Why I'm an Ex-Conservative

I used to think I was a Conservative.  When I was in high school in the mid-60s there was a lot of appeal to some of their beliefs and I was for Barry Goldwater (I was too young to vote then). It was like you were better and smarter than other people just by holding to those beliefs.  Even today, many Conservatives think they simply have to quote Ayn Rand to prove how smart and superior they are.  It was a simple matter to be a Conservative in the abstract.

Unfortunately, life isn't led in the abstract. After I got out of high school I started seeing where those beliefs seemed to lead.  How disappointing to discover that you disagree with most everything you were supposed to believe.  I suppose I never really was a Conservative;  I just thought it was cool to be able to say so.

Among those beliefs:

• Approval of apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia.
• Opposition to the civil rights movement. It's almost comical to watch today's Conservatives--like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin--fall all over each other declaring Martin Luther King their idol.  Their Conservative forebears declared him a Communist and un-American.
• Opposition to Civil Rights laws.  "States rights" was the code word then and it seems to have crept back into the Conservative vocabulary again. 
• Social Security and Medicare are bad things (even though they have virtually eliminated poverty among the elderly).
• Prayer in public schools.
• Opposition to the Voting Rights Act.
• Opposition to minimum wage laws.

These are only a handful of things that happened in my younger lifetime; the list could be made longer if one went back to the early 20th century and before.  But the point is that on all of these issues, Conservatives have been on the wrong side of the issue and the wrong side of history.  And they continue to be on the wrong side today.

I'm a Glenn Beck Celebrity

I heard that a couple weeks ago Glenn Beck singled out Credo Mobile on his show because it donates money to "evil" left wing causes and organizations.  Credo--aka Working Assets--gives a percentage of each dollar it collects to organizations voted on by its members.  Credo is my cell phone carrier, so I guess that I can proudly call myself a Glenn Beck celebrity, at least indirectly.

Christian Life Resources and Michele Bachmann

Christian Life Resources (CLR) has presented Rep. Michele Bachmann as a sort of role model for the Christian politician (see the September/October issue of their "Clearly Caring" magazine).  In that interview, she spoke hardly at all about life issues but a whole lot about the typical right-wing banalities of anti-tax, small government, states rights, blah blah blah. She is certainly entitled to whatever political beliefs she holds but I'm not sure why Christian Life Resources has to give her a forum to express these views.

The website Politifact.org has rated 13 of Michele Bachmann's public statements over the past couple of years.  Politifact classifies statements made by politicians into the following categories: True;  Mostly True;  Half True;  Barely True;  False;  and Pants on Fire.  Of Rep. Bachmann's statements, seven were ruled False and the other six were ruled Pants on Fire.  Christian Life Resources has cited these types of websites (FactCheck.org is also excellent and fair) when it serves its own purposes, so I thought it only fair to point out how Rep. Bachmann stacks up with the truth.

In "Clearly Caring" (3rd quarter 2009) Robert Fleischmann, CLR's national director, wrote an article entitled "Save Us from the Zealots".  The article contains the following sentences:

Today’s fanatic is reckless with the truth, merciless with those holding contrary opinions and articulate in appealing to the intellect and emotions. The fanatic thrives on the ignorance of others and is convinced and convincing that there are no lasting moral absolutes. As time changes, they argue, so do the moral boundaries. Like the emperor who thinks he is modeling his royal garments that don’t exist, so also do the fanatics espouse convictions that have no substance.

Obviously, he was mostly referring to people with whom he disagrees, but it's also a pretty good description of Michele Bachmann, or at least many of her public statements.  Apparently, as long as someone agrees with CLR on the "important" issues, they are free to be as reckless as they want on other issues without being held to account.

Record Profits

I see today that U.S. businesses had record profits last quarter.  Unadjusted for inflation, it appears to be the most profitable quarter since records have been kept (60 years).  Adjusting for inflation it is still from the second to the sixth most profitable quarter ever (I guess there are different ways of making that adjustment.)

