There's Still Wit in Politics

As the historically named Roger Williams demonstrates:

Anti-Apocalyptic Apocalyptism

The Gray Lady gives space to one Matthew Avery Sutton, associate professor of history at Washington State University and author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America to suggest that Christian apocalyptic expectation may fuel the rise of a seriously libertarian candidate who could receive the GOP nomination for POTUS and actually win the election.

SWNID responds, "Hmm!"

Sutton offers a history of American apocalyptism that's in the SWNIDish view just fair enough to be noted and just imprecise enough to leave the impression that super-strong end-time speculation is a serious part of many evangelicals' daily lives and decision-making. As an example, Sutton offers:

Conservative preachers, evangelists and media personalities of the 20th century, like Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, shared these beliefs.

Graham? Really? Yes, Graham believes in the return of Christ and has often stated that it could be imminent. But we defy Sutton to offer any repeated example of Graham indulging in speculation that this or that move might presage the end. More specifically, we defy him to show that Graham held to the notion that the return of Christ is connected to the rise of one-world government. One must observe the differences before drawing conclusions on the similarities.

We emphasize that point because it appears to us that Sutton routinely assumes that all expectation of Christ's return among evangelicals is somehow subject to the concomitant belief that one-world government will arise and that all moves toward the same must be opposed. This is, of course, nonsense.

It's especially nonsense because even those who profess to believe as much don't believe it enough to act on the belief in a serious, panicky kind of way. SWNID asserts that most evangelical Christians who take seriously the idea that a one-world government will arise near the end, and who even wonder whether this or that political development is the prelude to such, nevertheless are unwilling to stake a significant decision on that outcome. To wit: few liquidate their assets and households to acquire gold, rural land and firearms. To wit: few act differently about financial and career planning than do others in their social group. To wit: few in the end decide to back a political candidate because that political candidate seems least likely to cooperate with a one-world government.

An example: Years ago, we were at one of those academic meetings that we are blessed to attend, this one populated entirely by leaders of Christian IHEs. A person leading a session was talking about changes in federal regulations for IHEs, mostly stuff about steps of compliance for continued good standing to receive Title IV student-aid funds, the lifeblood of American higher ed. In the Q&A, someone asked this gentleman where he thought everything was headed. He replied, "Well my answer is determined by my eschatology. I believe that we're headed toward a one-world government." So he said, things will get more stringent, and eventually all of us Christian IHEs will be made illegal. The remark garnered the kinds of grunts that signify grudging assent to an inconvenient truth.

SWNID guarantees that not a single officer of a single IHE at that meeting went home to develop a contingency plan for keeping some kind of leadership training operation going through the tribulation, and that includes those who don't believe in a pre-tribulational rapture. And these folks are about as hard-core as they come.

Granted some folks do have their decisions dictated by specifics of apocalyptic speculation, and maybe a few more will in 2012, thanks to the miserable state of the economy. But last we checked, Mitt Romney still had a lot of political support, more than Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul put together. And Rick Perry's sudden rise (and fall?) can hardly be explained as the apocalyptic libertarian vote finally having found a voice.

In other words, this stuff plays virtually no role in political decision-making.

The end of Professor Sutton's essay is, we believe, the best explanation for the anxiety that it presents:

Barring the rapture, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry could well ride the apocalyptic anti-statism of conservative Christians into the Oval Office. Indeed, the tribulation may be upon us. 

There it is! The rise of a libertarian-minded conservative would be The End of the World as We Know It. There's the secular, liberal version of Armaggedon: a world in which Bible-thumpers are in charge and the welfare state is systematically dismantled. The main prop of their smaller-government message is a bunch of hooey about a one-world government and the rise of the antichrist. How quaint, but how pernicious and ignorant! Pray to the God who isn't there that this doesn't happen!

OK, here we go on the SWNIDish big picture.

First, why do so many Christians listen to and seem to take seriously the warnings that this or that political thingie means that the end is near? Well, largely because such announcements are presented by people who seem knowledgeable, who appeal to deeply held respect for God and fear of his judgment, and who prey on the average American Christian's ignorance of the Bible and unease about her or his relative comfort. Folks want to believe these talented preachers, don't want to be unprepared for judgment, don't really know much about the Bible, and don't feel that they are entitled to the prosperity that they enjoy, though they can't really contemplate life without it.

Second, why do so few Christian act on these warnings? First, because they're at least unconsciously hedging their bets to preserve their prosperity in the present. Second, because acting on the hard things that belief demands is, well, hard. But thirdly, and here we're going out on a limb, in their heart of hearts they know there's something fishy about what they're being told. They realize that per the typical dispensational-premillennial description of the "rapture" and the "tribulation," the God who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is going to do weird, inexplicable stuff before he brings his world to his intended goal. So they're holding out some unconscious skepticism about the conclusion.

Which brings us to another conclusion: most Christians, whatever they claim, functionally are "pan-millennialists," including our apocalyptically minded colleagues at the aforementioned academic conference. That is, they trust God to take care of the future and don't worry much about the details (except their personal details, about which they worry as most people worry, as in "will I keep my health and wealth?"). Apocalyptic hucksters may sell books and gain a following in the media, but they don't influence the substantial decisions of more than a handful of tragically misled people.

Which is why the Republicans, evangelicals and all, will nominate a relatively mainstream conservative, who will be able to govern only as conservatively as Congress and the judiciary and the body politic allow him to govern. And why people like Dr. Sutton should be ignored by their prospective audience of lefty seculars, who shouldn't be taken in by his prophecy that somehow the weirdos are taking over.

