Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

The Missing Icon

Dr. David Pence, a friend and correspondent of mine, has sent me his new book: Religion, Sex, and Politics: For Men Only, published by Llumina Press (www.llumina.com).  Our longtime contributing editor Donna Steichen writes these words of praise: "Pence argues that American society lost its way over the past forty years because the traditional masculine qualities of fraternity, courage, and self-sacrifice withered in an atmosphere of politically correct scorn."  For me, the most fruitful among the book's many insights is that there's a "missing icon," absent from our churches: the band of brothers, the men who imitate the apostles in their comradeship and their protection of the truth.

But Dr. Pence applies this insight to the civil order, too.  He's reminded me that when conservative men say, with a dash of self-depreciation, that women civilize men, they clip only a piece of the target.  Women domesticate men.  Men civilize men.  That is, historically, quite accurate.  It is men who enlist other men in complex and far-reaching organizations that may bear fruit only in the long run, and perhaps after many of the men involved are dead.  (Consider the excruciatingly difficult construction of canals and spillways along the flood-prone Tigris and Euphrates, rivers pitched at hardly a foot's droppage per mile from Babylon to the sea.)  That we no longer perceive a difference between civilization and domestication is a symptom of our decline and of the withering of our civic order.

Civilization is a good thing, and domestication is a good thing, yet they are not the same thing; and though you can enjoy both, sometimes the one will strive against the other.  People used to know that when a man abandons his brothers for the comfort of hearth and home, he puts the tribe or the city at risk.  Hence the ubiquitous legends of men who lose their strength when they fall to the lassitude of sexual pleasure: Troy had been better off had Paris never been born.  Here is Torquato Tasso's description of a tapestry on the palace where his hero Rinaldo lies, having abandoned his crusading army, now pouring himself out in looseness and lasciviousness:

     Here they saw Hercules, hero of the wars,

     gossiping with the servant ladies, spinning;

     he who had harrowed hell and borne the stars

     now turned his loom.  Love looked upon him, grinning,

     while weakling Iole fulfilled the farce,

     lugging his homicidal weapons, pinning

     upon her girlish frame a lion's skin --

     too rough to clothe her tender members in!

Hercules happily plies the distaff in exchange for sex, while his lovely Iole drags the cudgel around and dons the floppy khakis.  The big fellow had once been a friend to man, a boon to civilization, ridding the world of various tyrants and monsters, including that great Nemean lion.  No more pelt-taking now.

The scene above is what Dr. Pence identifies as an "inversion ritual".  It is as if, says he, we had been binging on a forty-year Fat Tuesday, reveling in putting a drunken "bishop" on an ass and turning everything upside down.  Unfortunate and unhappy men who sow their seeds in sewers are lauded, are allowed to be mummers in their own parades; it is the Boy Scouts who are shunned as bizarre.  Most men do still know better.  But they have been domesticated too well; they are disunited and helpless; the locks of the fraternity have been shorn.  Witness the vast nation of Canada, once a land of hardy farmers and pioneers, now about to suffer the imposition of marriage for the jaded denizens of postcivilized Toronto and Montreal.  And they sit, these Canadian men, their natural inclination to band together to form and protect villages, towns, and cities, all but forgotten.  There they sit, helpless as Samson, eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.  God help us, let that hair grow back.

Witchcraft Slayings in Africa?

Fom yesterday's Ecumenical News International:

Suspected ritual killings in Kenya alarm churches
By Fredrick Nzwili
Nairobi, 29 June (ENI)--Kenyan church leaders have condemned recent killings of children in suspected witchcraft rituals in the coastal city of Mombasa, where over 20 children are reported to have disappeared in the last six months.

"We condemn these killings in strongest terms," said the Rev. Wellington Sanga, the conference secretary of the Methodist Church of Kenya.

Police on 20 June arrested three people in Mombasa in connection with the disappearance and deaths of three children, whose bodies were found early in the month with their eyes and sex organs
missing.

Sanga said he suspected the missing body parts were intended for witchcraft rituals.

... The Anglican assistant bishop of Mombasa, the Rev. Laurence Dena, said the church was seeking information on the killings, which had shocked residents in the Indian Ocean city.

The Child Rights Advisory Documentary and Legal Centre said it was demanding that the government adopt serious measures to curb such incidents and award harsh punishment to anyone trafficking children for witchcraft practices.

Robert P. George vs. Cuomo et al

National Review OnLine Editor Kathryn Lopez recently asked Robert P. George, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, to talk a little about the future of stem-cell research and some of the heated rhetoric surrounding the issue.

Find out what Mario Cuomo said that caused Ms. Lopez to say to George: "You must have been fuming." I have never seen Robert P. George fume. It's hard for me to imagine it, actually.

Anyway, he is well worth reading on the matter at hand, bringing, as usual, clarity to the issues, separating fact from fairy tales. No wonder his students love him.

Eminent Judge to Lose His Domain?

It's sort of funny, and I don't know how serious this ultimately is, but the perpetrator says he is in earnest. A developer, who also happens to head up an organization opposed to abusive governments, has filed a request with town officials to create more jobs and increase tax revenues in Weare, N.H., the hometown of Supreme Court Justice David Souter, by building a hotel on the present site of Souter's home, where he has lived since 11.

Logan Darrow Clements is waiting to hear back from town officials. I wouldn't hold my breath. But, according to the Supreme Court's recent decision on the rights of local officials to evict private homeowners in the public interest of creatin jobs and revnues, a decision that Souter supported, you only need to persuade 3 of 5 officials in Weare to vote Souter out. He had better hope they like him at city hall.

Canadian House Approves "Gay Marriage"

Canada Lawmakers Approve Gay Marriage Bill

So reads a headline from today's news. Canada's House of Commons has approved legislation to legalize "gay marriage." Canada's Senate also must approve the legislation, which it is expected to do easily. "Gay marriage" would thus become law of the land by the end of July.

The Netherlands and Belgium are the only other countries to have approved "gay marriage."

Some Liberal lawmakers voted against the bill, and a Cabinet minister resigned over the legislation. But enough allies rallied to support the bill that has been debated for months, voting 158 to 133 to approve it on Tuesday evening.

Amazingly, a momentous change like this can be approved by a fairly close vote. Had 13 of 291 legislators switched their votes, it would have failed.

The government estimates the number of gay and lesbian couples in Canada at around 34,000. I wonder how many of these couples change from year to year, but of course the same can be said of heterosexual marriages, which is a problem that should be addressed, not used as an excuse to further damage marriage.

Prime Minister Paul Martin, whose minority Liberal Party drafted the legislation, claims to be a Roman Catholic, and

has said that despite anyone's personal beliefs, all Canadians should be granted the same rights to marriage.

Churches have expressed concern that their clergy would be compelled by law to perform same-sex ceremonies, with couples taking them to court or human rights tribunals if refused. The legislation, however, states that the bill only covers civil unions, not religious ones, and no clergy would be forced to perform same-sex ceremonies unless they choose to do so.

The Roman Catholic Church, the predominant Christian denomination in Canada, has vigorously opposed the legislation, saying that it would harm children in particular.

Charles McVety, a spokesman for Defend Marriage Canada and president of Canada Christian College, called the vote an "onerous breach of trust and the deconstruction of so much that is dear to our hearts."

