I’m told that once Albert Einstein was invited to a reception where he was asked to give a speech. He stood up and said “Ladies and gentlement, I’m sorry, but I have nothing to say.” He sat down, and then got back up and announced “If I think of something to say, I will come back and say it.” Some time later, he did in fact return to give a speech.
I have nothing to say right now. But if I think of something to say, I’ll come back and say it.
One of the most recent homeschoolers in the country is none other than … Senator Rick Santorum.
Huh.
From http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138621,00.html
A man set himself afire Monday just outside a White House gate and repeatedly yelled “Allah Allah” after Secret Service (search) officers put out the flames and one held him facedown on the sidewalk.
I’m told the AP originally headlined this story “Bush burning Muslims alive at White House”. Just kidding. It was actually Dan Rather who wrote the headline.
In other news, Drudge reports that “FDA issues warning about RU486“. No information yet on whether this will be “Warning: This product kill babies.”
ABCNews is reporting that Condoleezza Rice will be nominated to the post of secretary of state. But there is a catch. She’s insisting that she be called an “Administrative assistant” instead of “Secretary”.
Tony Blair says Europe should work with Bush, not mock him. Saddam Hussein says, in retrospect, that would be a wise approach. But Jacques Chirac says his underground bunker is much better than the “spider hole” Saddam used.
The first part of my Intro to Theology class is a study of Theology Proper, what the Bible says about God. My theology class would be better entitled “Intro to _Calvinistic_ Theology” because I deliberately teach it that way. So when I teach about God, I largely emphasize His glory and majesty and sovereignty. It’s kind of a response to the “God as a Grinning Grandpa” folk theology we have. Even when I discussed the love of God for us, I emphasized that it was not some kind of ooey-gooey emotionalism, but was demonstrated by Christ’s death.
Yesterday we turned to discussing what the Bible says about mankind. Philosophy basically turns around the questions “Who am I? What am I here for? Where am I going?” and I set out to answer some of those questions from the Bible.
My first point was that God did not _need_ to create us, but chose to create us for His own glory. Coincidentally, the sermon that morning was about the angelic conflict and how our devotion to God brings Him glory in the presence of the angels (Ephesians 3:10-11). We are, so to speak, “Exhibit A” in God’s response to Satan. Satan, of all the angels, saw God’s face most clearly, and even in light of that, he chose to rebel. We have not seen God’s face, yet we love and serve Him willingly (although imperfectly), showing God to be worthy of honor, praise, worship, love, and reverence, and showing the thorough wickedness of Satan’s rebellion.
So in my class I talked about the ways we bring glory to God. I discussed how Romans 9 says God is glorified in punishing the reprobate and saving the elect. I mentioned how letting our light shine causes men to glorify our Father in heaven. I discussed Jesus’s prayer in John 17 where He asserted that His obedient life and death glorified Him and the Father.
Those are all very true. They are very grand, majestic, dignified, and reserved. Very becoming of a Calvinist like me.
It’s true that all of creation exists to glorify God, and that His love for us is best understood in terms of the atonement. It’s true, as I’ve written elsewhere, that God should be worshipped and obeyed simply because He is God.
But in my efforts to exalt God I should be careful not to distort the image He has revealed to us. I cannot over-emphasize some points to the neglect of others.
There is a wonderful verse in one of those books of the Bible that we generally skip over. I prefer the NAS translation here.
“The LORD your God is in your midst,
A victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy,
He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.
Zephaniah 3:17 (NAS)
This is such a stirring image. The King does not _only_ sit lofty and exalted on His throne. In this picture, He came down off the throne and went to battle. The rest of the passage makes it clear that He was fighting for our redemption. He won. Now the warrior has come to claim the bride He just fought for and redeemed. I picture a victorious knight, bruised and bloody, taking His lady in His arms. And He is just _speechless_ with love. The king of heaven is left speechless by His love for us. And then He finds His voice and rejoices over us with shouts of joy.
This is the God of the Bible. This is no grinning grandpa sitting in a rocking chair on the back porch watching his kiddos playing. My picture is not on God’s refrigerator. That’s such a shallow, anemic, effeminate view of God. Our God is a warrior king, who is passionate in His love for His elect and willing to fight to the death.
Democratic Party must be ‘born again,’ Carville says
“The underlying problem here is, there is no call to arms that the Democratic Party is making to the country,” said Mr. Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign win. “We’ve got to reassess ourselves. We’ve got to be born again.”
This is encouraging. It’s not the shrill “Half of America is stupid or evil; time to flee the country!” response, nor the “Karl Rove tricked voters about Kerry’s stances” excuse, nor the “It’s all leftover support from 9/11 and the WoT” excuse. It’s responsible, introspective, and constructive. Carville recognizes that the problem lies with the Democratic _message_, not the candidates, the current geopolitical issues, or the delivery of that message. The Democrats missed it. The message is not what it ought to be.
