Month: October 2004

To complement Jim Henley’s case for Kerry, “Jane Galt” makes the thinking libertarian’s case for Bush here.

Another article today at TCS opens with this paragraph:

Two of America’s most important Brits — Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens — have endorsed John Kerry for President. Their endorsements are important because both support an aggressive pursuit of the war on terrorism, an issue where Senator Kerry’s commitment is suspect. Their endorsements are also important because both Sullivan and Hitchens resist taking positions out of blind partisan loyalty. When they take positions, whether you agree with them or not, it is safe to assume that they have thought them through.

Now, with all due respect to Messers. Sullivan and Hitchens, I think it’s extremely easy, especially for those of us who spend a lot of time keeping up with political commentary, to overestimate the importance of what pundits say in general and with respect to their presidential endorsements in particular. For instance, I mentioned to my wife the other day that Andrew Sullivan had come out for Kerry. “Who’s that?” she asked. Keep in mind that she is a student at an Ivy-league law school and very well informed on current events and she had no idea who Sullivan was. A little perspective may be in order.

Around 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in violence since the US-led coalition forces invaded the country in March 2003, said a report published Friday in British medicine journal The Lancet.

More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes, American public health experts said in the latest issue of the magazine.

The study, which was carried out in 33 randomly chosen neighborhoods of Iraq representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq.

More here.

UPDATE: Tim Worstall at Tech Central Station questions the accuracy of the report here.

UPDATE II: Juan Cole also comments here:

The methodology of this study is very tight, but it does involve extrapolating from a small number and so could easily be substantially incorrect. But the methodology also is standard in such situations and was used in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I think the results are probably an exaggeration. But they can’t be so radically far off that the 16,000 deaths previously estimated can still be viewed as valid. I’d say we have to now revise the number up to at least many tens of thousand–which anyway makes sense. The 16,000 estimate comes from counting all deaths reported in the Western press, which everyone always knew was only a fraction of the true total. (I see deaths reported in al-Zaman every day that don’t show up in the Western wire services).

The most important finding from my point of view is not the magnitude of civilian deaths, but the method of them. Roberts and Burnham find that US aerial bombardments are killing far more Iraqi civilians than had previously been suspected. This finding is also not a surprise to me. I can remember how, on a single day (August 12), US warplanes bombed the southern Shiite city of Kut, killing 84 persons, mainly civilians, in an attempt to get at Mahdi Army militiamen. These deaths were not widely reported in the US press, especially television. Kut is a small place and has been relatively quiet except when the US has been attacking Muqtada al-Sadr, who is popular among some segments of the population there. The toll in Sadr City or the Shiite slums of East Baghdad, or Najaf, or in al-Anbar province, must be enormous.

A very interesting piece from Religion News Service on Republican efforts to get the Amish to the polls, largely based on appeals to conservative stances on abortion and gay marriage:

The Amish, as well as their spiritual cousins the Hutterites and Old Order Mennonites, have long resisted political involvement as a way to “not be conformed to this world,” as the Apostle Paul wrote. But in recent years, Republican-touted issues involving “traditional family values” have found a receptive audience in some of those groups, whose religious and cultural beliefs emphasize family and community.

And it seems to be working in part:

Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites are members of a Christian movement known as Anabaptism, which emerged out of the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 16th centuries. Some conservative groups, known as Old Orders, have largely avoided political involvement, while many members of others, such as Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Brethren, have become voters and office holders.

“Who’s going to vote them in if we Christians don’t?” said Joel Decker, a member of Starland Hutterite Colony in Gibbon, Minn., who plans on voting in his second presidential election next month.

“I’m ultraconservative in the political arena,” he said.

Some aren’t biting though:

But other Old Order groups seem to be adhering closer to traditional beliefs. Amos Hoover, an Old Order Mennonite member and historian in Pennsylvania, said he has not seen increased interest in voting in his church.

“We discourage voting and try to take no part,” he said. “We try to pray every Sunday for the government.”

That was echoed by Steve Hofstetter, principal of an Indiana school affiliated with the Beachy Amish, a more progressive Amish branch. “We would pray for those who are voting,” he said. “We vote on our knees.”

