Coach

John Wooden died today at 99. My favorite anecdote about him is still the Story of the Socks.

Will on Voegeli on The Welfare State

George Will reviews William Voegeli's Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State in his Thursday column. I chose the link at my local paper, the Manchester Union Leader, once notorious as the main conservative newspaper in the country. The Barrister over at Maggie's Farm put me on to this editorial, and I quote a slightly longer section than he does.

Wilsonian progressives believe that History is a proper noun, an autonomous thing. It, rather than nature, defines government's ever-evolving and unlimited purposes. Government exists to dispense an ever-expanding menu of rights -- entitlements that serve an open-ended understanding of material and even spiritual well-being.

The name "progressivism" implies criticism of the Founding, which we leave behind as we make progress. And the name is tautological: History is progressive because progress is defined as whatever History produces. History guarantees what the Supreme Court has called "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

The cheerful assumption is that "evolving" must mean "improving."

It put me in mind of CS Lewis's comment via Prince Caspian in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

"But that would be putting the clock back," gasped the governor. "Have you no idea of progress, of development?"
"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspain. "We call it Going bad in Narnia. This [slave] trade must stop."

Conservatives sometimes get stuck on the true, but oversimple point that we cannot keep expanding government because it costs too much. It's not just the price, because we might theoretically become a rich enough nation some day that the price wouldn't matter so much. It is the few acquiring power via the money of the many and distributing this to their chosen recipients that is troubling. It not only rankles (bad enough), it destroys. It is the granting to government the responsibility of making us whole and happy. Finally, it is the demand that others come along for the experiment, despite considerable evidence from history that it will not work.

Voegeli plants this in the philosophical battle between Madison's constitutionalism and Wilson's progressivism for control of the government. We associate liberals and Democrats with the latter, but the belief is well-embedded in conservatism at this point as well.

Who Is Against Evolution?

I came across this essay by David Friedman via Mark Amagi at GM's Place. Friedman has a Doctorate in Physics but teaches law at Santa Clara University.

It's a widespread view, but true in only a narrow sense. People who say they are against teaching the theory of evolution are very likely to be Christian fundamentalists. But people who are against taking seriously the implications of evolution, strongly enough to want to attack those who disagree, including those who teach those implications, are quite likely to be on the left.

There is much to be said for this. It is an oversimplification, of course, and both Amagi and Friedman acknowledge that within the context of their own essays, even giving counterexamples. But it is certainly an irony worth attending to.

Friedman's site is called Ideas, and that's what it is. I am barely started and am already finding much to chew on. Don't be intimidated by that. Most of the writings are quite accessible, and even fun. Think of them as brain vacations, where you travel to an unfamiliar place but only do the fun stuff.

The Joys Of Driving An Old Car

Donna B has a fun piece on the topic, though it might spark some reflections on simplicity, worry, priorities, and the like.

Our record is a Nissan Sentra that we owned from 110,000 to 257,000 miles, at which point we gave it to a woman at church who needed to urgently move back to Minnesota and had no vehicle. Apparently the car made it and lasted another 8 months, though I never got an official mileage reading on it.

We've always bought cheap cars, though Tracy has been an influence for upgrading to things that look more attractive and/or cause her less worry.

I remember an adult Sunday School class on stewardship 20 years ago - so double or triple the final figure by now - that if you started buying cars on 4-year plans at age 20, trading each in as it was paid off and starting a new 4 year loan - at age 65 the finance company would have a million dollars of your money...and you would have a used car.

Plus if I had a nicer car I'd have to dress better.

New Book on Athanasius

A friend who used to go to our Covenant church finally has his book out, The Bible In Athanasius of Alexandria. Sure, an' there must be some Athanasius fans out there who would just love to have this.

James D. Ernest, Ph.D. (2000) in history of Christian life and thought (Theology), Boston College, is an editor at Baker Academic. He edited and translated C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Hendrickson, 1994).

