From: The Cumberland Presbyterian Church blog - the cumberlist
On Monday, July 9, 2012 8:17:54 AM UTC-5, KLM wrote:
Before we read too far into my post, let me offset some of the following statements by affirming that many churches close as a result of their community becoming a "ghost town" - when everyone moves away and leaves a church in the middle of nowhere... those closures are beyond our control. Of course, church growth and death are truly in God's hands and beyond our control anyway.
HOWEVER -- knew that was coming did you not?
However, many church closure are a result of the ineffectiveness of judicatories and a lack of accountability among the bodies. There have been churches that closed as a result of a pastor's failure, but more often than not the pastor is blamed for situations over which they have no true effectiveness without the support of the presbytery or denomination. One congregation comes to mind, it suffered tensions over decades of ministry, under the leadership of various pastors the problem remained... and presbytery did nothing over the years and allowed those who were the problem to remain in position and authority and eventually the attrition closed the church. In other cases, Presbytery jumps to the defense of congregations clearly in violation of the Word of God and our Confession. We are not connectional just for the camping and family lineage we are also connectional for the accountability that it brings.
As people who are a part of fallen humanity we will mess up and it is grace to confront the error and restore the person gently - frankly, in my mind, it is sin to allow people to continue to damage the Bride of Christ with impunity.
To turn the closure of churches around we need to hold the congregations accountable the the problem, and find a way to correct it. We need to use people who have actually seen a turn around in their congregation (elders and pastors) to inform and assist the local church and the presbytery. When ever we ask people to do something we haven't done (like turn around a church) there is a ring of falsehood in a declaration that these things will work.
Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that we will take the steps necessary to correct the problem ... it will be painful, but so is a surgery to remove a cancer, letting it remain is foolishness.
Until all know
Keith Mariott
Monday, July 9, 2012
What I Read Today - Monday July 9, 2012
From: The National Journal - Influence Alley Blog
Are We About To Witness Watergate The Sequel?
By John Aloysius Farrell
July 6, 2012
6:00 a.m.
Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the infamous Watergate break-in. On the night of May 28, 1972 a team of burglars from President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign entered Democratic National Committee headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate office building, rifled through files and desk drawers, and bugged telephones. One of the bugs didn't work. So the burglars returned on June 17 to replace it. That was the night they were caught.
The investigations that followed unearthed a series of scandalous acts that sent Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, his White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, and three dozen other aides and associates to jail. Nixon himself resigned. The dark deeds of other presidents - assassination plots, electronic surveillance and dealings with organized crime - were unearthed by congressional investigations, shaking faith in government.
It was a sad, disillusioning moment, which Americans would like to forget. But it's important to remember our history now, at a time when the post-Watergate reforms, which were designed to put an end to such corruption, are being eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, the IRS and the Federal Election Commission.
Today you can give as much money as you want to help a president, a senator or a member of the House of Representatives get elected - and you can do it in secret, and the public will never know. The Watergate scandals left us unassailable evidence of just what that kind of behavior leads to - of the kind of corruption that occurs when campaign finance laws are lax, or unenforced, or riddled by loopholes.
The International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, for example, discovered in the Nixon years that a timely $400,000 contribution to the Republican Party helped make an anti-trust problem go away.
"Does ITT have money?" Haldeman asked.
"Oh God yes," said the president. "That's part of this ball game."
Dairy interests kicked in $2 million in secret donations, in return for higher federal milk subsidies.
"Better get a glass of milk. Drink it while it's cheap," aide John Ehrlichman told Nixon.
Herb Kalmbach, the president's personal lawyer, supervised the collection of $20 million in 60 days in the spring of 1972, including $2 million in cash. Multi-millionaires like W. Clement Stone, Richard Mellon Scaife, Arthur Watson, Walter Annenberg, Robert Vesco, Armand Hammer, Dwayne Andreas, George Steinbrenner and Ross Perot were among the secret donors.
The bundles of $100 bills piled up, until the Nixon campaign had a million dollars in cash in its safe. The money that financed the Watergate break-in came from secret donations.
Some of the contributions were illegal, but much of the secret fundraising was allowed under frayed federal statutes. The post-Watergate laws reformed the system, but time passed and voters forgot and creative pols found new ways of hoovering money from folks who have interests before the government.
In 2010, in the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced that political corruption was but a theoretical danger, and transparency would protect the citizenry.
Well, it's a theory. But in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles the candidates and their allies have taken advantage of the chinks and cracks and dormant federal regulators, and the system is anything but transparent. Even this last line of defense is gone.
By the time the 2012 election is over, a lion's share of the billions of dollars that will be spent in this campaign will have been raised in secret. When a wave of negative advertising eviscerates your favorite candidate this fall, you'll probably never know who paid for it.
"I promise you, there will be huge scandals," says Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who is old enough to remember Watergate. "There is too much money washing around; we don't know who contributed, and there's corruption associated with that kind of money."
