We feel sorry for poor people who are just trying to get by. We want to give them a break, and we want to see others do the same. If we’re honestly trying to love our neighbor, we’ll probably help them out — with money, food, or an odd job if we can.

But we don’t help them jack someone’s car.

The comments on the previous post, “Loving Your Illegal Neighbor,” called to mind a very hard-nosed Proverb:

“Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all the wealth of his house” (6:30-31).

Loving your neighbor has its limits. Those limits are the law, and the law is supposed to be “one size fits all:”

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Lev 19:15).

In the illegal immigration debates, poverty cannot be an excuse to violate the law. If it’s treated as an excuse to violate immigration law, we shouldn’t be surprised if some think it’s an excuse to violate other laws.

We can change our laws, and I think we should, but we can’t ignore those who broke the law. If a reasonable price isn’t paid, the law loses respect required to make our society function.

What’s a reasonable price? That’s a question for another time.

——-
Crossposted from Homeward Bound

Should Christians support an open border policy or amnesty or something like that? Aren’t these people just looking to make a better life for themselves and their families? They just want the opportunity to work and feed their kids. Wouldn’t we do the same thing if we were in their place? How can we deny them that chance? We shouldn’t discriminate against them just for being born on the other side of an imaginary line. If we want the poor to help themselves, what more can we ask than these people who simply want to come here and work?

Is that what the golden rule requires? If so, we’re in heap big trouble.

If loving our neighbor requires allowing anyone to come here, we certainly can’t limit that to those born in Mexico or even South America. Why should we discriminate against those who were born in Africa or China. Don’t they deserve the same chance to strive for a better life?

But if we say anyone anywhere who wants can come here, how can we limit that to those who have the means to get here? If we care about the poor, how can we neglect the poorest of the poor who could never afford to travel here? We will have to go get anyone who wants to immigrate here and bring them back.

How could it be otherwise?

Now, if you want to say we should do all of this … well, at least you’re consistent.

But does loving your neighbor really require such open immigration policies? I don’t think so. There are three things we need to consider as we approach this problem.

1) Borders like we have today are a relatively modern invention. Nothing in the Bible directly addresses the issue because it didn’t exist then.

2) While we’re loving our Mexican, etc, neighbors who want to move here, we still have to love our Mexican, etc, neighbors who don’t want to. Is the best thing for the people of Mexico to make it easy for their young, hardworking, talented people to abandon their country and come contribute to ours? Wouldn’t open borders just be putting a band-aid on the real problem — a third-world country existing next to two of the most prosperous nations in history?

3) While we’re loving our neighbors who want to immigrate illegally, we have to love our neighbors who did it legally. If we just throw open the borders, what do we say to someone who waded through the paperwork, waited for permission, fought with the bureaucracy, and otherwise obeyed all the rules? “Yeah, great, but this guy wants to be here, too.”

It’s easy to treat the Golden Rule as a feel-good, bumper-sticker slogan that can be tossed out to trump someone else’s argument, but when thought through, it doesn’t present much of a solution to our immigration woes.

I’m not prescribing any particular solution to the illegal immigration situation — right now, at least. I just want people to stop abusing “love your neighbor as yourself” as justification for their liberal views.

——
Related:
Immigration Reform and Christianity 1: Justice

Crossposted from Homeward Bound

But having a device that allows you to make phone calls and search the web and send messages and take pictures doesn’t mean that you really know what you are doing.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, , “What Does It Take?”, what we have is really a very fancy and, perhaps, expensive toy.  We have all of this wonderful technology but we don’t know how to use it. 

And now, some of the experts are beginning to say the same thing; see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/16/techliteracy.

When you consider some of the challenges that we face in today’s society, we desperately need to be ahead of the curve.  Right now, it appears that we are on the upside of the curve and falling back.

I welcome your thoughts.

————————————-

Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

I do not remember when it was that I became interested in John Wooden. It was probably, as I wrote in my review of his last book (John Wooden – A review of “A Game Plan for Life – the power of mentoring” by John Wooden and Don Yaeger), back in 1968 when I bought his book on coaching basketball, Practical Modern Basketball, and I was harboring some thoughts of going into coaching.

But over the years, as I read about him and what he had done, I began not only to respect him but also to admire him. Not just because of his coaching record and all the titles but because of what transpired after the game was over. Before John Wooden became a coach, he was a teacher and it was as a teacher that he honed his skills as a coach.