Without realizing it, though, Sutton has indirectly raised a point of theology that does impinge on political decision-making for thoughtful Christians. The Bible's apocalyptic imagery portrays the fall of the autocratic human empire to the reign of God. Along the way and especially in the end, God, not overweening humans who build kingdoms and empires and towers to make a name for themselves and become like God, will rule all. Humans, when they try to rule all, always fail in the end. Utopian claims are inherently and fatally flawed.

That observation cautions Christians against the hope that their government can do bunches of stuff for them. They look for incremental progress in human affairs that's grounded in the transformation of the human character. They don't look for geniuses to take over and make things better.

That means that they don't expect a utopia to emerge by means of smaller government, either. They just don't want a government that makes things worse by trying to do what government inherently can't do because of the inherent weakness of all people who govern and who are governed.

So chill, Dr. Sutton. Wild-eyed masses of people who read Left Behind for instructions on voting--they're just not out there. And the world won't collapse if the Bismarkian experiment with welfare statism happens to gently be reversed to a more appropriate point of deployment.

Mishap at the Brent Spence Bridge

The President visited Cincinnati yesterday, as we expect he and everyone else running for POTUS will do a lot for the next thirteen months or so.

His visit was to tell John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to fund the replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge, a famously sturdy but obsolete span that carries I-75 and I-71 from the Queen City to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

The double-decker bridge is famous for being narrow and without breakdown lanes, though it is perhaps most famous for this slightly lame joke:

Q: Why is the northbound lane of the Brent Spence Bridge below the southbound lane?

A: So that Kentuckians returning home can drop their shoes to Kentuckians leaving home.

But really, why show up at this spot to call for more infrastructure spending to replace crumbling stuff and get the unemployed to work? As a local-government web site innocuously points out, planning for the bridge's replacement has been going on since 2002, and no one in Cincinnati thinks that anything will be done before 2015. There's not even a consensus on a plan for replacement, let alone a plan for what to do during construction. And since much of the regions critical infrastructure and many of its most expensive buildings are close to the span, there are good reasons to plan carefully and well.

So even the left is admitting that this is far from a "shovel-ready" project, "shovel-ready" having joined such political phrases as "Middle-East peace plan" in the lexicon of the politically oxymoronic.

Of course the bridge will be replaced. Certainly it won't be replaced absent a workable plan for replacement. The only significant question is whether it will be replaced with dollars borrowed, collected in still higher taxes, or collected at present or lower rates of taxation with concomitant reductions in other, lower-priority spending.

So why did the President make the trip? For the very reason that he sarcastically denied: to stir up his base in the home turf of two leading Capitol Hill Republicans. It's all part of his pitch for what James Taranto dubs "Stimulus, Jr.," the half a trillion (or roughly $1500 per American) that BHO proposes to subsidize unionized public employees and unionized highway workers at the expense of nonunionized taxpayers and all Americans' children.

Postscript: We note the Bushism in the President's speech: claiming that America built the "Intercontinental Railroad." Now that's a bridge!

How to Make Money in a Recession

One way is to appeal to people's anxious sense of paranoia, and call it patriotism.

Like the guy running this money-spinner, a super-secret survival kit for the coming apocalypse.

You may not have enough health or life or house or car insurance. You may not have a retirement account. You may not be prepared for things that often or always happen. But you need to be prepared for the imminent return of the Stone Age.

When this guy's ads come up on Facebook, click them. It'll cost him money.

A Voice in the Wilderness on Standardized Testing

Standardized tests are what's wrong with American public schools, right?

Well, maybe not so much.

We give a SWNIDish salute to the high school English teacher Ama Nyamenkye, who offers a thoughtful, positive assessment of the power of the standardized test, originally in Education Week and more widely disseminated by the potent National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NIOLA, a.k.a. SWNID's favorite higher-ed organization). Here's a little quote that epitomizes her take on taking standardized tests:

The 2010 Scholastic-Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation survey of 40,000 educators nationwide found that only 27 percent felt state standardized tests were essential or very important in measuring student performance. I'm now convinced that these sentiments are the product of a testing movement that has become more about fear and politics than pedagogy. Teachers, I believe, are pumping their fists for the wrong reasons. . . .

Sadly, the actual merits and shortcomings of standardized testing often get lost in this stalemated debate that positions the test as either a scourge on teachers or a panacea for reform. In truth, the test is nothing more than a tool. It will not singlehandedly turn around swaths of failing classrooms or be the death of public education.

Only policies, leaders, and, most importantly, teachers wield that kind of power over school performance. Like any assessment tool—including the ones teachers regularly generate and assign—standardized testing has strengths and limitations.

When I "depoliticized" the test, I found a useful and flawed ally. The exam excelled where I struggled, offering comprehensive and standards-based assessments. I thrived where the test fell short, designing creative, performance-based projects. Together, we were strategic partners. I designed and graded innovative projects—my students participated in court trials for Shakespearean characters—and the test provided a rubric that guided my evaluation of student learning.

You betcha, says SWNID. The truth is that even the most personally invested of teachers at any level is naturally reticent to allow someone else to measure her or his students' learning, precisely, in fact, because the teacher is so personally invested. "These are my children," we all think, "and no one will say they're ugly except for me. Sure, standardized tests can be stupid. Sure it's hard to measure everything that students know or ought to know.