The corruption that peaked with the Watergate break-ins destroyed Nixon's presidency. This year marked other milestones - like the 40th anniversary of his world-shaking opening to China, and the SALT arms control treaty with the Soviet Union - that might otherwise have placed him in the ranks of our greatest chief executives.
So honor the Watergate anniversary. Rent the movie All the President's Men. Remember. And hope McCain is wrong, and that we won't be looking at another debilitating scandal in the months ahead, with President Obama or President Romney needing a pardon, as their aides are hauled to jail.
Friday, July 6, 2012
What I Read Today - Friday July 6, 2012
From: The New York Times - published July 5, 2012
Honor Code
By DAVID BROOKS
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters. He was rambunctious when young and courageous when older. But suppose Henry went to an American school.
By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time. By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.
By elementary school, Henry would be lucky to get 20-minute snatches of recess. During one, he’d jump off the top of the jungle gym, and, by the time he hit the ground, the supervising teachers would be all over him for breaking the safety rules. He’d get in a serious wrestling match with his buddy Falstaff, and, by the time he got him in a headlock, there’d be suspensions all around.
First, Henry would withdraw. He’d decide that the official school culture is for wimps and softies and he’d just disengage. In kindergarten, he’d wonder why he just couldn’t be good. By junior high, he’d lose interest in trying and his grades would plummet.
Then he’d rebel. If the official high school culture was über-nurturing, he’d be über-crude. If it valued cooperation and sensitivity, he’d devote his mental energies to violent video games and aggressive music. If college wanted him to be focused and tightly ambitious, he’d exile himself into a lewd and unsupervised laddie subculture. He’d have vague high ambitions but no realistic way to realize them. Day to day, he’d look completely adrift.
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.
Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys. A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back. Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse.
By 12th grade, male reading test scores are far below female test scores. The eminent psychologist Michael Thompson mentioned at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few days ago that 11th-grade boys are now writing at the same level as 8th-grade girls. Boys used to have an advantage in math and science, but that gap is nearly gone.
Boys are much more likely to have discipline problems. An article as far back as 2004 in the magazine Educational Leadership found that boys accounted for nearly three-quarters of the D’s and F’s.
Some colleges are lowering the admissions requirements just so they can admit a decent number of men. Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.
Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic. The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But the big story here is cultural and moral. If schools want to re-engage Henry, they can’t pretend they can turn him into a reflective Hamlet just by feeding him his meds and hoping he’ll sit quietly at story time. If schools want to educate a fiercely rambunctious girl, they can’t pretend they will successfully tame her by assigning some of those exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas. Social engineering is just not that easy.
Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.
The basic problem is that schools praise diversity but have become culturally homogeneous. The education world has become a distinct subculture, with a distinct ethos and attracting a distinct sort of employee. Students who don’t fit the ethos get left out.
Little Prince Hal has a lot going on inside. He’s not the unfeeling, uncommunicative, testosterone-driven cretin of common boy stereotype. He’s just inspired by a different honor code. He doesn’t find much inspiration in school, but he should.
Honor Code
By DAVID BROOKS
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters. He was rambunctious when young and courageous when older. But suppose Henry went to an American school.
By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time. By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.
By elementary school, Henry would be lucky to get 20-minute snatches of recess. During one, he’d jump off the top of the jungle gym, and, by the time he hit the ground, the supervising teachers would be all over him for breaking the safety rules. He’d get in a serious wrestling match with his buddy Falstaff, and, by the time he got him in a headlock, there’d be suspensions all around.
First, Henry would withdraw. He’d decide that the official school culture is for wimps and softies and he’d just disengage. In kindergarten, he’d wonder why he just couldn’t be good. By junior high, he’d lose interest in trying and his grades would plummet.
Then he’d rebel. If the official high school culture was über-nurturing, he’d be über-crude. If it valued cooperation and sensitivity, he’d devote his mental energies to violent video games and aggressive music. If college wanted him to be focused and tightly ambitious, he’d exile himself into a lewd and unsupervised laddie subculture. He’d have vague high ambitions but no realistic way to realize them. Day to day, he’d look completely adrift.
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.
Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys. A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back. Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse.
By 12th grade, male reading test scores are far below female test scores. The eminent psychologist Michael Thompson mentioned at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few days ago that 11th-grade boys are now writing at the same level as 8th-grade girls. Boys used to have an advantage in math and science, but that gap is nearly gone.
Boys are much more likely to have discipline problems. An article as far back as 2004 in the magazine Educational Leadership found that boys accounted for nearly three-quarters of the D’s and F’s.
Some colleges are lowering the admissions requirements just so they can admit a decent number of men. Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.
Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic. The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But the big story here is cultural and moral. If schools want to re-engage Henry, they can’t pretend they can turn him into a reflective Hamlet just by feeding him his meds and hoping he’ll sit quietly at story time. If schools want to educate a fiercely rambunctious girl, they can’t pretend they will successfully tame her by assigning some of those exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas. Social engineering is just not that easy.
Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.
The basic problem is that schools praise diversity but have become culturally homogeneous. The education world has become a distinct subculture, with a distinct ethos and attracting a distinct sort of employee. Students who don’t fit the ethos get left out.
