Insert your own metaphor...

I promise I will get to another missions post soon. In the meantime, enjoy this link:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/west/view/2008_11_21_Sarah_Palin_pardons_turkey_while_others_slaughtered_during_interview/

I love it. Palin pardons turkey. Palin turns around to give interview. Turkey farm continues to slaughter turkeys in the background. This is a great metaphor for...well, any number of things. Have fun!

Urbi et Orbi,

TBG

Mind The Gap

It has now been a full 10 days since my last post. My most humble apologies! School has been absolutely crazy. I will have another post on missions tomorrow, Lord willing and the creek don't rise (as Dr. James Strange would say). In the meantime, I would encourage everyone to check out savedarfur.org and prayerfully consider what we as Christians can do about the crisis in Sudan. The human rights group on campus here recently showed a documentary about the genocide that has been taking place, and God's been putting it on my heart to take action, but I'm not sure what to do just yet. Suggestions?

Urbi et Orbi,

TBG

Yes, We Can

My ancestors came to this nation on a dirty, cramped boat. They came because the potato crop had failed, and they needed food. They needed life and liberty. They needed Hope.

When they came, they met poverty, hunger, and adversity. They met with employers who posted signs that read "No Irish Need Apply". But they kept on striving. They had Hope.

48 years ago, one of us was given the highest honor any mortal man can have: to lead the United States of America. An Irish Catholic kid from Brookline, Massachusetts was elected President of the United States. He had his failings, and his moral faults. But he stood for equality, justice, and freedom. Though he was struck down as a young man, his flame still burns in Arlington, and his Hope still lives.

Barack Obama's ancestors came from very different places. They came, from Africa and Europe, from Kansas and Kenya. They strove and persevered. They needed life and liberty. Above all, they Hoped.

What was the Hope of John F. Kennedy and Barck Obama? What gave them so much strength in the face of so much adversity, and kept them going when all seemed impossible? It was the promise that some truths are self-evident, that all men are created equal, that we really are endowed with certain unalienable Rights. It was the faith that this is a nation with a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and that this reality will not perish from this earth. It was the strength that comes from knowing that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. It was the Hope, that Yes, We Can.

How will history remember this night? How will we tell our grandchildren about how the Irish Catholics in Boston and the Blacks in Chicago, the Hispanics in Florida and the Asians on the West Coast, and even Anglo-Saxons in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, all stood up and said "Yes, We Can"? We will remember that Tonight, our nation accomplished something incredible. It's longer-lasting than the victory in World War 2. It's bigger than putting a man on the moon. The wall we tore down was stronger than the wall that Reagan defied. We looked at an entire race of people in the eye, we spoke to a continent we had wronged for so long, we conjured up the ghosts that have longed for freedom since 1619, and we said to them, "Yes! You Can! You can Hope too!"

I have never been more proud to be an American. May God continue to bless our great nation.

"Of The Day" Double Whammy

This past weekend I went with Mrs. Gadfly to New York City to cheer on her step-mom in the NYC Marathon. We had a fun weekend, and we're so proud of her step-mom, who finished the race strong. Go Kellie!

Since I haven't been on the blog in 3 days, I thought I would make it up to you with a double-post of a Don West poem and a Reinhold Niebuhr quote. After the election is over tonight (assuming legal challenges don't prolong this business), I'll have some final words on the topic of politics, and then I'll move on to another topic: Missions. It's an extremely important topic for every Christian, but is sadly one of the most neglected and misunderstood aspects of our faith.

I pair the following quote and poem on purpose to say this: there is nothing new under the sun. The injustices that present themselves to us in our day are no different than the ones faced by Christians of every generation. The question God poses to each of us in every era is, "will you love your neighbor?"

"...a laissez faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. The history of the past 100 years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own. Its survival is due to the ignorance of those who suffer injustice from the application of this theory to modern industrial life but fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions."

(Niebuhr, "Moral Man and Immoral Society", 1935)

Factory Child

What chance now for Margaret Biggs

To grow in stature, heart and head?

She breathes foul dust and rotted lint

Among the wheels to earn her bread.

And while her lungs are eaten out,

Her eyes stare hungrily through space,

Eyes that sink at eventide

Within a sallow, longful face...

Better for her if she had gone,

From womb of flesh into the earth,

Or if she had not come at all

To cause some woman pangs of birth.

Soon she will have a pauper's grave,

Pitted deep in nameless sod...

Another child for Potter's Field

While churchmen sing and praise their God.

