Bill's Comments

Today in the WSJ Opinion Journal appeared an essay on the film "United 93" written by the father of one of the passengers on that flight. It is an eloquent testimony on the film, the flight, and our freedom.

There will be a test.

The above is the title of an excellent essay in the Weekly Standard online edition. Using the example from South Park's "Cartoon Wars" episodes, the author very clearly displays the craven surrender to terrorist censorship. A definite must read.

This takes a while to load, but is hypnotic once it starts.

Wow!

Thanks to Gerard for the link.

This article in WSJ Opinion Journal is an excellent summary of the economics of government meddling in markets. It is so clear and fundamental it belongs at the gen ed level not the major/minor level of course work.

You can skip the political commentary. I agree with it, but am more impressed with the economics lesson.

While we were at my in-laws on Sunday, I glanced at the "Focus" section of the Indianapolis Star. One of the op-ed items was a piece by a member of the ACLU, claiming that requiring a photo id in order to vote was "a solution in search of a problem." He provided several examples of situations in which someone would have been unable to provide a photo id, ostensibly through no fault of their own, and therefore would have been prevented from voting unfairly. At first glance, it was easy enough to identify with the "victims," but a bit more thought led me to consider that each situation was actually the result of a lack of care or planning on the part of the "victim."

He then added the observation that there had never been a prosecution for voter fraud in the State of Indiana with the implication that it was not necessary to have such a law.

What is being ignored here is that the right to vote is a right belonging only to citizens of the US, and providing proof of citizenship is perfectly legitimate. Since we are in a utilitarian argument here, the loss of a few votes to random circumstance is a small price to pay to prevent the counting of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of votes cast by non-existent people, people who are not citizens, or multiple voting by the same people. The harm that can be done by fraud is far greater than the loss of votes from chance events.

From a purely principled point of view, voting is the foundation of our republic. As such it must be protected from corruption to the highest degree. Voting is a right that should accrue only to citizens. Therefore it is imperative that we do everything possible to insure that as many citizens as possible are able and allowed to vote, and that we deter anyone not qualified to vote from voting. We require registration to vote. Requiring identification to prove who one is, would hardly be more difficult. It is the minimum we might do to protect the ballot box.

I would go so far as to require photo id for registration, and the ID would be recorded as part of the registration, e.g., DL number, or ID number. To vote one would have to match the ID at voting with the ID from registration.

It is very easy to become suspicious of those who don't want to implement voter IDs. The current situation is fraught with opportunity for fraud.

Communal Christianity
The first lesson for today, the Second Sunday of Easter, is from Acts 4:32-35.

32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.
33 With great power the apostles gave their testomony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
34 There was not a need person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.
35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

We discussed this at the Men's Breakfast. The first thing out of the leader's mouth was "Sounds like Communism or Socialism." At first blush it does. We had two retired pastors, one Lutheran and one Methodist in our group, and both addressed this from the non-obvious viewpoints. I will add one more.

First of all one of the retired pastors made the very important point that "the whole group...were of one heart and soul." This was voluntary action, unlike communism which is forced. The other pastor made the point that what was important here was the expression of values, that possessions were less important than the well-being of others.

I would like to make the point that it probably didn't happen exactly as stated. If everyone sold everything and pooled the money, it would only go a short way, before everyone was starving. What is more likely that those with means of income generation turned the proceeds to the group, not selling the means themselves.

I think the important lesson here is not that Christians or any theist should pursue a communal lifestyle, but rather that they should put the care and concern for others ahead of their desire for material things. There should be no question that when faced with another's survival need which could be met by the sacrifice of some personal possession, the owner stands willing to do so. Rarely would there be the necessity to actually sacrifice a prize possession, but more likely the on-going call to defer gratification and contribute to the causes for the needy rather than buy an addition for a collection, or upgrade or enhance some prize possession.

I think the misconstrual of this lesson is similar to that of the lawyer being told to sell all to achieve the kingdom of heaven. It is not a condemnation of being rich, per se, but rather the values that place money and possessions ahead of people.

Easter
To everyone, Happy Easter. This is the season of renewal and rebirth. Whether you interpret the story of the Resurrection of Jesus as a literal historic event, a misinterpretation of a true event, or an allegorical or metaphorical story, its message of a triumph over death as represented by Winter is true. My wish for you at this time is that you be open to receive Gods's blessings, and that you begin all anew and refreshed with the renewal of Spring.

Sermon
On Good Friday, I gave the following sermon:

Decision in the Olive Grove
Today we are specifically remembering Jesus’ crucifixion, but I would like to go back to the evening before, because it gives a greater context to the events of Good Friday. From the study of the Gospels that I have been doing for the last two years, I have concluded that THE determining point in the establishment of Christianity was Jesus decision to not fight in the olive grove after the Last Supper.

All four gospels tell this story with variations. Here is Mark’s version of this event. The words of this version are the result of comparing nine different translations of the Bible and producing what I consider the closest meaning to the original Greek the Gospels were recorded in.

Mark 14:43-53:
43 Just at that moment, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived and with him a crowd of men with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders.
44 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.”
45 So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him.
46 And they laid hands on him and seized him.
47 But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
48 Jesus then said, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to capture me as though I were a robber?
49 Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching and you did not seize me; But let the scriptures be fulfilled.”
50 Then they all deserted him and fled.
51 And a young man was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him,
52 but he left the cloth behind and ran away naked.
53 And they led Jesus away to the high priest; and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes were assembled.

We know all too well what happens after this.