When you listen to all that is said about Coach Wooden, listen to what his players said. You will not hear much about basketball or winning but you will hear about what he taught them. And it is what he taught them that we should be remembering Coach Wooden on this weekend.

But, you know, it is sad to think that if he were coaching basketball today, he may not have the same success that he is receiving all the accolades for today.

How many coaches today would be able to say to a star player that their hair was too long and it had to be cut if they expected to stay on the team? How many coaches today would last if their vocabulary did not include the words victory and winning and doing it right now? How many coaches would survive if they sacrificed a number one ranking to make a point about the need to stay focused? (I recall reading one time that the 1974 UCLA team, in the midst of the 88-game winning streak, became overly self-confident and head strong, to the point that they felt that they could win no matter what. When the time came and the pressure was on the players, Coach Wooden refused to call a time out and bring them back into focus. As a result, they lost at Notre Dame, lost two conference games and the national semi-final game to North Carolina State. If a coach were to do that today, the odds are that he or she would be fired before the sun rose the next day.

But the players, to a man, know that though they came to UCLA to play basketball, they left with a degree and an education; because John Wooden was a teacher first.

And there are lessons to be learned from this master teacher, lessons that we need to be learning but are apt to ignore. We really need to contrast how it was that John Wooden taught his players with the manner in which we teach today.

We teach for the moment when we should be teaching for tomorrow and, more importantly, the day after tomorrow, for the future.

I have no doubt that Coach Wooden was a fierce competitor. But he recognized that success does not come immediately but rather over time. It took him many, many years to build what has become know as the Pyramid of Success but there are many people today who seem to think that owning a copy of this pyramid will bring them success.

We teach by giving the answers to the questions when we should be teaching our students how to get the answers. (In light of our current fascination with testing, this will be very difficult.)

We simply give out the information as information when we should be utilizing it and expressing it in real-life terms. The most important part of a UCLA basketball game was the practices that preceded the game, not the game itself. Each game was organized and there were drills to be run at a specific time and with a specific speed. The drills started off simply but increased in speed and complexity with practice concluding with what was essentially a full court game. The actual game was nothing compared to the practices that lead up to the game. (How many practice players do you know who were drafted #1 in professional basketball – Swen Nater was recruited to play basketball at UCLA in his junior and senior year. He never started a game but, according to Bill Walton, was the toughest center Walton ever played against.)

We can test our students all we like but if all we do is simply set it up so that they repeat or parrot what they were told, they will have learned nothing. On the other hand, if we work on the basics and we expand the basics and we culminate the process with real-life problems, then what transpires outside the classroom and after graduation will seem quite easy by comparison.

John Wooden also taught us the need to listen, the need to think, and the need to change when it was appropriate (look at what happened when Wilt Chamberlain pointed out that you handled things, not people; upon hearing that, Coach Wooden went to his basketball textbook and changed all the references to “handling your players” to “working with your players”).

He himself admits that it was his own stubbornness that prevented him from implementing the 2-2-1 zone press that so devastated basketball in 1964 and 1965. But he listened to Jerry Norman and Norman’s analysis of the press in light of the players on the 1963-64 team and the result was 30 victories, no defeats, and the first of ten national titles.

We live in a world where success is called for immediately, where learning is instant, and the measure of success is determined right now. It is a world where the individual counts most of all.

Coach Wooden pointed out many times that it is what you learn after you have learned everything that is important. He pointed out that working together can accomplish far more than going it along. He taught us all that success comes later and you look back at it, not to it. He also pointed out that success is far more than the number of victories in life and that life cannot be measured in terms of wins and losses. The lessons of life are there to be learned; in this day and age, I hope that as we celebrate the life of John Wooden, we take the time to reflect on what he taught us. After all, he was a teacher first.

Here is a compilation of pieces I have written with references to John Wooden:

• Sermon/message given on 22 November 1998 - “Who Shall Lead us?” - speaking about the attitude of the players in 1974 (posted 5 June 2010)
• Sermon given on 30 July 2000 - It’s The Little Things - in which I spoke of why Coach Wooden taught his players how to put on their socks and shoes (posted 12 July 2009)
• Sermon given on 15 January 2006 - "Hearing God’s Call"- about a player who wasn’t a good practice player but was a fine basketball player
• Sermon given on 24 August 2008 – "Building On the Rocks" - about the Pyramid of Success
• 10 December 2008 - "Is It The Water?" - “Drink deeply from the good books”
• 10 May 2009 - Two Things To Think About - John Wooden’s definition of success
• 9 October 2009 - John Wooden – A review of “A Game Plan for Life – the power of mentoring” by John Wooden and Don Yaeger

Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The  Left – comments are welcome but please post them on “Thoughts From The Heart On The Left”

They see the end of the world from their own moral viewpoint; one that, in my mind, is self-righteous, self-centered, and hypocritical. They complain about the morals of others while clearly living a life that follows the dictum, “do what I say, not what I do.” They want a vengeful God, a hateful God so they can justify their own hatred, their own anger, and most importantly, their own ignorance.

