Hey, Ya Know What?

Why Conservatives Scare Me as Much as Liberals Do

I lean conservative. Lean. I am not a crazy right winger. I've said it a million times. However, many of those "conservatives" who lean WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY past where I am scare the hell out of me sometimes. The liberals that go just as far the other way scare me too. The further you go in one direction, whether left or right, the greater the risk of turning into a mean and hateful person. Now, on to the article I link to in this post...

Background on the dude who is the subject of the article: Don Miller is one of my favorite writers. Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What made huge impacts on me. His style is perfect for my sarcastic and humorous side and his ideas and thoughtfulness add much to my own ideas of ministry and being missional.

I do not know who Mark Tooley is, but he writes for the Weekly Standard and slams Miller hard. See, Miller, who attends a conservative evangelical church, campaigned and voted for Barack Obama. Tooley does not like this, not one bit. He also throws up the "emergents" and "emerging church" people that Miller knows to prove his devilish cred. The thing is Miller has never claimed to be a part of the movement. While these emergent people are liberal and I can't agree with them on many things, they are not the epitome of evil.

The article is so full of untruth I could scream. He doesn't even get the city that Miller lives in and attends church in correct (he lives in Portland, not Seattle). He takes pieces and parts of what Miller has said and written and builds the biggest straw man I have seen recently. The fact he doesn't toe the conservative Christian line on abortion (he is pro-life actually) and gay marriage, he becomes the evil liberal evangelical poster boy. This is where I get in trouble myself with my conservative evangelical friends. My answers and the weight I give these issues is not up to snuff.

I am not going to get too far into a defense of Miller. That is not what this post is about. I have linked to his response and he does a fine job. No, this is about scary mean people. This kind of attack is why far right and far left people scare me so much. In order to push their agendas, they have to lie and distort the truth. They use quotes out of context. They seek to destroy people. And before you know it, those on their side are whipped up into a frenzy based on NOTHING! Both sides do it. Don't even try to tell me they do not.

Why can people who stand on principles not JUST stand on those principals? Why do they have to instead go on the attack and attempt to destroy the lives and reputations of those they disagree with? Why can't they be more like Donald Miller who says the following in the blog post answering this article:

The one thing my very conservative friends and my liberal friends have in common is that they are extremely kind. I think kind people are kind and mean people are mean and it hardly matters whether they are conservative or not. It has more to do with irritable bowels, I think, or a persons controlling personality vs. their ability to trust Gods grace and speak His truth without associating a persons response to that truth with their own threatened identity. Regardless, I keep the kind friends and slyly slip away from the mean ones. Life’s too short.

I wish people could be more like that. Moreso, I wish I could be more like that.

Post-Modern Prophet

Miller's Response

Falling for Phony Jobs

Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal (not Foxnews). Go ahead and pipe in and say that the GOP and the right offer no real solutions, blah, blah, blah. They aren't allowed to. They are not in power anymore. They are not even allowed to meet with the majority Democrats to talk about many of the issues that our country is struggling with.

Anyway, this article gets to the heart of one of the biggest concerns I had and voiced: the "saving and creating" of jobs by our government via a huge stimulus package. First, it is impossible to measure how many jobs the government has "saved and created" and second, it's obviously not working, even by their own predictions. Emphasis below is mine.

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

So when do those who think the stimulus was a great idea start getting "antsy"? Or will they ever. Will pride keep them from admitting that maybe this stimulus was not a great idea? Who knows. All I know is, summer is already here and this money has done no good whatsoever...

McGurn: The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims - WSJ.com.

Musical Marathon Today

In a little while I leave the house and be gone till after midnight. We don’t call ourselves the hardest working band in the Tri for nothing!

Here is the itinerary:

11:00 AM Arrive at Black Wolf  Harley Davidson in Bristol VA

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM Set up and sound check

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM On the stage

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Break down and pack up

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Drive to Lakeview Marina and maybe grab some food

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Setup and Sound Check (and maybe some rest)

7:00 PM – 11:00 PM On the stage

11:00 PM – 12:00ish – Break Down, Pack up and head home

Long day, but the extra money sure does help and I know we’ll have some fun, meet some new people, and hang out with plenty of friends and family.

It’s Not About Biased or Un-Biased

I have been accused of saying that in political matters I am un-biased. Actually, I never said that. In fact, it would be silly for ANYONE to say that. Of course I have biases. We all do! There are certain convictions that most of us stand by. Those who don’t, well, God help the. We all have a particular world view and our stances are shaped by them. No, I have never claimed to being un-biased and if I did, I must have been loopy that day.

What I have claimed is that I will, to the very best of my ability, be open and listen to another view. And I do that. I can listen to another view, take it in, and process it against what I currently think or believe. At that point I make a judgment. Some times I will agree and adopt/reconcile it into my own views. Other times I will not be able to agree with it and will say so. Not a thing wrong with rejecting an idea.

