harmonicminer » politics

Jan 21 2009

The Scandal of New Evangelicalism?

Category: politics,theology — harmonicminer @ 10:48 am

Even though the sociology has not yet caught up, the narrative of a new breed of evangelicalism has taken hold among the media and political elites. The narrative is doubtlessly popular in part due to wishful thinking by Democrats and their media-savvy friends; yet as a young evangelical myself, it is impossible to discount entirely. Even if the outline of our theology is broadly the same as our parents, as it is for an increasing number of conservative evangelicals, our ethos is different. And the differences are not strictly politicalâ€”the political trends among young evangelicals that have received so much attention are grounded in different concerns and emphases that undergird younger evangelicals’ approach to culture and spirituality as well. This new ethos is largely a reaction to the abuses, failures, and excesses of our parents’ generation and contains significant clues as to the future of evangelicalism in America.

It’s a long article, but worth the read, by a 26 yr old evangelical who’s been thinking deeply about it all. You aren’t likely to agree with all of it, but it will stimulate your thinking, at least.

Tags: church, politics, theology

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Jan 11 2009

What Price Victory #2

Category: corruption,election 2008,politics — amuzikman @ 10:06 am

Or perhaps this blog could be more accurately entitled, “To The Victor Goes The Spoils’. In either case there are immediate and profound consequences of this last election, and in my opinion troubling consequences as well.

As a result of the recent election three U.S. Senate seats are now vacant; one each in Delaware, New York and Illinois. Current law allows for the governors of those states to appoint individuals who will fill the seats being vacated by Obama, Clinton, and Biden. For a moment, if you can, set aside your political affiliation and think about this. This means that 32,578,952 citizens of the United States are about to be represented by individuals who were not elected but rather selected for them by one person.

I seem to remember a lot of people were very upset after the 2000 presidential race when the Supreme Court had to intervene in the tallying of election results in Florida. Even today you can find many of the liberal persuasion who claim President Bush was “selected, not elected”. This has been one of the cornerstones of the “Hate Bush” crowd for eight years. While the circumstances of 2000 are clearly subject to interpretation depending on your political leaning, this current situation is not. Yet the silence is deafening. Why don’t those same accusers raise their voices of protest in this case when “selection” is indisputable? The answer, of course, is obvious.

What’s tragic for our country is that the selection process in each of the 3 current cases has shown itself to be entirely corrupt. Apparently the seat in Illinois was up for the highest bidder, The Delaware selection process seems to be nepotism at it’s best and the New York seat is about to become a coronation more reminiscent of the British House of Lords than anything resembling our democratic process. And in all three cases the issue of qualification is given little more than lip service. Does ANYONE want to try and make the case that Carolyn Kennedy Schlossberg is actually qualified to be a U.S. senator?

Watching the way theses 3 senate seats are being filled should make us all demand a change in the law requiring a special election to fill all vacated seats. Instead watching the news recently has made me feel like I’m watching “The Fall Of The Roman Empire“. In case you are unfamiliar with the admittedly mediocre 1964 film, it ends with the hero, Livius, (Stephen Boyd), besting the evil Caesar Commodus in gladiator combat. Immediately afterward he is offered the throne by the recently-deceased leader’s hirelings. His (excellent) reply is, “You would not find me very suitable, because my first official act would be to have you all crucified.” He then walks away with his true love on his arm while in the background a spontaneous auction begins for the throne of Rome.

I hope it does not need to be said that I do not advocate for crucifixion of political enemies. But I do think there are many qualified men and women who simply refuse to participate in our political process either as candidates or even voters because they see the degree to which our political process has become corrupted. Much of the corruption, not surprisingly, is tied to money. Influence and access to political office has become the domain of the wealthy. As more highly qualified, moral, intelligent, and knowledgeable individuals abdicate the election process, and as more political positions are gained by means other than that process, more of us will continue to ask:

Why bother to vote?

Tags: corruption, elections, voting

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Jan 08 2009

John Ziegler’s interview with Sarah Palin for his new film

Category: election 2008,media,Obama,Palin,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:11 am

I’ve mentioned John Ziegler’s efforts before to correct the record about How Obama Got Elected. As part of making his new movie, “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared” he has interviewed Sarah Palin. Some of his comments on that interview are here. (you may need to scroll down)

the most important part of my visit to the Palin house is that there is a big difference between thinking that something is true and knowing for sure that it is. I now know that Sarah Palin is who I thought she was.

I also know now, with moral certitude, that the media assassination of her, her character and her family was one of the greatest public injustices of our time and I am totally justified in devoting my life to correcting the historical record in my forthcoming film “Media Malpracticeâ€¦How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared”

I’ll keep linking to developments on this, but I think this is going to be a gangbuster’s film, with so much content in making its case that no one, no matter how avid a media consumer, has seen it all, and many people are going to be surprised at the strength of the case Ziegler makes.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Early rumblings in the main-stream media about the Palin interview are here, including Palin pointing out the obvious disparity in the treatment of Caroline Kennedy’s candidacy for the Senate as opposed to Palin’s for the veep slot, even though Kennedy is angling for an appointment and won’t even be vetted by the voters til 2010, while Palin would at least have to have been elected to start with.