This scene, especially as described by Mark, always puts me in mind of the Hollywood monster movie. You know the scene, when the crowd is aroused in the local pub by some loudmouth, and, grabbing whatever is at hand, charges up the hill to the castle to get rid of the monster and his master. This image is reinforced with John’s account, when Jesus identifies himself and they all fall down. At the moment, I am trying to look at things as historical events as much as possible, and it is easy to imagine a crowd motivated by a mixture of dread and self-righteousness as being afraid of Jesus. It may be that John wants to use their falling down as an indication of Jesus inherent divine power. My guess that what John describes as falling down is actually minor stumbling and slipping as they backed up in the dark and not a wholesale falling like dominoes.

Again considering the crowd, just how big was it really, and who was in it? There are some differences among the four gospels. We have Jesus and the remaining eleven disciples on one hand. According to Luke 22:38 there were two swords among them. I would also assume that each carried a knife of some sort. Against this we have the crowd. If it were truly a large crowd, as Matthew or Luke indicate, or for that matter if it were the Roman guard as John suggests, I cannot imagine any of the disciples drawing a sword against such foolish odds. For that matter, the crowd could not be well-armed or the cutting off of the ear would have merited instant retaliation. My guess is that a rag-tag group of around two dozen people, armed mostly with clubs and knives, came after Jesus. The odds would have been about even with numbers vs. swords. Jesus, seeing that nothing but bloodshed would come from resistance stopped the disciples from further aggression or defense and allowed them to escape.

John is always emphasizing Jesus’ majesty and divinity, and I have a lot of difficulty with John’s version. It is not consistent to call out the guard to seize Jesus at the olive grove, and then have Jesus taken first to either Caiaphas’ or Annas’ house. I also don’t see the Roman guard falling back at the mention of Jesus name, or relinquishing control of Jesus to the Sanhedrin once they had him. I am inclined to think that Mark is the most historically accurate of the four.

In summary then, we have this situation: The Chief Priest and the Sanhedrin roused a bunch of people to come and seize Jesus. They named the Chief Priest’s bonded servant to be the leader of the group. (He was the one injured and therefore at the head of the pack within reach of a sword). They took Jesus to the Chief Priest’s home. Later the Roman guard was called in, after the grounds of the charge of rebellion were created.

The whole point of recreating the scene in the Olive Grove in our minds is to emphasize what Jesus did there. What is important is that Jesus is fully human. Let us get rid of the idea that Jesus considered himself more than human. If he were more than human, it would be asking the impossible for us to follow his example, as we are certainly expected to do. There apparently is or has been a long debate on the subject of Messianic Awareness—did Jesus consider himself the Messiah. If he did, it would have been strictly in the Judaic tradition of Messiah which was another anointed military king such as David. I think from Jesus’ behavior we can rule that out. He never acted in such a manner. At the same time, it would be a logical contradiction of the belief that Jesus was the fully human son of God, if we assume he could make the decision not to fight, knowing he would be resurrected, or that he had a special place in heaven after he died. Jesus had to make this decision, just as we might in similar circumstances, weighing those things of value to him.

Let’s try to imagine what might have been in Jesus’ mind that night. Here he stands with his eleven closest friends, having a few weapons among them, and none of them trained as fighters. Facing him is a mob of scared, excited villagers, full of bravado, and each depending on all the others being there to remain steadfast. Accompanying them are some goons from the Temple. Jesus is fully aware that what they want is him. He knows that if he is captured he will die, by what means is not clear but also at this point not important. He also knows that there is the possibility that he could escape. He may also realize that if he does, he will be hounded all over Judea and Galilee until he is captured. In the process of trying to escape, one or more of his best friends and certainly some of the crowd will be hurt or killed. All of this is on his mind, and the fight starts. One of the crowd is injured, and it becomes very real that death for someone will occur. At that point, thinking and feeling much as you and I might about these things, he accepts his fate, and says “Enough.”

I believe this is the turning point. This is the point at which the Christian doctrine of love of all becomes established by example. Jesus followed his own commandment to “love each other as I have loved you.” Jesus loved his disciples and cared enough about the poor fools of villagers, that he gave his life rather than risk theirs to protect his. This was not an act of cowardice. A coward would have run or tried to save his own life. This was an act of the highest bravery. Knowing that his death was guaranteed, he saved the rest.

We give soldiers medals for this, God gave him a church.

Let us pray: God, please give us the courage to follow Jesus’ example and make the right decisions, acting out of love for others, and not our own self-interest.

I once posted a detailed discussion on the hard-boiling of eggs. It is my top hit producer. In an average month it produces 10-25% of my hits. This month, in particular Saturday, it produced an avalanche. Almost 1500 hits on the post alone for the the month, and 585 of them on Saturday.

It is far more important to know how to boil and egg at Easter than to have a clue on anything else. I don't know whether to be cynical or thankful, that people's biggest concern is eggs.

This is a very interesting read from the Weekly Standard on a military option towards Iran. When I started reading the scenario, I immediately thought of Dale Brown's novels of superior air power as a political weapon. Then I saw the name of the author at the end--Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret.) served as assistant vice chief of staff of the United States Air Force--I think he may have sufficient knowledge for it to be plausible.

....he was reading too much Dale Brown.

Also from Fox News comes this story:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Up until now, parents had to deal with a separate company or buy special equipment to track their children through their cell phones. Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) becomes the first U.S. wireless provider to sell its own product when the Family Locator Service rolls out Thursday.

Using the Global Positioning System, the service allows parents to track up to four cell phones over the Internet or on their own wireless device. Parents can periodically ask the service to find the child's phone, displaying the location on a road map. [emphasis mine, bk]

Parents can also set alerts, automatically warning the parent if the child isn't at a certain place, such as school or soccer practice, at a specific time.

The child's phone also displays a text message, letting the child know they've been searched for and found.

The software, provided through WaveMarket Inc. for $9.99 per month, can be downloaded on 17 existing phones and can locate 28 GPS-enabled models.

Sprint officials insist their service isn't a "Big Brother" tool.