Ken Griffey, Jr.

Griffey retired today at 40, with 630 lifetime home runs. On my modified-for-steroids list, that puts him at 6th all-time. Had he stayed in Seattle, he might have made it to 700. And if not injured starting in 2000, more than that.

First ballot.

Nothing New Under The Sun

Primitive version of reality TV

More Time Travel

Another entry point in our culture for thinking about time travel is sports. Sports fans think about this all the time, wondering what Ty Cobb would hit in our era, or what would happen if the '59 Celtics played the '89 Pistons. In contrast, no one spends much time arguing about whether Meryl Streep would have won an Oscar in the 1940's, whether Ulysses S Grant would win a 1992 election versus Teddy Roosevelt, or whether Winton Marsalis would have succeeded at jazz if he had lived during the Dixieland era.

Our loss. Those would all be fun to think about. Sending Winton Marsalis back for a Field of Dreams moment? (Or more precisely, Kinsella's companion book The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, which is better.) I can see him wanting to make the movie, too. Or Presidential Playoffs set in a particular year? I'm thinking a 64-team field, seeding by number of terms and vote dominance in their own years, with at-large bids being given to close finishers like Al Gore and William Jennings Bryan. But maybe a double-elimination tournament would be fairer. None of that World Cup group stuff, though. This is America.

And who wouldn't want to see Errol Flynn in a movie with great CGI?

Sports and Sci-Fi have more male fans than female, so maybe that's part of it.

Logo Similarity

We have a Recovery Act project going on in our town. When I first saw the logo, I figured it was just my paranoid right-wing mind that thought it oddly suggestive of the Obama 2008 campaign logo. And I was driving by quickly, so I didn't get a decent look at it.

Tangent: You'd think New Hampshire would be just full of these things. The primary season will go into full swing right after the Nov 2010 elections, so maybe they're holding off until then. /tangent

So I went to look up both logos to see if it was just fevered imagination, and found that I'm not the first person to think this. A writer at the LA Times thought so too. In fact, both logos are designed by the same company. They aren't hugely the same - not communist dictator the same - but the Recovery Act logo, especially when driving by at a good clip, sure seems evocative of Obama's campaign logo.

Wedding Dance

Four years and a few weeks ago we went to Asbury College to watch Ben graduate. While there, we visited Southland Church outside of Lexington, a megachurch with lots more bells and whistles than we are used to. As part of the service, illustrating a sermon point, there were four couples of varying ages on the stage, dancing close while "I Hope You Dance" played over them. I am turned off by this style of Christianity which takes secular banalities and tries to stretch them into a spiritual truth. I'm all for the sacred permeating all of the secular world; the secular permeating the sacred, not so much. Also, I don't like that particular song all that much.

We were interrupted by Tracy's cell phone, which she had neglected to turn off, ringing. She was clearly upset at the news she was receiving, and we passed the grim news down the row: "Adam Bishop is dead." I wrote at the time about the worship and the young man's death in this post. He was almost 20, an only son, killed in an early-morning car accident on Mother's Day, driving through the night to come see Mom.

It was his sister who was married today, and while all was properly joyfully, some nods to mourning were there. Her white gown was hemmed in black, the Matron of Honor made reference to their brother in her toast, and an interesting additional custom was added in. After the bride's dance with her father, and the groom's with his mother, Tommy went over to his new mother-in-law and danced alone with her. Very poignant, very moving.

They could not possibly have known the connection for our family, but the song was "I Hope You Dance." I still don't like it much, but it brought tears to my eyes and will have even more meaning now. That's how country musicians stay in business, I guess. Three Chords and the Truth, as the saying goes. All those artificial, overhyped stories really do happen to us all.

Wedding Vows

Brides and Grooms tinker with the vows a lot these days. Promises from the old formulae get left out and others added in. Some of the new additions are very nice, quite moving. I do sometimes wonder whether some things were left out intentionally, or just didn't make that couple's top ten list when they were composing them. But in Christian weddings, at least - we don't see many others - two vows seem to always make it in: faithfulness, and "in sickness, in health." Notice that these are highly measurable, compared to the vaguer sentiments more popular now.

