Moral Reasoning and Parental Notification Laws

Each side in the parental notification issue has their "poster children" for why parental notification laws should, or should not, be passed. On the "should" side are the instances where boyfriends and statutory rapists talk and/or coerce their pregnant underage girlfriends into abortions without their parent's knowledge - in one prominantly quoted case leading to the death of the girl from complications of the abortion because the parents did not know that a surgery had been performed.

On the "should not" side you are advised to go read "Abortion and parental notification laws" and the two posts (here and here) the author links written by someone who works within the justice system processing judicial exception requests to parental notification laws.

However, I really am not interested - at least in this post - about the "poster children" . . .

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The Strength of Uniqueness

There were a couple of diaries at Street Prophets reflecting on some of the political and social aspects of two strategy/war games -- Chess and Go: "Metaphor and The Game of Go . . ."

• Part 1
• Part 2

Part 1 is really mainly introduction - Part 2 is the one I really caught and involved myself in. My comments in the diary itself were mainly to correct some more or less serious errors (IMO) about chess - a game I both palayed and organized tournaments in a past "life". However, the real point of interest to me was some the underlying philosophical assumptions of the author:

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Discussion Question: On Science and Morality

It seems rare for two intelligent folks with diametrically opposed views actually have a civilized, engaging conversation. It seems to me it is even rarer when one is an atheist and one is a follower of Christ who wrote a pretty scathing indictment of Dawkins, Hitchens and company.

The atheist is Luke at Common Sense Atheist and he wrote a post called "The Irrational Atheist (notes in the margin, part 2)". Vox Day wrote The Irrational Atheist and has a blog called Vox Popoli.

I am following both of them in Google Reader. On the Vox Day side, The Irrational Atheist provided most, if not all, the basis for a couple of my posts. I also posted the beginnings of an exchange of letters between Luke and Vox.

However, what has gotten my attention this time is this set of comments by Luke. First, he quotes VD from the chapter "The Case Against Science":

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Romans 7:7-25 -- "The Real Problem With Me"

[The index for the series is here.]

I am using the Pastor's titles for these posts. The appropriate links are:

• Audio file
• Note sheet

The text:

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The Problem of Evil: Free Will and the Quantity of Evil

Luke at Common Sense Atheism is continuing his series Arguing about Evil with the post "Plantinga’s Free Will Defense". Go read that.

This was started as a comment there, and then got to long-winded to keep as a comment.

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Vox Day vs Luke: Nosing into a Discussion

I have quoted The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day in three major posts:

• "War and Religion" and "The Problem Isn't God" based on Chapter 6: "The War Delusion"
• "Atheism, Utopianism,  and Totalitarianism" based on Chapter 13: "The Red Hand of Atheism"

I added Vox Popoli -- Vox Day's blog -- to my reading list and, lo and behold, ran into the 6th letter (3 from each side) in a dialogue between Day and Luke Muehlhauser at Common Sense Atheism. Apparently, Luke requested this dialogue and kicked it off with his first letter at his blog

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Atheism, Utopianism, and Totalitarianism

[Attention: This posts is not about all atheists, or what all atheists believe, or even (necessarily) all utopianism - please read carefully]

I will begin with a comment I made in a discussion of Bill Maher's "enabling" of the "Religious Right" (all the scare quotes there are because I do not think any of that terminology is very good).

Suffice it to say, that the view of Marx on the philosophical side was the same as Dawkins: progress will only occur in solving the world's problems if the metaphysical, non-naturalist ideologies and theologies standing in the way of that progress (and they always stand in the way of that progress) are isolated from the culture so they can no longer stand in the way of that progress.

In either case, both Marxism and Dawkins stated, or seriously implied, that religion must be removed as an influence in society in order for humanity to solve its real problems and evolve to a higher order of human social relationship. In the case of Marxism in power, that led in every case to atrocities against the religious and holders of other "bourgeois philosophies" in order to move that evolution on.

There is no doubt that the modern history of totalitarianism is primarily anchored with expressly atheist ideology (Communism) or non-Christian ideology (Hitler). The slaughter has been enormous - far, far outweighing the closest of Christian kings or rulers since the beginning of Christendom around 400 AD. Religious, but non-Christian, kings have not been as bloodthirsty either by several orders of magnitude. Why is this?

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Blog Tour: 10/4 - 10/10

Wherein I look around the web - hopefully once a week - and draw some attention to things I see there that interest me.

If you want to know where I go, look at the links on the left of my blog under "Places I Frequent". From there, I will go places those places may point me. Typically, I will also list up to three of my favorite posts from the current Christian Carnival - and may go somewhere those blogs take me.

Sometimes they will be topically organized, and sometimes just in order of the links I visited. Enjoy:

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Subsidiarity and Violence

I have talked alot about subsidiarity:

"As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them." (Pope Pius XI, "On Reconstruction of the Social Order", 1931)

On of the reasons for this is diminishing spontaneity:

as a hierarchy of associations and relationships rise from the individuals and families at the base of the social structure (up to and including government), the higher the rung the less spontaneous it is and the more contrived; or, the higher you go the less help the structure gets from nature and the more help it needs from culture.

So, as this article points out:

[Subsidiarity] holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy

That is because the closer, and more organic, organization is the more natural organization and easiest for the folks affected to control.

One thing I noticed (and haven't directly mentioned in connection with subsidiarity) when I wrote "The Era of Bloodshed" was (as mentioned by Conyers) that Hannah Arendt:

suggested that where power, in the sense of effective action within a community is missing, violence takes its place. Moreover, once the institutions of government have outgrown the individual and the neighborhood, so that the very scale of governance no longer permits effective action for most people, then those people are more likely to take to the streets and address their grievances in destructive ways.

If you are not just going to take things like the Tea Party movement and the outcry at the health care town halls as astroturfing, then you can see this feeling of ineffectiveness and lack of control beginning to explode into anger and violence.

Even folks who supported President Obama are feeling the same: it seems to many that regardless of the promises made during the election, and the vote, and the control of Congress by the Democratics - that nothing has changed. Nothing. Arendt's critique still explains: we, the electorate, are simply to far from the "halls of power" to have any impact on policy - or at least not the same impact as the lobbyists sitting in their offices. Certainly not the same impact that organized citizens can have on city, county, and state governments.

There was a reason the Federal Constitution left so many powers in the hands of the several states - and it has not been particularly good that the Federal government has moved more and more control, over more and more areas, into Washington D.C. One thing that political activists of all stripes need to realize - the Federal Government is too large, and too distant, for there to be effective citizen control.

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What Kind of Conservative Are I?

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House has listed some points that he believes do, and do not, define being a political conservative. It seems like a worthy task:

• the Bush Administration has been anything except my version of conservative


• the Obama presidency is going to be anything but conservative


• a lot of folks who say they are conservative are anything but conservative.