Businesses have been moaning about how "anti-business" Obama is, but these results put a chink into that argument.  I think they are just a bunch of crybabies, and--as I've said before--it's about time for them to step up and start hiring some workers.  Consumers are spending. Investors are investing. It's about time for the Chamber of Commerce to stop whining and for businesses to start hiring.

Activist Judges

Judicial activism is clearly in the eye of the beholder.  The current Supreme Court is as activist as any liberal Court has been in the past.  Here are three examples (I won't even use Bush v. Gore although it could qualify as a fourth.)

Campaign Finance Reform.  When the Supreme Court threw out this law, I really think liberals missed the boat by emphasizing the wrong issue.  Instead of ranting on about how big money will flood the system (which is certainly true), we should have gone to first principles.  Specifically, we should have hammered on the notion that a corporation (or a union for that matter) is somehow a "person", which is at the heart of the decision  This is a clear example of judicial activism, especially for those who argue for some form of original intent.  Nothing like a modern corporation existed at the time the Constitution was written.  Corporations are fictional creations of statute, so any attempt to make them into people is a bald-faced creation of a right that does not exist in the Constitution.  We should have been saying it over and over.  (I believe that even William Rehnquist--no shriveling liberal he--did not ascribe to the current Court's activist interpretation.  See http://larssonfest.com/content/why-justice-rehnquist-thought-it-was-ok-regulate-political-speech-corporations)

Money Is Speech.  How can anyone take this seriously?  Money is money;  speech is speech.  If you want to make them the same, then you are adding words to the Constitution.

Liberal Interpretations of the Takings Clause.  Although this hasn't specifically happened yet, I predict that it will happen someday with this Court.  If you claim that putting restrictions on the use of property is tantamount to "taking", then you are adding words and meaning to the Constitution that are not there.  "Taking" and "restricting" are not the same.  Taking means taking--nothing more, nothing less.  If the framers wanted to say "take or restrict" then why didn't they?  If you say that restricting property use is "almost like" taking and unconstitutional, then you are practicing judicial activism.

It's about time that we stop the right-wing from appropriating the term "judicial activism".  So let's go to first principles and start using the term to describe their reckless rewriting of the Constitution.

Job Creators???

I see that Eric Cantor doesn't want taxes to go up for the rich because it would be bad to tax the "job creators" in our economy.  Is he referring to those "job creators" who got huge tax cuts and created virtually no jobs during Bush's eight years?

The Bush Era Tax Cuts

Reasonable people can always disagree on their opinions--the Tea Party purists notwithstanding--but only if we agree first on what the facts are.  One interesting example has to do with the Bush tax cuts that are scheduled to expire in January.

Both the cuts and the expiration date were put into the bill by an essentially Republican Congress and signed by a Republican president.  So if the Right wants to treat this as a de facto tax increase, then let's make sure we place the responsiblity where it belongs.  This so-called tax increase already exists in current law, enacted by Republicans, so it is a Republican tax increase.

Once we agree on that fact, then we can discuss the wisdom of whether some or all of them should be extended.  But I find it incredible that the Republicans lacked the guts and/or the votes to pass a bill that was permanent and now expect the Democrats to take the blame for it.  Have you heard this reported in the media?  Where is the liberal bias when we need it?

Meanderings

Many of us wish that Obama had been more progressive rather than trying to find common ground with those who weren't negotiating in good faith, but nevertheless it was remarkable at what has been accomplished even through these tough times.  The health care bill could have been better but it's pretty good.  The financial reform bill could have been better, too, but if the financial services industry is whining about it and giving their money to the Republicans, then we can figure that there must be a lot good in it.  The stimulus package also should have been more aggressive--maybe double what it was--but there's no question that things are better because of it.  There's a good chance that the coming recovery will be credited to the Republicans, but that's okay as long as it's happening.

