Politics – Page 7

On National Conversations

February 19, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Another school shooting. Another subsequent sequence, one that, horrifically, we’ve gotten used to. Shock. Grief. Exposes of the shooter. Identification of causes, conveniently aligned with our political positions. Charges that the other side—and only the other side—is “politicizing” a tragedy. Snarky posts. Angry comment threads. And calls for a “national conversation”—in this case, on guns.

Back in 2009, when the national focus was on police shooting of unarmed black civilians, Attorney General Eric Holder was widely mocked by the political opposition for calling for a “national conversation” on race. Some conservatives charged that when liberals call for a “national conversation,” what they mean is “Shut up and do what I say.”

Of course that’s not fair. People are all different, even those in the same group; it’s conservatives who resist “class-conscious” thinking as Marxist. You and I can’t really say—accurately—that “all liberals” or “all conservatives” mean this thing when they say that thing.

But I’d like to try to go beyond the political posturing and the mud-slinging and the parading of moral superiority of “my side”—and I do have a side, which I’ll not state, for reasons that I hope will soon become clear—to encouraging us to think more deeply about our assumptions on all of this.

I’ve noted before that political victory is fleeting and that a great many things are more important because they last forever. That fact should certainly drive any “conversation.”

But I wonder if we might probe a little deeper. What’s the point of a conversation? To win the argument and rest in our smug confidence? To gain political ground and the consequent political power, so we can make everyone else—especially those morons who disagree with us—do what we want? Or to solve the problem?

What kind of conversation will lead to a solution?

Here’s where I get controversial.

A conversation that leads to a solution will not involve everyone, because not everyone has something of substance to contribute.

We all know what it’s like when everyone talks at once. And even when people take turns, we all know from experience that not everybody has something useful to say. (I know you’ve been in a meeting like that, as I have. Far too many times.)

A conversation that leads to a solution will involve people who (1) know what they’re talking about and (2) are interested more in arriving at a solution than in winning the argument.

Jim Geraghty recently expressed frustration with people who advocate for gun control but in the process demonstrate that they have no basic knowledge of how guns work. They’re ready to pontificate for everybody, but they think automatic weapons are legal—or that an automatic weapon was used in this shooting or that one (chances are, it wasn’t). They call a magazine a “clip.” They use the term “assault rifle” as if it actually means something.

Now, I grant that knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine, or a round and a bullet, is probably not going to affect any policy outcome. And I also grant that liberals aren’t the only ones who demonstrate on occasion that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

But what about the principle? Won’t we be more effective with national policy if we convene people with expertise and experience, get them away from the noise, and then listen to what they say? If we base our positions on hard data rather than political expediency?

How effective are various kinds of gun laws?
What are the primary avenues of illegal gun traffic?
What psychological conditions are most likely to result in violence?
- Is shooting violence different in causation from other violence?
- How can those psychological conditions most effectively be identified?
- Is there a statistically significant correspondence between the use of antidepressants and violence? Is there a control group available for comparison?
Why do so many shootings happen in schools? Are there data on that, or is everybody just assuming his thesis?
What are the best practices in building security?

Come on; the military has been doing building security for centuries; the knowledge is out there. Why not use it?

I see the danger in what I’m saying. Elitism. Trust the smart people—you know, the ones from the Ivy League. The smartest ones in the room.

That’s a danger, all right, for many reasons, most obviously that the elites haven’t done all that great a job of running the country since, oh, 1800 or so. (Happy 286^th birthday, Mr. President!)

But I’m not talking about the Ivy League. I’m talking about people with demonstrated expertise and success in the field in question. In this particular issue, many of those people may never even have gone to college. Let them talk. And listen to them.

I have a friend, whom I like very much, who has one really irritating characteristic. When we’re sitting together in an audience, he’ll keep whispering comments in my ear when I’m trying to listen to the speaker. And I have to choose between being polite to my friend or getting the information I’m there to get.

So. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, keep your opinions to yourself, so we can hear the people we came to hear.

Assuming, that is, that you want to solve the problem.

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

On Overcoming Cultural Distance

February 1, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

The USA is sure a dysfunctional family, isn’t it? We share common experience, and a reasonably common culture, though of course we have a rich collection of subcultures, from the Italian Catholic feast days of Boston’s North End, to the summer dog days of the Carolina Low Country, to the rugged manliness of that isolated Texas prairie out west of Van Horn, to the streetwise playgrounds of Roxbury and Harlem and Avalon Park. The experiences of growing up in these places are significantly different, and those experiences shape our perspectives as well as our personalities.