Flanked by clergymen, McVety vowed his group would work to vote out lawmakers who supported the legislation in the next general elections.

But according to most polls, a majority of Canadians support "gay marriage." If that's really true, then there is a country within easy reach of the U.S. where U.S. "gay marriage" candidates can now safely move in order to escape American discrimination. Of course, the American prospect for "gay marriage" is not clear yet.

Comments on Mere Comments

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Shelby Foote, RIP

Civil War historian Shelby Foote died Monday night at the age of 88. Foote is known not only for his historical work, but for his friendships. A Mississippian, Foote knew William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor as a young man, but was most closely associated all his life with his best friend, Walker Percy.

The letters between Percy and Foote reveal a different side to the crusty old historian. When working on the first of his Civil War volumes, Foote asked Percy if he and his wife could spend a few weeks at the Percy home. "We could work all day and talk all night. I think it's a great shame we've been apart so much these past three-four years. Friendship is so rare a thing, it should never be neglected beyond necessity."

Sadly, Foote couldn't seem to understand Percy's attraction to Christianity, afraid that Percy's conversion would weaken him as a novelist. Foote was concerned, for instance, about Percy's insistence that characters in a novel should be "redeemable" or else they are uninteresting. "I think the real difference is, I'm talking about novels and you're talking about Protestant sunday-school tracts; old John Calvin is breathing down your neck." The Catholic Percy was no doubt amused to be called a crypto-Calvinist.

Despite his aversion to the faith, Foote was a brave and thoughtful man. He loved his native South while standing firm against Jim Crow and the race-baiting populists of the twentieth century. In what had to be the most withering blow a Ku Klux Klansman could ever hear, Foote accused the white supremacist group of "degrading the Confederate flag" by converting it "from a symbol of honor into a banner of shame," having "covered it with obscenities like a roadhouse men's room wall."

Letters between Percy and Foote are found in Jay Tolson's classic collection, The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (W.W. Norton). You will find it a remarkable and thought-provoking glimpse at a rare and beautiful friendship between a man of faith and a man of doubt.  It should also remind us, as we mark the passing of this great man, that such friendship is a gift to be cultivated, acknowledged, and received with grateful hearts from a Father who knows that we were not made to be alone.

Star Wars & Stem Cells

For one of my grandson's birthday, I offered to take him out to see a movie. Jacob is now in the 4th grade and he really likes the Star Wars series. So off we went yesterday to a matinee of Episode 3, The Revenge of the Sith. I had already seen it once with my youngest son, who is 14, a few weeks ago. A second viewing was a welcome familial duty, but not something I relished as a cinematic experience.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the second viewing, mostly concentrating on the process of turning Anakin into Darth Vader through a series of temptations, disappointments, perceived betrayals, fears, and so on. I said enjoyed, which is to say that I found more there to occupy my mind than sitting through a second viewing of plenty of other movies, not that Star Wars will ever come close to even the bottom of my favorite one hundred movies list.

As far as the change into Darth Vader, I still didn't find the definitive turning all that convincing, right where Anakin, having rescued the Sith lord & chancellor Palpatine, sees what he has done in killing Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), a Jedi knight, who had come to arrest the chancellor. Anankin immediately turns to the obviously evil Palpatine and offers him his service from there ever after. AnI still didn't get it. There was, indeed, plenty of conflict, inner turmoil, but he seem simply more confused than anything else.

Anyway, the most intriguing aspect of the temptations facing the young Jedi Anakin centers on saving his wife Padme from death. The chancellor tells him that he knows the dark side of the Force, and that only in the dark side are the secrets that can save his wife from dying, presumably in childbirth.

What is clear in the movie that Anakin's love for his wife and wish to keep her alive at all costs is, as chancellor himself puts it, the "fear of loss" that the chancellor keeps throwing up as a temptation to break the code of the Jedi and explore the paths of the dark side.

After a second viewing, it seemed all the more clear to me that the motivation and fears of Anakin that drive him to cross the dark line that leads to evil, for the sake of keeping his wife alive (she dies anyway) are not that much different from the sentiments and arguments, the "personal stories" and fears of loss, that are offered by the proponents of research on human clones and human embryos. There is definitely a line being crossed here that anyone in 1945 would have seen as clearly as the evil of the Nazi concentration camps.

But, you see, there is just so much suffering and we must do something to alleviate it, even if that means experimentation on embryos and "fetuses." Whatever it takes.

Well, no thanks. I realize it's "easy for you to say that," since I have no disease myself that I know of. But, please, for the record, I state plainly should it ever come to that, use no human embryo on my behalf on behalf of those whom I love. I cannot love them by abusing the lives of others. Death is certain for all of us.

There was the promise in the film that the dark side held secrets of immortality. I think there is a bit of that wish, hope, or whatever you might call it in modern research: we shall not only improve mankind and make him better than he has been, but more than that, overcome death itself. Beware the dark side.

Grave Progress at O'Hare

A cemetery lies in the path of progress at Chicago's O'Hare Airport and the dead, it seems to me, will have to pick up and move on, if the mayor and the governor have their way. In this story in the Chicago Tribune, the controversy is spelled out:

Beneath marble and granite grave markers etched with ivy and the words "ruhe in frieden" (rest in peace), the remains of hundreds of German immigrants who helped settle DuPage County lie yards from passenger jets roaring down an O'Hare International Airport runway.

The artwork on the headstones in the 156-year-old cemetery and the significance of those buried there--religious figures, a bank founder and early Addison Township politicians--convinced the National Park Service that the grounds belong on the National Register of Historic Places.

But the state doesn't agree.

The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency is asking the National Park Service to reconsider, saying St. Johannes Cemetery, located where a proposed new southern runway would be built, does not deserve the honor, according to documents released Monday.

Even if the federal government refuses to change its decision, the distinction would not block the airport expansion plan or prevent relocation of the cemetery, Federal Aviation Administration officials said.

The state's stance has confused and angered residents such as Bob Sell, whose ancestors are buried in the cemetery where people still use a 19th-Century hand pump to water graveside plants.

"As the state agency that is supposed to be about preservation, why would they be looking to advocate on behalf of destruction?" Sell asked. State officials said they are following federal guidelines to determine whether the cemetery is historical.

Whether it is or not is probably moot as far as building the runway goes. I have a few comments:

1) Not only does the state have the right to take your house if they want to award its site to a developer, but it also has the right to move you from your "final resting place"? At least that's what I suspect the US Supreme Court might say after reading their earlier decision this week. After all, progress is progress and jobs are jobs.

2) Chicago's O'Hare Airport, really, hardly needs more expansion: the roads around it are already jammed beyond anything I have ever seen at any airport in the country. What, we need more passengers and taxis?

3) It's all about money for the City of Chicago. In metropolitan area the size of Chicago, a number of airports would be a blessing. Right now we have only two, Midway and O'Hare. Midway is small and flight choices limited. Folks who live in northwest Indiana or the far south or southwest suburbs of Chicago have a great distance to go just get to O'Hare. But a third airport that would geographically serve that population (not to mention decrease O'Hare traffice a bit) would have to be build outside the city limits of Chicago. And that means the City wouldn't get its cut of the lucrative airport fees, taxes, revenues that they depend on.

4) When O'Hare was built, they knew the cemetery was there. If they didn't plan enough in advance or miscalculated, that's tough. They didn't need it then, and they don't need it now.