I am 62 years old so I am well accustomed to Americans voting against their own self interest.  Unlike the Republicans, though, I will not question the legitimacy of this election.  The people are entitled to vote for whom they wish.  The near Depression that began in 2008 was a culmination of a policy of under-regulation and the intentional redistribution of wealth from the bottom up.  That policy began in the Reagan era and was pursued and advanced to some extent by both parties ever since.  The standard of living of the average American has declined throughout that period.

One last point.  As bad as things are today, here are some facts that are seldom mentioned.

• When Clinton came into office the Dow was around 3250;  when he left it was around 10,500
• For George W. Bush the number were 10,500 when he started office, and around 8200 when he left.
• Obama started at 8200 and the market closed yesterday at around 11,100 (yup...that's up about 35%).

So what is business whining about?  Maybe it's about time for them to stop whining and step up and start hiring some workers.

Take Heart

Take heart, progressives!  We will be getting our butts kicked in the upcoming election and I don't want to minimize that, but it is useful to remember that all does not revolve around politics.  I guess that's what George Soros has decided, too, when he says he will be devoting his efforts and money to nonpolitical groups and bypassing the politicians.

But even in the political arena, things aren't always as they seem.  There have been times in the past when the Republicans have won the short-term tactical battle but the progressive agenda marches forward.  A couple instances come to mind, dating back to Nixon.

The conservatives controlled the China agenda for many years but Richard Nixon finally engaged China in a way that a progressive president wouldn't have been allowed to do.  So we progressives were labeled as weak on China, but the correct agenda was pursued anyway.  That trade-off is worth it.  If you want to be a progressive in this country, just get used to it.

The other example was on Vietnam.  In the 1972 election, McGovern was labeled as weak and naive, and Nixon had his plan to end the war.  McGovern was trounced.  But guess what?  Nixon pretty much did what McGovern said we should.  It was a tragedy that Nixon prolonged the war when we could have gotten to the same place years earlier, but we did end up there in any case.  So who was really naive?

Occasionally politics leads culture, but more often it is the culture that drags the politicians along (civil rights, Vietnam, etc.).  For example, the snapshot of politics today says that the American public is against the health care law.  But that snapshot also shows that most Americans are in favor of most of the specifics in the law.  So even if the Republican/Tea Party succeeds in toying with it for a while, something like it will have to happen because the current system is unsustainable, and the only things the Republicans put on the table (like tort reform) at best just nibble at the edges of the problem.

The same is true for a host of other issues.  The Republican/Tea Party message on the economy today is just a repackaging of the same song we've heard since the '80s, namely, that the only way the current version of capitalism can survive is for the bottom 90% of the economy to lower its standard of living even more.  (That's really the heart of Paul Ryan's plan.)  It's a bankrupt, zero-sum philosophy and it cannot survive, nor does it deserve to.

So although none of this is inevitable, I will try to say optimistic that we progressives are on the right side of history, and that the Republican/Tea Party can only delay what's right but not prevent it.

Tea (Republican) Party Glossary - Updated

• Socialist:  Anyone whose politics I don't agree with.
• Anti-American:  Anyone whose beliefs I don't agree with.
• Compromise:  One of the many bad things that those Anti-American Socialists do.
• Taxes:  Another bad thing forced on us by those Anti-American Socialists (you know...it's that money the federal government collects from the blue states and then sends to the red states).
• Terrorist:  Any US president with a Muslim-sounding name.
• Armed Insurrection:  Exercise of Second Amendment rights.
• Torture:  One of those things that's very bad unless we are the ones doing it.
• Freedom of Religion:  The freedom to impose my religion on others.
• Religious Persecution:  Not being allowed to impose my religion on others.
• Godless Liberal:  (see Socialist, Anti-American above).
• "Good" Christian:  One who has been declared so by Dr. James Dobson (apparently this includes that wonderful family man Newt Gingrich but not, say, John McCain).
• Bipartisanship:  Two part definition. (1) If Republicans control Congress:  voting with the Republicans. (2) If Democrats control Congress:  letting Republicans write the legislation.
• Self-Appointed Elites:  President and members of Congress elected by wide majorities with whom we do not agree.
•  Mainstream Media:  All the media except the ones I agree with.
• Tax and Spend:  What those Anti-American Socialists like to do.
• Spend and Spend:  The more preferable Republican modus operandi.
• Smackdown:  Training session for a Tea Party rally.
• Treason:  Criticizing Bush's foreign policy.
• Patriotism:  Criticizing Obama's foreign policy.