We hear many on the right side of the political and religious spectrum call for troops to patrol our southern borders or to build an immense wall to keep out those from the south who seek employment in this country. They also use the excuse to keep drugs out of this country (unfortunately it is the American people who have created the demand for illegal drugs). Yet we never hear them speak of troops patrolling our northern border (which is far longer and far more open) or building some sort of barrier there.

And there is no call to penalize the businesses that hire illegal workers, wherever they come from, who seem to do the jobs no one else wants to do. And we hear no calls to improve worker conditions in the third world. Could it be that we want cheap products that are produced in third world countries in conditions we wouldn’t work in?

We don’t seek to penalize the businesses who hire the illegal workers because there are many who don’t want the Federal government interfering in the actions of businesses; what we hear is that businesses are capable of regulating themselves. And we certainly don’t want to waste our tax dollars on some sort of program that helps other peoples; we want our tax dollars to be spent on ourselves.

All we have to do is look at what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico to know that businesses are more interested in the bottom line than they are doing it safely and correctly. There is an on-going environmental disaster taking place right now because we have endured some thirty years of rhetoric that government is too big and businesses can do the job themselves.

But in that same thirty year span, the power of big business has grown exponentially while the power of the individual has been stripped and stolen away and trampled on.

But in all of this, the single most glaring fact is that the people of this country have allowed this to happen. They have allowed companies like Massey Energy and British Petroleum to trample regulations and throw away safety concerns, all in the name of the bottom line and profits.

We have accepted the notion that it is easier to drill for oil or dig for more coal than it is to seek alternative forms of energy. We have allowed these things to happen and we have accepted the rhetoric of cheap energy and the god of profit over the stewardship of this earth and the care of the people who live on it because we didn’t know what was happening.

We didn’t know what was happening because we have lost our ability to question and to think, to create new solutions. We have changed the nature of education from that of teaching people how to think to teaching people how to answer questions. Somehow we have decided that grades themselves are a reasonable indication of whether or not someone actually knows something. But good grades don’t tell us anything about how well an individual can create solutions to a problem, especially (as I have previous stated) when the problems haven’t occurred.

The problem is that we are so concerned that no child be left behind that we have left them all behind. We think that if we can teach our children how to take tests and as long as scores go up on the tests each year, then they are learning. Our concern is more for the bottom line, the number of students who graduate, than it is for how many students actually are capable of thinking and creating solutions for tomorrow’s problems.

Look around and tell me that we are using our collective abilities to their fullest. We can’t (or won’t) develop alternative energy resources. We are more committed to the destruction of the world through violence and oppression than we are seeing people fed and kept healthy and live in a world of justice and equality. We somehow think that by our use of violence we can conquer violence; we somehow think that we can live in a world of justice by taking away the rights of the individuals.

All we have done is create a world of fear and ignorance. There is a subtle paranoia sweeping this country that threatens not only our physical safety but our mental safety as well. We have built a wall but it doesn’t keep people out; it keeps us in, prisoners of our fears and ignorance. We no longer seek new worlds to explore and our dream of visiting other planets and stars is just a dream and no longer a reality.

As the cartoonist Walt Kelly once wrote in his memorable comic strip, Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Look around at the world in we live and tell me what you see. These are the “end times”, the times of our own making. The world in which we live is the world that we made.

But there is good news in all of this. The fact that we see the destruction, the fact that we the violence, that fact that we see the poverty and homelessness and hunger and sickness and illnesses and oppression and injustice means that we can do something about it.

Instead of destruction, let us try construction. Instead of feeding an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, let’s really try to develop alternative energy solutions. They do exist and they will cost but, in the end, the cost will be worth it if it means the world will remain.

And finally, let us really invest in education. Let’s put the money in the classrooms so that teachers can truly once again begin teaching our children and grandchildren the skills to think and be creative.

Yes, there are costs involved in all of this. But consider this, if we do not begin to make the changes, there will come a time when we cannot make changes.

