I Write An Email To An Academic Hack (UPDATE)

A Facebook friend had linked to this Huffington Post piece and, since the link was provided, I checked out the survey report that was the source for the article. I was surprised, and somewhat dismayed, to discover the survey in question said none of the things the author, Phil Zuckerman, claimed it said. Furthermore, the description of various Christian believers, the thumbnail sketch of the history of conflict between more traditional, conservative Christians, and their various liberal opponents, was caricatured to the point of unrecognizability, with some pretty glaring errors of historical fact tossed in just to make it interesting.

Indiscretion being the better part of valor, I decided to send this doofus, who teaches sociology at someplace called Pitzer College, an email. Ahem:

Dear Sir,

I was led to your Huffington Post article, "Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus", and was amazed and saddened to discover, after reading the linked article from the Pew Research Center, that your description of the survey results, the provocative headline, and even some of the alleged history related in the article are quite wrong, misleading, and play upon stereotypes rather than fact. When reading the Pew Center article discussion its research on the Tea Party and religion, a couple points jumped out at me. First, it states unequivocally that "[t]he analysis shows that most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party. But support for the Tea Party is not synonymous with support for the religious right." To support this assertion, the authors write the following in reference to the results of the survey: "An August 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that nearly half of Tea Party supporters (46%) had not heard of or did not have an opinion about “the conservative Christian movement sometimes known as the religious right”; 42% said they agree with the conservative Christian movement and roughly one-in-ten (11%) said they disagree.3 More generally, the August poll found greater familiarity with and support for the Tea Party movement (86% of registered voters had heard at least a little about it at the time and 27% expressed agreement with it) than for the conservative Christian movement (64% had heard of it and 16% expressed support for it)."

Your description of Jesus teaching "socialism" is the kind of lazy, thoughtless nonsense one would expect from someone who doesn't carefully study the subject in question, rather than a professor at a university.

Finally, the historical survey regarding the relationship between conservative evangelicals (did you know there are liberal evangelicals?) and various liberal mainline Christian churches, after jumping forward to the post-WWII era, makes the glaring mistake of moving "the Social Gospel" a generation forward, long after it had petered out as a source of inspiration. Furthermore, the criticism that anti-communism joined up with (non-existent) criticism of (non-existent) Social Gospelers in the 1950's misses a huge factual point; the most important American Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, was influenced strongly by the Social Gospel movement, although he took several steps to one side during the early part of his career. After the Second World War he, along with Arthur Schlesinger created Americans for Democratic Action, a left-leaning but also anti-communist organization of intellectuals and activists. Niebuhr spent much of the time after WWII actively criticizing some European theologian, most prominently Karl Barth, for their softness toward communism. To claim that it was only conservative evangelicals who were anti-communist is negated by actual historical fact.

The entire piece was so typical of someone who doesn't understand the complexity of American religious life (fundamentalists are not always evangelicals; evangelicals certainly are not all fundamentalists), the actual history of the various movements involved, and doesn't even take the time to read through the details of a survey before writing about it. Such is the state of American intellectual life today that this kind of thing is acceptable.

Thank you for your time,

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford

One can be critical of conservative evangelicals. One can be critical of all sorts of things. The thing I really dislike is when people who are supposed to be educated present information to people that is so wrong it wouldn't pass muster in an undergraduate research class.

UPDATE: So I was checking out some other stuff Phil Zuckerman has written that are available on-line. This piece in particular struck me as interesting, not least because the interpretation of the data showing a rise in non-belief across the board, including in the United States which had been impervious to the secularization of western Europe, is interesting. All the same, I came across the following paragraph that leaped out at me with blinking red-and-white neon screaming "BULLSHIT!!":

Every single 1st world nation that is irreligious shares a set of distinctive attributes. These include handgun control, anti-corporal punishment and anti-bullying policies, rehabilitative rather than punitive incarceration, intensive sex education that emphasizes condom use, reduced socio-economic disparity via tax and welfare systems combined with comprehensive health care, increased leisure time that can be dedicated to family needs and stress reduction, and so forth.

These same countries also share a certain historical background - official religions that support the ruling status quo that was, until the early- to mid-20th century, hostile to the needs of large parts of the population. Religious support for the fascist tyrannies across central Europe certainly didn't help. Already by the end of the First World War there was a strong popular reaction against established religious beliefs in various European countries, for the quite sound reason that they supported the slaughter across the continent.

That many western European countries simultaneously display a large disbelief in traditional religious faith and exercise various social policies most folks identify as "liberal" at the very least does not represent anything other than statistical correlation; the two happen to occur at the same time in various societies. One is not related to the other beyond, perhaps, being the results of various historical forces the authors do not come close to addressing.

Real Elitism

The third and, I think, final little installment of what is, really, a kind of overview of what I do and why. Here, we address a wide-ranging topic. I know you're just breathless with anticipation.

In the summer of 2009, as the Tea Party began to coalesce around opposition to the proposed health care reform legislation, there was quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the liberal world over all those horrible folks showing up at various Town Hall events, speaking out against the bill. I, for one, supported it, and still do. I remember quite distinctly writing that more participation in the political process is always a good thing. Even if done by those with whom I disagree.

What I dislike, with all my heart, is the way far too many conservatives choose to discuss everything from budgetary concerns to the President's political philosophy. It is all well and good to oppose, say, the Affordable Care Act, even for reasons of principle. It is quite another to dub it "Obamacare" and claim the Affordable Care Act is a "government takeover of health care." It is, in fact, the exact opposite, invigorating the health insurance market by regulating certain practices that open the market up, creating a pool of customers three hundred million strong. Costs for consumers, so the theory goes, will decline, and the larger pool of potential customers present opportunities for insurance companies to rake in some serious money. Now, as I say, one can oppose these matters on principle. What one cannot, or at least should not, do is argue from the premise that the Affordable Care Act eliminates private insurance, dictates and limits treatments, and stifles innovation. None of these last three are addressed in any way by the act, and even those opponents who dislike the ACA have never argued it.

Yet, that is the way the entire issue is framed. Zombies are easier to kill than this bunch of lies; at least those you can shoot in the head. No matter how often they are shown to be wrong, counterfactual, nonsense, BS, and hokum, they keep appearing.

Why is that? The answer is as close as the TV remote.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been keeping track of a trend among friends around my age (late thirties to mid-forties). Eight of us (so far) share something in common besides our conservatism: a deep frustration over how our parents have become impossible to take on the subject of politics. Without fail, it turns out that our folks have all been sitting at home watching Fox News Channel all day – especially Glenn Beck’s program.

--snip--

I flew out for a visit, and observed that their television was on all day long, even if no one was watching it. What channel was playing? Fox. Spending a few days in the company of the channel – especially Glenn Beck — it all became clear to me. If Fox was the window through which I saw the wider world, for hours every day, I’d be perpetually pissed off too.

--snip--

Unbridled anger at the deserving enemies is a danger to the civil order, and ultimately to ourselves. Remember Thomas More’s warning to the hotheaded William Roper in A Man For All Seasons, when Roper accused More of going easy on a scoundrel who hadn’t (yet) broken the law. Roper charged More with wanting to give the Devil the benefit of the law.

“This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s!” More responded. “And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”

More adds that he would give the Devil the benefit of the law “for my own safety’s sake.” There’s a profound conservative truth in this, a warning that even passion for righteousness can be turned to evil, precisely because it is passion.

The popularity of vigorous rage merchants like Beck and Olbermann are not a sign of our political culture’s vitality, but rather its decadence. We live in a time and place that puts high value on emotion, and that views emotions as self-validating. To feel something is thought by many to be sufficient evidence of its truthfulness, or at least its authenticity. This is a mark of the barbarian. I understand why post-Sixties liberals make the mistake of believing that nonsense. But conservatives?

It isn't just conservatives who find this troubling.

If they weren't so nasty most of the time I'd start to feel sorry for the Tea Party. They are getting taken for such a ride by hucksters, snake oil salesmen and billionaire puppeteers that it's getting sort of pathetic.

--snip--

I'm sure there are plenty of sincere Tea Partiers out there who are getting fleeced all the time by these types. And while it's tempting to say they deserve it, it still isn't right. They are just trying to exercise their democratic right to organize and they are being manipulated and conned by a bunch of billionaire media moguls and small time hustlers. I guess that's part of the bargain too, but it's distasteful to see it happening anyway.

Were this solely the work of ideological opponents, I suppose I could be accused of the very thing I am complaining about. I am unhappy to say it isn't only conservatives who get taken for a ride by extremely rich folks who sell bullshit on TV.

Rachel Maddow made some flat-out mistakes in her first report on Wisconsin—as people often do.

--snip--

On February 18, Politifact began to fact-check Maddow’s confusing report. In the process, they spoke to Lang himself; they concluded that Maddow, like several others, had gotten this matter wrong.