(West, date unknown)

Reinhold Niebuhr Quote of the Day, #2

"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own,; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."

~From "The Irony of American History" (1952)

To Live Is The GOP, To Die Is Gain

I would like to draw your attention to 2 recent news stories: the first involves a South African woman named Gayle Williams. Gayle was working in Afghanistan as an aid-worker when she was gunned down by Taliban forces last week. Her crime? According to a Taliban website, she was killed for spreading Christianity in Afghanistan. They claim to have been following her for some time. The full story is on cnn.com

The second story is the recent interview of Sarah Palin by James Dobson. Dobson, as you may or may not know, is one of the leaders of the religious right movement and the founder of Focus on the Family. He can, at times, make Pat Buchanan look like a pinko-commie. In his recent interview of Palin, Dobson whined that the "liberal mainstream media" has been attacking the Governor. The reason the media despises Lady Sarah so?

"It's the offense of the cross and it's one of the reasons there's such hostility tor Sarah Palin, because she is an unabashed Christian."

Oh really? So Dobson would have us believe that Palin is being persecuted for her faith. The religious right would apparently have us believe that Palin is a martyr, being crucified by the media for having "the courage to speak the name of Christ".

Here's some things we have heard Sarah Palin criticized for in the media:
1) Unethically firing a police commissioner
2) Cheating on her taxes
3) Spending $150,000 on clothes and make-up
4) Telling blatant lies at rallies
5) Claiming that certain parts of the country are more "pro-American" than others
6) Refusing to talk to the press
7) Deliberately avoiding the questions asked at the VP debate
8) In general, being unfit for office

I could go on, really, but here's one thing Palin has not been criticized for in the media: being a Christian.

Martyrdom and persecution have strong emotional pull on Christians. We believe that our Lord died for us, and ever since, Christians around the world have been called on to lay down their lives for their faith. Even to this day, Christians around the world face persecution and the possibility of martyrdom as a part of daily life in following Christ. Christians have always held those who are called to make these sacrifices in high regard, in part because nothing in the world is a more compelling testimony for the Gospel than someone who values his or her faith above their life.

Real martyrs die for their faith. Being criticized for your ethics violations and your being unfit for office does not equate to being persecuted for being a Christian. Implying that it does is frankly despicable and insulting to the memory of Gayle and so many others who have counted the cost and chose to give up what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose.

Dobson and his cronies know precisely what they are doing. They are playing on emotion to get political power. By making Palin a martyr, they are trying to get Christians to back a failed presidential ticket as a matter of faith. Evangelical votes are hemorrhaging away from the GOP, and Dobson wants to stop the defections by fostering an "us versus them" mentality. It has nothing to do with the Kingdom of Heaven and everything to do personal gain.

Shame on you James Dobson! Fellow Christians, we cannot allow our faith to be so sullied. We cannot continue to confuse our faith and our political affiliations. With a world in desperate need of the love of Christ, we have too much to lose. If you subscribe to any newsletters or magazines from Focus on the Family, or another organization like it, unsubscribe and let them know why you are doing so. This has got to stop.

Reinhold Niebuhr Quote of the Day, #1

What do Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, and The Berean Gadfly have in common? We share a favorite theologian: Reinhold Niebuhr. More on Niebuhr's life and thought in the days to come, but chew on this quote in the meantime.

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

~From "The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness" (1944)

Yet more trouble on the Right...

The battle lines are getting drawn in the Civil War in the Republican Party. Read this insightful piece from WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302869.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

It's amazing to me that more and more people are using the "civil war" language. Things are getting pretty ugly in the GOP. I don't think McCain could have won this year no matter how he ran his campaign, it's not the GOP's year, but he has so exacerbated the problem with his incredibly poor decisions that I don't think his party can continue the way they are going any longer.

A poem I wrote today...

I held my "choose life" sign so very high,
And I was really quite happy to note
That my Truly Christian friends and I
Always gave a Republican our votes

I stuck a pro-life sticker on my car
Right by my Jesus fish is where it stayed
I always frowned to show I disapproved
Of those who fought to uphold Roe v. Wade

But then, I died, and I was taken up
And I was sorely shocked that day to see
That Peter, standing by the Pearly Gates
Looked down, disappointed with me.

"St. Peter, please, what did I do,
To make you frown that way,
All my life I went to church
Always sang the songs, and always, always prayed"

"My child, I have to tell you this,
And I'm afraid it's going to sting
The Lord wanted an abortion
And you did not do a thing."