All of that is, of course, purely subjective on my part -- so I, like Rick, need to be clear on my definition of conservative. Rick is a political conservative, and an atheist; and I am a political conservative and a theologically conservative Christian. So, let us start with a division there: while my religious beliefs do inform my political beliefs, these are entirely separate categories. I know political conservatives who are either unreligious, or very liberal in a theological sense. I know theologically conservative folk who are liberal politically. I like a lot of what I see of Rick's political ideology - and of course think his theology is absolutely wrong. So, we really have to be careful about drawing too many conclusions about someone's political ideology from their theology; and vice versa.

Another problem with being a political conservative is the company I keep. Moran nails it:

For it appears to me from my vantage point that we are entering a period where someone’s conservative bona fides will not depend on what he believes as an intellectual frame of reference that informs his stand on issues as much as how much he agrees with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter . . .

. . . there lies a whole slew of litmus tests where many of these conservabots will brook no opposition, no nuance, no independent thinking whatsoever.

A partial listing:

If you are pro-choice to one degree or another, you are not a conservative.

If you are pro-choice to one degree or another, you are not a conservative.

If you criticize the war or the military, you are not a conservative and unpatriotic to boot.

If you say anything nice about a liberal anytime, anywhere – if you agree with a liberal on anything or praise a liberal past, present, or future – you are not a conservative.

If you don’t agree that torturing the enemy is necessary and/or good, you are not a conservative.

If you say anything nice about any media besides conservative mags, talk radio and Fox News, you are not a conservative.

If you believe in evolution, you are not a conservative and are probably going to hell.

If you believe that there is a possibility of man made global warming based on scientific evidence collected so far, you are not a conservative and should probably be committed.

If you believe that Barack Obama is just a stupid liberal and not a clone of Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden all rolled into one, you are not a conservative.

If you believe that Democrats don’t have horns, a tail, and a pitchfork, you are not a conservative.

And most of all, unless you believe Sarah Palin is the second coming of Ronald Reagan, the bees knees, the cat’s meow, the apple of our eye, and the greatest thing to hit the conservative movement and the Republican party since Robert Taft first uttered the immortal words “US out of the UN” – you are not a conservative.

The problem with all those issues (and most of the things that "progressives" use to define being "progressive") is that none of them have anything to do with a theory of government or governance - nor any other historic definition of conservatism. They are all superficial and non-ideological guages. To put it into theological terms, they are all about behaving and appearing righteous, without any discussion of the reasons for the behavior or who the behavior serves: there is nothing about the heart or really even about the head. All of that was about partisanship and not political theory.

Yet another problem with being a conservative (or a progressive really) is that there is little source of good discussion about political theory as opposed to issue-oriented partisanship. If the coming election of Barack Obama - and a whole slew of liberals to Congress - is really going to mean that political conservatives really start to discuss what it means to call yourself a conservative then that is great. That may happen after all the blame gets tossed around. More likely we will have at least 4 years of folks opposing everything their opponent supports, even if that opposition has no coherant political or philosophical framework informing it. That is pretty much what we have seen from the left for the last period of time. They are fortunate that the Bush administration was fairly incompetant - they are not winning this election because they have put forward a coherant vision. They are winning because they oppose President Bush and he is not loved.

How do I relate to Rick Moran's principles for his conservatism?

I believe first and foremost in American exceptionalism - the idea that we are a different country and people from any other nation on earth.

Of course the United States is exceptional on an historical level; and in the world today. Does this mean better - especially in some form invoking superiority or the right to expect other nations to attempt to duplicate what we are? No. It does mean, to me, that "to whom much is given much is expected". Also, this is where my theological conservativeness raises up. J. Budziszewski:

The mistake in all these stages is confusing America with Zion. She is not the inheritor of the covenant, not the receiver of the promises, not the witness to the nations. It may well be that all nations have callings of sorts — specific purposes which God in His providence assigns them. But no nation can presume to take God under its wing. However we may love her, dote upon her, and regret her, the Lord our God can do without the United States.

I am first, and foremost, a member of the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God - and, frankly, this is where the famed split on the right between the social conservatives (read "fundamentalist" Christians) and the political conservatives may be based. Political ideology, and especially partisanship, do not trump theology.

I believe the free market economic system is the fairest, the most productive, and the greatest engine for human liberty ever conceived.

I believe that American defenses must be second to none – conventional and strategic.

I believe in a robust, forward thinking, “America first” foreign policy.

What does this last mean? The use of "America First" as the cover slogan for the pro-Nazi Americans who wished to keep the US out of WWII makes this an unfortunate phrase at best. That aside, what does a foreign policy that puts the United States first mean? What kind of foreign policy has the US ever had that didn't put us first? Is the key phrase here "forward thinking"? Now, foreign policy that is forward thinking would be new.

I believe in a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution and that a president should appoint judges to the federal courts who reflect that view.

This would be the first (maybe second) real ideological point I see Rick Moran making. I agree, and I like how one of the commentor's explained this:

The term “strict constructionist” is probably liberal term invented in academia as a dysphemism to make proper interpretation of the Constitution seem like a bad thing.

The Constitution says what it means and means what it says. It has an amendment process so we can add other things that we think it should say. Instead of just making up what we think it says, we should rule that it says what it says. The legislative branches all over the country have the right (and duty) to correct and amend it as needed.

Exactly. It is the impatience -- and laziness -- of folks to do the political work necessary to "win the hearts and minds" of enough people to change the constitutions of the federal and state governments that make them go to the courts in order to get judges to legislate from the bench. This, as Jefferson warned, creates a judicial oligarchy and makes the constitution blank by construction.

I believe in the inviolable rights of private property as the guarantor of American liberty.

I believe in equality of opportunity for all Americans regardless of color, ethnic heritage, or national origin.

I believe America should strive to create the smallest government realistically possible, possessing the lightest touch imaginable on the individual citizen.

This is one of those things I agree with absolutely, and see very few folks giving an ideological depth to. Without a concept like subsidiarity informing this view, it is largely rhetoric:

Since Aristotle two principles have been seen:

1. connaturality: culture should develop in partnership with our design filling the outline our first nature provides; and


2. diminishing spontaneity: as a hierarchy of associations and relationships rise from the individuals and families at the base of the social structure (up to and including government), the higher the rung the less spontaneous it is and the more contrived; or, the higher you go the less help the structure gets from nature and the more help it needs from culture.

These two features imply the risk that though the higher rungs ought to protect and co-operate with the more spontaneous lower rungs - the higher rung's lesser spontaneity means they may not.

This implies a rule, subsidiarity, which was a natural assumption but not put into words until 1931 by Pope Pius XI:

"As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them." ("On Reconstruction of the Social Order")

As Pius said, what brought this to the forefront was the industrial revolution, and the danger that between the collectivists on one side, and the individualists on the other, all the "little platoons" between the state and the individual would be destroyed and/or absorbed.

Back to Moran's list:

I believe in a just and moral society with a as clear a sense of right and wrong as is consistent with reality.

