Ryan and Biden Takes Two Steps Toward Orderly Government

Two steps toward orderly government were taken today.

Vice-President Biden, after contemplating the presidential nomination, stepped back.  He was the last serious challenger to Hillary Clinton.  Senator Sanders will, no doubt, keep raising issues for months, but it now seems all but certain that the Democratic Party will unite behind Secretary Clinton.  One party, at least, seems to be set on a path to a serious, governing-oriented candidate.  

The even bigger news is the Paul Ryan has offered to become Speaker of the House - if the Tea Party agrees to unite with the Republicans to work toward governing.  This will be bigger news, I should say, if the Tea Party actually agrees to these terms.  Nonetheless, I appreciate Congressman Ryan's willingness to take on the heavy job of making the House into a governing body again.

The Liberal Party Has a Huge Victory in Canada

The Liberal Party has turned out the Conservative Party by a large margin in Canada.

The Liberals ran on a platform of raising taxes in order to rebuild infrastructure.  Most gratifying to me, they ran against the Conservative fear campaign against Muslims, and for an inclusive and welcoming country.

May our own election next year turn out so well.

Cheaper Weddings Lead to Longer Marriages

This is a most gratifying study:  people who have small, expensive weddings divorce at a higher rate than those with bigger, cheaper ones.

Specifically:

the study found that women whose wedding cost more than $20,000 divorced at a rate roughly 1.6 times higher than women whose wedding cost between $5,000 and $10,000. And couples who spent $1,000 or less on their big day had a lower than average rate of divorce.

The researchers, economists Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon at Emory, did not know why.

My theory:  people have expensive, fantasy-driven weddings because they are unsure of the marriage, and are trying to drive up the sunk cost.

"Morally Acceptable" May Still Mean "But a Bad Idea"

There is an interesting comparison of actions that a majority of Americans now find "morally acceptable" which most Americans used to reject.

I think that this question is misleading, and is becoming more so.  My students are very reluctant to pronounce anything morally unacceptable, or always wrong.  Yet I do not think their underlying position has actually changed that much.  It is not that they find formerly abhorrent actions to now be acceptable.  It is that they don't want to pronounce moral absolutes in case someone comes up with some wild desert-island counter-case.

I think an additional question wording would be revealing.  We should ask, "Do you think doing X is almost always a bad idea?"

I believe on that standard we would see that there has been less change in American morality than some fear.

The British Public is Just as Fearfully Ill-Informed as the U.S. Public

A nifty poll found that British people think the world is scarier than it really is on welfare fraud, immigration, race, crime, teen pregnancy, unemployment benefits, and foreign aid. These are the same issues that most Americans are way off about.  

For example, "On the issue of ethnicity, black and Asian people are thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent."  My own surveys that most Americans think the black proportion of the U.S. population is about 1/3, whereas the real fraction is 13%.

I think the root of the problem is not poor education or reasoning ability.  It is not really a media problem, though the media makes it worse.

It is a fear problem. When we address the majority’s fear, they will be more open to facts.

"Hamilton" is Extraordinary

Mrs. G. and I were on a long road trip today, so we listened to the soundtrack to the new musical, "Hamilton."  It has been all the rage in my extended family.  We were not disappointed.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the whole show (and stars in the title role on Broadway) has done an excellent job of portraying the Founding Fathers as ambitious young men.  This invigorates the portrait that I have of them all from later, at the height of their powers, and in old age.

"Hamilton" will mostly appeal to the nerdy minority who already know their Founding Fathers and early Federalist history.  I hope some people stumble onto the musical because it is a hot ticket, and then become Revolution nerds.  But I expect that real enthusiasm will come from people who already are attached to the story of the founding of the Republic.

Love Conquers Fear at an Ohio Islamic Center

Of all the good news coming out today - and there is, as usual, quite a bit - I have to go with this small "love overcoming fear" story.

Lured by a Facebook campaign to protest at Islamic centers, a woman named Annie was the only one to show up, with homemade signs about "Sharia Law" and a crying Middle East.  The nice people of the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin, Ohio, came out to welcome Annie.  They greeted her with conversation and offers of hospitality.  Finally, one of the women spontaneously gave Annie a hug. Annie was visibly afraid - and then the hug won.

Annie toured the Center, was fed and welcomed, learned more about Islam, and left with smiles.  And without her signs.

The fight against fear chalks up another small victory.

"Conservative Revolution" is an Oxymoron

David Brooks' excellent column, "The Republicans' Incompetence Caucus," raises an interesting question:  is "conservative revolution" an oxymoron?

