Article VI Blog

Right after South Carolina – this showed up on Ace of Spades HQ (Please pardon the language):

Look; seeing Newt sock the MBM is always fun, but that’s not really what resonated the most with me, and I have to assume that at least some of the SC electorate think the way I do, since they are members of my very common demographic (female, white, 40+ y/o, some college, hunchbacked, three large teeth that don’t meet anywhere, likes pudding. Understandably. It’s frickin’ delicious! Also there’s the tooth situation).

For me, it was the part where he stood up for work. Where he discussed the essential virtues of work. Nobody does that anymore. It was refreshing. It was important to me to hear someone say it. To hear that someone has a f*cking clue what’s going on down here in Realityland. We are out of work and we want it.

This administration seems to think that Americans should view work as a vampire perceives holy water, and nearly every policy out of DC reflects that.

Well, we don’t think that way. We’re Americans. We want to work. Dammit, we’re ready to get back to it. Give us the reins to our own lives, stick your food stamps back in your ass where they came from, and get out of the way. You’re killing us.

This message resonates. That’s why Gingrich won. Not just the slap at ‘the elites,’ but the content of the slap. The part where all work is good work and no one should consider themselves demeaned by what is *good.* Yeah, that may have been pre-formulated, and Juan Williams walked right into it. So? It needed to be said. Most of us thoroughly enjoyed hearing it clearly and unambiguously elucidated.

Fair enough, but remember, Gingrich “stood up for work” in the context of Williams’ question about racism.  Gingrich was ringing the racism bell, without question when he “stood up for work.”  Not directly, of course, but in the context of that question in that environment – it was dog whistle time.

But that is not really the point I want to make in this post.  Rather I want to look at a couple of aspects that go to what this series has been all about – character.

For one thing, what is “work” and has Gingrich ever done it?  I am not saying Gingrich has not made an honest living, but has he worked?  Since leaving congress he has more-or-less been a professional fundraiser.  Oh, sure he “consulted” but have you seen the consulting contract?  He was paid to put his name on a letterhead.  Is that work?  He has established organizations that raise money to carry on for a cause, but what has he produced of value that other people are willing to pay a profitable price to obtain?  In all the stuff Newt Gingrich has done, what is his product?  Beyond Newt Gingrich being the product of Newt Gingrich, I’m not sure I can answer that question.  Is it work when your work consists of developing and promoting yourself?  That is a complex question to answer, more than we can deal with in a blog post like this, but this is worth thinking about:

Prov 21:23-26 – He who guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from troubles.   “Proud,” “Haughty,” “Scoffer,” are his names, who acts with insolent pride.  The desire of the sluggard puts him to death, for his hands refuse to work; All day long he is craving, while the righteous gives and does not hold back. (NAS)

So, how to close these series of blog posts?  I think maybe with a short quotation of the Apostle John:

I Jn 3:18 – Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. (NAS)

Much has been said about how wonderful Newt Gingrich is at expressing the feelings and anger and desire for work that people feel.  Words are JUST words.  Feelings can change with the state of your digestion.  In the end it is not the words that matter.  Had Moses simply talked to Pharaoh, the Jews would still be in Egyptian captivity.   Had Jesus come and preached, but never been crucified nor resurrected,  we would not even know of Him, let alone call Him Lord.

Mitt Romney may not be seem to be as eloquent as Newt Gingrich.  Mitt Romney may not seem to connect with the emotions of the electorate as well as Newt Gingrich, but Mitt Romney’s actions in the campaign, as Governor of Massachusetts, as head of the Salt Lake City Olympics, and as a private business man are what matter.

Listen to Newt Gingrich – enjoy his words, revel in them.  But remember this is about who we want to govern the nation.  If words made a good president, then the president we have right now would be the best we have ever had.  Examine the records and lives of these two men.  On the one hand we have the twice-divorce, thrice-married, philandering, deeply prevaricating life-long politician of great words.  On the other hand we have a man married to one woman for decades, of immense character, who only after a remarkable career in business came to politics as a matter of service.  Not much a decision in my book.

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That title does not really ring, but out of deference to my Mormon friends it is what it is.

The consensus seems to be that Romney did not hurt himself in last night’s debate, Gingrich did and Santorum won.  If you’re a Romney supporter, that’s an A-/ B+.