5) Is the government becoming so secularized that it requires that they respect nothing but economics? The government cannot even respect the respect for the dead that most people have, or used to have, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Native American? But if out of some measure of respect they relocate the cemetery, with state funds, does that mean that the state is endorsing religion?

Individualism

One of the things I've come to learn about while visiting neighborly Canada is the odd pride the Canadians feel in being not-like-the-USA.  The author Michael Adams has recently written a book about the divergence of American and Canadian values: to wit, America is growing more individualistic, patriarchal, and hierarchical, while Canada is ever more committed to gender parity and the life of the community.

I confess it struck me as odd to hear America described as a land of individualism.  That supine continent of Reality Television?  I'm not fond of individualism anyway, but I thought that a distinction or two might prove useful: there is a difference between an individualism predicated upon man's capacity, and an individualism predicated upon man's predilections.

American farmers had to be individualists in the former sense: they had to believe that, under unpromising conditions (the severe weather shifts of the storm-prone plains), they could clear their fields, sow their wheat, build and maintain their homes, and raise decent children.  Under circumstances of general hardship and daily physical labor, neighborliness takes two critical forms: you have to help your neighbors at tasks that no one household could possibly manage (raising a barn); and you refrain from asking your hard-pressed neighbors for help at tasks that you ought to be able to handle on your own (disciplining your kids).  Your belief in your capacity to work hard and to wring a living from the soil, despite your being born without title or money, endowed you with a self-reliance that earned the respect of your neighbors, and gave you the know-how to help them when the hailstorms came, as they inevitably would.  That self-reliance extended to the management of your household generally, since nobody likes to live near chaos; and the nearby lad who steals fruit when he was little, and who then goes on to slash and burn, is a plague upon everyone.  Essentially, the individualist of this sort made a compact with the community: "Give me half a chance, and I will be all right.  I can handle anything that any other man can handle.  I will not be a burden to you -- rather a strong arm when a strong arm is needed.  In return, I promise to uphold what the community cherishes.  You need not worry about me on that score.  I will stay married.  My children will grow up straight and honest.  And if we do sin, we will keep it to ourselves, so as not to spread the damage.  Call the latter hypocrisy if you like, but there is a charity in it, too."

That kind of individualism -- a trust in man's cleverness and sense of responsibility -- will, with any luck, result in prosperity.  And prosperity seems to encourage a second, decadent-stage individualism, one that champions self-expression, often at the expense of the community (Christopher Lasch is the great analyst of this syndrome).  Indeed "community" is invoked as an abstract sanction for what one wants to do.  If, for instance, one wants to parade seminude down a city street, letting everybody (including children) know what one does in private, then "community" is the principal that will allow for it, because "community" must extend its warm embrace to include all manner of individual whim.  If one's whims or self-determined "needs" result, say, in children born out of wedlock, then "community" is called upon to pay up to alleviate the hardship -- the poverty, the crime, the mess.  Nor can one's predilections be condemned without oneself being condemned.  The only real sin lies, as far as those cravings or leanings are concerned, in not being true to them.  The "charity" you demand from others (who might prefer that their children not know about your cravings) is that they put up with it, even pretend to like it.  You demand a neighborly hypocrisy from them, and do as you please.

This decadent individualism is deeply hostile to community even as it invokes its protection, as the other kind is supportive of it, even as it speaks a damaging language of self.  Yet the communities that self-reliant individualism supports can in turn appeal to the state for a great measure of autonomy, thus: "We will handle our own affairs; you needn't worry about us.  In return we will raise up citizens who love their country and her principles and will fight for her defense whenever she calls."  But the individualism of predilection must appeal to the state, or to the Supreme Court, to raze any last firewalls of community that stand in their way, so that everywhere will be a haven for the individual's delight: no distinction between San Francisco and Wichita, or between Vancouver and Saint John's. 

And should anybody demur, ever so slightly, the "neighborliness" of the phony communitarians in both Canada and the USA will result in calls to have that person's head on a platter.

Unfriendly Acts & Boycotts

The Southern Baptist Convention has decided to end an 8-year boycott of the Disney Company for its "gay"-friendly policies. The American Family Association has ended a similar boycott.

They both might want to consider boycotting the US Supreme Court instead. They have ruled illegal a display of the Ten Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse, but not all such dislpays:

The justices voting on the prevailing side Monday left themselves legal wiggle room on this issue, however, saying that some displays -- like their own courtroom frieze -- would be permissible if they're portrayed neutrally in order to honor the nation's legal history.

But framed copies in two Kentucky courthouses went too far in endorsing religion, the court held.

"The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the majority.

"When the government acts with the ostensible and predominant purpose of advancing religion, it violates that central Establishment clause value of official religious neutrality," he said.

Souter was joined in his opinion by other members of the liberal bloc -- Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, as well as Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided the swing vote.

Tear 'Em Down!

City not doing enough for jobless, study claims
A new report from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless states that Chicago's One-Stop Centers, part of the city's effort to find jobs for the unemployed, fail to help workers find positions that move them up the career ladder.

Someone needs to tell the Chicago Coalition for the Homelss that the US Supreme Court just gave them the means for creating jobs. Get some developer to work with the City to seize and tear down a row of private houses and build a strip mall with a Starbucks and a fast-food restaurant.

In fact, now that I think about it, there are several private houses right on the main street by my house that are real eyesores. I have no idea why they're there. They look so out of place. Maybe someone can beg a developer and contractor to do the public a service by tearing them down and building some jobs right there. You see, part of good government is just getting the right people together to make things happen, for the good of the people.

But wait, there's a problem:

The coalition's study, conducted during more than eight months last year and based on interviews with 170 people, was prompted by complaints from homeless that the centers were directing them into low-wage, low-skill jobs.

Better forget the Starbucks and fast-food restaurant and make that offices for securities traders, a legal practice, one tax-consultant, amd a developer. Maybe a dentist.

Don't Rain on This Parade

"Undeterred by recent setbacks in the push to legalize same-sex marriage, tens of thousands of festively dressed people marched in parades around the country Sunday to celebrate the 35th anniversary of gay pride." So one story reads about parades for "gay" pride this past weekend.

"Festively dressed people"? That's a polite way to describe people (not all, of course, but many, many) dressed in lingerie and other paraphanalia designed to display, for male homosexuals at least, what their lifestyle is all about. I needn't say more, except that should any of your children be in the vicinity of a "gay pride parade," you would be wise to make sure they stay away. Definitely R, not PG-13.

But Chicago's WGN-TV, which used to be a "family-friendly" TV station, and home station of the Chicago Cubs, thought it okay to have their own float as part of the festivities in Chicago, attended by 400,000, it is reported. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago

Parade coordinator Richard Pfeiffer was quick to stress the diversity of spectators and participants. When World War II veterans wave from a car right behind a float of drag queens, gay people can't be pigeonholed, he said. ... "You have people with costumes and glitter and then people in suits and ties."

"I think it's amazing. ... This is one of the few parades with a positive message," said Nick Polydoros, 24, of Chicago.

Most other parades are negative? St. Patrick's Day parade? Veterans? Labor Day? Fourth of July? Memorial Day?

To celebrate WGN's "diversity, I guess, it is now advertising that this fall it will begin broadcasting "Sex in the City." Make sure the kids tune in.