I believe that all of these things should be taught in American schools and that an appreciation of these values and qualities should be encouraged.

Someone in the comments asked where exactly this list is published - which is, of course, a great question. I believe in natural moral law so I have some ideas on the matter; but Rick and I do not agree on the existence of God (and a natural set of moral principles arising from that) - which conservatives like Burke and Russell Kirk took as granted. From Kirk (the first of his six canons of conservative thought):

Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality . . . cannot of itself satisfy human needs. . . . True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

[Kirk later expanded these six canons into ten principles which are listed below]

And I believe we should have the freedom to say what we think, write what we want, worship however the hell we please, do anything, go anywhere, and enjoy life according to our own lights – as long as we do no harm to anyone’s person or property

Most liberals would agree with this - until we got to the definition of what constituted harm.

Now, I criticized Moran for lack of ideology - as he has criticized current conservatives for a lack of a intellectual foundation for their views. Kirk, however, dismissed ideology for the conservative:

Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the past two centuries. After some introductory remarks on this general theme, I will proceed to list ten such conservative principles.

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers. But of course there is more to the conservative persuasion than this general attitude.

To cap this piece, I will list Kirk's ten principles as well.

Conservatives

1. believe that there exists an enduring moral order


2. adhere to custom, convention, and continuity.


3. believe in what may be called the principle of prescription.


4. are guided by their principle of prudence.


5. pay attention to the principle of variety.


6. are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.


7. are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.


8. uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.


9. perceive the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.


10. understand that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.

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False TestimonyThe Wasilla Earmarks

Someone pointed out this article from the Washington Post: "Palin's Small Alaska Town Secured Big Federal Funds":

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group.

I am a fiscal conservative. I believe that - to the highest degree possible - things should be organized, and paid for, at the lowest level of government possible. It is part of my belief in subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

One of my criticisms of the Bush administration is that they have spent "like a drunken sailor on shore leave": more massively than any administration in US history. Indeed, it is difficult for me not to laugh when folks talk about the Bush administration cutting social service spending - no administration has ever spent more by any gauge.

However, subsidiarity doesn't mean that higher levels of government do not exist, or that they do not need to collect and spend money in support of lower levels of government. The principle is that lowest possible level of government should do the work and raise the money - the one closest to those served. Sarah Palin, as a mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska, has supported this idea - saying that Wasilla, or Alaska, should attempt to do what it needs to do without higher levels of funding.

Higher levels of funding are necessary though. There are issues that cannot be resolved by a single city, or a single state. There are necessary and important improvements that a smaller entity may not be able to afford. Believing that spending should occur at the lowest level does not mean that all higher spending is necessarily wrong. Indeed, this comparison in the Washington Post article seems to me exactly wrong:

In fiscal year 2002, Wasilla took in $6.1 million in earmarks -- about $1,000 in federal money for every resident. By contrast, Boise, Idaho -- which has more than 190,000 residents -- received $6.9 million in earmarks in fiscal 2008.

A city of 190,000 should be better able to "pay its own way" and receive less Federal or state funding than a city of 6,000. Right? Also, I haven't looked into why the shift in years for the comparison - what did Boise get in 2002? If they picked on Portland, OR during the years when we have received the bulk of the funding for the Light Rail projects, our numbers might approach a billion. Finally, Boise has existed and been building infrastructure a lot longer than Wasilla - or indeed Alaska. That is one of those ways half-truths are hatched.

What is an "earmark"? The article says:

federal spending sought by members of Congress to benefit specific projects

That is technically correct; but fails to identify the real problem with earmarks. Barack Obama identified the problem as he teamed up with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and John McCain to call for an end to earmarks (at least until the election):

"We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress' seniority, rather than the merit of the project," Obama said in a statement. "We can no longer accept an earmarks process that has become so complicated to navigate that a municipality or non-profit group has to hire high-priced D.C. lobbyists to do it." [Notice that Obama just explained why Wasilla had to hire a lobbyist]

Earmarks are line items inserted directly by members of Congress into legislation - typically large bills. This is not a reference to spending by executive department branches as part of their granting process. The problem with earmarks is:

On paper, earmarks are intended to go through a public process. Lawmakers recognize needs which exist in their respective states or districts, and submit a written request to the appropriate congressional subcommittee asking for the panel’s support. In reality, however, earmarks are often not judged on their merit. Rather, earmarks are typically handed out as favors in exchange for votes on key pieces of legislation by party leaders and appropriations chairmen.

In addition, earmarks are rarely considered by the entire U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate during the construction of a bill. Rather, they are often added during the conference phase, which is when House and Senate leaders meet to iron-out the differences in their respective pieces of legislation on a particular issue. Following the conference, both houses must approve the legislation again, but if a member wishes to oppose a particular earmark, he/she must vote against the entire bill in order to do so. Given that most earmarks are inserted into massive pieces of legislation which fund the federal government, members of Congress are often reluctant to oppose them simply over an earmark. In addition, through the process of logrolling, members often agree to support a bill with another’s earmark in exchange for the same treatment. The result is bills with hundreds, if not thousands, of specifically-directed funding projects. Thomas A. Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, said that 98 percent of earmarks to appropriations bills in 2005 were added in the conference phase.

Earmarks have been defended:

In 2001, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) argued that politicians know better than federal agencies how to properly spend money for higher education. He stated, “Nobody knows their constituents or their academic institutions or their programs better than the members of the House or the Senate who represent these organizations...We are in a better position to evaluate the merits of these programs than any executive agency.

Again, the distinction is Congressperson directed spending and not executive branch directed spending -- and really about largely unexamined spending. So, let's look at that list in the first linked article:

A sampling of the 14 earmarks, totaling $26.9 million, directed to the city of Wasilla from 2000 through 2003. Sarah Palin was mayor from 1996 to 2002.

$1.9 million for the Wasilla Intermodal Transit Project, to realign rail and bus routes to increase use of public transit in the region. First, this was not an earmark - it was a grant from an executive branch agency - the US Department of the Transportation. Second, it was built in Fairbanks and not Wasilla:

The Alaska Railroad Corporation will use the $1.9 million grant to build the new intermodal facility to accommodate future expansion and tourism growth . . . “We understand that transportation plays a key role in the economy of Fairbanks . . . The new location is easily accessed from downtown Fairbanks and the airport . . . Major construction is scheduled to be completed in April 2005 with passenger operations set to begin in mid-May. Final completion of the center, including exterior landscaping is expected in July 2005 and will serve passengers arriving from and departing to Denali National Park and Preserve, Talkeetna, Wasilla and Anchorage.

One down

$500,000 for Kids Are People Inc., an emergency shelter for youths transitioning out of juvenile detention facilities. This was an earmark - and you will find it on page 8 of the linked PDF. And, it was actually built in Wasilla. One up.