Burkeans, like Brooks, and me, think so.  He wrote:

"conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible."

The "Reagan Revolution" was not for any of those things, but focused on preventing government.  While the Reagan administration talked this talk, while actually growing the government, they planted the seed.  That seed has now bloomed into the Tea Party, which really does want to destroy government.  That is not conservatism by any definition.

Celebrating the Nerd Awards: Macarthur and Nobel Roundup

Heading the list of Macarthur “genius” awards was a very gratifying choice for the Gruntled household: Ta-Nehesi Coates, the most thoughtful on the young generation of black public intellectuals.

The biggest "find”: Lin-Manuel Miranda and his musical "Hamilton," which has become an obsession among my relatives.  

In the Nobels, I particular liked the story of Youyou Tu, who found a way to do science under Maoist anti-intellectual tyranny by finding cures within the annals of Chinese traditional medicine.

The peace prize lifts up the brightest achievement of the Arab Spring by honoring the "Tunisian quartet" of civil society organizations. They are building a functioning civil democracy after removing a long-running tyranny.

Today rounds out the Nerd Awards with the Nobel Prize in economics to Angus Deaton, a Scot working at Princeton who studies well-being, one of my favorite topics.

Christians Are Best Protected by a Neutral State - So Take Down the Wilmore Cross

Our neighboring city of Wilmore, KY, owns a water tower with "Wilmore" painted on it in big letters.  And a cross on top.  The tower sits on the property of Asbury Theological Seminary, which sold the tower to the city years ago with the provision that the cross remain.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin secularist group, has asked the city to remove the cross from the city-owned water tower.  Sentiment in Wilmore is not supportive of this move.

Nonetheless, as a Christian and an elder of the church, I believe we would all be better off if the cross were removed from the city's tower.  Our religious freedom - everyone's religious freedom - is best protected by a neutral state.  Moreover, Christian hospitality urges us to make sure that non-Christians are also welcome in any town in America.

Speaker of the House Crisis is a Good Time for Republicans to Take Their Party Back ...

... by allying with Democrats.

If an establishment Republican in the House went to the Democratic members and proposed to work with them to govern, in exchange for their support in the Speaker's race, this would be good for the country.

The Tea Party would be completely uncooperative, of course - but they are doing that already.  The Republicans cannot govern with them.  But perhaps they can without them.

Middle American Radicals Want a Demagogue

John Judis has an interesting take on "The Intellectual History of Trump Supporters".  He connects them with an analysis from the 1970s of "Middle American Radicals," moderately educated white populists who strongly oppose the government and the bankers, the non-whites and the immigrants. They have a strong affinity with the Tea Party constituency.  And the Tea Party is drawn to Donald Trump.

The main things the MARS voters want is a strong man to fight all their enemies.  Or, as I argued recently, they want a demagogue.

Fortunately, Judis points out, there are not enough of them to elect a demagogue.  They may make up as much as 20% of the electorate, but that still does not get their guy elected.  He predicts that Trump - like George Wallace, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan before him - will fade away.

Extreme Poverty Worldwide Fell Below 10% for the First Time

The World Bank reported this excellent news.

The biggest improvements have been in East Asia - formerly the proverbial location for the starving millions - where extreme poverty has fallen to just over five percent.

The Second Amendment is Not a Charter for War on the Government

The American Revolution is bad precedent for today's individuals-against-the-government reading of the Second Amendment. The state governments sent representatives to Congress, which created a Continental Army made up of troops recruited by the states. General Washington, the duly designated commander, tried mightily to turn the rag-tag militias into well-regulated military units. 

The fundamental justification for creating this revolutionary army was to protest against a monarchy which refused even token representation to the colonies.  It is hard to imagine a scenario in the United States in which a legally constituted authority had no democratic means for redress of grievances. 

The Second Amendment protects the rights of citizens to join a well-regulated militia, of which we have several levels.  The idea that every citizen constitutes a legitimate “militia of one” is as archaic as the idea of quartering troops in citizens’ homes.

The Donald Trump Bubble Shows There is a Significant Market for a Demagogue

Today there is a market for a demagogue - someone whose entire appeal is polarizing, uncivil, personally vilifying, and policy-less. The demagogue's message is "you are weak, but I will make us strong again." 

There are always demagogues in the political market.  Usually the governing parties are able to shut them out by appealing to the majority who want government to govern according to law.  Governing parties then debate policies that appeal to their separate constituencies and reach some compromise.

