Peter Bjerregaard from Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health has noted that while Greenland’s suicide problem began in 1970, almost all the deaths involved people born after 1950—the same year that Greenland began its transformation from remote colony to welfare state, as the Danes resettled residents to give them modern services and tuberculosis inoculations. Hicks, the Canadian researcher, said the correlation is present in other Inuit societies as well.

This is what you get when you too-rapidly transform communal norms, traditions, and institutions. Conservatives rejoice!

I actually encountered an ACORN registration worker during the last presidential campaign. A young, cheerful 20-something rang my door bell and asked if I had registered to vote. I had not since moving to Pennsylvania and so I filled out the form that he provided. While filling it out Jay, the ACORN guy, asked if I wanted to see change in American politics. Apparently my grunt signaled agreement so Jay asked who I was planning to vote for come November 2nd. I told him John McCain. He asked if I really wanted to support someone who wanted to leave American troops in Iraq for “a hundred years.” I noted that the immediate context of that quote changed McCain’s intended meaning significantly. Jay promptly shook my hand and said goodbye.

Fast forward two months to two weeks before November 2nd. I still have not received my registration card. So I register in person. A week later my card comes in the mail.

Perhaps my cynicism is misplaced, but I suspect that if I had said I was voting for Obama my registration might not have gotten lost. Just a suspicion.

1. All truth is God’s truth. My dad is an analytical chemist. He firmly believes that you can rejoice in God by studying molecules, thermodynamics, and chemical reactions. In some Christian circles families place pressure on their young people to go into the formal ministry. I never received anything but encouragement from my dad as I pursued becoming a historian. He understood that God is most magnified when we choose the vocation where we can best exercise our God-given abilities for His honor and glory.

2. My Dad lived out his desire for service. Just because he was a chemist he felt no less an obligation to live out the Great Commission. My parents have led missions teams and participated in camp ministries for 28 of the last 29 summers in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Michigan, and Australia. He made a point of always ministering as a family so that family and ministry stayed in the same sphere.

3. My Dad taught me that monetary gain ought to be a low priority. He left a highpaying job in industry for a lowpaying job at a Christian university because he believed that the Lord wanted him to educate Christian young people for service. Both my parents chose to save during the year to spend money on summer ministries rather than working during the summer to save for luxuries.

4. My Dad knows that the best way to make others laugh and feel at ease is to make fun of yourself. He has a well-developed sense of self-deprecating humor. His baldness and ample stomach have broken the ice in many conversations. He is also a bit impish; he enjoys challenging preconceived notions and upsetting shibboleths. He taught me not to take myself too seriously. God finds us pretty funny at times…the least we can do is be willing to laugh at ourselves!

5. Most importantly, my Dad taught me the importance of depending on God. I would frequently go downstairs on the way to school to find my father reading the Word or praying. How can I not be thankful for an earthly father who was aware of his need for a heavenly Father? Is that not the greatest gift a son could ask for from his dad?

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Merciful God, we commit our friends Ben Zion and Krensky to your care. We have no more prayers, no more tears. We have run out of blood. Choose another people. We have paid for each of your Commandments. We have covered every field and stone with ashes. Sanctify another land. Choose another people. Teach them the Deeds and the Prophecies. Grant us but one more blessing – Take back the gift of our holiness.

That moment is truly powerful. God had demanded more from them than they felt they could endure. Choose another people.

The director shows where he places his hope of salvation. Towards the end of the film as the German army chases the Jews through the woods and they come to what appears an impassable marsh, the main character, Tuvia, who has given up hope is confronted by his younger brother Asael:

Asael: We must keep going!

Tamara: In there?

Rona: It is impossible!

Murmuring. Asael raises his voice.

Asael: Nothing is impossible! What we have done is impossible!

Murmuring quiets.

Asael: God will not part these waters. We will do it ourselves.

Rona: But how?

Asael: Not by miracles. By our strength.

Compare the response of these Jews with those of their forebearer, King David in II Samuel 24:

I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.

Without Christ we would have no hope either. Praise God for our deliverer!