$15 million for a rail project to connect Wasilla with Girdwood, the home town of Sen. Ted Stevens (R). That was the cutest rhetorical trick here. Do you think Stevens is the only resident? This little chunk of railroad is part of this overall plan to solve commuter and recreational traffic problems between Anchorage and the Mat-Su borough - home of 57,000 people of whom 35% commute into Anchorage:

Wasilla is located in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in south-central Alaska on the (Anchorage to Fairbanks) Parks Highway. Located 43 miles north of Anchorage, Wasilla (and the Mat-Su Valley) is among the fastest growing regions in Alaska. Wasilla . . . is located alongside the Alaska Railroad mainline which stretches from Fairbanks to Anchorage, and then on to Seward.

Population growth has been rapidly shifting from Anchorage to the Mat-Su Borough over the past 15 years. The population growth in the Borough is partly attributable to the lack of affordable housing and developable land for new residential land tracts in Anchorage. The Mat-Su Borough gained more than 20,000 new residents between 1990 and 2000. The 2000 census states Mat-Su’s population at 59,322, up from 39,683 in 1990, and 17,816 in 1980.

The majority of people live in the southern part of the Mat-Su Borough (the Mat-Su Valley) within about an hour drive time of the Anchorage metropolitan area. The two largest towns in the Mat-Su Borough are Palmer and Wasilla, each with a current population of roughly 5,000 residents. The “Core-Area” of the Mat-Su Valley is largely residential. Approximately 35% of the employed labor force commutes south to Anchorage on a daily basis

. . .Direct road access to and from Anchorage through Wasilla came with the construction of the Parks Highway in the early 1970s. This development enabled Anchorage workers and their families to live in the Wasilla area, and commute each day to the city for employment. Support and service industries began to expand to meet the needs of new residents. The City of Wasilla incorporated in 1974, and has developed as the retail and commercial hub of the central Mat-Su Borough.

Land use patterns have been largely shaped by the early development of the rail and highway corridor. As Wasilla grew, it grew linearly along the rail/highway corridor. As the population increased, demand for north-south crossings of the rail/highway corridor also increased. When the population was small, these crossings were not a problem. With the community’s rapid expansion over the past 15 years, however, the growing population and roadway traffic has overburdened the road network and increased the traffic crossing the highway and railroad as well as the traffic running along these major corridors. The increasing cross traffic (road and pedestrian) coupled with increasing through traffic causes safety concerns for at-grade crossing of both rail and highway facilities. Recreational land development north of Wasilla increased through traffic dramatically and now presents its own problems burdening local traffic pattern. The growth and inefficient layout of the road network exacerbates conditions.

To deal with the growing traffic problems, the State has embarked on an aggressive road construction program in the area. The state’s emphasis on the Parks Highway corridor reflects the highway’s importance as one of the state’s main commercial corridors and Mat-Su Valley’s rapid growth. Up to 20,000 cars and trucks a day travel along the Parks Highway south of Wasilla. Wasilla is the hub for several regional roads, including the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, Wasilla-Fishhook, and Knik-Goose Bay Road.

For many years, long-term transportation plans in Wasilla have included either a rail or a highway bypass. The 2002 Parks Highway Corridor Management Plan calls for a possible second or even a third corridor to address the traffic volume anticipated by 2030. The Plan says that if all the roadway(s) have direct access, as many as 12 lanes could be needed to carry the expected east-west traffic in downtown Wasilla. A 1982 Parks Highway location study investigated alternative alignments for the Parks Highway through and around Wasilla to accommodate the projected traffic growth. Eventually, additional travel lanes will be needed on any section not bypassed.

To help alleviate the growing travel demand through the corridor into Anchorage, the Alaska Railroad has been pursuing rail improvements that, when complete, will provide commuter rail and enhanced passenger services through the corridor

Sounds to me like part of a comprehensive plan to re-work the entire transportation pattern of a rapidly growing commuter area coupled with a great deal of recreational traffic. Probably not about Steven's house. Two down.

[Update 9/14/08: ABC also dealt with this $15M in their "Palin's Record on Pork: Less Sizzle than Reported". Alaska Railroad received this money - not Wasilla; although Wasilla supported the request]

I included that whole description because one of those "half-truths" is that Wasilla is some "small town" with 5,000 people. Obviously, the description of the region above makes it clear that there is a whole lot more going on in the Mat-Su valley than that.

$1.75 million to upgrade emergency communications between authorities at the Wasilla dispatch center. It was a Homeland Security grant, and not an earmark. Also, I found one explanation of part of its use - $440,000 for a mobile communications command vehicle:

During the flood disaster in August, scouring rivers cut two phone cables. For residents from Willow north, cell phones and the Internet didn't work at one point. Flood responders had fewer paths to communicate through as well. Krill said he and others drove up suitcases of radio equipment that had to be set up in Talkeetna. "We did it piecemeal," Krill said. "With this, if communications are disrupted, the command van can fill that void. We can take it anywhere in the Borough and have an already-established communications operation."

Three down.

$600,000 to upgrade bus stations.. Couldn't find this - so call it an earmark. It is part of the whole intermodal transportation plan for the Mat-su above. two up

$900,000 to upgrade water and sewer facilities. This is an earmark that was part of (see page 136)

$40,000,000 for grants to address drinking water and wastewater infrastructure needs in rural and Alaska Native communities

Three up. Again, this is a rapidly growing area - and the need to upgrade water and sewer facilities to safeguard the health of the citizens is obvious.

So, three of the six earmarks were actually earmarks - and actually directly aimed at Wasilla. The reception of those three is not, in and of itself, a problem. As Barack Obama stated the problem with earmarks is that they are not necessarily judged for their necessity and importance - we do not really know whether Congress did that or not. You now have some information to judge their necessity and importance; and thereby the fitness for office of the one who sought them (and of course the Congress that approved them). Was she representing her community well as its Mayor, or

"She certainly wasn't shy about putting the old-boy network to use to bring home millions of dollars," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "She's a little more savvy to the ways of Washington than she's let on."

Another issue is that one commenter criticized Wasilla (and Sarah Palin as it's Mayor) for:

• Placing itself in debt through bond issues in order to pay for infrastructure; and


• avoiding debt by seeking funding for necessary infrastructure from the federal government; and


• doing what Obama pointed out was necessary in order to get federal money - hiring a lobbyist

How then is Wasilla supposed to pay for necessary infrastructure? As a spokeswoman for Palin said about all this:

Palin sought the Wasilla earmarks because she was "working in the best interests of Alaska, working within the confines of the current system."

The political decision: Does this experience recommend Sarah Palin as a Vice-Presidential candidate; or speak against her. Did she feed at the public trough like the rest of the pigs; or did she do what was best for the well-being of the folks she was elected to represent? If you think the earmarks process is broken, will her executive experience seeking and receiving them be a benefit in that reform; or not?