We live in the world of our own making; we can therefore make this a better world. We live in the world that we wanted; isn’t it time that we wanted a better world?

———————————————–

Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left; comments are welcome but please post them on “Thoughts From The Heart On The Left” – Thanks!

But lately, I am thinking about giving up flying all together. Every since 9/11, it seems we are more interested in keeping people off airplanes than we are letting them on. One guy attempts to blow up an airplane with explosives in his shoes so we all have to take off our shoes. One guy tries to do the same thing with a combination of liquids so now the liquids that we take with us must be of a certain size and quantity.

And the device that detects explosive materials (which I assume to be nitrate-containing compounds) will also detect other compounds such as the residue of local anesthetics. That has to really scare someone recovering from surgery.

The implementation of policy and training sees inconsistent at best. I have observed TSA agents lift 40-lbs of bowling equipment without bending their knees and being told that they were never given any instructions on how to lift heavy objects. I have observed other agents as they struggle with clear cut instructions (like the time my boarding pass said “must check in at gate” and the agent was telling me that I had to go back to the ticket counter. As he was struggling with this dilemma, I pointed out that the individual behind me had the same boarding pass and that he should resolve the two issues at the same time in consultation with two supervisors. I was told not to tell him how to do his business and after they took some 20 minutes to figure out that I should go to the gate; they took the same amount of time with the next person who had the same issue.

But as I struggle with these annoyances (does anyone seriously think that someone is going to try and destroy a plane with a shoe bomb or a combination of liquids?) I also struggle with the service issues.

I have found that I can get a cheap ticket even two weeks before my departure but that the moment I go to book the flight, the price changes and I am forced to start over. And I know longer check my baggage since they charge you for your checked bags. I now ship my gear instead of lugging it to the airport; yes, it is a little more expensive but it gets to where I need it and I don’t have to worry about the bags being torn up.

And besides, I have to fly out of New York City in order to get any sort of cheap flight. I remember when the airlines were deregulated back in the early days of the Reagan administration. Just as today, there was this cry about getting government out of the way of business. Well, we have seen what happened with oil exploration and the way airlines are going today makes it very clear that while deregulation may help businesses, it does very, very little for the people.

It appears, at least as far as I can see, that all that has happened following deregulation of the airlines is that it robbed many of the smaller airports of service. And if there is service, it is prohibitively expensive. So I no longer can fly out of the regional airport that is fifteen minutes from my home.

Now, the airlines, especially in the past few years, have always charged you for changing your mind. You booked a cheap fare, you had better keep it.

And they have begun charging you for the simple snacks that they serve. But this past Wednesday (May 26^th), I found out just how far the airlines (or at least one airline) will go to take every dollar from you that they can.

I knew from experience that the flight I had booked might be oversold. So I got to the airport early with the intention of volunteering for a bump as I have done in the past only to find out that I would have to pay a charge to fly standby. And after choosing the last seat on the plane, I find that I can pay for extra leg room or a more premium type of seat. Neither option is viable at this time. When I inquired about volunteering to move to the exit rows, I found that I would have to pay a fee. Those must have been the seats with the extra leg room that I passed up earlier.

I will not name this airline but I can say that while the skies were very friendly, the ground personnel were not. Weather-wise, this was the first time in all of my flying that the plane had to be diverted to an alternate airport because it was low on fuel. May 26^th was not a good day to fly as thunderstorms blanketed the Midwest from Chicago to Denver. I don’t know what it was like in Chicago but when we finally got to Denver, ground personnel handed each of the departing passengers a sheet of paper with a number to call about the status of our reservation and a number to reserve a hotel room. No other information was provided. And of course, because of the severity of the storms and the disruption on the system, both phone lines had lengthy delays.

So I spent Thursday morning in, what is for me, the new Denver International Airport trying with so many others to get some sleep and prepare to get to my destination. Fortunately, the airport (and not the airline) was prepared to hand out sleeping mats, blankets, and a bottle of water.

Everyone must have one trip that borders on the disastrous or ridiculous; this has to be mine. But this trip and how the airline handled the flight reflect what I believe is going on in this country.

The reason for my flight delay was not the airline’s fault; the flight crew did their best to get me to my destination. The weather just prevented them from doing so. And when it is weather that causes flight problems, airlines are not required to offer compensation or assistance. Giving the passengers the numbers of the airline and the hotel booking company was all they are required to do.