Full article here.

(via Get Religion)

This coming Sunday is Reformation Day – the anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg. This event is generally held to mark the start of the Reformation. (So, kill two birds with one stone by sending your kids trick-or-treating dressed as Luther and Calvin.)

I’m not sure how many Protestant churches actually observe Reformation Day, but I personally find myself somewhat ambivalent about it. I have very little taste for Protestant triumphalism and prefer to see myself as a “small-c” catholic – someone who adheres to the ecumenical Creeds of Christendom and the Great Tradition.

On top of that, one of my best friends is a serious practicing Roman Catholic, and I am not the least bit inclined to see him as being in league with the Antichrist. At best, I can see the Reformation as a kind of regrettable necessity, a sundering of the body of Christ that begs to be healed.

Moreover, I wonder how many Protestants still see their separation from Rome in terms of grand theological differences. How many of us, if asked, could articulate the Protestant and Catholic views on justification or infused grace? In fact, the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on Justification with the Roman Catholic Church that concluded that the doctrine of justification need no longer be church dividing.

If that’s right (and there are elements within the Lutheran churches that dispute the Joint Declaration), then what do Lutherans in particular (I’ll let other Protestants speak for themselves) take to be the justification (pardon the expression) for the continued divisions in the Church? I’m assuming here that reunion of the churches is a self-evident good, and that if we are to remain separate from Rome we ought to have good reasons.

Rather than attempt to speak for an entire tradition, I’ll offer some of my own reasons for not swimming the Tiber, some more substantial than others. I hope these are all offered (and will be received!) in a spirit of charity, as serious intellectual and spiritual differences rather than as an attempt to score debating points.

Authority and Ecclesiology



This may be the biggest sticking point between modern-day Protestants and Roman Catholics. It’s interesting to speculate what Luther might have thought if he could’ve foreseen the splintering of the Church into hundreds of denominations, a splintering that often appeals to his principles for its legitimacy. Be that as it may, there seems to be a fundamental division between Christians who see the Bible as their primary authority for faith and life, and those who rely on the interpretive statements of a magisterium. Sola scriptura has been called the “formal principle” of the Reformation; it continues to condition many of the substantive theological judgments Protestants make.

For most Protestants, the local congregation is sufficient in itself for the Church to be present. The universal church is the invisible collection of all believers, past and present, living and dead. It doesn’t have an institutional expression per se. As Timothy George puts it “the invisible church emerges into visibility in the local congregation” when the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments and rightly administered.

I can’t help but think that this relatively non-hierarchical and decentralized ecclesiology is closer to the spirit of the New Testament. Despite its risks, the image of a group of believers coming together, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to understand the revelation vouchsafed to us in Scripture seems to me to comport better with that spirit than a sharp division between clergy and laity with a centralized authority.

This is not to say that a magisterial authority doesn’t have its advantages. The fact that the RCC has been able to maintain steadfast adherence to the historic beliefs and practices of the universal Church in the face of various modernist and skeptical assaults should give any but the most revisionist-minded Protestant pause. And the fact that many Protestants have unofficially adopted Pope John Paul II as the highest profile defender of orthodoxy in the contemporary world is itself revealing.

Still, The notion of an infallible papacy seems too much like a kind of epistemological bootstrapping – of asserting the existence of such an authority because it would be really nice if we had one! Which is not to say that Protestants should ignore the rich tradition of biblical interpretation from the Church Fathers to the present. We should strive to be truly catholic by adhering to “that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all,” but with Scripture always remaining the touchstone.

Women’s Ordination

Our congregation has two pastors – a man and a woman. Each week they alternate duties at worship, with one preaching and the other officiating at the Eucharist. It has never occurred to me that when I receive the sacrament from our female pastor that it is somehow “invalid,” or that she is any less capable of faithfully preaching the Word. I realize that this is by itself not an argument. I think this intuition, though, is grounded in the Lutheran view of grace. Grace is, according to Lutherans, God’s work from first to last. It is in no sense a work that we perform; we are purely receptive. Thus, I can find no theological footing for the notion that the celebrant must be a man in order for Grace to be really present.