But isn't it better to measure something rather than nothing? And isn't it better that there be some level of objectivity in the measurements?

Nyamenkye's essay represents the work of someone who is less afraid of being evaluated than of neglecting something that her students need to learn from her. She's admirably externally focused, student-centered, outcomes-oriented.

May her noble tribe increase.

Not a Good Sign for BHO or the Republic

It appears that the Obama 2012 campaign is down to about one tactic: scaring people from voting for Evil Republicans.

Witness AttackWatch.com, an Obama campaign site devoted to "fact checking" and "debunking" Republicans' lying attacks on the Greatest President of Our Lifetimes. Sporting severe black-and-red graphics, distorting already unflattering pictures of conservative pundits and candidates, employing panicky language, AttackWatch contrasts rather sharply with such successful presidential re-election themes as "Morning in America":



though perhaps it is inspired by this successful classic:




At any rate, we don't have a lot of SWNIDish optimism about where all of this is going, not least because the Rs don't seem to have a candidate of sufficient stature to command Presidential respect.

Killing Us Softly

The SWNIDish political philosophy is negatively epitomized in the twin aphorisms, "Pacifism kills," and "Socialism impoverishes."

Today we approve of an exposition, only slightly longer, of the first aphorism.

At the indispensable First Things, Michael Cantarino offers "The Painful Naivete of Pacifism."

Indeed! Call it "deadly naivete" if you care to be direct.

Cantarino briefly and provocatively lays out the best reasons not to regard pacifist cant as a thoughtful application of Christian principles.

We wish things were different in this regard, but they aren't.

A Curmudgeonly Look at Higher Ed

Prolific author James Schall offers what would be merely a typical rant against the current state of higher ed, were not the rant so eloquent. We will refrain from quoting, and nearly every sentence is quotable.

Reading Schall, we believe that much of our present confusion in higher ed stems precisely from what Schall rants about mostly in the beginning of his rantification: that we expect everyone to go to college, not just those with the abilities and preparation. Don Peck in Atlantic Monthly has what seems to be the proper answer: according greater emphasis, dignity and encouragement to educational ventures that put people in skilled trades.

Want to waste a human being's time? Send a marginally literate high school grad with no specific ambition to a community college for remedial coursework. Want to redeem a human being's time? Provide dignity, encouragement and support to adolescents and young adults who show potential as plumbers, HVAC technicians, machine-tool operators, and tool-and-die makers.

Celebrity Christian Food-Fight, Round 2

It's Mohler versus McLaren again, in a Battle Royale!

Now the subject is Adam. Mohler insists that anyone who denies a single, identifiable Adam in history as the beginning of the gospel "metanarrative" (point loss for using that banal neologism) has destroyed the gospel. McLaren says that's goofy, and Mohler should be ashamed of himself for being so narrowly sectarian.

Details here, at Associated Baptist Press.

Now the SWNIDish view.

First, let's note that Mohler's assertion that the gospel depends on a singular, historical Adam is a consequence of his commitment to the Reformed notion that universal human guilt flows from a singular, historical Adam's first sin. That is, all us humans are sinners because we inherited guilt from Adam, plus a tendency to sin to boot.

But if you don't think that Romans 5:12 means what Mohler says, you've got much less at stake theologically in a historical Adam.

So, say our skeptical but still gentle readers, is SWNID indifferent to the theology of Genesis? Hardly! However, note well how the narrative of the first parents works in context. Both "Adam" and "Eve" are names that strongly suggest more than just individuals but archetypes (of course, something can be both at the same time). Their place is at a junction of four rivers of which only two are identifiable, suggesting a lost, greater place than that which is home to a Great Empire. They encounter a creature reminiscent of the pagan, theriomorphic gods of chaos, a snake who speaks, enticing them to an experience that by its very name, eating fruit of knowledge of good and evil, suggests loss of innocence, with an enticement that is nothing short of self-centered rebellion against the Creator. The consequence of their action is that they are responsible for their alienation and suffering in a world which ought to be "very good" for their habitation.

And thereafter in the sacred canon, their story is referred to as the archetype of all such rebellion. So Hosea says that Israel is like Adam in its disobedience to covenant. And, as we noted above, Paul says that death spread to all people because all sinned--as Adam sinned. The point is not that there must be a single human whose sin explains all of our lostness, but that all of us have done what Adam did and so share Adam's guilt and sentence. We don't need guilt plus depravity to be passed along through Adam's line of descent to explain universal human sinfulness. We just need to look around to say, death spread to all people because all sinned--like Adam.

Dare we say it, then? Loath to declare ourselves in a battle between two theological publicity hounds, we grudgingly say that in this round, McLaren is right this time.

But . . .

Presently the whole "historical Adam" controversy largely hangs on a single observation of genetics and paleoanthropology: that the present state of human genetic diversity had to arise from an original population of "modern humans" of about 10,000. Hence, no singular Adam.

However, where did the 10k community come from? Well, they came from earlier homonids of the quasi-human variety, of course.

Take the Neanderthal, so maligned in the human imagination. Seems likely that "modern humans," obviously slumming, mated and procreated with Neanderthals. And the issue of such unions were themselves fertile, not like mules and other animal hybrids.

Meanwhile, our paleoanthropological friends tell us that there's still singular human ancestry in the background. It's just prior to "modern humans."