But we’re family nevertheless. I began to come to that realization by growing up in a variety of places, from the Pacific Northwest to suburban Boston, before settling into a stereotypical “sleepy Southern town” with a decaying Main Street that blossomed over a few decades into a thriving city center after one of the most studied transformations in the country. (Thanks, Knox.) For several years I had immediate family members in all 4 corners of the Lower 48—almost as though we were all trying to get as far away from one another as we possibly could. Living in different subcultures—farm, suburb, town, western, northeastern, southern—helped me learn early on that we’re really different but all fundamentally the same.

That feeling has grown stronger in more recent years, with the opportunity to travel internationally more than the average American. I know the feeling of recognizing another American in an otherworldly place. Of being embarrassed by the horrified look on the Buddhist monk’s face when the gum-chewing girls in halter tops and short shorts are snapping photographs and talking exponentially more loudly than anyone around them, completely oblivious to the way they’re treating his sacred space. Or by the well-fed, camera-laden tourist in the sidewalk café berating the waitress for being obviously too stupid to speak English. Or, on a lighter note, enjoying a cultural moment with (The) Ohio State University students at the bungee jump bridge just downstream from Victoria Falls, Zambia. Or being moved by the student on one of my Africa teams, patiently interacting with an autistic child, perhaps the first person ever to interact with him in a way that understood and addressed his special needs.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re my people.

We’re family.

But boy, are we dysfunctional.

Polarized. Hateful. Viewing one another through deeply distorted telephoto lenses, because we can’t abide getting close enough to talk face to face.

Pride is in our national DNA. It’s human nature to care for ourselves, to respect ourselves, infinitely more than others. To compare ourselves to others in a way that makes us the standard and others the defects. Everyone who drives slower than I do is an idiot; everyone who drives faster is a maniac. Me? I’m an excellent driver.

My congressman is awesome, but the people who elected all the other ones are idiots, and we ought to throw all the (other) bums out.

This pride isn’t unique to Americans; it’s in the human DNA too. The first evil creature rebelled out of pride, and the first human ones did too; they decided they knew better than their Creator on the question of produce.

So we despise each other; we talk but don’t listen, and the loudest, rudest, sharpest, cruelest remark wins.

That was good one!

What’s sad is knowing that if these same people were in a broken-down Jeep in the middle of the African grasslands, listening at night to the unfamiliar, terrifying sounds of the surrounding wildlife, they’d be working together. They’d be figuring out who was good at what, and they’d be dividing up tasks among the team members and figuring out a way to get the Jeep fixed or send a radio signal or use a mirror in the morning to flash sunlight at an airplane, or something to get out of there.

American ingenuity, you know.

And when they got out, they’d all go someplace and eat and drink together, and laugh, and tell stories, and joke about their individual idiosyncrasies, and be friends for the rest of their lives.

How do I know that?

Ask any combat veteran.

Maybe what we need is working on solving life-threatening problems, together.

Sure beats hate.

Photo by Corentin Marzin on Unsplash

On Threats from a Hostile Culture

January 25, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Last week Carl Trueman published a thoughtful piece, entitled “Preparing for Winter,” on the future of Christian colleges. His premise is that they’re threatened, existentially threatened, by the hostile secular culture, particularly as it is expressed by the US government, and particularly in the matter of sexual discrimination, and particularly on the question of transgenderism. If Christian colleges stick to their beliefs, they will run afoul of anti-discrimination laws, thereby losing their accreditation and possibly—probably—even their tax exemption. An existential threat.

I don’t find anything he said directly wrong, but I’d like to balance his thoughts just a little bit.

First, a key piece of his argument is the Bob Jones Supreme Court case, in which my college lost its tax exemption because it violated “public policy” by prohibiting interracial marriage among its students. Something he doesn’t seem to consider, though, is that public-policy decisions arise more out of politics than out of law. It was easy for most Americans to agree with the court’s decision in the Bob Jones case because BJU was, well, wrong. It seems to me that if the government were to seriously consider denying tax exemption to all Christian schools that do not accommodate the policy du jour on transgenderism, the breadth of public outcry, and the consequent threat of political backlash, would render such an incursion politically impossible. There are a lot of people in this country who don’t see current transgender policy as in the same category as the civil rights movement.