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Arrogance, Elitism, and Opiates for the Masses II

[Continued from Part I]

I left the Left (or at least activism) in the late 70's for one conscious reason: I came to believe the radical Left would NEVER reach the working class that they wished to organize. EVER. Barack Obama's San Francisco speech about workers in Pennsylvania clearly shows why: we just didn't get the "culture" - and our philosophical, sociological, and political explanations about why "they" [key word that] just couldn't see why we were right were just not right. We were indeed, as Spiro Agnew called us, "nattering nabobs of negativity" and "effete intellectual snobs".

I left the Left for some unconscious reasons as well. I - not by design - "immersed myself in the working class": I got married to a fellow activist with four children aged 9-12 and I had to pay attention to my family, my job, and my life. I would swing a hammer as a carpenter for the next 15 years until I got injured on the job.

As PastorDan pointed out in "Rural Voters, Values Voters, And The Bitterness Of The Elites":

Even setting those issues aside, working class people tend to be somewhat parochial. I don't mean that as a criticism: it's just that they're focused on what happens at the shop, or at church, or in the neighborhood. The town board is pushing a plan to build a park. They also have a reputation for being a good-old-boys club. Both issues are keeping our neighbors up at night: the friendly biker across the road is mulling a run for the board, which we're encouraging for no better reason than that we like him. He also hates the bar down the street as much as we do. That's a good thing. But the point is that the focus around here is definitely on around here.

It goes deeper yet in my mind: the family, the neighborhood, the shop, and the church are inherently conservative, and organic, structures. Organic in that they are not "organized" [except the shop - yet it can develop an organic culture] - they arise naturally out of human interaction. Conservative in a non-political sense that parallels the political sense spoken of by Russell Kirk:

1. Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality . . . cannot of itself satisfy human needs


2. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes . . . equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.


3. Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked


4. Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters, calculators, and economists" . . . Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power.


5. Recognition that change may not be salutory reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a person must take Providence into his calculations, and a person's chief virtue . . . is prudence.

The shorter version: that family, tradition, land, and faith are the tap roots from which the vast majority of folks' in the world draw their strength and endurance - and not something they "cling to" [unless, of course, you think plants "cling to" their roots during draughts]: it is just part of what they are. As Rick Moran said - they are "embraced and welcomed into their lives". Even Moran, now an atheist, gets this:

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic – that’s me, alright. Despite the fact I have long since left the Church, God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost (changed to “Spirit” in my youth; so much for the immutability of the divine), organized religion, and the idea of the supernatural altogether, I am still a Catholic.

I think like a Catholic. My worldview has been shaped – though not dominated – by Catholicism. In this, the nuns, the priests, the brothers, and probably a monk or two have left their mark on my intellectual, social, and spiritual development. And I will thank them for it till my dying breath. There is great beauty to be found in the strands of logic and insightful, penetrating analysis of humanity by Catholic thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and other Catholic theologians and philosophers.

So, the Left in my day failed to touch the working class with their ideology because they could not step into and embrace their world - they could not stand in their shoes, or share their roots, long enough to show them the correct direction to walk in them [assuming, of course, we even actually knew the right direction].

When the Apostle Paul gave his famous speech on Mars Hill he understood that point: he did not start from a point of criticism but by understanding the roots of that audience and who they were:

So Paul stood before the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects. For as I went around and observed closely your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown god.’ Therefore what you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.

Of course, political activism tends to run counter to a couple of important "beautiful attitudes" at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them."

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

There are some that it coincides with as well:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

That assumes that your politics are bringing true righteousness, justice and peace as God sees those terms.

True political activism also requires a servant's heart - the first will be last and the last will be first. If you want to lead, you must submit yourself to the needs of those you lead - and, of course, understand what those needs are. The Left has always thought that was economic - it isn't. That is why folks vote against their "economic interests".

However, I really have come to the threads of my current life: evangelical Christianity (and sales). Everything said above applies to that as well. Folks outside the Body of Christ have also put down their tap roots into sources of strength and endurance - and you simply cannot tell them the source of their strength is "wrong". You have to come into their world as Paul did above and lovingly serve them where they are: you have to be part of their community, job, traditions, etc. - and then show them by your fruit that your roots are planted in a better wellspring.

For the sales aspect, I will just leave you with this commercial from an automatic group:

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"Divine Will" or "Will of the People"? - Part II

One needn't be a theophobe to believe that government ought to be conformed to
the will of the people, not of the divine.

I examined one side of this idea in Part I - I am going to examine the other (maybe "next") part here:

What does control of the US government by the "will of the people" look like?

I am going to have to go to the idealized concept of control by the "will of the people" because certainly few in this country believe that their will controls the government; nor am I sure very many folks believe some will of "the people" in general controls government.

Indeed, the modern nation state resembles these remarks to me:

. . . important decisions in society were being made in remote, or at least highly inaccessible places like Washington and London. The growth of bureaucracies in capital cities and the remoteness of the centers of power increased the feeling of alienation from those who make truly adult decisions in society . . .

. . . once the institutions of government have outgrown the individual and the neighborhood, so that the very scale of governance no longer permits effective action for most people, then those people are more likely to take to the streets and address their grievances in destructive ways . . .

. . . [government] power is a prophylactic against violence

Assuming that in an ideal world, the modern western nation-state still has the ability to be directed by some general "will of the people" - how does that occur? The United States is not a true democracy - it is a representative republic. Also, most folks who have really thought it out really do not believe in "majority rule". The bottom line is that we expect our elected and appointed leaders - who are closer to being the actual people the government bows to the will of than us - to be ethical, moral and "do the right thing"; and that has nothing to do with the "will of the people" because we really do not care what the majority thinks if that majority opposes what we believe to be ethical, moral, and right. C.S. Lewis:

I now go back to what I said at the end of the first chapter, that there were two odd things about the human race. First, that they were haunted by the idea of a sort of behavior they ought to practice, what you might call fair play, or decency, or morality, or the Law of Nature. Second, that they did not in fact do so.

This oddity is both the basis of natural moral law, and one of the important theistic arguments.

So, I believe there is a universal moral code, and that this is a general universal revelation from God to all of humanity. Lewis again:

I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behavior known to all men is unsound, because different civilizations and different ages have had quite different moralities.

But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to--whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' . . .

I have mentioned a number of times this list of reasons why - even if our conscience tells us to "do the right thing" - our faulty moral reasoning may corrupt our moral agency:

1. insufficient experience: we do not know enough to reach sound conclusions;
2. insufficient skill: we haven't learned the art of reasoning well;
3. sloth: we are too lazy to reason;
4. corrupt custom: it hasn't occurred to us to reason;
5. passion: we are distracted by strong feeling from reasoning carefully;
6. fear: we are afraid to reason because we might find out we are wrong;
7. wishful thinking: we include in our reasoning what we are willing to notice;
8. depraved ideology: we interpret known principles crookedly; and
9. malice: we refuse to reason because we are determined to do what we want.

This is why believers in natural moral law hold that, even though it flows from God to everyone, it must be strengthened, supported, and trained. That strength, support, and training comes from whatever ethical and moral system the person subscribes to - typically religion for 85% of the world - and it really must be pursued proactively. This includes our elected representatives.