"How could that be?" I asked him, in a shock
My thoughts were all in quite the whirl.
"Jesus walked by you one cold night,
In the form of a teenage girl".

"Five months pregnant, hungry, tired.
She had nowhere to go from there
Her parents had kicked her out
She could not have been more scared"

"She told you this, as you both waited,
For the bus to come that night
You did not do a thing for her,
You went on about your life"

"You could have given her a meal
The number to a place to stay awhile.
You could have shared God's love with her,
And you could have adopted her child."

"Not knowing what else she could do
By abortion, she brought the child's life to an end.
She didn't know any better,
So the blood is on your hands."

"How can that be?!" I shouted,
Really quite irate
"She's the one who had the abortion,
She brought about the baby's fate."

"And I always voted pro-life, Peter!
I can't think of a better way to show
My commitment to God, and giving free hand-outs
Always seemed so socialist, you know?"

"My child, socialists we have here in heaven,
And a few more, we could afford
The thing we can't accommodate
Are those who do not serve the Lord."

Don West Poem of the Day, #3

Don West was a man deeply aware of his roots, both in terms of his family and the Appalachian mountains he came from and loved. This poem is a beautiful tribute to both, and it still gives me goosebumps everytime I read it.

Funeral Notes

We're burying part of him today
In Hickory-Grove Church Yard.
We can't put him all here,
For his grave
Spreads over a few rocky acres
That he loved-
Where peach blossoms bloom, and
Cotton stalks speckle the ground
On a Georgia hill.

Forty years he's been digging
And plowing himself under
Along these cotton rows.
Most of my Dad is there
Where the grass grows
And cockle-burrs bristle
Now that he's gone...

We're covering him in March days
When seeds sprout.
And I think next Autumn
At picking time
The white-speckled stalks
Will be my old Dad
Bursting out...

Myths and The Mythologizing Mythmakers Who Tell Them

In one of the very first assignments of the law school semester, we were asked to evaluate whether a young man should be prosecuted for burglary. The relevant statute said that burglary (which, by the way, has a much stiffer penalty in Massachusetts than just breaking-and-entering) is committed when a breaking-and-entering occurs at night, in a "dwelling house", when an occupant is present. Seems pretty straight forward, right? Here's the catch: our young man had broken into the basement of an apartment building, at night, when an occupant was doing laundry. The question we had to analyze was whether the basement of an apartment building counted as a "dwelling house" under the statute.

So we all did our research. Turns out that a series of judges had decided cases regarding burglary that were equally tricky on this matter. Over the years, the judges in this line of cases had adopted a three-requirement test to determine if a structure is a "dwelling house": (1) is it secured? A gazebo was ruled not to be. (2) Is it used for activities central to domestic life? A court felt that a shed used to store food was. (3) Is it easily accessible to the main habitation? The courts ruled that a parking garage across the street was not. Do those seem like reasonable requirements to you?

At this point, a true "strict constructionist" would cry "foul". No legislative body ever voted on those three requirements, the judges just made them up. That's absolutely true, and it gets to the heart of the debate over judges: should judges have the authority to do that? The truth that few Republicans admit is, they already do have that authority, and they have for about 900 years now.

Our legal tradition depends on what is known as the "common law" tradition in England. In fact, every state at its admission to the Union adopted a law stating, in effect, "we adopt the common law of England as it was in 1776." Many such provisions appear in state constitutions. The common law dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries in England. Essentially, the common law is an accumulated body of judicial decisions that are more or less binding on current judges by the legal principal of "Stare Decisis", Latin for "let the decision stand". What that means is that judges like to follow the principles and decisions of other judges, and are legally obligated to do so when those decisions are made by a higher court.

This practice is why, if you've ever seen a good legal drama on TV, you've seen a lawyer run into the room excitedly proclaiming "I found a precedent!" That character is telling the audience that a judge has made a decision on a case similar to his, and given some guidelines that the judge in his case can or must follow. This is of great benefit to society, because legislators simply cannot write laws that will never need interpretation. They first of all don't have the time to write "this is exactly what we mean by abc in xyz circumstance". They're too busy running for re-election. Second of all, it's impossible to foresee all of the scenarios that might need interpretation: for instance, a while back in class we read a recent case from California where a man died, but before he did he had some of his semen frozen for posterity's sake. 4 years after his death, his widow decided to have a child using the frozen semen. After giving birth to the dead man's offspring, she sued his two grown children to try to make them share the inheritance with their new sibling. Obviously, the California state legislature had not addressed this scenario when they wrote the inheritance laws for their state, so some judicial interpretation was in order.