The most interesting reaction was from Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ:

It won’t be because Mr. Romney has become a better or more effective candidate. Primaries exist to help with that process, to let contenders read signals from the political landscape, to adapt, become stronger. Successful politicians absorb the signals and change up. Not Mr. Romney. If politics were evolution, the governor would still be swimming in the primordial soup.

That much was clear this week. The first signal was Mr. Gingrich’s resounding victory in South Carolina. If Mr. Romney were listening, he’d have understood that vote was as much against him as it was for Mr. Gingrich. It took but one punchy Gingrich debate performance to have voters abandoning the front-runner in droves.

South Carolina voters also clearly explained why. Exit polls showed that Mr. Romney’s two (and only) messages—that he is the best suited to turn around the economy and to defeat Barack Obama—aren’t working for the majority of voters. Mr. Gingrich beat Mr. Romney on both issues. The electorate explained that they first and foremost want a candidate willing to passionately promote conservative ideals.

Even I will confess to sometimes wanting to hear Romney want to “passionately promote conservative ideals.”  However, I also know why he doesn’t.  For one, George W. Bush’s “No New Taxes” pledge.  Any president is going to have to make some decisions that are unpopular with the base – nature of the job.  But I don’t think Romney is so concerned about angering the base.  A man of his character would be more concerned about breaking his word.   If he made such broad sweeping statements, he would feel honor bound to abide by them.  The people of very high integrity that I know operate on the principle of “under-promise and over-perform.”  That’s pretty rare in this world, but a treasure when found.

But there is another aspect to Ms. Strassel’s criticism that I find interesting.  From Dan Gilgoff @ CNN:

In a recent conference call with conservatives across the country, Mitt Romney expounded upon subjects he usually doesn’t talk much about: Jesus and eternity.

Asked on the call how his faith had shaped his success as a businessman and his political career, the presidential candidate spoke about “a conviction that life is eternal, that your family is your greatest prize, that ultimately what we accomplish in life is of little significance compared to the interests of the savior Jesus Christ and his purposes.”

“It puts everything into perspective and the perspective is that there are things more important than the here and now,” Romney continued on the Wednesday call, which was organized by the Faith and Freedom Coalition and included thousands of participants.

His answer may sound to some like boilerplate Christian thinking, but Romney was expressing core Mormon beliefs in a way he almost never does on the campaign trail.

When Romney does go “big idea,” it triggers a whole raft of Mormon talk.  “Does he really believe that or is that one of those things Mormons try and make you think they believe?”  “Do Mormons really have big ideas?”  “Are there verses in the Book of Mormon about that?”  It goes on and on and on.  In chat rooms, in local papers, in conversations across the nation these question and much worse go on throughout the nation.

USAToday put it quite well in this headline:

Many Americans uninformed, but still wary of Mormon beliefs

Suspicion of Mormonism is different than bigotry or opposition.  Suspicion of Mormonism means that everything Romney does has to be checked, rechecked, doubled checked – then checked again, because well…. No candidate, no person, can stand up to that kind of scrutiny unscathed.  Not because they are bad or mistaken, but simply because they are human.

But people need to remember it will be a different world come the general election.  The stark contracts between parties, and their respective candidates, will give Romney much more room to state broad principles.  In a primary, the debate is over shades of grey – you are looking for the candidate with just the right amount of “greyness.”  In the general election things will be quite black-and-white.

In the primary as it now stands, we have a black-and-white choice as well.  As we have chronicled here all week, we have a choice between a man of immense character and one who struggles mightily (and often loses the struggle) to maintain his character.  But even that immense gulf is a shade of grey in comparison to what comes in the general election.

There is a time and a place to speak broadly.  It is not yet that time.  It is yet another measure of character to know that time and to stay within its boundaries.

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We’d like to thank our guest for kindly sharing his words with us.

Jerry L. Walls teaches philosophy at Houston Baptist University.  His PhD is from Notre Dame.  The author of several books and many articles, his most recent book is Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2011).  His co-authored book with David Baggett, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (Oxford University Press, 2011), was recently chosen as one of the outstanding books of 2011 by Christianity Today in their annual book awards.