"It's not about tracking. It's not about monitoring," said Dan Gilmartin, Sprint's marketing manager for location-based services. "It's about giving parents and caregivers peace of mind that they're able to find their children's location." [emphasis mine, bk]

He added that the service could let adults keep track of elderly parents.

The demand for child-locating products is heating up, with several third-party providers, such as Wherify and Teen Arrive Alive, already selling location services.

Last week, CATS Communication Inc. said it was releasing a service to warn parents if their child went near the home of a registered sex offender, and The Walt Disney Co.(DIS) is targeting children this summer with a GPS-enabled phone that includes a locating feature.

The first thing a kid will do is leave the phone where they are supposed to be and then go elsewhere, using a friends phone that doesn't have tracking. Then the parents will start calling periodically. Then the kids will turn off the phones. Kids win, because the solution is grounding or taking away the cell phone, and nobody makes the first stick, and the second is self-defeating, since the parent wants accessibility to the child, and the child can use someone else's phone.

As for the Sprint spokesman-- IT'S ALL ABOUT TRACKING. Calling it monitoring is just playing word games. So what's wrong with parents tracking their children.

I do have a question--How do they prevent stalkers and predators from finding out the phone numbers and doing their own tracking?

From Fox News comes this article:

COSTA MESA, Calif. — A middle school student faces expulsion for allegedly posting graphic threats against a classmate on the popular MySpace.com Web site, a district administrator said.

Twenty other students at TeWinkle Middle School were slapped with two-day suspensions for viewing the boy's posting on the social networking site, officials said.

"With what the students can get into using the technology we are all concerned about it," Bob Metz, Newport-Mesa Unified's assistant superintendent of secondary education, said Wednesday. "There is so much good, and there is so much that can cause difficulties."

According to parents of three TeWinkle students, the boy allegedly created a MySpace group on Jan. 3 that he called "I hate [girl's name]" and included an expletive and an anti-Semitic reference.

Five days later a second posting asked, "Who here in the [group name] wants to take a shotgun and blast her in the head over a thousand times?"

The posting was discovered by a TeWinkle teacher who was browsing MySpace.com, according to a police report. School officials and police identified 20 students who visited the site and suspended them last month.

Some parents said they were upset that their children were suspended for viewing the site from their home computers. The invitations to join the group and to view the second posting gave no indication of the site's content, they said.

Metz, however, said the suspensions were appropriate because the incident involved the safety of students on campus.

Costa Mesa police said they're looking into hate-crime charges against the boy.

"HATE-CRIME CHARGES"? Let's get a grip here folks. The kid that did the post needs some parental help and discipline. From my experience, this kind of "I hate..." and extreme graphic hyperbole goes with pre-puberty and early puberty. The problem as I see it is that access to violent movies and video games may reinforce an idea of acceptability of such expressions. But it is a parent's place to deal with it.

Suspension for reading the site? How did the school administrators know they read it? I love the justification--"the safety of students on campus." Don't they just wish words were really that powerful. Yet I will bet the library has books available to them that are far more inappropriate.

Kids say things that are extreme and, if an adult said them, they would create a lot of worry. This was a pretty immature for a middle-schooler, but within the bounds of normal kid behavior. It should be dealt with that way, not criminalizing it, and suspending students for simply reading it.

First we get rid of all the education adminstrators.....

Today in WSJ Opinion Journal is an essay on the voter fraud in Pennsylvania. It takes a strong stomach to read it. But read it you should. It is probably akin to Tammany Hall on a state-wide scale and NYC survived that.

.....that representative democracy is the worst form of government...except for all other forms.

However, it is becoming more rampant, more entrenched, and coupled with the immigration question, it makes us look more and more like some third world pretend democracy. Most of us are so busy leading decent, hard-working lives, and assuming that everyone else is like us, that we fail to believe the evil that does exist in the world, our country, our states, and our municipalities. We also have been so mis-led by our education system that we do not understand the criticallity of voting or paying attention to what our elected and appointed officials are doing.

I am starting to sound like a John Birch Society conspiracist. There is no conspiracy in the sense of a mastermind or group of masterminds orchestrating all this. It is more like Al Qaida, a group of like-thinking people with common principles (yes, they have principles, just rotten ones) who strive for a common vision with different details.

Actually now that I have made the analogy, it really fits, Al Qaida and the Left/liberal axis. It is no wonder they seem to be allied in effect. They tacitly are--thieves always know another thief, and are allied against the good, until the good is gone. Then the most rapacious of them will survive. There is where it breaks down. The left will be overwhelmed in an instant, unless we see their underlying visciousness come to the fore. If the good falls, it will be a horrible blood bath.

Holy Week
On Palm Sunday we as Christians begin the celebration of the reason for the existence of our faith, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. I have posted on Easter before. This year I have taken a more active role in the celebration. I was the producer and director for the play "The Living Last Supper" which depicts the DaVinci "Last Supper" with actors and has as a script a series of monologues, each describing the life of the respective apostle and ending with the words, "Is it I? Lord, is it I?"

The production was well received, with many comments on its being inspirational. This was the goal. I had purposely created a minimalist version of the play, deliberately not recreating the picture in costume or backdrop, but rather the poses at the table with all the apostles wearing the same robe, an off-white, Jesus in pure white, and Judas with a black over-robe. The backdrop was portable partitions drapped with neutral colored cloth, tan, grey, and slate blue. Other than one comment that the simplicity of the production was a good thing, all the comments were on the message--exactly as desired.

This Friday, I deliver the sermon at the Good Friday service. It is an edited version of one of my posts a year ago. I will post it next Sunday.

Gauss and the Gospels
The latest issue of American Scientist arrived today, and the first article (Membership in Sigma Xi required.) was on the story of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the great mathematician, who supposedly solved a busy-work problem as a school child with amazing speed.