This is where the myth comes in: during the Civil Rights Era, SCOTUS, lead by Chief Justice Warren, made some incredibly ground breaking decisions to break down segregation. To do this in many cases, they used a broad interpretation of the 13th Ammendment, which officially ended slavery in this country. And thus began the reacquaintance of the Southern conservative politician and the strict constructionist. After all, the ammendment did only say it was ending slavery, right? So SCOTUS must be overstepping its authority, right? And thus the myth of the "Judicial Activist" was born. The term was meant to convey that judges were overstepping their role and, in essence, breaking the law. Judges made decisions which they were within their legal and moral authority to make, and they were labeled judicial activists by the conservatives.

To do this, the strict constructionists had to ignore 900 year of history and the established legal practices of our nation. They did so brazenly to accomplish their own agenda. Unfortunately, when Roe v. Wade was decided, strict constructionists duped unsuspecting Christians into their camp by labeling Roe a fine example of judicial activism. Of course, in our present era most strict constructionists are not connected to the overtly racist past of the movement (for more on this, scroll down to my previous post entitled "The Once and Fututre Sting"), including, clearly, Clarence Thomas. (Law school classroom activity: get out your yarn and felt. Make a puppet out of Clarence Thomas. Tada! You're now Antonin Scalia). Nevertheless, their judicial philosophy is harmful to our country, and too many Christians advocate nominating them to SCOTUS and other high courts in the vain hope of doing something about abortion, to replace judges who are making, by and large, sound decisions.

So to summarize, the Judicial Activist is as mythological as the tooth fairy and Santa. Judges do what judges have always done, and if the strict constructionists don't like it, they can find another country.

PS: Thanks for the post name inspiration, Al Franken. Good luck in your senate race!

Update: 10/17

Turns out I'm not the only one who sees the coming storm in the GOP. WaPo's got an interesting article on-line today about Christopher Buckley, son of conservative founding-father William F. Buckley, endorsing Obama and resigning the National Review:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101602538.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Now, this isn't like The Gipper's Son turning Dem. This is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, scion of conservativism's first family telling his party he's had enough of their nonsense. I highly suggest following the links to Buckley's own articles on this matter.

Does it say something that conservative intellectuals have abandoned McCain, and all that's left is an unruly mob yelling "terrorist" and "Arab" ?

Slowly Going the Way of the Whigs

Are we seeing the early stages of a terminal illness for the GOP? If Obama wins on Nov. 4th, particularly if he flips reliable red states (think Virginia), I think it's entirely possible that the internal strife that has been smoldering beneath the Republican surface could come to a head, and the GOP could become the Whig Party of our generation. Maybe it's not yet probable, but it's possible.

To be sure, the Republican party has been an uneasy alliance for several decades now. Neoconservatives, Paleoconservatives, and Social Conservatives have never liked each other. But the events of the past few years have shown that the GOP's leadership is inept at satisfying the wants of any of their constituent groups. The neo-cons have a failed war in Iraq and their foreign policy is despised at home and abroad. The paleo-cons and other fiscal conservatives have been betrayed by the party with the bailout. And, as always, for the last eight years the social cons have been patted on the head and told to go outside and play with the other kids.

The McCain/Palin ticket is a perfect example of this. They've got the angry, flustered neo-con, still rattling his saber at Russia and calling for 100 years in Iraq. They've got his social con sidekick/comic relief who can't even keep the party line straight on foreign policies. And the fiscal conservatives, who thought they were going to have a seat at the table with Mitt Romney, have totally been left out in the cold. If Obama goes much over 300 electoral votes and/or the Dems make significant gains in the House, I don't see how that marriage will last.

Add to the mix the rise of the young, urban evangelical. I'll call us "latte-cons". We're under 30, we're college educated, and we'd rather read Donald Miller or Rick Warren than Chuck Colson or James Dobson. We're passionate about our faith and about social justice issues, we like to vote, and we don't feel tied to the political alliances of our fathers in the faith. We aren't pro-choice, but we aren't pro-Iraq war either, and we haven't made up our minds about gay marriage. The Democrats recognized our growing influence by nominating Obama, a man of strong faith who doesn't drink the neo-con kool-aid, and I think they're going to reap the rewards for that on Nov. 4th. I think we may well represent a 2-3% defection from the GOP, and in a divided nation, that's a lot. The Republicans will continue to ignore us at their peril, and our growth will mean that they lose the evangelical vote in the next generation once we're in charge of churches and ministries, if they continue on the path they are on.

