On a lighter note, let’s talk about the season ending Rally Australia. First, a couple of big pieces of news:
1. PSA, which owns both Peugeot and Citroen, announced that 2005 would be Citroen’s and Peugeot’s final year competing the WRC. Shocking news indeed, but this could open the door for Skoda and Mitsubishi to make real progress, as well allowing another manufacturer or two to enter the championship (Toyota? VW?).
2. Carlos Sainz announced he would retire at the end of the season. Unfortunately, due to a recce shunt in Australia, the retirement party started early, as his doctor’s suggested that Sainz not compete in Oz.
About the only excitement heading into the rally was whether or not Petter Solberg could hang on to second place in the championship. Markko Martin came out of nowhere to win France and Spain, and he was only four points behind Solberg. Unfortunately, Martin ran into engine problems on the rally-opening Superspecial in Perth, his engine dropping to three cylinders on the short test. Martin isn’t optimistic that his engineers will be able to diagnose the problem. Both Sebastien Loeb and Solberg are still gunning for win number six, but both Marcus Gronholm and Harri Rovanpera could compete if their 307s cooperate. I think Solberg will be tough to stop, since he has little to lose.
Posted on 11 November 2004
First, Keith has posted a response from Eric Miller about his article in the Post-Gazette.
That got me thinking, as did a lunchtime discussion we had at the office. And it got me reading. So I read this article on Christian Counterculture. This really hit home:
Instead of crusading and picketing against all of the perceived evils in our culture, believers would better glorify Christ by leading the way in concrete acts of kindness and love. Instead of complaining about our government’s tendency to waste money on useless programs, believers should open their hearts and their purses to care for the poor and needy. Instead of blocking the doors to abortion clinics (or worse), they should open the doors of their homes to pregnant women who don’t need a ?Pro-life? lecture, but a clear presentation of the gospel and loving assistance in carrying their babies to term. Instead of fighting to have ?prayer in the classrooms? of our public schools, believers should be spending more time in prayer themselves. Instead of suing for the right to display a nativity scene in the public square believers should be ?using the, public square? to tell anyone who will listen about the grace of God in Jesus Christ. These are but a few of the practical ways believers can demonstrate the love of Christ instead of becoming objects of ridicule by constantly engaging in all of the negative rhetoric about how bad our society is.
I’m ready to give up political discourse, and I don’t think that Christians should ignore the public square/political sphere. But obviously, we can’t get too wrapped up the political game and lose sight of what we really fighting for.
Posted on 11 November 2004
First, Crooked Timber is spreading the word about the gradual erosion of our system of government.
Second, via Keith, Comment has a series of articles comparing the blogosphere with European coffeehouses.
Jump aboard the meme train.
Posted on 11 November 2004
I was going to talk about Eric Miller’s article regarding his choice for president, but Keith has already commented on that, and, for the most part, I agree with him.
Eli passed this along to me this morning, and it’s pretty interesting.
I think what I really want to talk about is the “cultural war” that has suddenly been front-and-center lately (at least on the web). It goes a little something like this:
Democrats accuse “Christian evangelicals” of trying to Bible-cize our great country, and Republicans see Democrats as trying to drag this place back to Gomorrah. “Moral issue voters” came out and made their statement.
The truth isn’t so simple. First, the number of church-going folk who voted was roughly the same as 2000. Chances are, their vote was generally the same as 2000 (from a Republican/Democrat perspective). What the left doesn’t realize is that while it’s easy to say this is a “religious” country, the definition of “religious” is not easy to pin down. I believe that 75% of the country believes in “God” but I don’t believe that more than 45% actually understands what that means to their everyday lives. And even fewer of those people have Biblical basis to what they believe (other than God created the earth, and Jesus rose from the dead) to what they believe.