Here is the problem. There are too many people who think a person is close minded if they reject an argument from the other side. The only way a person can be open minded is if they hear your side and accept it. That is pure nonsense. Again, it comes back to convictions, and if we slide on those for the sake of “open mindedness”, we are weak minded and spineless. And beyond that, some people called you biased and close minded for even stating an opinion contrary to their own.

I love when someone makes a good argument about their position. Even if I don’t agree afterwards, I can appreciate and respect the way they communicate their convictions. What irks me is when I feel I have made an argument and the responder takes whacks at my convictions by changing the terms and content of the debate. We should listen to what a person is saying and respond to that. When I comment on a blog or a Facebook post, I aim at what is actually being said and do not try to pull other factors in.

Look at my post yesterday as an example of this. If I am posting about Obama and how I think he is not making good on his promise of promoting a post-racial, unified society, don’t respond with Bush comments and the GOP is evil. I am not Bush. I am not the GOP. I am not even a republican! I am someone who is a stakeholder in good race relations and if our President does something that I think is harmful to them I will speak out. I don’t care if his name is Bush or Obama. And I have spoken out against both of them.

So, am I biased? Yes. Do I go right down the line with one party? No. Can I listen to the other side? Absolutely. It is not a crime to disagree and have convictions. It’s not even a bad thing. What is bad is when being open minded means agreeing with the other guy all the time. If that is what a person expects, they are the most closed minded of all.

Surprised by Love - Liberty U Infiltrated

A friend sent me a link to this book review. I really want to read the book now. The article is really worth a read and I think the book will give non-Christians and skeptical(of far right Christian organizations) Christians like me, who have problems with Falwells school, a look at some of things about the place that are good.

Basically, a Brown University student enrolled at Liberty for a semester to go "undercover" to right a book about Liberty from the perspective of a secularist.

Here is the opening of the article.

Surprised by Love - Books & Culture.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University isn't the book its author, Kevin Roose, thought it would be. It's certainly not the book he pitched to his publisher as a left hook in the ongoing fisticuffs between secularists and believers. And it's not the book I anticipated when I first heard rumors among students at Liberty University, where I teach, that a young man from Brown University had come here and spent a semester undercover in order to write an expose on command central for one side in America's culture wars.

It's not the book it was supposed to be because, as it turns out, Liberty University wasn't what it was supposed to be.

This isn't to say that some of the worst stereotypes of evangelicalism, fundamentalism, the Bible Belt, and Christian higher education aren't reinforced by Roose's experience. They are. Nevertheless, Roose largely gets beyond the stereotypes and humanizes even those whose views he finds "reprehensible." And in the process, Roose gets a good dose of humanizing himself.

Obama, Race, Discrimination and the Sotomayor Selection

I knew of the New Haven Conneticut case (Ricci v. DeStefano) in which appellate judge Sonia Sotomayor found against firefighters who did well on promotion tests. So well, they did better than all the applicants of another color, save one. They didn't all receive their promotions in spite of doing everything they were asked to do. Their only short fall? They were white.

This is the person that post-racial Obama has nominated for the Supreme court. Here is a short snippet from the commentary I have linked to.

...Sotomayor and two colleagues simply brushed aside the important constitutional and statutory questions raised by the city's decision to discard the results of a race-neutral test given to applicants for promotions within the department. Too many men of the "wrong" color had passed it -- that is, all of those who scored highest were white except for one Hispanic.

Those firefighters had worked hard to get the test results they did; the lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, is dyslexic, but he had been on the force for 11 years and was determined to become a lieutenant, so he paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes and make flash cards. Ricci gave up his second job in order to study long hours -- and aced the test.

Most of the people I know have not heard of this case. It didn't make it into the news cycle with the same gusto as other stories. Many may decide she was right in her decisiopn on the case, but most would not. Even many of those I know who are not white would not agree with this. One thing they would question is the assumption being made that the blacks and hispanics aren't smart enough to beat our their white counterparts on a test, so let's give them a charity promotion. That wouldn't sit well with me were I part of a minority.

If we are going to fight discrimination based on color by discriminating based on another color then it's not about discrimination anymore. And if Obama is going to nominate such lightening rods to the highest court in the land, he is no more post-racial than the idoits who would call my wife and kids the "N word".

In spite of electing a black man to be our president, we are still caught up in the same old same old. He is not going to help heal the deep wounds of our nation and it's sordid history of discrimination and racism. No, not so long as he makes decisions like this one.

We can no more live in a country where a white man gets passed over for a job, in spite of following the rules and working hard than we can a country where a black or hipanic man can't even sniff one because of his skin color. But that IS the country that Sotomayor wants to live in, and by extention, maybe our president does as well.

This commentary is worth a read.

Commentary: Identity politics in the age of Obama - CNN.com.