American History part 4 -- From Carter to Obama

This is taking longer than I anticipated. I guess 250 years is a long time. 
1. From Revolution to Fracture
2. From Civil War to World War
3. From Roar to Reagan
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18. But the real shift came with Ronald Reagan

But first, we should mention Jimmy Carter. Before Reagan swept in with a cowboy hat and camera-ready smile, there was a one term Democratic president. He was a soft-spoken peanut farmer from Georgia, quite unexpected really. Sincere. Intellectual. Doomed.

He called himself a "born-again" Christian, the first president to say somethng like that. Of course, that didn't mean anything in my Christian circles. After all, he was a Democrat. We always had a reason to vote against a Democrat even before Roe v. Wade. The reasons changed, the vote remained the same. After all, we humnans are herd animals.

Carter promised honesty after Watergate, and he delivered. He was a truly honorable man. Thus of course, doomed. 

He was everything Nixon wasn’t. He was transparent, humble, moral. Maybe too moral. Can you be moral and be president? He told Americans we were addicted to consumption. He asked us to turn down the thermostat. He wore sweaters on TV and talked about rising above our national gloom. 

Meanwhile, inflation soared. Gas lines stretched for blocks. Iran took Americans hostage and wouldn’t let them go. In one of the final acts of his presidency, we botched a rescue attempt and lost 8 servicemen in the process.

Carter did broker a landmark peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel. An astounding achievement. Since Israel had declared itself a state in 1948, there had been little but war and hostility with its Arab neighbors. But that diplomatic triumph was overshadowed by domestic frustration. What Americans remembered was inflation, gas lines, and the failed rescue of hostages in Iran -- not the breakthrough at Camp David.

He was a good man in a bad moment. Far too boring. Far too intellectual. And America wanted a showman, not a sermon.

19. Reagan was charming, confident, camera-ready. He talked about America like it was a sunset movie. He said the government wasn’t the solution. It was the problem. Sounded good to people who were tired of the government telling them what to do (especially when it came to blacks).

Reagan marked the end of a decades long flipping of the parties. The Democrats had once been synonymous with Jim Crow and "state's rights," a tool to keep the blacks in their place. Now the Democrats had somehow become the champion of civil rights and voting rights. And the Republicans, once the party that had freed the slaves, now found itself now the champion of state's rights and resistance to these developments.

They called it Nixon's "southern strategy." Appeal to the disaffected Democrats in the South who were angry over the changes the rest of the Democrats were leading nationwide. It worked. By the end of Reagan's presidency, many of those who were once southern Democrats had become southern Republicans. Reagan himself had once been a Democrat.

By the 1980s, what remained of the earlier Republican Party’s identity was its loyalty to big business and deregulation. As Hoover had said, "Let the markets self-correct." Now Reagan put a new spin on the economics of the 20s.

"Trickle down economics." If you slash taxes on the wealthy and on big business, their increased investment in the economy will "trickle down" to the ordinary person. That was the concept. With more money in hand, businesses will raise wages for their workers. Their increased wealth, the theory went, would eventually drip down to the rest of us.

It has never seemed to work, although two more Republican presidents since have also tried it. Each time, the pattern repeated: tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring deficits, and eventually, economic trouble. Reagan's own Republican rival, George H. W. Bush, famously called it "voodoo economics" -- before becoming Reagan's vice president, and later, president. 

The rich got richer. Wages stagnated. And despite the promises, prosperity never quite trickled down.

20. Perhaps the most significant piece of Reagan's puzzle was the full alignment of evangelicalism with the Republican Party. Evangelicals in the North had long leaned Republican, while many Southern evangelicals had historically voted Democrat -- the party of segregation and state's rights. 

That all changed in the late 20th century. The issue that fused evangelicalism with the Republican Party was abortion. It became almost unthinkable for an evangelical to vote for a Democrat. The thing is, many southern Democrats initially supported Roe v. Wade. The outrage came later. Something deeper was going on.

What was it? Southern evangelicals had been angry about the federal government telling them to desegregate their schools and allow interracial dating in their colleges. But instead of defending segregation outright, they shifted that anger to something with stronger moral force: abortion. “The government can’t make me accept Black children at my private school” became “The government can’t make me accept abortion.” It was the same defiance -- repackaged around a more righteous cause.

While southern evangelicals had first been ambivalent even supportive of Roe v. Wade, it now became the sure sign that God was totally aligned with the Republican Party. Democrats were sheer evil.

Reagan welcomed the rise of a new force in politics: the Religious Right. Evangelicals, once wary of politics, got organized. They saw a country slipping away -- too secular, too sexual, too progressive -- and they made a deal. Vote Republican, and we’ll fight your culture wars. “Family values” became their brand. They didn’t just want to save souls. They wanted to shape policy.