Little Prince Hal has a lot going on inside. He’s not the unfeeling, uncommunicative, testosterone-driven cretin of common boy stereotype. He’s just inspired by a different honor code. He doesn’t find much inspiration in school, but he should.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
What I Read Today - Tuesday July 3, 2012
From: The New York Times - July 2, 2012
A Choice, Not a Whine
By DAVID BROOKS
Hostility toward the Supreme Court has risen sharply since Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. upheld the Obama health care law. People are apparently angry that the court didn’t rid them of a law they detest. But that’s silly. If Americans want to replace this thing, they should do it themselves.
The case against Obamacare is pretty straightforward. In the first place, the law centralizes power. Representative Tom Price, a Republican of Georgia, counted 159 new federal offices, boards and councils, though nonpartisan researchers have had trouble reaching an exact tally. In the first six months after passage alone, federal officials churned out an awesome 4,103 pages of regulations.
The law also creates the sort of complex structures that inevitably produce unintended consequences. The most commonly discussed perverse result is that millions of Americans will lose their current health insurance.
A report by the House Ways and Means Committee found that 71 of the Fortune 100 companies have an incentive to drop coverage. But nobody really knows what’s going to happen. A Congressional Budget Office study this year estimated that 20 million could lose coverage under the law or perhaps 3 million could gain employer coverage. Or the number could be inside or outside the range.
There are other possible perverse effects. According to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services, over the next 75 years Medicare payment rates for inpatient hospital services would steadily fall from around 67 percent of private insurance payment rates to an implausibly low 39 percent. Doctors would either flee the program in droves or Congress would override the law, exploding the costs.
Another report from the department suggests there could be 84 million Americans on Medicaid, an astounding burden on that already stretched system.
The law threatens to do all this without even fixing the underlying structures that make the American health care system so inefficient. It fails to fix the fee-for-service system that rewards people for the volume of services provided. It fails to fix the employer tax exemption that hides costs and encourages overspending.
Critics of the bill shouldn’t be hating on Chief Justice Roberts. If they can’t make this case to the voters, they really shouldn’t be in public life.
Moreover, there are alternatives. Despite what you’ve read, there is a coherent Republican plan. The best encapsulation of that approach is found in the National Affairs essay, “How to Replace Obamacare,” by James C. Capretta and Robert E. Moffit. (Mitt Romney has a similar plan, which he unveiled a little while ago and now keeps in a secret compartment in subsection C in the third basement of his 12-car garage).
Capretta and Moffit lay out the basic Republican principles: First, patients should have skin in the game. If they are going to request endless tests or elaborate procedures, they should bear a real share of the cost. Instead of relying on the current tax exemption that hides costs, the Republican plans would offer people a tax credit for use to purchase the insurance plan that suits their needs. The tax credit could phase out for the wealthy. Employees of small business who aren’t covered now would see an immediate benefit, which they could take from job to job.
Second, Americans should be strongly encouraged to buy continuous coverage over their adulthood. Then insurance companies would not be permitted to jack up their premiums if a member of their family develops a costly condition.
Third, the Republican approach would encourage experimentation in the states instead of restricting state flexibility.
Fourth, instead of locking Medicaid recipients into a substandard system, the Republicans would welcome them into the same private insurance health markets as their fellow citizens. This would give them greater access to care, while reducing the incentives that encourage them to remain eligible for the program.
Fifth, this approach would replace Medicare’s open-ended cost burden with a defined contribution structure. Beneficiaries could choose from a menu of approved plans. If they wanted a more expensive plan, they could pay for it on top of the fixed premium.
Finally, under this approach, any new spending would be offset with cuts so that health care costs do not continue to devour more and more of the federal budget. This could be done, for example, by gradually raising the retirement age.
Capretta and Moffit have more details. Their plan is flexible, decentralized and compelling.
Republicans say they trust the people. If that’s true, then they won’t waste another futile breath bashing the court for upholding Obamacare. They’ll explicitly tell the country how they would replace it. Democracy is a contest between alternatives, not a deus ex machina stroke from the lords in black robes.
A Choice, Not a Whine
By DAVID BROOKS
Hostility toward the Supreme Court has risen sharply since Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. upheld the Obama health care law. People are apparently angry that the court didn’t rid them of a law they detest. But that’s silly. If Americans want to replace this thing, they should do it themselves.
The case against Obamacare is pretty straightforward. In the first place, the law centralizes power. Representative Tom Price, a Republican of Georgia, counted 159 new federal offices, boards and councils, though nonpartisan researchers have had trouble reaching an exact tally. In the first six months after passage alone, federal officials churned out an awesome 4,103 pages of regulations.
The law also creates the sort of complex structures that inevitably produce unintended consequences. The most commonly discussed perverse result is that millions of Americans will lose their current health insurance.