Meanwhile, Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed two bills into law Sunday "that advocates say will boost protection against hate crimes."

One bill makes discrimination against minorities, the elderly and other protected people during housing transactions a civil rights violation, a news release issued by the governor's office says. ...

The other law makes it a hate crime to use electronic communication to harass someone because of his or her race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability.

This last one has me wondering exactly what the law means, never mind however it might be interpreted by all those strict (de)constructionist judges out there. So, does a blog critcizing homosexuality constitute a hate crime? Somewhere, sometime, somebody will be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to jail for expressing their opposition to the creeping homosexual agenda. And they won't be festively dressed when they go.

Encomium Iacobo

I wish to praise someone to whom praise is due: Nathan Joy James, the pastor of the church we attend. Although Calvary Memorial Church of Racine, Wisconsin, would be identified, in the old style, as Evangelical, Nathan does not call himself that because he shares my difficulties with the defining ascendancy of the movement. I think I would simply call him a Baptist. In any event, he has, at considerable cost to his reputation for being an appropriately religious character, kept a great deal of foolishness at bay, and does the sort of preaching that I can understand.

One might ask what sort of preaching someone with a Ph. D. in theology cannot understand. I’ll tell you: the kind that nobody should be able to understand because it is shoddy, unreflective, incautious, illogical, or party-spirited—the kind in which one cannot hear any truth because it is full of bunkum, boilerplate, clatter, and gas—or the kind that, reliably containing even small amounts of these contaminants, cannot be digested in peace.

Nathan’s preaching is a safe haven for reflective listening. One can safely leave his discourse to meditate on something he has (or hasn’t) said, and then, returning, easily and quickly pick up his thread. He studies the scripture passage upon which he is preaching at length, bringing both the intellect and imagination fully to bear on it, yet he avoids speculation or romanticization. Because he is wary of speculation and respectful of the Great Tradition, his preaching is remarkably surefooted and catholic. In the years I have heard him, only one or two sermons would not have been suitable for any orthodox congregation of the Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox traditions, because all these traditions regard the scriptures as authoritative, and the closer one adheres to them in preaching, using scripture to explain and interpret scripture, the more universally Christian the preaching becomes. Those who read the public discourses of Father Reardon, or have had the good fortune of hearing him preach at his parish in Chicago, will find exactly the same thing in his work. In fact, this is what defines good preaching wherever it is found.

I know people like Pr. James and Fr. Reardon often feel they are preaching to the wind, that they must wait until heaven to receive any substantial reward for their labors. This is not a particularly comforting thought, because along with contemplation of the reward comes the expectation of the Judgment Seat of Christ where good men think it hardly possible that much if not most of what they might receive will turn out to be wood, hay, and stubble, and be burned away. (The Lord does appear to use the carrot and stick method on us a good deal.) And Nathan, being a melancholic, like most deep men, will not be able to take unalloyed joy in this temptation to think better of himself than he ought. But praise and thanks should nevertheless be given where they are due, and sometimes needed, for bread along the way. 

No, I Am NOT an Evangelical

I’ve got to quit doing this. My wife says I’ve got to quit doing this. Every time I do, it bothers me for a week, and she suffers for it. I’ve got to quit listening to church services on the radio.

This morning on the way to church I tuned in to a large Evangelical gathering. It was communion Sunday. The pastor, at the distribution of the bread, said something like, “We’re about to do something momentous, Lord, something that you told us to do in remembrance of You, Lord, something, Lord, indescribably precious and meaningful, Lord . . . .” But “This is my body”?  No. And then, to even things up, some woman was asked to thank God for whatever it was they were drinking. Her prayer, while humble, was similarly off the point. I hope the audience enjoyed the snack.

When I was a boy these churches, which prided themselves on their deep devotion to an inerrant Bible (a term that has pretty much disappeared from their lexicon), at the same time did away with the passages unfriendly to teetotalism and several other things. Although they didn’t believe the Lord’s body and blood were received in the communion meal, at least they read his words over it, presumably because they were in the Bible. In the interim a good many of them have apparently added to their list of taboos the Words of Institution and anything unfriendly to egalitarianism.

If the heretics deny scripture outright and the liberals reinterpret it to the specifications of modernism, the Evangelical method of nullifying the Word of God is to ignore what they don’t like and substitute something they prefer, slathering down the whole process with pious claptrap and painfully tendentious "scholarship."  The egalitarians of this generation sound very much like their fathers, referring, in their own fashion, to "the original Greek" to show that Jesus didn't make real wine at Cana, or that wives aren't really expected to "obey" their husbands.

Sometime during the last generation we came to the point where no orthodox Christian will want to identify himself as an Evangelical, and those who wish to call themselves orthodox and Evangelical will have more effective denial of scripture to answer for than they have had at any time in their short and ambiguous history.

Corporate Headhunters

Many may have seen this article, "Is Your Boss a Psychopath?" recently, but I pass it on in case you haven't and you know someone who should read it. It does raise some interesting questions about corporate culture and the sort of people that we have perhaps unwittingly rewarded with the greatest honor one can receive in our culture: fabulous wealth, big bucks, multi-million dollar salaries.

A snippet from the article:

Such scandals as Enron and WorldCom aren't just aberrations; they represent what can happen when some basic currents in our business culture turn malignant. We're worshipful of top executives who seem charismatic, visionary, and tough. So long as they're lifting profits and stock prices, we're willing to overlook that they can also be callous, conning, manipulative, deceitful, verbally and psychologically abusive, remorseless, exploitative, self-delusional, irresponsible, and megalomaniacal. So we collude in the elevation of leaders who are sadly insensitive to hurting others and society at large.

Christians were warned not to seek the whole world at the cost of one's soul. It seems that some who seek the world do, in fact, lose their souls--even in this life, it would seem.

Supreme Court Awards Naboth's Vineyard to Ahab, Inc.: Attorney Jezebel Says Jobs to Be Created by New Construction

I have had numerous encounters with city and county governments. All that I have seen up close I have become convinced are run by a cooperative circle of local movers and shakers, mostly business people, principally for their personal enrichment, and thereafter for the public good, since public welfare obviously serves their interests. To be sure, not all these people are devoid of public spirit and of good motives, but once fresh meat is thrown down in the middle of the pack, altruism has a recognized tendency to decline.  Recently a large, bleeding chunk has been thrown down by the Supreme Court. 

There is some truth to the observation that when some become rich others are enriched in their train. What is good for General Motors or Bill Gates or the Harbor Park Business Owners Association is, up to a point, good for the nation. But it is also true that the United States was founded as a place where the laws protected a free man’s property from seizure for the personal advantage of the rich and powerful.

The recent Supreme Court decision allowing local authorities to seize private property for commercial development as long as it can show that there is a valid public interest in doing so (which will be no difficulty—palace-building creates jobs) in effect ennobles the local Rotary, and sends the sharks heading for the beaches. It is one of the most novel and pernicious pieces of judicial legislation this country has ever seen, a weird hybrid of communism and hypercapitalism. It must be defeated as quickly as possible, before the feeding frenzy begins.

Public Schools and Neighbor Love

I have received quite a bit of reaction to my post on the debate over Southern Baptists and public schools. One correspondent wondered if I was not sacrificing love of neighbor for safety and security. After all, he argued, we should love not just our own children but the children of others. This means seeking to influence the public schools by keeping our children in them. I don't think this argument works.

