A Socially Constructive Aphorism

As a happy centrist, I often think about how to build up society, and how to keep it from breaking down.  Lately, I have been thinking that these processes are not quite symmetrical.  Thus, I propose this aphorism.

We build up for a reason;
Things break down when we lack a reason.

What Would a "Permanent Record" for Dating Do? Would it Create a Sense of a Courtship Career?

I find that young people pay attention to their school and work history, because it creates a permanent record that others can, and sometimes do, check.

They pay less attention to their dating history - in part, I think, because there is no equivalent of a "permanent record."

What would happen if dating websites asked for a complete dating resume, including asking for explanations of gaps and omissions?  Would students come to see that they have a courtship career that matters, in the same way that they have a school and work career with cumulative effect?

Regional Cultures Depend on a Period Without Immigration

Michael Barone, in his excellent Shaping Our Nation, notes that New England did not have a significant influx of non-Puritans from the 1620s to the 1780s. As a result, the Yankees developed a  strong regional culture.

I think this is a powerful, and generalizable, idea:  regional culture depends on a long period without significant in-migration.

The advantage of such a situation is that the local culture has time to develop and become pervasive.  The disadvantage is that the region can become backward.  Such a region misses out on the energy of new immigrant groups.  Worse, it misses out on the vibrant innovation that a mixed region must develop as it hybridizes old and new cultures into a new synthesis.

Low in-migration can account for why colonial New England developed such a strong regional culture. I think this also accounts for why the South developed such a distinctive culture up to the 1960s, and why Appalachia is distinctive to this day.

Trump Could Bring the GOP to its Lowest Ebb Since 1932

The Republican Party has been cultivating an authoritarian base since Ronald Reagan ran as an "anti-government" president.

Donald Trump is an opportunist. He has correctly seen what kind of opportunity this gives him to hijack the Republican presidential nomination for his own purposes.

The Republican establishment is already trying every measure they can think of to stop Trump.  However, they have disarmed themselves of all checks and balances, and have not at all been able to unite.  Each attempt they make to stop Trump just confirms to the authoritarians that "elites" are trying to take away their voice and vote - because they are.

Now the GOP is openly preparing to attack their own nominee, in an attempt to protect their Congressional candidates.

Nothing is certain.  However, I can see how this election could turn into a debacle for the Republican Party worse than Goldwater's loss.

The Black Imprisonment Rate is Going Down

Some good news that the experts are having a hard time explaining.

The imprisonment rate for black men has gone down by a fifth, and that for black women has gone down by half, since 2000.

The white rate for both sexes is up a bit.  This may be due to tougher enforcement against drug and sex crimes, especially in rural areas, which whites commit more than blacks.

Why the black rate, and not just the black proportion, has gone down is more puzzling.   Perhaps the police and the courts have become more conscious that they were imprisoning more black people than whites, even though the races commit the main crimes at about these same rate.  The New Jim Crow, Black Lives Matter, and the higher attention given to mass incarceration in general seems to be helping.

Some Good News from Charles Koch

I give Charles Koch credit for writing about his agreement with Bernie Sanders on several important points. Since the Koch brothers often top the list of evil billionaires that Sanders campaigns against, this is unexpected good news.

Koch agrees with Sanders that the system is increasingly rigged to favor the already privileged.  They both oppose special interest tax exemptions - even, Koch says, those that favor him or his business.

Most surprising to me was that Koch Industries has voluntarily "banned the box" in its job applications which asks if the applicant had a criminal conviction.  A society that permanently handicaps ex-cons from getting a job just makes the situation worse.

However, Koch parts from Sanders without admitting it. Koch concludes that poverty, despite the government's anti-poverty efforts, shows that "a bigger, more controlling, more complex and costlier federal government leaves the disadvantaged less likely to improve their lives."

40% of Trump Supporters in South Carolina Wish the South Had Won the War

I believe Donald Trump should be asked what he thinks of whether it is a good thing the United States of America won the Civil War, since only a quarter of his supporters in the next primary state think so.

The Feds Did It Right: "Vanilla Isis" Arrested After Armed Invasion of Oregon Refuge

The federal government showed great patience and discipline in waiting out the very unregulated militia that occupied a bird sanctuary.  Despite the clear desire of "Vanilla Isis" to have a shoot-out with their own government, they were taken peacefully, with the exception of one hothead who drew on the arresting officers.