A report by the House Ways and Means Committee found that 71 of the Fortune 100 companies have an incentive to drop coverage. But nobody really knows what’s going to happen. A Congressional Budget Office study this year estimated that 20 million could lose coverage under the law or perhaps 3 million could gain employer coverage. Or the number could be inside or outside the range.
There are other possible perverse effects. According to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services, over the next 75 years Medicare payment rates for inpatient hospital services would steadily fall from around 67 percent of private insurance payment rates to an implausibly low 39 percent. Doctors would either flee the program in droves or Congress would override the law, exploding the costs.
Another report from the department suggests there could be 84 million Americans on Medicaid, an astounding burden on that already stretched system.
The law threatens to do all this without even fixing the underlying structures that make the American health care system so inefficient. It fails to fix the fee-for-service system that rewards people for the volume of services provided. It fails to fix the employer tax exemption that hides costs and encourages overspending.
Critics of the bill shouldn’t be hating on Chief Justice Roberts. If they can’t make this case to the voters, they really shouldn’t be in public life.
Moreover, there are alternatives. Despite what you’ve read, there is a coherent Republican plan. The best encapsulation of that approach is found in the National Affairs essay, “How to Replace Obamacare,” by James C. Capretta and Robert E. Moffit. (Mitt Romney has a similar plan, which he unveiled a little while ago and now keeps in a secret compartment in subsection C in the third basement of his 12-car garage).
Capretta and Moffit lay out the basic Republican principles: First, patients should have skin in the game. If they are going to request endless tests or elaborate procedures, they should bear a real share of the cost. Instead of relying on the current tax exemption that hides costs, the Republican plans would offer people a tax credit for use to purchase the insurance plan that suits their needs. The tax credit could phase out for the wealthy. Employees of small business who aren’t covered now would see an immediate benefit, which they could take from job to job.
Second, Americans should be strongly encouraged to buy continuous coverage over their adulthood. Then insurance companies would not be permitted to jack up their premiums if a member of their family develops a costly condition.
Third, the Republican approach would encourage experimentation in the states instead of restricting state flexibility.
Fourth, instead of locking Medicaid recipients into a substandard system, the Republicans would welcome them into the same private insurance health markets as their fellow citizens. This would give them greater access to care, while reducing the incentives that encourage them to remain eligible for the program.
Fifth, this approach would replace Medicare’s open-ended cost burden with a defined contribution structure. Beneficiaries could choose from a menu of approved plans. If they wanted a more expensive plan, they could pay for it on top of the fixed premium.
Finally, under this approach, any new spending would be offset with cuts so that health care costs do not continue to devour more and more of the federal budget. This could be done, for example, by gradually raising the retirement age.
Capretta and Moffit have more details. Their plan is flexible, decentralized and compelling.
Republicans say they trust the people. If that’s true, then they won’t waste another futile breath bashing the court for upholding Obamacare. They’ll explicitly tell the country how they would replace it. Democracy is a contest between alternatives, not a deus ex machina stroke from the lords in black robes.
Monday, July 2, 2012
What I Read Today - Monday July 2, 2012
From: The Arkansas Democrat Gazette
The root of the confusion
By Paul Greenberg
This article was published July 1, 2012 at 5:21 a.m.
LITTLE ROCK — O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
-Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2 Not too long ago-Monday, June 18th-we published a syndicated column on the editorial page about sex-selection abortion. That is, a mother’s choosing to abort her baby because it’s the “wrong” sex, say a girl, when she really wanted a boy.
It happens around the world, particularly in Asia. And the one-child policy in still Communist China has only increased the practice. It would be hard to come up with a clearer example of sexual discrimination.
The pro-life faction in Congress has responded by introducing what’s called the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw such abortions.
Our guest columnist, Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman down in Texas, seemed of two minds, at least, about this issue. He knew he was against unjust discrimination against women, the way any good liberal or just any fair-minded American would be. But he also seemed to be for a woman’s right to have an abortion. Which left him in a quandary.
So our columnist friend asked Planned Parenthood, that citadel of pro-choice opinion, whether it was for or against sex-selection abortion.
If he was seeking guidance, he got precious little. What he did get in response to his simple question was a load of boilerplate about how Planned Parenthood supported all the right principles when it comes to not discriminating against women.
(“Planned Parenthood opposes racism and sexism in all forms; and we work to advance equity and human rights in the delivery of health care. Planned Parenthood condemns sex selection motivated by gender, and urges leaders to challenge the underlying conditions that lead to these beliefs and practices . . . .”)
Yadda, yadda, yadda. But was Planned Parenthood fir or agin this here Prenatal Nondisrimination Act?
It wouldn’t say, not at first.
But when pressed, it finally came out, like the Obama administration, against the proposed law. In short, Planned Parenthood is against all forms of discrimination on the basis of sex except when it isn’t, and on this issue it isn’t.
Planned Parenthood might be all against such discrimination in principle, but in practice it couldn’t be bothered to save a single baby marked for abortion because of its sex.
Our columnist friend in Austin was left in his self-imposed quandary.