See the problem, gentle readers? It's the boundary of the category "human." Is that handsome person with his high foreheard, inconspicuous eyebrow ridge, slender chest and lithe limbs someone like me? Of course! What about that brute with the sloping forehead, prominent eyebrow ridge, barrel chest and awkwardly powerful limbs? Ugh. Clearly not a part of my family.

As long as we understand the problem of taxonomy, there's every possibility that behind a larger community of modern humans who comprise our common ancestors, there's an earlier homonid pair, self-conscious in the same way that you and we are, who are our first ancestors.

Which, then, is the SWNIDish view? Either.

What's important is that we see ourselves and our situation--for all of us--as described in the Adam story, whether it is both a story of one person and an archetype or is an archetype alone. It is a true and factual story, describing the factuality and truth of human rebellion against God and its consequences, either way.

Anticipated response plus rejoinder: If Adam is not historical, what about the second Adam? And if the second is historical, isn't the first also? Answer: Maybe, maybe not. The narrative of Christ is different in its nature of historical position and witness. Further, the singular, historical incarnation is vital to everything about the gospel in ways that a singular Adam is not, as we've noted above. There's no reason why the one who comes in space and time to reverse human sinfulness cannot be compared to one who might be an archetype but not a singular, historical individual. Unless he was.

Additional anticipated response plus rejoinder: Adam: historical or not? Direct answer please! Answer: Yes, either historical or not. We refuse to take sides on issues for which we have insufficient warrant to take sides. One ought to know what one doesn't know.

Yet another anticipated response plus a rejoinder: You and your Adam-denying ilk are just pandering to modern, secular views, watering down the biblical message to make it acceptable to people who are sinners and need their minds and hearts changed. Answer: We disagree only with a couple of words. Change "just pandering" to "deliberately addressing," and "watering down" to "trying to focus on" and "acceptable" to "clear and without unnecessary obstacles of our own making" and we're good with all of that. Just a little revision, that's all.


Final anticipated response plus rejoinder: If we don't know, why bother discussing it? Shut up, please! Answer: Making sure that we don't insist on certain beliefs as part of the faith if they aren't really part of the faith is a means of being sure we do believe what is part of the faith--and concentrate on it.

On Food and Our Future

WSJ's "Weekend Interview" is always a must read. Today's is especially so.

Nestle's chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe holds forth on global macroeconomics regarding food, agriculture, fuel, and the food industry. Too, too many insights abound in his discourse to summarize here, but we'll summarize a few:

• Food and fuel are linked by the calorie. Because we always use many more calories for fuel than for food, we can never replace our use of fossil fuels with biofuels.
• Using biofuels always drives food prices upward. That has little impact on the West, but lots on the South.
• Certainly we can feed the number of people projected to live in the world in 2050, but not without the ongoing "Green Revolution" propelled by advances in agricultural production. Those are now propelled by genetically engineered crops, for which the powerful Europeans have such an irrational hatred that they are stifling the growth of agriculture in the developing world.
• Organic farming is unproductive and so a burden on the world's poor imposed by the world's rich who imagine falsely that organic means healthy.
• Putting a cost on water may be the best way to ensure that it's used efficiently, so as to boost global food production over time.
• Without a food industry, we'd all either starve or become subsistence farmers, meaning we'd mostly starve.

Compassionate folk, including those of Christian faith but not only such folk, often imagine that the world is hungry because of a shortage of compassion. Indeed, if we all shared more, people would be better off.

But perhaps the most potent solution is to make use of the agricultural and marcoeconomic forces that lie ready to hand, that don't depend on ideally selfless donors, that allow more people to pursue their aspirations for physical health and economic self-sufficiency, including having some healthy meat proteins in their diets now and then.

Give for sure, gentle readers. But back policies that really boost the production of food globally and so deliver more people from hunger and toward dignity.

A Little Perspective on the Present Versus the Past

Recently as SWNIDish friend became engaged in an unfortunate social-media argument about the merits of the present versus the past. Baited by the whining rants of self-absorbed twentysomethings, he vainly attempted to persuade the young and clueless that multiple, significant facts refute their narcissistic fixation that they live in the Worst Situation Ever.

Readers can imagine our friend's inability to persuade in such a situation. Facts are useless among those who make their own facts.

Into the same breach now enters National Journal's Ronald Brownstein. Obviously, he says, the decades containing the Civil War and the Great Depression were worse, and so were those framed by Kennedy's assassination and Watergate and by Kent State and the failed rescue of hostages in Iran.

And why not mention such decades as those containing World War II or World War I plus the Spanish Influenza? Fun times erecting public monuments with the names of your friends and relatives in wholesale lots!

Brownstein doesn't gloss over the travails of the decade since 9/11/01, of course. Things have been rough of late, though not as rough as we once imagined they'd be (we have water stored in the SWNIDish basement as a hedge against terrorist-induced disaster, now a decade in its plastic containers and doubtless unsafe to drink, but a potent reminder of what we haven't experienced).

But by just about any significant measure of human misery, for Americans and much of the rest of the world, it's still been better of late than at many times in recent history.

Of course, Brownstein offers that if things don't improve, the next decade will be as bad as or worse than the one just concluded. We hold these truths to be self evident: that if things don't get better, they'll be worse, or at least about the same.

So herein and hereby we offer the SWNIDish Declaration that the decade of 9/11/11 to 9/11/21 will be a No Whining Zone for all of our Republic's citizens. Quiet down and boost productivity, pampered Americans!

