Article VI Blog

The Wall Street Journal ran a powerful editorial this morning.  It concludes this way:

If the scandal is showing anything, it is that the White House has a bizarre notion of accountability in the federal government. President Obama’s former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC recently that his guy was off the hook on the IRS scandal because “part of being President is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast.”

In other words, the bigger the federal government grows, the less the President is responsible for it. Mr. Axelrod’s remarkable admission, and the liberal media defenses of Mr. Obama’s lack of responsibility, prove the tea party’s point that an ever larger government has become all but impossible to govern. They also show once again that liberals are good at promising the blessings of government largesse but they leave its messes for others to clean up.

***

Alexander Hamilton and America’s Founders designed the unitary executive for the purpose of political accountability. It is one of the Constitution’s main virtues. Unlike grunts in Cincinnati, Presidents must face the voters. That accountability was designed to extend not only to the President’s inner circle but over the entire branch of government whose leaders he chooses and whose policies bear his signature.

If the President isn’t accountable, then we really have the tea party nightmare of the runaway administrative state accountable to no one. If Mr. Obama and his aides are to be taken at their word, that is exactly what we have.

I could not help but reflect when I read those words that the scandals are evidence of the need for ultimate accountability.  Yes, the checks and balances of the constitution are a form of accountability, as is the voting booth.  But in the end, and the founders knew this, men are accountable to themselves and to God.  Without the internal ethical and moral compass that good people have, things just go awry.  From pilfering produce in the grocery store to the kind of government scandals we are witnessing to the horrid happenings in London yesterday, good religion is the only force that can keep such things in a reasonable state of check.  Governmental forms of accountability can intercede after the fact, but only a person’s sense of accountability to a just and reasonable God can keep them from acting to begin with.

As I reflect on the perversity that was the last election campaign, where in some circles a man was depicted as inhuman and uncaring BECAUSE of his faith in God – where is some circles theology was confused with character, I shudder.  The fact that the current president was believed by sufficient numbers to the ethically and morally superior candidate to be elected points to a nation that is horribly confused about morality and ethics and one that is looking to its government for all the wrong things.

The relative lack of outrage at unfolding scandals of this administration are also reason for concern.  The scandals of the Clinton administration showed a lack of character, but not necessarily a problem of governance.  One must go back to the Watergate scandals of Nixon to see this kind of abuse of governmental authority.  But those scandals created a sense of moral outrage in the press and the people.  These scandals, at least for the moment, have more of an air of “business as usual” than of the horrific violation of trust that they are.  This speaks to not just an administration that does not feel itself under ultimate accountability, but also a nation that does not.

Our nation has a way of correcting itself – that is what such ultimate accountability can do.  I find myself wondering if a sufficient amount of such accountability still exists within the nation for that self-correction to kick in.  Fortunately,  my faith in placed in higher places.

UPDATE

(A few minutes later) Things are worse than I expected.  Check out this from our friend David French:

Earlier this week, in a feeble attempt at humor on Facebook, I posted: “If you haven’t been audited by the IRS during the Obama administration, can you even call yourself a conservative?”  Given the scale of the abuses, I should probably just shorten it and say, “Only RINOs don’t get audited.” My wife and I got audited in 2011, with the IRS examining every inch of our adoption the previous year. The process was painful, but we got through it, and our refund may have been adjusted by a few dollars (the amount of the adjustment was so small, I don’t actually remember). In other words, the audit was a gigantic waste of time — for the IRS and for our family. A Facebook commenter, however, pointed me to a report that made me rethink the experience.

As we get word that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood, check out this statistic: In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent.

David discusses the personal turmoil such wrought in his and his wife’s life with their adoption,  and I do not wish to be dismissive of that personal hardship.  But there is something much deeper here.  This level of discouragement of adoption means the government thinks of children as property – more, government property.  Talk about a broken moral and ethical compass!

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, character, Culture Wars, Social/Religious Trends | Comment on this post » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

A little over a week ago, Buzzfeed ran a piece on “Christian” bands.  Set me to thinking about the whole idea of Christian music as a genre, and Christian bookstores, and Christian products, etc.  I wonder if people realize that such things are part of constructing a Christian ghetto?  Of course most people that do such things think they are doing them in a counter cultural fashion, but what are they doing to move counter culture to culture?  Worse yet, many people cynically identify themselves with the counter culture just to take advantage of it in marketing and sales.