He wound up spending a couple of columns of type deciding not to decide where he himself stood on the issue. He ended up by inviting any readers who disagreed with him to submit their opinions on the matter.
But what was there to disagree with?
Or agree with, for that matter? He never took a clear stand himself.
It’s the besetting sin of American opinion writing. I’ve lost count of the number of editorials I see that don’t editorialize. Instead they weave all around some controversial question-like abortion, for example-without ever taking a clear stand. As if they were afraid of offending. It would be more honest to label such editorials News Analysis, not claim they’re opinion.
Our friend’s big problem, his ethical dilemma, was symptomatic of those who don’t go back to first principles and think the abortion issue through. They don’t make the connection between the right to life and all the others subsidiary to it, like the right to equal treatment under the law.
The right to life must come first or all the others can never take root, much less flourish. As in the Declaration of Independence’s order of certain unalienable rights, among them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Note which one is mentioned first. And for good, logical reason.
Yet we condone snuffing out human lives so the rest of us can get on with debating Title IX or Affirmative Action and all the rest of the equal-rights agenda.
Something seems to have gone terribly wrong with the American capacity for reason itself.
All of which brings me to the story of Ruth Pakaluk of Worcester, Mass., diminutive housewife, homemaker, mother of six, beloved by neighbors and friends and all who ever had the good fortune to come into contact with her.
Dead of breast cancer at 41, she left behind a shining memory.
She was one of those people who brightened the life of everyone she came into contact with.
Ruth Pakaluk was also a figure in her state’s pro-life circles, and stated her position with such eloquent, unpretentious, convincing clarity that after a while pro-choice speakers declined to debate her. A Harvard graduate, she must have had some classical education, too, because she tended to express her position on, or rather against, abortion with the irrefutable simplicity of a Socratic syllogism. As she would sum it up in plain English:
“Human rights are rights that pertain to us simply because we are human, not for any reason above and beyond that; the fundamental human right is the right to life, and if that right is denied, then all human rights are in effect denied; the thing growing in the mother’s womb is surely alive (otherwise it would not need to be killed by an abortion), and it is human, thus to deny that it has the right to life is to deny that anyone has any human rights whatsoever.”
Q.E.D.
Those who think of abortion as an oh-so-complicated question pitting many equal, competing rights against one another don’t see-or maybe just don’t want to see-that a society that can abrogate the right to life can abrogate any right. For if we don’t have a right to life, we have no rights whatsoever.
Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at: pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com
Perspective, Pages 74 on 07/01/2012
Print Headline: The root of the confusion
The root of the confusion
By Paul Greenberg
This article was published July 1, 2012 at 5:21 a.m.
LITTLE ROCK — O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
-Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2 Not too long ago-Monday, June 18th-we published a syndicated column on the editorial page about sex-selection abortion. That is, a mother’s choosing to abort her baby because it’s the “wrong” sex, say a girl, when she really wanted a boy.
It happens around the world, particularly in Asia. And the one-child policy in still Communist China has only increased the practice. It would be hard to come up with a clearer example of sexual discrimination.
The pro-life faction in Congress has responded by introducing what’s called the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw such abortions.
Our guest columnist, Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman down in Texas, seemed of two minds, at least, about this issue. He knew he was against unjust discrimination against women, the way any good liberal or just any fair-minded American would be. But he also seemed to be for a woman’s right to have an abortion. Which left him in a quandary.
So our columnist friend asked Planned Parenthood, that citadel of pro-choice opinion, whether it was for or against sex-selection abortion.
If he was seeking guidance, he got precious little. What he did get in response to his simple question was a load of boilerplate about how Planned Parenthood supported all the right principles when it comes to not discriminating against women.
(“Planned Parenthood opposes racism and sexism in all forms; and we work to advance equity and human rights in the delivery of health care. Planned Parenthood condemns sex selection motivated by gender, and urges leaders to challenge the underlying conditions that lead to these beliefs and practices . . . .”)
Yadda, yadda, yadda. But was Planned Parenthood fir or agin this here Prenatal Nondisrimination Act?
It wouldn’t say, not at first.
But when pressed, it finally came out, like the Obama administration, against the proposed law. In short, Planned Parenthood is against all forms of discrimination on the basis of sex except when it isn’t, and on this issue it isn’t.
Planned Parenthood might be all against such discrimination in principle, but in practice it couldn’t be bothered to save a single baby marked for abortion because of its sex.
Our columnist friend in Austin was left in his self-imposed quandary.
He wound up spending a couple of columns of type deciding not to decide where he himself stood on the issue. He ended up by inviting any readers who disagreed with him to submit their opinions on the matter.
But what was there to disagree with?
Or agree with, for that matter? He never took a clear stand himself.
It’s the besetting sin of American opinion writing. I’ve lost count of the number of editorials I see that don’t editorialize. Instead they weave all around some controversial question-like abortion, for example-without ever taking a clear stand. As if they were afraid of offending. It would be more honest to label such editorials News Analysis, not claim they’re opinion.