Birth Control

Though apparently many American Catholics disregard their Church’s teaching on artificial birth control, it remains a serious bone of contention between Catholics and Protestants. In part this is because if this teaching is false, it calls into question the authority of the papacy as an infallible guide to faith and morals.

For my part, I can discern no morally significant difference between preventing pregnancy by abstaining (i.e. “Natural Family Planning”) and preventing pregnancy by means of (non-abortive) artificial birth control. I can sympathize with those who argue that the prevalence of artificial birth control has had socially deleterious effects, but for better or for worse it’s here to stay, and there’s no reason that should prevent Christian couples from making responsible use of birth control.

Marian Devotion and Dogmas



Next to the question of authority, this may be the place where Protestants find the most to disagree with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Though certain Anglicans have maintained a strain of Marian devotion, the vast majority of Protestants regard it as unnecessary at best, and idolatrous at worst.

I personally have no problem with devotion to Mary and the Saints and would be happy to leave it as adiaphoria – an accepted practice not binding on Christian conscience about which we can disagree. However, the issue of the Marian dogmas is another matter. The doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (not to be confused with the Virgin Birth!), the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and her Bodily Assumption into Heaven, while widespread in the ancient Church, should not, in my view, have the status of required doctrine. This is because of the lack of attestation in Scripture and their (seemingly) peripheral relation to the central truths of Revelation (as expressed in, say, the Apostle’s Creed).

These don’t exhaust my disagreements with the RCC, but they’re probably the most significant. I hope I have presented the Roman Catholic teachings that I disagree with in a clear and fair light and that my Catholic readers (if any) will correct me if I haven’t. And I hope I’ve offered an understandable (if not fully persuasive!) account of why, barring a deeper understanding of the requirements of Christian life, I remain (if somewhat uneasily) camped at Wittenberg rather than Rome.

Eve Tushnet has a very good post on her election ambivalence.

Best line: “So, some scattered thoughts, in an attempt to at least gesture toward the reasons why, if I were registered to vote, I would vote for (growl) Bush–the man who puts the ‘W’ in ‘WTF?!’”

After taking that presidential selector quiz yesterday, I was a bit puzzled. It seemed strange that I, who have long considered myself a conservative of some stripe or another (with a brief sojourn among the libertarians), would find the Green Party candidate at the top of my list (with admittedly a large area of disagreement)!

But after reflecting on it a bit, maybe it’s not so strange. My intellectual heroes are people like Russell Kirk, C. S. Lewis, Christopher Lasch and J. R. R. Tolkien, all of which combined a degree of social conservatism with a recognition that conserving the physical and social ecology of civilization required placing limits on the untrammeled market. All of them had a “green” streak and exhibited a love for the natural world. According to Eric Scheske:

Kirk himself had “liberal” traits, as that term is understood by many today (though Kirk would have fiercely denied that the traits are liberal). He detested Ayn Rand and her objectivist philosophy that teaches that selfishness is a virtue, and distrusted the efficiency-obsessed economics of many capitalist economists. He denied that people have an absolute right to private property. He admired the trust-busting and early conservationist Teddy Roosevelt (listing him as one of the top ten conservatives of all time14). He endorsed environmental protection legislation and was an ardent lover of nature who planted thousands of trees during his lifetime.

Furthermore, all of these thinkers recognized the dangers to a virtuous communal life posed by a state that engages in regular war-making. Tolkien in particular regarded modern war as uniquely horrific, differing in kind and not just in degree from earlier conflicts. Kirk was an ardent non-interventionist who cast his first presidential vote for socialist Norman Thomas to reward the latter for his opposition to war.

So, it occurs to me that an ecologically concerned, mixed-economy favoring, non-interventionist conservative might just have more in common with a David Cobb or a Ralph Nader than with George Bush or John Kerry. This despite serious disagreements over some social issues.