If we want to be the mainstream, we need to act like the mainstream.

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Make no mistake – the Scandalrama that has erupted in DC represents new fronts in the Culture War.  Two fronts to be exact.

Corporate Culture

The breadth and scope pf the scandals indicate that this is not a few individuals going rogue.  Think of the number of agencies that we have heard about in the last two weeks that have been involved in corrupt, or at least unethical practices.  IRS leads the pack, but the DOJ, State, EPA, HHS and many others have come up with one problem or another.  THAT is a cultural problem within the government.

There is an important lesson that can be learned from this – Culture matters more than issues.  This is why litmus tests don’t work.  You see, I have no doubt that Obama knew little of all this garbage going in.  That does not make him any  less culpable, I just think it accentuates his bad management and makes his sins ones of omission, not commission.  I think it is pretty easy to form an image of the president has having hired all his cronies, let them go, and then going off to play golf, assuming the dimbulbs he hired had things well in hand.  I have no doubt everyone he hired was a card-carrying, ticket-punching liberal activist that hit the issue list just right.  But they clearly did not know beans about how to run a government.  (Politics and a campaign they knew how to do in spades, but not governance.)

Consider the latest response to come out of the White House:

Struggling to find his footing after one of the most turbulent weeks in office, President Obama’s aides have ordered the White House staff to spend no more than 10 percent of their time on controversies, Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear report. Democratic strategists are now working on a plan to intensify the administration’s focus on revamping immigration laws, reaching a budget deal and implementing the new health care legislation.

That is not leadership, that is accounting (10% of their time indeed!) and optics.  That approach is denial of the problem, not an effort to change the culture within the executive branch of the government.

As those of us of faith approach the culture war it is important that we see this clearly.  The culture war is not primarily about abortion and same sex marriage, it’s about a culture where such things do not rise to the level of being issues, just as the corrupt practices of the Obama administration should never have been issues to begin with.  That means we of faith need to learn how to lead the nation, not just complain about its wrong turns.  Which leads me to the second front…

Character Culture

One of the questions that has been niggling in the back of my mind for the last week has been, “Where are the careerists?”  The government is full of employees for whom this is a career, not a political appointment.  Think of those that testified about Benghazi, they were pros, not appointees.  Where are such people in the IRS?

Now, I am guessing based on yesterday’s testimony, that there were some structural hide-and-seek going on.  Miller yesterday tried to hide behind a claim that these applications were grouped for “efficiency.”  I have little doubt that was the internal claim of the agency.  I would suspect that the unit that got these grouped claims was staffed almost entirely by appointees, not career types, and thus they were able to ply their intimidation trade without much scrutiny or counter force.  But even such structural steps would be extraordinary and should have drawn some outcry from the career types.

Why did that not happen?  Well, for one, I have little doubt that the federal employee unions were pretty active.  But more importantly, I think it is because those career types did not have sufficiently developed character to see this for the problem that it was and then to stand and take the risks involved in crying out.  I think a few may yet appear now that they can count on Congressional cover, but someone should have come forward a long time ago as far as I am concerned.  (Of course what we do not yet know is whether someone DID go forward to, say, the White House where their complaints were greeted with complacency.  Yet another sin of omission.)

This is why the “religious test” that was so clearly and unambiguously applied to these applications is so stunningly awful.  You see, if religion can be relegated into some box that reads “only for Sunday morning worship” then people of the character that would have come forward won’t exist at all, anywhere.  Such ethics and courage do not grow in the wild; they must be cultivated.  Religion is one of the few forces in our nation that does such cultivation – at least it should.

The primary front on the culture war is the one where we continue to cultivate and fight for our right to do such cultivation.  If we do that then abortion and same sex marriage will be forgone conclusions, not issues at all.  If we do that then when the inevitable corrupt influences creep into government, people will be in place that will do what is necessary to keep that corruption from becoming endemic.