Bob Shrum goes on to say, in the same article
“Some of the stuff I read is not going to happen,” Mr. Shrum said. “The Democratic Party is not going to be better at competing with the Republican Party at being anti-gay. And frankly, I wouldn’t be in that party. I would leave that party.”
That’s disappointing, but at least the men mentioned in this article understand the need for reform. You won’t get back in power by being “Anybody But Bush”, nor by alienating over half the voters by calling them stupid, nor by embracing a seemingly unrelated set of sometimes extreme positions.
I’m disappointed with some of the leftists today. For example, Andrew Tanenbaum, who ran the popular electoral-vote.com website, writes the following:
One thing that is very strange is how much the exit polls differed from the final results, especially in Ohio. Remember that Ohio uses Diebold voting machines in many areas. These machines have no paper trail. Early in the campaign, Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. He later regretted having said that.
Oh, come on. The exit polls were just wrong. They are statistically flawed. But no, that couldn’t be it. Bush cheated!
And then he writes
Again, if you are a senior majoring in computer science and are seriously thinking of leaving the country due to the election results, you might be interested in my international English-language Masters program in parallel and distributed computer systems.
This should put to rest any doubts about the objectivity of Dr. Tanenbaum.
We didn’t just elect a totalitarian dictator. This isn’t Hitler or Stalin. Democracy is still safe. Jack booted thugs are not about to kick in the doors of dissenters. Calm down. It’s silly to think of leaving the country because Bush won.
Looks like Kerry will concede in an hour or so. It’s encouraging that he is not pursuing a long legal battle. I know the provisional ballots in Ohio will be counted, but there’s no real statistical chance that it will go for Kerry.
I’ve emailed some liberal friends and relatives asking their opinion of what happened. IMHO, the War on Terror does _not_ explain it. Polls showed voters pretty evenly split on whether Bush or Kerry would do a better job with Iraq or the broader War on Terror. Further, it certainly doesn’t explain the GOP pick-ups in Congress.
Michael Moore approvingly wrote the other day that the Democrats had abandoned the conservatives within the party. I agree with him. I believe this is what went wrong (from a Dem POV). People have to choose between morals and money, and they chose morals. This is supported by the large number of state constitutions that were amended last night to protect the traditional definition of marriage. I think the Democrats are too beholden to shrill leftists when it comes to certain issues.
I believe the Democrats can, and must, go more populist. And that means socially conservative and economically moderate. Here’s a winning (not
necessarily moral or correct!) platform:
* Allow *states* to restrict, but not completely forbid, abortion. Maybe 1st trimester + health of the mother. Nobody likes abortion. Many are not as extremely pro-life as I am, and I think this would satisfy them. Pro-lifers would be happy with this huge step, and would calm way down. A 1st trimester abortion is not as politically and emotionally charged as partial-birth abortion.
* Oppose all homosexual marriage or civil unions. We all think gays are icky. Or perhaps take a strong position that no state is compelled to accept another state’s definition of marriage or “civil unions,” because that’s everyone’s fear.
* Aggressively pursue the War on Terror, but cut back on this nation building, democracy spreading stuff. Many Americans, I think, have a strong isolationist bent, and would prefer to just stay out of everything we can.
* Skepticism and contempt for the UN, but a commitment to work with it as much as possible. We conservatives despise the UN, and I think even moderates and many liberals don’t particularly like it. But nobody can argue with a commitment to give it a good faith effort.
* Maintain a strong military. It would be tough to win on a platform that wanted to “weaken” our national defense.
* Raise taxes a fair amount on the rich, and maybe just a little bit on the poor. You can feed off the class warfare and the perception that the poor are getting a free ride. I think there’s a lot of resentment among conservatives about the “welfare state”.
* Economic protectionism. It may make sense in an invisible hand sort of way, but free trade and outsourcing are scary.
* A few more socialistic style programs, particularly when it comes to the elderly, and health coverage for all.
* Pro guns. There is a certain large segment of voters, including me, who would not vote for an anti-gun candidate.
* Pro school vouchers. This is such an easy one. And it’s easy to defeat the “you are robbing money from public schools!” argument. Make the vouchers only 80% of the actual money spent on the student. Then each student that leaves public school is actually a financial boost for the public school system, because they get 20% of the money, and don’t have to attempt to educate that student.
* Reform public schools, plus give them lots of money. “Reform” is a fairly meaningless platitude, and the attempt will fail miserably, but it’s popular and feels good to say.
* Environmental protection. Not to the “internal combustion engines will kill us all” Al-Gore extreme, but still, pretty strong.
* You’d need a fairly religious Christian candidate, too. Or at least one that would resist any attempt to get rid of “under God” or “In God We Trust”. It would help if he was pro 10 Commandment displays, too. If he was in favor of school vouchers, it would totally defuse the prayer in school thing too.
