jeffreymark

TIM RUSSERT III

I'm a week late on this one, perhaps because of my recent disappointments with Peggy Noonan's Bush bashing. Yet, last week she gave a moving tribute to Tim Russert, connecting us with his eternal soul that encompassed the truth born in all our hearts.

The beautiful thing about the coverage was that it offered extremely important information to those age 15 or 25 or 30 who may not have been told how to operate in the world beyond "Go succeed." I'm not sure we tell the young as much as we ought, as clearly as we ought, what it is the world admires, and what it is they want to emulate.

In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich." We say, if we can, "The thing about Joe was he took care of people."

The young are told, "Be true to yourself." But so many of them have no idea, really, what that means. If they don't know who they are, what are they being true to? They're told, "The key is to hold firm to your ideals." But what if no one bothered, really, to teach them ideals?

After Tim's death, the entire television media for four days told you the keys to a life well lived, the things you actually need to live life well, and without which it won't be good. Among them: taking care of those you love and letting them know they're loved, which involves self-sacrifice; holding firm to God, to your religious faith, no matter how high you rise or low you fall. This involves guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond. Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to master the ethics of your field. And enjoying life. This can be hard in America, where sometimes people are rather grim in their determination to get and to have. "Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," said Ronald Reagan.

Tim had these virtues. They were great to see. By defining them and celebrating them the past few days, the media encouraged them. This was a public service, and also what you might call Tim's parting gift.

When looking at Russert's life we see the truth Noonan speaks of and we must ask ourselves, "Why can't we, like Russert live this more virtuous, higher kind of life? Why must we call attention to it, crave it, when someone dies only to remain as we were?" Perhaps, as Noonan suggests, Russert's life may serve to remind us that our deepest longings for a joyful life can indeed be realized when we submit to the One who offers us a higher kind of life.
Continue reading Noonan here.

POLITICAL CRYSTAL BALL?

Could spring's special elections serve as a political crystal ball? The W$J's Rhodes Cook thinks perhaps this particular season may part company with a history that often answered the million $ question with a resounding "no!"

From early March to mid-May, Democrats won three special House elections in formerly Republican districts, the largest net gain by any party between general elections since the 1970s. Yet it was not just the number of seats the GOP lost in such short order, but where they lost them that has left pundits and politicians alike wondering what might come next.

To be sure, special elections are not always a good harbinger of what lies ahead. In early 2004, the Democrats picked up a pair of previously Republican House seats in Kentucky and South Dakota. But that fall, the GOP handily fended off Democratic efforts to capture either house of Congress.

This year’s special elections, however, may be more prescient. Two seats that shifted from the Republicans to the Democrats were in the Deep South (Louisiana and Mississippi), a region the GOP has owned of late. The other, outside Chicago, included the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan (Dixon, Ill.) and the base of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The three districts were typical pieces of the Republican base and supported the re-election of President George W. Bush in 2004 by margins ranging from 11 to 25 percentage points.

A Spike in Optimism

But the backdrop of this year’s election is quite different from 2004. With their recent special election victories, Democratic optimism for the fall spiked from an already high level. The president’s approval rating, outside the Republican Party, is spectacularly low. The GOP has far more open House seats to defend than the Democrats, as well as far more Senate seats. Democrats, for a change, are flush with cash, which they used to good effect in the special elections. And Republican efforts to link Democratic House candidates in these races to Sen. Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed to pull out a victory anywhere.

At first glance, this year bears a resemblance to the Watergate election of 1974, which culminated with a Democratic gain of close to 50 House seats. According to Vital Statistics on Congress, the Democrats had a net gain of four House seats that cycle by special elections. Most of the inroads were in the Republican heartland at the time, the Midwest and the Northeast. John P. Murtha was one of the Democratic victors, winning the western Pennsylvania House seat that he holds to this day. But probably the most significant Democratic triumph occurred in Michigan, where Democrats captured the Grand Rapids-based seat vacated by Gerald Ford, who had left Congress in 1973 to become Richard Nixon’s vice president.

Democrats, by comparison, have won not only Mr. Hastert’s district this time, but also the two Deep South districts where the African-American population (according to the 2000 census) is 25% to 35%. That racial composition used to supply the Democrats with many of their Southern House seats before the Republican wipe-out of 1994 turned this type of district from Democratic to Republican.