--snip--

Please note: The fact that Maddow seems to have made this mistake isn’t a hanging offense. Nichols made the error first, and several others followed. But other people corrected themselves, and Maddow simply didn’t. Politifact challenged her report on February 18—and all was silent for almost a week. But all hell broke loose last Thursday night, with Maddow saying that she had been “slandered” when Politifact called her a “liar.”

Politifact didn’t call Maddow a liar, of course; it simply said she had made some mistakes. But Rachel Maddow is rarely wrong— if you let Rachel Maddow tell it. Last Thursday, she issued a blistering, 12-minute rant in which she hotly denied all error. Her rant was grossly unfair, and highly deceptive . . .

The closest I come to using an American news source is listening to NPR in my car to and from work. Now, some would consider that the epitome of limousine liberalism; while the news readers tend to stick to bare facts when reciting headlines, and the occasional complex story gets far more full treatment than it might otherwise receive even on a cable network that has 24 hours to fill, when it comes to politics, even NPR succumbs to the notion that facts are irrelevant trivialities when conflict arises.

For example, as events in Madison, WI heated up, there has been little to no reporting on whether or not Gov. Walker's insistence on stripping collective bargaining rights from municipal employees will actually create a healthier fiscal climate for the state. Even as he revealed his budget the other day, insisting it closed, over two years, a widening budget gap, he said it was contingent on busting the state workers' union. It seems to me this is an easy enough question to answer - will ending collective bargaining give, in Walker's words, "needed flexibility"? There certainly has been no effort of which I am aware, to answer this question, by NPR or anyone else. Instead this, like all great political discussions, is presented as a simple, two-sided, he-said/she-said affair, where any factual information is far less important, far less interesting, than repeating the talking points of each side with the meaningless "some say" qualifier. Whenever you hear a news reader use those two words, you are listening to a weasel.

In all this, we are experiencing the undermining of our ability to govern ourselves as elite news outlets shun factual content for the far more interesting fight between two sides. Now, I can grant that it is quite possible Gov. Walker, the folks in the Wisconsin State Senate who wrote the bill, and those around the state and country who support it, do so in the sincere belief it is necessary. They might also be motivated by an honestly felt distrust of organized labor in general, and municipal unions in particular. There is nothing wrong with any of this. Stopping there, however, is not giving people the information necessary to understand the stakes involved. The question at the heart of conflict should be addressed.

This isn't done because for too long any attempt to figure out what actually lies at the heart of so many of our political debates is attacked by conservative elites - beginning decades ago with Vice President Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism" speech (thank you, William Safire) - as nothing more than "liberal bias". No matter how often it is demonstrated that such a creature doesn't exist, it, like the mega-zombie lies about the ACA, continues to exist. It is the cockroach of our social life, a bit of social vermin that cannot be destroyed, and may well survive a nuclear war.

I have said it before and I will say it again. I do not care if you oppose Pres. Obama, the policies of the Democratic Party, or anything else. I am glad the rank and file Tea Party supporters are out there, concerned about important matters facing all of us, engaging in discussions on matters of fiscal policy and all the rest. I long ago gave up slandering these folks because, at heart, being a small-"d" democrat, I always prefer more participation to less, more activism to less, more opportunities for all sorts of folks to engage in the hard work of running this huge, wonderful country.

If, however, anyone uses false information to support their position, don't believe for one moment you are above being corrected. If a person receives their information from questionable sources, whether that is FOXNews or AM talk radio hosts or right-wing websites like Renew America, Little Green Footballs, or American Thinker, please know the target of my ire is not you for holding the beliefs you do, but the sources that are taking you for a ride. There are plenty of serious, thoughtful conservative sources of information. The Frum Forum, to which I linked, is one. While National Review Online is a truly pathetic place, the print version is, by and large, still quite good. There's even that mainstay of responsible Establishment conservatism, to which I subscribed for years, U.S. News and World Reports.

It is important for all of us to weigh the sources of our information. Check out anything and everything we read against any available facts. With Google, that is easy enough for the average person. Just because a report chimes with our worldview doesn't make it either true or real. We need to keep checking, getting the information from as many sources as possible. That way, we aren't taken for a ride by those who have agendas that might well not suit us. This is the way I conduct my affairs. It keeps me honest; when I am factually wrong, I admit it. I hate being so, but being human, it is bound to happen no matter how thorough and conscientious I am.

On the other hand, when I call some folks on the carpet about their repeated claim the Pres. Obama is a socialist, I am told that no matter how much I point out that actual socialists aren't too enamored of the guy's policies; that there is nothing in his public life to indicate he is anything more than a moderately liberal (at best) Democratic politician; that the claims concerning his alleged socialism are rooted in falsely reported facts and incorrect understandings of the terms involved; no matter how often this happens, I am told I am the one who is wrong. At this point, it is pretty clear those who do this aren't interested in facts, are not swayed by the way the world is, that words have no meaning. Really, that last is the greatest danger we all face.

When words cease to have any social meaning; when facts become malleable, because the words we use to talk about them are empty of any content, rest assured, we are in serious trouble.

Our contemptuous, elitist overlords - Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch; the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey; Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann - want us to stay tuned without actually thinking about what we are told. They make money, acquire power, and rob us of our critical faculties. Our democracy is the poorer for it. These are the folks we should worry about. Not the ridiculous idea that Barack Obama is a foreign-born, closet Muslim-jihadist-socialist. Rather, that this idea isn't given to you, but sold to you by folks who are laughing all the way to the bank with your money.

It Don't Mean A Thing If It Aint' Got That Swing

Before I gave up my membership, The Musical Heritage Society provided the opportunity to purchase a complete edition of Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. A triumph for Goodman, for swing, for race relations in music (it was one of the first opportunities, and at a large, important venue, for black and white musicians to play together), and for the historical detective work necessary to track down lost songs, to put Goodman's recollections included on the recording in context. Even if you aren't a particular fan of jazz, or swing, it is a marvelous recording, although the CD separates out the applause and band changes as separate tracks, which makes the set interesting to listen to on iTunes, as there are little thirty- and forty-five-second bits that are titled "Applause".

Along with a live recording of the Dave Brubeck quartet at that same venue, as well as by the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra around the same time, also at Carnegie Hall, I have a nice little set of live jazz at Carnegie Hall that shows this staid institution opening itself to the liveliness of American's signature musical art form. My father, who studied at Carnegie Hall, told me the original auditorium was an acoustic masterpiece; one could stand in center stage and speak and be heard with clarity way up in the cheap seats in the balcony; since microphones didn't exist, this was necessary, but one can get a feeling for the acoustics of this marvelous theater on the Goodman recordings, in particular those previously considered lost but discovered on weathered acetates that have been digitally reconstructed. The Goodman show, in particular, shows the old Carnegie at its best, American swing at the beginning of its national popularity as a powerful musical force, and offers a glimpse of a long-lost moment in our cultural history that should be treasured by all Americans.

Plus, it makes you want to get up and dance.

OK, enough reminiscing about my awesome music library. I'm pushing the button . . .

Lady Evil - Black Sabbath
Baby, Baby Don't Cry - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Lamplight Symphony - Kansas
Kiss of Death - Vanden Plas
Pope - Prince
S'il Vous Plait (Live) - Miles Davis, Complete Birth of the Cool
Filipino Box Spring Hog - Tom Waits
Remember Me Lover - Porcupine Tree
Map of the World - Marillion
Times of Trouble - Temple of the Dog

This one just missed the cut. One of those 1970's, country-rock one-hit wonders that deserves to be a hit.

Our Ridiculous Intellectuals

This is the second in a series of posts that clarify, for the moment, what I do and why. I realize this is exciting for all of you.

I have to admit that I was quite disturbed by the positive press the movie The Social Network received. While it may well have been excellent film-making, its story, purporting to chronicle the rise of Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, it is rooted in some fundamental untruths regarding our favorite whipping boy. In the movie, Zuckerberg is portrayed as a sexually and socially frustrated young man, incapable of serious, long term attachments, who creates Facebook as a way for fellow losers to share information on hot women. The problem, of course, is that while FB was, indeed, designed for this purpose, at least in a limited way, Zuckerberg himself has been in a healthy, steady, long-term relationship with the same young woman since early in his years at Harvard. The entire premise of the film is rooted not only in a lie, but a far more general perception of people interested in computers and social networks as somehow socially and psychologically malformed. Were I Zukerberg, who was reportedly worried over the impact the film's release would have on the public's perception of him, I would have laughed all the way through.

I read or heard a review of the film when it was released that cast the writer and directors as, in essence, changing some very basic facts concerning Mark Zuckerberg because they are uncomfortable with the reality that he is, by and large, a well adjusted, intelligent, thoughtful young man who also happens to be an extremely wealthy, powerful media presence. In other words, they envy Zuckerberg's success, and figure the best way to bring him down a peg or two is to make him out to be some kind of socially awkward nerd who can't get laid, alienates all those without whom he never could have created Facebook in the first place, and winds up, rich and powerful, yet alone, sending a friend request to the (non-existent) young woman who dumped him years before.