Since I believe most ethical and moral systems on the planet are rooted in the divine nature, I do not expect those people elected to be Christians - that is a specific (not general) revelation. I do expect them to believe in Right and Wrong - and I expect them to be held to that. I also expect them to place their duty as an elected official, and as a representative of the people, higher than themselves: I expect it to be a vocation:

1. The idea of a call implies an agent outside of the one who is subject to the call.
2. The summons is often against the will of the one who is called into service.
3. the calling involves in almost every case hardships that must be overcome in order to answer the summons.
4. from the point of view of answering to the summons, the greatest danger appears not in this kind of resistance, but in the possibility of being diverted or distracted from the goal.

That vocation should have them work to analyze and improve their moral reasoning for the sake of strengthening their moral agency; and serving their constituents better by being more moral, more ethical, and doing the right thing more often.

And, in my opinion, their actions - by doing so - will be rooted in the "will of God" and not the "will of the people"; and it is exactly in the will of God (as reflected in doing Right and avoiding Wrong), and not the majority (the only logical definition of the "will of the people"), that their actions - and the actions of government - should be rooted. If - because they "do the right thing" against the will of the majority - they are removed from office by "the will of the people" then so be it.

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"Divine Will" or "Will of the People"?

One needn't be a theophobe to believe that government ought to be conformed to
the will of the people, not of the divine.

This comment really ties together a number of ideas I have been writing on for awhile - and I think you are NOT a theophobe because you believe that. You are a theophobe if you believe that those who do not have this divided, "enlightened" view of the secular and the divine realms are trying to take over the government for Christ (or Allah) - and you irrationally fear that. After all, as Joe Carter contends:

After all, it is true that some conservative Christians in our country do want to establish a theocracy. Their actual numbers, however, are rather negligible and their political influence almost non-existence. As a group they likely outnumber black separatists, though they are dwarfed by the number of liberal secessionists.

However foolish I really think the theocracy canard is - that is not the point here.

The point is the intersection of faith and politics - and the connecting together of a few threads that have been running through my blogging - some nearly since the beginning:

• Natural moral law, or - as it is called by C.S. Lewis - the law of right behavior; and the source, role, and defeat of conscience.



• The Great Commandment, specially "Loving God with all Your Heart" and " . . . Mind"



• Vocation, and its fall in front of individual will endorsed by the Enlightenment

The first part of my view on this is that there are not, as the Enlightenment wished to contend, a spiritual realm and a secular realm. Of course, most devout folks I have met from any religion understand that the morality and ethics flowing from their faith cannot simply be cut-off from their secular lives - we can not be two-minded.

However, the natural law tradition is that all good things in the world overflow from God's character - including the governments we raise up to bring right order and maintain justice since the Fall. Thomas Aquinas and William Blackstone:

But Aquinas is also a natural law legal theorist. On his view, a human law (i.e., that which is promulgated by human beings) is valid only insofar as its content conforms to the content of the natural law; as Aquinas puts the point: "[E]very human law has just so much of the nature of law as is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law" (ST I-II, Q.95, A.II). To paraphrase Augustine's famous remark, an unjust law is really no law at all.

The idea that a norm that does not conform to the natural law cannot be legally valid is the defining thesis of conceptual naturalism. As William Blackstone describes the thesis, "This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian theologian and martyr who most had to tackle whether the "Two Kingdoms" of Luther had been subverted - also opposed the idea of separate secular and religious realms:

Any reduction of Luther’s doctrine of the “Two Kingdoms” to a notion that there are two spheres, “the one divine, holy, supernatural, and Christian, and the other worldly, profane, natural, and un-Christian,” Bonhoeffer held to be a vulgarization. The modern reading of the Two Kingdoms—a reading shaped (Bonhoeffer would say deformed) by the Enlightenment—unwittingly finalized the separation of Christian concerns from the secular and profane. “On the Protestant side,” he writes, “Luther’s doctrine of the Two Kingdoms was misinterpreted as implying the emancipation and sanctification of the world and of the natural. Government, reason, economics, and culture arrogate to themselves a right of autonomy, but do not in any way understand this autonomy as bringing them into opposition to Christianity.” The Lutheran misunderstanding of Luther contributed over time to the Enlightenment cult of reason and the emergence of the self-mastering self.

With that triumph came an idolatrous faith in progress that could only result in nationalism—the “Western godlessness” that became in modern times its own religion. In the “apostasy of the Western world from Jesus Christ,” a massive defection from our collective recognition of finitude, we abandoned the knowledge that we are creatures as well as creators. This for Bonhoeffer is the backdrop to twentieth-century totalitarianism, a terrible story of what happens when we presume we stand alone as Sovereign Selves within Sovereign States, a terrible story of what happens when individual hubris meets nationalism.

For many today, the United States is the country that most reflects "individual hubris" meeting "nationalism" with a "massive defection from our collective recognition of finitude".

For Augustine, Aquinas, Blackstone, and Bonhoeffer laws and government are only legitimate if they maintain the right order and right justice that overflows from God's character in the form of natural law. In other words, right government must conform to divine will - or it is not right.

However, let us say for a second that that is not true (as many reading this will) - what does it mean in modern America to say that government conforms to the will of the people; and where does true justice and right order flow out of the people's will (and, of course, what is it's source).

That is for Part II

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Modern Slavery I: Alienation and Isolation

[Number seven in a series. Resumes discussion of slavery started in number one]

A couple of times I have mentioned A.J. Conyers' contention in The Listening Heart that - in the return of slavery to Europe and its colonies that accompanied the rise of modernity's exploration, trade, and conquest - the chattel slave

is the ultimate autonomous individual. Stripped of every human tie, he belongs to no community but to a stranger. It is no accident, then, that the rise of modern slavery coincided with the Enlightenment itself.

Of course, every time this is mentioned folks freak a bit about the use of the word "autonomous" in the same breath with "slave". As one commenter said it does not mean "free" - it means "alienated or isolated" from family, community, culture, and support.

Indeed, Conyers points out

We have already seen how the modern, increasingly urbanized, technologically sophisticated, society had become organized in a way congenial to the uses of power and material acquisitiveness. The usefulness of human beings in this relationship was made more feasible when they were understood as equals in the modern sense - that is, as interchangeable units in a machine - and fundamentally alienated from natural associations, "belonging" only in the new, modern sense.

This new relationship is only adequately articulated, as we shall see, by the master-slave language, though this language - thanks to the pre-modern influence of Christianity - is highly offensive, causing modern people to reject the system of slavery when it is visibly evident (as in the plantation systems of the early U.S.) and to submerge it in forms that are less visible . . .