Here is the opening of the article:

Gauss's Day of Reckoning
A famous story about the boy wonder of mathematics has taken on a life of its own
by Brian Hayes

Let me tell you a story, although it's such a well-worn nugget of mathematical lore that you've probably heard it already:

In the 1780s a provincial German schoolmaster gave his class the tedious assignment of summing the first 100 integers. The teacher's aim was to keep the kids quiet for half an hour, but one young pupil almost immediately produced an answer: 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 98 + 99 + 100 = 5,050. The smart aleck was Carl Friedrich Gauss, who would go on to join the short list of candidates for greatest mathematician ever. Gauss was not a calculating prodigy who added up all those numbers in his head. He had a deeper insight: If you "fold" the series of numbers in the middle and add them in pairs—1 + 100, 2 + 99, 3 + 98, and so on—all the pairs sum to 101. There are 50 such pairs, and so the grand total is simply 50×101. The more general formula, for a list of consecutive numbers from 1 through n, is n(n + 1)/2.

The paragraph above is my own rendition of this anecdote, written a few months ago for another project. I say it's my own, and yet I make no claim of originality. The same tale has been told in much the same way by hundreds of others before me. I've been hearing about Gauss's schoolboy triumph since I was a schoolboy myself.
The story was familiar, but until I wrote it out in my own words, I had never thought carefully about the events in that long-ago classroom. Now doubts and questions began to nag at me. For example: How did the teacher verify that Gauss's answer was correct? If the schoolmaster already knew the formula for summing an arithmetic series, that would somewhat diminish the drama of the moment. If the teacher didn't know, wouldn't he be spending his interlude of peace and quiet doing the same mindless exercise as his pupils?

There are other ways to answer this question, but there are other questions too, and soon I was wondering about the provenance and authenticity of the whole story. Where did it come from, and how was it handed down to us? Do scholars take this anecdote seriously as an event in the life of the mathematician? Or does it belong to the same genre as those stories about Newton and the apple or Archimedes in the bathtub, where literal truth is not the main issue? If we treat the episode as a myth or fable, then what is the moral of the story?

The questions that Dr. Hayes asked, I have also asked about the Gospels. As we look into his article the parallels between a tradition transmitted via print and a tradition transmitted verbally until written down and canonized are striking. The key here is his penultimate question, “Or does it belong to the same genre as those stories about Newton and the apple or Archimedes in the bathtub, where literal truth is not the main issue?” The stories are to be illustrations of the character of the subject via a representative action. Any serious student of the Gospels realizes that they are not written as historical documents, but rather as presentations of events to illustrate to the readers and convince them of Jesus’ nature and the nature of God. In this light the story is analogous to the the story of Jesus in the temple, answering the questions of the priests and scribes.

Dr Hayes goes on to say:

After reading all those variations on the story, I still can't answer the fundamental factual question, "Did it really happen that way?" I have nothing new to add to our knowledge of Gauss. But I think I have learned something about the evolution and transmission of such stories, and about their place in the culture of science and mathematics.

Dr. Hayes then searches for all the versions of the story he can possibly find and finally traces it back to a document written one year after Gauss’ death. He makes the following comment:

Incidental details from this account reappear over and over in later tellings of the story. The ritual of piling up the slates is one such feature. (It must have been quite a teetering heap by the time the hundredth slate was added!) Büttner's switch (or cane, or whip) also made frequent appearances until the 1970s but is less common now; we have grown squeamish about mentioning such barbarities.
What's most remarkable about the Sartorius telling of the story is not what's there but what's absent. There is no mention of the numbers from 1 to 100, or any other specific arithmetic progression. And there is no hint of the trick or technique that Gauss invented to solve the problem; the idea of combining the numbers in pairs is not discussed, nor is the formula for summing a series. Perhaps Sartorius thought the procedure was so obvious it needed no explanation.

He then continues with a long analysis of the various versions of the story, when certain items appear and disappear, and even has a chronological table of all the versions and their key content.
To me, these remarks are essentially identical to remarks I have read in commentaries on the Gospels and their origins, the added and missing parts, the speculations on motive for writing a particular version.

And then Dr. Hayes makes this interesting statement:

If you think it utterly implausible that two or more authors would come up with the same example and the same method, then Bieberbach himself is disqualified as the source. A full millennium before Gauss and Büttner had their classroom confrontation, essentially the same problem and solution appeared in an eighth-century manuscript attributed to Alcuin of York.

A case of the same idea occurring over 1000 years before the story took place. Again I am struck by the parallel to the Bible, where much of the New Testament has its origins in the Old, and often is a simple restatement of the same idea from the Old Testament.

Dr. Hayes anticipates my punchline with this:

Tellers of a tale like this one seem to work under a special dispensation from the usual rules of history-writing. Authors who would not dare to alter a fact such as Gauss's place of birth or details of his mathematical proofs don't hesitate to embellish this anecdote, just to make it a better story. They pick and choose from the materials available to them, taking what they need and leaving the rest—and if nothing at hand suits the purpose, then they invent! For example, several authors show a familiarity with Bell's version of the story, quoting or borrowing distinctive phrases from it, but they decline to go along with Bell's choice of a series beginning 81297, falling back instead on the old reliable 1-100 or inserting something else entirely. Thus it appears that what is driving the evolution of this story is not just the accumulation of errors of transmission, as in the children's game "whisper down the lane"; authors are deliberately choosing to "improve" the story, to make it a better narrative.