CLR and Politics - Part 4

The Christian Life Resources (CLR) website has an article (http://www.christianliferesources.com/?news/view.php&newsid=7739 read the full article) dated Oct. 22, referring to the healthcare lawsuits going through the courts.  The article has almost nothing to say about so-called life issues, but it does contain the following quote from one of the attorneys:

Richard Thompson, the president and chief counsel of the pro-life firm, said, "Obama Care is one of the most oppressive measures in the history of our Nation. And it was passed by Congress despite overwhelming opposition of the American people. It was not about reforming health care, but government seizure of unprecedented power over our lives. We will continue to challenge it in the courts.”

As I have said in previous posts, the CLR claims that it has no political agenda except to "inform" it's readers on pro-life issues, but this is just one more blatant example of using their website to promote a more generic political agenda.  Using terms like "Obama Care", "oppressive", and "seizure of power" are not pro-life phrases:  they represent a right-wing vocabulary that goes beyond CLR's stated mission.  This suggests that the CLR website is just another stop on the rightwing blogosphere merry-go-round.

Starting with the Facts

It can be difficult to discuss or argue over opinions when the one you are arguing with is starting with un-facts.  The list is a long one, but here are a few things that some on the Right believe to be true.  Some things can be repeated often enough that they become a sort of legends, or pseudo-truisms.

• Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attack (duh).
• Taxes have increased under Obama (taxes have been cut).
• Obama was president when Wall Street was bailed out (W was president).
• Reagan never raised taxes (yes he did!).
• Lowering taxes decreases deficits and creates jobs (we should be drowning in jobs if that were true).

Myths

I have always been puzzled by certain myths that have been around ever since I can remember.  The one that is most interesting to me is how the Post Office has become the whipping boy and symbol of government incompetence.  Whenever some new program is considered, the standard is something like, "Do you want it to be like the Post Office."  It's interesting to me because it's a statement someone can make without evidence.  It has become what I call a "pseudo-truism".  It is presented as a fact or foregone conclusion, and we are just supposed to accept it as some sort of proof that everything government runs is a mess and that privatization is the fix-all.

I guess I am an American heretic, because I just don't see it that way.  I am 62 years old and I can count on one hand the number of times a piece of mail has been lost or otherwise not delivered properly.  I'm sure others have experienced a worse record and have bad experiences.  But I can certainly say that in my life, the worst customer service issues I have dealt with were with private companies, not government entities.  In terms of service, technology, and courtesy, the Postal Service, Social Security Administration, DMV, and even the IRS compare pretty well to their private sector counterparts.  And the private sector never would have produced the interstate highway system or the space program.

CNBC's Class Warfare

I don't really watch CNBC much anymore, not since I have been getting Bloomberg on DirecTV.  CNBC has really become more about politics than business the past few years and Bloomberg actually does business reporting. CNBC has really turned into a shill for Wall Street and the financial industry.  I do like Fast Money, so I watch that sometimes;  and I watch their reporting now and then just to see what they are up to .

I was pretty amused last week when I caught part of a discussion about the problems the banks are having with improper court filings of foreclosures.  Those who were watching CNBC the past few years may have noticed like I have that they pursue their own version of class warfare.  When people were questioning the six-figure bonuses being paid by essentially insolvent financial firms, CNBC's general response was to cry "Class Warfare!!".  When altering mortgage terms was being discussed they were preaching about the sanctity of contracts and the law.  But when union contracts are voided by bankruptcy courts they think it's okay because, after all, most of the problems in the economy are caused by unions and workers.  So the sanctity of contracts only applies to certain people I guess.  (Sounds a lot like class warfare to me.)