They are clearly important, and this is obvious even to young people who don't have a lot of experience in the world, and who grew up in a culture where these promises are not kept. We might suspect that these are so crucial to the definition of marriage that we cannot even loosely consider it without including them.

With life extension becoming what it is, the 21 year-olds I watched today may be making a hundred-year vow.

In Our Own Image

Early man made things and Did Stuff, and in groups: hunted, ate, shaped rocks, hated. It was part of just staying alive. There wasn't much time or energy for solo contemplation. Early man had gods who made things, Did Stuff, and lived in groups: moved, loved, punished, battled. Along came Greek philosophers - back before Socrates, maybe Democritus or someone - who noticed that Ethiopians had gods who were black and had flat noses; Thracian god had red hair and blue eyes, just like the Thracians. They reasoned that man must be making gods in his own image, which hardly seemed right.

So they sat and thought about it and decided that the real gods were beings who thought things rather than doing things. And philosophers have tended that way ever since, even Christian philosophers, describing gods who more like thoughts, and didn't have any personality. Proving their point about making gods in their own image, I guess.

When Jesus came, he Did Stuff. The prophets before him and the early saints, same thing. Worth thinking about.

Origins Of The Moonwalk

Kyle will be going to a wedding reception with us today, and will doubtless moonwalk and wow the crowd. So, in honor of Kyle.

Close Playoffs

Sure there have been close and hotly contested playoff series in recent NBA history. But it's hard to beat 1981, Boston versus Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference finals.

(1) Boston Celtics vs. (3) Philadelphia 76ers: Celtics win series 4-3
• Game 1 @ Boston: Philadelphia 105, Boston 104
• Game 2 @ Boston: Boston 118, Philadelphia 99
• Game 3 @ Philadelphia: Philadelphia 110, Boston 100
• Game 4 @ Philadelphia: Philadelphia 107, Boston 105
• Game 5 @ Boston: Boston 111, Philadelphia 109
• Game 6 @ Philadelphia: Boston 100, Philadelphia 98
• Game 7 @ Boston: Boston 91, Philadelphia 90

The series was already close, but look at the last three games. The Celtics, down 3 games to 1, win games by 2 points, 2 points, and 1 point to win the series. Two 1-point games and three 2-point games overall.

Something Newer

I just like it. Listening to Kyle's stations is sometimes good for me.

Sunday For Tea

I was hoping to see Peter and Gordon singing it, but there doesn't seem to be a tape of that. I had forgotten how much of a crush I'd had on Diana Riggs.

-ible or -able

I was always told to guess "-able" on a debateable spelling, because there are "many more" of them. For some reason, I decided to see if there was a more reliable rule I could find on the internet.

Sort of. To be quite sure, one could look it up - not always practical in the moment - or enter the word into a document that has a spellcheck feature. But once in awhile, you still have to guess, don't have a ready source, and hope not to look sloppy. In addition to the link's info, know that "many more" in my first paragraph turns out to be about 80%. The rule at the link about whether a word comes from Latin or not strikes me as unhelpful. It is not always obvious, even to those who pay attention to such things. Plus, that's not 100% certain anyway. The rule of thumb at the bottom is sort of interesting, though.

Extraordinary Compassion

Upon further review, I did not accurately describe the Compassionate People in my last post. As I did not name them – and shall not – it doesn’t make much difference regarding the individuals. But as I did violence to the understanding, it deserves correction.

These are all people who show a high degree of ordinary compassion 80, 90, even 99% of the time. They are fine, exemplary individuals at those times, and we might all wish to be more like them. But there is a switch that gets thrown, a move to extraordinary compassion that creates problems. Terminology misleads here. What, after all, could be wrong with extraordinary compassion? Yet there is something subtly wrong with it, and it can lead to great cruelty.