For the most part, I would not criticize this practice. Effective storytelling is surely a legitimate goal, and outside of formal scholarly works, a bit of embroidery on the bare fabric of the plot does no harm. A case in point is the theme of "busywork" found in most recent tellings of the story (including mine). It seems we feel a need to explain why Büttner would give his pupils such a long and dreary exercise. But Sartorius says nothing at all about Büttner's motivation, nor do any of the other 19th-century works I've consulted. The idea that he wanted to keep the kids quiet while he took a break is entirely a modern inference. It's probably wrong—at best it's unattested—and yet it answers a need of readers today.

At this point Dr. Hayes article and I part company. He is interested now in dissecting the algorithm that Gauss supposedly used, and what variants can be found on it. What I think is important is we have a clear example of the point I have tried to make many times in other posts that over time there is considerable alteration of the objective facts of a story to enhance the underlying moral or truth being presented. Additionally, I will state that such a circumstance is not bad. It makes it difficult or even impossible for those of us who are interested in trying to recreate the objective reality behind a story, but the metaphorical truth of the story remains and is emphasized by such changes and embellishments.

Just as Gauss’ biographers wished to present him in the most positive light, and to make all the stories about him shine with his genius, so did the evangelists that wrote the Gospels, wish to present Jesus as the Savior and the Messiah. In order to do so, they changed the order and details of events, put words in Jesus’ mouth, and spliced Old Testament scriptures into their narrative. This is not to disparage them. The Gospels serve their purpose, they inspire and lead us to behavior akin to that of Jesus. That they use metaphorical rather than objective truths to do so does not diminish their value.

Render unto Caesar
If there is any outstanding message to my postings on religion, the command from Matthew, "Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's" would be it.

The intanglement of religious leadership in politics will be the downfall of the church in America. It will gain them neither rewards in Heaven, respect on Earth, nor additional membership and the saving of souls for God.

I received the latest issue [Nov, 2005, bk] of The Lutheran magazine, the official monthly publication of the ELCA, yesterday in the mail. The very first item in the ....
was a note that the Presiding Bishop and the 65 bishops of the synods had signed a letter asking for removal of the tax rebates for the rich and applauding the continuation of the food stamp program.

These putative Christians applaud the raping and pillaging of non-Lutheran pocketbooks to support their personal political priorities. Not satisfied to exhort the membership to charitable work and giving, they petition Congress to force others to conform to their vision. Without their titles, they are 66 ordinary people petitioning Congress. They have misused their position as leaders of believers to carry a political weight that they should never have.

In addition to the subordinating of religious belief to political action, they practice socialist economics as well. Just who do they think provides the bulk of the funds they run their churches on? The little guy? Give me a break. I have seen church finance details. Most churches depend on a few very well-off and generous patrons to provided the bulk of their funds, and certainly the extra funds when special needs arise. Now they want to penalize and punish the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Since I don't qualify as a traditional Christian, I hope there is some re-education and remorse before these people are admitted into Heaven.

So now that half the team has lost their scholarships, their season was cancelled, and the coach resigned under pressure, it turns out that NONE, repeat NONE, of the Duke LaCrosse team had sex, consensual or otherwise, with the accuser.

The administration of Duke has much to answer for. Our justice system is predicated on the principle of innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. One more university succumbing to political correctness and a fear of being seen as permissive to athletes.

Shakespeare was wrong...First we fire all the college adminstrations.....Though why stop there, clean out the public education system completely.

As an excellent follow-up to my post on Islam as a political force (though it was posted for another purpose) is this post by Dymphna at Gates of Vienna on the attempted suppression of free speech, by muslims, in a heartland university. The story itself is bad enough, but the horror is easy to pass by--

We have grown to expect these things on the major East and West Coast cities “elite” university campuses that harbor radical professors and anarchist student and radical Muslim community activities.

--"...grown to expect..."? We now expect the attempted suppression of free speech at our universities?--the self-appointed bastions of thought? It's about time the purse-strings were used to effect. We fired the first salvo with the decision that said military recruiters had to be available for the acceptance of US Government dollars. The next step is to withdraw financial support everytime a speaker of any persuasion banned from speaking by public pressure, as being a First Amendment violation.

Today in the WSJ Opinion Journal, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, defended his state-mandated health-care plan. Like most good politicians, he does an excellent job of spinning the positives. It has been a while since I have undertaken a fisking, but this one is inspirational.

BOSTON--Only weeks after I was elected governor, Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples, stopped by my office. He told me, "If you really want to help people, find a way to get everyone health insurance." I replied that would mean raising taxes and a Clinton-style government takeover of health care. He insisted: "You can find a way."

I believe that we have. Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.

This sounds too good to be true, and I think it will be clear that it is too good to be true. The last phrase is an outright lie. He is using a very carefully tailored definition of government takeover, meaning that a takeover is government ownership. I see little difference between government mandate and outright ownership. What escapes bureaucratic inefficiency becomes inefficient due to regulatory activity. In addition the entire principle of private property and ownership is abrogated when it is regulated.

When I took up Tom's challenge, I assembled a team from business, academia and government and asked them first to find out who was uninsured, and why. What they found was surprising. Some 20% of the state's uninsured population qualified for Medicaid but had never signed up. So we built and installed an Internet portal for our hospitals and clinics: When uninsured individuals show up for treatment, we enter their data online. If they qualify for Medicaid, they're enrolled.

Notice that there is no freedom of choice. If a person is eligible for medicare, they get it whether they want it or not. No questioning why, no consideration for individual choice or pride. No allowance for self-sufficiency if a person is at a certain level of income. The bigory of low expectations fully revealed--"You are too poor to take care of your own needs without help.

Another 40% of the uninsured were earning enough to buy insurance but had chosen not to do so. Why? Because it is expensive, and because they know that if they become seriously ill, they will get free or subsidized treatment at the hospital. By law, emergency care cannot be withheld. Why pay for something you can get free?

