Republicanism in 2012

Since everyone is very eager to proclaim the end of Reagan Republicanism, I think in the future the party is going to be searching for a new identity. Of course, I've lamented the idea of taking the solutions of the past and trying to apply them to today but at the same time you do need to keep track of what American Conservatism has been so if you go back to the pre-Reagan days you have the group of Eisenhower-Nixon-Ford. Certainly there are elements of this vein of Republicanism that are horrendous and you never want to repeat them but at the same time you are reminding of things like this and you realize that whatever fusion of ideas the party comes up with...looking to Ike for some wisdom and guiding principles isn't such a bad idea.

Barack Obama...Christian?

It's a question a lot of people are asking. If his faith is truly Christian or not based on an interview he gave. The answer of course should be who cares? At least in regards to the office he has just been elected to. If you want to express concern over the state of his soul, well that's a different subject, unless you want to take him at his word which is basically all any of us can do. My first thought on the subject is to paraphrase Martin Luther, that he would rather be governed by a capable Muslim than an incompetent Christian.

Then I turn to two of my favorite voices calling out from the wild world wide web.

First, Ross Douthat:

If you're following the interesting debate over whether Barack Obama is a Christian, one thing to keep in mind is the extent to which heresy of various sorts pervades American Christianity at this point - and, moreover, the extent to which it cuts across confessional, cultural, and political lines. The Obama interview that provided the grist for this conversation does indeed suggest, as Larison puts it, that our President subscribes to some sort of semi-Arian conception of the nature of Christ, which isn't surprising at all given that he entered Christianity through the liberal-Protestant gate. But heresy of this and other stripes is hardly confined to liberal Protestants. Americans of all denominations are pretty murky about even the most important theological questions, and thus as likely to offer semi-Arian (or semi-Pelagian, or semi-Nestorian, or what-have-you) formulations out of ignorance as out of considered belief. And of course a distinctively American strand of heresy is integral to a large swathe of what we think of as "conservative" Christianity: You could call it Americanism or Moralistic Therapeutic Deism or something else entirely, but whatever label you choose it owes as much to Emerson, Hegel and Norman Vincent Peale as to Nicaea and Chalcedon, and its emanations and penumbras influence everything from the prosperity gospel to the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

Now it's true that if he had been asked about Christ's nature, Bush - or Ronald Reagan, to take another conservative President with an idiosyncratic religious sensibility - might have given a more Nicaean answer than Obama did in the interview in question. But then again maybe not! (And God only knows what John McCain, the most pagan Presidential contender we've had in some time, might have said.) Given the muddled way in which most Americans approach religion, and the pervasiveness of heterodoxy, I suppose I'm basically with Alan Jacobs: I think that figuring out exactly what sort of things Obama believes about God and Christ and everything else, and how those beliefs may affect his Presidency, is ultimately a more profitable pursuit than arguing about whether he should be allowed to call himself a Christian. Or put another way: I expect my Presidents to be heretics, but I think it matters a great deal what kind of heretics they are.

Second, Alan Jacobs:

Is Barack Obama a Christian? Rod has all the links to the various participants in the controversy. My view is this: the President-elect claims to be a Christian, and I take him — I think I have to take him — at his word. Could he be lying? Could he be self-deceived? Could he have a limited or erroneous understanding of what Christianity is? Yes to all three. But then, the same doubts could be directed at anyone who claims to be a Christian, including me.

We’re not mind-readers, and the attempt to discover just how much fit there is between someone’s profession of faith and the state of his heart and mind is a mug’s game. In the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards nearly drove himself and his congregation nuts by his determination to withhold Communion from people unless he could be absolutely sure that they were truly and deeply believers. The problem with this approach was neatly summed by a century earlier by the great Richard Baxter — coiner of the phrase “mere Christianity” — who took the opposite view from Edwards. If congregants do “by word of mouth say, that they believe with a saving Faith, these words are but signs of their minds; and whether counterfeit or not, the Church cannot tell.” Even if they manifest good works and pious utterances, they could be doing so for reasons unconnected to faith — the desire for social approval in a Christian community, for instance.

So when people say “I am a Christian” I accept them at their word, just as I hope that they accept me at my word when I make the same claim.

But the conversation doesn't have to end there, does it? It seems to me that, having taken President-elect Obama at his word when he claims the Christian faith, we can then go on to discuss what he thinks Christianity is, who he thinks who Jesus is, what obligations he believes a Christian takes on by virtue of being a Christian, and so on. And as that conversation proceeds we might say to him that we think his understanding of Christianity sadly limited, or the place of Christ in his theology to be insufficient and wrong-headed, or whatever. (Those are the kinds of things I would probably say to the President-elect if we were having such a conversation.) And he might point out to us flaws in our own theologies — we’d have to be prepared for that, wouldn't we? The debate might go on a while. But I think the conversation will be healthier and more productive if no one starts it by denying the other the status of Christian.