Our friend’s big problem, his ethical dilemma, was symptomatic of those who don’t go back to first principles and think the abortion issue through. They don’t make the connection between the right to life and all the others subsidiary to it, like the right to equal treatment under the law.
The right to life must come first or all the others can never take root, much less flourish. As in the Declaration of Independence’s order of certain unalienable rights, among them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Note which one is mentioned first. And for good, logical reason.
Yet we condone snuffing out human lives so the rest of us can get on with debating Title IX or Affirmative Action and all the rest of the equal-rights agenda.
Something seems to have gone terribly wrong with the American capacity for reason itself.
All of which brings me to the story of Ruth Pakaluk of Worcester, Mass., diminutive housewife, homemaker, mother of six, beloved by neighbors and friends and all who ever had the good fortune to come into contact with her.
Dead of breast cancer at 41, she left behind a shining memory.
She was one of those people who brightened the life of everyone she came into contact with.
Ruth Pakaluk was also a figure in her state’s pro-life circles, and stated her position with such eloquent, unpretentious, convincing clarity that after a while pro-choice speakers declined to debate her. A Harvard graduate, she must have had some classical education, too, because she tended to express her position on, or rather against, abortion with the irrefutable simplicity of a Socratic syllogism. As she would sum it up in plain English:
“Human rights are rights that pertain to us simply because we are human, not for any reason above and beyond that; the fundamental human right is the right to life, and if that right is denied, then all human rights are in effect denied; the thing growing in the mother’s womb is surely alive (otherwise it would not need to be killed by an abortion), and it is human, thus to deny that it has the right to life is to deny that anyone has any human rights whatsoever.”
Q.E.D.
Those who think of abortion as an oh-so-complicated question pitting many equal, competing rights against one another don’t see-or maybe just don’t want to see-that a society that can abrogate the right to life can abrogate any right. For if we don’t have a right to life, we have no rights whatsoever.
Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at: pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com
Perspective, Pages 74 on 07/01/2012
Print Headline: The root of the confusion
Friday, June 15, 2012
What I Read Today - Friday June 15, 2012
From: The New York Times
What Republicans Think
By DAVID BROOKS
Democrats frequently ask me why the Republicans have become so extreme. As they describe the situation, they usually fall back on some sort of illness metaphor. Republicans have a mania. President Obama has said that Republicans have a “fever” that he hopes will break if he is re-elected.
I guess I’d say Republicans don’t have an illness; they have a viewpoint. Let me describe it this way: In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower reconciled Republicans to the 20th-century welfare state. Between Ike and George W. Bush, Republican leaders basically accepted that model. Sure, they wanted to cut taxes and devolve power, but, in practice, they sustained the system, often funding it more lavishly than the Democrats.
But many Republicans have now come to the conclusion that the welfare-state model is in its death throes. Yuval Levin expressed the sentiment perfectly in a definitive essay for The Weekly Standard called “Our Age of Anxiety”:
“We have a sense that the economic order we knew in the second half of the 20th century may not be coming back at all — that we have entered a new era for which we have not been well prepared. ... We are, rather, on the cusp of the fiscal and institutional collapse of our welfare state, which threatens not only the future of government finances but also the future of American capitalism.”
To Republican eyes, the first phase of that collapse is playing out right now in Greece, Spain and Italy — cosseted economies, unmanageable debt, rising unemployment, falling living standards.
America’s economic stagnation is just more gradual. In the decades after World War II, the U.S. economy grew by well over 3 percent a year, on average. But, since then, it has failed to keep pace with changing realities. The average growth was a paltry 1.7 percent annually between 2000 and 2009. It averaged 0.6 percent growth between 2009 and 2011. Wages have failed to keep up with productivity. Family net worth is back at the same level it was at 20 years ago.
In America as in Europe, Republicans argue, the welfare state is failing to provide either security or dynamism. The safety net is so expensive it won’t be there for future generations. Meanwhile, the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education. Successive presidents have layered on regulations and loopholes, creating a form of state capitalism in which big businesses thrive because they have political connections and small businesses struggle.
The welfare model favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care. This model, which once offered insurance from the disasters inherent in capitalism, has now become a giant machine for redistributing money from the future to the elderly.
This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. It needs replacing.
Mitt Romney hasn’t put it this way. He wants to keep the focus on President Obama. But this worldview is implied in his (extremely vague) proposals. He would structurally reform the health care system, moving toward a more market-based system. He would simplify the tax code. He would reverse 30 years of education policy, decentralizing power and increasing parental choice. The intention is the same, to create a model that will spark an efficiency explosion, laying the groundwork for an economic revival.
Democrats have had trouble grasping the Republican diagnosis because they don’t have the same sense that the current model is collapsing around them. In his speech in Cleveland on Thursday, President Obama offered an entirely different account of where we are. In the Obama version, the welfare-state model was serving America well until it was distorted a decade ago by a Republican Party intent on serving the rich and shortchanging the middle class.
In his speech, Obama didn’t vow to reform the current governing model but to rebalance it. The rich would pay a little more and everyone else would get a little more. He’d “double down” on clean energy, revive the Grand Bargain from last summer’s budget talks, invest in infrastructure, job training and basic research.