THE DEATH OF EVANGELICALISM IS GREATLY EXAGGERATED

Lately a wave of prophets enthusiastically predicting the demise of evangelicalism have received ample attention from the media. Most notable of late, emerges from the pen of self acclaimed former Baptist Christine Whicker. Her new book entitled The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church currently ranks 61,000 at Amazon. Publishers Weekly offers this piquant critique of the work:

Religion reporter Wicker (formerly of the Dallas Morning News and author of Lily Dale) proffers a tendentious, confused book about the alleged demise of conservative evangelicalism.She makes a few lucid points, as when she deftly takes apart the many competing statistics about how many Americans are evangelical. But, overall the book has a shrill feel, thanks to the regular use of terms like threat and death knell.Some of the chapters, which seem like filler, are journalistic accounts of aspects of evangelical life—e.g., a portrait of a grieving widow who says she wouldn't give up Jesus to have her husband back—and are not closely related to the overarching argument.Wicker argues that some of the threats to evangelicalism come from evangelical institutions themselves.For example, she asserts that megachurches carry a lot of debt—a fascinating claim that should be bolstered by more rigorous research and source citation. However, merely establishing that megachurches are vulnerable because they cater to the tastes of boomers and depend on the personality of their leaders doesn't tell us that evangelicalism is dying; it just suggests that evangelicalism, ever protean, will once again change.

Since I have not read the book I cannot make an assessment of Ms. Whicker's arguments. I surmise, however, from her recent Dallas Morning News op. ed. piece that her tone renders her reason suspect. Gleefully rubbing hands together she reveals her prejudice with this sardonic epiphany:

Evangelical faith has been dropping since 1900, when 42 percent of the U.S. claimed that distinction. Every year, Religious Right evangelicals, such as those who lead the Southern Baptists, are a smaller proportion of the country. Every year, their core values are violated more flagrantly by the media, scientific discovery and mainstream behavior. Every election, politicians promise to serve them and then don't because evangelicals lack the power to make them.

What all this means is that we were duped. All the hype proclaiming an evangelical resurgence was merely that – hype, a furious shout from a faith losing its grip, manipulation by a relatively small group of dedicated, focused, political power-seekers. [bold mine]

Ms. Whicker parrots an observation New York Times journalist David Kirkpatrick made last year in an article entitled The Evangelical Crackup Today William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion & Public Life at the James Madison Program, Department of Politics, Princeton University, J. Daryl Charles, posted an insightful response to David Kirkpatrick. Pointing to factual errors in Kirkpatrick's assumptions Mr. Charles suggests:

Kirkpatrick’s definitive claim of a leftward drift of many evangelicals is anchored in his mistaken assumption that only very recently have they developed an interest in a wider array of social issues. In addition, Kirkpatrick points to encouraging signs that the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is rethinking its relationship to the Republican party. And, of course, Republicans’ “fury” at the war in Iraq is said to be confirmed by the alleged precipitous decline in the president’s approval rating among white evangelicals.

Charles continues by elaborating on Kirkpatrick's glee in discovering a leftward bent in mega church pastors Bill Hybels and perhaps Rick Warren. Both claim to be a-political, but Hybels courts leftist laughingstocks Clinton and Carter. Warren posts his own plan among many, for political peace appropriately called PEACE. The plan calls for addressing the issue of Giant corrupt leadership through servant leadership. One wonders if he may seek a political solution through the smokescreen of faith. Charles reveals the fatal flaw in Kirkpatrick's reasoning with this assessment and concludes with a lesson for evangelicals:

Conspicuously absent from Kirkpatrick’s reporting, a genre that rests on the perpetuation of false or exaggerated stereotypes, are several inconvenient facts. First, it ignores the remarkable—and seldom reported—diversity among evangelicals on matters social and political. Those of us who teach at the university level cannot help but be impressed by the current generation of young evangelicals, who possess a remarkably sensitized social conscience that is far more diversified and progressive than evangelicals of a previous generation. This development, it needs reiteration, has been measurable since the 1980s and is both heartening and to be encouraged. To describe this as a “recent” phenomenon or a “desertion” of traditional priorities or a major leftward political shift, as Kirkpatrick does, is pure fiction. Kirkpatrick need only consult a recent Pew study that reports “a small increase in the number of Democrats” that is coupled with an increase in the number of “independents and politically unaffiliated Americans.”