Encyclopedias (and their kissing cousins, dictionaries) are odd creatures. Animals and minerals, verbs and nouns, abstractions and applications, all squeezed together alphabetically. I understand that alphabetizing language makes the dictionary accessible, but there is something strange about arranging knowledge by nothing other than the first letter (whether pronounced or not) that just so happens to grace its written form. Perhaps these musings have become dated. I, for one, use online dictionaries almost exclusively. Now I can search instantaneously for xylophone without having to thumb past “weed” to find that I’ve overshot to “zenophobe.”

Even so, encyclopedias are strange because of the implicit presupposition that the definitions of words are rooted in discrete, objective forms. This is true for both encylcopedias and dictionaries. High school English students are instructed to prostrate themselves before the all-knowing DICTIONARY. The basic idea is that the “dictionary definition” of a word is the final say (at least until a later edition). Language is reduced to a gigantic Scrabble game in which the dictionary settles all disputes. Is it a word? What does that mean? Well, look in the dictionary.

Yet how do we determine what words mean? Do words mean the same things to all people in all places? We all would acknowledge that the meanings of words evolve over time. Words are concrete expressions of abstract ideas. As the understanding of an idea changes, so too do the definitions of the words which are used to describe those ideas. Of course, the form of a word does not necessarily have to change for its meaning to.

So words are fluid because ideas, and peoples’ perceptions of those ideas, are constantly in flux. At the same time it should not be surprising that multiple definitions of a word (or the underlying idea) can compete for space simultaneously. Choose a word, any word. I’m going to pick “patriotism.” To one person patriotism means fighting, and if necessary dying, for one’s country. To another, it means pacifism. To a conservative it may be the very definition of “America.” To someone on the left it might be an imperialist, jingoistic phrase which encourages dangerous loyalty to a constructed nation-state. This contested definition embodies the battle between “America” and “Amerika.”

There are a multiplicity of Americas just as there are multiple Christs. He can be the Christ who lived an exemplary, moral life, the imposter who claimed to be Messiah, the son of Holy Mary, or the sinless man who gives hope to a desparate, dying world.

[NOTE: For the purposes of this post, I do not wish to worry about the validity of contested definitions. That belongs in an entirely different entry. What matters is that ideas, words, and definitions are slippery. Perception is as important as reality in language (if true, pure reality can even be said to exist in this world...an assumption I'm leery of).]

The standardized, dictionary definition is a myth born out of the Enlightenment/Modernist impulse to empirically categorize all truth. In fact, the original Encyclopedié was the work of Enlightened philosophes who believed that all knowledge could be summarized in a single series of books. The knowledge contained in its 17 volumes would aid the inevitable progress of humanity. Words, as they described ideas, had real power.

Back to the explosion of wierd online encylcopedias. These niche dictionaries are reactions against the Wikipedia model, an online dictionary that seeks to reach inclusive, shared definitions. In a way, Wikipedia is a 21st century, democratized version of the original Encyclopedié. By allowing anonymous internet users to contribute to an online storehouse of knowledge, Wikipedia seeks to unify mankind around a shared discourse. On the other hand, the contributors to competing encyclopedias, both wierd and wierder, recognize that language is discursive, ever contested and never settled.

Dear Father,

I thank you for the grace you have given Dong Yun Yoon in his hour of need. May you comfort and encourage him as he undergoes a loss that I cannot even begin to comprehend. I thank you for using him as a vessel to show your love to his community, our country, and to me. Along with Dong I pray that you heal the pilot. I ask that you would use this time of grief to open opportunities for the gospel, that this tragedy might turn to triumph.

Now may the love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with Dong and us all.

Amen.

Notice the slogan on this bank robber’s hat (”Yes We Can”). I don’t think it’s a crime in Pennsylvania to take a campaign slogan very, very literally…though the robbery is worth at least 5-10 in Leavenworth.

I have a feeling that Obama didn’t mean “Yes we can…rob from the bank and give to the poor (myself).”

