Article VI Blog

Mark Steyn ranted about Elizabeth Warren last week:

Hallelujah! In the old racist America, we had quadroons and octoroons. But in the new post-racial America, we have – hang on, let me get out my calculator – duoettrigintaroons! Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother’s wedding license application. And now it’s here! You can read all about it in Elizabeth Warren’s memoir of her struggles to come to terms with her racial identity, Dreams From My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother.

Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran’ma as Cherokee, but let’s cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind – “people who are like I am,” 31/32nds white – and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America’s melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.

Note the shot at Obama’s composite girlfriend in there too.  Steyn’s point? – for the left labels seem to matter.  Want more evidence? – Consider an AP story that we found at 3 sites – Huffington Post – FOXNews Latino and NEWSONE for Black America.  Quoting the HuffPo version:

How unthinkable it was, not so long ago, that a presidential election would pit a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian.

Yet here it is: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States.

How much progress has America made against bigotry? By November, we should have some idea.

I don’t think people understand that the story itself is conclusive, we don’t need to wait for the election?  Bigotry is evident in people even being concerned about such things.  It is vitally important to note that this story is carried in places designed to reach out to minorities or that is decidedly left-wing.

This story comes in the wake of Obama opening his campaign.  It represents an effort certainly on the part of the MSM, and one wonders who in Camp Obama is whispering in their ears, to cast the narrative of this general election campaign in terms of these labels.  I cannot think of anything uglier.

But then, what does team Obama have left?  Elections are supposed to be about who can best do the job of POTUS.  Obama has 3.5 years of demonstrated inability to do that job well.  And so it seems evident that he and his willing allies in the press are going to make this election about labels – maybe even tribes.  Is it any wonder Obama wants out of Afghanistan as fast as politically expedient?  Fighting the tribalism that scars that land and breeds terrorism against this nation is counter to his chosen electoral strategy.

Proponents of Obamathink will be quick to point out that our nation has always celebrated its diversity.  Yes it has, but there is a big difference between inviting your non-German neighbors to your Oktoberfest and pitting yourself against your non-German neighbors in a contest – electoral or otherwise.  The former says “welcome” while the later lets lose forces that have caused evil and harm throughout human history.

There is no such thing as moderation with some evil forces.  There is a reason Mormons and many people of more traditional Christian faith prohibit alcohol.  It is true, alcohol in moderation does no harm. but moderation with alcohol is extraordinarily difficult, and for many impossible.  Such is true with the kind of identity group/tribal forces that are being mucked about with here.  When such groups are set in competition instead of joined in common cause, escalation of that competition becomes inevitable.

This is at its core unAmerican.  E Pluribus Unum:

E pluribus unum (pronounced /ˈiː ˈplʊərɨbəs ˈuːnəm/; Latin [ˈeː ˈpluːrɪbʊs ˈuːnũː]) — Latin for “Out of many, one“^[1][2] (alternatively translated as “One from many“)^[3] — is a phrase on the Seal of the United States, along with Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum, and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782.^[2] Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H.J. Resolution 396), adopting “In God We Trust” as the official motto.^[4]

The motto was suggested in 1776 by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere to the committee responsible for developing the seal. At the time of the American Revolution, the exact phrase appeared prominently on the title page of a popular periodical, The Gentleman’s Magazine,^[5][6][7] which collected articles from many sources into one “magazine”. The phrase is similar to a Latin translation of a variation of Heraclitus‘s 10th fragment, “The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.” A variant of the phrase was used in Moretum, a poem attributed to Virgil but with the actual author unknown. In the poem text, color est e pluribus unus describes the blending of colors into one. St Augustine used a variant of the phrase, ex pluribus unum, in his Confessions.

The first coins with E pluribus unum were dated 1786 and struck under the authorization of the State of New Jersey by Thomas Goadsby and Albion Cox in Rahway, New Jersey.^[8] The motto had no New Jersey linkage but was likely an available die that had been created by Walter Mould the previous year for a failed federal coinage proposal.^[9] Walter Mould was also authorized by New Jersey to strike state coppers with this motto and did so beginning in early 1787 in Morristown, New Jersey. Lt. Col. Seth Reed of Uxbridge, Massachusetts was said to have been instrumental in having E Pluribus Unum placed on US coins^[10] Seth Read and his brother Joseph Read had been authorized by the Massachusetts General Court to mint coppers in 1786. In March 1786, Seth Reed petitioned the Massachusetts General Court, both the House and the Senate, for a franchise to mint coins, both copper and silver, and “it was concurred”.^[11][12] E pluribus unum, written in capital letters, is included on most U.S. currency, with some exceptions to the letter spacing (such as the reverse of the dime). It is also embossed on the edge of the dollar coin. (See United States coinage and paper bills in circulation).

While Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum appear on the reverse side of the great seal, E pluribus unum appears on the obverse side of the seal (Designed by Charles Thomson), the image of which is used as the national emblem of the United States, and appears on official documents such as passports. It also appears on the seal of the President and in the seals of the Vice President of the United States, of the United States Congress, of the United States House of Representatives, of the United States Senate and on the seal of the United States Supreme Court.

Originally suggesting that out of many colonies or states emerge a single nation, in recent years it has come to suggest that out of many peoples, races, religions and ancestries has emerged a single people and nation—illustrating the concept of the melting pot.^[13]

The concept of being tied together by a single cause, in this case the cause of building the greatest nation in human history has been within the fabric of our nation from its very beginning.  And make no mistake, one of the most important factors that divided colonies-come-states in the early days was religion and country of origin.  In large part the colonies had established, official religions often reflecting the established religion of the nation of origin of the colonists.  The constitution’s rules against establishment and religious tests was a part of the compromise that enabled the forging of a single nation out of that diversity.  It is really not just “in recent years” that the Latin phrase as gained the melting pot connotation.

Obama has called into question many of the founding ideals of our nation – capitalism and the personal freedom that travels with it being the most prominent of them.  But in this emerging meme we see if not he, his supporters in the media attacking the most fundamental of those ideals – that we are a single people rising above our petty differences to be a great nation.

It has been said the future of our nation is at stake in this election – that’s true in every election to one extent or another.  But it seems that in this election our very concept of who we are as a nation is at stake.  The nation will choose this November, but it should choose with its eyes completely open and all the cards on the table.

If you read this blog, you are more politically attuned and better educated than most.  It is imperative that you help your friends and neighbors see what is truly at stake in this election.  Take the time and make the effort between now and November.  We cannot afford to have the nation make this decision based on sound bites and ads – only education and discussion will do.

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Amongst the left there is the notion that those of us of religious conviction are somehow less rational and reasonable than those whose mind is uncluttered by such unsubstantiated nonsense as resurrection and multiplying loaves and fishes.  Two articles appeared in the last 24 hours that attempt to “prove” that presumption.

One, from CNN, is basically a straightforward slap in the face to those of faith:

When was the last time you sat down and questioned your decision to believe in God?

According to a new study, that simple act could decrease your religious conviction – even if you’re a devout believer.

In the study, published Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Canada’s University of British Columbia used subtle stimuli to encourage analytical thinking. Results from the study found that analytical thinking could decrease religious belief.

“Religious belief is intuitive – and analytical thinking can undermine intuitive thinking,” said Ara Norenzayan, co-author of the study. “So when people are encouraged to think analytically, it can block intuitive thinking.”

Now, let me put on my science hat (Let’s remember I have a graduate degree in chemistry – I actually do have a science hat.)  There is an a priori assumption in the statement, “Religious belief is intuitive….” Such assumptions are guaranteed to skew the results one obtains from one’s proposed experiment.  Where is the data that religious belief is intuitive?  There are literally thousands of years of deep rational thought and apologetics lying behind Christian belief.  More mystical religions, and some highly mystical expressions of Christianity may be a bit more intuitive, but to state religious belief is intuitive is to more or less assume the thing you are trying to prove.

When you read the methodology this study uses, one realizes how utterly silly it is:

Some of the more than 650 Canadian and American participants in the study were shown images of artwork that encouraged analytic thinking, while another group was shown images that were not intended to produce such thinking.

Images promote analytical thinking?  Wha?  I know when I am doing analysis it generally involves sentences and equations, not image processing.

Far more interesting what this piece from the Atlantic contends:

Of late, researchers in political science and psychology have been talking a great deal about an idea called “motivated reasoning” — thought and argument that seems rational and dispassionate, but really isn’t anything of the sort. Motivated reasoning is becoming a buzzword, but few have sketched out why it is such a powerful idea: Because it fits so nicely with everything we now know about evolution and the human brain.

[...]