UPDATE: Of course, in the coverage linked here, John Ziegler is a “conservative film maker,” not merely a “documentary film maker.” I wonder if the makers of anti-Bush films in the last 8 years are usually referred to as “liberal film makers”? How about all the anti-war stinkeroos that have died in the box office in the last few years? In the reviews, are their writers, producers and directors referred to as “liberal filmmakers”? The double standards here are so obvious that pointing them out is like shooting fish in a barrel with a howitzer… but I suspect Ziegler is going to be the target of a great deal of ad hominem attack and attempts to label him out of relevance.

Tags: election 2008, media, Obama, Palin, politics

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Dec 17 2008

Vote buying in Venezuela

Category: Obama,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:54 am

ChÃ¡vez government handed out millions in exchange for votes

Venezuela’s government distributed electronic appliances, food and cash totaling tens of millions of dollars in an effort to secure the loyalty of voters in poor sections in advance of recent elections, according to evidence and testimony obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

Pro-government officials in the municipality of Sucre alone handed out $10 million in cash on Nov. 22 and the day of the balloting, Nov. 24, offering each person between $140 and $480, according to campaign workers who spoke to El Nuevo Herald.

So how different is this, really, from encouraging people on the government dole and payroll to vote for the candidate who will give them more? Is buying the vote after the election so different from buying it before the election? Very few people voted for McCain because of what he might give them, while enormous numbers voted for Obama expecting him to honor campaign promises to give them benefits of various kinds. “Spread the wealth” indeed.

With his war chest, he made a down payment on his election with the media blitz. Now that he’s elected, is he going to pay for the rest on the public dime?

Tags: Obama, politics

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Dec 11 2008

Christian Derangement Syndrome

Category: politics — harmonicminer @ 9:32 am

Not a disease of Christians, but of those who criticize them, Christian Derangement Syndrome is a malady to which both the Left and some on the Right may fall prey. On the Left, it is recognized as bigotry towards anyone who, for religious reasons, supports the continuation of 4000 years of tradition in keeping marriage a heterosexual thing, is pro-life, etc. On the Right, the symptoms are similar, but also involve a curious symbiosis with the Christians, because the secular Right NEEDS the Christians to have any power, but simply wants them to shut up and vote their way. Here are some observations about Christian Derangement Syndrome on the Right:

Continue reading “Christian Derangement Syndrome”

Tags: politics

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Nov 27 2008

Ignorantly decrying ignorance

Category: education,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:22 am

Kathleen Parker has not been my favorite person of late, due to her support for Obama, for what I consider to be trivial reasons, but she quotes an interesting study on voter ignorance. The report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) on the nation’s civic literacy finds that most Americans are too ignorant to vote. After quoting all the various bits of ignorance on the part of the public about basic historical and constitutional principles and facts, which I’ve discussed before, we are treated to this:
Continue reading “Ignorantly decrying ignorance”

Tags: education, politics

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Nov 23 2008

Nothing new here, except that they admit it

Category: media,politics — harmonicminer @ 9:13 pm

I’ve written on the credibility problems of the major media, so just consider this to be one more data point in the case. I think this is just the beginning of the fallout for the major media. There will be more. Lots more. The major media spent ALL its meager remaining capital of trust on this campaign. But the truth is going to come out, in a way that will be persuasive to all but the 20-30% of people who are totally committed to the Left, no matter what… call them “blue dog socialists”, I guess.

TANSTAAFL. The major media will pay for this, in coin of which they have little, even if they don’t know it yet.

The mainstream media’s support for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was so biased that even major insiders are now admitting they were shocked by its depth and depravity.

Continue reading “Nothing new here, except that they admit it”

Tags: media, politics

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Nov 23 2008

Ten politically incorrect thoughts

Category: economy,education,energy,environment,politics,society — harmonicminer @ 7:39 pm

Victor Davis Hanson is in fine fettle indeed, in Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts. Herewith, two of them, but all are worth the reading.

5. California is now a valuable touchstone to the country, a warning of what not to do. Rarely has a single generation inherited so much natural wealth and bounty from the investment and hard work of those more noble now resting in our cemeteriesâ€”and squandered that gift within a generation. Compare the vast gulf from old Governor Pat Brown to Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. We did not invest in many dams, canals, rails, and airports (though we use them all to excess); we sued each other rather than planned; wrote impact statements rather than left behind infrastructure; we redistributed, indulged, blamed, and so managed all at once to create a state with about the highest income and sales taxes and the worst schools, roads, hospitals, and airports. A walk through downtown San Francisco, a stroll up the Fresno downtown mall, a drive along highway 101 (yes, in many places it is still a four-lane, pot-holed highway), an afternoon at LAX, a glance at the catalogue of Cal State Monterey, a visit to the park in Parlierâ€”all that would make our forefathers weep. We can’t build a new nuclear plant; can’t drill a new offshore oil well; can’t build an all-weather road across the Sierra; can’t build a few tracts of new affordable houses in the Bay Area; can’t build a dam for a water-short state; and can’t create even a mediocre passenger rail system. Everything elseâ€”well, we do that well.

…

10. The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

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Nov 22 2008

Have you been abusing your consitutional rights?

Category: Obama,politics — harmonicminer @ 12:28 pm

So, President-elect Obama’s vetting questionaire includes this tidbit.

“Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage.”

The last time I looked, there is a Second Amendment to the Consitution. Yes, firearms ownership and possession has been restricted in various ways, but the Supreme Court has decided that it IS a personal right, not a group right, and that greater scrutiny must be applied in the future regarding limitations on it.
Continue reading “Have you been abusing your consitutional rights?”