The landscape of our social life is changing rapidly. Over the past five years we have gone from the largely adolescent-dominated MySpace to the far more adult-friendly Facebook and Twitter. Trying to understand these phenomena is difficult enough, considering they are a constantly shifting platform. For those whose interest in them runs more toward their use as a medium of communication and the relationship between social networking and the creation of actual social groups, movements, and other real, as opposed to virtual, social networks, it is difficult to escape the influence of social network skeptic Malcom Gladwell. An article he published last October in The New Yorker has been subject to serious criticism, yet it seems no one can write intelligently about the reality of social networks without moving through Gladwell's article.

The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece. The next biggest Darfur charity on Facebook has 22,073 members, who have donated an average of thirty-five cents. Help Save Darfur has 2,797 members, who have given, on average, fifteen cents. A spokesperson for the Save Darfur Coalition told Newsweek, “We wouldn’t necessarily gauge someone’s value to the advocacy movement based on what they’ve given. This is a powerful mechanism to engage this critical population. They inform their community, attend events, volunteer. It’s not something you can measure by looking at a ledger.” In other words, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro.

These two snippets from a very long article should be evidence enough that Gladwell's piece is garbage. Yet, it is too often treated with utmost seriousness.

There was a stage set for Remnick and Gladwell. … When they came out, Remnick immediately brought up the Gladwell’s social media article from a few weeks ago, where Gladwell wrote that social media only created weak ties and wasn’t sufficient to push a people to form a social movement. He took a lot of heat in the past few weeks, since social media may have played some role in the uprisings in Egypt. Gladwell was pretty hostile to his critics. He scoffed that his critic was some blogger from Huffington Post. Why should we listen to some pajama-wearing blogger, he asked? Some pajama-wearing blogger who lives in Brooklyn, he added for extra laughs.

Well, I’m not sure why we should listen to a journalist who doesn’t like to travel north of 14h Street. Look, it was a very entertaining evening. Those guys were funny and witty and shared lots of amusing stories. But they didn’t know anything about revolutions or social media or Egypt. That’s okay. Journalists don’t have know be experts in their field. But they have to acknowledge that they aren’t experts and they really have an obligation to talk to people who spend their lives studying those subjects. … Why should anyone care what Malcolm Gladwell thinks about Egypt and Facebook, when there are people who have travelled to the Mid East, are fluent in Arabic, and spend most of their waking hours learning about this subject.

I should note that the Crooked Timber piece is a meta-critique of the whole notion that Gladwell's piece has any serious merit, and the "debate" in question having any merit as an intellectual exercise.

There are serious inquiries in to the place and role of social media, in particular in light of their important role in the on-going revolutions in the Muslim world. For example, Scott McLemee, writing at Inside Higher Education, notes the following criticism of another social media skeptic, Evgeny Morozov:

Cory Doctorow, the novelist and a co-editor of the website Boingboing, has published an extensive critique of The Net Delusion -- arguing that its broadsides against net activism are misdirected. “Where Morozov describes people who see the internet as a ‘deterministic one-directional force for either global liberation or oppression,’ or ‘refusing to acknowledge that the web can either strengthen rather than undermine authoritarian regimes,’ I see only straw-men, cartoons drawn from CNN headlines, talking head sound bites from the US administrative branch, and quips from press conferences.”

Far more balanced and nuanced that Gladwell's dismissal of pajama-wearing bloggers, McLemee's piece notes that social media had and will continue to have a role in the revolutions in the Middle East, while skeptical of all the claims that they are, indeed, "Twitter (or Facebook) Revolutions." A healthy skepticism of any such claims is always a good thing.

These examples of the back-and-forth concerning the place of social media, how we perceive its architects and users, is an example of what I take to be the very real vapidity of our intellectual life. As the critic cited at Crooked Timber notes, Gladwell is a journalist, and not one particularly knowledgeable about the subject matter in question. Treating his take as a matter of intellectual seriousness is a symptom of a far deeper malaise - the paucity of our intellectual life at our current historical moment. Scott McLemee's piece is a rare bird, indeed; that it has received far less attention and discussion is another symptom of that same decay of our collective critical faculties.

Another example, again, drawn from the same general milieu of discussions in re social networking sites, is this piece from Rob Horning at The New Inquiry.

Facebook makes a market in friendly discourse and skews it so that it, as broker, always comes out ahead. But in other ways, the friend market functions like most others: it depersonalizes exchange and reduces transaction costs, thereby increasing the number of exchanges that occur. Accordingly, the volume of friend communication we consume thanks to Facebook has increased exponentially. But we have next to no ethical obligation with regard to any of it — that’s understood by all parties entering into Facebook’s market. We are obliged only to be rational maximizers, like we are in ordinary markets.

But what has radically changed is the nature of friendship, which once upon a time was something intended specifically as a bulwark against depersonalization, against market logic. With Facebook, the consumerist allure of “more, faster” fuses with a closely related moral cowardice about rejecting people to drive us en masse to the platform, bring the efficiencies of commercialization right into the heart of our social lives. With friendship in play as an alienated revenue stream, we must retreat even further into our private lives to find a haven from commercialization, to preserve the disappearing self. Soon we’ll have to seek refuge in that evocation of the “blissful isolation of intra-uterine life” as Freud called it — the “total narcissism” of sleep, where our gadgets can’t reach us.

Personally, I find the kind of angst-ridden apocalyptic warnings concerning the potential social disruption brought about by the anomie-inducing algorithms of Facebook to be not only overheated and overdetermined; they are the result of a certain kind of social status, a privileged position in which one has the time and means to worry about such things, rather than consider the very real possibility that, far less than the automatons goosestepping to our social-network overlord's every whim, users of social media might actually be aware of the pitfalls and limitations of the media they are using, understanding the contacts and communication of Facebook for what they are.

At our current historical moment, we no longer have the intellectual tools necessary for understanding the multi-variant phenomena that are impacting our lives. Our universities, homes to our official intellectuals, are really no more than farms where pens hold sociologists and philosophers and physicists and mathematicians who not only do not communicate with one another; they do not communicate to the general public, except in rare instances that usually lead to misunderstanding and more heat than light. The time-honored idea that understanding needs to be done across a variety of disciplines - the roots of liberal arts education - is honored in the names of various colleges, but usually in practice is dismissed as dilettantism of the worst sort.

At heart, we are in need of people who can grasp, in rudimentary outline, a variety of perspectives, and integrate these perspectives in to a far larger picture of our social and political life. Anything less isn't so much understanding as it is the marginalization of real understanding.

The enemy of this kind of real intellectual life is the expert, either self-professed, or generally declared. While there are kinds of expertise that earn the name, they are usually limited to crafts and skills, such as woodworking and welding. A philosopher who spends time and energy researching, say, the nature of scientific discourse is not "an expert", but rather a specialist. Familiar with a particular vocabulary that is limited to the very narrow field under study, any attempt to link this particular vocabulary to our general way of speaking would not only be nearly impossible; the attempt would be understood as watering down the specificity of the vocabulary in question. The worst epithet any academic can have tossed at his or her work is "popularizer".

This paucity of serious intellectual engagement, leaving the field open to pseudo-intellectuals like Gladwell (and marginalizing far better and more serious intellectual engagement like that done by Scott McLemee and others he covers in the linked article) is a central concern of mine. For a generation, our universities, lampooned by ignoramuses on the right as the home of tenured radicals, are in reality farms where the various pens are not just locked but walled shut. Real intellectual life centers on figuring out together the multi-leveled implications of everything from tax policy to social media to the new physics recently much discussed. The lack is serious intellectual heft in our common life is demonstrated most clearly by the success of climate skeptics. While the silliness of the ruminations on social media are less important intellectually, as an example of the defects of our intellectual life, it is the most visible.

We are not in need of experts or specialists. We need to return to an understanding of an intellectual as someone engaged across a multitude of disciplines, attempting to integrate an understanding of our world as it unfolds that treats the public as serious, intelligent, and thoughtful. This blog is my small contribution to this effort.

Just A Guy

This is the first of a multi-part series in which I state my ever-evolving position on what I do, why I do it the way I do, and the merits or lack thereof in the endeavor.

The family was sitting around allowing our collective brain cells to die the other night, watching IndependenceDay. I don't mind watching brain candy like this, although having lived through an era where our elected officials have acted as if the violence others have visited upon us is as mindless as that of the aliens in that movie, I found myself enjoying it far less than I used to. There are far too many Americans who would enthusiastically support the words of the fake President, "Let's nuke the bastards," for me to consider any such invocation "entertaining". During the scene where that "nuking" takes place, I expressed umbrage at the way our military technology was presented. Nuclear-armed cruise missiles are depicted being launched from Stealth bombers, while a military observation vehicle sits close by to check and see if the target - a flying saucer hovering over the remnants of Houston, TX - is destroyed. The film portrays the planes being quite close, the missiles fired at almost point blank range. The vehicle, sitting on an empty stretch of Texas highway is buffeted by the blast wave, as debris flies past, but is otherwise undamaged.

