Corrs Video of the Week: Forgiven, not Forgotten
July 31, 2006
From a live concert at Lansdowne Road (like I have any clue where that is…Graham?), this title track from a sweet Corrs album features Sharon on a beautiful violin solo intro, and Jim pulling double duty. One of my personal Corrs faves…enjoy!
Clear (Not Necessarily Deep) Reasoning Needed
July 31, 2006
Something’s bugging me, a lot, about the state of American discourse today, and it’s this: it seems like there are increasingly few people who are able to think, and articulate themselves, clearly. Look…I am not a deep thinker, at least in my own estimation. I don’t sit around and ponder philosophers a lot, and some of the deep stuff I read makes my eyes glaze over. My buddy Bob is a deep thinker, and he reads all kinds of deep stuff, and posts about it on his blog (“Hi, Bob; you’re welcome for the free plug, dude!”), and that’s great, because he really gets a charge out of rasslin’ around with stuff like “foundationalism” and “neoGnosticism”, and I read some of his stuff and think, “man, go for it, buddy…but how ’bout them Steelers!” So hey, deep thinking is great; I probably need to do more of it; I could stand to read Foucault and Derrida and all those pomo dudes myself, I’m sure.
But you know what? Most of us aren’t really deep thinkers, and from where I sit, that’s cool. But what we all ought to strive to be is clear thinkers. We ought to work to follow an argument logically, to think through things with clear minds, to buttress our points with well-reasoned arguments. But I’ll tell you: I’m dismayed.
Case-in-point: last week, I posted a response to a buddy when he asked about gays and “gay marriage”. I think that my remarks were not only biblical, but reasonably well-reasoned. One point I made involved the fact that the prevailing wisdom, that the whole “gay marriage” thing is about “equal rights”, is a logical fallacy—and frankly, not a particularly difficult one to prove. A friend read this post and linked to it from his collaborative blog, a blog at which he seems to be something of the “token conservative”. My reasoning was immediately taken to task on that blog, but the dismaying thing was that the responses to my argument were heavy on the emotion, but very short on intellectual substance. Try as I might, what is a simple, should-be-easy-to-grasp, almost completely irrefutable argument was seen as anything but. And I’m sorry; I allow for the likelihood that I’m often wrong on things…but not on this thing, because it is simply an easy, logical position.
Aw, why be coy…here’s the argument: every person in America has equal rights already when it comes to marriage. If I am a single man, I can marry any woman not related to me already. This is true of any man in America. I cannot marry a person of the same sex; neither can any other man (except, of course, in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts). Ergo, our rights are all currently equal; the issue is not, nor will it ever be, one of “equal rights”; rather, the issue is definitions; how will we define the institution of marriage (and hey, it’s a free country; make your arguments for “gay marriage” if you wish, but at least have the intellectual honesty/intelligence to admit the simple truth that it’s about definitions, not about “equal rights”)? The argument back against that (weak, though it is) centers on “gays don’t want the right to be married to a person of the opposite sex, so ‘equal rights’ is a canard for them”, to which the reasonable reply is, “the fact that you don’t choose to value, or to exercise, a given right does not mean that you do not have it”. I have the perfect right, as an American, to skydive or to dangle from the side of a mountain, but I have no interest in exercising those rights. Are my rights not equal, though, to Americans who do choose those activities? Is it logical for me to say that, because those rights are meaningless to me, and/or I choose not to exercise them, I must be given the right to shoot kittens for entertainment so that I have a fitting/worthwhile alternative to those rights? No…the rights are equal, period. Now again, if you are willing to concede the point, and then argue that the definition of marriage ought to be changed in such a radical way, then we can have a respectful argument. But the argument that “gay marriage” is about equal rights (oh, by the way: some of the issues dealing with homosexuals may well be about “equal rights”; it’s just that this one isn’t) is either disingenuous, or made by people who haven’t followed the argument rationally and logically through, or by the intellectually lazy who won’t follow it through…or by those who, it would seem, can’t.