In their discussion of the foreclosure issue they actually seemed to be implying that the banks are the victims here and that they had good reasons to be committing fraud.  Can you believe it?  (Silly question, I know.)  So here again, the necessity of following the law is selective.  Banks have laid off thousands of people since the recession.  Maybe if they hadn't they would have enough employees to do the work instead of committing fraud.  Then CNBC wouldn't have to tell us about the poor helpless banks.

CLR & Politics - Part 3

As I have written in the past, Christian Life Resources disavows any political preferences but any reasonable review of their website and publications shows otherwise.  Among the things CLR has done:

• It has used its publications to allow politicians like Michele Bachmann to promote their political views, much of which have little or nothing to do with the supposed mission of CLR.
• It encouraged defeat of the health care reform bill.
• CLR has used right-wing political figure Cal Thomas as keynote speaker at its conventions.
• I see that they have recently added a right-wing blogger as a guest speaker at their national convention in November.
• CLR has closely identified itself with the Right to Life Committee (as well as many other groups) which is openly and actively political. It endorses candidates, and works for and against specific pieces of legislation.  CLR website encourages its readers to use the Right to Life website as a basis for their political views and votes.
• CLR cites papers from unbiased groups like FactCheck.org when it serves to bolster its own political position but it remains silent when a FactCheck paper debunks a CLR political position.

Rules of Thumb

Here are some rules of thumb that I find useful.  I don't claim them to be absolute truths.  Rather, they are high on a probability scale.

• Just about anything you read in a chain email is not true.
• If a reporter or commentator on TV is trying to make you angry or scared, you should be very suspicious.
• If Larry Kudlow thinks something is a bad idea, then it's probably a good idea (and vice versa, of course).
• If you need to resort to a conspiracy theory to explain something, then it's probably not true.
• If there's a merger or acquisition, it's gonna be bad for your pocketbook.

Taking Things Seriously

More for the angry mob:

• I will take seriously your outrage over affirmative action when I see that you are equally outraged over racial profiling, housing discrimination, etc.
• It would be easier to take seriously your outrage over the current deficit and national debt if I had heard the same outrage when Bush was president.  (Thomas Friedman's column on Sept. 29 about the Tea Kettle movement has a good take on this.)
• I will take your outrage over health care reform seriously when you voluntarily give up your employer-sponsored or public employee health insurance and buy it instead on the open market (before the pre-existing condition prohibition kicks in).

List #1 - Books

Don't you hate all those arbitrary lists?  Like the 10 best places to retire; or the 10 safest cities; or the 10 desserts you must eat before you die?

Yeah well I hate them too, but Saturday is my day off so here is my first useless list of 10 to fill up space.

My ten favorite books of all time, in no particular order:

1. Slide, Danny , Slide (by Matt Christopher).  I have to include this one because it is the book I have probably read the most times in my life (like maybe 100 times between the ages of 8 and 10).  It's a book about Danny in Little League, and yes I still have the book.
2. Light in August (William Faulkner)
3. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
4. Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter)
5. The Shipping News (Annie Proulx)
6. The Accidental Century (Michael Harrington).  There are several of Harrington's books that I read in the 70s that are very special to me.  This is one of them.
7. The Liars Club (Mary Karr)
8. Atonement (Ian McEwan)
9. The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)
10. The Best and the Brightest (David Halberstam)

I'm sure I am giving more weight to more recent readings, but that's probably pretty normal.  These are the ones that popped out of my head today.  Maybe I'll do it again in a year or so and see what pops out then.

The Good Old Days

I lived my first nine or ten years in Milwaukee, in the 1950s. The Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 so I was caught up in baseball fever just like most boys my age.  I was a big Eddie Mathews fan and I have vague memories of Hank Aaron's rookie season in 1954.  One of my strongest memories, I think, was when I found out that Aaron had some difficulty buying a house in the suburb of Mequon because he was black.  It was probably the first instance in my life where reality was at odds with what I was being taught in school about America and its ideals.  I was utterly devastated, even at that age.