The missiles in question could have been fired quite safely from as far away as either coast. Even had they been fired from, say, the Chicago area or even as close as St. Louis, their travel time would have been minutes only. Firing a nuclear missile from the range depicted would have eliminated the plane quite handily. The observation vehicle may have survived the blast wave traveling faster than the speed of sound; the heat, however, would have, at the very least, cooked those inside.

Don't even get me started on the aerial "dogfights" between the F-16s and the little alien spacecraft.

My older daughter looked at me and asked me, "How do you know all that stuff?" The answer was quite simple. I read about it. It isn't secret. It isn't some weird arcane knowledge available to specialists. Any reasonably intelligent human being who can muddle through some technical jargon can come away with a general grasp of military technology. It just isn't all that hard to figure this stuff out.

A couple weeks back, my wife was expressing her dismay that I seemed to have a grasp of current events that surpassed hers. I told her that was because I was interested in what was going on in the world, and tried to keep up the best I could given limited time and resources. She demurred, insisting I had a greater intellectual grasp of these events than the average person. To which I responded with embarrassed thanks, insisting, however, that I was really no different than the average American confronted by the huge amount of information on all sorts of things that happen each and every day. I am just trying to figure this stuff out, as best as I can. I have said it many times before, and will say it many times again, but I really doubt most of my reflections have any real merit beyond my own sense of gathering my ideas at any particular moment in time.

A friend of Winston Churchill once remarked with wry amusement that the Great Man was really one of simple tastes. He far preferred the best things in life. I have long identified with that description and sentiment. Now, about Churchill, it referred to his preference for vacations in the south of France, for expensive wine and other drink; for fine foods; for great conversation partners who would enlighten him on various topics (as well as sit through a Churchillian monologue without fidgeting too much).

I take the same approach to how I go about figuring out the world, what's going on, and what I actually think is happening at any given moment. Why read The Weekly World News, or even The Washington Post, when there are abundant resources out there that are far more intelligent, far more clear? For example, when it was clear that events in Egypt were quickly moving toward the kind of political and social ultimatum that could end either in tragedy or triumph, I turned first to Twitter for various sources of information; reading a retweet by Reuters from Al Jazeera English, I made the quick decision, on my own, to do what thousands of Americans did in the ensuing weeks. I started streaming Al Jazeera English reports, reading commentary, sidebars, analysis. Knowing that I did not know much of anything concerning the situation; knowing that American sources like CNN, the Times, and the Post were probably as well-informed as I was, I decided that, being there in the midst of that part of the world, with reporters on the ground who knew the language and the politics, AJE would be a far more reliable source of information. I was rewarded by watching the Egyptian revolution unfold in real time, including that moment when former Pres. Mubarak's resignation was announced, sitting and listening as the roar of the masses in Tahrir Square rose.

Now, I never pretended that sitting and watching these events unfold, learning all I could about the particulars of Egypt's history and politics, meant even vicarious participation. My sympathies were always with the people, as they continue to be in regards to on-going protests in Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain, emerging protests in Oman, and the civil war in Libya. Sympathy, however, is not identification. I continue to maintain that I am just observing and learning; I get information from tweeters on the ground in Yemen and Algeria, and from a Libyan ex-pat living in Manchester in the UK who has sources on the ground.

The same is true for the rest of my life. Being a Christian and an American, I'm trying to figure out how to be those things with a certain amount of integrity from people who are far more intelligent, insightful, knowledgeable, and capable of far better expression that I ever will be. Why settle for just anyone when there are the best resources out there, people who are really engaged with living these same questions I have, and at the very least express the questions more clearly than I ever have or will.

As the title of this post suggests, I do not nor have I ever considered myself either special or insightful. As I told my wife a week or so ago, I'm just some guy trying to figure it out as I go, with the single advantage of being able to discern who is a far better resource for help in figuring it out than a whole lot of other folks. At the very least, that makes the search for understanding a lot less cluttered with fluff and nonsense. Life is far too short to waste one's time listening to ninnies.

Governor Weaker

After repeated threats to "clear" the state capitol building in Madison, the chief of police refused to do so. As in all power struggles, there are decisive moments, events that have deeper meaning beyond the immediate impact. For all his bluster and refusal to budge, the chief of police has showed that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker might not have what it takes to win what has become a far more protracted and important conflict over the right of state workers to organize.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan called the bluff of the air traffic controllers, and fired them, lock, stock, and barrel. Regardless of one's feelings about that act, one thing is sure; organized labor understood that Reagan meant business. With a President willing to fire an entire group of federal employees, labor's struggles with management across the country became that much more difficult. The federal government would not be (at best) a neutral arbitrator, a resource to which parties could turn in order to negotiate differences. Businesses wishing to eliminate the threat of organization through mass firings now had a friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, and they knew it.

Gov. Walker, on the other hand, is finding it more difficult to find friends. He may have the Koch brothers, but at this point, they are toxic. Republican governors are running from any association with Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from state employees. The protesters in Madison have stayed despite bad weather, threats of arrest, and bad mouthing from some in the press. They reach out and thank the police, knowing that as organized workers doing a tough job in bad conditions, they stand to win or lose much depending on the outcome of the legislative process and street protests. The police trip over themselves praising the good-natured, well-behaved, and even politeness of the protesters. The police, right up to the chief of the Capitol police in Madison, know who has their backs, and it isn't the Governor or the Republicans in control of the state Senate.

This isn't over, by any means. All the same, despite winning pretty handily - 54% of the vote is substantial in most places - the last dregs of goodwill and political capital Gov. Walker had when he entered office is dripping on to the snows of Madison. Even should the measure pass, Walker will face a hostile press, a hostile state workforce not necessarily willing to implement other laws that pass with his support. He has been exposed, as of this morning, as a paper tiger, so the advantage, and momentum, is clearly with those who oppose the attempt to strangle Wisconsin's public employee's unions. For all intents and purposes, barely two months gone, Gov. Walker's effectiveness as governor is over. The longer this continues, and the more he displays a lack of any ability to control events, the weaker he will become (which, I should add, gives the protesters all the more reason to drag this out).

Were I Scott Walker this Monday morning, I'd be on the phone to the real Koch brothers, wondering if there were any positions open.

To Whom Do You Listen?

I have been working on this post all morning, took a break to go to church and heard a message from this lady pastor I know that convinced me even more that this was something I need to say. So, thanks, Lisa, for encouraging me with your word today.

America's eyes are turned right now just north of where I'm sitting. Recently elected Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party favorite, has decided the best way to balance that state's finances isn't accepting concessions from state workers. Rather, the best way to straighten out that state's fiscal mess is to break the public employees unions. The unions had already accepted the concessions that were initially asked for; after all, they know the state of Wisconsin's finances. Walker, however, refuses to budge on the nonsequitur of destroying union representation for public employees.

This is perhaps the most important moment for American labor in over a generation. Since Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981, the war against organized labor has been on multiple fronts, with unions always seeming to come out the loser.. Current union representation in the private workforce is around 8%. Most workers, particularly in the low-wage service sector, work under the threat of losing their jobs for even mentioning the possibility of organizing their workplaces. New employees are fed tales of union perfidy. Most everyone I know can tell a story, whether they have actually experienced it or not, of union employees doing no actual work, yet getting paid huge wages. These stories, along with the double-edged sword of stories of evil-bad unions taking worker's hard-earned money and the threat of termination for even saying the word "union" have kept much of the biggest fresh-field of labor organization clear of unions.

A week ago, I was still troubled by the thought of expressing any opinion on the events in Wisconsin. My experience in Virginia of outsiders interfering in state matters gave me an allergy to any kind of interference in matters that are confined to particular states. I am convicted and convinced, however, that remaining silent is no longer an option. For far too long we have listened to the voices of those who say that organized labor is the enemy of prosperity. For far too long, we have been fed the lie that the market, freed from the heavy hand of state regulation and the private check of workplace organization is the magic bullet for the general welfare. We have been told the state demands taxes to pay for services for the few; that unions take a piece of our wages to fatten the wallets of union staff, leaving the workers no further ahead than they have been.

These are the same voices, really. They are the voices of those who see economic and political democracy as a threat, not so much to their rights, as to their pocketbooks. Social welfare, whether guaranteed by the state, or fought and won by American workers joined together hammering out contracts with employers, are declared the enemy of prosperity. We are told by these voices that legislation for general betterment, or workplace organization for better working conditions and higher wages, are, of a piece, a threat to the magic bullet of a market freed from restraint. Prosperity comes from on high, running down to all, if only the heavy hand of the state and the antagonistic hand of organized labor would stand to one side.