And lo and behold, I’m not the only one who thinks this way. After doing a quick Google search I came across this wonderful blog named, appropriately enough, A Green Conservatism. The proprietor, a “Marcus Tullius Cicero” even has a green conservative manifesto of sorts:

The central political commitment of this tradition of conservatism, stated with a view to the conditions of our time, is that the life of civilization should be so ordered, and states should so act, as to enable all members of the human community to live as well, and hence as virtuously, individually and collectively, as circumstances allow.

But, as the reader will know, the central commitment of modern conservatism in America, and similar movements worldwide, is to taking one’s capitalism straight, so to speak, in the name of liberty. At the extreme, this position is indistinguishable in many of its practical commitments from a kind of ecologically blind – and to that extent not really typical – libertarianism.

In particular, state ownership of enterprises or provision of services, egalitarian redistribution of income or wealth, and interferences with the market or other facets of human behavior intended to protect the interests, rights, and dignity of consumers, workers, or even just bystanders – I am thinking here of the issue of externalities, and taking it in a large enough sense to encompass all our environmental concerns – are all rejected and resisted by these conservatives, and attempts are periodically mounted to roll them back.

On all of these issues, I am firmly opposed to the aims and views of modern conservatism. For instance, like nearly everyone today, I favor a mixed economy. And generally I favor more, rather than less, of all those kinds of economic and environmentalist measures these conservatives oppose, to the point that I am, in these things, actually notably to the left of the Democratic Party.

That this type of “conservatism” bears little resemblance to the variety currently prevalent in the GOP seems obvious enough. In any event, it’s nice to know I’m not completely alone in my weirdness.

Eric Weiner:

So, might mandatory voting work in the United States? It’s a tempting quick fix to our low levels of voter turnout. Also, imagine our political parties freed from the burden of having to energize their base. Candidates could focus on converting voters, rather than trying to get them to the polls. As for concerns that mandatory voting represents government coercion, one might argue that our government coerces its citizens to perform many duties: pay taxes, attend school, serve on juries and, in times of war, fight and die for the nation.

In the end, though, mandatory voting is extremely unlikely to work in the states. An ABC News poll conducted this past summer found that 72 percent of those surveyed oppose the idea. The results are almost identical to a similar poll conducted by Gallup 40 years ago. Why such resistance? Perhaps because we view voting as a right, not a responsibility, and nothing is likely to alter that bedrock belief.

Also, mandatory voting would probably cause a further dumbing-down of election campaigns, if such a thing is possible. Motivated by a need to attract not only undecided voters but also unwilling voters, candidates would probably resort to an even baser brand of political advertising, since they would now be trying to reach people who are voting only out of a desire to obey the law and avoid a fine.

Mandatory voting would be a nightmare to enforce and would rob us of an important barometer of public interest in politics. If everyone were required to vote, then nobody would be excited to vote. And, of course, there’s another downside: We’d also lose all of those entertaining get-out-the-vote campaigns.

(Emphasis added)

More here.

James Kushiner and S. M. Hutchens at Mere Comments lay the smackdown on those Christians who deride single-issue voting and can’t bring themselves to support President Bush. (permanent links don’t seem to be working; the entry titles are “My Big Fat ‘Single-Issue’ Vote” and “The Smart Evangelical”) Unfortunately, neither one seriously addresses the issue of war, which should be as much an issue of concern for Christains as any in my view.

Does not exist! Not even close, according to this quiz designed to help you select your presidential candidate. Here are my results:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)

2. Cobb, David – Green Party (59%)

3. Nader, Ralph – Independent (59%)

4. Badnarik, Michael – Libertarian (52%)

5. Brown, Walt – Socialist Party (43%)

6. Kerry, Senator John, MA – Democrat (40%)

7. Peroutka, Michael – Constitution Party (37%)

8. Bush, President George W. – Republican (33%)

All these quizzes have their limitations of course. Still, it would account for my inability to get excited about any of the candidates.

If you click on “more info” for your ideal theoretical candidate you get this message:

Who is “Your ideal theoretical candidate”? This candidate adamantly endorses all of your political views. The problem is that they may not exist, unless you write-in your own name on your ballot.

Well, that’s an idea…