Posted in character, Culture Wars, Governance, Social/Religious Trends, Uncategorized, Understanding Religion | 1 Comment » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf responds to a Matt Lewis column with this opening:

In The Week, columnist Matt Lewis, a conservative who is regularly willing to criticize the right, explains why, despite his occasional frustrations, he isn’t tempted to defect. “I am repelled by the Left’s worldview, which implicitly argues that morality is subjective,” he states. “This is a natural outcome of a rejection of the numinous, but it’s an idea that has consequences. When there are no moral absolutes, we make policy decisions based on efficiency instead of compassion. Or we make decisions based on our own individualistic needs, not on what is right or good.”

Given his beliefs, I’d never urge Lewis to defect to the left for all sorts of reasons. But I don’t think the one he’s offered is what should hold him. The left encompasses a lot of people who believe in God, while the right has its atheists. I don’t think that there is any single world view that encompasses the whole left. And even if we presumed for the sake of simplicity that it makes sense to talk about “the” world views of the left and right, I don’t think the left embraces moral subjectivity any more than the American right, despite the fact that so many conservatives insist otherwise. How common is moral subjectivity on the left, according to Lewis? It is unclear, perhaps understandably, since he was constrained by writing at column length for print.

Pending clarification, let’s set the left aside and talk about the American right. To what moral absolutes does it subscribe in practice? Certainly some of the ones that are shared by the whole political spectrum. Slavery is wrong. So is rape. And genocide. Surely we can all agree that, on those significant questions, that neither the American left nor the American right are non-absolutists.

Friedersdorf then goes on to pick on the supposed “hypocrisies” of the right.  The use of torture in the gathering on information on terrorism being his biggest bug-a-boo, but along the way he also discusses immigration, Gitmo and arms control.  Then he says this:

In what moral absolute was their position grounded?

In other words, “How can we preach compassion when we engage in torture or deport the oppressed?”  There are three things at play here that need to be noted.

First, there is a difference between something being absolute and something being universal.  We must always act in compassion, that’s absolute.  But that does not mean we act compassionately to everyone, that’s universal.  Unfortunately, life presents us with situations where to act compassionately towards some we will be required to act harshly with others.  It is an unavoidable reality.  If a man is standing poised to kill another man, killing the threatening killer is, in fact, quite compassionate towards the intended victim, even if it is extraordinarily cruel towards the actor.  Someone is going to die in this situation, compassion cannot be judged solely on the fact that someone is killed.  Compassion is exercised in the choice of who dies and how.  Morality may be rooted in absolutes, but that does not make it simple, by any stretch.

The second thing at play here is the where the moral absolutes are rooted.  We cannot argue religion in public anymore, but there was a time we could invoke God.  However, even then, it was not good to argue theology in the public square.  Once we are discussing the complexities of applying our absolutes, the discussion will become theological very rapidly.  Theology, even amongst protestant Christians, is far more diverse today than it ever was at the time when the invocation of religion in the public square was more common.  In fact, there are some schools of theology that have grown not out of the religion in question, but purposefully to develop religious apologia for a political or social issue previously considered anathema to the religion in question.   For example, the last couple of decades have seen scores of theological arguments attempting to make homosexual practice acceptable; something Judeo-Christian thought as rejected as wrong throughout its history.

Because of the confusion between absolute and universal, the gate-keeping functions inside religion have failed to sort the wheat from the chaff in these arguments and all are deemed valid.  How is a public, largely not trained in how to think about these things, to judge what is a good application of the absolutes and what is not?  Are we to now argue theology publicly?  The result of this dilemma has been the sort of dogmatic approach that leads to the perceptions of hypocrisy that Friedersdorf presents.

The bottom line cause of all of this, and the third factor at play, was mentioned in that last paragraph.  It is the failure of the gate-keeping functions inside religion.  This failure has come as a) religion itself has become more personal that societal/cultural, and b) rather than fight inside the church, groups split off and form smaller groups that lack the critical mass to form the institutions needed to perform the function effectively.

Frankly, in today’s world, there is validity to what Friedersdorf has to say.  It should not be so, but that is a failure that can be laid squarely at the door of the faithful.  We continue to work on our series telling the 2012 election story.  Unlike the 2008 story, the 2012 is not themed so much in politics as it is in the failure of the religious to do and be all that they are supposed to do and be.  Thus that series will lead to a series on where Evangelicalism has failed.  Thus we will leave this third factor at this point and allow the deeper discussion to come at a later time.