The more you think about how every Christian is pretty uneducated when it comes to multitude of arguments that have been held about the person of Jesus or some theological issue in the history of the church...the more you should fear applying religious tests to political figures or hoping for a theocracy. Who's God would we end up putting over the top of us all. Then you come back to realizing how amazing it was that the Founding Fathers designed a solution for precisely this problem: Govern to the best of humanity's understanding and live your personal lives piously. It works out the best way.

Thoughts on Election Day

1. It almost seems surreal that we are finally going to decide this thing. I know I'm not alone in feeling like this contest has been going on forever?

2. It looks like it will be an easy win for Obama and we may have an anti-climactic ending by early afternoon.

3. I'm wondering how long it will take for the disillusion to set in on the behalf of the Obama movement. He is after all, merely a man, though extremely gifted and talented, and the challenges facing this land are of such a great magnitude. He's bound to disappoint and perhaps sooner rather than later. If you are looking for the Messiah, I believe he's already been here and is still at work but he's not running for President.

4. As someone who really truly is by nature a conservative person I find myself thinking along similar lines as Ross Douthat, another blogger I read daily when he writes all of this:

Conservatism in the United States faces a series of extremely knotty problems at the moment. How do you restrain the welfare state at a time when the entitlements we have are broadly popular, and yet their design puts them on a glide path to insolvency? How do you respond to the socioeconomic trends - wage stagnation, social immobility, rising health care costs, family breakdown, and so forth - that are slowly undermining support for the Reaganite model of low-tax capitalism? How do you sell socially-conservative ideas to a moderate middle that often perceives social conservatism as intolerant? How do you transform an increasingly white party with a history of benefiting from racially-charged issues into a party that can win majorities in an increasingly multiracial America? etc. Watching the McCain campaign, you'd barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them. But there were people in the Bush Administration who did understand the situation facing the Right, and set out to wrestle with these challenges - and as a result, George W. Bush had a real chance (especially given the political capital he enjoyed after 9/11) to establish a model for center-right governance in the post-Reagan era. That he failed is by no means the greatest tragedy of the last eight years, but it is a tragedy nonetheless - for conservatives, and for the country.I'm not counseling despair here: There were people in 1976 who thought Richard Nixon had irrevocably squandered the chance to build a new right-of-center majority, and looked how that turned out. But for now, as America goes to the polls, I find myself stuck thinking about the lost opportunities of the last eight years, and the possibility that they may not come round again.

Maybe the Reagan model is obsolete as the world has changed. Maybe the left has the better ideas for how the economy should function at this point in time, just like Reagan had the right ideas 30 years ago. I'm willing to give them a shot. Socially, I wonder along similar lines...how do you explain that you think traditional values are actually better when for the past 40 years it seems like everything progressive has worked out just fine and some traditional values seem to fly in the face of science, man's best attempt at understanding the Universe. I'm not ready to throw out the totality of 6000 years of collective human wisdom simply because it's been proven wrong a few times (i.e., racism, etc.) and because we've managed to remedy a lot of the costs and negative externalities of the choices of our parents' generation.

Couple that with the idea that an Obama election assures us of an undivided Congress and White House. I fear this nearly as much as I fear extending the policies of the first six years of Bush's time in the White House. Look, the fact is Burke was right, power corrupts. Both sides have their excesses, and I'm sure the Democrats are going to make some mistakes during their time in power. I think the record of my lifetime proves a pretty valuable example of the fact that our government charts the best course when the Democrats and Republicans share power. Reagan/Bush and the Democratic Congress in the 80s and early 90s and the Clinton/Gingrich years from '94 through the end of his term. (Even the last two years of W. Bush, which people will one day look back on and see in a much more positive light.)

5. With all of that in mind, I'm two for two in presidential elections. Here's hoping I can continue batting 1.000%. A crazy world indeed, ain't it? An exciting one too!

Me=Obamacon

I have been tempted to write about this political season several times since I started this blog. I have refrained though because I didn't have the time or feel inclined to exert the effort to write the post that such a topic would deserve. My own political journey has taken me from a staunchly Republican family to where I am today- fancying myself more concerned with realism and pragmatism (which were conservative values at one time) than having any desire to embrace ideology. My simple answer, when I have been asked, is that this election I think Obama is offering better options than McCain. His positions align with the voices and recommendations of experts that I encounter when I read about the world we live in and the challenges we face. Mr. Andrew Sullivan, whose blog I read daily, offers a much better explained and concise set of reasons than I can, and mostly nails why I, as a self-identified conservative, will vote for Obama this year.