And that’s a shame, because vigorous debate and honest discourse need, desperately, clear thinking.
Republican Irresponsibility on Display: The Minimum Wage
July 29, 2006
Economics 101: Raising the minimum wage—i.e., artificially inflating the cost of goods and services—harms the very people that it is designed to help. This stuff isn’t even hard—but that didn’t keep House Republicans from taking the politically-expedient-but-dumb step of doing so anyway; here’s the first line of the article: “Republicans muscled the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House of Representatives early Saturday after pairing it with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.” Let’s call that “Reason Number Next” why I am not a Republican.
House Approves Minimum Wage Increase Bill
For a sane approach, consider this article by Larry Elder:
Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity
As Larry says, quoting from Investors Business Daily,“The Employment Policies Institute figures that the first 50 cents out of the $1.00 hike in the minimum wage in 1996 through 1997 cost 645,000 jobs.”
He adds, “Rarely do economists agree on any given issue. But here, however, almost all economists agree: Minimum wage hikes destroy jobs. And they hurt the very people that the victicrats purport to help—women, minorities, and teens. Most minimum wage workers are not heads of households, attempting to raise a family on $5.75 an hour.”
But that’s the sob story you hear, isn’t it? “How can Americans raise a family on $5.75 an hour?” It’s a canard, for the most part, although as soon as I say that, someone can trot out an example of someone trying to do just that.
Now, of course, the person trying to do that might end up without a job, because the employer can’t afford the raise. As Elder quotes again from Investors Business Daily, “It’s clear to everyone but the most diehard socialists how this happens. Employers who can afford to pay four workers $5.00 an hour can’t afford them all at $6.00 an hour. Somebody has to go. So, three are marginally helped—a fourth is simply without a job. And the fifth, sixth, and seventh don’t get hired in the first place.”
A fact which escapes all socialist/liberals and, apparently, just enough Republicans.
UPDATE: More from a different Elder piece, establishing that raising the minimum wage has the effect of being one of the most racist things that we can do:
“Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman said, “We regard the minimum wage as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.” Friedman and the overwhelming majority of economists say that minimum-wage laws hurt the very people that proponents seek to help — minorities, teenagers and female heads of families.
Or how about the 1987 New York Times editorial, “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00″? The editorial in the liberal paper urged the abolition of the minimum wage, arguing, “An increase in the minimum wage … would increase employers’ incentive to evade the law, expanding the underground economy. More important, it would increase unemployment: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers, and fewer will be hired.”
How about the unemployment rate for black teens, age 16 to 19, which now stands at 30.1 percent? Before minimum-wage laws, the black and white teenage employment rates were about the same. After minimum-wage laws, however, black teens experienced greater unemployment than white teens.
Or how about when Congress raised the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $4.75 an hour? From third quarter 1996 to first quarter 1997 (when the rate kicked in), teenagers, blacks and women heading families all experienced greater unemployment. And this during a period of over-all job growth! Allen Reynolds, director of economic research at the Hudson Institute, writes, “Such a sudden rise in the national unemployment rate would be front-page news. But when only teens, blacks and single moms are affected, it apparently does not attract much attention or sympathy.”
UPDATE NEXT: Unfortunately, my own representative, Phil English (PA-03) was a ringleader in this misguided effort. A few of his words:
“The minimum wage hike is a fairness issue that has been long overlooked. At a time when working families are struggling to make ends meet, juggling high gas prices and looming heating bills this winter, an increase in the minimum wage goes a long way in guaranteeing some of our most vulnerable citizens get an adequate return on their work effort.â€
No, Phil…it goes a long way in guaranteeing that more of ‘our most vulnerable citizens’ will be soon in the unemployment line.
“Rivers of the Year”???
July 29, 2006
This article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Three-day water adventure planned for the three rivers
contains this wonderful line:
The Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers were named Pennsylvania’s 2006 Rivers of the Year by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources…
I’m sorry, but doesn’t that raise just a host of questions?