These types of situation used to fall in the “acts of God” category and were, thus, exempt from corporate actions. But I am reminded that the single most important act of God was to send His Son so that we may be saved from slavery to sin and death. We make a big deal these days about being a Christian country but our actions sure don’t reflect that.

Our interests seem to be in the bottom line, the profits a company makes. It should be, no matter what the industry, on the people that the industry serves. The most important person flying on a commercial airline is not the most frequent flyer but the flyer that only flies once or twice a year. I am not saying that those who frequently fly shouldn’t be rewarded since they have to endure this stuff far more than the occasional flyer but if you treat the occasional flyer poorly, they may not fly again. Or if they fly again, it won’t be on that airline that treated them so poorly.

Our nation’s focus on the bottom line, to cut costs so as to increase profits, does not do well when there is a crisis. Be it the disaster in the Gulf, the mining disaster in West Virginia, or a stack of late airplane flights over the Denver International airport, the desire to keep the bottom line profitable for the short term will have long term negative effects.

But to keep the eye on the bottom line prevents one from keeping the focus on the people being served. I am not against any company making a profit; hey, that’s what you got into the business for. But when your focus is on the profit, and how much money a few privileged individuals can make, instead of the service you are providing, you have forgotten why you began the business in the first place.

I realize that I probably will have to fly to get to many places in this country. I have thought many times about taking the train but it is not always a good trade off. For essentially the same price that I paid for my airline ticket, I could have taken the train. But the time spent traveling would have been greater on the train and you have to make some decisions as to how fast you want to get to your destination and how much time you have to travel. And next year, I will have the same choices to make. As I plan for that trip, I will consider many factors about how I will get there. But one thing is for certain, the way in which this particular airline handled the problem means that I will probably not utilize their service next year.

I think that we, as a nation, have seen too many instances where profits are more important than people. I think it is time that we change that view.

——————————–

Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On  The Left; comments are welcome but please post them at “Thoughts From The Heart On The Left.”  Thank You

———————————————————————————————

The title of this piece comes about because of a little news blurb this past week. It was noted that the musical, “The Fantasticks” was something like fifty years old last week and was the longest running musical on Broadway before it closed a few years ago. It also noted that those who backed this musical when it first started received something on the order of a 2,000% return on their initial investment. But as I was reading this little tidbit of information, I was trying to remember the music that was associated with the show.

And then as I tried to remember the songs, a jolt of neurons hit my brain. The song in question is and was “Try to Remember”!

That’s the thing about our memory. We can remember things if we have the right motive or the proper aid. But we also need to have something in our minds that will bring it back to us. As I did some searching about the musical and the songs, it was noted that the late Jerry Orbach was the singer in the musical. Most people only know him as one of the detectives on the television show “Law & Order” and know little about his early acting and musical career.

Along those same lines, I was chatting with a help-desk tech the other day as we were trying to resolve a particular computer issue. It was necessary for me to reboot the computer and as it was doing so, that insidious little piece of Windows music played. I mentioned that I used to have a clip of “Elvis has left the building” that played when I would shut down my computer.

I asked the techie if she knew who Elvis was and she replied that she did. But when I asked her if she knew what band Paul McCartney was in before “Wings”, she couldn’t tell me. That is the way it goes sometimes. What constitutes part of life for some of us is only ancient history for others and it is quickly forgotten after it is studied, if it is studied at all. I wonder how many mothers and grandmothers there are today who are fearful their children and grandchildren will see pictures of them on the Ed Sullivan Show screaming and shouting when the Beatles or Elvis first played?

But my reminiscing about the music of my youth also reminded me of another song and what transpired forty years ago last week. Forty years ago, on May 4, 1970, four students where shot by Ohio National Guardsman. The incident and I think the protests across the nation concerning what President Nixon had ordered done in Viet Nam prompted Neil Young to write “Ohio”. I remember being a part of a protest at my school (Truman State) but I don’t know if we knew that four students had been shot. I also know that very few people today remember that two students were killed at Jackson State University in Mississippi that same day.

In light of what is transpiring in this country, both socially, politically, and environmentally, perhaps we should be doing a little more remembering. We, collectively, stood by and allowed our his country to begin an ill-conceived war in Iraq; it was a war conceived in lies and more lies and it continues today. The war in Afghanistan is now considered a separate theater of operations by the Army so that it can transfer troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and call each a separate tour. It promises to be a war that shall go on for a very long time.