I don't know how many of you have seen this, but we latte-cons have been getting quite the scolding from the likes of Albert Mohler and Robert George. The old guard of evangelicalism isn't happy that we're tending towards Obama. However right they may be (and I don't think they are), their condescending tone and demonization of Barack is going to further alienate us and reinforce our view of them as Republican surrogates rather than independent Christian thinkers. I'm not sure what George was thinking when he wrote his essay, but if he thought it was going to bring us back into the fold, I'd like a toke of what he's smoking.

Add to Republican death knell the rise of the Ron Paul conservatives. They are a rebirth of paleoconservatism and libertarianism that has found a likeable leader in Paul, an OB/GYN from Texas who's got a pretty impressive obsession with the constitution. They've attracted a few screwballs, but they've also attracted some intellectual heavy-weights (like our very own Chris "The Yellow Dart" Bauer), and they've got unbelievable fundraising and organizational skills. I think they're about done with the GOP. Again, this will represent another 2-3% defection from the Republican ranks, far too much for a party on the defensive to sustain. They're a force to be reckoned with (as my dad used to say, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog) and I don't think they've found a home in a party yet. When they do, watch out if you find yourself against them in an election.

So what will happen if the GOP goes down? Only time will tell, but I think one thing is certain: the great neo-con/fiscal-con/social-con experiemnt is over, and conservatives of all stripes have some soul searching to do. In the meantime, welcome to the new golden age of progressivism...

Thrown Under The Bus Again

Well, watching the debate tonight, I was frankly surprised that abortion came up, with the current preoccupation with the economy. But it did come up, and I was surprised to hear John McCain inching towards the truth about his positions. If you missed it, here's a link to some clips from the debate, including the one I'm discussing:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/15/debate.videos/

McCain specifically promises "I will not use abortion as a litmus test in appointing Suprem Court justices" and says "I believe this is a states rights issue". This is the EXACT same rhetoric that landed Charlie Crist in trouble with Florida conservative Christian leaders. I seem to recall that it roused a lot of excitement in church pulpits during the last gubernatorial election in FL, and understandably so, since it's basically code for "I could care less about abortion" and "I don't intend to nominate anyone who will actually interfere with abortion rights and hurt my appeal to independants". Where's the outcry from conservative Christians on this one? Those of my friends who are pro-life Republicans, John McCain just told you on national television that he plans to throw you under the bus on this one, just like everyone else in his party's leadership. Do you still think that a vote for McCain is a vote to overturn Roe? If so, on what grounds?

And for any other Christian bloggers who stumble upon this blog, can you please stop circulating the Robert George essay? I've seen it on a ton of Christian blogs today, and I'm over it. It's biased, untruthful, partisan, pejorative, and frankly beneath the dignity of Christian intellectuals, and I'm extremely disappointed that the likes of Albert Mohler are distributing it.

The Once and Future Sting...

Strict constructionism destroyed this country once, and I'm afraid it could do it again. What, you may ask, is a strict constructionist? If you ask a Republican presidential candidate what one is, he'll simply say "it's one who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade". McCain has repeatedly echoed Bush's promise to appoint only strict constructionist judges, and Fox news pundits assure their viewers that that means pro-life. The problem is, that's not necessarily true, and there's a lot more to it than that. In it's broadest meaning, the term "strict constructionist" describes a judge who seeks to never make inferences beyond the written word of a statute or the Constitution. As a philosophy, it seeks to ascertain the intent of the framers of the Constitution and to never go beyond that. Most strict constructionists lean heavily in favor of state's rights as opposed to federal rights.

I think a lot of conservatives, Christians in particular, are attracted to that style of interpretation because it works pretty well for studying most books of the Bible. If I'm studying the book of Romans, I'm going to want to know exactly what Paul meant when he said certain things. We pray for the Lord's help in understanding the original intent and trust Him to open our hearts. We have faith that at the end of our search, there is a meaning meant for us. We can interpret Paul using other scripture written by different men, because we trust that the Bible was inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, and even though many men wrote down the 66 books of the Bible, we believe that they had Lord's guidance as the common thread running throughout their separate writings.