- What makes these three particular rivers deserving of this year’s honor? Were they particularly “good” rivers the past year, not flooding and making a mess of things for people? Did they not drown as many other people, per capita, as other rivers? Were they on their best river behavior, in other words?
- Are these rivers aware that they’ve been so honored? Do they have little floating pins that they display with pride? Will they be bragging to their river friends about this accomplishment? “Hey, Susquehanna, when’s the last time you were “River of the Year”?”
- Will there be an awards show on TV? Who will host: Joan Rivers? Muddy Waters? Rikki Lake (probably not)?
- Since this is the first time that the prestigious honor has been awarded to three rivers in the same year, do you think that each river senses that somehow the award doesn’t count for as much as if it’d been honored alone? Are rivers, for that matter, particularly envious entities?
I hope that someone can answer these questions for me, and I’m pretty sure that there’s a federal grant available to study them…
Ice Age II: As Funny as They Get
July 27, 2006
I meant to write this a couple of weeks ago, but if you get the chance, you need to take in Ice Age II: The Meltdown. This is probably the funniest movie I’ve seen in a decade, if judged by the number of times I laughed out loud. I won’t spoil any of the plot for you, but just thought that you might be interested in an almost-completely-family-friendly flick (a couple of subtle references that’ll likely go over the heads of kids notwithstanding) that is really a scream. The weasels are some of the funniest characters I’ve ever seen…
Time for the “Church Shrinkage Institute”?
July 25, 2006
Eyes are rolling, rolling in the back of my head on this one. I went to a link that lists the “50 Most Influential Churches in America”—more on that in a minute—and saw a banner advertising the “Top 20 Youth Pastors”. I kid you not. A la the AP Top 25 football rankings, we have the CR Top 20 Youth Pastors rankings. For once, I confess that a comment escapes me. I am sitting here just shaking my head at the absurdity that this is apparently a serious thing, meant to be taken seriously (for what purpose? Can any of my readers imagine the value in an article ranking America’s Top 20 youth pastors?).
FYI, Kurt Johnston of Saddleback is the #1 youth pastor in America. Of course, it looks like all of the Top 20 youth pastors are affiliated with a Top 50 church.
And isn’t that interesting: the 50 most influential churches in America. Now, among them are some fine churches, some churches I’ve never heard of, and some churches led by borderline heretics. Actually, I could probably join half or better of them, so I guess it’s not a terrible list at all. But you know, I’m just about up to here with the whole “bigger is better” mentality. I’m honestly thinking of starting the “Church Shrinkage Institute”, with our theme passage being taken from John 6 where a whole bunch of people get off the Jesus Bus. I benefit from some megachurch ministries, I honestly do, and so I’m not tossing the baby out with the bath water when I say this, but maybe, just maybe, some of these churches are big and influential because they have tossed sound theology out the window in favor of a charismatic preacher who can “bring it” from the pulpit and tickle the ears of the good folks (Can you say Osteen? Can you say Jakes? Sure…sure you can).
But isn’t every denomination (my own included, though to a lesser degree than many) and every major conference all wrapped up in “church growth” and in inviting only pastors from the biggest churches to speak? Every year at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference, the same group of megachurch pastors, for the most part, is trotted out, ’cause these are the guys who are really getting it done, dontcha know? If you’ve got a big church, hey, you must be in tight with the Boss in ways that the great unwashed, whose churches struggle to break 75 week-in-and-week-out, are not (never mind that some of those churches are in Bug Tussle Junction, population 45, in contrast with the places where the megachurches are located, generally). I’m not bitter about this, and don’t mean to sound that way, but I certainly am growing increasingly cynical.