Proof that Joe the Plumber was right; Obama might not have been kidding about spreading the wealth around! (-;

I think that it is vitally important to examine the fundamental points of a political candidate’s reasoning. Before we label a candidate and throw him/her into our categories, take a moment to really examine political candidates, in this context, through the prism of reality, truth, and objective opinion. The following points were made by Senator Obama on October 29,2008 in his televised address to the nation:

Outline for America’s Future
Purpose of Plan: To restore health of the economy

Immediate Plan
Cut taxes for families making less then $200,000
Tax credit for hiring new employees in US
Eliminate tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas
Freeze foreclosures for 90 days
Low cost loans for small business

Long-term Plan
$15 billion a year in energy efficiency and renewables (wind, solar, and biofuels)
Create 5 million clean energy jobs
Help auto companies retool for fuel efficient cars
Tax credit to hep afford fuel efficient cars Tap Natural Gas Resources
Invest in clean coal technologies
Expand domestic oil production
Eliminate government programs that don’t work
Biggest savings for the United States is to change policy in Iraq
Tax credit to cover tuition to university in exchange for service to community or country
Improve information technology
Require healthcare coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions
Rebuild military to meet 21st century challenges
Renew tough direct diplomacy to prevent aggression
Refocus on Al Qaeda and Taliban

Any thoughts?

I thought I’d post my subjective two cents on these policies as an explanation of why I withheld my vote from Obama this morning. (Objectivity is rather like Christlikeness: an ideal to be striven for but never reached). For clarity’s sake I’ll go through Obama’s plan point by point.

1. Obama promises to cut taxes for 95% of all Americans. What’s not to like? I actually thing there is a subtle, yet significant, danger to the consequence of Obama’s plan. Cutting taxes is great, but the effect is to drastically increase the number of people who will pay no federal income taxes. This sounds great (as a fiscal libertarian I think taxes are legalized extortion), but taxes are an important way of tying decision making to responsibility in a democratic society. The idea goes back to Aristotle and Plato who argued that property owners were the basis of a stable society. Why? Because they had a stake in the decisions made. If Greece decided to fight a war than their property would be endangered; in theory this would encourage consideration and hinder rash decision making. They would face the consequences of their votes. America’s founders were conscious of the dangers of the Roman mob and Greek demagogues. They feared the mob because the mob effectively voted itself bread and circuses at no cost to itself…the cost was born by Roman citizens in the provinces and by the well to do. So how does that apply to America? The birth of a modern mob fueled by cable and food stamps. People who do not have to pay for more expensive expanded social services are more likely to vote for them. (My father would point out here that I’m quite free with his money, but rather stingy with my own.) I propose that almost all Americans should pay taxes, but the rate of those taxes should be small. Even Jess and I, although we are living below the federal poverty line, should have to pay a little something in income taxes as a reminder that we share in the burden of government.

2. The tax credit for hiring new employees is a minor distortion of the market, not enough to get me worked up yet in principal distasteful. Why should companies be encouraged to hire new employees even if it would be more efficient for them to pare down the number of workers? This proposal would discourage efficiency and ultimately taxpayers foot the bill twice over. Companies are forgiven taxes which means more of the budget for individuals to pay; and less efficient companies make more expensive products so as consumers we end up paying more.

3. Eliminating tax breaks for companies sending jobs overseas. Another market distortion, one that Adam Smith himself dealt with in Wealth of Nations. Jobs/industry/production flows to where it is most efficient at creating wealth. So one nation might be more efficient at producing steel because of larger ore reserves while another has more fertile fields for growing grain. To subsidize a less efficient mode of production rather than allowing it to flow to a more efficient producer decreases potential wealth creation. Companies move jobs overseas not out of some conspiratorial desire to destroy America but because other nations are more efficient at creating that given product. We benefit in the end because the price of that produced good or service ultimately declines.

4. Freeze foreclosures for 90 days. Populist rhetoric akin to McCain/Clinton’s proposed summer gas tax holiday last year.

5. Low Cost loans for small business. Another relatively mild distortion of the market. Why are small business more worthy of cheap loans than large businesses? I share he American sympathy for the little guy as much as the next guy, but I’d rather allow lenders to decide who is worthy of cheap loans rather than dictating it by government fiat.