There’s a reason that Social Security is the third rail of politics, even though the math underlying it is confessedly bogus. Politics works that way.

But times change, and majority public opinion changes with it. Suppose that, over time, clear biblical teaching on sexual morality is seen by most Americans as the enemy of the people? What then?

Well, several observations.

First, colleges can survive without tax exemption. Bob Jones did (and yes, it got the exemption back after several decades). It’s difficult, and with the passage of time a college will need to change significantly in the way it does things and perhaps even in its basic structure, methods, and size. But people are in the image of God, and that fact makes them creative, among other things. Just as businesses adjust to changes in tax law and all sorts of other elements in their legal environment—and do that every year, routinely—so people who want to run an educational institution can come up with ways to make it work. (And toward the end of his piece, Trueman essentially says that.)

But suppose the environment gets so oppressive that the college model can’t work at all? Well, for most of human existence—and this is true for young-earth creationists as well as old-earth creationists—people have been educating their offspring and preparing them for useful lives without any colleges whatsoever. You think businessmen are creative? Just watch parents trying to ensure their children’s success. There are no limits.

And it’s not just about the motivation and determined action of the parents.

For decades the People’s Republic of China was one of the most oppressive societies on the planet. It was completely cut off from the West; everybody had to dress just like Chairman Mao, and they had to quote his Little Red Book; and Mao had unfettered power to annihilate the scourge of Christianity from his land.

Several years ago I was teaching Christian theology. After class one of the students, who had grown up in China, said to me, “You are telling the [Bible] stories.” “Yes,” I replied. “I know the stories,” she said. “How do you know?” “My grandmother taught me.”

Mao had all the power imaginable, and he used all of it. Millions of his own people died under his orders just because they were Christians. But today Mao is dead—I’ve seen his corpse—and his great effort was foiled by a bunch of wizened 4’10” Chinese grandmothers, who told their grandchildren the stories. And today, by most estimates, there are more Christians in China than there are in the US.

Christian parents of whatever nation, however hostile, will tell those same stories, and Christian sons and daughters will go out as ambassadors for Christ, to spread the Good News, to die if necessary, but they will go out, and they will be faithful.

Christ, whose power well exceeds that of Mao and of any future American autocrat, will build his church, and the very gates of hell will have nothing at hand to stop it.

Fear not.

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

On Leaders, Flaws, and Achieving Some Sort of Rational Consistency

January 15, 2018 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Or, as the government officially calls it, the “Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.” On this day the nation officially focuses on a lesson learned from its past; as the current president put it, to “encourage all Americans to observe this day with acts of civic work and community service in honor of Dr. King’s extraordinary life — and it was extraordinary indeed — and his great legacy.”

We all know that this day, and its good intentions, arose out of controversy—first, the very painful controversy surrounding the Civil Rights movement, and then more controversy regarding the personal character of Dr. King himself.

Political conservatives, in my opinion, pretty badly missed the boat in dismissing the Civil Rights movement as simply “communist agitation,” first, because it sprang from a serious social problem in our culture and was not simply a minor issue stirred up by enemies of the nation to foment instability. Of course the extreme left sought to use the movement for its own very different ends, but that minor fact hardly renders racial segregation and discrimination minor problems. Both political and religious conservatism are founded solidly on the principle of divine creation of all humans and the rights and respect that come with that status. Conservatism speaks often of equal justice under law. We conservatives missed the boat—badly—on this one. We took the wrong side.

And then there’s the second controversy. When Congress discussed making Dr. King’s birthday a federal holiday, there was considerable opposition. Some of it, doubtless, came from those who just don’t like black people. Further opposition came from those on the political right who didn’t like anybody aligned with the political left. But some opposed the holiday on the ground that Dr. King was a flawed character, one whose birthday we shouldn’t honor with a federal holiday.

Charges were leveled against his memory. The most significant was that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Some charged, based on his acceptance of support from left-wing organizations, that he was a communist. Others noted that while he preached non-violence, violent protests seemed to follow him wherever he went. The character argument received new life several years after President Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, when Dr. King was found to have plagiarized his doctoral dissertation in systematic theology at Boston University in 1955.