My buddy Matt, regular reader and occasional poster here, pastors a church in a town in Pennsylvania that makes the little town I’m in, Mercer, look like a metropolis. Matt believes that he’s right where God wants him, and is willing to retire from there (Matt is in his early thirties). God bless Matt; his church of, I don’t know, maybe 125 people equals a church of about 3000-4000 in a major city…but because Matt’s chosen to do something I’d probably scratch my eyes out trying to do (live in the middle of nowhere), he probably won’t get invited to speak at a big conference any time in his life, and I doubt a TV ministry is in his future. But he, and thousands upon thousands like him, are the bread and butter of the American ministry, and while I very much appreciate the insights and contributions of some of the pastors on the list of America’s 50 Most Influential Churches, here’s to all the guys plugging away in ministry, trying to be faithful to God’s call on their lives in Bug Tussle Junction.
In Defense of Nuance
July 25, 2006
This week’s posts are starting to make me sound like some kind of flaming, touchy-feely liberal, I guess…getting in touch with my Democrat side, I suppose. But here’s a defense of John Kerry, of all people. Remember how, in the 2004 election, Kerry got into dutch with a lot of folks because he was “wishy-washy” and a “flip-flopper” (he will go to his grave regretting one statement which seemed to embody this: “I voted for (it) before I voted against it.”). And candidly, I’m not sure but what he wasn’t a little rubbery on some things (but then, hardly any politicians have steel in their spines, do they?).
And yet he was spoken of by supporters as a person who took “nuanced” positions, providing fodder for the Limbaughs and Hannitys, of course (as if there weren’t enough other reasons not to vote for John Kerry! I believe that GWB is doing a generally mediocre job, but if it were him v. Kerry again, I’d not waver in my vote for the President.). Anyhoo, back on subject: to be “nuanced” about things was taken as a bad thing. In fact, a failure to understand that many, many things must be approached in a nuanced way is itself a bad thing. In the last 24 hours, I’ve posted on taking a common sense approach toward what to do with convicted child molesters; had that post linked to by a pastor who also linked to a guy who took a “zero tolerance” approach; and heard Glenn Beck make the subject of what to do with child molesters the key part of his program. And I say that we have to take a nuanced approach to the subject.
Mr. “Zero Tolerance” basically says, “fry ‘em all”. “Demand a death penalty statute against child molesters”, and he does mean all of ‘em, period; it’s the only way to clean out the infection, he says. Well…
Well, that sounds popular, doesn’t it? Except that a non-nuanced position would be a disaster. A 16-year-old—old enough to be legally married in some states—dresses like Britney, her hero, and seduces a guy who is three years her senior. Catch the guy? Off with his head, says Mr. Zero Tolerance. Hogwash. There is a massive, qualitative difference between the guy who stalks little girls, and the kid barely over the age of consent who is seduced by someone a little shy of it—and anyone in their right mind knows it.
Or take the Iraq war. Sean Hannity and Rush like to say that “you can’t be against the war and for the troops”. To which I say, “scuse me? Why not?” Look, I’ve never, ever been convinced that Iraq was the correct next step in the war on terror. Perhaps it is; perhaps it’s not. I won’t pretend—like so many Americans—to have enough information to make an informed decision one way or the other. Do I “support the war”? If by that you mean, “am I convinced that going into Iraq was the best thing to do”, then the answer is, “no”…I’m just not sure (Afghanistan, on the other hand, slam dunk). Does that mean I do not support the troops? You’re kidding, right? We are in Iraq. I want them to accomplish the mission effectively, with as little loss of innocent life as possible, and get out as quickly as they can. I cheer their bravery and their efforts, and consider them American heroes for standing up to evil—even if I’m not sure that the evil to which we should have stood up is located first/primarily in Iraq. Nuanced position? Yep. And correct, from where I sit; I don’t have to agree with a given military decision to want with all of my heart for the troops to do a superb job of carrying out that decision.
What is my stance regarding homosexuals? Nuanced (see my previous post of last week). What is my stance regarding poverty, drugs, limited government, CCM, sports, even abortion (if it’s the mother’s life or the baby’s; they can’t both be saved)? Nuanced.
Just like most people’s…
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