Here's the problem: the Constitution isn't the Bible. Never has been, never will be. It's a fallible document written by fallible men. It too was written by many men, but the founding fathers were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. We can't trust that they all had the same principles in mind, and we can't trust that at the end of our struggles a definite meaning will be there. The founding fathers may have had different things in mind when they voted for the provisions of the Constitution, and for most of them we will never have access to their original intent. And worst of all, they didn't even want us to treat the Constitution that way. Thomas Jefferson, for example, thought that each successive generation of Americans should rewrite the Constitution for themselves. Don't get me wrong, the Constitution was an amazing achievement of the human intellect, but to treat it like the Bible is, to be undiplomatic, dumb. Trying to treat the Constitution like the Bible gives you some really awful results.

Do you recognize the picture at the top of the post? Probably not. It's Chief Justice Taney, appointed by President Jackson, who was in charge of SCOTUS until his death at the end of the Civil War. Still not ringing any bells? He infamously wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case. That decision ruled that no one of African ancestry was a U.S. citizen and therefore no black person had any rights in a federal court. It also ruled that Congress was not authorized by the Constitution to prohibit the extension of slavery into new territories. The case is considered one of the main antecedents of the Civil War.

How did Taney and his cohorts justify this decision? Strict Constructionism. They argued that since the Constitution mentions slaves, the founding fathers clearly intended for slavery to continue perpetually in the USA. He also argued that Congress was not explicitly given the power to outlaw slavery, so they therefore clearly could not constitutionally prevent it from spreading into new territories. They held that making laws about slavery was a state's right.

That kind of rhetoric sound familiar? It should, because "states rights" rhetoric has been used like crazy by McCain and Palin with reference to abortion. If you think abortion is a state's rights issue, the other side of your coin to overturning Roe is prohibiting a federal ban on abortion. You want to ensure that abortion will never be banned across the country unless each and every state decides to do so for itself. If you are pro-life, are you confident that California or New York will ever take those steps? Strict constructionist judges today also seek to undermine a lot of the progress we made with Earl Warren as our Chief Justice, progress like the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. They would take this country backwards and destroy any progress we made, just like they did when they helped incite the Civil War.

Next post in the series: the myth of "judicial activism"

The Day After Tomo-Roe...

If the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade tomorrow, what would happen? This is my second post on the topic of SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) and abortion, and I want to start with a clear, unambiguous statement of my beliefs: Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Period. So before you read this and are tempted to go tell your buddies that Ryan doesn't think Roe should be overturned, stop right there.

There's a lot of confusion on both sides about what would happen if Roe went down, in part because we don't know exactly. Contrary to popular myth, abortion would not be illegal, at least not across the entire country. Overturning Roe would allow states to decide for themselves what to do with the abortion issue, and we just aren't sure what would happen in a lot of states. Right now there are 4 states that have "automatic reverter" laws, which say, in effect "as soon as Roe is overturned, abortion will be illegal in this state". 6 other states have laws that would significantly restrict abortions. A handful of others have currently unenforceable bans on abortion, but many of them are sure to take those off the books if Roe was overturned, like Massachusetts.

In all, USAToday estimates that 22 states are likely to add new restrictions of some kind to abortion if Roe is overturned. Those 22 states only represent 37% of abortions that occur annually in the US. Even if abortion was completely banned in all 22 of those states, it would of course not represent an automatic 37% reduction in abortions. Many women would just cross state lines. Others would simply obtain an illegal abortion from one of the many abortionists who would no doubt stay open for business illicitly. No one knows for sure what the actual reduction would be, but I think it's clear that it would be a drop in the bucket. And, of course, if Roe is overturned by a 5-4 margin, every new SCOTUS justice will represent a potential return to legal abortion in all 50 states.

My point in all of this is that overturning Roe, while a great moral victory, would simply not accomplish all that much in the number of babies saved category. And after all, isn't that what we are aiming for?

So why do we focus all of our pro-life angst on electing Republicans, to nominate "pro-life" justices to SCOTUS, to overturn Roe? I suspect it's because it's easy. It takes like 5 seconds once every 4 years to vote for a presidential candidate. It requires no effort whatsoever to slap a bumper sticker on your car, or even to go hold a sign on a street corner, because hey, it's only once every 4 years. Real change is tough. It's emotionally draining to volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center. It's a lifelong commitment to adopt a child. Sitting down and explaining to your friends at school why you are pro-life takes time and energy. Who's got time to really love and care?

I worry that overturning Roe might even raise the number of abortions if we aren't diligent. It would fire up the pro-choice base. Meanwhile, a lot of pro-lifers who incorrectly thought that Roe was the holy grail would simply move on with their lives, not realizing that the battle has just begun.