You Saw It Here First

As a question, that is.

Has anyone in the world of televangelism connected the devastation of Hurricane Irene in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont to same-sex marriage? How long will it take for that to happen?

SWNIDish Answers to Keller's Questions

NY Times staffer (and retired point guard for the ABA Indiana Pacers?) Bill Keller has made a splash recently for his list of questions about religion to be posed to (Republican) presidential candidates.

As a service to the candidates, we here supply answers of the SWNIDish variety. So the questions are Keller's, the answers are ours.

Q: Is it fair to question presidential candidates about details of their faith?

A: You betcha! It's a free country, we're running for office, the content of faith shapes the consciousness of the individual, always influencing and often determining choices. It's silly even to ask that question, isn't it, since it is itself a question about the details of one's faith?

Q: Is it fair to question candidates about controversial remarks made by their pastors, mentors, close associates or thinkers whose books they recommend?

A: Again, yes it is. People have a right to know whether I agree with this or that thing said by someone who has influenced me. But please believe me when I say that something hasn't had influence. Everyone knows that one can be influenced without arriving at rote agreement.

Q: (a) Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or “Judeo-Christian nation?” (b) What does that mean in  practice?

I agree if by that they mean that the nation was founded on and continues to be influenced by principles that have their origin in Christian thought or are consistent with it. I agree if by that they mean that the predominant religion in the nation has always been Christianity. Unlike some Christians, I expect that to be the reality for some time to come.

I disagree if by that one means that our nation's founders were all orthodox, practicing Christians, or that Christian theology ought to have an explicit, deliberate, protected role in shaping public policy. While I will always be influenced by my faith in my thinking, I won't say that any policy is right because it is Christian. I'll make my case to the public on the basis of values on which people widely agree.

In practice, that means that I will be honest about being influenced by my faith but never appeal to it as the reason the public should support my policy decisions. I will explain policies on their public merits.


Q: If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?

A: In such a case, I will work to change the law or the Constitution, whatever is in conflict. But I will do so on the merits of the position, not simply asserting authority for a faith-based decision.

Of course, this has happened in the experience of most Christians, who find abortion to be immoral. While I believe that the Supreme Court erred in Roe v. Wade in finding a constitutional right to privacy that demands abortion's legality, I will continue to work within our constitutional system to change that outcome, as have countless Christian citizens and elected officials in the past.

Q: (a) Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? (b) What about an atheist?

A: I will appoint anyone with outstanding qualifications and a judicial philosophy congruent with my own view of the Constitution and the judiciary's role. That is, I have no hesitation appointing a Muslim or atheist who understands that the law and the Constitution must be interpreted according to the sense of the text as it was written at the time it was written. I would regard judges like Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas to fit this criterion very well, and I would not hesitate to appoint Muslims or atheists with their views. The fact that they are all Roman Catholics has nothing to do with it.

Q: Are Mormons Christians, in your view? Should the fact that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons influence how we think of them as candidates?

A: Mormons are Christians in the sense that their faith derives from Christian roots and continues to employ language and characters from Christianity. Most Christians, however, do not regard Mormonism as a legitimate form of Christian belief because Mormonism denies the eternal deity of Christ and the tri-unity of God. Mr. Romney and Mr. Huntsman are honorable men with outstanding records of public service, and they should be respected and taken seriously by all other candidates and all voters. If America does not elect me, the country would be well served by either of them.

Q: What do you think of  the evangelical Christian movement known as Dominionism and the idea that Christians, and only Christians, should hold dominion over the secular institutions of the earth?

A: Dude, this question is either part of a flaky conspiracy theory or is a dumb joke. I've been in high-end Christian circles all my adult life, and I have never once heard anyone talk about "Dominionism" until someone accused Michelle Bachman of being an adherent. If there are people out there who say what you say they say, they have no influence over anyone that I know of. There's no "movement" out there.

But maybe there are some web sites and self-published books and the like. OK, so evangelicals have to answer for every kook in their neighborhood. We're used to that.

So here goes: "Dominionism" is not good Christianity and it's not good governance. I reject it categorically. I condemn it. I pass gas in its general direction.

Q: (a) What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution? (b) Do you believe it should be taught in public schools?

A: As a Christian, I find no essential conflict between what we know about evolution from science and what the Bible teaches about creation. I know that many Christians do, and while I disagree with them strongly, I respect the convictions that lead them to their disagreement.

I believe that evolution should be taught in schools, and I do not believe that it needs to be taught alongside other "theories." However, I believe it should be taught in a context that considers the larger questions of existence raised by questions of origins. That can include both that a god like the Christian God may have deliberately caused the very process that we observe for the very outcome that we see, and that evolution by itself is powerless to explain why something exists instead of nothing, why life exists and not just non-life, and why self-conscious, purpose-seeking humans exist, not just creatures that reproduce without the disadvantage for survival of self-consciousness.

Q: Do you believe it is proper for teachers to lead students in prayer in public schools?

A: I do not. As a Christian, I will find almost all such prayers to be inadequate to the point of embarrassment. I also object as a Christian to people who aren't Christians being coerced into religious observance. While I do not think that the first amendment is necessarily violated by teacher-led prayer in schools, such a thing is unnecessarily divisive and offensive to far too many people to be embraced. That having been said, I encourage schools to permit and encourage student-led faith activities, to welcome faith groups to rent their facilities and provide services to their students like after-school tutoring, and to study issues of faith as they arise in the study of history, literature, behavioral science, and, as I discussed above, natural science.