“If you are kinder than God, you will end up being cruel.” I have tried to locate where I read that line. I believed it was in Elie Wiesel’s remarkable Souls on Fire, a liberating book on the Hassidic masters, but I cannot find it there. Perhaps it was in discussion with the person who gave me the book. Perhaps I even thought it up myself. I can’t trace it now.

First: There is a doubling-down on mercy, a determination to pursue that strategy regardless of circumstance. People get locked into patterns Mercy is sometimes the only thing that will work. There isn’t enough mercy in the world. Therefore mercy shall be my weapon against evil, and I will not abandon it no matter how things look. Even when it appears not to work, those are the times which test my compasion, and I will persevere.

I will note that Jesus was enormously merciful, but he was not always merciful. It was not that he was incapable of enough compassion or that mercy was beyond him in some circumstances, but that it is sometimes the wrong thing to do. Relatedly, mercy does not exist except within a framework of justice. If we let every thief and murderer go free in hopes that the kindness may cause repentence (heck, it works in fiction, such as Les Miserables, all the time!), we are not kindly but simply anarchic, living in a Hobbesian state of nature. The genial person called a judge who presided over such pardoning might think himself merciful, but he a horror.

We can see this readily enough in the extreme, but fall for it when it is milder. The visible difference between a high degree of ordinary mercy and the dangerous extraordinary compassion is often subtle, ambiguous.

And second: We are to forgive everything done against ourselves. We are not to allow our worldly goods to have any hold on us, lest we fail in generosity. But what is the principle when we have authority over others? If I am head of a family and someone sins against all of us, or has need of generosity from us, what right do I have to give away what belongs to them? We see clearly that this is wrong in the extreme – we cannot give away money for the baby’s food to someone who has sponged off us and is asking again. If I have no responsibility for others and choose to give up my last dollar, that is my own affair, and perhaps an excellent thing. I leave aside for the moment the question whether the gift is actually good for the recipient or whether it is ultimately destructive. That is a separate issue of cruel kindness we may explore later. For now, that is a complicating or intensifying factor, but not the central issue.

All persons of authority or influence make these decisions on behalf of others, and the judgement calls involved are dizzying. When my sons were young and I went to church meetings, or didn’t go to church meetings because I chose to be home, which was the robbery? Discerning that is what authority is for. But in either case, my generosity to one is stinginess to the other. In matters of ordinary generosity or compassion, it is mine to choose. But is it ever my right to make my children give an extraordinary gift?

The kindly people I am thinking of were all in positions of authority or great influence – perhaps that is why the sample is skewed elderly and male*. They are doctors, pastors, department heads, heads of non-profits and the like. The have the power to command the actions of others. They have the worldly authority to require others to grant more than justice. Do they have the moral authority?

The more authority one has, the more one is able to require others to go beyond justice into mercy. This differs qualitatively from a high degree of ordinary compassion. This is an enforced extraordinary compassion, and there is something terribly wrong about it.

Some dramatic examples may illustrate. If a church member who worked with the youth group molested some of them, neither the pastors nor the deacons nor a vote of the congregation can declare them forgiven in the eyes of that organization without a release from the victims and their families. But Christians are supposed to forgive, we are supposed to receive the repentant sinner back after discipline and confession… But that forgiveness is not yours to give. Any of those categories might have the worldly authority - legal or church polity authority – to declare whatever they want and enforce it, but it’s not morally right. To insist that the victims accept them back and share worship with them cannot be demanded. It is theirs to give freely, or not. Even if they are wrong to withhold it, or vindictive themselves, or would benefit from forgiving, the others do not posess the moral authority. Being kind to the one is to be cruel to the other.

