Catholics were to double as a proportion of the population, and the secularists to be reduced to half their current numbers -- is rather more benign, if still not comfortable to those who disagree politically.

Let's assume that every conservative gets his wish list, now. What would America look like? Well, a lot like the 1950's, one supposes. Was that a theocracy? (The Taliban in Afghanistan is an instructive comparison. If anyone can recall an instance in the 1950's when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the appropriate punishment for two men having homosexual relations was to have a stone wall dropped on them, crushing them to death, please drop me an e-mail or comment with the citation.)

No. First, keep in mind that the wish-lists of conservatives often contradict one another. Oops; a uniform crushing of political dissent is difficult when there's dissent in one's own ranks.

But let us assume what a secularist would regard as the worst-case scenario: Let us assume that, whenever conservatives' agenda-items conflict with one another, it's the least-secular, the least-libertarian, the "most hardcore" item that wins. Under those circumstances, what would we get?

Openly gay couples could not adopt children
Homosexual relationships would have no legal recognition
All abortions would be illegal, and so would most medical research with fetal tissue
Ceremonial events in public schools would often start or end with prayers of a Christian, though denominationally non-specific, nature
Pornography would be heavily restricted, and the definitions of profanity and pornography expanded, and the fines for producing/distributing/broadcasting them in ways that made them accessible to minors would become more severe.
Government would promote marital stability in economically meaningful ways
Charitable organizations with religious history or charters would not have to abandon or violate their beliefs in order to receive government funds commensurate with those received by non-religious charitable organizations
Theoretical sex-ed in schools would be more or less unchanged, but practical sex-ed would become abstinence-only

And that, basically, would be that.

And remember, that's the list which would result if, in all internal squabbles in the Evangelical Community, the "most hardcore" faction always won. What is more likely is that secular elements in the U.S. would find common ground with the more secular-leaning elements among the Evangelical Christian community. It is not inconceivable that the "most hardcore" factions would nearly always lose. So what would that look like?

Openly gay couples would be "back of the line" with regard to adopting children
Homosexual relationships would have no legal recognition, but gay individuals could of course use normal contract law to specify survivorship rights, power of attorney, et cetera
Many late-term abortions would be illegal, and early-term abortions performed on a minor would require parental consent except in instances where doing so would threatent the child, and medical research with fetal tissue would be heavily restricted
Ceremonial events in public schools would often start or end with prayers of a generically Judeo-Christian nature
Pornography would be more restricted than it is today, and the fines for producing/distributing/broadcasting profane or pornographic materials in ways that made them accessible to minors would be increased.
Government would promote marital stability and child-rearing in sufficiently economically meaningful ways to eliminate any perceived "marriage penalty"
Charitable organizations with religious history or charters would not have to abandon or violate their beliefs in order to receive government funds commensurate with those received by non-religious charitable organizations
Theoretical sex-ed in schools would be more or less unchanged, but practical sex-ed would become more abstinence-oriented than it is today

Is that the theocracy which causes such panic among the secular left?

What's Your Problem (How To Conduct Political Discourse)

2008-01-18T15:44:00.000-05:00

A Plug (Not Shameless, Because It Isn't For Me)

The ongoing series titled "What's Your Problem" by Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg is must-watch material for all political observers.

http://www.nationalreview.com/video/archives/

Simply put, all political discourse should be so civil.