Nobody could stop that candidate. He would effectively isolate and marginalize the real social leftists, appease the moderate socialists, villify the economic conservatives, and isolate the hawkish neocons. I believe the Democrats could more easily adopt this platform than the Republicans could, and I also believe the Democrats must reform in this manner, and very quickly, or they will not survive as a viable national party.
Jeff Jarvis has a post-election peace pledge.
I’m not sure what he means by “support the President, even if I didn’t vote for him”. I think he means that we will be decent and evaluate his policies and positions, without degenerating into the “Bush = Hitler” type hysteria we see on the left.
If Kerry is elected, I will abide by what Scripture says we ought to do. I will submit to and obey him (with the usual disclaimer about not following him into sin). I will support him when he is right, and oppose him when he is wrong. I will be respectful of him as far as I am able. I will not call him names or be hateful about him. And I will do what I think is appropriate to see the most godly man elected in 2008.
The Observer | UK News | Teenage girls just want to marry and stay home
Their grandmothers fought for the vote, their mothers battled to have it all, but the upcoming generation of girls have decided to turn the clock back and just want stay at home with their babies.
According to a survey of 5,000-plus teenage girls, their main ambition is to complete university then return to the homestead
This is tremendous news! We came, we saw, we turned around and went back home.
But it hacks me off that this is termed as “turning back the clock”. It’s part of the whole idea that progress is inherently good. It ain’t.
More than nine out of 10 of the girls believe it should be up to their husbands to provide for them, with 97 per cent disagreeing with the statement ‘It doesn’t matter who is the main earner, as long as we are happy.’
More than 90 per cent of those polled for CosmoGirl magazine’s November issue believe it is the man’s role to provide the household’s money, with 85 per cent maintaining they would rather rely on their partner for financial support than be a successful, independent woman.
Ninety percent!!! Wow. That is unbelievably good news.
The problem is that we so easily fall into the idea that it simply takes two incomes. Or people plan “eventually” for the wife to stay home. And the years drag on and on…
But the pendulum is clearly swinging back. This is such positive news. I just wonder what British _boys_ think.
I don’t know why it’s so fashionable within the church to criticize Christians who are leery of Halloween. I know a guy who was concerned about our church’s plans for a fall festival because he wanted to make sure that we weren’t implying that Halloween was somehow wrong. I’ve also seen Christian blogs “taunting” those who are not cool with Halloween.
The basic argument is that, regardless it’s origins, Halloween today is in no way pagan or evil. Maybe, just _maybe_ there’s something undesirable about all the disgusting and scary costumes, but there’s absolutely no underlying devil worship or paganism. So the argument goes.
Now I’ll grant that virtually nobody who is all dressed up - even in a scary costume - is _actually_ worshipping Satan or any such thing. But what _are_ they doing?
Could there ever be a celebration that had such roots that Christians just should not celebrate it?
What if one day Germans began a celebration on November 9 that included children “harmlessly” breaking small panes of glass? But you know, it was a fun community thing that included lots of candy. Would it be OK?
Or what if there was a fun community thing that commemorated Baal worship? Involving carving little idols and setting up little Asherah poles. Just harmless fun, right? You could even pass out small cakes and pour a little drink on the ground.
Hopefully we would agree that Christians would have no business celebrating Kristallnacht or Baal worship. Hopefully. Even if it had become so far removed from the original _practice_ that it was not actually a pogrom or idol worship, we would recognize that what it was celebrating was still evil.
I was told that “Nobody connects Halloween to Satan.” If Halloween is not at some level a celebration of evil, can someone please explain just why it is that people dress up as killers, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and so forth? Why did so many TV channels have horror movie marathons? What is the point of a haunted house?
It’s just ridiculous to assert that Halloween is not connected to evil.
Considering all that, why did I dress my older two boys up like knights and take them through our neighborhood?
As far as my boys are concerned, Halloween is all about costumes and candy. Halloween is such a strange thing. Everyone dresses up their kids and take them around to request candy from strangers, and we give them candy. Such an odd thing. On that level, there is no significance beyond getting to dress up, and getting candy. And while a lot of people do (innocently) use horror and images of evil to mark Halloween, plenty of people don’t. There are plenty of non-scary costumes - maybe even the majority last night - and even many of the witches and ghosts and skeletons are strictly comic. So I don’t actually see any harm in it.
I do think this could be a slippery slope. I can imagine some Jewish family a few thousand years ago saying “No, we’re only going to the grove to visit with friends and neighbors and get some of those yummy cakes. _We_ aren’t going to worship Baal.” The difference is that Halloween is neither inherently evil nor primarily a commemoration of ancient pagan practices. If 70% of Halloween was scary and evil, that would be one thing. But if last night in my neighborhood is a representative sample, probably 70% of the houses and costumes were perfectly innocent. There were only two or three houses where they were actually being scary - and at one, the two year old girl running around hissing with the rubber snake really ruined the effect!
I understand the reservations many Christians have about Halloween. To some extent, I share those reservations. I don’t reach the same conclusions, but I do not think they are wrong to be concerned.