More MP3 Recommendations

• "How A Christian Worldview Produced Science" - This presentation by John Mark Reynolds (professor of Philosphy at Biola; PhD in Greek philosophy) at the 2009 Norton Lectures at SBTS does a nice job of describing why Homeric, Platonic, and Aristotelian philosophy could not produce science, and why Christianity is the only worldview that provides the necessary assumptions for science.  I had never heard this explanation of why Paul's statement on Mars Hill about them being "very religious" was so scandalous.  This clearly explains why Christianity is fundamentally different from Greek philosophy (and sheds some light on why it's silly to equate common sense reason with Greek philosophy). Highly recommended; warning: some of the philosophy by quickly & Reynolds likes to run down rabbit trails occasionally. All 3 lectures are excellent if you're academically inclined.
• Marvin Olasky presented at the 2009 Norton Lectures at SBTS.  The first two are not bad; the first is an application of the Elder Brother / Younger Brother mindset to today's culture. The second discusses understandings of "social justice."  I might tweak the theology in places, but Olasky is a subject matter expert on governmental efforts to take care of the poor.  I'm not so sure about his emphasis on the linking of righteousness & justice in the OT ... but I see his point and think it has merit.
• "The (too?) Young, (too) Restless, (too) Reformed" - an interesting interview on The Christian Worldview radio show about a movement I was largely unaware of.  Well worth reading / listening to if you follow movements like the Emergent/Emerging Church.  BTW, this is not the first time I've seen someone state recently that, just like the megachurch movement, the emergent/emerging church movement is fading.  Maybe the Internet is shortening the lifecycle of these kinds of movements.
• "N.T. Wright and the Doctrine of Justification" - a SBTS panel discussing what I think is one of the more subtle controversies these days, the "New Perspective on Paul."  N.T. Wright is very orthodox in many areas, but in this area is considered a bit heterodox since the New Perspective tends to undermine the understanding that Christ (a) atoned for our sins (b) by suffering the penalty of death on the cross (c) in our place, but asserting that justification depends in part on works instead of wholly on Christ's sacrifice. Anyway, that's what I got out of it.  I get the impression that Wright perhaps puts more emphasis on the restoration of the created order in this life (vs. eternal life or hell) than Christ did.

Teachers Overpaid?

AEI has just published a study that asserts that teacher pay is 50% above the market rate.

To their credit, they do note that in certain areas (eg, math, chemistry) this level may be fair (or even below market).

I'm a little skeptical of the methodology, which uses "cognitive ability" as a scale for determining relative value.  The left is more commonly associated with metric-driven "fair wage" computations than the right.  If there's an algorithm for a fair wage, then the government can set and enforce wage levels.

The problem with determining a market wage for teachers is that there's not really a free market for their services in this country.  Most K-12 teachers are employed by the government, and graduate/post-graduate education is fundamentally distorted by government funding.

Regardless, it's an interesting read.

Nothing Replaces Persistence

More reality-mugging ... some excellent discussions of understandings that used to be considered essential to American identity:

• "Creativity Is The Enemy" - This interactive graphic accompanying a WSJ article is a picture of "Ten Bullets" that nicely capture some of the structure and discipline required in any work group. I don't necessarily agree with every detail, but this is required reading for any young person.  And, the "Ten Bullets" video isn't bad, either.  Welcome to the real world.
• "Why Do Some People Learn Faster?" - new study showing that academic accomplishment is increased by praising effort and inhibited by praising ability.  More evidence of the pervasive and deep damage caused by the narcissistic self-esteem movement that gained widespread acceptance in the 60's.  And, more evidence of the fraying of the progressive paradigm.  For more, see Freud , John Dewey, the birth of modern progressivism, and the shift from Christian skepticism about fallen humanity to secular optimism about human perfectability.
•  "Can Everyone Be Smart At Everything?" - Identity as a learning disability ... somehow I don't think this will diminish our culture of narcissism, identity politics, self-esteem, and other navel-gazing tendencies to worship the "god within."
• Re-engineered by Google - an intriguing anecdote by a father and employer who is taken aback by the pervasive channeling of Google by his daughter and employees.

Did Govt Cause the 2008 Bubble-Crash?

Interesting article on the recent mortgage debacle in Investors Business Daily. 

Bottom line: In 1994 the Clinton administration told lenders that they would aggressively pursue them as engaging in discrimination if they rejected minority loan applications in greater proportion than whites.  As a result, lenders abandoned traditional risk assessment and management processes.  And, Freddie & Fannie provided de facto government backing for the tsunami of bad loans that ensued.

Unfortunately, the lenders did not have the integrity to stand up to this pressure.  Instead, they lied to the borrowers by telling them they were qualified to buy something they couldn't afford, and they lied to the markets by telling them the loans were solid.

And, the sudden deluge of govt-backed money caused a bubble in the housing market that left even many credit-worthy borrowers under water in the wake of its bursting.

And the Obama administration is growing even more aggressive in pursuing this policy ... but I'm not sure the markets will get fooled again.