We are not the hypocrites Friedersdorf wants us, or paints us, to be.  However, we have to be a lot smarter about our faith and its application in the public square if we do not want to appear as such.

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From Philip Rucker at WaPo’s “Post Politics” blog yesterday:

Faith has been a constant in Mitt Romney’s life, yet when he ran for president, he was extremely cautious about discussing his Mormon religion. He rarely spoke of God on the campaign trail. Rarer still were any references to Mormonism itself.

But now, six months removed from his unsuccessful bid for the White House, the former Republican nominee is opening up about his Mormon upbringing and his strong belief in a traditional family structure.

In a commencement address at Southern Virginia University last weekend, Romney spoke about his Mormon mission to France in the 1960s, in which he explored the reaches of his faith, and told stories of early settlers in Salt Lake City. Repeatedly citing the Bible, Romney urged graduates to find God, marry young and have many children.

So, what was the occasion?

Romney’s address at Southern Virginia University — a small liberal arts college in Buena Vista, Va., where more than nine in 10 students are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — marks a significant departure for the former Massachusetts governor who became the first Mormon to win a major party’s presidential nomination.

The story seems to want to make Romney out to be disingenuous somehow:

At the rare moments when he did talk about spirituality, as in his 2012 commencement address at Liberty University, founded by the late evangelical televangelist Jerry Falwell, Romney spoke broadly about his shared “Christian conscience” and his trust in God, but did not utter the word Mormon.

At a town hall meeting in Wisconsin, when a young man confronted Romney by reading from a book of scripture published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney grew visibly agitated with the man’s line of questioning.

“I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view,” Romney said. He added that he would talk about the practices of his faith, but not the doctrines of his religion.

Yet as he addressed graduates and their families on the grassy quad at Southern Virginia University in the Shenandoah Valley, Romney read from the diary of an 1800s Mormon pioneer and then from the Bible.

“Children are a heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the loom is his reward,” Romney said, quoting scripture. “Happy is the man who hath his quiver full of them.”

I honestly don’t know what to make of all this.  First of all, who really cares anymore?  With all due respect to Gov. Romney, someone I respect a great deal – this stuff does not matter anymore.  Secondly, they are comparing apples and oranges here.  Any reasonable speaker is going to tailor their remarks to the crowd in front of them.  Hence remarks to a largely Evangelical crowd would sound different than remarks in front of a largely Mormon crowd regardless of who is making the remarks – your truly included.  (Having addressed both on multiple occasions.)

But lets go back to why this is appearing even now.  Once must presume there is more at play here than simply winning the presidential election.  Mitt Romney lost – it’s over.  The “not authentic” meme of which the “he never talked about his faith” is part-and-parcel was part of the reason he lost.  It worked because it divided the right.  Evangelicals tend to find Mormons somehow “inauthentic,” and this meme played on that.  And that is why they are still writing this stuff.

They are interested in more than than simply beating Mitt Romney.  They are interested in keeping Republicans on the ropes for, well, eternity.  But there is more.  They are very, very interested in keeping religious people generally out of politics, and making them look like fools.  The “not authentic” charge is really a soft form of the “hypocrite” charge that was so commonly aimed at the religious in my youth.  They just want to keep us down.

We cannot fall for this bait.  Such an argument is not a charge in which we need put stock.  This charge stands as little more than a temptation to stop trying.  It argues implicitly that there is no sense trying to be better because you’ll never make it and just look like a phony trying.  One of the reasons our public influence has waned is because we have bought into this charge and now can barely be distinguished from anyone else.

Leadership demands that we stand apart.  It is time we started to do so.

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First Fact: Jason Collins “came out” as gay in Sports Illustrated yesterday.

Fact Two: SCOTUS is currently trying to decide two cases related to same-sex marriage, one on DOMA and one on California’s Prop 8.

These are essentially discrimination cases.  The claims center on the fact that it is discriminatory to forbid same-sex marriage.  But if you think about it, we discriminate everyday; otherwise, there could be no criminal or non-criminal, no good or bad.  Discrimination is not, of itself, wrong.  It is only wrong to discriminate in certain situations.  Legally, these “certain situations” are defined as a “protected class.”