Love of neighbor is, of course, a mandate of Christian discipleship. And love of neighbor entails seeking educational opportunity for children outside of our families of our ecclesial communities. This is why we should support efforts at commonsense educational reform. The question, however, is whether this love of neighbor annihilates the unique parental responsibilities within the family?

The Scriptures consistently speak of education within the context of a father imparting wisdom and knowledge to his sons and daughters (Deut 6; Prov 1). Jesus appropriates this imagery when he speaks of watching what his Father is doing and doing likewise (John 5:19-22). This does not mean that home schooling is the only (or even, necessarily, the best) option, any more than it means that the father must grow all of the family's food.  It does mean, however, that fathers are responsible for their children's well being, in terms of food, nurture, and education. This is above and beyond the call of love of neighbor. After all, the apostle Paul warns that the man who does not provide for his own family is "worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim 5:8).

Often joined with the neighbor-love argument is the "salt and light" contention that being a Great Commission people necessitates remaining in the public schools in order to influence them.  Let's remind ourselves that the public schools are a recent invention. Are we compelled to leave our children in whatever system the government institutes, or else sacrifice our evangelistic responsibilities? Some school systems have "preschool" programs that begin at age three. Are we obligated to these as well? How about the "after-school" programs that run until 6, 7, even 8 PM? What if the United States government decides to universalize boarding schools?

Moreover, it doesn't seem that the "salt and light" advocates can live consistently with their arguments. After all, if public school education is part of the Great Commission mandate then why send one's children to a relatively good public school? Why not send them to the worst possible public school as an effort to reach the "World A" of the educational system? Most would not do this. Why not? Because they believe that the education of their children is important. Exactly...

That brings us to the real nub of the disagreement. Do the public schools really do what they claim to do, that is, enculturate children into the mainstream of contemporary values? I think they do. The underlying question then is whether the mainstream of contemporary values is consonant with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Snake Oil from the Old Hippies

Responding to my recent blogs on the passing fancies of the management world, a correspondent sent a link to a site describing what is apparently one of the latest of them: “Great Groups.”  One of its bellwethers has been kind enough to put its characteristics and dogmas in plain view, and one reads them with morbid interest. As with most tricks, it loses its fascination once seen through, but how much must be invested in them by fad-chasing administrators and their hapless workers before its inevitable and carefully hushed-up death is died, when a little bit of reflective work on first principles could have spared them all a world of silliness and trouble?

Eventually reality dawns; eventually these schemes are seen through, but not until the damage is done.  Their originators are rarely denounced as quacks or con-artists because those who have believed their gospel and imposed it on their subordinates have a vested interest in not appearing to be fools. The locals who have been hawking the peddler's elixirs are hardly apt to denounce him when he has left town.

In any event, here are some extracts from this description of Great Group characteristics, with my commentary:

---At the heart of every Great Group is a shared dream. All Great Groups believe that they are on a mission from God, that they could change the world, make a dent in the universe. They are obsessed with their work. It becomes not a job but a fervent quest. That belief is what brings the necessary cohesion and energy to their work.

Nice work if you can get it. And it is kind of him to expose the scheme’s Achilles’ heel right here at the beginning of his list. Soberly read, this means that the “Great Group" is impracticable for almost every task, for there are very, very few labors that, by their nature, can or should generate the levels of interest and cooperation described here as “necessary.” On a mission from God to provide a plan to keep the break room orderly?  To design a better widget?  To plan a curriculum?  Get real.  There are few things sillier than the attempt to assemble a group like this for the mundane tasks that make up the vast majority of our labor—except perhaps the antics of those assigned to do the cheerleading. And few things make for a worse day at the office than the announcement that everyone is henceforth to devote his soul and body to the development of a Better Thingummy.

There is a distortion, not only unreasonable, but wicked, in all this, for what is required here for the formation and function of the group goes far beyond what is usually right and possible, or within the rights of, those who demand it. And make no mistake: because of this it must be demanded in order to do the vast number of jobs that are there to be done, because a not only a reasonsed sense of proportion, but respect for the value of the person, gag reflexively on the notion that a life is to be valued with widgets.

--They are protected from the "suits." All Great Groups seem to have disdain for their corporate overseers and all are protected from them by a leader. 

Thus protecting them from not only the intervention of naysaying fuddyduddies, but wisdom of maturity and the executive and funding power necessary to see most projects through to completion.  Here once again here is the theorist’s approach to the real world, but also a gratuitous and irresponsible anti-establishment prejudice. No enterprise can long endure without the encouragement and cooperation of “the suits,” for the simple reason that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

--Great Groups make strong leaders. On one hand, they're all nonhierarchical, open, and very egalitarian. Yet they all have strong leaders. That's the paradox of group leadership.   

Here is the kernel of truth that makes the pitch marginally plausible. A group that is driven, highly dedicated and focused, as described in the first maxim, will do most of its own executive work.  The task of the group leader will be primarily coordinative--and he still will need the cooperation of "the suits" to carry through--represented in one of his examples in this article by a competent suit who kept the incompetent ones at bay while the Great Group did its work.

What is described here is very much like a good marriage, in which the authority of the husband is present but rarely if ever invoked because the wife shares his vision and his values. This is not egalitarianism—it is in fact the perfection of hierarchy--but it may look like it from the outside. There is no question in the best marriages about who is in charge, about who leads, but the husband knows that pulling rank on his wife, or arbitrarily restricting her field of discretion, is a last desperate resort that is probably a sign of his failure to lead as he should. (Marriages are unquestionably among those few “groups” that can rightly demand the kind of loyalty and dedication that widget-makers want, but haven't the proper right to demand.) Of course the foolish, obstructive exercise of hierarchical authority is deadly to any enterprise, but no more damaging than egalitarianism, the organizational equivalent of headlessness.

Some people imagine that being in full charge means the constant exercise of a heavy hand. No, that is not the sign of the master’s touch. But no organization in which the heavy hand is not readily available on the occasions it is needed will survive.

------------------------

In the real world "the suits," and the realism and experience and authority this epithet represents, must not only validate the product at every stage of development, but supervise the group.  They are the ones who do the driving and provide the focus.  Or at least this is what they are supposed to do. It is the task of the executive and is what executive authority is required for. 

Organizations that make a practice of leaving people at their first level of incompetence, or “kick them upstairs” when they make a dog's breakfast of their downstairs work, or hire or promote them because they are the president’s nephew, or have a Harvard MBA, or are women, or from a favored ethnic group (and they are rife), or for any reason other than competence or promise at the appointed task, will eventually be run down by incompetence. (Even the simplest observer from the outside can easily see what has happened to Howard Johnson’s or Maytag or the Milwaukee Public Museum or the City of Detroit or that Ramada Inn we stayed in in Cincinnati.)

Thousands of enterprises fail every year, and many unquestionably from “the suits’” lack of courage and vision, their failure to encourage, support, and direct competent and enterprising work. But wherever this situation is regarded as the paradigm in which the Great Group characteristically functions, an organizational pathology is assumed which in the real world kills both the group and its work, just as the disease that kills the pregnant mother kills her child as well.

 

The Party Spirit

Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are mad at Karl Rove for comments he made about liberals and 9/11, Republicans (and Mayor Daley) were incensed at comments Dick Durbin made about our military treatment of prisoners (using words like Nazis), Democrats and Republicans shot back at Howard Dean for comments he made about "white Christians." The party wars seem to be heating up and there is no end in sight.