6. Money for renewable energy. Are we seriously proposing that government increase its intervention into the renewable energy market? Did we learn nothing from the corn ethanol debacle?! Besides, wind and solar energy are highly inefficient. If government would simply remove regulatory obstacles and discourage legal challenges than the energy market would work things out itself (i.e., build nuclear power plants). You want energy independence? You want to emit less carbon? Nuclear energy is the only feasible alternative. One of the founders of Greenpeace actually came to the same conclusion. (Hooray for Samuel Sinnamon!)

7. Help auto companies retool for more fuel efficient cars. This proposal is either helping by mandating that cars meet minimum fuel efficiency standards (which means those cars are more expensive for who? Us.) or by subsidizing r&d. The real story here is that Asian car manufacturers (Toyota, Honda, etc) predicted this 20 years ago and did all the r&d themselves and so are reaping the benefits of their foresight (and so are an excellent example of how the market does a better job than the government). The losers in this story, American car manufacturers (hello Detroit!), are asking for handouts…rewarding incompetency and inefficiency is not a smart move. And lest we are tempted to say that if they go out of business the workers will suffer we should remember that Americans will buy cars from somebody. Thus the decline/failure of Detroit is the triumph of Toyota/Honda/co…this is not bad. The people with the best idea deserve to prosper.

8. Tapping natural gas for cars. Once again, why do we want government deciding the fuel of the future? I think the (successful) car companies can figure this one out on their own. Besides, it looks like electric cars are the wave of the future. The question is what will we use to produce electricity and for an answer see number 6. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance (inconsistency) in Obama’s plan here. He wants to shift away from fossil fuels…but then proposes shifting to another fossil fuel…go figure.

9. Expand domestic oil production. It is worth noting that Obama initially opposed all new oil drilling, but under great pressure (including rising poll numbers for McCain/Palin; “drill baby, drill”) Obama changed to support some further drilling. But it is significant to note that the proposed drilling only puts on the table a arbitrarily small percentage of the currently off limits continental shelf.

10. Eliminate government programs that don’t work. Hooray, an idea that I can back completely!(-; Then again…the only programs I’ve ever specifically heard that Obama wants to eliminate are school voucher trial programs and No Child Left Behind. In their place he proposes even more money going to states in block grants with fewer stipulations. I don’t think that counts as much of a real cut. I put the plank down to political positioning since he is adopting the same rhetoric used by McCain to appeal to independents.

11. Iraq, etc. True.

12. Education tax credit for community service. Fine.

13. Improve IT. No, horrible, bad, evil…just kidding. A bit like saying ‘fighting child molesters.’ Anybody opposed? Yet I bet that any any proposal will include the government spending more money and deciding where that money will be best sent. How did I feel about that again? Oh…

14. Healthcare insurance. Another step towards government provided healthcare…not a big fan. Every additional stipulated coverage, as seen in states that require insurance plans cover acupuncture or pre-existing conditions, raises the costs of insurance. This results in fewer people who can afford coverage (and higher costs for everyone else).

15. Foreign policy (other than Iraq). Window dressing. I bet that Obama will be like Bill Clinton on foreign policy. When people get up in a huff about something he’ll drop a missile (Sudan) or send in a mission (Somalia). Otherwise Obama’s going to spend his time “fixing” domestic problems.

I really appreciate the opportunity to focus on policy today rather than personality. I’m not withholding my vote from Obama this morning because of his pastor, his Chicago machine background, or his associations with various and sundry questionable persons. I am withholding a vote for Obama because his policies would waste potential future wealth that could solve the problems he wants to fix. Ironically I believe his proposed policies would either exacerbate the problems he is trying to mitigate or create other, bigger difficulties.

Up until this weekend “experience” has been the primary narrative of McCain 2008. The Republican party had selected a war hero who had served in Congress for as many years as his opponent, Barack Obama, had been post-pubescent. Although McCain’s campaign brandishes his lengthy resume, he likes to be seen as a maverick, willing to buck his own party for what he believes is right.

The Democratic Party countered attacks on Obama’s inexperience by transforming it from a liability into a strength. They present a young, fresh visionary who has not been tied down to special interests. Obama is a new kind of politician who will reform Washington.