That said, there are plenty of “evangelical Christians” who believe the best way to bring about Christianity is through legislation. Some are outright theonomists, others are closeted. But their theonomy is woefully illogical and incomplete. Yes, they say, ban gay marriage and abortion. But whither are the calls for laws against adultery, fornication, and drunkeness? What about bringing back the Blue Laws? I guess theonomy has to start somewhere. But I still think these folks are a minority on the right. They may have loud voices (I’m thinking of the TV evangelists and the Christian Right), but they aren’t the majority. The majority of the “moral issue voters” (I promise, that’s the last time I’ll use quotation marks) are God-fearing, but not necessarily God-knowing. Killing babies is wrong, and being gay is even worse. It’s not about a well-reasoned belief — it’s about disgust. People are so thoroughly disgusted by gays that they had no choice but to get out and vote. And don’t discount the collection of economic libertarians who still cling to a greater moral code and aren’t quite social libertarians. Most of these folk know they’ll never see a libertarian president in their lifetime, so the Republican candidate is their best choice, even if he is a big government, spend-spend neo-conservative.
All that said, let’s talk about that cultural war again. Plenty of Christians (and I mean theologically grounded folk) believe in that legislation is an effective tool of evangelization. Some believe that the U.S. has always been a Christian nation (history and political theory be damned), and therefore our laws should reflect that. But there are those of us who believe things work the opposite way — by redeeming the world through the things we do (either through our work, our relationships, our hobbies) we can work towards spreading the Gospel. So we may be fighting a cultural war as it were, but we are fighting it in the world instead of in the halls of Congress. It is a cultural war, in a sense, but not one to be fought with swords and laws. If anything, it’s a counter-cultural movement trying to change the way people fundamentally look at Things.
But that doesn’t make good politics (as most counter-cultural movements). And it doesn’t make for good copy. The political handlers on both sides of the aisle want to toot the horn of cultural war because nothing less seems to rally the troops. The Democrats failed to get out the vote with the specter of the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, and Bush’s apparent bungling of both. So now, instead of looking for answers through changes in the party, they are crying war. And the left is listening. It’s not the Democrats fault — blame those close-minded Christians (who, of course, do deserve some blame)! And the Republicans will be happy to play along. Obviously it’s worked for them so far, and now, with many of the “moral” leaders of the party feeling the power, expect more in the future.
Posted on 10 November 2004
There are a lot of things I’d like to comment on today:
Eric Miller’s Single Issue Voter Apologetic
Keith Martel: Can I wear clogs with my kilt?
The Discussion of How Now Shall GWB Live?
Unfortunately, my brain is having trouble shifting out of low gear. We went to the New this weekend, and the climbing was good, but we left the crag far too late for people with an 18 month old son. More sleep would be greatly appreciated. Add to that the general physical fatique of climbing for two days, and of running in and out the crag at Summersville Lake (we left our climbing harnesses in the car — duh), plus a windy ride to work, and I’d like to be at home, sitting around, doing nothing.
So, tune in tomorrow, and perhaps I can sort things out enough to comment on at least one of the above.
Posted on 8 November 2004
How George Bush won the election
As a member (at least in appearance to people who don’t know me, or read this site) of the “evangelical Christian” group, I want to respond to this:
Looking out across America, what’s one of the largest groups of people with a single strongly-held set of beliefs? The evangelical Christians. They comprise a large portion of the US population and believe in God more strongly than most other groups believe in anything. The Bush camp used a coordinated campaign to speak directly to those people and put their strong belief in God in direct opposition to what the other side stood for: liberals want to kill innocent babies, allow gays to marry, and let non-Christians run the country/world. To an evangelical Christian, the fear that those things will happen is almost overwhelmingly unbearable. Based on that emotional appeal, they turned out in droves, voting for Bush in greater numbers than in 2000 and overwhelming the increased turnout on the other side of the aisle.
I am not one of these people. I guess I like to think of myself as being a little smarter than that, and a little more comfortable in my faith to think that way. First, I realize how our government is supposed to work. I understand that the country was founded on the idea of religious freedom (see Pilgrams, The). I also understand that being a single issue voter doesn’t really work if you’re a Christian, regardless of what anybody tells you. I realize that our current form of two party government will never, ever permit real, Biblical Christianity from having a material influence on the politics of this country.
