- Code words, dog whistles, Biblical illiteracy, and politics of fear.
- School Choice is Here to Stay – for good reason.
- Not just recovery: deleveraging recovery.
- Cum grano salis.
- Information gluttony.
- The foundation of human dignity.
1
Republican politicians are often accused of using religious “code words” and “dog whistles,” … when all they’re doing is employing the everyday language of an America that’s more biblically literate than the national press corps. Likewise, what often gets described as religious-right “infiltration” of government usually just amounts to conservative Christians’ using the normal mechanisms of democratic politics to oust politicians whom they disagree with, or to fight back against laws that they don’t like.
… [J]ournalists should remember that Republican politicians have usually been far more adept at mobilizing their religious constituents than those constituents have been at claiming any sort of political “dominion.”
… Manichaean rhetoric, grandiose ambitions, apocalyptic enthusiasms … often are[] not signs of religious conservatism’s growing strength and looming triumph, but evidence of its persistent disappointments and defeats.
Ross Douthat column at the New York Times. Douthat is “spot on” in all four points, although a cynical politician with a Biblically-literate background can use “the lingo” <dog whistle>to deceive, were it possible, even the elect</dog whistle>. The “persistent disappointments and defeats” come from trusting people who deceive — i.e., people.
Meanwhile, some Jackass who blogs as Doghouse Riley goes on a scatological rant against Douthat, appearently mistaking that for a logical argument. He’s preaching to his choir. I suppose people puzzle over my following James Howard Kunstler, whose blog is scatological in the title even if most postings are not.
But note this well: the politics of fear is not a conservative exclusive. All this buzz about religious codes words and dog whistles is the Left’s version of McCarthyite commie witch hunts. The only difference between “Left” and “Right” is which threats each thinks realistic and fanciful.
As I’ve said before, ad nauseum, I’m politically homeless, and that’s because I know what the Left does wrong, I know that the Right doesn’t follow through on its rhetorical come hither looks, and I know that the Theocratic vision, if realized here given America’s Evangelical core, will not be friendly to Orthodox Christianity.
We all tend, at various times if not at all times, and healthily if not pathologically, to fear what we don’t know, and we don’t know details of the future. If I find any political home, I’ll occupy it only uneasily, because its would-be <code words>princes, sons of men in whom there is no salvation</code words>, will not be perfectly reliable.
2
I had lost sight of the extent to which our educational problems are the result of conscious decisions, driven by ideology. I was reminded by a podcast on Ancient Faith Radio with the topic of Imagination and Soul.
John Dewey’s notion that you don’t teach subjects, you teach students, and that the teacher isn’t (even relatively) an expert, seem highly corrosive of good education.
Maybe that’s why School Choice is Here to Stay.
3
Two business leaders endorse an outside-the-box proposal for economic recovery. (Wow! An idea! Those things intoxicate me!)
Seriously, this is worthwhile reading. I’m increasingly hearing things along the lines that “a massive deleveraging is inevitable, will take time and be painful.” The new term, to me at least, is “deleveraging,” which I’ve seen as a noun and as an adjective modifying “recovery.”
The point seems to be, this ain’t your regular business cycle, folks. Thus, it seems to me that novel solutions are worth considering for our novel problem.
4
Take no proposed law at face value. Take every rationale with a grain of salt. Look for how big corporate interests will be benefitted.
That’s probably too cynical, but it’s late and I’m feeling surly. By the dawn’s early light, it will stil be rooted in a painful reality, even if blown out of proportion a bit.
5
The Web, and especially blogs, are a free information buffet, and I’ve been acting like a real pig. I just unsubscribed several blogs, all under my heading on “Public Affairs,” consistent with my diminished blogging on politics.
But I’m amazed how many I still seem to see as indispensable somehow. Methinks that’s a perception problem, not a mark of true bounty. When crunch times come — e.g., Sunday — I feel more, not less, human for the real human contact versus cybercontact.
It may have pushed me a bit in this direction that my new Mars Hill Audio Journal (Volume 108) arrived (via internet download, of course), and I see that one of the pieces is on how the web more resembles “lifestyle enclaves” than it resembles real communities. I almost didn’t have to listen to it — though I surely will listen — to see myself reflected in that summary.
6
The understanding of God becoming Man is the only possible foundation for the dignity of human beings. (Attributed to Abp. Dmitri Royster by Fr. Stephen Freeman) Memory Eternal (again)!
This man may beat Seraphim Rose to recognition as the first American-born convert Saint.
* * * * *
If you’re missing political rants, I’m sorry, but I was giving the impression that I cared, so I stopped blogging politics. “They” are all idiots except for the ones who are rogues. But RogerWmBennett Tweets about politics and stuff over in the right-hand column. I generally agree with the guy.
Tipsy
Bon appetit!
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 