Neumatikos

27April2007

“It’s wrong to vote on rights”

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

As you may know, Valerie and I live in the only state in the USA in which a party of seven, by a majority of one, has elected to modify the human condition by changing the definition of a single word. Massachusetts has, for several years now, by court edict, granted to homosexual couples the right to “marry.” It doesn’t bother them at all that this is ontologically impossible, on the level of granting fish the right to breathe by changing the definition of the word “lung.” A homosexual union cannot be a marriage because marriage entails a commitment to become a family by raising together the children that come from the union. Nevertheless, Massachusetts now hands out marriage certificates to couples of the same sex and has been forced to remove the words “father” and “mother” from birth certificates, replacing them with the words “Parent A” and “Parent B.”

How long this kind of nonsense will continue is a anyone’s guess. But organizations like VoteOnMarriage.org have been steadily working on the only legal recourse available: to change the Massachusetts constitution to make explicit what was originally assumed: that a marriage can only exist between a man and a woman. The effort has been surprisingly difficult. The amendment process in Massachusetts is particularly complicated - it requires a referendum and two separate votes in congress. In addition, many people in the MA congress are unwilling to even consider putting the issue on the ballot, and are willing to violate their own constitutional procedures to avoid it.

In addition, I’m finding, there are a large number of people who are very interested in insulting both their creator and human intelligence with a single word. So there has begun a campaign to bring the amendment process to a halt. One such organization is MassEquality, which I’ve just discovered. Apparently they believe the best arguments should be self-contradictory.
Read on, MacDuff!

26April2007

Ten Complaints about Feminism

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

Todd Seavey is a writer of apparently some standing in New York City. He calls himself a libertarian, which is a philosophical tradition I can only moderately agree with, but he has written a critique of Feminism (as opposed to something like “traditional conservatism”) that I think is well worth reading. An excerpt:

far from feminism being the opposite of chivalry, it should by this late juncture in history be obvious that both chivalry and feminism are just systems for getting men to treat women more gently than they treat other men. The difference is that under chivalry, both sexes admitted this was the arrangement and under feminism, we are supposed to pretend women are being held to the same standard even when they aren’t.

A caution though: he makes some arguments based on sexuality which, though apparently accurate, are pretty unseemly.

24April2007

democracy fails because it does what voters want.

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics; Reviews.

Greg Mankiw points us toward a new book now available on amazon.com: The Myth of the Rational Voter. There is also an excerpt available at the Princeton University Press.

The book is a critique of democracy on the basis that people are fallen and sinful. Of course, being written by economists for a secular audience, it doesn’t quite put it in those terms, but it makes essentially the same point:

Across-the-board irrationality is not a strike against democracy alone, but all human institutions. A critical premise of this book is that irrationality, like ignorance, is selective. We habitually tune out unwanted information on subjects we don’t care about. In the same vein, I claim that we turn off our rational faculties on subjects where we don’t care about the truth. Economists have long argued that voter ignorance is a predictable response to the fact that one vote doesn’t matter. Why study the issues if you can’t change the outcome? I generalize this insight: Why control your knee-jerk emotional and ideological reactions if you can’t change the outcome?

Of course, being a book by economists written for a secular audience, they go on to look into ways of forming a government that can compensate for fallen human nature. After all, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” I think this is consistent with a Christian understanding of government, regardless of the form it takes. One of those purposes is to at least put a cap on human evil until such time as the Governor comes who can eliminate all sinfulness.

I’m afraid I haven’t time to read the book myself, but it looks a very worthwhile read. I’d love to hear from anybody else who gets a chance to look at it.

6March2007

Is it possible to have a Moral Economy?

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

Joe Carter is at it again. He has a precise, incisive post up on how we need to look at market economies as Christians. I highly recommend.

6December2006

I should have thought as much

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

Great, hurried political commentary from a theology student too busy to read the news. And Cox & Forkum is hardly the premier news outlet. But they’ve got a point in the commentary on this comic.