Since politicians are elected largely on image, McCain needs to burnish his own maverick identity while simultaneously poking holes in Obama’s reputation as the rebirth of JFK. The experience debate has served McCain well, but over time it may have lost its bite. Voters who find experience a compelling argument have already been won over. No point in beating a dead horse. Experience could even be a liability if the opposition can paint McCain as a professional politician whose values are divorced from those of ordinary Americans. McCain is old enough to remember the 1960 Nixon v Kennedy campaign. In an environment more congenial to Republicans than today, Nixon ran on his superior experience, but still lost to the youthful and exciting Kennedy.

Palin provides the McCain campaign with the opportunity to switch the dialogue from experience to reform. Obama has dominated this conversation so far with talk of change and a different style of politics. Yet McCain and Palin could subsume Obama’s message. (Subsume is a debate term for taking your opponent’s premise, or primary issue, and arguing that you can do a better job with it than they can.)

McCain has been something of a political outsider for the last decade in Congress. The conservative base has distrusted McCain since his centrist campaign against George W Bush. McCain has not been afraid to buck the party line on immigration and other issues. He even cosponsored legislation with conservative archenemy Ted Kennedy. It seems that Palin has managed to annoy nearly the entire Republican establishment in Alaska. She publicly supported investigations into the infamous pair Don Young and Ted Stevens. She resigned from an energy commission in protest at a Republican commisioner’s corruption. How’s that for bipartisanship and reform?

The McCain campaign should push this reformist image on the news shows and in their campaign analysis. Republican operatives should then highlight Obama’s thin record on bipartisanship and perilous connections with shady politics back in Chicago.

Obama likes to tell the story of how he couldn’t even gain admission to the 2000 Democratic National Convention. What explains his meteoric rise through the state legislature and into Congress? Obama made several connections to the notorious Chicago Democratic political machine. Ever since Obama began making waves in the Democratic primary, there has been an undercurrent of articles, and a book, written about his relationships to shady Chicago political operatives.

One story that has gotten some play in the national media is his relationship with Tony Rezko, a man who was a major fundraiser for Obama’s Senate campaign. Rezko was also found guilty of federal fraud this May and is currently under indictment for several more fraud charges. Obama was understandably embarassed after Rezko’s indictment and said that he had never done Rezko any “favors.” However Obama had written a series of letters to Illinois government officials on Rezko’s behalf in a bid to get taxpayer money ($14 million) to build apartments for the elderly, $855,000 of which went in fees to Rezko and Obama’s former boss, Allison Davis. Whether or not Obama thought he was doing Rezko a favor, it seems that Rezko was grateful enough to sell the Obama’s a strip of land next to the family’s new house for over $500,000 less than what the political fixer had paid for it six months earlier. Keep in mind, this land deal came after the feds investigation into Rezko was already public knowledge.

Furthermore, Obama began his Congressional campaign under the patronage of Emil Jones, then the Democratic leader of the Illinois Senate.

“You have the power to elect a US senator,” Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: “Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?”

According to Jones, Obama replied: “Me.” It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.

Jones used his leadership in the Senate to block anti-corruption legislation from becoming law even though the bill had already unanimously passed through the lower chamber. Jones also recently announced his retirement and filed to have his inexperienced son take his position, nepotism worthy of Richard J. Daley himself in the 1970s.

Finally, Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, ran Richard M. Daley’s mayoral election in 1989 and is still one of Daley’s advisers. He surprised liberal Chicago reformers by running the campaigns of several other distasteful Cook County politicians. In his defense Axelrod may have just done it for the money and to gain influence. But when comparing clients, Axelrod makes Karl Rove look like a boy scout.

So Obama’s campaign manager, political patron, and a major fundraiser are all connected to a sordid Chicago political machine. Sure, Obama himself has not been directly accused of corruption, but when a man runs a campaign about change and reform, surely he should be held to a higher standard of association than Rezko, Jones, and Axelrod, Inc.