Two features of slavery - its transforming of a human being into an instrument for use, a resource for the masters of the larger society, and its destruction or at least neglect of natural relations within natural groups such as the family and clan and leaving in its place the alienated individual - are also features of modernity. Within the history of slavery we shall always find these two features prominent; it is no wonder that early modern leaders of the Enlightenment nearly always defended and promoted slavery. They were above all promoting the instrumentalizing of the individual and the individualizing (that is, the alienating from natural relations) of the human instruments of labor.

The previous parts in this series have looked at the way modern society seeks to break all ties except to the company, the military, and the state.

Conyers traces some pre-modern definitions of the slave:

for most of history, and among most peoples in history, the slave is one who specifically did no longer belong to the family, or to his own people, but belonged to a stranger. It might be said without exaggeration that everyone was thought to "belong" to someone, or to some family or group. But when one belongs to strangers, the misfortune is described by the status of "slave."

Some examples:

• "Early Hebrews were restricted from making slaves of their own people; and if one of them had become so indebted that they sold themselves into slavery to foreigners, their next of kin was obliged to buy them back, to 'redeem' them."



• "in early Saxon law 'the 'autonomous' stranger who had no family or clan to protect him was automatically regarded as a slave.'"



• in most African nations, where the opposite of slavery is not '''freedom' qua autonomy but rather 'belonging.'''

David Brion Davis (as quoted by Conyers):

"the salient characteristic of slavery was its antithetical relation to the normal network of kinship ties of dependency, protection, obligation, and privilege, ties that easily served as a model of nonkinship forms of patronage, clientage, and voluntary servitude." [and] the "'modernity' of the slave lay in his continu¬ing marginality and vulnerability, in his incomplete and ambiguous bonding to a social group:' -- Slavery and Human Progress

Conyers makes the final tie between the relations of large masses of people to modern society and slavery thus:

when some populations are living sumptuously at the expense of others who are barely able to feed their young, is that not also slavery, one might ask? Or when large populations live as "alien residents" - which was a biblical term practically equivalent to "slaves" - then are there not some remaining signs of the institution? When so many people are heavily in debt, and some third world nations as well, can they truly be said to work for their own living? Or do they, just as in any ancient slave system, work for the primary benefit of others-even for others they do not know? This latter-day slave system has the convenience of remaining out of sight, and thus inoffensive to a sensitive bourgeois population.

Earlier, Conyers has said that Marxism has made us sensitive to the expansion of the word "slave", but the alienation Marx saw as making us "wage slaves" was alienation and isolation from our own labor; whereas Conyers traces it as alienation and isolation from vocation: from ties to family, church, tribe, etc. that make us part of an organic community. His presentation is that that severing of ties to organic community and reattaching them to modern organizations like the state, the company, and the military leaves us in exactly the same isolated and alienated position - working for the benefit of another with whom we have no real ties.

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The Listening Heart: The Decline of Vocation II

[Number six in a series]

The last post looked at organic society as represented by one which embraces vocation; and the organized society created by modern western culture:

• Organic societies were not based on the independence of individuals; but the interdependence of members; and


• Organic societies were not based on the equality of their members, but their differences

This wasn't just an outgrowth of the rise of modernity - it was a requirement. Therefore, the theme of this post:

that modern western culture requires the severing of folks from vocation - and its attachment to family, tradition, religion, etc. - in order to build a culture rooted in production and conquest.

Indeed, as A. J. Conyers points out in The Listening Heart, the "reason" taught by the enlightenment wasn't reason in general [other than items in brackets by me - this completely follows Conyers]:

It is often noted that Enlightenment thinkers emphasized reason. Yet the real effect of their emphasis is almost always lost. This certainly could not mean that they emphasized reason while earlier ages neglected it, or preferred superstition and unreason: who indeed were more devoted to the arts of reason than the disciples of Aristotle in antiquity, or those who, in medieval times, submitted everything to reason in the most rigorous fashion, the schoolmen from Anselm to Aquinas and beyond? The specific way in which the Enlightenment used reason was as a replacement for the idea of vocation. One could then make reasoned choices. The true locus of personal decisions was to be found in the individual who "thinks for himself:' as Kant would put it, and who declines to depend upon the "guidance of another."

and

It is not without significance that Kant, like others following the same pattern, appeals to a virtue of the will, courage. For in many ways the movement of modernity has been a shift from the intellect and the affections as guiding faculties for human beings, to the will. Kant does not say, develop the skill to think for yourself. Nor does he say learn what best to love so that you may guide yourself toward what is good. Nor does he suggest that you have the courage to follow what you know is good and true. The will is placed ahead of the intellect and the love of good. He says instead, ''All that is required for enlightenment is freedom. . . ." and "Men raise themselves by and by out of backwardness if one does not purposely invent artifices to keep them down."

[An interesting contrast in this will vs. good discussion might be Matthew Yglesias' "Thinking about Prostitution"; and Joe Carter's "Prostitution and the Pollution of Moral Ecology" or PastorDan's "Eliot Spitzer Self-Immolates". None of the three mention the "elephant in the room" in regards to prostitution (and pornography) - the international trafficking in sexual slaves. I am getting to slavery in this series.]

So, what does Conyers see as the process in the modern decline of vocation:

The stages of this recession are not surprising, though the extremity in which it has manifested itself (and the real name of that extremity) is something modern people would generally reject, although they, more than any other peoples of any other age are most acquainted with it. . . .

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought impressive advances in technology, or-to use plainer language-in the use of implements or tools to accomplish practical tasks. This advance was so impressive and made such a remarkable impact upon society that a number of direct or indirect consequences made themselves felt.

1. Progress in technology suggested that progress was a general rule in human experience and that it was a force that operated throughout social, moral, and artistic life; that what was the rule for technology was also the rule for civilization and culture, bringing all things under the power of an unseen evolutionary hand.

2. The increased use of technology drew larger numbers of people to centers of production and commerce, giving rise to the phenomenal growth of urban living and the ready availability of manpower for industry and army, for production and conquest.

3. The labor force, the government, and the army developed along lines analogous to the machine.

4. Governments were organized for the efficient administration of large territories and the gradual yet effective opposition to barriers (including and sometimes especially the moral and religious ones) that hampered profitable enterprises. One can see this especially in the effort (beginning with Locke) to distinguish between a public and private realm, in which matters of moral and religious concern were relegated to the private, where the influence of church and family could not discourage free rein in the public realm of commercial enterprise.

[This can be seen in the battle over homeschooling. In Germany, a law passed in 1939 during the Third Reich and still in effect today makes it illegal to homeschool your children: parents are arrested and children moved under control of the state. The need of the modern state to control education in order to make us more equal and interchangeable parts for conquest and production is clear. Homeschooling in the United States, particularly in California right now, is also a "battleground issue" between those who wish to maintain the connection of their children to family, community, church, and tradition - and those that believe that the state has an interest in creating more "equal" and homogenous students.]

5. Social organization increasingly imitated the rational use of implements - of machines.

6. The social consciousness of large territories began to be formed . . . toward those urban centers of manufacture, trade, and government (growth industries all!) where the power of technology and bureaucratic organization could be felt in its full force.