What has heeding these voices brought us but social misery and the very real threat of physical and social collapse? What have these prophets of the freedom of the rich and powerful ever granted to the public out of their largess? It was public works that brought us everything from state and national parks that are the envy of the world, to local post offices and schools to our interstate highway system. It was union labor that made the steel that union labor made in to automobiles. Later in our history, it was unionized steel factories that fed the unionized auto plants that had been retooled, by organized tool and dye workers, to build the military machine that defeated fascism. It was organized labor, with its generous wages and benefits, that provided the economic demand that fed the post-war boom, providing for an explosion of general wealth and prosperity, the shift from urban to suburban living, and an increase in health and prosperity that spread across the land.

Yet, for nearly forty years now, we have been told that unions bring nothing to those they represent. We are told that the government of the greatest country in the world is the opponent of social prosperity and welfare. We are told, right now at this moment in our national life, that we must settle for less - less money, less service, less hope for the immediate future. We are told that we the workers must sacrifice so that our employers can stay in business, keep making profits.

Again, I ask, what have we gained by listening to these voices? We have a choice to make right now. Do we, as a people, continue to listen to those voices that, having already brought us to the brink of disaster, need to be heard again and that this time, they will be right? Or do we listen to those who reach deep in to our collective life and memory and remind us that we, the people, the workers, have made this country. We have made the steel and the cars and the roads and staffed the shops and stores. We have asked that our country be made better, first by connecting canals and railroads, then later national roads, then finally interstate highways. We have asked that no one work under the constant threat of arbitrary management, in unsafe conditions, for a wage that does not provide even the basic necessities of life.

So, right now, at this moment, we are being asked to choose. To whom do we listen? Do we listen to the advocates of fear, the prophets of failure? Or do we all join together and listen to our own voices demanding that ours be a land of hope, of promise, even prosperity again, a prosperity that recognizes that it is we the people who make the wealth by making the goods and providing the services that keep our country going?

To who will you listen? To those who insist it cannot be done? Or will you listen to your own voice, in chorus with so many others, who insist it will be done?

Whores, Scumbags, And Other Miscreants

My mother, God bless her, taught many valuable lessons in life. Along with learning how to mop properly as well as the necessity of porch-sweeping to a happy marriage, one of the most valuable is a simple one - don't call people names. Now, my mother took that to the extreme that she wasn't thrilled with nicknames. None of her siblings, with the exception of her oldest brother, had them; Eugene was always "Junior" because, well, he was Eugene Johnston, Jr. My father's family, on the other hand, referred to one another only by nicknames. For example, my father, whose first name is "Daniel", was until the end of his father's and brother's lives, "Boone", as in Daniel Boone. My mother always considered that slightly insulting, I think. Woe be unto anyone caught referring to a friend by anything other than their given name. Again, she didn't quite understand that the use of certain words is always context dependent. It is one thing, for example, to refer to one's best friend as "Dork", and refer to a member of a special education class in school as "Dork". Her attitude seemed to be that, if you avoided using them even in jest toward those you liked, you would be less likely to use them in all seriousness toward others you didn't even know.

Now, I would never claim I followed my own modified version of this teaching to the letter. All the same, exposure to the sheer variety of human life I have witnessed in my short span of time has driven home this most basic lesson. Whether it is an unmentionable word to be used in reference to a member of a religious or ethnic minority, a woman, or certain class-based epithets, I make an effort to steer clear of them. In particular this last, most commonly using phrases like "trailer trash" or "poor white trash" (PWT is a common acronym) I avoid for one simple reason. My generation of my family is barely one generation removed from what most would label that way. Furthermore, back during the 1990's, the treatment Paula Jones received from some of Pres. Clinton's supporters was horrible. I shall never forget one - it might even have been Paul Begala, who I never liked much anyway, even greasier than the President - who said, in reference to what was considered the baselessness of the charges, "Well, you know what happens when you drag a $20 bill through a trailer park." At that moment, I knew what was in the hearts and minds of these folks; nothing but contempt and disgust at a whole segment of the American public - the working poor - to whom the President not only offered sympathy, but for whom he and the rest of them should have been working tirelessly.

Now, I have a right-wing interlocutor who tosses around all sorts of epithets with relative ease. Phrases like "cheap whore", "scumbag", and "bastard" flow effortlessly from his fingertips. I have mentioned on several occasions that I find these terms objectionable, not least because they dehumanize those to whom they refer. At heart, really, that is my objection to the use of such extreme terms. Anyone who can compare a young woman using vulgarity to someone speaking like a cheap whore must, in that person's mind, have a class of persons who exhibit characteristics that person label's "cheap whore". Now, I'm not going to pretend there are not people of both genders who are free and loose with their sexual favors, for any number of reasons. On the other hand, calling such persons a whore strips them of their individual integrity, removes them from our center of care and concern. We no longer have to trouble ourselves with questions as to why that person may be acting that way, if their actions present a danger to themselves or others. A cheap whore is, well, just a cheap whore.

Whenever someone uses a term such as these - and there are plenty of others - to refer to a human being, they are not only, in their own mind, classifying such persons as existing within a group of persons whose existence is morally questionable. Such people are also, as I have pointed out, revealing themselves and the way they look at the world.

The world is full of all sorts of people, all individuals, with their own quirks and foibles, their own strengths and weaknesses. For me, it is far better to treat others as having all the integrity and dignity I believe I have. Labeling others, calling them names that reveal an attitude of indifference due to alleged moral turpitude, or socio-economic class, or racial, ethnic, or religious background is one of the few things I find morally reprehensible and worthy of calling out as such. To my mind there are no such things as "whores", cheap or otherwise; a bastard is an outmoded legal term that dismisses another person as of less worth because that person's parents weren't married at the time that person was born; I could continue on down the list, but I think you get the idea.

Jesus said that there are two things that fulfill the Law and Prophets - loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. When some who claim the name Christian toss around terms like this, and defend it in the name of an alleged Christian morality, it discredits the ministry of the churches to all persons. When we look out at the world, we should just see children of God, worthy of love and respect just because they exist; calling them whores and bastards in the name of God's morals makes it that much harder to reach them and convince them that they are, indeed, beloved of God.

Public Protests Here And There

Before the Mubarak regime collapsed in Egypt, David Ignatius - a Washington Post columnist who writes on foreign affairs with all the aplomb and expertise of a chimpanzee discoursing on Aristotle - appeared on Diane Rehm's radio program and allegedly quoted some of his "sources" who were complaining about the possibility that the United States might well stand with the Egyptian people against their government. Essentially, Ignatius' argument - or, rather, his alleged sources' argument - was that "a few thousand protesters" did not represent a country of 85 million people, that undermining a long-standing ally was against our national interest, etc., etc.

Fast forward to a column by another member of the WaPo's stable of typists-in-residence, George Will, and this time it isn't "a few thousand Egyptians", but a few thousand Wisconsonians who are trying to overturn an election. Except, of course, they are actually exercising their constitutional rights. The last time I checked we weren't a parliamentary system; in Britain, say, or Israel, or France, a party is elected and has the opportunity to pass certain key legislative programs at the heart of the electoral process. In the United States, while elections do indeed have consequences, the rights of the minority to protest, and even disrupt the legislative agenda of the incoming majority, is protected by the constitution. Furthermore, one wonders if the voters of Wisconsin actually elected Scott Walker to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Considering certain facts - that pay and pensions are not part of negotiations but of statute; that the unions were nevertheless willing to accept temporary accession to certain benefit cuts due to the economic situation - the only thing the governor and Republicans in charge of the state legislature seem to have to fall back on is they want to break the public employees union because they can.

It seems that the formula political figures have for dismissing protests come from the same playbook. Ben-Ali, Mubarak, King al-Khalifa, Pres. Saleh, Col. Qaddafi, and now Gov. Walker with some help from former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, all insist that those protesting not only are not representative of the public at large, but may well be (wait for it) . . . outside agitators! Bussed in union supporters and Democrats from outside Wisconsin, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, wherever. Because, see, local folks love the government, whatever it does, so discontent has to lie outside the borders and boundaries of the state or nation. It was outside agitators who were responsible for the Civil Rights marches, for the anti-Vietnam War marches, for protests against the invasion of Iraq, for Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the list is endless.

Public protests are the sign of a healthy, vigorous, engaged citizenry. They are, therefore, despised, belittled, and otherwise marginalized by those who hold power. Whether that power comes from bullets or ballot boxes, it is always a threat. For that reason alone, it should be encouraged.

A Typical Day

In general, the sight of a governor attempting to break a public employee union is enough to make me want to dope-smack someone. I can't speak to the way public-sector unions operate in Wisconsin, nor can I really speak beyond my own second-hand experience as the child of a teacher, NEA/NYEA member, and contract negotiator who has been retired from teaching for twenty-two years. By and large, however, much of the published animus seems directed at teachers unions in particular, so I thought I would set out a teacher's typical day, as our schools are currently run.