Correlatively, Kirkpatrick propounds a view of evangelicals that is patently false when he writes: “The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism . . . is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly.” While Times reporters cannot be expected to be experts in American religious history, they cannot be excused for evading—or denying—the rich history of American evangelical Protestants in terms of social reform, health and medical reform, not to mention a fundamental concern for human life, dignity, and welfare. And in this regard, we evangelicals gratefully continue to learn from our Catholic brethren.

But Kirkpatrick’s reporting does do us the service, however inadvertently, of exposing problems that are internal to wider evangelicalism itself and its relationship to the culture. That megachurch leaders are placed on a pedestal, whether by New York Times reporters or evangelicals themselves, is instructive. What needs emphasis is that megachurch entrepreneurs—with their large congregations, their larger constituencies, and their even larger book sales—may not be the best, or even the legitimate, measurements of Protestant evangelicalism’s health and vibrancy. In fact, both the megachurch influence and the “emergent church” phenomenon belong to a peculiarly Protestant genus that is theologically suspect (eschewing the difficult doctrines of divine wrath and repentance), infatuated with postmodern sensibilities, and therefore notoriously hard to define.

In the end, megachurches may well represent the most glaring deficiencies in evangelical thinking—for example, heavy dependence on marketing, large numbers as a measurement of “success,” congregations run as businesses, and a strongly anti-sacramental orientation to church life. Can evangelicals today confess, not merely with Dorothy Sayers but with their own forefathers, that the drama is truly in the dogma? One need only consider the accent that was placed by the magisterial Reformers on Word, sacraments, and discipline as the authenticating “marks” of the church.

And yet, had Kirkpatrick done his homework, his research would have taken him, not to Wichita, Kansas, but to his own backyard and New York City, where evangelical congregations are vibrant and socially engaged. Consider, for example, the very large and increasingly influential Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which embodies what is salutary, healthy, and encouraging about Protestant evangelicalism. But because Redeemer, given its simultaneous commitments to theological orthodoxy and social responsibility, has been making a difference in the city for almost two decades (and doing so without a so-called leftward political shift), such evidence would undermine Kirkpatrick’s thesis. Similar examples abound in metropolitan areas nationwide.

Like their Catholic counterparts, evangelical Protestants face significant challenges in the present post-consensus cultural climate, partly stemming from their theological orthodoxy (where found) and partly due to a wider cultural backlash. Unlike Catholics, their fragmentation and lack of authoritative voice hinder their ability to marshal a concerted cultural witness.

The rub as they say, does indeed come with Kirkpatrick's historical and social anemia. Politics does not an evangelical make. Both Whicker and Kirkpatrick reveal skewed attitudes toward evangelical faith. An astute student of American Christianity realizes a gulf exists between one's politics and theology. Evangelicals hold in common a set of theological beliefs and a way of looking at life. Life's chess pieces for the evangelical get moved in all directions, contrary to secular perceptions. Bill Hybels and Rick Warren both embrace consciously or unconsciously, evangelical theology to the exclusion of political philosophies. Those who fail to comprehend the difference between temporal playing fields and eternal dispositions possess little understanding of history and the struggle of the saints. Mr. Kirkpatrick and Ms.Whicker might benefit from evangelical academies in order to discover the mystery of evangelicalism.

BUSH MADE THE WORLD SAFER?

Publicly the Europeans, via their liberal media, incessantly rant about President Bush's failure to comprehend foreign relation's complexities and diplomatic solutions. The stereotypical image of a Texas gun slingin' cowboy in town to do business, is firmly stamped in the European conscience. Yet, at this point in history, that might be the image needed to hold off the bad guys. Indeed, we longed for a John Wayne type figure who might enter the terrorist ridden world with both guns a blazin'. Oliver Kamm of UK's Guardian News admits that Bush's tenure undoubtably made the world a safer place to live:

Jimmy Carter was cheered when he visited Newcastle with Jim Callaghan. Bill Clinton was lauded in Northern Ireland. But it is more usual, at least with more consequential holders of the office, for American presidents to be told by European demonstrators to go home.

The postwar history of our continent would be different and less benign if the United States had heeded that message. His office, and the system of collective security from which we benefit, would be justification enough to welcome President Bush's visit to London this week. But there is an additional reason peculiar to the Bush presidency. For all Bush's verbal infelicity, diplomatic brusqueness, negligence in planning for post-Saddam Iraq, and insouciance regarding standards of due process when prosecuting the war on terror, the world is a safer place for the influence he has exercised.