Why Paul Isn't SWNIDish

Ron Paul is often right. Like when he says that the country is out of money and the federal government should do less, not more.

As he reportedly said today on Fox News.

Why, then, can't SWNID imagine supporting the elderly Congressperson from Texas?

Three huge reasons.

One is Paul's common insistence that the things he opposes are unconsititutional. He'd be rather wiser to insist that they appear to him to be unconsititutional, or that they are questionable constitutionally. His rhetoric doesn't acknowledge the differences of opinion that have always existed about the boundaries of constitutionality.

Take Jefferson's war with the Barbary pirates, for instance. Paul says that United States involvement in the Libyan civil war has been unconstitutional, much as Jefferson's opponents said the same about his little conflict in North Africa.

Paul's tendentious appeals to the constitution tend to appeal most to people who are understandably upset about the status quo but are inclined to accept the simplistic solution that says, Just follow the dang Constitution!

Which brings us to our second objection. On foreign policy, Mr. Paul is an isolationist. Always asserting unconstitutionality, he doesn't want any military action unless the American homeland is attacked, and maybe not much then.

Like it or not, the United States has most of the military power in the world, and China notwithstanding, the US will continue to have it for at least a generation. Whether that potential gets used to promote human well being, when and where such can be done ("the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"), will have a lot to do with whether more or fewer people get to live in relative peace and prosperity. Paul is indifferent to such considerations.

That indifference appeals too, to those who see the awful cost of war, and its common mismanagement. Paul invites them to imagine a world in which that's someone else's problem, as they live in peaceful apathy about other people's suffering. SWNID just can't do that. And neither can most people.

Which brings us to our third objection. Paul has only one of the political abilities that a President must have. His lonely skill is maintaining the loyalty and interest of his political base. His followers are as rabid as Lyndon LaRouche's once were, and markedly more sane and stable for all that.

But he has no record of having formed a coalition, sponsored a successful bill, championed a cause that won the day, or anything else that suggests he could maintain the kind of consensus necessary for any political action, especially the negative kind--cutting back on nearly everything--that he seeks and that is arguably needed. The fact that he often votes alone or with Dennis Kucinich is proof of what we assert.

Ironically enough, a Paul presidency would leave the Republic further from its fiscal salvation, not closer. How could he expect to unite those whom he has ignored throughout his political life?

So if it's Paul v. Obama, our vote is with the current President, and all our potent political activity will be for a Republican Senate and House to force the more moderate of the two to moderate our excessive government before it's too late.

It's a symptom of how little BHO understands of the present distress that he polls so closely to Paul presently. Likewise, it's a symptom of how unknown Paul is to an electorate that will take anyone who will cut government spending over the current spendthrift. But there's extreme doubt that Paul could do what he wants, much more than there is that Obama could triangulate to a moderate position of austerity in his second term.

SWNIDish Stimulus? Be Contrarian!

As an utterly amateur economist, we wonder whether it's past time for a very different kind of monetary policy to effect stimulus of our moribund economy.

Specifically, we wonder whether higher interest rates are in order.

"What?" responds a public drunk on elixir of Keynes. "Higher rates will suffocate what economic activity there is! Are you mad, SWNID?"

Yes, on the demand side, it might be a little tougher. But consider first that lower rates are not making for more borrowing and the economic activity connected to it. Banks are loathe to lend, and businesses are loathe to borrow. Cash is being hoarded in record amounts these days.

But what if the Fed began gradually raising rates.

First off, the dollar would strengthen considerably. That, in turn, would reduce inflation for producer prices, specifically for petroleum and other raw materials that the American economy needs to make products to sell to the world. Conventional wisdom says that a weaker dollar will make exports cheaper and so stimulate export industries. But when about half of our domestic economy's imports are petroleum and other raw materials, the difference is at best negligible. People buying with higher valued currencies currently have an advantage over Americans, an advantage that would go away if rates were raised and the dollar appreciated. That says nothing about the additional dollars in the pockets of consumers if oil prices drop with dollar appreciation, as they historically have.

Second, savers would have a better reward for their savings, and all would have more of an incentive to save. Not only would America's retirees have some money to spend, America's workers would have a better growing sense of prosperity as their net worth creeps up. The difference is that interest, not appreciation of assets like homes or stock-based mutual funds, would be fueling the renewed confidence. So for the long term, we get a stronger consumer base, but even in the short term, we get a more confident cadre of consumers, at least those who save instead of borrowing.

Now, who would suffer in all this? For one, banks would no longer be able to make money on the fact that they can borrow from the Fed essentially for free. Some might fold as a result. But might others be forced into more aggressive lending that would in turn offer some prospect of economic growth? What good is a bank that simply makes money on the Fed's zero-interest dole?

Of course, Uncle Sugar would have to pay higher rates too. That outcome, however, depends on the world finding something other than Treasurys as a parking place for its fear; otherwise, the rate at which the government can borrow will remain historically low. But if rates on Treasurys do rise, there's all the more of an imperative for the government to reverse the pattern of the last 2.5 years, in which "stimulus" has been used as the Trojan horse for increasing the federal baseline on the way to making more of the economy dependent on federal patronage and so more firmly capital-D "Democratic." So this too may be, at worst, painless in the short run but still highly beneficial in the medium and long run.