JOHN NEWTON, NEWT GINGRICH AND THE REAL ISSUE FOR HIS CANDIDACY

Many conservative Christians are enthusiastically supporting Newt Gingrich for President, despite the fact that his personal lifestyle for most of his life has been sharply and starkly at odds with the values they profess to cherish.  As one who cannot share this enthusiasm I want to articulate what I believe the issue is here, and what it is not. First, it is emphatically not a matter of whether God, or we, have forgiven Newt. I am in no position to judge his heart or the sincerity of his repentance or the status of his relationship with God, but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his repentance is sincere and that God has forgiven him. The issue is not forgiveness, but rather character, and forgiveness is not the same as proven character. I believe rapists, murderers, child molesters, persons who fail to report suspected molesters, slave traders, and so on can all be forgiven. I believe in John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” and I well know we all need it. But I doubt anyone would argue that a rapist, a murderer, or a child molester should be running for President.

Not all sins are the same, despite the pious insistence that they are. Yes, “sins are sins,” and all separate us from God but some cut deeper and  do far more extensive damage to persons (starting with the persons who commit them), do far more to destroy relationships and undermine trust, and consequently require much more time and serious effort to repair.

Nor is the issue an unrealistic demand for perfection. No one has a perfect past, and few, if any have a perfect present. But it is a stunning impoverishment of standards to dismiss multiple lies, adulteries, and hypocrisies as mere foibles that fall just somewhere shy of perfection. While Newt was going hard after Clinton for his moral failures and campaigning on family values, he was engaged in an ongoing adulterous affair.

So again, am I suggesting we demand perfection of our candidates? Should we make an issue of every high school and college prank, indiscretion, drunken weekend, wild party, and so on?  Of course not. But we are not talking here about adolescent behavior, nor even about isolated failures. Rather, we are talking about his long term behavior as a mature adult, while holding elected office.

The fact that Newt thinks his history of moral and ethical infidelity is for all practical purposes irrelevant to his qualifications to be President, the fact that he can wax passionate with moral indignation against those who raise these issues, represents a wildly distorted sense of moral judgment and moral proportion.  When John King raised the issue, Newt responded that giving attention to his ex-wife’s comments two days before the primary, and opening the debate with that question was “as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”  The fact that he could use such extreme language shows he is either utterly lacking in moral imagination (I would guess any decent person, off the top of their head could come up with half a dozen things more despicable), or his reaction was a carefully calculated, and altogether successful, ploy to divert this issue by taking the role of a victim of the “liberal media.”  Ironically, in this exchange, he showed himself to be the mirror image of the postmodern who rejects traditional morality, but knows exactly how to draw a huge ovation from an audience by attacking intolerance with a sense of aggrieved outrage.

King David fell into adultery and he repented and was forgiven. Notably, when confronted with his adultery, he did not turn on Nathan, and say, “Seriously, I am appalled you can be making an issue of the fact that I banged Bathsheba, given the enormous political and economic issues facing this country.” David was forgiven. But he never regained the moral credibility he previously had, and after this incident, his Kingdom began to unravel in various ways, as Nathan predicted.  Indeed, it is surely no coincidence that we see this beginning to happen one chapter after Nathan’s confrontation with David, precisely in the form of his sons mimicking his worst behavior (2 Samuel 13).  Amnon rapes his half sister Tamar, and when David ignores the matter and does nothing about it, Tamar’s brother Absalom plots Amnon’s murder and successfully carries it out.  Given David’s adultery and devious murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, he was poorly situated to confront his sons with any sort of moral credibility or hold them accountable for doing the very same sort of things he had done. The King inevitably set a moral tone for the nation, whether for good or for ill.  David eventually lost so much of his previous authority that his own son Absalom could successfully garner enough support to lead a rebellion and temporarily usurp the throne.

Again, I am not saying we should demand perfection of our leaders. If we insist on perfection or nothing, we will invariably get nothing. That is not my point. But we do need a President who can lead with moral authority and address moral issues with the sort of credibility that comes from a history of integrity. Newt has forfeited the ability to do that by his multiple betrayals and deceptions, and therefore the right to ask us to support him with election to our highest public office.

I believe Evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics are making a huge long term error in supporting Newt despite these obvious liabilities. For many, the bottom line is that Obama must be defeated. They relish the image of Newt waxing him in a debate. Well, their error is the mirror image of those who elected Obama in the first place. A man who had very thin credentials and experience was elected four years ago, largely on the strength of soaring rhetoric and wildly unrealistic promises. Now those who want to see him defeated are willing to support a guy who is lacking in moral substance but who is a great debater as well as a savvy politician.  The question is whether Christians should be willing to accept such a tradeoff.  Too many times Christians have been far too uncritical in supporting candidates who are willing to mouth support for their views or do an interview with Dobson or talk about God in a Baptist church, regardless of whether these candidates have shown by their actions any deep commitment to their values and convictions.