That said, I agree with Kottke’s basic premise:
And we’re lazy about our beliefs and convictions and we let the Democratic and Republican Parties dictate the political agenda in America by pushing our emotional buttons. Red, blue, black, white, brown, yellow, purple, and retina-burning yellow-green…we all share the blame.
It’s much easier, I like to joke, when someone else makes the important decisions for you. We like to claim that this place is a democracy, and “power to the people” and that, but when things fall to pieces, we don’t see ourselves as being responsible. We can just point our fingers at our elected officials (or in the Democrats’ case, the unelected officials). And we certainly don’t want to think for ourselves. Christians fall into the trap with the abortion issue — the “culture of life” that they want is a big lie — think about then-governor George Bush mocking a death row inmate asking for a stay of execution — or pehaps a conservative’s lack of compassion for the poor. But that door swings both ways, and there are plenty of way Democrats do the same. Maybe the government should require a civics test before you vote…
Posted on 5 November 2004
Our Thursday night chit-chat group got together last night to discuss two articles from First Things:
Freedom and Decency
Church as Culture
I wrote about Freedom and Decency last week (scroll down), and after our discussion, I stand by most of my comments. One thing that we dove into, and were very critical of, was Hart’s elitism. First, he believes only certain people are “properly trained” to decide what is and isn’t decent. Second, he creates a line between “high art” and “low art.” Ulysses, despite attempts in the United States to censor it, is acceptable to Hart because it is such a “great” piece of literature, but most forms of contemporary art don’t pass his litmus test, and are therefore indecent. He really should just say what means — he believes that high art is dying in the post-modern world and he doesn’t like it.
The discussion about Church as Culture wasn’t nearly as animated, primarily because of our reformed tendencies. Wilken advocates a distinctly Catholic perspective on the Chuch being visible in the world through cultural forms (his examples: language, architecture, and the calendar). The Reformation did it’s best to destroy every one of those forms, and I don’t we’re anxious to re-embrace them. And, as one of us pointed out, these forms didn’t do much to maintain the Church’s presence in culture. But his point was well-taken — there was a time when the Church was a driving cultural force (for good and bad). The question remains: how can the Church influence and shape culture in the post-modern world.
Posted on 5 November 2004
Matt had a link to the Boing Boing post about Kerry’s concession of the election, and I thought it was interesting for a couple of reasons:
1. Boing Boing had been quite silent today about the election, after numerous posts yesterday.
2. I think the bit they quoted from Dan Gilmour was right on the money. Let me share a bit:
People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.
One is Bush’s America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian “conservatives,” corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.
Another is the Democratic “left”: wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.
I suspect there’s a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored — or made worse — by those in power today.
That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.
3. The last line of the post:
Presuming the elections were fairly conducted and accurately counted — which remains a matter of some debate — I’m going with the latter.
Enough of this, ok? First, Bush has a 7 digit lead in the popular vote. That’s a heck of a lot of election fraud. Second, both sides engage in voter fraud, plain and simple. Why? Because the system is so screwed up. Here’s one interesting story. And I’m sure there are tens of thousands of others on the web right now. Point is, Kerry lost not because Republicans rigged the election, but because he didn’t get enough votes (again, if Republicans rigged this election and prevent MILLIONS of people from voting, and did it without raising all heck, that’s sorta impressive).
But this just goes back to Dave Gilmour’s point. A lot of people didn’t vote. They didn’t vote because they didn’t like Bush, and they didn’t like Kerry. And I think for many of them, there will never be a viable candidate for president. It’s easier for Democrats to label these people as “lazy” or “undecided” or just blame the Republicans rather than realize there’s something wrong with their party (see Sidney Blumenthal).
All that said, I’m not looking forward to another four years of George Bush, but that’s how it is. We’ve got four years to fix the system.
Posted on 3 November 2004