While the Republicans’ experience argument was based upon how much we know about McCain’s impressive resume, it left Obama’s record in the dark (which was the point). But if the McCain campaign switches the dialogue to reform, highlighting McCain’s support for campaign finance reform and his pledge to abide by public financing limits (unlike Obama who welshed on his promise), the burden of proof shifts to Obama and focuses on his past. If Republicans can focus the public’s attention on Obama’s seedy Chicago connections, than Obama’s image will suffer severely, especially among Independent voters.

Asimov was a great author not because of the excellence of his prose but because of the breadth of his vision. His Foundation series and invention of “psycho-history” is the ultimate historian’s fantasy. Asimov was a man of many gifts, a renaissance modernist; he was a biochemist, a signer of the Humanist Manifesto, as well as the author of over 400 books (including science texts, popular histories, and a guide to the Bible).

The collection of Asimov’s stories that I first came across was his I, Robot series (the plots of which are not to be confused with the Will Smith extravaganza that bears only occasional resemblance to the original stories). I enjoyed the “Three Laws of Robotics” and robo-psychologist Susan Calvin as a kid, but most of Asimov’s social commentary was way over my head. I just reread one of the stories titled Evidence when I stopped dead in my metaphorical tracks. Asimov provides a definition of Fundamentalism in this story that dates to 1946!

This inadvertent discovery amazed me. Let me give you some background. My advisor at Temple University, David Harrington Watt, has taken a leave from teaching this year to write a new academic work examining how Fundamentalism became defined as a “dangerous other.” His central thesis argues that the term Fundamentalism was defined not by self-described fundamentalists, nor even by their modernist foes.

Watt believes that our modern conception of Fundamentalism was shaped by secular intellectuals who describe Fundamentalism as a reaction against modernity. These intellectuals, including sociologist Talcott Parsons and historian Richard Hofstadter, defined modernity as progression towards a improved society as measured by the ideals of the European Enlightenment. Thus anyone opposed to scientific or social progress must be a Fundamentalist. Over time this definition turned Fundamentalism from a specific description of militantly orthodox American Protestantism into an ambiguous phrase used to describe global reactionary groups whether they be Islamic, Jewish, or even essentially areligious.

The interesting thing about Asimov’s story is that it was written before many of the works by intellectuals Watt was researching, a fact which could support his argument. So what does Asimov say?

Evidence uses robots as a metaphor for the improvement of mankind. The story describes a candidate for mayor who is accused of being an android, or life-like robot. When rumors are spread among the populace to that effect, the people begin to worry. Asimov describes it with these words

It was what the Fundamentalists were waiting for. They were not a political party; they made pretense to no formal religion. Essentially they were those who had not adapted themselves to what had once been called the Atomic Age, in the days when atoms were a novelty. Actually, they were the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.

Later the accused robot is advised that he is in danger: “Is there a threat of violence? The Fundamentalists threaten it, so I suppose there is, in a theoretical sense. But I really don’t expect it. The Fundies have no real power. They’re just the continuous irritant factor that might stir up a riot after a while.”

When the protagonist proposes giving a speech, he is told not to by his campaign staff: “Look, that mob has been organized by the Fundies. You won’t get a hearing. You’ll be stoned more likely.” Sure enough, a couple paragraphs later: “From the start the speech was not successful. It competed against the inchoate mob howl and the rhythmic cries of the Fundie claques that formed mob-islands within the mob.” At the end the mayor is revealed to the reader, though not the the people, as a robot by a robo-psychologist who makes the point that it is impossible to tell a robot from a really decent person.

As should be expected from a secular intellectual, Asimov’s Fundamentalists are reacting against Modernity, which is symbolized by opposition to progress, both scientific and social. His Fundamentalists are not American Protestants, indeed they aren’t particularly religious at all. Yet the Fundies form mobs that threaten to stone the opposition, a deft use of Biblical imagery by Asimov.

PS – I find it intensely ironic that Asimov may have coined the use of the slang “Fundies.” It is a logical shortening of the mouthful “Fundamentalism” and serves the double purpose of auditory trivialization. “Fundamentalist” sounds a whole lot more intimidating than “Fundie.” It amuses me that when I grew up at Bob Jones University, a bastion of Fundamentalism, the malcontents liked to use “Fundies” as a term of derision. Little did they know that they were imitating a famous atheist!