Can we celebrate a holiday as an impetus to social good, based on the noble sentiments expressed in the “I Have a Dream” speech, when the man who gave it was imperfect? Well, obviously we can; that’s what we’re doing. More precisely, then, can we do so in a way that’s morally and intellectually consistent?

I think we can. Here’s why.

First, everyone is flawed. That doesn’t mean that everyone’s birthday should be a national holiday, but it does mean that all of our heroes—all of them—have feet of clay. Washington, Lincoln, the Pilgrims, our veterans, even St. Valentine!—these are people who sinned and who disappointed themselves and others along the way. But they did not surrender to their sinful natures; they rose, as image-bearers of God, to stand for ideas that were bigger than themselves, ideas that are worth celebrating and promoting.

The real question, then, is whether Dr. King did the same, in spite of his status, alongside all of us, as a sinner.

That’s a question we have to wrestle with in each of our proposed heroes. In the case of Dr. King, I don’t know whether he was unfaithful to his wife; I don’t know whether he secretly sought to promote violence even as he urged the opposite; I don’t know whether he was an ideological communist—though I’m pretty sure, based on statements and his actions, that he wasn’t. I’m not going to believe those things about him without better evidence than I have, and I’m especially not going to believe those accusations when they come only from his avowed enemies.

Now, the plagiarism matter was adjudicated by a panel at his alma mater, and they ruled that he was guilty. In my line of work, that’s a career ender, but there are all kinds of mitigating considerations along the way—intent and extent being the most significant—and I’m not in a position to know the details of those matters either.

So what do we have? We have an imperfect man who embraced and promoted high ideals—necessary and good ideals—at significant personal risk, who inspired a great many people to pursue those ideals themselves, whose legacy is directly associated with those ideals, and whose memory is sacred to a lot of people, all of whom are in the image of God, and many of whom are my dear friends and colleagues, of whose character I have no doubt.

Can I celebrate this day and the ideals with which it is associated?

You bet I can.

Photo Credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto

Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You.

January 8, 2018 by Dan Olinger 10 Comments

What to do?! What to do?!

Everything’s just awful! Worse than ever before!

If you’re conservative, then the Deep State is trying to overthrow a duly elected president, and the country’s going broke, and sexual mores are all being redefined, and what has happened to our country?!

And if you’re liberal, well, do we even need to say? We have an idiot in the White House, who watches TV all day, and he’s going to start a nuclear war, and even his entire staff thinks he’s unfit for office. Roll out the 25^th and stop this madman.

It’s awful. Just awful.

I’m not suggesting that the world’s problems aren’t serious, or that evil people aren’t up to something. But I’d like to suggest that we don’t have to panic—in fact, that as a moral matter we ought not to panic.

A few observations.

One of the benefits of being an old codger is that, if your long-term memory is still working, you have some history by which to evaluate the present. I can testify that this kind of apocalyptic talk has been going on for as long as I’ve been alive—and longer than that (because I was actually taught history in school, back in the day).

When I was born, VP Richard Nixon was going to jail everybody who disagreed with him, because of that awful Senator McCarthy and the military-industrial complex, or something. Then JFK was going to start a nuclear war with the USSR over a few pictures from an inconsequential island. Then the Commies were going to destroy our society with forced integration, and with that take over the whole bloomin’ country by 1973. Then LBJ was going to kill all our boys in Vietnam—he was so unpopular with his own party that he couldn’t run for reelection in 1968. Then MLK and RFK were gunned down right before our eyes. Then Nixon—well, Nixon—do we even have to talk about him? End-of-the-world stuff. Then Carter couldn’t get our hostages out of Iran, and then Reagan was going to start World War III (“we begin bombing in five minutes!”), and then Clinton was, well, inattentive to his presidential duties because of, um, distractions, and there was that whole impeachment thing, which was just about sex, and who cares about that? and then Bush stole the whole country from Gore and blew up the Middle East by lying about WMDs, and then Obama wasn’t even born here, and was just an undercover Muslim (did you know his real name is Soetero?!), and threw the whole country away, and now Trump’s gonna destroy everything for sure.

I mean it when I say that I’m not mocking past fears or trivializing serious issues in the US and the world. But I can’t help noticing that none of the fears were realized. None of them. Sure, there are problems today, many of which have their roots in those earlier times. But we’re still here, and the great majority of us live better than millionaires did a hundred years ago (sometime study the history of sewage systems), and the fears were all overblown. All of them.