The Feds have clearly learned since Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Y'all Qaida, on the other hand, has not.

Consumers of the City, Producers of the Polis.

A developing thought from our research into why people choose to live where they do.


Some fear the city.

Some view the city as consumers.  They see the city as a source of goods and services that they can take or leave at their convenience.

Some view the city as a polis. They view themselves as producers of the polis, a task they are engaged in all the time.

The President of Mount Saint Mary's University is doubly wrong

I rarely sign protest petitions or call for someone's immediate resignation, but this case warrants it.

First, President Simon Newman wrote to faculty to get them to push out weak students before a federal deadline each year, in order to improve the university's retention statistics.  He put his order delicately:

"This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads."

This is a reprehensible position for any college administrator to take, especially at a Catholic institution.

Then he made it worse, by summarily firing his critics, though they have tenure.

I have signed the petition.  

NARAL is Foolish to Criticize the Doritos Ad

As a centrist, I object to extremism on either end of the spectrum.  As a cheerful person, I object to humorlessness, particularly about minor things.

Therefore, I was doubly sorry to see that NARAL Pro Choice took to the public tweet-waves to criticize a silly Doritos ad that played during the Super Bowl.

The ad showed a man casually eating Doritos during his wife's ultrasound examination.  They discover that the baby responds to the Doritos being waved near the mother's belly.  When the mom, in disgust, brushes the Dorito away, the baby leaps to being born in order to chase it.  As I said, silly.

NARAL, though, chose to make the silly, and very wrong-headed complaint that showing a baby reacting thus through ultrasound is "humanizing fetuses."

They have come in for richly deserved scorn, even from people, like me, who support the legal option of abortion.

A Better Measure of Authoritarians Supporting Trump

Jonathan Haidt and Emily Ekins report the results of a survey of the moral concerns of voters who support different presidential candidates. This survey draws on Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory, which I have written about several times. 

The whole article is rich on many candidates.  Here I want to lift up just one sentence: 

Voters who still score high on authority/loyalty/sanctity and low on care — even after accounting for all the demographic variables — are significantly more likely to vote for Donald Trump. These are the true authoritarians — they value obedience while scoring low on compassion.  

There was on another point that caught my eye on the Democratic side.  Bernie Sanders supporters scored highest on the classic liberal virtue of care for the vulnerable.  They were also surprisingly strong in supporting individual liberty - young libertarians went for Sanders more than any other candidate except Rand Paul.  "Meanwhile, Moral Foundations do not significantly predict a vote for Hillary Clinton; demographic variables seem to be all you need to predict her support (being female, nonwhite, and higher-income are all good predictors)." 

Trying to Figure Privilege and Hard Work

I teach about privilege in most of my classes.  In talking about privilege, students always want some credit for their own or their ancestors' hard work.  This is fair enough.

I am working on a table showing how to think about the relation of privilege and hard work.

This is my half-baked idea.  Comments welcome.

	Hard Work
Privilege		+	-
	+	Most Power	Low Status
	-	High Status	Pity

Young Adult Dystopian Fiction is How Millennials Are Preparing for War

The forces who want the next big war get louder each day.

Young adults are preparing themselves by absorbing story after story about kids being called on to fight a great evil and save the remnant of civilization.  Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent, The Fifth Wave, and many more show the huge market for this fantasy.

The good thing about these stories is that they prepare young people to fight heroically for the right.

The bad thing is that they build the presumption of a coming war for civilization into the taken-for-granted background of our lives.

Howe and Strauss' generation theory predicts a "Crisis of 2020" or thereabouts, when the generations align to produce a major crisis.  The initiative for the war would come from the aging Baby Boomers.  But the people who would do the brunt of the fighting would be Millennials.  And the Millennials seem to be mentally preparing themselves for war.

Hilary Clinton's Reticence About Discussing Her Faith is Common to Mainliners

Hilary Clinton was asked at a town hall meeting to talk about her Christian faith.  She gave a solid answer, typical of mainline Protestants (she is a Methodist).