First, however, it is important to remember that, as most states require teachers to have a Master's Degree, yet usually pay far too little to repay the massive debt that comes from the way we finance higher education in this country to make ends meet, so when my typical teacher wakes up around 5:30 in the morning, he or she may well have gone to bed close to midnight because of a second job.

Anyway, after waking up and getting ready, as the coffee is being drunk and breakfast is being eaten, notes from the upcoming day's lesson plans are reviewed (my typical teacher is a literature teacher, because that is what my father taught, although I will mention other subjects as appropriate). For one class, it is the day to introduce Huckleberry Finn, but there's a memo attached concerning some parents' complaints because the book contains inappropriate language. The permission forms for the honors lit class are turned in and almost half of the parents object to the use of John Gardner's Grendel, so some other work has to be sought out, soon.

The teacher leaves home a half-hour early because he/she needs to stop at Target or Wal-Mart and pick up some school supplies because they are running low and the school just doesn't have the budget for them. Some erasers, chalk for the blackboard, book covers for some students whose nearly-20-year-old textbooks are showing the results of wear and tear. For a writing assignment in one class, he picks up a ream of printer paper so the students can print out their assignments on the single class-room printer.

After arriving at school, there is a note in the mailbox from the school nurse and counselor. The girl who seemed to be exhibiting signs of anorexia refused treatment and the parents were threatening legal action because the teacher had showed the temerity to follow the law and intervene in a situation where such intervention is demanded. The year before, a boy had admitted to being the victim of domestic violence after this teacher noticed some large bruises on his upper arms and the teacher reported it. Now, this young man was in foster care in another city, and his father had been leaving harassing phone calls on the teacher's answering machine.

Over the course of the day, the teacher sees students who are attentive and eager, stoned and dreamy, on the verge of lost in the grind of life, and overtly hostile simply because some people are that way. The teacher confiscates three cell phones from students who insist on texting during class. One girl wants to stop by after classes end for some extra help, but the teacher demurs on meeting in the classroom, because one of the teacher's colleagues recently was caught in a sex scandal with a student, so all after-school student-teacher conferences are held in a public area.

As students are filing in to one class, some are complaining because the biology teacher has been teaching evolution. One girl says, "My Dad is going to the next school board meeting to stop that." This same girl has been accepted to a pre-med program at a major university, yet she does not accept evolution, and wants it not to be taught in her school.

After classes end, the teacher meets in the library with several students who have requested extra help. Once those meetings are over, all the days papers are gathered in folders and put in a briefcase and the teacher heads home. He or she sits at a table and grades the papers from one class, then reviews the notes for the test being given in two days in another. Typing up that test takes about an hour, printing it another fifteen minutes or so. He or she leaves a sticky note on the refrigerator to stop and pick up a couple packet of Number 2 pencils before school the next day, because he or she knows about half the students will not have them, and the school does not supply them.

Then, he or she gets ready to head out to his or her second job. A quick kiss to the spouse, a pat on the head to the children, then it's off with a pit-stop at the school to check on the Literature Club who is running the concession stand at the basketball game that night as a money-raiser. Normally, the teacher would be there all through it, but with schedule conflicts, the teacher did manage to find another to stay there through the game, but the teacher is still required to make an appearance. Because of this, the teacher is ten minutes late to the second job, which earns a stern look from a manager who, a few years previous, was a student of this teacher's. After a four-hour, very physical shift, the teacher heads home, knowing there is still about an hour's worth of work waiting to get ready for the next day's lessons.

For all this, the teacher earns, roughly speaking, around the median national income of $50,0000 a year as a teacher. Supplemental income from various required extra-curricular activities - coaching softball in the spring, directing the fall play, earns another $1500. From the second job, part-time during the school year, full-time during the summer, there's about another $12,000.

So, yeah, teacher unions are a bad idea, don't you think? Teachers have it easy, soft, they don't care about our kids, and have no real outside pressure on their lives.

If It's Wednesday, You Better Be Ready To ROCK Randomly

I need some suggestions on good songs to accompany sitting and watching revolutions. Something a little off the wall, maybe? Not necessarily obscure, but certainly not the Beatles, God love 'em. With everything happening in North Africa and Arabia right now, I just feel the need for a good soundtrack.

Which reminds me. We all should be praying, or sending good karma, or have in our thoughts - whichever way of being attentive to others works for you - the people of Libya. It seems Col. Qaddafi has decided that he would rather kill his people than rule them While it would be nice if all the revolutions in that region could be relatively peaceful and orderly, it was just not meant to be. Oh, and a good word for the king of Bahrain, who, before leaving to confer with the King of Saudi Arabia (man, we just need to get rid of all these absolute monarchs, I hate writing about kings), released some political prisoners today. I don't know if it will help or hurt him, but it certainly makes the one's imprisoned happy, huh.

Enough of this talk. This is supposed to be about MUSIC dammit. So, batteries to power, turbines to speed, and Dire Straits was wrong; I do give a damn about trumpet playing bands. You should, too, especially if the band is The Budos Band, a bunch of kids from Long Island who play some seriously awesome Afro-funk.



Batteries to power, turbines to speed.

Ripples (Live) - Genesis
Doctor Diamond - King Crimson
Island - Julia Fordham
Mozart Horn Concerto #3, Second Movement - Orchestra of The Old Fairfield Academy
I'm Losing You - The Temptations
Strange Dreams - Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush
Harmony Korine - Steven Wilson
O Death - Ralph Stanley
Oculus Ex Inferni - Symphony X
Dragula - Rob Zombie

The other day the following song popped up on my player. A real blast from the past, it made me feel good, but also bad that I had forgotten about it. I always loved a mystery.

Some Thoughts On The Revolution

Twenty-two years ago, we in the United States watched as Poland held its first multi-party elections in the spring; as China teetered on the brink of revolution, only to have its dreams of democracy drown in blood and horror; as Hungary opened its border with Austria; as, first, people danced on top of the Berlin Wall, then took sledgehammers to it, bringing it down; as the people of Czeckoslovakia marched on St. Wenceslaus Square and their government collapsed like a rotten fruit; as Romania, the heavy-hand of the Ceaucescu clan desperately trying to cling to power, erupted in violence, with the images of their dead leaders beamed around the world; as Bulgaria, reading the tea leaves, quietly ended forty-five years of communist rule. The process, spread over the course of much of that amazing, frustrating, sad, and finally triumphant year, was relatively rapid, In the late spring, from China, there was much discussion over the role of new communications technology, as people discussed the role of the fax machine in the simmering pro-democracy movement. Once the first supports were removed from the first regime in central Europe, the rest toppled not least because the people not only understood that change was in the air. More important, even when they were met with resistance - in Czeckoslovakia and Romania - they proved they were no longer afraid of the threat even of violent death.

The events of that year are usually considered the end of the Cold War. One historian, John Lukacs, wrote that the events marked not only the end of a period of history, but marked the end of the historical cycle of the 20th century. The most famous and influential verdict on the events of that year was Francis' Fukuyama's claim that History was at an end.

Large swaths of humanity were surprised to hear these considered verdicts on the victory of freedom. Not only China, but Indonesia, to name two of the most populous nations on the planet, were in different ways still laboring under dictatorships. Much of the African continent was suffering the ravages of neo-colonial exploitation and the imposition of kleptocrats. Central and South America was only beginning to emerge from two decades of military dictatorship, with all the violence, official domestic terrorism, and repression that entailed. The Muslim world, stretching from Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the East, was still groaning under the weight of regimes, many of which were imposed at the end of the First World War by then-fading imperial powers who sought to safeguard their access to resources.

This band, in particular running from Morocco to Pakistan, is now in turmoil. The last vestiges of absolute monarchy, of the military revolts of the height of the Cold War, of a new age of what Noam Chomsky called, in the title of one of his books, The New Military Humanism, and the beginnings of a theocratic democracy in Iran all simmer with unrest as the people of various nations demand an end to extrinsic definition and imperial dominance. Since the collapse of the Tunisian autocracy in January, the entire region has not seen a day without several of the states experiencing protests, violence, state-sanctioned murder, and the growing sense that this state of affairs has yet to play itself out.

Even as our troops sit in Iraq, on bases in Kuwait and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, our money pours in to Turkey and Iraq and Israel, and our covert military forces engage various "targets" in Yemen, the amount of influence the US actually possesses can be rated at or near zero. For all our might, for all our economic influence as a purchaser of the principle export of petroleum, for all that ours is still, by far, the major cultural, social, military, and economic power in the world, we have sat idly by as two long-time dictators went the way of the Dodo. In Libya, long a focus of American angst (and target of its bombs in the 1980's), Moammar Qaddafi's rule hangs by the slenderest of threads. The royal family of Bahrain is under siege. In Yemen and Algeria, Djibouti and Morocco, the people have gathered to demand changes that include a greater voice for the management of their own affairs, as we who were once called the "last best hope for mankind", sit around and argue as to what we should do.