That’s where politics comes in. Our political, ideological, partisan, and religious convictions — because they are deeply held enough to comprise core parts of our personal identities, and because they link us to the groups that bulwark those identities and give us meaning — can be key drivers of motivated reasoning. They can make us virtually impervious to facts, logic, and reason. Anyone in a politically split family who has tried to argue with her mother, or father, about politics or religion — and eventually decided “that’s a subject we just don’t talk about” — knows what this is like, and how painful it can be.

There is a deep fallacy in extrapolating from a deeply personal phenomena like a family fight to the political stage of our nation.  They attempt to deal with it later in the piece, but I do not want to get bogged down in the science and methodology of this piece.  Rather, let us turn to the credit at the end of the piece:

This article is an adapted excerpt from The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality (Wiley).

Interesting is it not?  They make a long and extensive argument that apparently rational thinking is not nearly as rational as we might imagine, but at the end you find out that such is true only on one side of the political spectrum.

So Why Does This Matter?

Folks, what you are seeing here is agenda “science,” no different that the global warming scientists in Britain that cooked the books.  The goal here is not, like the climate change fakery was, wealth transfer, but the elimination of religion from the public square totally.  This could, if allowed, get quite Orwellian.

If “proven” that religion stands on the way of reason and rational thought, would it be that hard to require a demonstration of purging our minds of religion as a qualification to vote?  When the general public believed African-Americans to be of inherently limited intelligence, they had no access to the franchise.  My assertion is not nearly the stretch it might seem.

What is most disconcerting about this is that philosophically science is born of religion.  Science came from an effort to understand the Creator by understanding His creation, as one understands the author by reading his books and the artist by viewing his paintings.  Unshackled from religion, science ceases to be science in any meaningful sense – it becomes no different than any other field of academic endeavor.  Rather than having discovery as its aim, it exists to prove the presumptions of the scientist.  Rather than be objective, science unshackled from religion is as subjective as literature or art.

The answer here is not some form of counter-science.  The answer is instead twofold.  One is to rely on the constitution and the traditional understanding of same.  We must insist on it and we must spend our money in defense of it.  Secondly, we must endeavor to be the kind of people that only people of faith can be.  The winsomeness that faith produces in us is the best possible evidence for the necessity of faith.

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Doubtless John will have something to add in a few hours, and I know I have more to say. For now I’ll just note this, from McKay Coppins of Buzzfeed, who points out that although Romney beat Santorum in Illinois by double digits (47% to 35%), among Evangelical Christians the story was quite different:

According to CNN’s exit polls, Santorum beat Romney handily in that group, 46 percent to 39 percent. And the bad news didn’t stop there: Among the quarter of the Republican electorate who said a candidate’s religious beliefs matter “a great deal,” Santorum crushed Romney by 20 points — 51 percent to 31.

This race is about to pivot away from the GOP primaries to the general election, and we won’t be talking about Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich much longer. I wonder: will we be talking about Evangelicals much longer?

Some Evangelical thinkers, like Regent University president Carlos Campo, have suggested that Romney needs to explain his religious views to their group in order to win their support. But why? Romney seems to have adopted the attitude that there’s nothing he can say to change the minds of those hard-core Evangelicals who oppose or distrust him because of his faith. (He tried that in 2008; remember?) So it seems Romney has decided to win the nomination in spite of that demographic, rather than with its support; and he’s well on his way to doing just that.

If Romney succeeds as a candidate, how much influence can Evangelicals who were cool to him expect to have in a Romney campaign, or even a Romney presidency? Probably more than they deserve, if the Governor’s past behavior is any guide, and if his Evangelical supporters like Mark Demoss want to be involved. Still, John has been warning for years now that by playing identity politics his fellow Evangelicals will eventually marginalize themselves politically. They may well be in the final stages of doing just that.

John Joins (the next morning)

Lowell has put his finger on the single biggest takeaway from yesterday’s huge Romney win.  Aaron Blake tweeted:

Romney has won all 10 primaries where evangelicals make up less than half vote. And he’s lost all 7 where they have been >50%

Romney appears in Illinois to have overcome all his other demographic issues. And while some will say that it’s not over, realism has to enter the picture some where.  Team Obama knows who they will be facing and the press is all too willing to help them.  Yesterday, a video from sources unknown as launched that was artful if inherently dishonest in its construction.  Taking single words from presentations and piecing together sentences is cute, but talk about putting words into someone’s mouth.  Something like that requires enormous time – which means enormous resources.  The rest of the Republican field does not have those kinds of resources.  Once again, Team Obama knows who they will be facing.