Here's what I think: if we go out and fight the good fight, love hurting women, take in unwanted children, be the salt and light we are called to be, and actually saving babies by changing peoples minds, Roe v. Wade will eventually take care of itself. But if we keep on making this just a political battle, too many thousands or millions of babies will die while we just spin our wheels.

Next post in this series: the double-edged sword of Republican judges...

Don West Poem of the Day, #2

For those who may be just joining us, I've started taking the opportunity to introduce everyone to one of my heroes, the poet Don West. If you haven't yet, take a second to read the first post in this series; I think you'll enjoy it.

To get a sense of Don's poetry, start by thinking about T.S. Elliot. Now think about his complete opposite. That's Don. Don didn't have any time for subtly or obfuscation. To him, poetry was an opportunity to give a voice to the voiceless, to stand up for the poor and oppressed. If your writing didn't take that opportunity, Don wasn't interested. He thought that truth should be expressed as clearly and plainly as possible, so that even the most uneducated, unsophisticated Kentucky coal miner could understand it.

Don found himself in an era and a place of a lot of injustice, and he couldn't help but write about it. He suffered quite a bit for his stances, but kept on fighting for the truth. This next poem was written after the incidences of September, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. Within a week, four black children in Sunday School were killed by a church bombing, and two others were killed by white hoodlums and police officers. Requests for federal troops to protect against racial violence were denied, since the military was stretched too thin in Asia, "to support an acknowledged dictatorship in South Vietnam", as Don put it. Don pulls no punches on this one.

Bombs Over Birmingham

Four little girls in Birmingham
America, hang your head
Four small bodies in Birmingham
Now lying cold and dead.

Four little Black girls went to church
On a Sabbath morn
Four little children bombed to death
Mourn, America, mourn

Six little dead ones in Birmingham
What does our leader do?
Noble words in a U.N. speech
And soldiers sent to Nhu.

Six dead children in Birmingham
Toll of less than a week
With his eyes hard set on South Vietnam
What does the President seek?

Six mothers there in Birmingham
O Jesus, mourn their dead.
Millions cry for federal law,
The President turns his head.

Six little children laugh no more,
Bleed, America, bleed.
Six dead children accuse us of
Greed America, greed.

Six murdered children's voices cry:
Blood is over this land
Blood on the streets of Birmingham
Blood on the President's hand!

One Judge, Two Judge, Red Judge, Blue Judge...

If there's one thing I've learned in my first two months of law school, it's that Supreme Court opinions are often as based on real life as your favorite Dr. Seuss book. This is true regardless of whether the opinion was was written by a liberal or a conservative. I guess that when you assemble nine brilliant people who disagree with each other on absolutely everything and give them an enormously powerful job from which no one has ever been fired, absurdity is bound to follow.

But we can't just dismiss the Supreme Court, can we? They are at the center of so many of our political discussions, since they are nominated by the President. Because the Court is such a crucial topic, I want to spend some time on it. This is going to be the first post in a series about why I don't think that trying to get "strict constructionist" judges nominated to SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States, as we abbreviate it in law school parlance) is a good way to fight abortion. I'll start with some practical considerations, and eventually finish up with an explanation of why I disagree with strict constructionism generally. As always, feel free to agree or disagree in the comments section.

I'll start with pragmatics. We as Christians have tried the strategy of Supreme Court "stacking" for years, and it hasn't got us anywhere close to stopping abortion in this country. Consider this: the GOP, supposedly the party of the pro-life cause and strict constructionist judges, has won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. They have been wildly successful in the last 40 years, to say the least. In that time, they have obviously had many opportunities to nominate SCOTUS justices. Today, of the 9 justices, 7 of them were appointed by a Republican president. Only Ginsburg and Breyer were nominated by a Democrat (Clinton).

Sadly, despite many Christian conservatives best efforts at the Supreme Court tactic over the last 35 years, only 3 of the 7 Republican justices have explicitly and publicly stated that they would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade: Alito, Thomas, and Scalia. Chief Justice Roberts, to my knowledge, has never stated any such thing, and my reading of his public statements is that he is a 50/50 chance, at best, despite the fact that his personal beliefs as a Catholic are opposed to abortion. This is a very high rate of failure for what is the only anti-abortion political strategy that gets serious attention from Christians.

It's also worth pointing out that the infamous Justice Blackmun, who penned the majority opinion in Roe, was a Republican nominee.

I personally think it is indicative of how little Republican politicians actually care about abortion. By my count the last 5 Republican presidents have chosen a justice of at least dubious feelings about abortion. Given the track record of his party and his own "nuanced" position on the matter, do you trust John McCain's hints that he will pick judges that would overturn Roe v. Wade?