We are attracted to this idea by all the wrong reasons, namely, our contrarian tendency to assume that if a huge majority believes something, it is probably false. But at this stage, who can realistically say that more of the same will yield something better than it already has?

A SWNIDish Almanac of Higher Education

Actually, this is our selection of facts from the annual almanac issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The principle of selection is what interests SWNID.

Here goes:

• The average tuition discount rate for first-time, full-time freshmen is 42.4%. For all undergraduates, it's 37.1%
• Average cost of attendance as an in-state, residential student at a 4-year public is $20,339. At a 4-year private it's $40,476. At a 2-year public as a commuter it's $14,637.
• Professors in theology and religious vocations are paid the least on average. Here are the averages:
• Professor: $74,267
• Associate Professor: $59,593
• Assistant Professor: $52,241
• New Assistant Professor: $50,620
• For private master's-granting institutions in Ohio, average professorial  pay for all disciplines is as follows:
• Professor: $69,261
• Associate professor: $57,170
• Assistant professor: $60,553

• Average compensation for faculty members has over the last five years and the last ten years gone up faster than inflation. Not so for other recipients of graduate degrees or people ages 25 and older. But presidents' salaries have risen even faster.
• IHEs show more diversity in their staffs than in their faculties.
• College presidents are sharply divided when asked whether the purpose of higher ed is to promote intellectual and personal growth or to provide knowledge and training for the working world. Overall, it's about half either way, but for four-year institutions, more than 70%, public and private, name intellectual and personal growth as the main aim.
• 20% of college presidents are older than 65.
• 41% of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled at degree-granting institutions. A larger percentage of women are enrolled than men. Hispanics lag other groups in enrollment at 28%. Blacks are enrolled at 38%; Whites at 45%.
• Less than 1/3 of Americans have at least a bachelor's degree.
• In the next 10 years, the number of students graduating from high school in Ohio is projected to decline by 6%. It is projected to rise in Indiana and Kentucky by 4%. Highest rates of decline will be in the northeast. Highest rates of increase will be in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, and the Rocky Mountain and Intermountain regions.
• In the last decade, undergraduate enrollment grew 38%. It grew 21% in private nonprofit colleges.
• Liberty University is by far the largest private, nonprofit, master's level institution in the country, with 46,312 students in 2009. That makes it the largest private institution in the country: NYU has 43k. We infer that most of this is online enrollment, not that there's anything wrong with that. Eight public universities and three for-profits have higher enrollment than Liberty. Liberty grew 342% from 2004 to 2009.
• U of Phoenix had 380k students in 2009 fall.
  
• Four freshmen out of 1000 name the MDiv degree as their eventual goal.
• Fifty-one freshmen out of a thousand name "Church of Christ" as their religious preference. That's less than Roman Catholic, Baptist, Other Christian or None, but more than any other. Really.
• In 2008-09, 8940 bachelor's degrees were awarded nationwide in theology and religious vocations, almost 2/3 to men. At the master's level there were 12,836, with a somewhat less pronounced lean to men. Nearly 1600 doctoral degrees were awarded, and we believe that every one of them asked us for a job.
  
• There were 347k bachelor's degrees given in business.
• In the decade ending in 2009, the number of degrees in theology and religious vocations rose 43%. On average, growth was 33%.
• 19% of college students in Ohio are minorities.
• Blacks and Hispanics had the biggest increase in percentage increase of students receiving degrees in the decade ending 2009.
• For-profit institutions enroll a disproportionate number of black students.
• Per ACT, only 25% of college students are ready for all areas of college study (English, math, reading, science). Only half are ready for the reading.
• Nearly 60% of bachelor's recipients from private 4-years graduate with less than $20k in debt. 28% graduate with no debt. 15% owe over $40k.
• Median debt at 4-year privates doesn't vary much according to the family's income. It hovers a little above $20k. It's over $30k at for-profits.
• College costs have been increasing steadily as a percentage of family income.
• The wealthier a student's family, the more likely the student is to receive a degree.
• On average, grants and loans are roughly equal as sources of financial aid.
• Adults with bachelor's degrees in Ohio = 24%. Indiana =23%. Kentucky = 21%.
• From highest to lowest percentages of students who report using such digital things, here are the digital technologies most used by students:
• library web site
• presentation software
• text messages
• social networking web sites
• course- or learning-management systems (like Moodle)
• spreadsheets
• instant messaging
• graphics software
• internet from a handheld device
• voice over internet protocol from computer (like Skype)
• microblogging (like Twitter)
• contributing to video web sites (like YouTube)
• contributing to wikis
• video-creation software
• contributing to blogs
• audio-creation software
• online multiuser computer games (like HALO)
• social bookmark/tagging
• online virtual worlds
• Nearly 50% of students are on the internet more than 15 hours a week. 9.1% are on 40 hours a week or more.
• Over half of Ohioans are between the ages of 25 and 64.

News Flash: Americans Start to Get It

Recent Rasmussen polling shows:

Most (59%) think it is better to have lower corporate tax rates and very few deductions than to have higher tax rates and lots of deductions. Seventy-nine percent (79%) recognize that corporations generally pass higher taxes along to their customers in the form of higher prices. 

So the truth is taking hold. From a SWNIDish perspective, this is a very optimistic sign in an indicator that leads Leading Economic Indicators.

Has Barone Been Cribbing SWNID?