It is most unbecoming for the other Republican candidates to whine and threaten.  Gingrich has declared his intention to “stop Romney.“  It is even worse when Santorum borrows his meme.  And now the Evangelical press is “threatening?!”  David Brody:

As for Romney, the guy and his campaign are a machine. But let me remind everyone about something very important. Romney has NOT courted evangelicals and the Tea Party yet he’s winning the Primary battle. It hasn’t hurt him because both groups are split among different candidates but in the General Election the Romney campaign should NOT take evangelicals for granted. Sure many of those evangelical supporters of Santorum and Gingrich will hold their nose and vote for Romney but they probably won’t bring an evangelical friend and won’t organize for him either. Romney will need evangelical and Tea Party fervor in the fall campaign if he makes it there but there’s NO guarantee that they will be there for him in droves. That’s what happens when you virtually ignore them. He’s not paying attention to them now and in the fall they may return the favor. The General Election will probably be a close one and won at the margins. A standard evangelical turnout won’t do the trick for Romney. He needs them to turn out in spades.

Precisely where is the Christian charity in those threats?  But more importantly, where is the political wisdom?  When the train is leaving the station and you stand there and yell, “Wait for me,” you’re going to be left behind.  If you run to catch the train, you have a chance.  Romney tried last time to meet Evangelicals and we all know how that came out.

Santorum has been his own worst enemy.  But worse, his lack of advance work has gotten him in places he really should not go.  Last Sunday night he appeared at a church in Louisiana:

Rick Santorum attended a revival-type church service on Sunday night in Louisiana, where the Rev. Dennis Terry, pastor of the Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, offered some fire and brimstone in a videotaped sermon that on Monday was going viral because of his fiery comments.

“I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation,” Mr. Terry said.

“There’s only one God, and his name is Jesus,” he continued. “I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me. If you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things I have one thing to say — get out!”

Thunderous applause interrupted him before he went on.

Santorum has tired to dig himself out of this mess, but too little too late – if the Brody File is all he has to rebut an assertion that people of differing belief need to leave the country, then he has officially entered the echo chamber.  Santorum is tagged with this sentiment, even if he does not share it.

It is time for the party to start putting itself back together, not continue with threats and divisiveness.  First Things carried a piece last month that points out that despite theological differences, Mormonism is a Christ based religion.  If people would only take the time to understand.  But the most important words I have read in the last week came from Elizabeth Scalia:

The advent of Sarah Palin, however, seemed to usher in a genuine madness that affected every inch of the political spectrum, and it brought about the blog’s second “crisis of civility.” If I found something praiseworthy in Palin, my “liberal” readers sneered and called me names. If I mildly critiqued the woman, her defensive fans became stunningly abusive. Ironically, as I tried to be both honest and fair-minded about Palin, I discovered neither left nor right could allow an assumption of good faith on my part. Perhaps projecting their passions on to me, both sides assumed that whatever I was writing about Palin was meant as a political manipulation against them. If I tried to offer balanced criticism, Palin fans accused me of “hating her from the first.” When I—because I detest bullies—defended her from an unconscionable assault by supposedly “liberal” people and the press after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, I was derided, even by progressives whom I considered real friends, as being a “secret Palin lover.”

A good-faith assumption that I simply meant the exact words I wrote, in either case, and nothing more, was not permitted. It was deemed not possible.

Ms. Noonan’s dictum that people could disagree and still be “decent people” began to take a real beating, and things have only gotten worse, since then. Lately, I admit, my willingness to assume good-faith of others, particularly of the administration, has collapsed, mostly thanks to the HHS mandate and the shameful willingness of some to mischaracterize the church’s opposition as being about something other than a genuine concern for first-amendment freedoms, and to play along with the utterly false, media-contrived, so-called “war on women” narrative.

I don’t like feeling like this; I don’t like surrendering that “good faith” instinct—and I most certainly do not like being in discord with fellow Catholics, many of whom I have long liked and respected, over a matter of policy.

[...]

If good-faith assumptions cannot be well-founded, what does “civility” serve beyond the preservation of polite fiction?

From Evangelicals, Mitt Romney has never received the “good faith assumption.”  It is time for that to end.  One of the most important things that separates Christians is that we are civil.  As Scalia makes clear, the forthcoming opponent has taken grave steps to rob us of that civility, if we join him in that lack, he wins.