Protected class is a term used in United States anti-discrimination law.^[1] The term describes characteristics or factors which cannot be targeted for discrimination and harassment.

So, what are the protected classes in the United States?  Wikipedia (linked above) provides a list.

• Race – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Color – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Religion – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
• National origin – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Age (40 and over) – Federal: Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
• Sex – Federal: Equal Pay Act of 1963 & Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Familial status – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1968 Title VIII (Housing, cannot discriminate for having children, exception for senior housing)
• Disability status – Federal: Vocational Rehabilitation and Other Rehabilitation Services of 1973 & Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
• Veteran status – Federal Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974
• Genetic information – Federal: Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act

Now, examine that list of characteristics carefully.  It can be divided into two categories.  Let’s call one “Attributes” and the other “Choices.”  Attributes are those characteristics that we have no control over – they are essentially accidents of birth.  So, the protected classes in the category of Attributes would be, race, color, national origin, age, sex, disability and genetic information.

Choices as a category is a different matter.  These are characteristics over which we as individuals do have control. The characteristics on that list that fall into this category are religion, familial status, and veteran.

Now the first thing we have to ask ourselves is if they we are to judge same sex marriage as discriminatory, into which category would we fit homosexuality?  This is where Jason Collins comes in.  Jason Collins is an identical twin:

Something in the media guides did not compute.

Jason Collins is listed at 7-0 and 260 pounds in the New Jersey Nets media guide, while the Utah Jazz media guide lists twin brother Jarron at 6-11 and 255. Aren’t they identical twins?

Yes, responds Portia Collins, the mother of the first set of identical twins to play in the NBA since Harvey and Horace Grant.

So, is Jason taller than Jarron?

After a bemused pause, the answer we knew was coming finally arrived: “Noooo.”

“They filled out questionnaires and have a media archive at their respective schools [high school and Stanford University]. Jarron and Jason let it continue. I don’t think they let it bother them.”

His brother Jarron is married, with kids; by all appearances quite heterosexual:

Late last summer Jason called and said that he was coming over because he had something to tell me. This was nothing new. We speak multiple times a day, always have. He’s Tio Jason to my three kids. He’s like a brother to my wife. He’s my twin, eight minutes older. We live only a few miles apart on the west side of L.A. But while most of our conversations are quick and light, this one was different.

So, here we have two men, genetically identical, that grew up together, were afforded all the same opportunities, went to high school and college together.  They seem as close as brothers can be.  Yet one is homosexual and one is heterosexual.  Clearly then, Jason’s homosexuality is a choice, or perhaps a series of small choices over the course of many years, but it is certainly not an Attribute, as we defined it above.

Many are the claims that homosexuals are “just born that way.”  How many times have I heard, “That’s just the way I am.”  Well, clearly it is not, as so well illustrated by the Collins twins.  Physically identical and walking nearly identical paths until well into adulthood,  one made choices that lead to a traditional lifestyle and the other made choices that lead down the path that was exposed yesterday.

Jason Collins “coming out” should make it crystal clear to SCOTUS that if they are to award “protected class” to homosexuals it will be in the Choices category, not the Attributes one.  But examine carefully that short list in the Choices category.  Religion is set aside as a protected class within the body of the constitution proper, and it is plain letter in the Bill of Rights.  Veteran only makes sense – this is another means of honoring those that have served the nation at the highest risk.  It seems commonsense enough.

Familial status is where the rub lies.  But note, this is not an absolute when it comes to the protections.  The protections are limited purely to housing matters and furthermore, there are notable exceptions.  While it could be argued that same-sex marriage is, in some sense, a “familial status,” it falls so far outside the existing protection limits as to make it plain to the court that they will be creating a whole new protected class should they go that direction with these cases.

Does the court have the power to create a protected class?  Note that each of the classes on the list above were created by legislative action, as cited.  When it comes to Attributes, it could be argued that the court might create, and/or expand a category based on “…the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…,” in the Declaration of Independence.  But as the case of the Collins twins makes so transparent – this is no Attributes situation.

The Court has little choice but to leave existing law in place.  These are choices by the individuals involved and how to deal with such people is a choice for the people generally.  That is why there are elections and legislatures.  If the Court decides otherwise, it will be a clear and undeniable usurpation of power.  It would be a tyrannical act.

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