Govt as God - Updates

There's a lot of frustration out there about the demise of Government as God.  A few articles that caught my eye recently:

•  Qaddafi as God - this NYT article is a good summary of his rule.  Although the following quote is characteristically arrogant, I can't help but wonder how many people in our government feel basically the same way about it:
  "I am a glory that Libya cannot forgo and the Libyan people cannot forgo, nor the Arab nation, nor the Islamic nation, nor Africa, nor Latin America, nor all the nations that desire freedom and human dignity and resist tyranny!" Colonel Qaddafi shouted in February.  "Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution!"
• Once Upon A Time In America - I don't always agree with Peggy Noonan, but she has a sharp eye and a sharp pen.  Her critique of Narrative-focused politics in this column is especially sharp ... though I would have liked it better if she had tied Narrative to Identity.  Regardless, this "reality-mugging" quote is dead on, even for folks like me who are perhaps overly sensitive to the limits of pragmatism:
  "Here's the problem: There is no story.  At the end of the day, there is only reality.  Things work or they don't.  When they work, people notice, and say it."
• Scorn for Vote Grows - an interesting NYT article on the growing disillusionment with Government as God around the world. I keep looking for an emerging awareness that the only solution is decentralized & deformalized power & responsibility ... not seeing it yet.
• Robert Gates Speech - a typical analysis expressing frustration that highly centralized and pervasive power has become polarized and divisive.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this sort of thing ... it's much closer to history repeating itself than to history rhyming ... this aspect of power is fundamental and unchanging.  If you want to localize divisiveness and gridlock, then you have to localize/decentralize power.

Cannibals, Dominionism, and Mt. Carmel

Those who uphold traditional Christian truth claims and values are increasingly seen as dangerous if not downright evil by the secular mainstream culture. 

The threat: Christians are impeding the imposition of a secular theocracy.

A recent New Yorker article on Michele Bachmann is an interesting example.  In it, the author asserts that Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey ("Total Truth")  promote Dominionism (the belief that only Christians should control civil government and should conduct it in accordance with Biblical law).

This is a version of the common charge that anyone who expresses a religious belief into the public square is imposing a theocracy.  The comparison is secular ("good") vs. religious ("bad").  Conflating Christianity (which invented the separation of church and state) with, say Islam (which dictates the unity of church and state), is trivially absurd, but that's the charge.  Nancy Pearcey has two thoughtful replies (here and here) that are well worth reading.

It reminds me of the way early Christians were accused of being cannibals because they celebrated Christ's death & resurrection by taking the Lord's Supper.

Our reputation isn't quite that bad yet, but there's a growing aggressiveness in secular progressives: fundamentalist atheists like Dawkins attack anyone who doesn't toe the Darwinist line, militants among the gender-confused call those who refuse to celebrate their confusion "hateful" and "homophobic",  and anyone who defends private property rights is selfish, uncaring, a plutocrat, and certainly no follower of Jesus. 

Is 20th century progressivism shifting from derision to violence in its pursuit of  those they think are impeding the project?  As it continues to crack up after 40+ years of concentrated effort by the best and brightest and an incomprehensible expenditure of federal dollars and power, the growing desperation of these attacks reminds me of the prophets of Baal cutting themselves on Mount Carmel to wake up their god. 

Miscellaneous Geopolitics

Here are some recent articles I thought were interesting.

• Geopolitics of the US - a nice diagram showing some of the natural resource advantages the US has.  Stratfor tends to under-emphasize the effect of worldview in their historical analyses, but they're still worth reading if you're interested in this sort of thing
• Clausewitz and World War IV - this Armed Forces Journal article is a nice summary of why there's been so much emphasis recently on social science in the defense domain. The assertion is that WWI was the Chemist's War (key knowledge was chemical engineering), WWII was the Physicist's War (radar, atomic bomb), WWIII (Cold War) was the Information Researcher's War (intelligence knowledge was key), and WWIV will be the Social Scientist's War.  Reminds me of the old cliche about scientists getting to the top of the mountain and finding the theologians there ... only the Gospel will remove the threat of Islam.  I just don't think a stable synthesis of modernism & Islam is possible; I hope I'm wrong.

Current Situation - Pros & Cons

I don't think we'll see much of a swing back toward traditional American values in the near future, so I don't think that Government's increasing involvement in every aspect of daily life will slow much.  However, this article from American Thinker is not a bad summary of why things are unlikely to get better.  Here's my short list of the key positive & negative drivers:

Positives

• Discredited/abandoned Judeo-Christian framework still has significant influence & intertia
• Economy is relatively free
• Property rights remain relatively secure (though this could drop quickly)
• Demographics are better than rest of developed world (more young people)
• Social & physical capital/resources remain the envy of the rest of the world

Negatives

• Rapidly aging population (public & private retirement promises will be modified)
• Degenerating social capital - the 60's embrace of radical individualism & egalitarianism has virtually destroyed large swaths of local informal social ecosystems that used to encourage individuals to build and maintain a healthy identity & role within those ecosystems (family, church, community).
• Degenerating knowledge capital - the effect that social capital loss has had on education is understood best by teachers in the classroom.  However, the increasing power of public sector unions and increased government funding & regulation of education have also contributed to a growing divide between the educational "haves" (eg, those in (some) AP/IB programs) & "have nots" (eg, those who are just cranked through the school to get money from the state).
• Degenerating knowledge/social capital - the loss of any sense of telos/purpose beyond "survival of the fittest/happiest" & of any truth beyond "whatever works" has meant that our "wisdom literature" is seen as irrelevant at best.  At the core of Western social capital is the Bible, and, in the USA, the Declaration/Constitution.  All are increasingly seen as fundamentally discredited.
• Increasing gap between "haves" & "have nots" - degenerating social/knowledge capital is widening the gap between those who maintain/create social/knowledge capital and those who undermine/destroy it.  Regardless of the cause, this kind of disparity tends to be destabilizing at some point.
• Increasing economic & social control by government at all levels
• A worldwide level of private & public debt that is too large to be fully repaid.  And this does not include promises (eg, pensions, social security) that are not debt but are seen as inviolable.  It's inevitable that the unwinding of this debt will create significant dislocations over at least a decade.