A Lutheran and a Baptist Testify before Congress on Religious Liberty

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/02/19/a-lutheran-and-a-baptist-testify-before-congress/

Hilarious Attack Ad for the Dirtiest Election Ever

When it Comes to Presidential Candidates, You Can't Please Us Americans

From Kevin DeYoung on the Republican debates (forgive the white background, I don't know how to get rid of it).

"The debates over the past months, and the election in general, exposes a number of inconsistencies about Americans.

• We want to be rich and want politicians who will promise to make us richer. But we don’t like our politicians themselves to be wealthy.

• We want candidates to give straight answers and not dodge hard questions. But when they give specific answers to hard questions their answers will be ridiculed as dull or will be held against them.

• We want our leaders to be super confident, super competent, and super intelligent. But we hate elites.

• We want the president to be one of us and above us and unlike us at the same time.

• We want someone to be an effective executive in the labyrinth of legislative, judicial, bureaucratic, military, and diplomatic tasks that face the modern President. But we also want him to be a complete outsider with no experience in how any of that works.

• We want politicians unsullied by the real life tradeoffs, lobbyists, and interest groups of politics. But what they are like in the rest of life doesn’t really concern us. They can compromise in everything but politics."

True Believers, Dissidents, and Doublethinkers

"In any place where dissent is banned, society fractures into three groups. One group is those who remain committed to the prevailing order because they agree with it--the true believers. Another group is made up of those who are willing to defy the prevailing order despite the risk of punishment--the dissidents. For members of these two groups, there will be little or no gap between their private thoughts or public statements. Unlike true believers or dissidents, members of the third group do not say what they think. This group is comprised of people who longer believe in the prevailing ideology, but who are afraid to accept the risks associated with dissent. They are the 'doublethinkers...' 

Doublethinkers live in constant tension from the gap between their thoughts and their words, They always avoid saying what is not permitted but also try to avoid saying what they do not believe. But fear societies do not generally leave their doublethinkers such a luxury. They demand from the 'cogs' constant expressions of loyalty...

If a fear society is repressive enough, it will appear to an outside observer to consist of only true believers when in reality it may have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of doublethinkers living in terror. Moreover, while it is impossible to know how many doublthinkers there are in a fear society, one thing is certain: With every passing day, the number of doublethinkers in a fear society always increases...

In Saudi Arabia, one can definitely be arrested or imprisoned for expressing one's views. While many people who grew up in liberal democracies would regard life in Saudi Arabia as oppressive, can it be said that the people of Saudi Arabia, who appear to agree with the prevailing ideology, live in fear? Aren't the Saudis simply living according to their age-old traditions?...This question assumes that the people of Saudi Arabia agree with the policies of the regime. But how do we know that? Because of what the Saudis say publicly? Can we assume that what people living in a fear society are willing to say publicly is the true expression of their beliefs? The books of dissidents describing how how Saudis flying to Europe hurry to change into their Western clothes while still on the airplane and adopt different modes of behavior when they are abroad are enough to convince me that Saudi Arabia is steeped in doublethink. Even if these stories only refer to the Saudi elite, the process of internal decay, when more and more people are conforming to a world they no longer believe in, is clearly under way. We must always keep in mind that the public statements of those who live in fear societies are motivated by fear. If we fail to recognize this, we will only be deceiving ourselves."

--Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy 

 

Christian Principles for Realistic Politics

Wise counsel (in my judgment) about politics from Kevin DeYoung. I can hear the influence of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions in his talk about trade-offs and the origins of war.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/03/christian-principles-for-realistic-politics/

Politics Doesn't Encourage Rational Thinking

More from James Q. Wilson's American Government textbook. Interesting note: Rob Spinney had Wilson as a prof at Harvard. I remember mentioning this textbook to him several years ago. He responded, "Jimmy Q! He was a great professor. Very professional. Always dapper."

"If we wanted agencies to pursue their main goal with more vigor and less encumbering red tape, we would have to ask Congress, the courts, or the White House to repeal some of these constraints. In other words, we would have to be willing to give up something we want in order to get something else we want even more. But politics does not encourage people to make these trade-offs; instead it encourages us to expect to get everything- efficiency, fairness, help for minorities- all at once."

–James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio, American Government 

Should We Abolish the Electoral College?

This excerpt came from the American Government textbook I used in Dr. Gunter's class at Tech. I've never had so much fun reading a textbook.

"Should we abolish the electoral college? Most Americans think we should, and soon. But, then again, most Americans, even after the 2000 presidential election controversy, do not really know how the system presently works. First, the system is a bulwark of Amercian federalism and heightens the influence of states in national politics. Because of its winner-take-all feature (in effect in all but two states), candidates have a strong incentive to campaign hard in big states they have a chance of winning. Second, if we relied just on the popular vote, there would have to be a runoff election among the two leading candidates if neither got a majority because third-party candidates won a lot of votes. This would encourage the formation of third parties, and American presidential politics might come to resemble the multiparty systems we find in France and Italy. If that is what we want, then we should abolish the electoral college. But if not, then we should preserve the system or reform it in more minor ways."

--James Q. Wilson and John DiIulio, American Government

Lessons from Herman Cain's Fall

Read Al Mohler's thoughts on what Christian men can learn from Cain's fall.

http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/12/05/for-christian-men-the-lessons-of-herman-cain/

David Brooks on Politics and Prudence

I have yet to post any political excerpts on this fledgling blog. But there's a first time for everything. This excerpt comes from one of my personal favorite columnists, the New York Times' David Brooks. He wrote it back in July in the midst of the government shutdown crisis, and was lamenting the fact that (in his opinion) the Republicans missed their chance to make positive progress toward their goals because they were unwilling to compromise. He proceeded to give a taxonomy of the species of conservatives whom he believes obstruct progress toward conservative goals. I'm not sure if I agree with him on all the details (I don't follow politics closely enough to judge), but I agree with his overall view of the nature of the political process. So yes. Here's Brooks' taxonomy of imprudent conservatives:

The Beltway Bandits. American conservatism now has a rich network of Washington interest groups adept at arousing elderly donors and attracting rich lobbying contracts. For example, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has been instrumental in every recent G.O.P. setback. He was a Newt Gingrich strategist in the 1990s, a major Jack Abramoff companion in the 2000s and he enforced the no-compromise orthodoxy that binds the party today. 

Norquist is the Zelig of Republican catastrophe. His method is always the same. He enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible. 

The Big Government Blowhards. The talk-radio jocks are not in the business of promoting conservative governance. They are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners. 

They mostly give pseudo Crispin’s Day speeches to battalions of the like-minded from the safety of the conservative ghetto. To keep audience share, they need to portray politics as a cataclysmic, Manichaean struggle. A series of compromises that steadily advance conservative aims would muddy their story lines and be death to their ratings. 

The Show Horses. Republicans now have a group of political celebrities who are marvelously uninterested in actually producing results. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann produce tweets, not laws. They have created a climate in which purity is prized over practicality. 

The Permanent Campaigners. For many legislators, the purpose of being in Congress is not to pass laws. It’s to create clear contrasts you can take into the next election campaign. It’s not to take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better. It’s to pass responsibility onto the other party and force them to take as many difficult votes as possible. 

All of these groups share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn. 

Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the G.O.P., who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control."  

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks