Politics and Religion

Politics and religion have been dancing a long time. And every time it happens, politics ends up leading - and stepping all over the feet of religion. Mike Woodruff "The Friday Update" Woodruff is senior pastor at a multi-site church in the northern suburbs of Chicago.  My wife has been reading me quotes from his updates for a few weeks now, and I always sigh at what new Christian site she has found that I'm not going to like.  But I am entirely wrong about this and I find his simple style engaging.  I think he is doing what I do, only better.

I have aware of this concept for some time - it is very much part of Lewis's teaching, such as the "Christianity and..." of Screwtape, several of the essays in God in the Dock, and most chillingly, in That Hideous Strength. I thought we came to "the fell incensed points of might opposites" (Hamlet) in the 80s and 90s, when I was assailed by the mostly-decent but quietly self-righteous believers left and right. I was not good at being nice to either of them. 

It is back with a vengeance now, or maybe social media just gives a platform to the worst of them.  I don't think Episcopalians have heard many sermons on demon rum or adultery over the last decades - the priests reserve the hellfire and brimstone for the evils of Republicans.  I suspect it has the same effect as the old sermons did, scaring the bejeesus out of the already converted and making sure they don't dare leave and go out into the void, but chasing the unconverted away. I cannot believe the tone and accusation I am hearing from men and women of the cloth, spoken with the absolute certainty that is itself a red flag. 

Yet that isn't the whole story. Simmering up among the online young is a Christian conservatism with many good aspects, but entirely too welcoming to old demons in new disguises.  I don't know these children that well, and I doubt they will listen to one such as I.  But I have seen this before. I recall the revival weekends on church signs: Faith. Family. Country. " 

“If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.” CS Lewis The Four Loves.  Yes, if even love can fall, and can fall farther than mere lust, so too can love of family and love of country. The higher a thing can rise, the greater is its fall.

My own words would be that if a Christian develops any politics, the danger of the political beliefs becoming the faith is so great as to be irresistible without Divine aid.  Our tendency to self-deception is bottomless, whether we go off a cliff or sink into the marshes. The demon discovered simply hides one level further down. 

Are the Narnia Books or Lord of the Rings Allegorical?

 Earl at Wind Off The Hill (sidebar) has a new entry on this long-debated topic.

Old School

Shilo Brooks and Coleman Hughes discuss Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions, which came out almost 40 years ago. Sowell considered it his best, and it is the best of the four I have read. Tearing the argument down to the studs - the constrained versus unconstrained view of humanity - is greatly clarifying. 

Paul Anka Looks Young

 He was young here.  19.

We sat on the couch for prayer time tonight and I asked my wife to put her head on my shoulder. I started singing the song and she joined in.  For one line. Then we both said "That's all I know."

So here it is. BTW, I hadn't realised that he wrote the English lyrics to Frank Sinatra's "My Way."

 

Permanently Installed in a Back Closet

 

It pops its head out once in a while.

Why No Elections?

 I'll bet he had fun writing this today.

 

 

 

Michael Adams, KY Secretary of State

@KYSecState

We’re getting calls about polls being closed. They are closed because we do not have elections today. Kentucky votes next year. You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the Governor of Virginia. Sorry.

Shifting Values

It is interesting that liberals have become more and more European, and have oriented themselves toward Western European comparisons, just as Europe itself is disintegrating. They have castigated conservatives for being provincial and prided themselves on being internationalists.  But international means China, Japan, India, Indonesia, and Singapore now.  Europe still has plenty of juice and will for a long time.  "There's a great deal of ruin in a nation," as Adam Smith said. But the world is turning, and the new version is not well understood by either conservatives or liberals.

Norman Greenbaum

Before "Spirit In the Sky" with its fuzz bass, Norman Greenbaum was part of Dr. West's Medicine Show and composed this half-psychedelic, half-Roaring 20s novelty hit. 

Believers noted "Spirit in the Sky" was theologically weak right from the start. No Christian would say "Never been a sinner, I never sinned."  It seemed to be one of those California Jesus Freak things. People now know Greenbaum grew up in an observant Jewish family - big surprise, I know. But still...California or maybe Colorado or something. 

Well, there is even more to the story than that.  He was from Malden, MA, and was obsessed with Westerns as a boy.  What he was picturing was being inspired by a cowboy "dying with his boots on." Looked at from that perspective, a vague, general I've been a good person would be about what an average Jewish boy might think of Cowboy Christianity.

Less Parenting

 The Free Press has a new article The Secret to Parenting:  Do Less of It. I don't need to read it to know that I agree with it.  I often say to young couples about children "Have more children and pay less attention to them.  They'll be fine." It is analogous to the Rules of the House of God in the book of the same name about medical residency after med school.  The chief resident would tell the first years do as little medicine as possible. This was not laziness, but wisdom.  Over time, the author learned that the second half of the lesson was save it for when you really need it. The same applies for parenting.  Some children will require a lot (though even those should have as mujch time on their own as can be managed). All children will have episodes where they requirte more parenting. We found that once we mutually reached the conclusion that the current behavior required some sort of heightened response, defining what was wrong usually pointed to the answer.

I wish we had learned the lesson earlier.  Our first son in particular could have benefited from less pressure.  He would have done as well with half the effort. The three adopted sons all had periods when they needed more intervention, but we had learned to back off more by then and it was doable. 

Another Aspect of Concern For The Poor

 We discussed the restoration of Lazarus to life this morning, and specifically the oft-mentioned verse "Jesus wept." Why would he weep?  He knows that he is going to raise him.  Everything will be good again. At first glance it makes no sense.  Lewis offers that it is because Death is still the ultimate indignity. We skip too quickly over that part when we contemplate our own resurrection.  It wasn't supposed to be this way. Jesus was there for the creation of life and the creation of man, and he knew better than any other what was lost. That is in fact why his rising again is important. Without it, the good creation, Life, goes under the waves and is lost forever.  Everything was for naught. Joy would have meaning only for a moment, and suffering would have no meaning at all. 

I have always thought that the fatalist "death is part of life" is a twisting of the meaning. Death is not part of life; the new life transcends death, it does not negate it. 

Jesus does not evade this, he leans into it.  People are always dying, always being born blind, always going hungry.  When he says "the poor you will have with you always" he emphasises this. This world and perhaps the whole of creation is fallen and that will never be fixed, only transcended, especially on the last day.

This is why looking to fixes in this world is dangerous.  The fantasy is that if we just allowed the market to work freely, or just taxed the 1% more, or created more technical marvels then things would be fixed.  Even if we scale that back to "well, I mean pretty much fixed" the temptation is unchanged. It is the desire to get away from the shared pain, to have done with it all and be able to go outside and play. 

Any of our endeavors might help, and we should put great effort into that because of the life that we share with all the others.  But the temptation to want things to be fixed eventually descends into horror and cruelty, because we will excuse great cruelties and injustice in order to achieve this unachievable goal. I don't know how many tip-offs there are of this, so that we might recognise in ourselves that this demon has inhabited us.  But one is certainly when we believe that it is someone else who must fix it, that we have no part in the work at all. 

I had a patient years ago who was so delusional that he was unemployable. He collected a disability check, but felt he still should always do what he could for others. He got up every morning and swept the sidewalk on his block. It was the landlords' job, and the city's job, and the shopkeepers' job, but it was something he could do, so he did it. In the winter he would shovel it before sweeping it.  When he got old and could not shovel so much he felt bad about it. He also thought because he had food he should always give some away. When manipulators and thieves would take advantage he hit upon a new scheme.  He made a little extra each meal and would bring that little down to street level and look for someone to give it to.  I only knew bob a short while forty years ago but his example has stuck with me.  He had found a way to not only give back, but to be part of.  

We are called to be forever part of helping. Solving is a skill that can greatly aid helping, but solving is also a great temptation that leads to despair, and anger, and blaming others. The bastards.  Everything would be solved if it wasn't for them.

Shadow of My Own Heart

 

I had not ever heard of her.  Janis Joplin was considered the pioneer of white-girl-sings-the-blues, but Rose brings more style, more pain, a few years earlier. Come to think of it, I'll bet there were plenty before Joplin, but not in my ken.

Was Aethelred Really That Unready?

Aethelred only partly-deserves his bad rap in the history books.  His military actions are generally condemned, but even at that, he had a harder road than most other kings.  The Danish invaders were more formidable in the late 900s than even the Great Heathen Army of 865.  Aethelred bought them off for much of his reign, but did choose to fight them in ineffective ways intermittently. Buying them off was probably the best strategy most of the time - history teaches that wars are always more expensive than we pretend when we go in - but in retrospect historians thought this only encouraged the Danes to look at England as a renewable resource for raiding.  Better, they thought, to have defended fiercely at some earlier times. Yet he turned the tide a bit by hiring some Danes to protect England against other Vikings. While this is always a risky strategy, it can work for a long time.

So easy to say in retrospect. The disastrous Battle of Maldon was under Aethelred and considered partly his fault, but as the poem commemorates, the decisions of others were the problem.  It is one thing to say later if we were going to fight so arrogantly and stupidly it would have been better to buy them off this time as well, had the English fought and won then the subsequent raiding would probably have been different.  In that context, the execution of many already-settled Danes was a second disaster, because it gave the invaders reasons for revenge in addition to loot. None of it worked out, and it is agreed that he was not a good judge of character and chose terrible advisors.  This was ironic given that his name Aethel-red means "nobly-advised." 

Yet that is the real meaning of "Unready" at the time. It meant poorly-advised.  (Those who took German or know a bit of its history will recognise Rathaus as "advice-house" or town hall.) When he wasn't supporting the various nobles who were out for themselves rather than for him or for England, he did reasonably well. Despite the attacks and hemorrhaging money the institutions of government, not created by him but still new and potentially insecure, continued to function so that trade, law, the Church, and agriculture held up through it all.  More recent scholarship has tried to describe how exactly Aethelred accomplished this, but it is first noted that the whole thing might have collapsed but it didn't.  He must have done more than a few things right. Then, as now, people take for granted that life goes on and has some day-to-day predictability. But survival and success are never guaranteed. The take wisdom and effort to remain in place.

Sunday Links

Universal Basic Income has little to no effect in developed countries, but yet another study shows effectiveness in a poorer country 

A couple of years ago I highlighted the gathering of obesity research done at SMTM that point to chemical exposures, primarily lithium, as being the main culprit for weight gain. At the time, there was not much that consistently worked for weight loss, only calorie reduction and increased activity, which tends not to be sustainable. It sucks when reversing what got you into this mess doesn't seem to help get you out of it.  In response to a collection of criticisms, SMTM updates its defense, and I think the case looks even stronger now.

Why Is Switzerland So Rich? 

It's not just that Wikipedia gets it wrong, it's that they won't back down   

Jonny Steinberg on South African Crime and Punishment, the Mandelas' Marriage, and the Post-Apartheid Era.  "The writer of one of Tyler’s favorite books of the last decade on cops who won’t police, a marriage that shaped a nation, and the optimistic case for South Africa." I liked the podcast because it revealed how wrong my supposed knowledge about South Africa was. Oppressions I believed in were false, and ones I hadn't thought about were true.

Wind Off the Hilltop

 Earl has placed new material on his site, and surprised me with poems by Dorothy Parker.  I admit, I have only known her as a wit and an epigrammist (Asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence she said "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.") But her poetry! 

 The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk
 

I was seventy-seven, come August,
  I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I’ve experienced zephyr and raw gust
  And (symbolical) flood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
  To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
  As to what you got out of it all.

So I’ll say, though reflection unnerves me
  And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
  To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
  I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry—an
  Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
  Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
  And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
  Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
  And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
  There was nothing more fun than a man! 