Obama championed targeted subsidies and tax credits. Republicans, meanwhile, envision comprehensive systemic change. The G.O.P. vision is of an entirely different magnitude: replace the tax code, replace the health care system and transform entitlements.
This is what this election is about: Is the 20th-century model obsolete, or does it just need rebalancing? Is Obama oblivious to this historical moment or are Republicans overly radical, risky and impractical?
Republicans and Democrats have different perceptions about how much change is needed. I suspect the likely collapse of the European project will profoundly influence which perception the country buys this November.
What Republicans Think
By DAVID BROOKS
Democrats frequently ask me why the Republicans have become so extreme. As they describe the situation, they usually fall back on some sort of illness metaphor. Republicans have a mania. President Obama has said that Republicans have a “fever” that he hopes will break if he is re-elected.
I guess I’d say Republicans don’t have an illness; they have a viewpoint. Let me describe it this way: In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower reconciled Republicans to the 20th-century welfare state. Between Ike and George W. Bush, Republican leaders basically accepted that model. Sure, they wanted to cut taxes and devolve power, but, in practice, they sustained the system, often funding it more lavishly than the Democrats.
But many Republicans have now come to the conclusion that the welfare-state model is in its death throes. Yuval Levin expressed the sentiment perfectly in a definitive essay for The Weekly Standard called “Our Age of Anxiety”:
“We have a sense that the economic order we knew in the second half of the 20th century may not be coming back at all — that we have entered a new era for which we have not been well prepared. ... We are, rather, on the cusp of the fiscal and institutional collapse of our welfare state, which threatens not only the future of government finances but also the future of American capitalism.”
To Republican eyes, the first phase of that collapse is playing out right now in Greece, Spain and Italy — cosseted economies, unmanageable debt, rising unemployment, falling living standards.
America’s economic stagnation is just more gradual. In the decades after World War II, the U.S. economy grew by well over 3 percent a year, on average. But, since then, it has failed to keep pace with changing realities. The average growth was a paltry 1.7 percent annually between 2000 and 2009. It averaged 0.6 percent growth between 2009 and 2011. Wages have failed to keep up with productivity. Family net worth is back at the same level it was at 20 years ago.
In America as in Europe, Republicans argue, the welfare state is failing to provide either security or dynamism. The safety net is so expensive it won’t be there for future generations. Meanwhile, the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education. Successive presidents have layered on regulations and loopholes, creating a form of state capitalism in which big businesses thrive because they have political connections and small businesses struggle.
The welfare model favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care. This model, which once offered insurance from the disasters inherent in capitalism, has now become a giant machine for redistributing money from the future to the elderly.
This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. It needs replacing.
Mitt Romney hasn’t put it this way. He wants to keep the focus on President Obama. But this worldview is implied in his (extremely vague) proposals. He would structurally reform the health care system, moving toward a more market-based system. He would simplify the tax code. He would reverse 30 years of education policy, decentralizing power and increasing parental choice. The intention is the same, to create a model that will spark an efficiency explosion, laying the groundwork for an economic revival.
Democrats have had trouble grasping the Republican diagnosis because they don’t have the same sense that the current model is collapsing around them. In his speech in Cleveland on Thursday, President Obama offered an entirely different account of where we are. In the Obama version, the welfare-state model was serving America well until it was distorted a decade ago by a Republican Party intent on serving the rich and shortchanging the middle class.
In his speech, Obama didn’t vow to reform the current governing model but to rebalance it. The rich would pay a little more and everyone else would get a little more. He’d “double down” on clean energy, revive the Grand Bargain from last summer’s budget talks, invest in infrastructure, job training and basic research.
Obama championed targeted subsidies and tax credits. Republicans, meanwhile, envision comprehensive systemic change. The G.O.P. vision is of an entirely different magnitude: replace the tax code, replace the health care system and transform entitlements.
This is what this election is about: Is the 20th-century model obsolete, or does it just need rebalancing? Is Obama oblivious to this historical moment or are Republicans overly radical, risky and impractical?
Republicans and Democrats have different perceptions about how much change is needed. I suspect the likely collapse of the European project will profoundly influence which perception the country buys this November.
Friday, June 8, 2012
What I Read Today - Friday June 8, 2012
From: The New York Times
June 7, 2012
The Moral Diet
By DAVID BROOKS
In the 1970s, the gift shop at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was an informal affair. It was staffed by about 300 mostly elderly volunteers, and there were cash drawers instead of registers. The problem was that of the shop’s $400,000 in annual revenue, somebody was stealing $150,000.
Dan Weiss, the gift shop manager at the time who is now the president of Lafayette College, investigated. He discovered that there wasn’t one big embezzler. Bunches of people were stealing. Dozens of elderly art lovers were each pilfering a little.