The director of the homeless shelter who promises that “we” will get you a ride, because she knows one of her staff goes home that way. Those extras get promised in business as well, under the name customer service – except that it’s not the business making the gift, but the employee. One can see where it can get fuzzy. Good employees want to please the customer, and may quite willingly give; good managers are able to inspire others to greater generosity. But coercion has now moved in and taken a place at the table, even if he doesn’t eat much.

To forgive a plagiarising student and letting her keep her scholarship is robbery from the person who just missed getting it in the first place.

The social and political implications of this leap to mind pretty quickly. But let’s hold that off for a bit, and keep to the consideration of the individual. What causes some of our most compassionate individuals to flip a switch and engage in damaging, hypertrophic compassion? The political discussion may hinge on it.

*When I search intentionally for examples younger or female I can find them in memory. They will apparently have their turns.

Cruel To Be Kind

In the context of a Korea discussion, neo linked to an AISH article, Cruel To Be Kind. It describes simply but eloquently why destroying evil is perhaps the greatest act of kindness possible.

The classic example is the story of King Saul and King Agag. Saul was ordered by none other than the Almighty Himself to kill all the citizens of the nation of Amalek. But Saul had compassion on their leader. He spared his life. And in that one extra day allotted him, Agag fathered a child who was the ancestor of one of the Jewish people's most vitriolic and hateful enemies in history, the villain of the Purim story, Haman.

I have been reflecting recently on the dangers of compassionate people. Not of compassion itself - compassion is a good thing when it is servant and not master. One can have compassion and still be strict, or even severe.

I have spent many of my days with Compassionate People. The Human Service professions are awash with them; churches attract them; my early days as a coffee-house folksinging socialist were entirely too formative of my previous political beliefs. Yet even in those dense atmospheres, there are some who develop especial reputations for compassion. I am thinking of a type: elderly men who are beloved for their gentle wisdom and concern for others, known for their ability to inspire others to greater kindness. I have known a dozen such, but am focusing on five. I have seen the dark underside of their compassion - their need to be seen as the most compassionate person present, and the trail of good people feeling inadequate left in their wake. All of them were so exceptionally skilled at this that their dangerousness was only apparent if the mask by accident slipped (momentarily - covered fast as light), so that one was able to step back.

They were all basically kindly men who did much good. The undermining of those around them can only be seen if one looks specifically - at which point it leaps out, and you wonder why you never noticed before. The wounded they leave behind do not blame them. As they are aspiring Compassionate People, they blame their bad feeling on themselves.

There is a story in this, but I am very unsure I can write it. No - I am quite sure I do not have the skill. But scraps of it may be salvageable. I am still sorting this out. I am thinking of at least one line that should come near the end.

So you are telling me that this man's children and all the best people who worked for him spent their entire lives feeling inadequate, but he was a compassionate man?

Liberalism and Reasoning

There have been a few books and articles written recently characterising liberalism as a sort of mental illness. I haven't read any of them. I certainly have some sympathy with the idea that there are psychological mechanisms that prevent liberals from seeing some aspects of reality, but mental disorder seems a bit of a reach.

I could cheat and say that my experience arguing with progressives has some similarities to my discussions with the mentally ill, but that would be choosing my data conveniently. In fact, most of us act about the same when confronted with an idea we think is wrong, ill or not. As frustrating as it is to try and get psychotic people to admit the possibility of a different interpretation of reality, it is actually not that different from all rationalization and evasion.

Here's the interesting question: in psychology, we are presented with people who have been told a thousand times their ideas are crazy before they get to our facility. They've been told but they haven't believed the tellers. Our job is to get them to accept, however partially and grudgingly, a set of facts that everyone around them can see (even other psychotic people) without effort.

Play that out in political persuasion. I contend that liberals simply do not understand conservative arguments. They think they do, but they cannot accurately repeat them back. They are usually unable to describe them without caricature. Yet even in an MSM saturated subculture, they must have heard the opposition arguments a hundred times. What prevents the hearing?

No cliches, please, unless you are willing to give some explanation or evidence why the cliche is true.