For myself, I weary of the partisan nature of our national politics, especially the two-party system, which is not required anywhere in our constitution, but seems to be just the way things are. Would that we had 20 parties, or none at all.

David McCollough in his John Adams writes:

Like Washington and many others, Adams had become increasingly distraught over the rise of political divisiveness, the forming of parties or factions. That political parties were an evil that could bring the ruination of republican government was doctrine he, with others, had long accepted and espoused. "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other," Adams had observed to a correspondent while at Amsterdam, before the Revolution ended. Yet this is exactly what happened. The "turbulent maneuvers" of factions, he now wrote privately, could "tie the hands and destroy the influence" of every honest man with a desire to serve the public good. There was a "division of sentiments over everything," he told his son-in-law William Smith. "How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of the parts!"

What we are witnessing is what Adams feared. After a while, genuine principle goes out the window and it's all about whether a move advances the party ("the parts"), whether it gains more power.

I think it fair to say that the hands of many an honest man are tied in serving in politics. Should I run for public office, to even stand a chance I would have to choose to be a Democrat or a Republican. Nothing else matters. Two parties. Like it or leave it. Can't at least some declare their independence? Yes, but then there's the small matter of ... big bucks for the campaign.

Death Is Not a Happy Ending

The Spring/Summer 2005 issue of Presbyterians Pro-Life News includes a perceptive article by Terry Schlossberg on "What Terri Schiavo Taught Us About Dying." The most insightful reminder in the Schlossberg's piece (which is not yet online) hits the weakest link for many contemporary Christians: death is not a happy ending.

Schlossberg writes:

Approving medical means to bring about the deaths of the vulnerable often are rationalized by statements that death is a desirable end to perceived suffering. But Christian faith does not glorify death. It does not welcome death as a friend or as an escape from the burdens of this life. Scripture speaks of death as the "last enemy," that which is overcome by the Savior.

Schlossberg's point is much needed. If the culture of death ever seduces Western Christianity, it will not be because it redefined "personhood." It will be because it twists Christian piety to embrace death as a morally neutral "stairway to heaven."

Christian pulpits must resound with a full-orbed message about death. Yes, to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ. But this is not the final hope of the Christian. The final hope is to share in Christ's resurrection, and so to overturn the curse of sin and the reign of death. 

"This Doesn't Happen to Us"

"This doesn't happen to us," he said. "We're historians, we're scholars, and Peter was the kindest person. ... We're all in a state of shock and disbelief."

This is what was said by a professor in response to the brutal slaying of Peter D'Agostino, a University of Illinois at Chicago historian in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, two days ago. He died of "blunt head trauma" (sounds like a baseball bat to me, seriously. He was not shot, not knifed. His head was bashed in.) According to the Chicago Tribune,

Although D'Agostino was found on the grass outside a home in the 1100 block of South Harvey Avenue, the man who lives in that house said the position of D'Agostino's body was peculiar. He was lying flat on his back, his hands at his side, said resident Blake Hayner.

D'Agostino's leather bag was on the sidewalk a few feet away, and his glasses were folded neatly atop the bag, said Hayner, and D'Agostino still had his wallet and jewelry.

A large bruise already had formed along almost the entire length of D'Agostino's right arm, Hayner said.

"He was lying straight, as if in bed," Hayner said. "It looked as if somebody had laid him down."

D'Agostino, 42, has been writing about Italian-Americans and the Catholic Church.

His writing and research played a crucial role in the linking of religious history and immigration history, especially that of Italian-Americans, they said.

"Peter was an independent thinker, pushing the rest of us to rethink the way the story of U.S. Catholicism is told," said R. Scott Appleby, historian at the University of Notre Dame and a longtime friend of D'Agostino's.

With the publication of "Rome in America," D'Agostino had "just hit his stride," Appleby said. ... "Rome in America," which argued that papal myopia had yielded a compromise with Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History and was included in the Tribune's "Best of 2004" rankings.

I included that last bit in case you're wondering what sort of work he did and what some of his views were. (I don't endorse the book, of course.)

The killing took place in broad daylight, and if robbery doesn't seem to be the motive, what was the motive? A witness said he heard a car drive up, a "no!", a car door close, car drive off, and the man was down. Bludgeoned, but apparently not robbed. Police are scrambling for answers. True, this "doesn't happen" to professors of history. Unless, somehow, you make enemies. There must be more to the story. A lot more.

Film Quotes

On the light side, the American Film Institute this week listed what it considers to be the top 100 lines of dialogue from movies. The list is headed by Rhett Butler's "immortal" words to Scarlet O'Hara. It also includes a number of what I consider dubious distinction ("A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti," "The Silence of the Lambs," 1991--?)
and I think would have better if limited to the Top Fifty.

In case you're wondering, here's some from the very bottom of the barrel:

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary," "Dead Poets Society," 1989.
"Snap out of it!", "Moonstruck," 1987.
"Nobody puts Baby in a corner," "Dirty Dancing," 1987.
"I'm king of the world!", "Titanic," 1997.

Every one has his own favorite lines, certainly. If I had to at least replace some of these, I would throw in, "Max, he's wearing a dress!" "The Producers." There are a few on the list that have become commonplace--"failure to communicate" (Cool Hand Luke).

The God We Trust

In what I find a troubling decision today by the U.S. Supreme Court, local governments now apparently have the right to purchase any row of privately-owned houses they choose for development.

The 5-4 ruling upheld a plan by officials in a coastal Connecticut town to condemn nine homes of longtime residents that would be replaced with an office complex and a marina.

The dispute ... pitted a community's hopes for economic rebirth against an individual's right to keep one's home.

Economic development emerged as the clear winner.

The high court's opinion goes further than before in allowing the government to invoke its "eminent domain" and to seize private property from unwilling sellers.

The Constitution says government may take private property "for public use" if it pays the owners "just compensation." Originally, public use meant the land was used for roads, canals or military bases. In the 19th century, railroads were permitted to take private lands because they served the public.

In the mid-20th century, the court said officials could condemn homes and stores in "blighted" areas as part of a redevelopment plan. That 1954 decision helped trigger various urban renewal projects across the nation.

Yes, those were widely successful and produced the most "unblighted" neighborhoods in Chicago that I have ever seen.

In today's decision, the court went a step further and said officials need not claim they were condemning blighted properties or clearing slums. Now, as long as officials hope to create jobs or raise tax collections, they can seize the homes of unwilling sellers, the court said. This "public purpose" is a "public use" of the land, the court said in Kelo vs. New London.

How is this public? The developers who will benefit from this are private individuals out to make money for themselves. Yes, they might provide jobs, so is this an unfunded unlegislated court-ordered jobs program? Then again, a developer might build a strip mall, it might not make any difference and in three years become, well, a vacant strip mall. Who is going to tear down that strip mall and put up townhouses? After how many years?

The justices said they were unwilling to "second guess" local officials on what is best for their communities.

Well they should be. I saw the effects of a government clearance of old buildings in downtown Dumbarton Scotland a few years ago. Along High Street the shops in the old buildings were bustling, but to go to the Post Office you had to walk into an ugly courtyard with 60s-style concrete store fronts. This complex was built to stimulate the downtown. Most of the stores were empty and trash was abundant. The locals hate it and I was told that it is supposed to be torn down.

"Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government," said Justice John Paul Stevens. Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined him.

The dissenters said the court was ignoring the basic rights to private property that were written into the Constitution.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said all property was now potentially subject to seizure. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory," she said.

Dana Berliner, one of her attorneys at the Institute for Justice in Washington, called it a "dark day for American homeowners. Every home, small business or church would produce more taxes as a shopping center or office building. And according to the court, that's good enough reason for eminent domain."

I do fear what the toxic mix that developers with loads of money, public officials, and campaign contributions will undoubtedly turn into, not that there is corruption anywhere in government at the local level, especially in Chicago.

And what might the court decide should a private developer want to build a private Christian school that will create new jobs? Can they tear down your house to do this? Probably not, since the property in most such cases will not be taxable.

It seems the justices in the majority have decided that taxable money is more important than the private rights of homeowners. It's the god they trust.

Going Back to the Beginning

This is very funny, if you've ever read anything by the extreme traditionalist Catholic groups it's satirizing: The Society of St. Pius I .

A Dumb But Popular Book

An interesting article from the Times Literary Supplement (the Times in this case being the London one): Truth and falsity in The Da Vinci Code by Bernard Hamilton.

He addresses at some length the book's now infamous claim that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate," which is, shall I say, inaccurate. A car or drug company that made such a claim would find itself being told by a judge to pay a really big fine, and some of their executives would be asking their tailors for prison wear.

Having exposed several of the book's errors, Hamilton argues that

Although some readers may identify with the anti-Catholic prejudices of Langdon and Teabing, I suspect that this has had little to do with the book's popularity. The Da Vinci Code belongs to the genre of occult mystery novels, which range from Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni to the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Dennis Wheatley. The only difference is that Dan Brown is dealing with a "white" mystery -- the secret teachings of Jesus. Such works, always popular, appeal to the Gnostic which is lurking in many of us, the desire to be part of an elite with privileged information.

That's the obvious explanation, and a true one: you can never over-estimate the human desire to be on the inside of a secret. And even though uncounted millions of people have read the book and know the secret, it still feels like a secret because all those Catholics don't believe it.

The Da Vinci adept is still in the inner circle of those who really know. He is one of those who sees, as opposed to, say, Pope Benedict and that Enemy of Enlightenment, Truth, Justice, Peace, Flowers, Butterflies, and Guilt-Free Sex, the Catholic Church. It would be unkind to comment on the intelligence of these adepts, but let me just say I'm not worried that they know something I don't.

The writer then offers two other reasons for the book's popularity:

First, it is constructed as a series of interconnected puzzles. The solution to one set confronts the investigators with another. Readers are not asked to solve the clues, but if reasonably well educated they will get satisfaction from understanding them.

And more interestingly:

The second reason is very different. Although it starts as a thriller, the
book develops into a Grail Quest.

His explanation of the contemporary appeal of the Grail Quest is disappointing, but still interesting, and I commend the article even to those of you who have reached your limit for reading about The Da Vinci Code.

Abortion Foes & Life Support

In a story on today's Chicago Tribune's website, a local company is reported to be touting the promises of stem cell research--stem cells not from embryos but from adult bone marrow.

PHILADELPHIA -- June 23. Human stem cells taken from a patient's bone marrow may help in treating Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurologic diseases, the chairman of a Chicago biotechnology firm told a meeting here Wednesday.

Stem cells are the body's generalized building blocks and have the ability to produce tissue to build bones, nerves and muscle. Kiminobu Sugaya of Chicago's NewNeural LLC has processed human stem cells into nerve cells and implanted them in the brains of aged, demented rats.

The implanted nerve cells improved the rats' memories, Sugaya found, and could one day do the same for humans.

"In the animals we see a tremendous increase in neurons," Sugaya told a meeting of BIO 2005, the biotech industry's largest trade show.

The technique also avoids the ethical and political issues associated with using cells cloned from a human embryo.

Abortion foes have targeted embryo research as morally wrong, and President Bush opposes allowing the federal government to fund such stem cell research. . . . The embryos typically are unused byproducts of fertility treatments.

Well, not exactly. It's interesting to see that the ideological label used to describe someone like myself who opposes the use of human embryos for research is "abortion foe." As it that is all there is to it. Because I oppose abortion I oppose embryo research? What does one have to do with the other?

"Abortion foe" is a knee-jerk phrase used to paint all of us into a political Religious Right corner on the narrowest possible basis. You know those guys--the Abortion Foes. What is papered over is the fact there is something else motivating my opposition: a fundamental respect for the sanctity of all human life. Because of this, I oppose abortion. Becaues of this, I oppose embryonic stem cell research. Because of this I opposed euthanasia legislation and starving and dehydrating patients to death. I might even be persuaded to oppose capital punishment--but, you see, the problem with this position (not that it is necessarily insurmountable) is that I believe at bottom it is a statement about just how sacred a human life is.

Anyway, can't journalists bring themselves to call some of us "pro-life"? (Once again, comments are welcome.)

Jefferson's Invitation

While I am reading David McCollough's recent 1776, I am also revisiting recent notes made in the margins of his John Adams, finding a good deal of food for thought. On p. 450 McCollough writes:

Once, briefly [during the course of correspondence between Adams and Jefferson], a difference in philsophy was touched upon, when Jefferson observed that the "paper transactions" of one generation should "scarcely be considered by succeeding generations," a principle he had earlier stated to Madison as "self-evident," that "'the earth belongs in usufruct to the living': that the dead have neither the power nor rights over it." Adams, however, refused to accept the idea that each new generation could simply put aside the past, sweep clean the slate, to suit its own desires. Life was not like that, and if Jefferson thought so, it represented a fundamental difference in outlook.

Several things:

1) Jefferson obviously sees that it is possible for the dead to hold some power, through, one would assume, the willful acts of the living such as Adams, who are cognizant of the dead. His claim cannot be self-evident, a simple matter of what clearly the state of nature is, since he must argue people such as Adams out of this way of acting.

2) Jefferson on this point should be no friend of the environmentalist, since the use of the earth in the present simply is for those currently living. They have no obligation to the past, and I would argue that neither do they have any obligation to the future--if one accepts Jefferson's line (which I don't). But I think he has no means for claiming an obligation to future generations, and thus a enemy of the environmentalist who argues for stewardship for future generations.

3) hirdly, Jefferson seems to open the door for those who argue that the intent of the Founders, therefore, can be considered, but each generation is free to ignore original intent embodied in our Founding documents--just as long as the duly elected and legally appointed means for rewriting the meaning of, say, the Consitution is respected. In other words, a judge has authority as a member of the living generation to reinterpret the law, though, of course, most think it's best that he reinterpret using previous decisions and some type of "reasoning" to explain his reinterpretation. One might travel a long distance from original intent, of course, by following incremental steps of "reasonable" adjustments and following "penumbras" and "emanations of penumbras." In a Darwinian fashion, one might even create a new species of the Constitution hardly resembling the original.