I remember studying in my history classes about the “Forty Years War” and the “Hundred Years War” and wondering how a war could last for one, two, and even three generations. Now, as I read the reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and I see how we propose to fight terrorism, I no longer have to wonder. I am watching history develop its own story line in my own lifetime and I am watching my generation, who protested the war in Viet Nam and walked the streets in support of civil rights and free speech stand quietly on the sidelines, not in protest but in quiet acquiescence.

We have, in this country, a selective memory. We will send our troops overseas to fight in a war, bring them home for a short period of time, and then send them out again. Oh, yes, we will celebrate their return; as the song goes, “the men will cheer and the boys will shout and the ladies, they will all turn out, when Johnny comes marching home”.

But we have chosen to forget the darker side of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”; the side goes something like this:

Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo

With your drums and guns and guns and drums,

The enemy nearly slew ye

Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer

Johnny I hardly knew ye

Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your eyes that were so mild,

When my heart you so beguiled

Why did ye run from me and the child

Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your legs that used to run,

When you went for to carry a gun

Indeed your dancing days are done

Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye

Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo

Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo

Ye haven’t an arm, yhe haven’t a leg,

Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg

Ye’ll have to put with a bowl out to beg

Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye

They’re rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo

They’re rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo

They’re rolling out the guns again,

But they never will take our sons again

No they never will take our sons again

Johnny I’m swearing to ye

(From http://www.instantknowledgenews.com/johnny.htm)

(more…)

I’m going to take the moderate approach. I also think it’s the traditional conservative stance.

The conservative approach to the economy is largely “hands off.” Businessmen know how to run their businesses far better than politicians. When people who know nothing about the private sector start making rules, they can bog businesses — and the economy — down by making innovation and growth more expensive than it would otherwise be. If the government will get out of the way, the free market will take care of itself.

Under one condition, that is.

Traditionally, conservatives recognized that free markets — and democracy — only work when coupled with morality. Humans will always sin, but there have been ages when common decency was a bit more common. And there have been times when greed surpassed good sense.

For example, monopolies are not inherently evil. But the 19th century monopolies became problems when they realized they could do whatever they wanted and then did just that.

In modern America we’ve reached a point, hopefully temporarily, when corporate officers see their good, the good of the company, the good of the shareholders, and the good of the customers as four distinct things. And they see their own good as the primary concern.

While we can’t ignore the government’s role in the collapse of the financial market, we shouldn’t exaggerate it either. A whole lot of people did some awfully stupid and selfish things, assuming that they wouldn’t be the ones left holding the bag. They’ve shown us that they cannot police themselves, so we’re going to have to do it for them.

But that doesn’t mean we should let the left do whatever crosses their beady little minds. Before we accept new regulations, we should consider a few things:

1) Was lack of enforcement of existing rules a factor in the collapse?
Government, but the left more than the right, loves to make new rules when the old ones were never enforced properly. This only adds burdens without creating any actual security.

2) Power corrupts.
There are stupid, greedy, and power hungry people in government, too. And there are good people who are simply overzealous. And there are people who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. New regulation should be added slowly and carefully with as much oversight on the regulators as the regulatees.

3) Less is more.
We have to have rules, but it’s all too easy to overburden the private sector economy. Life is risk, and we’ll never remove all the chance of another stupidity fueled collapse. Trying to do so will only prevent our economy from getting back up to full speed. But wasn’t the “speed” part of the problem? Yes, but everybody’s been burned pretty darn good; I think we can err to the side of liberty. In general, I think it’s always preferable to err a little to the side of liberty.

4) Think out of the box.
Is “regulation” the only way to go? Is there a way to raise the costs of failure in such a way as to discourage insane gambling? Without adding to the cost of business? For instance, what if a corporate bankruptcy required the CEO and directors to forfeit 50% of their personal assets? Might jail time be appropriate for future failures of the magnitude we’ve recently seen? Replace golden parachutes with orange jumpsuits and see what happens.

All talk of regulation isn’t bad. I applaud the GOP for working with the Democrats to make better regulation rather than just sitting in the corner so they “can’t be blamed” for whatever insanity the Dems come up with. If we’re careful, we might just all live through this.

——–
Crossposted from My Three Cents

Dear Senator Schumer,

Let us start off by saying that you have lost two votes when you seek reelection to the United States Senate.

We have made this decision because of your recent statements to an Israeli political commentator. It is one thing for a Senator to disagree with the President; that happens all the time and each Senator has the right to do so. It is an entirely different thing when the President and the Senator are of the same political party. Unless you are planning to for President in 2012, your comments, made with extremely poor political taste, probably did more harm to the Middle East peace process than any number of guns and bullets could ever do.

In the movie “Thirteen Days”, Kenneth O’Donnell points out to President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy that no matter what members of the Kennedy Administration may think internally, when it comes to dealing with the missiles in Cuba and the missiles in Turkey, the message given to Premier Khrushchev and the Soviet Union had to be a unified message.

Your words the other day rip apart any unified message that President Obama and Secretary Clinton may have sought to send.

In addition, your blatant support for the current and past Israeli administrations brings into question your own political loyalty. Are you the senior Senator from New York or the senior Senator from Tel Aviv?

We recognize that Israel has the right to a political existence. But we cannot individually and we think that this country can no longer support a country which suppresses other peoples as the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

We need not be reminded of what was done to Jews in the 1920s and 30s, in fact, throughout all of history. But we wonder how it is that a people so persecuted throughout history could even justify the persecution of another group such as the Palestinians? Are human and civil rights limited in their application?

How can we, as a country which sought to throw off the shackles of tyranny, continue to support a country which does the same thing that we fought against?

It is not a question of supporting terrorists. The Palestinians cannot claim to be victims when their own hands are covered with the blood of innocents. The Israeli government has always portrayed themselves as victims and used that as a justification for their actions against the Palestinians. It is time that the Israelis stop playing the victim; to continue to do is to demean their own history.

In fact, this country, for whatever reason, always seems to support any totalitarian government who uses defeating terrorism as a justification for the suppression of civil and human rights. It is time that our representatives speak out against that policy.

In the coming months we are going to seek someone we can support. This candidate will have as their first interest the people of the state of New York. This candidate can and should give advice to the President with regards to matters of foreign policy, as the Constitution allows Senator to do, but will caution against policies which allow the present Israeli government or any government for that matter to pursue policies that are counter productive to freedom and peace in the Middle East.

We will seek a candidate whose interests lie with the people of the state of New York and not the corporate interests. We will seek a candidate who feels that every person is entitled to equitable and fair health care through a single payer plan and not a plan created by lobbyists for the health care industry.

We will seek a candidate who sees the corporate oligarchy that presently controls and seeks to expand its control of this country as a usurpation of the people’s rights and will work to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling that says that a corporation has the rights of an individual.

We will seek a candidate who will stand on the floor of the United States Senate for as long as it takes to insist, implore, and convince the Senate that the war and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal and ill-advised and must cease, not in some fuzzy two or three year time period but in thirty days. It is time to bring our troops home.

We will seek a candidate who will encourage the Attorney General to seek criminal indictments against any and all corporate executives whose financial policies robbed the American people of their finances, their safety, clean air, clean water, and healthy food. We have seen too many cases where laws have been written but do little except protect big business and big corporations.

We recognize that this country has an immigration problem but building fences is not the answer. We expect this candidate to seek laws and regulations which punish companies whose hiring processes encourage the employment of illegal workers and whose working conditions are based on the premise that workers, illegal or otherwise, will not complain because to do so is to lose their job.

We no longer believe that you, Senator Schumer, are that candidate. We will not vote for you simply because you are the least objectionable candidate.

And to those who read this blog and might be a Republican, do not think of “applying” unless you are prepared to deny and disavow the thoughts, policies, and practices of the present Republican Party.

———————————————

Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but you requested to post them on that site.

First came the announcement that Dr. Bruce K. Watke was resigning his position as a Professor of Theology at the Reformed Theological Seminary. In a video that was posted on the BioLogos Foundation website, Dr. Watke not only endorsed evolution but said that evangelical Christianity would face a crisis if it did not begin accepting science.

“If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult … some odd group that is not interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.” (From “The Video That Ended a Career” – Inside Higher Ed)

Now, clearly this statement was at odds with the stated philosophy of the seminary and the resignation of Dr. Watke, though done and accepted reluctantly, was a foregone conclusion. No matter what the seminary may have wanted to do, there are too many others who would have wanted Dr. Watke’s head on a platter. But as I and others have noted before, the seminary was entirely correct in their actions. When you go to work for a particular organization, it is with an understanding that what you say and what you do are consistent with their viewpoint. (See “A Mind for Truth? (RJS)” for other comments on this issue)

If you go to work for an organization whose corporate culture or beliefs are counter to yours, you either sell out your soul or you bide your time until you can get another position. (I remember a friend who was opposed to the Viet Nam war but who ended up teaching in a military high school that required that he wear a uniform. I am not entirely sure how he dealt with that.)