Many observers already believe conservative Christians are opportunistic hypocrites. Their support of Newt only confirms this impression and deprives them of any credibility if they ever want to make an issue of “traditional moral values” again.  As an obvious example, opponents of gay marriage, a flashpoint conservative issue, will find themselves in a very awkward position if they expect Newt to address this issue with credibility.   Indeed, supporters of gay marriage will understandably, and perhaps rightly, scorn conservative Christians who support Newt, and then turn around and try to make the case that homosexuality is a threat to the sanctity of marriage and traditional “family values.”  Let me be clear.  I believe homosexual behavior is condemned as sinful by scripture, and is morally wrong.  But the Bible has far more to say about adultery than it does about homosexuality.  Moreover, adultery is often used in the Bible as an illustration of idolatry, for it is a profound form of betrayal that deeply images our infidelity to God.   For adultery is by definition a lie as well as a treacherous form of personal betrayal.

Christians who can wink at Newt’s multiple adulteries, exacerbated by the specter of his hypocritical attack on Clinton while doing so, should not be surprised when supporters of gay marriage see them as mimicking the same sort of laughable hypocrisy if they try to make a moral issue of gay marriage.   They will understandably appear utterly arbitrary and unprincipled to their critics.

I am aware that for many conservative Christians, the foremost issue in this election is the economy, and the staggering national debt, an issue of great moral significance in its own right.  I could not agree more that the national debt is an issue of urgent importance and that the economy desperately needs better management.  But as urgent as these issues are, I do not believe they warrant the sort of compromise I believe conservative Christians are making in their support of Gingrich.

The bottom line for me: if Newt is the nominee, I will not be voting in November.

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There is a trend that emerged in South Carolina that I find really troubling.  The trend is best illustrated by Rush Limbaugh.  Limbaugh talks a lot about being conservative first and Republican second.  He also spends a lot of time trying to determine who is a “real conservative” and who is not.

This is religious language, in different cloth.  Think about it.  As people of faith we start first with what is good – and then use politics as one of the tools to accomplish what is good.  In other words, faith first – political affiliation second.  Thus no self-respecting candidate that wants religious folks votes will take money from abortion providers – it’s legal, but not good.  Like wise, taking money from gambling interests is probably not a very smart idea for someone that wants the religious vote.

But that also means we are conservative because of faith, but conservatism is not our defining label or litmus test.  Some might say I have just fueled the fire of anti-Mormon sentiment, but nothing is further from the truth.   When two faith expressions lead to the same political positions, joint action is called for because once faith has determined the position, such unity is the most effective tool of politics.  But we can never confuse the political position with the faith that brought us to it – they are different things.

The candidate that understands this is the candidate that best represents faith in America.  Some candidates want to enhance the confusion between the political position and the faith because such creates a constructive interference pattern that can “push them over the top,” if you will.  But when you blur the line between faith and the resultant political position, faith becomes less important than it should be, and the political position more.  Faith and its religious expressions run the risk of becoming mere political tools instead of politics being their tool.

Newt Gingrich has clearly being conflating faith and politics.  This is evidenced in statements like this by Rush Limbaugh:

Why did those questions tee Newt up, and why did Newt know what to do with them?  Very simple. I’ve been doing this show for 23 years, and one of my themes from the beginning, from 1988, has been that the American conservative middle class are the ones playing by the rules.  They are the ones that obey the law to the best of their ability.  They raise their kids.  They try to shield their kids from cultural rot and depravity. They try to keep them off drugs. They try to get them into college. They follow as best they can all the rules and they’re laughed at and made fun of and they are impugned everywhere they look.  They go to the movies, they’re mocked and made fun of.  They turn on the radio, listen to music, they’re laughed at, mocked, and made fun of.  They turn on television, watch an average television show, they are laughed at, mocked and made fun of.  They open the newspaper, same thing.  They’ve had it. They’ve been dealing with this for over 20 years, and nobody’s fought back for ‘em. Not one person ever has fought back for ‘em.

All that he says is quite true, but much of what he notes are religious issues, not governmental ones.  How do we shield “kids from cultural rot and depravity?”  We give them faith to withstand it.  And what about being mocked?  Well, consider the words of Christ:

Matt 5:10 -  “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (NAS)

Our faith give us the tools to handle those things which our government cannot or is not.  When we look to government to solves things that religion should solve then we are building a government much bigger than it should be, and in the process weakening our faith.