Sometime later in my grade school years, each of us in our class had to do some sort of report on a state in the US.  I did mine on Delaware.  I don't remember all the details, but in my research I discovered that interracial marriage was illegal in Delaware until the 1950s or 60s.  Another shock.  This wasn't even a state in the old Confederacy!

Several years later I was in the Army and we moved to the Washington, DC, area.  This was the early 1970s.  One of the jobs my wife had was as a computer programmer for a local retail business in downtown Washington.  One episode she related to me was when the credit manager used a mailing address (as a proxy for race) to decline a credit application, without looking at the actual application.

I bring up these memories because when folks on the right talk about "taking the country back", I am not impressed.  Take it to where?  They seem to be yearning for a return to an America that never was.  What happened to Hank Aaron occurred in the innocent and idyllic 1950s.  When people are wishing for the better values of the past, are these the values they're talking about?

A Puzzler

Here's a question for Glenn Beck and others.

Why is it that when a Progressive wants to make something better he's called an America hater, but when a Tea Partier does the same he's a called a patriot?

Tis a puzzler huh?

Buts...

I believe in freedom of religion but...

I believe in due process but...

I believe in freedom of speech but...

I believe in loving my enemies but...

I am opposed to torture but...

If we qualify our beliefs with "buts", do we really believe them?  If we claim to have firm beliefs but only practice them when it's easy or convenient, then what do we really believe?  Conservatives often accuse us godless liberals of moral relativism and situation ethics, but the qualified beliefs noted above are just as readily expressed by those morally superior conservatives as by us lesser types.

Invisible Hand?

Why does it seem that the most ardent advocates of the invisible hand (I refer to them as "Market Huggers") are also the loudest proponents of treating certain income more favorably than others?  Why should capital gains, dividends, "carried interest", etc., be given better tax treatment than ordinary income?  If money flows where the invisible hand directs it, then why does some activity need extra tax incentive?  The theory says that the risk/reward trade-offs will be compensated exactly as the market says they should, right?  Or don't you really believe in your theories?  It sure seems to me that saying certain behavior should be treated with this extra subsidy is an admission that the theory really doesn't work and that you really don't believe it.

CLR & Politics - Part 2

In the fourth quarter 2009 issue of Christian Life Resources' "Clearly Caring" magazine, they printed a disclaimer that they are not a "religious arm of the Republican Party".

It is good to see that they are at least thinking about the issue, but I think their claim is unsupportable.  They seem to go out of their way to say bad things about Democrats and go equally out of their way to avoid saying bad things about Republicans.  They point to their tepid criticism of Orrin Hatch to prove otherwise, but not much else.  For example, an August 5th story on their site referred to Elena Kagan with the epithet "pro-abortion activist".  Elena Kagan might be pro-choice, but describing her as an activist is inaccurate by any reasonable definition of the term.  Contrast this with, say, Dick Cheney.  If you do a search for his name on their website, the only stories that come up are very glowing in nature.  There's no mention of his support for gay marriage.  There is no "gay-marriage activist" epithet attached to him, only quasi-endorsements.  I think it's fair to say that Cheney and his family more closely fit the definition of "activist" in this regard than does Kagan.  My only point is that once you've decided to become political, you have--almost by definition--entered the arena of unfairness.  That's not a problem if it's a personal website or blog.  But CLR represents WELS and should not be engaging in politics or personal opinion.  They have chosen sides, even if they claim they have not.

A Brief Glossary of the Tea (= New Republican) Party

• Socialist:  Anyone whose politics I don't agree with.
• Anti-American:  Anyone whose beliefs I don't agree with.
• Compromise:  One of the many bad things that those Anti-American Socialists do.
• Taxes:  Another bad thing forced on us by those Anti-American Socialists (you know...it's that money the federal government collects from the blue states and then sends to the red states).
• Terrorist:  Any US president with a Muslim-sounding name.
• Armed Insurrection:  Exercise of Second Amendment rights.
• Torture:  One of those things that's very bad unless we are the ones doing it.
• Freedom of Religion:  The freedom to impose my religion on others.
• Religious Persecution:  Not being allowed to impose my religion on others.
• Godless Liberal:  (see Socialist, Anti-American above)
• "Good" Christian:  One who has been declared so by Dr. James Dobson (apparently this includes that wonderful family man Newt Gingrich but not, say, John McCain).
• Bipartisanship:  Two part definition. (1) If Republicans control Congress:  voting with the Republicans. (2) If Democrats control Congress:  letting Republicans write the legislation.
• Self-Appointed Elites:  President and members of Congress elected by wide majorities whom we do not agree with.