Continue reading Kamm here.

ET TU YOUR HONOR?

Have the Supreme Court justices allowed fear and pandering to steal their principles? One might thinks so after reading Hugh Hewitt's recent analysis of the Supreme Court awarding the privilege of habeas corpus to terrorists.

What is more alarming than the prospect of ignorance on the part of the majority [of justices] is their collective seduction by hard left elites, particularly those in the Academy. Supreme Court justices don’t get out much. When they do it is typically to the nation’s law schools and to judicial and ABA conferences, where they are no doubt surrounded by thousands of elites who have as much experience with the war as the justices, but are perhaps even less well read on the nature of the jihadists’ ideology and tactics. Andrew McCarthy’s brilliant new book, Willful Blindness, A Memoir of the Jihad, recounts how unprepared the American legal system was for the assault by the fanatics when it first crashed into the World trade center in 1993 and how even after 9/11 it could not adjust to cope with the war in which we are engulfed. Obviously the highest rank of our legal elite have not yet come to grip with the nature of the enemy.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN'S FLAWED ANALYSIS

Now that former Bush press secretary and fiction writer Scott McClellan is making an embarrassing go of it on the news channels, former Bush White House director of the office of strategic initiatives, Peter Wehner, makes one last attempt to set the record straight. Wehner's commentary is a lesson in logic. For example, he points out the flawed reasoning in McClellan's character analysis of Bush by applying McClellan's own argument to Colin Powell's presentation of evidence suggesting Iraq possessed WAMDs.

McClellan's book includes few heroes; one of them is former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In his book McClellan describes Powell as a man of "unquestioned honor and integrity" and "independent views," a "moderate voice" who offered "straight, unvarnished advice" and "looked out for the interests of the man he served, as well as the country to whom both had sworn allegiance, with great care and wisdom."

Yet Secretary Powell gave perhaps the most important non-presidential case for war on February 5, 2003, when he spoke before the United Nations. According to Powell's own account, in preparing his presentation

I spent an enormous amount of time with many of my colleagues and with a large part of the top leadership of the CIA, as well as a lot of the working-level analysts of the CIA, closeted in Langley at CIA headquarters for four days and three nights -- or it might be four weeks and three months -- it felt like it. And we were there well into the night, until midnight, 1:00 a.m. every morning, going over everything. We had lots and lots of information. The challenge was to get it down to that which was absolutely supportable and we were confident of.

The problem is that Secretary Powell, who spoke with CIA Director George Tenet seated directly behind him, was wrong on many of the key claims he made, including claims about Iraq's supposed mobile biological weapons labs (they were in fact a producer of hydrogen for military weather balloons); about aluminum tubes, which Powell said could be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium and was proof that Saddam Hussein was determined to acquire nuclear weapons (investigators found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program); about Iraq possessing four tons of VX nerve gas (the UN later confirmed that it had been destroyed); and more. The intelligence Powell and the administration relied on was massively flawed, and we didn't pick up on those flaws.

Yet no one, including Scott McClellan, believes Colin Powell deliberately turned away from candor or truth in making his case. Powell knew his reputation, as well as the President's, was on the line. He pressed as hard as he could to confirm what he thought to be true. The fact that he was mistaken is bad enough - but Powell was not guilty of manipulating the truth, being part of a cycle of deception, or confusing a political propaganda campaign with the realities of a war-making campaign.

What is true of Powell is true of the President and his administration, even if a clearly bitter Scott McClellan cannot see that now.

I wonder if all the accolades and money McClellan receives from his pitiful endeavor is worth sacrificing his character and honor over.

Continue reading Wehner here.

FAREWELL TO THE LONG TRAIN

The ever poignant Peggy Noonan gives her opinion as to why Hillary fell from the people's grace. She in essence determines that people grew leery of dynasticism. They have spoken and said farewell to a long train:

...but more than that, they threw off Clintonism. They threw off the idea that corruption is part of the game, an acceptable fact. They threw off the idea that dynasticism was an unstoppable dynamic in modern politics, that Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton could, would, go on forever. They said: "No, that is not the way we do it."