Political opponents have always exaggerated the fears. The current election has always been the Most Important One Ever, and the opponent has always been the Worst Person in the World. Now even the weather is worse than ever; every storm is the Storm of the Century, or the Snowpocalypse, or the Polar Vortex, or the Bomb Cyclone.

We need to get over our addiction to adrenaline. We need to see things as they really are, and then we need to just calm down.

This is particularly true of Christians. There is a God in heaven, who raises up kings—all of them—and in his good time sets them down again (Dan 2.21). Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton are no longer any threat.

Further, they were never any threat to the plan of God, even when they were in office. They were, in fact, part of his plan. As is Donald Trump, love him or hate him, and Barack Obama before him. Our times are in the hands of a God who is both great and good, and whose intentions for his people are good to the infinite extreme.

What are seekers to think when God’s people act as though none of that is true? When they express dismay, or rage, or outright panic in their public proclamations or in private? When they evidence that for them, love of God has not cast out fear? When we show no evidence of grace, mercy, and peace?

Sure, the world’s a difficult and dangerous place. And when we see problems, they should get our attention, and we should act to solve them. We should fight injustice. We should demand truth and righteousness from our elected leaders. But we cannot act strategically, wisely, when we’re in panic mode. We need to be calm, rational, deliberate, trusting in the providential care of Almighty God, as we seek to bring light and hope to a badly broken world.

#freakoutthounot

What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads

July 20, 2017 by Dan Olinger 13 Comments

After 45 years living in the same town, I finally got the call for jury duty. I’ve been hoping to get one for a long time; SC law has a provision that teachers can have their assigned week changed to one in the summer, when it wouldn’t intrude on their jobs. So I’ve wanted for a long time to get the experience.

I was seated on a criminal case, and the judge appointed me foreman. I was a little nervous about that, since I’d never been on a jury before, but another jury member had been a foreman on a case earlier that week, and I asked him to let me know if I was doing anything stupid.

It was a difficult case. It involved a sex crime (I’m going to try to avoid giving identifying details), and since in sex crimes there are often no witnesses but the victim and the perpetrator, it usually comes down to which person you believe. So you look for some indication that one or the other person might be lying. If there aren’t any such indications, what do you do? Some on the jury said that they believed the victim, and that was enough for them. Guilty. Others said that they believed the victim too, but they weren’t prepared to send the defendant off to jail without better evidence than one person’s accusation—beyond reasonable doubt, and all that. Not guilty.

So there we were. Highly emotional case, strong feelings, opposing views.

What did we do?

This jury was highly diverse on every possible axis. Different races, sexes, ages, levels of education, employment statuses, economic statuses, levels of religiosity. Every reason to go nuclear.

But we didn’t. Everyone gave his opinion and the reasons for it; everyone else listened quietly and respectfully. We laid out the bases of disagreement objectively and calmly, with no harsh language and no rolling of the eyes or other visible signs of disrespect. We shared the same frustration over the evidence that we knew was being withheld from us. When someone stepped into the bathroom—during which policy requires that deliberation stop—we sat back and talked jovially and actively, without any awkward silences, and we didn’t choose to talk just with people we agreed with.

It was awesome.

And this at a time when the country is allegedly more polarized, and angry about it, than ever. You know it’s true; the comment threads on political websites prove it.

Don’t they?

Well, let’s do a little math. Let’s suppose that half the population is polarized and angry. What are the odds that we’d seat a jury of 12 with no angry people? If the odds of getting 1 non-hostile person are 1 in 2, then the odds of getting 12 in a row are 1 in 2¹², or 1 in 4096. But if only 1 in 10 Americans is angry, the odds of getting that jury increase to better than 1 in 4.

So you know what I think? I think the rage that dominates the daily news cycle is overblown. I think that our fellow citizens are better than that. I think the comment threads and Facebook newsfeeds attract the angries the way a porch light attracts bugs. If you spend a lot of time there, you’re going to think the society is in much worse shape than it really is.

If I had no other reasons to be proud of my country and its people—and I have plenty—the 2 days I spent with my fellow jury members would be reason enough.

God bless them all.

Dan Olinger

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