Now, though, one of the governing parties has created a dangerous opening for demagogues to infiltrate and take over their party structure.  By running on a platform of "government is the problem" for a generation, one party has invited to cuckoos to lay their eggs in the party nest.  And now the eggs are hatching and demanding to be fed.

Why Do So Many Conservative Christians Love Their Guns?

In response to my earlier post on the assault weapons ban, I was asked by Barry, a regular reader:

What is the strong correlation between evangelistic Christianity and gun fandom? IT seems that there should be none, however, the correlation is strong

Barry, I agree that the attachment that many conservative Christians feels for their guns is very puzzling.  This is especially puzzling for those who want guns for hypothetical warfare with their own government - the exact scenario Jesus faced when he accepted crucifixion.

I think most people's religion is really a tribal religion, syncretized with elements of more universalistic world religions.  This goes for nationalistic Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Confucianists, as much as for nationalistic Christians.  In these cases, I believe they envision themselves as "good guys with guns" who will protect the tribe against "bad guys with guns". And, of course, the latter usually imagine the same about themselves.

No Unscripted Actors

I have made a rule for myself: I do not need to watch interviews with actors.  This goes double for movie stars.

Directors and writers I can be interested in.  But actors only reliably have something important to say when they are talking about acting.

A corollary: I am suspicious of plays about actors.  Same goes for novels about writers.

[All of this is brought on by watching "Birdman"- an artful film about foolish, self-destructive people with concerns not engaging to non-actors.]

The Economy is a Good Servant But a Bad Master

The economy exists to serve the needs and wants of everyone.  Society should regulate the economy just enough to make sure it does that job.  This regulation is done through the state and through the customs and mores of the people.

The "real economy," argues David Halpern in The Hidden Wealth of Nations, consists of the quality of relations among individuals and among social groups.  This is what most people value the most. The money economy and the production/consumption economy should serve human relations, not the reverse.

Society becomes distorted when, instead, the government and even the customs and mores are shifted to serve the economy.  The idea that society is best off if the market is left free to maximize profit for owners serves the owners, but hurts everyone else. In this as in all things, proportion is vital.

Bring Back the Assault Weapons Ban

After yet another mass murder involving an assault weapon, we should bring back the Assault Weapons Ban.

This sensible law included, at the NRA's insistence a sunset provision.  Passed under a Democratic administration, it was allowed to expire in a Republican one.

After Sandy Hook, Democrats made a concerted effort to renew the ban and make it permanent.  Republicans defeated it.

I am not calling for a total gun ban, nor gun grabbing (gun trolls take note).

I am calling for the renewal of sensible legislation to limit and gradually eliminate weapons whose only civilian use is mass murder.

Beards: They Do a Body Good

Today I will just enjoy the research that says beards block ultraviolet rays and keep irritants away from your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. :-)

Pope Francis Can Help Mainline Protestants Talk About Christian Economic Teaching Again.

The social teachings of mainline Protestantism and those of the Roman Catholic Church are strongly aligned with one another. They have been in dialogue for more than a hundred years. They diverge the most on sex, but are very congruent on the care of the poor and on economic issues in general.

Pope Francis has pushed forward the economic side of Catholic social teaching. This is a good thing for mainline Protestantism.  The market for genuinely Christian economic thought is open right now. Niebuhrians, deliver.  Take back the economy from the Randians and the libertarians.

We Don't Have a Crisis of Resilience Among College Students - We Have a Blessing of a Generation That Trusts Grownups

There has been much hand-wringing that today's college students are not resilient, can't solve their own problems, and rely too much on faculty and staff.

The great virtue of the Millennials are their better relation with their parents than either the Xers or the Boomers did at the same age.  They resemble the G.I. generation in this trust, as William Howe and Neil Strauss have argued.

Every generation has the vices of its virtues.  The virtue of trusting parents also produces the vice of turning to parents and other grown-ups for guidance before they try to solve problems themselves.  As Mrs. G and I told our children, when there is a serious problem, "Get Dumbledore."

But note, though:  the children don't give up on solving the problem.  They get advice on how to solve their problems, and then do it.

Good News: Defectors from ISIS

The International Center for the Study of Radicalization studies people who defect from ISIS, especially the disillusioned foreign fighters.

Among the main reasons the defectors cite:

The corruption of ISIS commanders

Racism against foreign fighters

Killing civilians, including women and children (especially fellow Sunni Muslims)

Fighting other militant groups, instead of Syrian dictator Assad.


Since none of these offenses is likely to diminish.

I hope that means the word is getting out to potential recruits that ISIS is not what it claims to be.  Worse, it is a bad organization even by the standards of radical Islam, and even to other radical Muslims.