That cannot be the only reason. He has automatically relegated 40% of the uninsured into the category of freeloader. Notice that he assumes they are depending on a government mandated distortion of the market--free emergency care.

Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes. The solution we came up with was to make private health insurance much more affordable. Insurance reforms now permit policies with higher deductibles, higher copayments, coinsurance, provider networks and fewer mandated benefits like in vitro fertilization--and our insurers have committed to offer products nearly 50% less expensive. With private insurance finally affordable, I proposed that everyone must either purchase a product of their choice or demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care. It's a personal responsibility principle.

It's a miracle!! Reduce the government mandates on insurance and it becomes cheaper. Too bad they didn't take the lesson all the way to its conclusion. "..personal resposibility principle" is plain Orwellian. Big Brother says you will be insured, or pay for it yourself. Where is the responsibility when if you don't meet the state standard of self-support of medical care, you must have insurance.

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.

Neither is a government mandate to provide health care.

Another group of uninsured citizens in Massachusetts consisted of working people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford health-care insurance. Here the answer is to provide a subsidy so they can purchase a private policy. The premium is based on ability to pay: One pays a higher amount, along a sliding scale, as one's income is higher. The big question we faced, however, was where the money for the subsidy would come from. We didn't want higher taxes; but we did have about $1 billion already in the system through a long-established uninsured-care fund that partially reimburses hospitals for free care. The fund is raised through an annual assessment on insurance providers and hospitals, plus contributions from the state and federal governments.

Again he assumes that they don't have health care because they can't afford it. No choice here, they will pay part of the premium and receive a subsidy for the rest. The mandated premium is simply another tax on those least able to afford it. Instead of letting them work out their own arrangements with the providers, they are required to pay a tax and have insurance. The assessment to pay for the subsidy is another tax, and what kind of double-think goes on in his head that this won't raise the costs of insurance and hospital care?

To determine if the $1 billion would be enough, Jonathan Gruber of MIT built an econometric model of the population, and with input from insurers, my in-house team crunched the numbers. Again, the result surprised us: We needed far less than the $1 billion for the subsidies. One reason is that this population is healthier than we had imagined. Instead of single parents, most were young single males, educated and in good health. And again, because health insurance will now be affordable and subsidized, we insist that everyone purchase health insurance from one of our private insurance companies.

Through smoke and mirrors of modeling, and because much of the population didn't really need insurance, now it is mandated.

And so, all Massachusetts citizens will have health insurance. It's a goal Democrats and Republicans share, and it has been achieved by a bipartisan effort, through market reforms.

Not reform, rearrangement of distortions. Health insurance, whether you want it or not. Reminds me of the old joke, "Come the Revolution you will have strawberries and cream." "But I don't like strawberries and cream." "Come the Revolution you will LIKE strawberries and cream."

We have received some helpful enhancements. The Heritage Foundation helped craft a mechanism, a "connector," allowing citizens to purchase health insurance with pretax dollars, even if their employer makes no contribution. The connector enables pretax payments, simplifies payroll deduction, permits prorated employer contributions for part-time employees, reduces insurer marketing costs, and makes it efficient for policies to be entirely portable. Because small businesses may use the connector, it gives them even greater bargaining power than large companies. Finally, health insurance is on a level playing field.

Gee, the connector is better than a wonder drug. By the time the legislature gets through with it, none of this will look the same. Notice the word "permits." As if there is virtue in the removal of government regulation that prevented something that should have been allowed all along. Big difference in most things when it comes time to make them work.

Two other features of the plan reduce the rate of health-care inflation. Medical transparency provisions will allow consumers to compare the quality, track record and cost of hospitals and providers; given deductibles and coinsurance, these consumers will have the incentive and the information for market forces to influence behavior. Also, electronic health records are in the works, which will reduce medical errors and lower costs.

Wishful thinking. People don't make decisions based on co-pays and coinsurance except when chosing their policies. They certainly don't sit and pore over the records of their providers. They pick the closest one that will agree to see them. Or the closest one after that one if they don't like him/her/it. This is policy wonk speakese. Electronic health records are already in the works to reduce errors without a government mandate. What this will do is destroy the privacy of the records by insisting they be open to the government.

My Democratic counterparts have added an annual $295 per-person fee charged to employers that do not contribute toward insurance premiums for any of their employees. The fee is unnecessary and probably counterproductive, and so I will take corrective action.

This is just the beginning of the nickle-and-dime fees and charges (translation, taxes) that will crop up in the interest of "fairness" or other nice-sounding words. What corrective action? He has the unilateral power to recend the fee? I don't think so.

How much of our health-care plan applies to other states? A lot. Instead of thinking that the best way to cover the uninsured is by expanding Medicaid, they can instead reform insurance.

Take one boondoggle and replace it with another.

Will it work? I'm optimistic, but time will tell. A great deal will depend on the people who implement the program. Legislative adjustments will surely be needed along the way. One great thing about federalism is that states can innovate, demonstrate and incorporate ideas from one another. Other states will learn from our experience and improve on what we've done. That's the way we'll make health care work for everyone.

It all depends on the people implementing the program, and human nature being what it is, it will be a cluster f***. For "legislative adjustments" read increasing regulation, reporting, and overburdening of the system, and that doesn't even begin to consider the bureaucratic aspects.

This is a prime example of entitlement gone wild. It is elevating a personal choice to an entitlement, univeralizing the entitlement and treating it as a right, then justifying the destruction of other rights in the name of this one. At the same time it destroys individual pride, initiative, and uniqueness, putting everyone into the same group of those-needing-health-insurance whether they need it or not or even want it or not.

Today in the "Grapevine" column in Fox News comes this:

Homosexual History Lesson

A state Senate committee in California has approved a bill that would require schools to teach students about the historical contributions of gay people. The bill would add homosexuals to the list of groups whose roles in history must be included in school texts and could have a national effect, since California is the country's biggest market for textbooks.