This led to people no longer seeing themselves as belonging to the land

that something more or less permanent no longer undergirded, nourished, and protected them: the land to which they belonged, and that was the common environment of all-rich and poor, old and young, from birth to death-was in smaller and smaller measure the environment that determined the shape of their lives.

but to the company, the standing army, or the state:

to belong to a "company:' let us say, means that one is subject to the will of another and in some ways is sustained only by the arbitrary good will of others. It implies that one belongs in a way that is not true of a family or a church, for this "belonging" is made possible by the activity and initiative of those who are in positions of power.

In the next post, we will see what Conyers calls these folks alienated from family, place, community, church, and tradition; and now organized, like parts of a machine, for production and conquest.

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The Listening Heart: Vocation

[Number four in a series]

A. J. Conyers, in The Listening Heart, explained the point of the book in this way:

"Why in this modern world have humane communities - communities that for brief moments in history rise above strife and in fact nourish the human spirit, enrich the mind, provide for the safety and education of the young - proven so hard to come by, so difficult to maintain, and known it seems only to our most nostalgic moments? Why have the 'wars and fightings' of this past century taken more lives, destroyed more communities, exiled more people, decimated more ethnic groups than ever before in any comparable time? Why have more people been killed by their own governments in this past century than in all other times together? How is it that this new century has gotten off to such an unpromising start? James had an answer that tapped into the root of human nature, and into the human lunacy: 'Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war'

This book might be considered a commentary on that one question and its answer, and on the hope which frames this question."

His answer is the decline of vocation, and the rise of "choice", since the dawn of modernity in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. This post examines the first of those.

Vocation

The familiar term "vocation", used in both religious and secular contexts, is rooted in the Latin vocatio, meaning "call" and is related to Latin-based words such as "voice" and "invoke." The Greek word is klesis and is found in our words "cleric" and "ecclesiastical". It is the root of the New Testament word for the Church, ekklesia, a point that is not etymologically significant except in that assemblies of all kinds were referred to with the same term. To say that the church consists of those "called out", however, is significant for more reasons than can be traced through linguistic usage: it was the reality to which the church had always attested.

Conyers points out that the idea of a divine call plays a central role in Judeo-Christian and non-Judaic contexts - and gives the communities and societies a distinctly non-modern character. I would broaden that: even the ideas of civil religion and nationalism are designed to give folks a sense of calling that is outside of, and higher, than themselves. Conyers doesn't disagree with this in the book, and implies agreement, but he just doesn't focus on it. This is the idea of a "higher power" encouraged in 12 step programs - even for folks that are not believers in God.

Conyers highlights a few points to make the distinction clear between the idea of vocation or calling, and the philosophical basis of modernity:

1. "The idea of a call implies an agent outside of the one who is subject to the call."

   One does not simply "choose" a course of action, but one responds to a summons. A person might be "free" in either case; but in the case of one responding to vocation, the freedom is not an inner-directed impulse, but the use of the will to respond to an unforeseen and perhaps unknown reality. This summons is characteristic of various reports, in a great variety of communities, from the summons of Zarathustra (the Iranian Zoroaster), to the calling forth of Abraham and the divine election of Moses, to the call of Isaiah, the baptism of Jesus, the blinding of Paul, the spiritual apparitions of Joan of Arc, and the divine compulsions of Martin Luther. The character in each case is founded on the summons that is external to the one who is called.



2. "The summons is often against the will of the one who is called into service."

   Muhammed first believed himself to be mad. Moses complained that the Israelites, to whom God sent him, had never listened to him and therefore neither would Pharaoh, "poor speaker that I am." Jeremiah, the Hebrew prophet, not only resisted the call, but continued to complain that God had overpowered him and placed him in an impossibly difficult circumstance, even protesting that God's call had made him "like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter." Jonah attempted to flee from the Lord to Tarshish, rather than going to Nineveh where he had been called. Jesus prayed to be delivered from his appointed calling.



3. Third, the calling involves in almost every case hardships that must be overcome in order to answer the summons.

   Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Muhammed, Mani (the founder of Manichaeism), Socrates, Jesus, and Paul all found themselves under threat of death by their community. Zarathustra is sent into exile. Jesus' moment of public vocation is followed by temptation in the wilderness. Paul's vocation is accompanied by physical ailments, imprisonment, beatings, and exile.



4. Fourth, from the point of view of answering to the summons, the greatest danger appears not in this kind of resistance, but in the possibility of being diverted or distracted from the goal.

   The whole of Joshua's reiteration of the covenant with Israel, after they had settled the land of Canaan, was devoted to the threat and the consequences of being distracted from their promise to "serve the Lord" and to the warning against being tempted by other gods. In all of the Deuteronomic history of Israel . . . the chief standard by which the nations of Israel and Judah and their kings are judged is their faithfulness to God, measured by their resistance to distraction by the religions of their neighbors. And the last petition in Jesus' model prayer, "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;' is an invocation against this distraction.

It is this sense of calling that William Wilberforce experienced. It is this sense of calling and vocation that modern historical critics of the Bible - at least the ones that are most anti-supernatural - must look beyond in finding "rational", "reasonable", and "historical" reasons for the actions of the Apostles and the writers of scripture. Certainly, inspiration and calling must have some source other than God reaching into His creation and calling people to His Will.

It is the need - in order to build the Body of Christ and His Church - to overcome folks "thinking for themselves" and "taking guidance from no one" that causes churches both theologically liberal and conservative to call their members to focus on their communities and to view that community, at least, as something which calls, from above and outside, them to vocation for the Body.

In modern society as well, it is only when people are drawn outside themselves to a greater call or vocation that true community can be built - otherwise we have the "competition of desires" that is the source of the violence and greed of modern life. President Kennedy called us to "Ask not . . ." It is Barack Obama, and not Hillary Clinton - and Mike Huckabee and not John McCain - that give us the attractive image of folks who are "called" to a mission. We are attracted to them because they seem to give true reverence to something outside of, and greater than, themselves.

That is the "schizophrenia" of Western life. We deeply, innately, almost desperately, seek real community and real relationship; and yet . . . Conyers :

I was struck with how far we had lost sight of the sentiment embedded in "vocation" when I ran across the title of a mid-twentieth century book that was given as "How to Choose Your Vocation"! Precisely the point of vocatio is that you don't choose. And this is precisely why and how the idea jars against conventional modern sentiment, the sentiment that since the Enlightenment has succeeded in making a primary virtue of self-determination. "What is Enlightenment?" asked Immanuel Kant. It is the capacity "to use one's intelligence without being guided by another." "Have courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment". Thus stand side by side, in unmistakable opposition, two ideas of the way one lives in the world. One is that of attentive listening to the guidance of another, whether of a wise guide, or tradition, or of God. The other is the notion of the self-determined "free" man, who without listening to another, becomes the master of his own soul.

It is that notion of "choice" that I will look at next.

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