Really interesting quote From Lawrence Dennis

"Any charter of liberties becomes necessarily an absurdity after a few years, for no plan of public order and means to its realization can long, be appropriate to changing conditions."

People are talking again about what Obama said (in addition to the need to deal resolutely and decisively with terrorists) about the roots of the 9/11 attacks

The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

Fair enough.

But is that consistent with his understanding of poverty he expressed in Dreams of My Father (see below)?

There he claimed poverty in inner city Chicago is the worst, because of the lack of "discernible order" in the life of the poor (order provided by tradition and networks of middlemen and bribe takers). Wouldn't the kind of traditional societies like those of the Arab world fit the model of those that provide "discernible order"? But the terrorists didn't and haven't come from Chicago, they came from a place where there was tradition.

I continue to be concerned with the statist impulse. The statist assumes he knows enough about social order to manipulate it. But nobody knows enough to do what he think will actually come to pass. Thus the governing impulse that humbly says we can't know the "roots" or "climate" that produces something (I'm becoming more leery of the climate metaphor) and instead we deal with the matters at hand is bound to be more effective and in tune with reality, avoiding the inevitable "unintended consequences"

Post Apocalypse. TIME writes on the phenomenon of mean blog commenters.

Thoughts?

I continue to be fascinated by the anonymous writer for the Asia Times "Spengler". Of interest to me is a recent article where he draws out the influence of the anthropological background of Obama's mother on Obama

Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised.

The anthropologist Obama is on display in a quotation from Dreams of my Father that Spengler references here

As we walked back to the car, we passed a small clothing store full of cheap dresses and brightly colored sweaters, two aging white mannequins now painted black in the window. The store was poorly lit, but toward the back I could make out the figure of a young Korean woman sewing by hand as a child slept beside her.

The scene took me back to my childhood, back to the markets of Indonesia: the hawkers, the leather workers, the old women chewing betel nut and swatting flies off their fruit with whisk brooms ... I saw those Djakarta markets for what they were: fragile, precious things. The people who sold their goods there might have been poor, poorer even than folks out in Altgeld [the Chicago housing project where Obama engaged in community organizing]. They hauled fifty pounds of firewood on their backs every day, they ate little, they died young. And yet for all that poverty, there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like Altgeld so desperate, I thought to myself.

That's quite revealing. As Spengler comments

The coherence of traditional society imposes a structure on life, a structure so rigid that such societies cannot adapt to change and must crumble before encroaching empire. In return for the sanctity of individual rights, Americans are freed from the constraints of traditional society and made responsible for their own actions. For an American presidential candidate to refer to traditional society as the model for the solution to American problems has no precedent. It is one thing to denounce American errors while upholding American principles. Never before has America considered electing a president who prefers the alternative, and that might just be the most dangerous thing to happen to the United States since its Civil War.

Back in the original article, though, American's "freedom from constraints" have a downside

Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm - "Great Awakenings" – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.

Environmentalists want to do whatever it takes to make sure we don't harm the environment.

Cheap oil leads us to waste it and not invest in alternative energy.

Oil prices are "mysteriously" high, and "speculators" are blamed, and politicians want to investigate to find who's responsible.

What if a well-funded cabal of environmentalists is buying up all the oil futures, paying higher and higher prices just to make sure the price is high. And they will just take the oil off the market and store it somewhere.

Did you hear about that Buddhist couple who're never more than 15 feet apart? Well, we tried it. - By David Plotz and Hanna Rosin

Here's a "radical feminist" argument for why heterosexual marriage should receive a place of legal privilege in comparison to whatever tolerated legal arrangements the US makes for homosexual relations.

In entering in to heterosexual marriage, women must assume greater personal risk than women who have lesbian relationships or men who have gay relationships.

The qualification and quantification of the risk could take various forms.

Go read The Diplomad: About Those "Highly Educated" Voters, for yet another indictment of our edumacational system. You can elide the implied criticism of Obama voters if you like.

Its a good follow-on to Craig Wilson's column in USA Today on the topic of gaps in cultural knowledge (like someone who actually didn't know what Christmas was)

From boardgamegeek comes the popular geeklist Lessons Learned While Demoing Games at a Non-Gaming Convention. I looked at this and didn't realize at first it was from a homeschooler promoting game-play. In response to the point that it isn't intuitively obvious to all families that boardgames are a good family activity, someone says

I did the homeschool convention circuit for more than a decade while working for a curriculum publisher, and at first it really surprised me how many people didn't necessarily agree with "books = awesome."

Well, that's not entirely true. But to have people say that "Little House on the Prairie" was not a good story because sometimes Laura was disobedient...

D. A. Carson is interviewed by Derek Thomas on Ref 21, on the perennial topic of "Christ and Culture". I liked particularly Carson's point about how the "givens" of western democracy are way too influential on how we think about Christ and Culture. That's actually one of the finest things about theonomy: it causes us to at least reflect on life in another "given" ancient israel.

But then Carson says

But many of those who speak easily and fluently of redeeming the culture soon focus all their energy shaping fiscal and political policies and the like, and merely assume the gospel. A gospel that is merely assumed, that does no more than perk away in the background while the focus of our attention is on the 'redemption' of the culture in which we find ourselves, is lost within a generation or two.

I dunno. Who does he mean? Who are the "top 10" Christian culture warriors, and how is this evidenced?

ALL their energy? Really?

From the 1930s comes a form for rating your adequacy as a wife or husband, with a detailed list of merits and demerits.

Tests for Husbands and Wives

When a select portion of the few readers of my blog want to see...

P. J. O'Rourke's commencement address Fairness, idealism and other atrocities recommends reading the Bible for a key piece of political advice

The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin. Observe the Tenth Commandment. The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there's the tenth: 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.'

Here are God's basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And, right at the end of it we read, 'Don't envy your buddy because he has an ox or a donkey.' Why did that make the top 10? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, include jealousy about livestock?

Well, think about how important this commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own.

I didn't like it when Bill Clinton talked about giving america a "New Covenant". And I don't like it when Obama rewrites 1 Corinthians 13.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Obama Needs a History Lesson: "In defending his stated intent to meet with America's enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: 'I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.'

That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit."

NPR has a discussion with Janice Hale, who was the foundation of Jeremiah Wright's claims about black and white brains, and black children's subject oriented vs object oriented learning style.

Hale says Wright is correct, but then immediately back away from a discussion of "brains" to a discussion of culture.

I wonder if she'll talk about why that doesn't fly because one of the goals/purposes of public education is homogeneity of culture.

Rick Phillips writes Did You Know that Pentecost is this Sunday?

I could be flip and answer, "No, I didn't, because I go to the church where Rick Phillips preached this."

But that would be flip.

Could Instruments Be Idols? R. Scott Clark for A capella psalmody.

Paul Washer - Shocking Message is a sermon from a Southern Baptist Evangelist on the requirement of holiness for true Christian salvation.