Openly gay Democratic State Senator Sheila Kuehl says the proposal will help gay students feel included in society by highlighting famous homosexuals such as poet Langston Hughes. Under this proposal, textbooks that did not identify prominent gays by their sexuality could not be purchased for the state's public schools.

Would someone please tell me where a person's sexual preference made any difference to history? This is the inverse of the old racist "What ever they did doesn't mean anything because they were ...." Now we have, "What ever they did gets its meaning because they are gay." This takes the whole self-esteem bullshit to a new level.

Can you say, "backlash?"

Please read this item from WSJ Opinion Journal.

....in California of all places!

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Here is the biography:

Born in England sometime in the second decade of the nineteenth century, you carved a notable business career, in South Africa and later San Francisco, until an entry into the rice market wiped out your fortune in 1854. After this, you became quite different. The first sign of this came on September 17, 1859, when you expressed your dissatisfaction with the political situation in America by declaring yourself Norton I, Emperor of the USA. You remained as such, unchallenged, for twenty-one years.

Within a month you had decreed the dissolution of Congress. When this was largely ignored, you summoned all interested parties to discuss the matter in a music hall, and then summoned the army to quell the rebellious leaders in Washington. This did not work. Magnanimously, you decreed (eventually) that Congress could remain for the time being. However, you disbanded both major political parties in 1869, as well as instituting a fine of $25 for using the abominable nickname "Frisco" for your home city.

Your days consisted of parading around your domain - the San Francisco streets - in a uniform of royal blue with gold epaulettes. This was set off by a beaver hat and umbrella. You dispensed philosophy and inspected the state of sidewalks and the police with equal aplomb. You were a great ally of the maligned Chinese of the city, and once dispersed a riot by standing between the Chinese and their would-be assailants and reciting the Lord's Prayer quietly, head bowed.

Once arrested, you were swiftly pardoned by the Police Chief with all apologies, after which all policemen were ordered to salute you on the street. Your renown grew. Proprietors of respectable establishments fixed brass plaques to their walls proclaiming your patronage; musical and theatrical performances invariably reserved seats for you and your two dogs. (As an aside, you were a good friend of Mark Twain, who wrote an epitaph for one of your faithful hounds, Bummer.) The Census of 1870 listed your occupation as "Emperor".

The Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, upon noticing the slightly delapidated state of your attire, replaced it at their own expense. You responded graciously by granting a patent of nobility to each member. Your death, collapsing on the street on January 8, 1880, made front page news under the headline "Le Roi est Mort". Aside from what you had on your person, your possessions amounted to a single sovereign, a collection of walking sticks, an old sabre, your correspondence with Queen Victoria and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine. Your funeral cortege was of 30,000 people and over two miles long.

The burial was marked by a total eclipse of the sun.

I have been called weird, even crazy. There is a certain cachet to being a raving lunatic.

Thanks to the Maximum Leader for the link.

Today in the WSJ Opinion Journal is an excellent short history of Islam by a scholar in the field. He makes it quite clear that despite the muddle-headed statements of our leaders and the ostrich position of our intellectuals, the religion of Islam is a religion of politics and conquest. It's goal is to conquer the world POLITICALLY.

Until we get that clear in our minds, we are doomed to ineffectiveness in dealing with it. If our enemy is intent on our destruction AT ANY COST, then the only solution is to completely wipe him out. Negotiated settlements are simply time for the enemy to regroup and strengthen, not a peace.

The title of this post is the same as that to which it links. Baron Bodissey at the Gates of Vienna has hosted a post by Apollon Zamp. I think this description brings home more than any other the inherent evil in Islam in a way that connects directly with our understanding.

Our failure to face the true nature of our enemies is leading to much further bloodshed in the Middle East. Our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, though appearing successful have only postponed a day of reckoning. This article in TCS clearly shows that Al Quida is only bidding time. The setbacks they were dealt were not sufficiently followed up, and so we see their resurgence elsewhere. Here is a quote:

The fact that Al Qaeda is infiltrating countries surrounding Israel is no coincidence. It is aimed at preparing different bases to attack the Jewish state. In fact, while Al Qaeda was really shunning the issue of the Palestinians until 2001, it has now become one of the central issues of the terror network. It is a clear tactical decision in order to gather support recently lost in the Muslim world. This fits totally in Al Qaeda's master plan as exposed by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein in his recent book "Al Zarqawi: Al Qaeda's second Generation"(only available in Arabic). Thanks to his personal connection to Zarqawi -- many years ago, they spent time together in prison -- Hussein was able to interview him along with other major Al Qaeda leaders. Unsurprisingly, Hussein explains that Al Qaeda's final goal is to establish an Islamic Caliphate in seven phases.

Interestingly, the third phase called "The Rising" advocates heavy attacks against Israel because it will then force the world to acknowledge al Qaeda as a major power, and negotiate with it. This phase should last three years and allow Al Qaeda to infiltrate Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. According to Zarqawi, the very likely collision between the United States and Iran over the nuclear issue is going to help reach that goal because Iran is going to be less focused on exerting its control on Syria and Lebanon.

Today in Fox News was this article on the establishment of an office in the Department of Homeland Security to work with faith-based assistance providers. The first paragraphs adequately state the issue:

WASHINGTON — In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush has added one more office of faith-based initiatives to his administration, this time in the Department of Homeland Security.

Proponents of faith-based organizations working with federal assistance are thrilled and say these offices are in part responsible for religious groups receiving $2.1 billion in federal grants last year, up 7 percent from 2004, according to recent White House numbers.

"I just think it's high time that this was there (in DHS)," said Pam Pryor, spokeswoman for We Care America , which connects religious-based charities and relief organizations with federal resources.