10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.
9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won't touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain's plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama's. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.
8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain's knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran's nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush's first term and George W.'s.
7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.
6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.
5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.
4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.
3. Two words: President Palin.
2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today's Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.
1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excresence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.
Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama.

I'm back!

I have acquired a new reader and she's wasted no time in drawing me back to this blog. I know a few of you have been craving for me to get back to posting more regularly. When I was younger (by which I mean up until about 6 months ago) I usually put my thoughts down in words only when I was going through tough times. Hence I have several half-used notebooks and one deceased blog full of mellow dramatic rants and declarations of undying love to the few women in my life I have really fallen for.

So, with a little deduction you can probably assume that do to the absence of any regular updates that things have been going very smoothly in life lately. All of this is a very long way of saying that I'll try harder to post more regularly and so, on that note, on with the show...

1. When I was in the 4th grade, my brother caught me with a fish hook between the eyes while he was attempting to cast. I was rushed to the emergency room with a night crawler danging in my eye...extremely blessed that the hook hadn't landed a half inch to the left or the right.

2. I once told a girl I had a crush on that I thought it was "disgusting" when she told me she thought I was good-looking. It was probably the longest day I ever spent at work.

3. I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. I did so the first time with extreme eagerness. I did it the second time because I was angry that my state's votes were going to John Kerry regardless of my vote.

4. If I could have anyone's sense of humor it would be Jon Stewart's.

5. I've seen U2 in concert 7 times in my life.

6. Absolutely destroyed my 6th grade teacher's all-time record in her annual "Global Pursuit" trivia game.

7. Went to the Columbia River Gorge today and couldn't believe it...

I don't even think I know 7 people with blogs so how about it you read this and want to consider yourself tagged you can leave a link to your blog in my comments section. Deal?

Crazy World Indeed

How insane has this week been? Some saying we are on the verge of a Great Depression-like situation. Also, a very really reminder that you can't always get what you want and that sometimes you can really hurt someone even when you are trying to do the exact opposite.

Weekend in Review

This weekend was the first time that I had both Saturday and Sunday off since I started working. The urgency of the project is over as the deadline has been successfully met. Thus, no need for overtime. Friday, we began transitioning into a new project that and so I will have a while longer to continue working at this job. It was also brought to my attention by my co-worker that our supervisor on this assignment was asking her what she knew about my background and qualifications because there "are always opportunities here." So it will remain to be seen if something more permanent will emerge from the situation. Honestly, I'd have to give such an option serious consideration if the pay was right since it's been such an ideal situation so far. I'll keep you all posted.

The weekend was great. Saturday morning, Tim, Julia and I headed off to a great farmer's market that is located at Portland State University. I bought some delicious strawberries. Tim came home with a nectarine he really enjoyed and Julia, who was the only one smart enough to bring along any real amount of money, brought home all sorts of fruit and vegetable delights. Then I hiked off, with the two love birds dawdling behind to find the main library which was a few blocks away. The library is in a grand, old three story building. It was a pleasant experience walking through all the rooms checking everything out and acquiring a new library card. I plan to spend a lot of time there this coming winter as it will provide a nice way to get out of the house when the winter sets in.

This morning, Tim and I went out and bought a frisbee. Then we headed over to the University of Portland with Julia and Sluggo, her dog. It was a very beautiful day in Portland today and so we joined not a few UP students in the quad. Tim and I worked on our frisbee throws. He wants to learn to play Ultimate and Julia ran her dog silly chasing his ball all over the place. It really made me miss college and everyone I knew at Chapman but it was a leisurely day nonetheless.

Tonight, Tim and I went to a church that one of my temporary co-workers told me about when we were working together. It's called Red Sea. From what my coworker told me and what I could glean from the website I understood the church to be affiliated with Mark Driscoll's Acts 29 Network of churches. I assumed the experience would be similar to the white, urban evangelical church stereotype that I have in my mind. Largely it was except for the fact that 3/4 of the congregation are black. I don't know that this is even noteworthy and in some way it makes me feel kind of weird to even point this out as noteworthy. This congregation, though small (there were only around 40 there tonight) was by far the friendliest group of Christians we have gone to church with since we've been up here. After the service was over, we were invited to dinner by many of the people in the church and also invited to someone's house for BBQ and a movie on Wednesday. I felt bad having to decline both offers but Tim and I were exhausted after the events of the afternoon and this Wednesday I think Megan and her parents will be in town.

I'm not really sure what to do about the church. There is no reason not to go back, but like Imago Dei, I'm not sure if I should commit to something right away. Should I keep exploring or just settle down?...realizing that ultimately church is about things that are so much bigger than just me.