My study of the Bible, my many conversations with people of faith, has led me to believe the most important commandment is to love the Lord with all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself, and that is what I think we are commanded by Christ to do, and there is so much more in the Bible about taking care of the poor, visiting the prisoners, taking in the stranger, creating opportunities for others to be lifted up, to find faith themselves that I think there are many different ways of exercising your faith.

There is the Methodist Social Creed (1908) in a nutshell.  

Her last point, though, also shows why mainliners are reluctant to wear our faith on our sleeves, for fear of unjustly imposing it on others.  "My study of the Bible ... has led me to believe ... [in helping others]  to find faith themselves [such] that I think there are many different ways of exercising your faith."  For those without ears to hear, this seems as if mainliners do not act on their faith.

Millennials Trust CNN the Most for News; Rush Limbaugh the Least

A nifty Pew survey about where Millennials get their news found that their most trusted sources for news were CNN (the only one trusted by more than half), followed by ABC, NBC, CBS, and the New York Times.

The bottom of the list?  Sean Hannity, Breitbart, Glenn Beck, and, at the very bottom, Rush Limbaugh.

The Ark Park Decision is Bad for Christian Honor

When Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry behind the Creation Museum, proposed a Noah's Ark theme park, they promised that there would be no religious test to work there.  On the strength of that pledge, Gov. Beshear promised tourism tax credits.

Both the ministry and the government acknowledged that if employees had to proclaim AiG's specific brand of Christianity, the deal would be off.

Then the ministry broke its word, and quietly required a religious test for employment.

Governor Beshear, therefore, cancelled the tax credits.

Inconsistent with the honor one might expect of a Christian ministry, Answers in Genesis sued for the tax credits.

Surprisingly, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Ark Park.  I think this is a bad decision in law.

But even worse, I believe, is the Ark Park bringing the suit, and accepting money from all the taxpayers while excluding some from employment.

Perhaps the GOP Coalition Will Break Up Like the Democratic Party Did in 1860

The war between the regular Republicans and the angry populists shows no signs of ending.  Donald Trump is still the leading candidate for the party's nomination.  Behind him comes Ted Cruz, who is loathed by his party's leaders.

Now Michael Bloomberg, the moderate Republican former mayor of New York, is mulling an independent run.

And Jim Webb, the Republican cabinet official turned Democratic senator, is also contemplating an independent candidacy.

In 1860 the Democratic Party split.  If they had not, Centre College's own John C. Breckinridge, the sitting vice-president, would surely have won the presidency.  Instead, Stephen Douglas refused to concede the nomination.  The Democrats field two competing candidates.  A third party candidate, John Bell, ran on a status-quo platform.  This allowed Abraham Lincoln, of the new Republican Party, to win an election he is not likely to have won otherwise.

If the Republicans splinter in 2016, I expect the would recover in a few years.  Still, there is no guarantee that the conservatives will rally behind one banner this year.

The Ideal Types of Human Flourishing vs. the Reality of Corporate Domination

I believe that burghers who build up the burgh, and love the polis, are the happiest and most developed humans.  

Jefferson believed that yeoman farmers developed an independence of character that was essential to a democratic nation. The burgher in the city and the yeoman on the farm are clearly different ideals of what the modal, and model, citizen is.

A modern nation consists mostly of urban people, but also draws from (and vitally depends on) the farm.

The small town, run by voluntary associations, has been the best compromise.  The new urbanists envision making the city livable through a conjunction of small town neighborhoods.

The real problem for all of these ideals, though, is that the economy is dominated by large corporations, which are not responsive to small town citizen associations, yeoman farmers, or even urban burghers.

Why Do We Need an Ark Park When We Have the Creation Museum?

Answers in Genesis, who gave us the Creation Museum, is building an Ark Park.  It was to have rides and food and other theme park stuff, centered on a 510 foot ark.  But they didn't raise enough money. In order to save the Ark Park, they have cut out nearly everything except the ark itself.

They project 2 million visitors a year. Almost no one outside the ministry and the mayor's office believe that the Ark Park will generate that amount of interest.

So why do we need an Ark Park when we already have the Creation Museum?  It would be sort of cool to see a 510 foot ark.  But not 2 million visitors cool.  The museum teaches the idea better, and it shows quite a bit of the Flood spectacle, too.  What more would a big ark add that would be so appealing?