Then there is the question of HOW we do fight back when we should.  Consider this bit of wisdom:

Prov 27:22 – Though you pound a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his folly will not depart from him. (NAS)

Newt Gingrich’s protestations about how despicable the media is may have felt good, but did it change the minds of those that agree with the media?  Or this other bit of wisdom:

Prov 18:2 – A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind. (NAS)

By playing with the forces Limbaugh identifies, Gingrich calls us to wallow in our own foolishness, rather than to wisely and smartly deal with the situation at hand.

Part of what I look for in a political leader is one that will call me to my higher nature, not my baser one.  One that expects me to behave wisely, not encourages me to behave foolishly.  I look for a political leader that will not seek to conflate my religious life with my political one for the sake of his political position, but will allow my religious life to flourish, informing and shaping me into a better person.

Between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – Mitt Romney is clearly that kind of political leader.

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In this continuation of our inquiry into which candidate is the one whom people of faith should support, I’ll ask our readers to leave aside any judgments about Newt Gingrich’s admitted past moral mistakes, including his serial infidelities and the related divorces.

No, I want you to think, not about those mistakes, but about how easily he lies about them, how glibly he obfuscates the moral clarity surrounding them.

Not Like Clinton, or Just Like Him?  You Decide

First, the former Speaker of the House was asked in detail about whether he was hypocrital to pursue Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal when Gingrich himself was engaged in a long-term adulterous affair (with the woman who is now his wife).  Gingrich has an interesting way of distinguishing between his own sleazy infidelity and Bill Clinton’s lies about the same kind of behavior:

Gingrich, when pressed that it was hypocrisy, responded that “people listen to your question but don’t listen to the facts.”

When pressed about having an affair himself, he responded many people approached him at the time and explained lots of people had affairs. But he always responded that it was lying under oath that made it an issue.

“I’ve been through two divorces,” Gingrich said. “I’ve been deposed both times under oath. Both times I told the truth in the deposition because I know that it is, I’m not a lawyer and I know it’s a felony, Bill Clinton is a lawyer. He’s a Yale Law School graduate. He knew it was perjury. He knew it was a felony.”

In other words, “I may have been a sleazeball and a hypocrite, but I didn’t lie about it — at least not under oath!” There.  Do you feel better about this man now?

Like so much of what Gingrich says, this response is — how to put this delicately? — an insult to the public’s intelligence. As one of the commenters to the post says, “Gingrich wasn’t the same as Bubba because nobody knew publicly he was having ANOTHER affair, cheating on ANOTHER sick wife…if they had, none of [the Clinton impeachment drama] would’ve proceeded, perjury or no perjury.”

Yet another Politico commenter raises an ominous point: “Well, there’s an opening: Let’s see Newt’s depositions in the 2 divorces to check out whether he told the truth.” As long as he is a candidate, Newt’s past will be the gift that keeps on giving, as closet after closet is opened to reveal yet another skeleton.

And Another Example

Remember the great signature moment of the second South Carolina presidential debate, when Newt Gingrich rose up in righteous indignation and thundered at the elite news media, which had no interest in the truth but simply wanted to to get him, and any other Republican candidate they could?  Remember how he stated, with fiery certainty and crystalline clarity, that his campaign had offered several witnesses to ABC news who would counter his ex-wife Marianne’s story, but ABC was not interested in speaking to those people?

As Rick Perry might say, Oops.  No such thing happened.  Here’s the video:

Well, so much for fiery certainty and crystalline clarity. I must admit, I am impressed, in a morbid way, by the ease with which Newt Gingrich lies so convincingly.  Watching him do that is like observing the behavior of a rare and exotic species of animal. It is astonishing, frightening, and disturbing all at once.  Is this the kind of man we want as President of the United States?  R. Emmett Tyrell doesn’t think so, and reminds us that we have been down this road before.

Conservatives should not be surprised by the scandals that lie ahead, if they stick with him. Those of us, who raised the question of character in 1992, were confronted by an indignant Bill Clinton, treating the topic as a low blow. To listen to him, character was the “c” word of American politics. It was reprehensible to mention it. By now we know. Character matters. Paul, Santorum, and Romney have it. Newt has Clinton’s character.

It sure looks that way. Please, please, voters of Florida — and voters everywhere who care about electing decent men and women to positions of trust and authority — keep that in mind.
 

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I am not really kidding here, per Buzzfeed:

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