As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

In the Next Post: Even if we overturned Roe, would it accomplish anything?

Oh Yeah!!

I apologize to all the people who will be tempted to extreme jealousy by this post, but I need to briefly pause from our serious discussions to brag and congratulate myself:

Fallon and I have ALCS tickets for Monday!

It doesn't get any better than the playoffs at Fenway.

Go Sox!!!

Don West Poem of the Day, #1

I thought I'd take advantage of having this blog to introduce you to a poet I think you ought to know, but probably don't. His name is Don West, and at one time he had the second best-selling volume of poetry in American history, next to Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", even though even most English professors have never heard of him. He lived from 1906 to 1992. He was a professor, a civil rights activist, a labor union organizer, and a congregationalist minister. His house and barn were burned down by the KKK, and he was banned from teaching at colleges in Georgia, for standing up for the rights of African-Americans. When I was a little kid, he was my next-door neighbor, which is why I've heard of him.

This first poem was written in 1950. Don had gone to a poetry conference in San Antonio. He got pretty frustrated that a lot of the poems that were being read there were praising Gen. MacArthur as the "great Christian gentleman", and were ignoring the issues that everyday people were facing. In response, he wrote this poem. Enjoy!

Advice to the Would-Be Poets

Away with pious references
To patriotism and to prayer,
As the naked child is born
Let the truth lie cold and bare!

If there is a thing to tell
Make it brief and write it plain.
Words were meant to shed a light,
Not to cover up again!

Jesus Christ, Übermensch?

Chris "the yellow dart" Bauer, my best friend from high school and probably the smartest guy I know, has brought up a question several times that I think deserves an answer. To paraphrase: how can a pro-life Christian possibly support a candidate or a party that supports the Wolfowitz doctrine?

For those who aren't familiar with it, Wikipedia has this to say about the doctrine:

"Not intended for public release, it was leaked to The New York Times on March 7, 1992,...the document outlined a policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action to suppress potential threats from other nations and prevent any other nation from rising to superpower status.

Such was the outcry that the document was hastily re-written under the close supervision of U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell before being officially released on April 16. Although the initial release was denounced at the time it was leaked, many of its tenets have since re-emerged in the Bush Doctrine."

Now, to me this doesn't sound like a political philosophy Jesus would support. It sounds more like Nietzsche's ideal of a super-man, but applied to an entire super-nation, brought above international law by the will-to-power. Yet many Christians supported this kind of thinking when it was used to justify the Iraq war in 2003.

Rememember, Jesus said that His Kingdom is not of this world. America isn't a Christian nation not just because of our demographics and history, but because such a thing is a contradiction in terms. Our mission is one of spreading the Gospel, not one of conquest. But if we as Christians have political influence to use, as clearly evangelicals do, shouldn't we use it to support peace and not US global supremacy?

Are we as Christians able, in good conscience, to lend our support to the imperialist machinations of the GOP? OK, clearly the question is worded in a biased way, but let me hear your thoughts.

Welcome...

Welcome to my blog, everyone! I thought that the discussion was really interesting over on facebook, so I thought I'd create a forum to continue it, along with other interesting discussions. I'll try to post pretty frequently, though law school may get in the way of that...

Please note the rules to the right before you make a comment. Perhaps I should also add: unless I address a post or comment specifically to you, don't take it personally!!! I want to stir up thinking and questioning, not feuds. Also, please note that I reposted my last facebook note on the blog below so that we could continue here without further clogging up our friends' newsfeeds.

Thanks, and again, welcome!

As previously asked on facebook...

Well, my note on facebook certainly got people talking...interestingly, though, of the five friends of mine who I believe are conservative Republicans that commented, not a single one addressed the topic of the note. Here's the link if you didn't read it the first time I posted it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/05/AR2008100502589.html?hpid=topnews

Now, let me ask it directly: if you were among those who said that Monicagate was such a moral failing that it disqualified Clinton to be President, or your parents or pastor said that and you generally agree with them, what then do you say about McCain?BTW, I specifically chose WaPo's take on this, since I know conservatives hate the NY Times. Just being considerate to you guys :)If you think character (including marital faithfulness) is important, and you refuse to consider voting for Obama, shouldn't you be voting for Chuck Baldwin on the Constitution Party ticket? I mean, Ron Paul endorsed him, and he's, um, stable. Here, I'll put that link up for you too:

http://www.constitutionparty.com/