But not everyone believes that the federal government should carve out special offices to funnel more than $2 billion a year to religious organizations. Opponents argue that it muddles the separation of church and state and prevents any real controls over whether the money will make its way into an organization's religious activities.

"The Bush administration's desire to turn more and more government responsibility over to houses of worship — along with lots of tax dollars — appears to be insatiable," Jeremy Leaming, spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State , wrote in a recent statement.

Until now I have been generally in favor of faith-based initiatives. In fact, my wife and I participate in one, Interfaith Hospitality Network. However, this article has focused my thinking a bit, and from a theoretical viewpoint I think faith-based initiatives are wrong, but from a practical viewpoint are workable for the time-being.

My argument against them has little to do with traditional arguments for separation of church and state. In fact not to allow religious organizations to obtain government-provided money, that secular organizations can, is a form of religious discrimination. Where I have the problem is the principle that "He who writes the checks makes the rules."

I saw it happen in education. I was in high school when Federal money started to flow to education systems. At the time I was aware that it would eventually mean Federal control of our education system. Of course, everyone said it would not. Now, no public school district can do without Federal and state dollars, but in the process must implement horrendous amounts of entitlements and bureaucratic control to keep those dollars. So will it be with faith-based initiatives. Eventually church programs will become dependent on the money, and then will be faced with continuing their mission or compromising their principles.

From a short-term practical viewpoint, faith-based initiatives are more effective in accomplishing their aims than secular organizations, primarily because they are almost exclusively volunteer, and therefore fully committed to the desired end. This looks like a win-win, tax dollars are used more effectively and churches accomplish their goals more effectively. But as the old saying points out, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Faith-based initiatives are simply another form of paving.

Jesus' Humanity
It often appears the fact that Jesus was human is lost in the tremendous emphasis given to the divinity of Jesus in most Christian liturgies, in particular because of the salvation theology that depends on Jesus being the literal Son of God. As a consequence Jesus exemplary behavior is not taken as humanly possible, but rather as an example of divine perfection--the unattainable goal that nevertheless must be striven for. Such an approach can provide a covert comfort when we fail to live up to the standard, "After all, Jesus was divine."

The divinity of Jesus is a before and after life issue. It occurs in the stories of the conception by the Holy Ghost, and in the stories of the Resurrection and after. During Jesus' life everything he did was done as a complete human, but no more than a human. It creates a logical inconsistency if it were otherwise. We would have been given an example that we were doomed to fail to follow. How many people will follow a command or set of commandments with no hope of achieving the defined end result? The idea that Jesus approached everything he did strictly from the stance of being human and not divine is central to the sermon I am giving on Good Friday. It concerns Jesus' decision to surrender to the mob in the Olive Grove, and the importance of Jesus' humanity when making that decision.

I do not ascribe to the idea that Jesus knew he was the literal Son of God. He refers to himself in the Gospels as "the Son of Man." For those of you who wish to quote verses from the Gospels that supposedly show Jesus knew he was the literal Son of God, I recommend you look at my next comment which is on the Gospels. In a nutshell, those verses may have been added later and ascribed to Jesus.

Some comments on the Gospels
The Gospels are for Christianity what the Torah is for Judaism. They are the core teachings around which everything else is constructed. The Epistles form a commentary perhaps analogous to the Talmud, but not nearly as detailed or extensive. When I was growing up, I learned that the Gospels were written in the order Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Since I started studying the Bible, I have learned that most scholars now consider Mark to predate Matthew. Prior to that rearrangement, Mark was considered a poor copy of Matthew, since it is about half the length of Matthew. Now it is considered that Matthew and Luke were aware of and made copies of Mark's Gospel and then edited it and added their own material. In the case of John, these edits and amendations are considerable.

Shelby Spong in one of his screeds against Biblical literalism, basically considered the Book of Mark to be superstituous junk. He carried on about Mark's reporting of demons being driven out, and miracles being performed. My own take on Mark is that he is a simple reporter, trying to tell the story of Jesus, the most important man in Mark's world. Unlike the other Gospels that worked to create a version of Jesus that emphasized their world view, I think Mark was simply telling what he knew. Though none of the Gospels are considered to be historical documents, in the sense of being a chronicle, I think Mark's, being written within 20 years of Jesus' death, may come the closest to historical accuracy.

One of the important things to always remember about the Gospels, is that they are a record of oral history that was told for 20-50 years before being written down. If anyone has played the game, Gossip or Telephone, they understand the reliability or lack thereof of oral traditions. The core message may get through, but the details are greatly altered. Actually Mark may be based on an older Gospel that is hypothesized but no record of which has been found.

Matthew and Luke both borrowed heavily from Mark, and the similarities are so great among the three that they are called the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew and Luke are the sources for the Christmas story, and Luke is the source for the stories of the conception of Jesus and of Jesus as a boy astounding the Scribes in the Temple. Mark and John both start with the Baptism of Jesus, and both tell the story similarly. It is almost as if Matthew and Luke heard a nice story and decided it would be a good addition to the tale of Jesus. The post-Markian Gospels have a goal of demonstrating Jesus' greatness in one way or another. Matthew and Luke use stories that show divine presence, and John emphasizes Jesus' majesty.

Of the four Gospels, John is my least favorite. Especially in his descriptions of the post-resurrection events, I find a flavor of telling fish stories, and in fact one of them is a fish story. I also find a not-too-subtle self-agrandizement. Traditionally the Book of John and Revelations are attributed to John, the Apostle. I find the constant self-references in John to "the disciple whom Jesus loved" both annoying and egotistical. So Jesus didn't love his other disciples? Of the four, I would consider John the most likely to put his own ideas into the mouth of Jesus and report it as if Jesus had said it.