Part of what’s keeping “the insurgency” going is an unending supply of free weapons from outside sources. There is now proof that Iran is engaging in its own Iran-Contra affair by manufacturing weapons directly for the use of Shiite militias in Iraq. Honestly, I should have suspected as much. How can you keep a guerrilla war on when you run out of ammo? Somebody has to supply. And if that supply is gone, the warfare has to cease. Or at least descend to a more manageable level.
Read on, MacDuff!

16September2006

Intimate Violence

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics; Essay; Theology.

In 1998, the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control released a report on the prevalence of violence against women within the US. According to a survey taken between November 1995 and May 1996, 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men had “experienced an attempted or completed rape as a child and/or an adult.”

0.3 percent of surveyed women and 0.1 percent of surveyed men said they experienced a completed or attempted rape in the previous 12 months. These estimates equate to approximately 302,100 women and 92,700 men who are forcibly raped each year in the United States.

The vast majority of violent encounters for women occurs within intimate relationships:

76 percent of the women who were raped and/or physically assaulted since the age of 18 were assaulted by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, or date; 17 percent were victimized by an acquaintance, such as a friend, neighbor, or coworker; 14 percent were victimized by a stranger; and 9 percent were victimized by a relative other than a husband.

There is no indication that these numbers are any different within the church.
Read on, MacDuff!

3August2006

Emergence

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics; Theology.

This is old. I found it in my archives, unpublished, and I was loathe to delete it, though it seems impossible to complete at this future date. I’ve since come to some conclusions about the Emergent movment, but to say everything right would require an article far too long for me to complete with my current time costraints. Nevertheless, I thought I’d share this “as is” for you consideration.

“Hey look at that.” I pointed at a bumper sticker on the SUV next to us.

“Yeah? What about it?” Valerie was obviously not impressed.

“It says, ‘I’m proud of my cub scout’ on a bumper sticker!”

“OK. So what?”

“Well, if they’re so proud of their son, how come it’s on a bumper sticker?”

“Because they’re proud of him.”
Read on, MacDuff!

22November2005

Judicial Inactivism

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

I’m still not getting this:

The 9th Circuit Court of appeals has been playing a little bait and switch tactic with their judicial activisim lately. Early this month they ruled against families and in favor of a local school district over whether the school was allowed to ask sexually explicit questions of children in a survey without informing the childen’s parents. However, instead of applying the traditional technique of inventing new rights in order to usurp the role of legislators, for this one they found a way to invent a novel lack of rights:
Read on, MacDuff!

12November2005

More on Pro-Life “Spam”

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

Peter Shinn at MarchTogether.com quickly replied to my email I sent him, and seemed apologetic enough that I thought I’d at least try to give him a fair hearing. The mistake he seems to have made was in realizing that this is a tiny little weblog, and not something a little more slick and professional: I never got around to putting our email addresses on the about page, so he assumed that posting his letter on the about page was going to send me a private little note.

Here’s his reply to me:
Read on, MacDuff!

11November2005

Pro-Life Spam?

Posted by Puretext under: Christian Politics.

I just received a comment on our “about” page from a pro-life blogger who wanted to use my site to promote his pro-life movement. Unfortunately, instead of asking for me to promote him, he just went ahead and commented with a full-page advertisement. His comment has since been deleted, and I’m not going to even bother linking to him, since I don’t think he should get any positive credit for using spam techniques, no matter how good his cause.

However, I thought I’d post the email reply I sent to him:

I received a comment from you on my site that ammounted to a complete article/advertisement for your organization. I’m deleting your comment, and I thought you might like to know why.

While I am 100% behind anything that might help to end the scourge of abortion, it isn’t fair to me or to anyone else for you to take advantage of my space to advertise your programs without my permission. I’m sure you have an excellent agenda, but taking advantage of other people to promote it is unchristian and uncalled for.

If you had posted a comment asking me to post something about your organization, I might have been willing to give you front page space to do so, and hopefully drawn the attention of whatever readers I might have. But as it is, your comment counts as little more than spam, and so it will be deleted.

Peace, Kyle French