 

Some others

Sanctuary 

Song of Perfect Propriety 

Inventory 

Concern For The Poor

I know people who do nothing I can see for the poor but are very quick to illustrate how much they care about them by complaining that other people don't care about the poor. I don't think I need to give examples. I was going to accuse them of desiring simple solutions that don't cost them much personally because they actually don't care about the poor.  They want something that allows them to stop having to think about it. I thought this about the Affordable Care Act, because of which Son #5 has had to spend lots of money his entire adulthood to purchase insurance that doesn't get him much medical care. Yet so many people breathed a sigh of relief when it was passed because they could now pretend it was solved and not think about it.

But this is what writing is good for.  In marshaling my arguments against these people, I recognised a lot of holes in my case. I don't know what these people actually do for the poor, or for humanity in general.  They may give a great deal in secret. (Okay, the ones I am thinking of almost certainly do not, but it's a slippery slope.) They may have relative they support who would be in dire straits without them. That in turn reveals that I don't have a clear definition of what I even mean by "caring for the poor." They may time or concern or prayer that I know nothing about. They might also not be avoiding doing anything as already shouldering the burden for some relative and not wanting it to get worse. If we all helped just a bit it would be a big deal for them. It's hard to accuse that group of selfishness. 

Lastly, the accusation looks back over its shoulder at me: "An' what are you doin' for them, mate?" 

The people who want those simple solutions are likely those with the better imaginations who are haunted by the suffering of others - and who wants to be haunted? The realise there isn't much they can do themselves, so they hope that taxing billionaires or improving the local tax base or overthrowing capitalism will bring them peace. When I make it personal like this I understand their motivation better.  They want it to go away because it hurts. It is tough to accept that the poor will always be with us, that we will always hurt, and that we cannot get away from it by leaving it to others. Trying to do that only deadens us. 

Saturday Links

 From ACX October links: T Greer on Trump’s flip-flopping Ukraine-Russia policy (X): “Every administration since Clinton comes in determined to reset US-Russian relations, to clear away old legacies and bad blood. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump I, even Biden. It is the swampiest of all swampy ideas, resetting relations with the Russians. It never works.” 

A Billion Years of Sex Differences 

The Science of Snickers  Caramel has to be done at 240-245 degrees Fahrenheit. That seems like a narrow window.

Political Extremists are the same under the skin 

Political Symbolism and Social Order The study argues that Confederate monuments actually reduce violence against Blacks because they reinforce the white supremacist order and white people feel comfortable with that.  Tearing them down makes the white people insecure and they get more violent to reassert supremacy.  I think a couple of things are being missed here. First, white-on-black crime is very low to begin with, and political versions are even lower, so the amounts being measured are small.  Secondly, the whole study is related to data from Reconstruction and a century ago, with this hand-waving idea "and it's just the same now." The modern data is...more sparse. Thirdly, if you go into any town and start tearing down its monuments there is going to be a baseline level of people who feel interfered with and annoyed, and that doesn't seem to be accounted for here. All measured violence is because of white supremacy, not for the insults, accusations, assumptions, or disruptions. The study does have formulas (!) which give it an air of precision, though.

It's Official

 There has been a language change, from progressive exaggeration.  When someone now says "Well, it's official..." they mean something near the opposite. It is no longer used to signify that some authority has certified a thing, it means some new occurrence has brought to the point of no return, or sometimes, the people I disagree with have admitted how evil they really are.  

We hear it most often about politics, but it's multipurpose.

"Well, it's official, the Democrats have declared war on the rest of the country."

"Well, it's official, Donald Trump is cancelling the 2028 elections."

"Well, it's official, the Presbyterians have denied the gospel of Jesus Christ."

"Well, it's official, the school board doesn't care about special-needs children."

This will be followed by some minor and often obscure news that they want you to pay attention to, because it proves what they have been saying all along. As with most hyperbole, there was originally some meaning behind it, treating some major event as the final straw, that everything but an official declaration had occurred, and we should be aware of our real situation.  But of course that is just too delicious to leave alone.  It's fun to perceive things that others have missed, to look smarter than the rest. The temptation is to prove yourself a True Princess by detecting the pea under so many mattresses. Progressive padding was likely inevitable. 

The Way Old Friends Do