Whether or not Qaddafi, or the al-Khalifa dynasty, or military junta in Algeria, or Pres. Saleh, or any of the others remain in power is, at this point, anyone's guess. Far more important is the reality that, no matter what happens, that stretch of the world we mistakenly call "the Middle East" will not be the same when these fires of revolution finally burn themselves out (as such fires have always done). We Americans have yet to grasp how profound, how important, how world-historical is the shift happening in the western half of the pre-dominantly Muslim world. Our leaders stutter and contradict themselves, trying to find their voices amidst the clamor for freedom and the sound of gunfire. In many ways, our hands-off approach resembles that of Gorbachev's Soviet Union as the former satellites down the heart of Europe shuddered then fell. For that, we should be thankful. All the same, it is my opinion that our leaders have not grasped the gravity and scope of the reality they face now, nor the new future that awaits on the other side of the democratic revolutions shaking the foundations of the Muslim world. As more of the vestiges of 20th century imperialism and neo-imperialism collapse, I wonder if we in the US will understand we shall awake one day to a world far different from that we have known. Better, to be sure, for the millions who had lived under the thumb of imposed dictators. Yet, perilous for anyone thinking we Americans can still work our will regardless of the cost.

Not Exactly A Knock-Down Drag-Out

[Y]our book struck me as so cheap and paltry that I felt profoundly sorrry for you, defiling as you were your very elegant and ingenious style with such trash, and quite disgusted at the utterly unworthy matter that was being conveyed in such rich ornaments of eloquence, like refuse or [shit] being carried in gold and silver vases.
Martin Luther, "The Bondage of the Will", a response to Desiderius Erasmus' "On The Freedom of the Will, A Diatribe", 1525

I first picked up Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation because, like much the rest of my library, I figured at some point I would turn to it to fill in the details, for more information, or general enlightenment. With my mind turning to the Reformation, I thought now would be a good time.

Two more different individuals one can hardly even imagine pitting against one another. Erasmus, the worldly satirist whose opinions on matters of faith were deeply held yet rarely surfaced; Luther, the voluble, passionate extremist; two such characters, if invented by a writer, would seem caricatures and an editor would probably demand something different. History is kind, however, and provides moments like this, if for no other reason than our entertainment.

As a matter of fact, the amount of theological light shed by both men on the questions of human freedom, grace, faith, and salvation is little indeed. Rather, what we do see is a clash of temperaments and styles, approaches not just to the specifics of theological dispute but some insight in to the personalities of each man. For that alone, the journey through the book was worth it.

Desiderius Erasmus was Luther's older contemporary. Renowned for his satirical attacks upon the leaders of the Church, for the scope of his learning, Erasmus is counted among the founders of northern European humanism in general, and a strain of Catholic humanism that stretches through the Jesuits right up to the Second Vatican Council. He was a man who appreciated the literature of antiquity, the arts, even - according to a quote Jacques Barzun includes in his From Dawn to Decadence - the habit English women seemed to display of kissing strangers. While highly critical of the excesses of the Roman hierarchy, he never went as far as Luther in his condemnations. Indeed, his arguments with the hierarchy were related as much to his preference for a quiet life, appreciating the glories of discovery and the beauties of art and literature and, apparently, English women as to the more abstruse matters of theology that Luther saw as the heart of the corruption of the Church.

With this in mind, it is the Preface of Erasmus' pamphlet that is by far the more important part. Luther's judgment, above, on the piece as a whole describes far more the latter part, in which Erasmus sets forth, rather half-heartedly (so it seem to me), various Scriptural passages regarding the freedom of the human will as regards our salvation. Far more important - and Luther recognizes it as well - is Erasmus' insistence that, in matters where dispute might well exist between persons of sincere faith and honest intent, his preference is, as he writes, to take the path of the Skeptics. Indeed, he sees in many matters - he mentions the Persons of the Trinity, the human and Divine natures within Christ, God's foreknowledge of contingent events - argument to be useless, adding more heat than light, and settles for the judgment of St. Paul in Romans 11, "How unsearchable are [God]s judgments and inscrutable his ways!" This preference for mystery over certainty in matters that are highly contentious is not only a personal one; he seems to be speaking directly to Luther in this regard. Rather than contend with the Church in these matters, and cast aspersions upon the faith and life of those whose opinions differ from his, a far wiser, more prudent course would be for Luther to address these matters in private, precisely because persons of good faith can disagree completely on all sorts of questions that still haunt the churches to this day.

Luther, whose life consisted of assertions against the authority of the hierarchy, the church councils, anyone who seemed to make the claim that salvation, efficacious through God's grace alone, in any way involved the individual as a partner in the process, would hardly consider a plea for restraint rooted in a preference for skepticism and a dislike of bold assertion where caution might better rule as anything other than cowardice or irreligion. In fact, he accuses Erasmus of both, although coming down pretty heavily in favor of the latter. His tone, as always, is rough; as one of the editors of this volume, E. Gordon Rupp, writes, Erasmus brought a rapier to this duel; Luther, a blunderbuss. Luther, for his part, sees the question of the freedom of the human will not as either a mystery upon which opinions can differ; nor does he see it as peripheral to a life of faith. Rather, Luther sees it as bound up with what was, for him, the central reality of the proclamation of the Gospel, salvation by grace through faith. To bypass claims on these matters out of a preference for peace for the mass of Christendom, Luther sees the choice as false. The peace would be, for him, the peace of the Devil, silencing the Gospel so that those who rule out of falseness can continue to do so.

These descriptions show the stark contrasts, not just in styles, but in personalities on display in these two pamphlets, by two giants of an age. While Erasmus surely would have been a marvelous manager of, say, a website like The Huffington Post, with his appreciation for all sorts of knowledge, his erudition, his wit, and his refusal to take himself too seriously, Martin Luther would make, in our day, an excellent troll on such a website. He baits, he praises, his ad hominems seem to flow effortlessly, and always with the insistence they are meant with the utmost respect. While not enlightening in any theological detail, the discussion in these pages surely ranks as an important document because we can gain some insight in to the minds of two figures who loom even over our own age.

Some Perspective

Ten days ago, I publishes this post, which linked to this post, what amounts to a quite literal telescoping shot from the Earth-Moon system out to a galaxy so many billions of light years away, it may perhaps be among the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang, and so massive the editors note that its very existence violates our current understanding of astrophysics. Just looking at the way stars we see as we gaze out to the night sky - Arcturus, say, or Betelgeuse - swallow not just our sun, but the entire solar system are enough to blow your mind. It is, quite literally, incomprehensible beyond merely repeating certain facts, that this really is as it is presented. The scale, beyond not just our experience, but any practical understanding of what would constitute experience, leaves me, as the title of my post said, dumb struck.

Reading through Freeman Dyson's review of James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, I came across the following that gave me another one of those jolts of perspective.

In 1949, one year after Shannon published the rules of information theory, he drew up a table of the various stores of memory that then existed. The biggest memory in his table was the US Library of Congress, which he estimated to contain one hundred trillion bits of information. That was at the time a fair guess at the sum total of recorded human knowledge. Today a memory disc drive storing that amount of information weighs a few pounds and can be bought for about a thousand dollars. Information, otherwise known as data, pours into memories of that size or larger, in government and business offices and scientific laboratories all over the world. Gleick quotes the computer scientist Jaron Lanier describing the effect of the flood: “It’s as if you kneel to plant the seed of a tree and it grows so fast that it swallows your whole town before you can even rise to your feet.”

Dyson, a physicist, also offers this somewhat slight aside on the information flood and what it means, in particular for scientists:

The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. Wherever we go exploring in the world around us, we find mysteries. Our planet is covered by continents and oceans whose origin we cannot explain. Our atmosphere is constantly stirred by poorly understood disturbances that we call weather and climate. The visible matter in the universe is outweighed by a much larger quantity of dark invisible matter that we do not understand at all. The origin of life is a total mystery, and so is the existence of human consciousness. We have no clear idea how the electrical discharges occurring in nerve cells in our brains are connected with our feelings and desires and actions.

Even physics, the most exact and most firmly established branch of science, is still full of mysteries. We do not know how much of Shannon’s theory of information will remain valid when quantum devices replace classical electric circuits as the carriers of information. Quantum devices may be made of single atoms or microscopic magnetic circuits. All that we know for sure is that they can theoretically do certain jobs that are beyond the reach of classical devices. Quantum computing is still an unexplored mystery on the frontier of information theory. Science is the sum total of a great multitude of mysteries. It is an unending argument between a great multitude of voices. It resembles Wikipedia much more than it resembles the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Internet is a wild, whacky place. One encounters all sorts of folk, and when you write about the Christian religion, without fail you will end up encountering that strange bird, the creationist. Now, quite apart from all sorts of reasons why "creationism" is really, really lousy Christian teaching, I could not subscribe to it if it were Christian doctrine because of . . . perspective.