Michael Barone, distinctly distinguished in the punditsphere for his logical and empirical rigor, today writes what SWNID has been writing for years. Namely, about how buses of the private sector smoke so-called high-speed rail of the public sector as well as buses of the crony sector.

We quote:

Bus travel used to be decidedly downscale, with a clientele that scared off middle-class travelers. That's because, back in the days of heavily regulated transportation, bus lines followed the passenger railroad model, with stations in central cities, routes with multiple stops, fares propped up by monopolies, and operators with no economic incentive to provide comfortable or pleasant service.

Chinatown and Megabus operators ditched this model for one that works for travelers for whom money is scarce and time plentiful. Who needs a station? Intercity buses can occupy curb space briefly just as city buses do. Who needs multiple stops? You can make money on people who want to go from one specific location to another.

Needless to say, the cost to the taxpaying public is minimal. City streets and interstate highways already exist, and maintenance gets financing from gas taxes. And the system has enormous flexibility. If fewer passengers want to line up in Chinatown and more on the Upper West Side, the bus can change stops.

Rock on, Mr. Barone. And he does:

Compare high-speed rail. It is tethered to enormous stations that must be built or refurbished and limited to particular routes that, once the rails are laid down, cannot be changed except at prohibitive expense.

And it is enormously costly. In just two years the estimated cost of the Obama administration's pet project, California high-speed rail, in the "flatter than Kansas" Central Valley, has risen from $7.1 billion to $13.9 billion. Oxford economist Bent Flyvbjerg has found that high-speed rail projects always end up costing more, usually far more, than estimates.

In addition, operating costs almost always end up higher than fares. And fares always turn out to be expensive, comparable to airfare if you book a popular flight the day before your trip.
So high-speed rail is a form of transportation on which government subsidizes business travelers. You don't see backpackers any more on the Acela or Amtrak trains from Washington to New York. They're taking the Chinatown bus or one of its competitors.

And so to conclude:

So the private sector provides cheap intercity transportation while government struggles to waste $53 billion. Please remind me which is the wave of the future.

Remember where you heard it first.

On the F-Word

GetReligion, a blog on press coverage of religion, offers a short rant against the LA Times characterization of Rick Perry's weekend prayer rally as a gathering of "fundamentalists."

We cite the post for one trenchant rhetorical question:

Have we reached the point where any Christian believer whose doctrine of scripture and church tradition is high enough to believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin will now be called a “fundamentalist”?

We figure that the obvious answer is "yes." There's probably no definition of the f-word today that better captures that word's usage. We intend to point this out to everyone from now on.

End of Week Economic and Political Potpourri

We offer some links and observations that converge on SWNIDish themes.

In WSJ, Eric Cantor is featured in the weekend-edition's profile that leads the opinion page. The brief interview and analysis emphasize what SWNID has been posting lately: that our body politic is riven by two distinct notions of what the country ought to be. If you haven't been paying attention, those two notions are (a) a republic of equal and abundant opportunity, relatively unfettered by government interference; (b) a European-style welfare state pursuing equality of outcome. Cantor is quoted on the subject:

The assumption . . . is that there is some kind of perpetual engine of economic prosperity in America that is going to just continue. And therefore they are able to take from those who create and give to those who don't. We just have a fundamentally different view.

Meanwhile, others in WSJ are noting a corollary: that in the present debate, as progressives get the worst of it, they retreat to more overt expressions of elitism. So writes Stanford's Peter Berkowitz. Cataloging some of the recent examples of egregious name-calling from lefty Congresspersons and pundits, Berkowitz observes a fundamental contradiction in the progressive political mindset:

The evident panic of the progressive mind stems from a paradox as old as progressivism in America. Progressives see themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people. Yet their vision of what democracy requires frequently conflects with what majorities believe and how they choose to live.

Add to this the progressive belief that human beings can be perfected through the rule of experts, and you have a recipe--when the people make choices contrary to progressive dictates--for generating contempt among the experts for the people whose interests they claim alone to represent. And not just contempt, but even disgust at diversity of opinion, which from the progressive's perspective distracts the people from the policies demanded by impartial reason.

The progressive mind is on a collision course with itself. The clash between its democratic pretensions and its authoritarian predilections has generated within its ranks seething resentment for, and rage at, conservatives. Unless progressives cultivate the enlightened virtues they publicly profess and free themselves from the dogmatic beliefs that undergird their political ambitions, we can expect even more harrowing outbursts to come.

Meanwhile, S&P has downgraded US Treasurys to AA+ with a negative outlook. Of course, they did it despite having to acknowledge a $2 trillion mistake in their analysis. We see this change as more symbolic than substantial, as there is no real alternative for cash in the global economy to replace Treasurys. So we expect little change in interest rates, even though a rise in interest rates is perhaps in the interests of longer-term prosperity. Markets are more important in determining prices than are market-watchers.

And meanwhile, Ohio's bonds have been upgraded. Ohio Governor, shameless self-promoter and former Lehman Brothers partner John Kasich explains how he has accomplished this fiscal feat by doing the Coolidge thing in balancing the state budget and reducing taxes:





What to say in conclusion? That we dearly hope that the decade-long flirtation with spending and borrowing our way to prosperity is at an end, and that this time the lesson will last longer than the 20 years it takes for another generation to arise, hold its parents in contempt, imagine that we suffer from a deficit of civic-minded virtue that they intend to fill, and concoct yet another failed experiment in patron-client relations between a government and its citizens.