They threw off the idea of inevitability. Mrs. Clinton didn't lose because she had no money or organization, she didn't lose because she had no fame or name, she didn't lose because her policies were unusual or dramatically unpopular within her party. She lost because enough Democrats looked at her and thought: I don't like that, I don't like the way she does it, I'm not going there. Most candidates lose over things, not over their essential nature. But that is what happened here. For all her accomplishments and success, it was her sketchy character that in the end did her in.

But the voters had to make the decision. So, to the Democrats: A nod. A bow. Well done.

May this mark the beginning of the remoralization of a great party.

So we shook the Clintonista monkey off our backs. But, in my opinion, she seemed a bit safer than Obama. Like the old saying goes, "Better the devil you know than the one you don't know." We indeed know little about Barack Obama. Yet, the revelations of late seem to look like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, slowly unveiling baggage that appears nefarious. That puzzle is missing a lot of pieces sure to come together as the weeks roll by.

Continue reading Noonan here.

OBAMA A LESSON IN REGRESSION

Obama waxes eloquent touting his penchant for change. Often when one listens to him declare absolutely nothing with passion, they hear and feverishly respond to the buzz phrase, "time for a change." But what kind of change does Obama represent? Hugh Hewitt, comparing Obama to the infamously liberal and soundly trounced presidential candidate of 1972, George McGovern, determines that Obama in essence, represents regressive change, not progressive. In summing the matter up Hewitt implies that the most significant change comes from the media who fails to hold Obama accountable for his radical views:

It is true that the country has moved to the left on a number of social and cultural issues in the 36 years since George McGovern lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon.

But there is no mistaking which of the candidates from then and now is farther left on the ideological spectrum. The only difference is that the MSM and its allies in 1972 were willing to credit McGovern with his views while this year's crop of "analysts" are intent on keeping those views out of the public's view.

Read Hewitt's comparative commentary here.

THE PRICE OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

Analyst have long questioned the benefits of subsidizing opulent sport facilities. Tom Kirkendall takes a serious look at the issue. Others tackle the issue here and here. This last link refers to a study done by the Heartland institute in 1987. If you're the type who majors in the details you will find the HI's study exhaustive and compelling.

OBAMA QUITS CHURCH II

As an evangelical minister and Republican (I have yet to vote for a Democrat in my 35 years of voting) I feel some sympathy for Barack Obama and John McCain in their quest to discover a spiritual guru. Their errors may be indicative of shallow faith or unreasonable discernment. Even intelligent men fall victim to compartmentalization when referencing their faith. For most principled and truly faithful individuals, religion gets into the emotions. Something so sacred and penetrating often bypasses reason and stirs what Methodist John Wesley called enthusiasm, which according to him, leads individuals and masses into all sorts of predicaments, a phenomenon to guard against. Wesley described the nature of enthusiasm thusly:

As to the nature of enthusiasm, it is, undoubtedly a disorder of the mind; and such a disorder as greatly hinders the exercise of reason. Nay, sometimes it wholly sets it aside: it not only dims but shuts the eyes of the understanding. It may, therefore, well be accounted a species of madness; of madness rather than of folly: seeing a fool is properly one who draws wrong conclusions from right premisses; whereas a madman draws right conclusions, but from wrong premisses. And so does an enthusiast suppose his premisses true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake: his premisses are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not: and therefore, setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way.

Every enthusiast, then, is properly a madman. Yet his is not an ordinary, but a religious, madness. By "religious," I do not mean, that it is any part of religion: quite the reverse. Religion is the spirit of a sound mind; and, consequently, stands in direct opposition to madness of every kind. But I mean, it has religion for its object; it is conversant about religion. And so the enthusiast is generally talking of religion, of God, or of the things of God, but talking in such a manner that every reasonable Christian may discern the disorder of his mind. Enthusiasm in general may then be described in some such manner as this: a religious madness arising from some falsely imagined influence or inspiration of God; at least, from imputing something to God which ought not to be imputed to Him, or expecting something from God which ought not to be expected from Him.

Both Obama and McCain may know no other religion than the sort that emanates from their extreme, yet opposing mentors, Wright, Hagee, and Parsley. And the problem holds implications for the Church as well. Theologians who ardently and vociferously endorse a particular politician must realize their gospel stands the chance of rising or falling with individual's character. Interestingly Obama claims he will make a decision about his place of worship after January. So, he may be more in touch with his reason than we think. Only time will tell.