4) Finally, and most importantly, I note that Jefferson is famously quoted as the source of the "wall of separation" betwen church and state, a phrase not found in the Constitution, nor implied. Organizations like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State often sound as if they are appealing to founding documents in clamoring to forbid the teaching anything other than evolution in public schools, when their real source is simply Thomas Jefferson, and a letter of his in which he used that phrase. But Jefferson is also a source who also tells us that we have no obligation to consider the view of dead people on the matter as determinative for our generation. In fact, Jefferson wished for "a little rebellion now and then to clear the atmosphere."

Modern Americans could oblige him on that point, overturning judicial decisions based on a flawed understanding of the establishment clause of the Constitution, while at the same time returning to the original intent of the clause. If a rebellion in favor of Jefferson's wall can be tolerated as it has been so far, then a rebellion in favor of Adam's view is also fair game as well, and should be considered so by both Jeffersonians who believe in freedom to ignore the past and by supporters of original intent, like Adams.

Well, so I it seems to me. But I'm not a lawyer. But still a member of the present generation. (Your comments are welcome.)

Groupwork, Anyone?

A few months ago the extraordinary beneficence of her employer showered upon my wife an insulated lunchbag emblazoned with the slogan of its current SMF (see my recent TQM blog) to the effect that Teams Make Everything Better. The implication is that if one brain working on things is good, two are better. Two heads being better than one, three is better yet, and so on up to some optimum number after which too many brains might be acknowledged to spoil the broth.

Far be it from me to disparage teamwork where teamwork is required, but in my experience nearly everywhere someone has called for it as a way to solve problems or do creative work, it does the opposite through decapitation and leveling.

By decapitation I mean removal, compromise, or occultation of executive authority. Headless bodies, as I learned in my chicken-butchering days, can do a great deal of very impressive thrashing about, moving from Point A to Point B with remarkable speed. But unless one’s definition of success is "to be pulled about by whatever nerves happen to be firing, leaving the body to lie where it falls," none of the movement has meaning. By leveling I mean the downgrading, discouraging, compromise, and failure to reward as such, individual accomplishment.

Both of these must be done to develop the Group Mind (a devilish mockery, by the way, of the mind of God), the mind to which everyone contributes but no one is allowed to dominate, either as executive or genius, no matter how talented or suitable they might be. The lazy or incompetent enter the group with as much right to create and modify as the diligent and gifted—and, by George, they, in blissful consciousness of their unwonted power to waste time and vandalize, customarily do. Since there is no effective executive to control them, or to coordinate critically the product of real ability, the result of the group’s activity is almost always a monument to mediocrity, the proverbial committee-designed camel. 

Groups like this do not arise naturally. They are instituted and maintained, quite often forcibly, by errant authority, for two reasons, I believe. The first is laziness. Good group work—and there IS such a thing--requires careful planning and supervision by those who institute it. This calls for high levels of effort, often stressful effort, on the part of an administrative authority. Frequent judgments must be made on the quality of the work being done and its applicability to goals. Along with this goes responsibility for success or failure. There is far less risk in crediting or blaming the amorphous group.

The second reason is the fear of being a judge or critic of other’s work in the age of equality, protected classes, and social mores that make it more and more difficult for those who would shoulder the burdens of leadership. Increasingly these people find it impossible not to transgress an ever-growing canon of rules that make the correction and direction of a subordinate immoral. Attempts to do what needs to be done to maintain and even improve the world grind to a halt where there are no such things as true heads or true subordinates, and correcting or directing people is considered an attack on their persons--ask any teacher who tries to buck grade inflation--while an attack upon (i.e., criticism of) a member of a protected class is the best way to bring a sudden end to one’s career.

Wherever there would be true accomplishment this mentality must be overthrown. There must be clearly defined lines of authority and responsibility, talent and productive diligence must be sought out, encouraged, and appropriately rewarded. Executive competence must receive high remuneration, laziness and incompetence disciplined, and ejected with due haste if it persists—for the demoralization this brings is one of the most destructive forces that faces any enterprise. There can be no class protection without frank acknowledgement that it is the response of charity to inferiority, that the protected have no right to the gift they are receiving, and that the object of the protection is to improve the members of the class so that protection becomes unnecessary.

The modern group mind militates against all of this. It is no wonder that hard-working and productive people so often shudder when they are informed that they are about to be “recruited” into a group project.  If I had my druthers I would require anyone proposing one to show, before it began, that proper planning had been done to avoid the creation of this monster.

Anglican Spin Cycle, Episode 9

The Episcopal News Service has this:

[ENS, Nottingham, June 21, 2005] -- The blessing of same-gender unions in the Anglican Church of Canada was the focus of its June 21 presentation to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).

"We're here to let you know we value our place in the Anglican Communion," said Bishop Suffragan Sue Moxley of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. "The decision was made to come to ACC. We agreed to make this presentation ... We wanted to be here."

The Church of Canada's elected members of the ACC are attending this meeting as observers as voted by its Council of General Synod in response to the request of the international Anglican Primates' Meeting. 

In 2002, the Diocese of New Westminster authorized the blessings of same-gender unions. This action prompted the Anglican Primates' Meeting to invite the Canadians to provide a presentation at ACC-13 as recommended by the Windsor Report. 

The Canadians' presentation followed a similar session offered by U.S. Episcopalians explaining the reasoning around the ordination of a bishop living in a committed same-gender union. Like the Canadians, the Episcopal Church's elected ACC members are attending as observers.

Well, actually, what the story doesn't say is that both the Canadians and Americans were there as observers because their official participation is no longeraccepted by the Primates, because of their divisive actions on homosexuality, and they were told to come and explain themselves. The lead suggests that the Canadians decided "same-sex unions" was their choice of topic. What's really happening is Canadians and American Anglicans who belong to their respective Anglican Communion Provinces (ECUSA in the US and the Anglican Church of Canada) have been told, essentially, shape up or ship out on the matter of same-sex blessings.

Of course the bias of the news service is apparent when it can write, without using quotation marks, about a bishop living in a committed same-gender union. The proper English phrase should have been something along the lines of a divorced man living in a homosexual relationship elected and confirmed as bishop of an American diocese.

Speaking of Americans, their appearance at the meeting was reported:

Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold joined six presenters at the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting in Nottingham June 21, explaining that while the Episcopal Church includes diverse views on sexuality, common mission continues.

"Although certain actions by the Episcopal Church have deeply distressed a number of you, we have not come to argue," Griswold said. "I want to be clear that the Episcopal Church has not reached a common mind. However, it is our desire to be faithful to scripture. It is my hope that in the tradition of classical Anglicanism we will be united in Christ's love and called to serve the world in Christ's name."

The presentation came at the invitation of the ACC and in response specifically to the Windsor Report's request (paragraph 135) to outline "how a person living in a same gender union may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ."

There was nothing in the report from ENS that I could see that qualified as such an outline. And the Windsor Report actually requested that it be explained, not "outlined." The testimony, as reported, was the usual mishmash: How one cleric came to terms with her gay son. She noted some homosexuals claim to have been healed, but that no one can be healed from something that isn't an illness to begin with. And about how one bishop opposing Robinson's consecration and one opposing it could still at the same time be friends and live in the same church.  Perhaps some American  bishops can accomplish such a feat of theological fleixbility. But not their brother bishops in Africa or Asia, where the majority of Anglicans are to be found. The witness of Canadians and Americans will not impress the Africans much, I'd wager.

Sorry to be reporting  one more slow sad episode in the demise of the Anglican Communion. Like the British Empire, were its days just numbered?