Got Anger?

So what am I supposed to make of the anger of the Tea Partiers?  They seem to wear it on their sleeves as some kind of badge of honor.  They certainly have the constitutional right to be as angry as they want, but I wonder what they expect me to believe?  Does being angry mean that they are more sincere in their beliefs than I am?  Does a willingness to be loud and obnoxious and rude prove that they are right?  Do people really believe that problems will be solved better in the heat of anger than in the coolness of reason?

Can't we disagree without being enemies?

How Do You Decide Which Stories or Columns Are Worth Your Time?

Do you have a hard time deciding which of the hundreds of stories and columns that are out there are worth reading?  I don't mean which do you agree with, but, rather, which to take seriously.  For example, although I don't always agree with David Brooks, I usually read his columns because they are thoughtful and respectful;  and, they do not insult the reader.

Half in fun but half in seriousness, I have developed a list of phrases for which--if I come across in a story or column--I stop reading immediately, because by their use the writer has forfeited all credibility.  Among them are the following:

1. The phrases "politically correct" or "politically incorrect".  Resorting to either of these to "prove" a point is simply lazy writing.  If you have a point to make, then make the point well, don't resort to something so ill-defined and nebulous, as if it ends the argument.

2. "Al Gore invented the internet".  This should require no comment.  If Jay Leno wants use it in a monologue, that's cool.  But if a writer wants to be taken seriously, then please....

3.  "Liberal bias".  Stop your whining already....

CLR & Politics

The Christian Life Resources website currently contains an editorial entitled "Political Candidates and Your Vote".  I have a couple of issues with this editorial.  First of all, it encourages readers to check out the websites of the National Right to Life Committee and its state affiliates to get "information" about various candidates.  Well, these websites not only have "information" but actually endorse candidates for office.  The Right to Life Committee does lobbying and therefore donations to it are not tax deductible as charitable donations. CLR, in the other hand, is a tax deductible charity, so this smacks of being a backhanded way of endorsing candidates for political office.

The editorial also contains the sentences: "We at Christian Life Resources find it difficult to imagine voting for a candidate that not only accepts abortion on demand but actively votes and acts for its continued practice. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the contrary view that candidate positions on other issues also can be considered 'life issues.'"  If the second sentence is true, then why is the first sentence necessary?  If the "contrary view" is equally valid, then what purpose is there for the first?  Is it the personal opinion of someone at CLR?  If so then why is CLR using its website to promote a personal opinion?  I suspect, though, that CLR does not regard it as equally valid (but then we have to wonder what "acknowledge" means).  I suspect that they think their position is more Christian than the contrary view.

September 14, 2010

First post ever....
As you can see from the title, I am one of those rare birds among members of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS):  a left winger.  In addition to observations and opinions of a political nature (as they randomly occur to me), I decided to create this blog to vent about two things:  (1) the WELS-affiliated organization called Christian Life Resources (CLR) and (2) the so-called Christian Right in general.  Whether anyone ever sees any of this remains to be seen, but I thought it might actually be possible that there are other WELS members who share my opinions and concerns and this might let others know that they are not alone.

Specifically, CLR--at least its website--has become inappropriately political.  Future posts will go into this in more depth.

The Christian Right (with which CLR has also become closely aligned) has appropriated the word "Christian" and by implication tries to invalidate the Christianity of people like me.  One "proves" one's Christianity by one's political beliefs.  This turns Christian (or at least Lutheran) belief on its head.  More on this later, too.