That’s one of the themes of Dan Ariely’s new book “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty.” Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little. Ariely and his colleagues gave thousands of people 20 number problems. When they tackled the problems and handed in the answer sheet, people got an average of four correct responses. When they tackled the problems, shredded their answers sheets and self-reported the scores, they told the researches they got six correct responses. They cheated a little, but not a lot.
That’s because most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that “good person” identity. Most people won’t cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about themselves.
Ariely, who is one of the most creative social scientists on the planet, invented other tests to illustrate this phenomenon. He put cans of Coke and plates with dollar bills in the kitchens of college dorms. People walked away with the Cokes, but not the dollar bills, which would have felt more like stealing.
He had one blind colleague and one sighted colleague take taxi rides. The drivers cheated the sighted colleague by taking long routes much more often than they cheated the blind one, even though she would have been easier to mislead. They would have felt guilty cheating a blind woman.
Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the Good Person Construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer — part of a daily battle against evil.
But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.
The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.
Obviously, though, there’s a measurement problem. You can buy a weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can’t buy a scale of virtues to put on the bathroom floor. And given our awesome capacities for rationalization and self-deception, most of us are going to measure ourselves leniently: I was honest with that blind passenger because I’m a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one because she probably has too much money anyway.
The key job in the Good Person Construct is to manage your rationalizations and self-deceptions to keep them from getting egregious. Ariely suggests you reset your moral gauge from time to time. Your moral standards will gradually slip as you become more and more comfortable with your own rationalizations. So step back. Break your patterns and begin anew. This is what Yom Kippur and confessionals are for.
Next time you feel tempted by something, recite the Ten Commandments. A small triggering nudge at the moment of temptation, Ariely argues, is more effective than an epic sermon meant to permanently transform your whole soul.
I’d add that you really shouldn’t shoot for goodness, which is so vague and forgiving. You should shoot for rectitude. We’re mostly unqualified to judge our own moral performances, so attach yourself to some exterior or social standards.
Ariely is doing social science experiments and trying to measure behavior. But I thought his book was an outstanding encapsulation of the good-hearted and easygoing moral climate of the age. A final thought occurred to me. As we go about doing our Good Person moral calculations, it might be worth asking: Is this good enough? Is this life of minor transgressions refreshingly realistic, given our natures, or is it settling for mediocrity?
June 7, 2012
The Moral Diet
By DAVID BROOKS
In the 1970s, the gift shop at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was an informal affair. It was staffed by about 300 mostly elderly volunteers, and there were cash drawers instead of registers. The problem was that of the shop’s $400,000 in annual revenue, somebody was stealing $150,000.
Dan Weiss, the gift shop manager at the time who is now the president of Lafayette College, investigated. He discovered that there wasn’t one big embezzler. Bunches of people were stealing. Dozens of elderly art lovers were each pilfering a little.
That’s one of the themes of Dan Ariely’s new book “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty.” Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little. Ariely and his colleagues gave thousands of people 20 number problems. When they tackled the problems and handed in the answer sheet, people got an average of four correct responses. When they tackled the problems, shredded their answers sheets and self-reported the scores, they told the researches they got six correct responses. They cheated a little, but not a lot.
That’s because most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that “good person” identity. Most people won’t cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about themselves.
Ariely, who is one of the most creative social scientists on the planet, invented other tests to illustrate this phenomenon. He put cans of Coke and plates with dollar bills in the kitchens of college dorms. People walked away with the Cokes, but not the dollar bills, which would have felt more like stealing.
He had one blind colleague and one sighted colleague take taxi rides. The drivers cheated the sighted colleague by taking long routes much more often than they cheated the blind one, even though she would have been easier to mislead. They would have felt guilty cheating a blind woman.
Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the Good Person Construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer — part of a daily battle against evil.
But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.
The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.
Obviously, though, there’s a measurement problem. You can buy a weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can’t buy a scale of virtues to put on the bathroom floor. And given our awesome capacities for rationalization and self-deception, most of us are going to measure ourselves leniently: I was honest with that blind passenger because I’m a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one because she probably has too much money anyway.
The key job in the Good Person Construct is to manage your rationalizations and self-deceptions to keep them from getting egregious. Ariely suggests you reset your moral gauge from time to time. Your moral standards will gradually slip as you become more and more comfortable with your own rationalizations. So step back. Break your patterns and begin anew. This is what Yom Kippur and confessionals are for.
Next time you feel tempted by something, recite the Ten Commandments. A small triggering nudge at the moment of temptation, Ariely argues, is more effective than an epic sermon meant to permanently transform your whole soul.
I’d add that you really shouldn’t shoot for goodness, which is so vague and forgiving. You should shoot for rectitude. We’re mostly unqualified to judge our own moral performances, so attach yourself to some exterior or social standards.
Ariely is doing social science experiments and trying to measure behavior. But I thought his book was an outstanding encapsulation of the good-hearted and easygoing moral climate of the age. A final thought occurred to me. As we go about doing our Good Person moral calculations, it might be worth asking: Is this good enough? Is this life of minor transgressions refreshingly realistic, given our natures, or is it settling for mediocrity?
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