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The Deep South Results

There’s not much to say about the outcome in the two Deep South states tonight. In summary:

• Romney was not supposed to win either of them. He even called them “a bit of an away game.”
• Some pre-election polls showed him leading in Mississippi, and neck-and-neck with Santorum and Gingrich in Alabama.
• He ended up doing just as expected all along, and lost both states.
• He’s still doing fine with delegates. In Mississippi, Santorum got 13 delegates; Romney got 12.
• At this writing, the voting in Hawaii is still under way.

Meanwhile, certain predictable narratives continue:

• Romney can’t “close the deal.”  (Because he lost states he was never expected to win?  Really?)
• For some reason that no one seems to be able to put their finger on, he doesn’t do well in the South.

The elephant in the room

On that last point, I have to share yesterday’s experience. I was listening to the Bill Bennett radio show.  Dr. Bennett was interviewing Byron York, a well-known and respected conservative pundit, about the primary elections.  The two of them eventually got to a fascinating question:  Why does Santorum, a Catholic, win the Evangelical vote, but lose Catholics to Romney?  The two wise men went over a wide range of possible reasons.  Not once did they mention Evangelical bias against Romney over his Mormonism.

That seems so strange to me, almost like a willful decision to ignore established facts, or the Vanderbilt University Study to which we have linked in the past:

• 20 percent of Republicans’ nationally would not vote for a “qualified Mormon” for president.
• 31 percent of Southern evangelical Republicans would not vote for a “qualified Mormon” for president.

“If you ask similar questions of Republicans about voting for qualified women or African Americans, the share drops to less than one percent. So there is more bias against Mormons than many other groups,” said Geer, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt.

I don’t bring this up to whine or complain about the bias, but only to point to it as a fact of political life. It’s just there. Why don’t the conservative punditocracy want to talk about it?

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Posting may be light in the early going today, as John and I will be on airplanes in the morning and John Mark will be molding young collegiate minds at the same time.  So here are some quick thoughts about yesterday’s voting.

1. Mitt Romney won 6 of 10 contests, including Ohio, which was his “must win” state in the MSM narrative.  Romney went from polling 10 digits behind Rick Santorum to winning narrowly.  This is being described by the Governor’s detractors not as a sign of strength and resiliency, but that he is “struggling.”  I just heard Fox News say Romney “woke up today not as a clear front-runner.”   Wow.

2. Tennessee was the Southern state most pundits thought Romney might win.  Not so.  The exit polls showed some interesting things:

a. According to CNN, in Tennessee, among voters who thought integrity was the most important factor, Santorum got 42%, Romney 15%.

b. Among those for whom the candidate sharing their religious values was most important, Santorum had 45%, Romney 23%.

3. In what may be the most fascinating statistic of the evening, Santorum beat Romney everywhere among Evangelicals, while Romney beat Santorum everywhere among Catholics.

Nothing surprising there.  The numbers were the same for voters who thought the most important factor was whether the candidate was “a true conservative.”  In the coming days we’ll be discussing what “true conservative” really means among Evangelical voters.  This will be significant as a bunch of Southern state primaries approaches.  Remember, polls show that among Southern Republican Evangelicals, 31% would not vote for “a qualified Mormon.”

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Thanks to our regular reader James of Dayton, Ohio, for bringing to our attention this offbeat but, I think, funny view of the Mormon issue by GQ’s Walter Kirn.  It’s not our usual fare here, but we hope you’ll consider it kind of like a Saturday Night Live-type interpretation of recent events.

Warning: There’s something in Kirn’s piece that is potentially offensive to just about everyone on every side of The Question. Be sure to put on your sense of humor before reading it. An excerpt:

The literal tarring and feathering of Mormons back when tar and feathers were closer to hand—before the job could be done using an iPhone—was often provoked by the church’s early progressivism. Joseph Smith and his followers’ opposition to slavery as well as their fondness for proto-communist living didn’t sit well with nineteenth-century rednecks from states such as Missouri and Illinois. After being driven west to Utah, threatened with invasion by the U.S. Army, and forced to renounce its experiment with polygamy, the church gave up its nonconformist ways, its bearded prophets took up razors, and Mormonism eventually emerged as an Eisenhower-era travesty of Wheaties-eating Caucasian conservatism. It’s hard to keep pace with white de-evolution, though, and now, in the person of Brother Mitt, the insufficiently Christian, Harvard-educated, French-speaking architect of America’s first socialistic public health care system, the sect’s most conspicuous adherent is, to many of his fellow Republicans, an egghead radical, a liberal mole.

Happy Super Tuesday!

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