But at the same time that Dr. Watke was announcing his resignation and the particular video was being pulled from the BioLogos web site, there was another announcement; one that brings into play the very idea that Dr. Watke warned the evangelical community about.

A new hominid fossil, Australopithecus sediba, was discovered in South Africa (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/science/09fossil.html for details) and this drives home the point that we have to look at the world around us if we are to know who we are and where we are headed. As Dr. Watke pointed out, if we deny the reality of the physical world, we are denying the truth of God in this world and that ultimately means that we deny truth and we deny God.

If you believe as I do, you can see the Hand of God in the fossil records and the cosmology of the universe. The complexity of such geological history and the wonder of the stars demands an explanation, an explanation that goes beyond an equation where two protons are forced together under intense pressure and extremely high temperatures to form a helium atom and release an extremely large amount of energy. It is more than simply an explanation of the physical processes; it is an explanation of why we are here as well. What I see is a world in which God has challenged us to find Him and understand what He has done and is doing.

It seems to me that those who oppose the teaching of evolution do so out of fear. They fear that open thinking will lead to a loss of control, of being able to dictate what people can think and say. We have been created in God’s image; yet, it strikes me that those who seek to continue to control what is taught have made God in their image.

If we are to understand God and how we fit within the scheme of things, we must explore this world and this universe. We must ask questions, even if we are afraid of the answers. If we do not use our abilities to their fullest, as God would have us do, then we fail ourselves and God.

Yet, it seems to me that as we move into the 21^st century, we are almost seeking to reverse the process begun in the Renaissance. I see people trying to reestablish the church as a dominant religious, moral and political authority while also trying to somehow deny the existence of both a Newtonian and Einsteinian view of the universe. I see people trying to form history and science in terms of their own views instead of letting the facts that are the very essence of history and science outline and shape their views. (See “Almost Spring”)

Education is supposed to be a learning process but we have turned it into a teaching process. Teaching is a one-way process, from the instructor to the student. Learning is an interactive process. If our students learn, they understand. We can teach them the right answer for a question on a test but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand what is being asked.

There is a natural desire to view the world from an Aristotelian viewpoint. If you ask any child if the sun moves or the earth moves, they will reply that it is the sun that is moving. There is nothing in their sphere of reference for them to suggest otherwise. The idea that the earth moves around the sun does not necessarily come from some statement in a text book but rather from an examination of the evidence that is offered.

The same can be said for the classical test of two objects falling from the same height. Even when shown the evidence that two objects fall at the same rate, many adults will tell you that the heavier object will fall faster than the lighter object (see “The Apollo 15 Hammer-Feather Drop”).

There is sufficient research information to tell us that our high school and our college graduates maintain this Aristotelian view of life, even when they can answer the questions on the test properly. And that is because we test for trivia, not understanding. If we introduce an idea as an item on a test but we do nothing to make sure that it is truly understood, then students can answer the question on the test but still not know anything about the question.

In the case of evolution, if we hold to a dogmatic interpretation of the world and we ignore the physical evidence, we run a greater risk than simply losing God in our lives. Now, it should not be the providence of the schools to teach ideas about God; I think that falls to the parents and the church. It is the providence of the schools to teach thinking. If in teaching thinking skills, a child comes to question the articles of faith, then the church must be able to offer reasonable and rational explanations, not merely demand compliance and obedience.

If we are to continue this journey into the 21^st century, we have to be able to envision new things, not merely reinvent old ones. But our teaching process is more attuned to an assembly line process than a creative process.

We measure the success of our students, not in what they do later in life, but how they score on a standardized test one week after the material is presented. We are correct in demanding accountability in the schools but society’s fascination with the “sound bite” has corrupted the accountability that we demand. The only true measure of what a student has learned comes later in life and society is not willing to wait that long.

We have transformed what should be a creative and engaging experience into an assembly line where students are placed in molds and quality control is measured in terms of scores on countless standardized exams. Teachers are measured on their ability to deliver high scores, without concern for knowledge or ability to create new information.

In the end, we will have a generation of students (if we do not already) who know a lot of “things” but have little real knowledge. There is a world outside the walls of the classroom. Yet the rhetoric and actions of today tell us that our students (our children) have little knowledge about that world and that they have little interest in seeing what’s out there. In the end, we will have countered everything that has been done since the first Renaissance and possibly reversed a thousand years of development.

————————————————-

Cross posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but it would be appreciated if you posted on that blog.