The photos of our Universe, the sheer immensity of it, is beyond our brains' ability to process beyond seeing a few, two-dimensional photographs that compare sizes to which we can relate. It is possible to buy a device on the open market and put it in your home that contains more information that was created in all of human history up to sixty-two years ago. There are things on the drawing board, apparently, called "Quantum computers", a name I've heard but about which I know nothing at all, that will make pretty much everything we currently do not only obsolete, but the equivalent of Linear B, and it is happening so rapidly it is almost impossible to keep up.

For all that science continues to shrink our understanding of our place in the Universe, it is not designed to address very thorny issues. As the critics of logical positivism pointed out decades ago, there are all sorts of things, like freedom and patriotism and love that science just cannot address, let alone understand. These are the things about which human beings care most deeply, have killed one another, fought and are quite willing to die for (as we have seen on our TV screens over the past couple months). These realities, too, provide perspective that reminds us how small we are.

It goes without saying that one principle, perhaps one of the very few, I hold most dear and which guides what I do is - pretty much everything I have said, either categorically or otherwise, might well be quite wrong. Indeed, I expect most of what I know to be the case is, in fact, quite wrong. Furthermore, as a self-professed Christian, I hold that my confident statements on all sorts of things regarding faith matters is not only wrong, but almost comically so. Indeed, part of my own sense of what faith means is that I have no guarantees, for example, that I have been granted salvation. I certainly hope so, and I live my life in the faith that is so, and my reflections on matters of faith are rooted in a belief that is so. When all comes to an end, however, I may find out that, as the Emperor said to Luke Skywalker, I am wrong about a great many things.

And I'm OK with that. I'm OK with the various perspectives that shrink my own worth to nothing. I'm OK with the notion that, before 2020, or perhaps 2030 (the year I turn 65), the world will look so vastly different than it does now, and the pace of change - not just in information technology but in so many other ways - will only increase, defeating my attempts to keep up. I'm OK with the reality that, at age 45, I am losing millions of brain cells every day, making my attempts to keep up with information and understanding increasingly difficult. I'm OK with the thought that, when the end comes, whatever is to be my lot, I did the best I could with the tools given me.

On Wesley's Perfection

Neither dare we affirm, as some have done, that all this salvation is given at once. There is indeed an instantaneous, as well as a gradual, work of God in his children; and there wants not, we know, a cloud of witnesses, who have received, in one moment, either a clear sense of the forgiveness of their sins, or the abiding witness of the Holy Spirit. But we do not know a single instance, in any place, of a person's receiving, in one and the same moment, remission of sins, the abiding witness of the Spirit, and a new, a clean heart.

Glory be to the the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries! Along with Wesley's sermons, they have made available, on-line, the final 1777 edition of "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection".

"QUESTION. What is Christian perfection?

"ANSWER. The loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. This implies, that no wrong temper, none contrary to love, remains in the soul; and that all the thoughts, words, and actions, are governed by pure love.

"Q. Do you affirm, that this perfection excludes all infirmities, ignorance, and mistake?

"A. I continually affirm quite the contrary, and always have done so.

"Q. But how can every thought, word, and work, be governed by pure love, and the man be subject at the same time to ignorance and mistake?

"A. I see no contradiction here: `A man may be filled with pure love, and still be liable to mistake.' Indeed I do not expect to be freed from actual mistakes, till this mortal puts on immortality. I believe this to be a natural consequence of the soul's dwelling in flesh and blood. For we cannot now think at all, but by the mediation of those bodily organs which have suffered equally with the rest of our frame. And hence we cannot avoid sometimes thinking wrong, till this corruptible shall have put on incorruption.

"But we may carry this thought farther yet. A mistake in judgment may possibly occasion a mistake in practice. For instance: Mr. De Renty's mistake touching the nature of mortification, arising from prejudice of education, occasioned that practical mistake, his wearing an iron girdle. And a thousand such instances there may be, even in those who are in the highest state of grace. Yet, Where every word and action springs from love, such a mistake is not properly a sin. However, it cannot bear the rigour of God's justice,~ but needs the atoning blood.

"Q. What was the judgment of all our brethren who met~ at Bristol in August, 1758, on this head?

"A. It was expressed in these words: (1.) Every one may mistake as long as he lives. (2.) A mistake in opinion may occasion a mistake in practice. (3.) Every such mistake is a transgression of the perfect law. Therefore, (4.) Every such mistake, were it not for the blood of atonement, would expose to eternal damnation. (5.) It follows, that the most~ perfect have continual need of the merits of Christ, even for their actual transgressions, and may say for themselves, as well as for their brethren, `Forgive us our trespasses.'

"This easily accounts for what might otherwise seem to be utterly unaccountable; namely, that those who are not offended when We speak of the highest degree of love, yet will not hear of living without sin. The reason is, they know all men are liable to mistake, and that in practice as well as in judgment. But they do not know, or do not observe, that this is not sin, if love is the sole principle of action.

"Q. But still, if they live without sin, does not this exclude the necessity of a Mediator? At least, is it not plain that they stand no longer in need of Christ in his priestly office ?~

"A. Far from it. None feel their need of Christ like these; none so entirely depend upon him. For Christ does not give life to the soul separate from, but in and with, himself. Hence his words are equally true of all men, in whatsoever state of grace they are: `As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me: Without' (or separate from) `me ye can do nothing.'

"In every state we need Christ in the following respects (1.) Whatever grace we receive, it is a free gift from him. (2.) We receive it as his purchase, merely in consideration of the price he paid. (3.) We have this grace, not only from Christ, but in him. For our perfection is not like that of a tree, which flourishes by the sap derived from its own root, but, as was said before, like that of a branch which, united to the vine, bears fruit; but, severed from it, is dried up and withered. (4.) All our blessings, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, depend on his intercession for us, which is one branch of his priestly office, whereof therefore we have always equal ~need. (5.) The best of men still need Christ in his priestly office, to atone for their omissions, their short-comings, (as some not improperly speak,) their mistakes in judgment and practice, and their defects of various kinds. For these are all deviations from the perfect law, and consequently need an atonement. Yet that they are not properly sins, we apprehend may appear from the words of St. Paul, `He that loveth, hath fulfilled the law; for love is the fulfilling of the law.' (Rom. 13:10.) Now, mistakes, and whatever infirmities necessarily flow from the corruptible state of the body, are noway contrary to love; nor therefore, in the Scripture sense, sin.

"To explain myself a little farther on this head: (1.) Not only sin, properly so called, (that is, a voluntary transgression of a known law,) but sin, improperly so called, (that is, an involuntary transgression of a divine law, known or unknown,) needs the atoning blood. (2.) I believe there is no such perfection in this life as excludes these involuntary transgressions which I apprehend to be naturally consequent on the ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality. (3.) Therefore sinless perfection is a phrase I never use, lest I should seem to contradict myself. (4.) I believe, a person filled with the love of God is still liable to these involuntary transgressions. (5.) Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please: I do not, for the reasons above-mentioned.

The heart of the doctrine of perfection, or entire sanctification, or holiness of heart and life - these phrases are interchangeable in Wesley's writings - lies right here, although the entire pamphlet is much longer. Again, there is nothing in here with which I would disagree. Rooted in Scripture, in particular Paul's citation of the kenosis hymn in Philippians ("have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus") and the Gospel of St. John ("therefore be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect"), the teaching on Christian Perfection sees the possibility of a cleansing of our life and will, the "heart" to use Wesley's terminology, from self-regard not through any work we do on our own, but as grace works in our lives, as we humbly follow the path and life of faith. This is not a "work", but part of that grace granted to us without merit, yet the life to which we are called, for which God in the Person of the Holy Spirit gives us strength and endurance.

26. In the year 1764, upon a review of the whole subject, I wrote down the sum of what I had observed in the following short propositions: --

"(1.) There is such a thing as perfection; for it is again and again mentioned in Scripture.

"(2.) It is not so early as justification; for justified persons are to `go on unto perfection.' (Heb. 6:1.)

"(3.) It is not so late as death; for St. Paul speaks of living men that were perfect. (Phil. 3:15.)

"(4.) It is not absolute. Absolute perfection belongs not to man, nor to angels, but to God alone.

"(5.) It does not make a man infallible: None is infallible, while he remains in the body.

"(6.) Is it sinless? It is not worth while to contend for a term. It is `salvation from sin.'

"(7.) It is `perfect love.' (1 John 4:18.) This is the essence of it; its properties, or inseparable fruits, are, rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, and in everything giving thanks. (1 Thess. 5:16, &c.)

"(8.) It is improvable. It is so far from lying in an indivisible point, from being incapable of increase, that one perfected in love may grow in grace far swifter than he did before.

"(9.) It is amissible, capable of being lost; of which we have numerous instances. But we were not thoroughly convinced of this, till five or six years ago.

"(10.) It is constantly both preceded and followed by a gradual work.

This teaching is, to me, the great gift of the Wesley's to the world - that God's grace works within us to make us strive in all our living and working out of a love for God, and only that. It is, in many ways, a working out of the following advice from Martin Luther:

Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.