And Reagan delivered. Not just with rhetoric, but with judges. Policies. A whole new political theology.

In the meantime, other biblical values were gutted. Reaganomics gutted public programs. The mentally ill were turned out into the streets as government funded facilities were closed. The war on drugs targeted Black and Brown communities. The AIDS crisis was ignored as thousands died. Many thought that gay people were being punished by God and getting what they deserved. It took the possibility that "normal" people would get AIDS to see any action.

But the story America told itself was that the country was back on track. Prosperous. Traditional. Strong. Becoming great again.

Reagan had changed the playing field. Now, freedom meant tax cuts. Patriotism meant military strength. The government could control people's moral values (but never corporate power). The backlash had become the blueprint.

Just like that, the gospel got a party platform. And the party got God's vote.

21. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The red star dimmed. The Cold War was over.

Reagan gets a lot of the credit. The Soviet Union just couldn't keep up with his spending on defense. Communism is a failed economic system, and they finally gave up.

The Berlin Wall cracked open like an eggshell. East Germans streamed west. The Iron Curtain rusted into memory. Within two years, the Soviet Union was gone, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, corruption, and economic stagnation. For nearly fifty years, America had shaped its foreign policy, its budget, its fears, its identity around this one opponent. And now the opponent was gone.

It was called the "end of history." Capitalism had won. Democracy had won. America had won. There would be no more ideological battles, no more existential threats. The world would now become a free market shopping mall. And the United States owned the mall.

But history doesn’t end. It just changes costume.

With the Cold War over, the military budget didn’t shrink that much. But the mood changed. America relaxed. It seemed like we had earned our happy ending.

Still, the West squandered a rare opportunity. After communism collapsed, Russia stood at a crossroads. The hope was that it might join the democratic world. But instead of helping it build the institutions of a healthy republic -- courts, transparency, a free press -- we sent over economists with a Hoover-era playbook: unleash the free market and let it sort itself out. "Shock therapy." Let the "Unseen Hand" take care of it.

What followed wasn’t democracy. It was chaos. A handful of insiders seized everything: factories, oil, media. The state was gutted, and oligarchy filled the vacuum. Instead of freedom, Russia got a fire sale. Now there was a new ruling class wearing suits instead of party pins. 

And soon a new approach to war with the West.

22. Enter Bill Clinton.

He didn’t campaign on moral crusades. He wasn’t Reagan with a smile. He was Elvis with a saxophone. He was a Southern Democrat who talked like one of the guys but governed like a centrist economist. He promised to modernize liberalism. Make it leaner, smarter, more market-friendly. He called it “Third Way” politics -- not left, not right, just whatever works.

In practice, it meant welfare reform. It meant deregulating banks. It meant free trade agreements like NAFTA that promised more jobs but hollowed out whole regions. Clinton balanced the budget. He charmed Wall Street. In some ways he was a Republican in Democrat's clothing. He turned the Democratic Party into something that could win national elections again -- but only by sounding more like Republicans on economics. 

He had out-Republicaned the Republicans. A Democrat had turned his back on the unions and sent jobs sprinting to Mexico. Ironically, the budget balanced more than under any Republican president and abortion rates declined more too.

In the 90s, some of the biggest changes in human history in hundreds of years were rising. Technology boomed. The internet was born. Cell phones shrank. Cable TV exploded. For some, the 90s were prosperity and promise. 

But the other America -- the one that didn’t go to college, didn’t get stock options, didn’t get heard -- it began to simmer. And while the culture wars subsided, they weren't dead. They just put on different clothes.

Clinton’s presidency became a proxy battle over sex, morality, and the role of character in public life. His affair with an intern, and his bald-faced lie about it, became the stuff of impeachment. The outrage seemed real. Although it's easy to act with moral outrage when it's the other party. We're more apt to overlook moral failure from our own team. 

Outrage over Clinton was good political theater. The same party that had aligned with televangelists in the 1980s now used moral outrage as a sword.

Still, Clinton survived. His approval ratings soared. The economy roared. At the same time, cynicism deepened. The right had weaponized scandal. The left had compromised itself into confusion. There was money, there was power, but there wasn’t much meaning.

By 2000, a new millennium was beginning. But the fault lines hadn’t gone away. They’d just been covered over by Nasdaq stocks and cable news.

23. The year 2000 ended in confusion. Florida ballots. Hanging chads. A Supreme Court decision. It wasn't quite as dramatic as 1877, but the outcome remains questionable to this day. For sure, George W. Bush entered the presidency without winning the popular vote. Yet even in the Electoral College, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida with him ahead by just 537 votes. 

But he was a good guy. A good old boy. Someone you would enjoy having a beer with. How much damage could a president do? 

Then came September 11, 2001.

Terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Smoke choked the New York skyline. The Pentagon was hit. A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people died that day. Everything changed in a morning. The American psyche had dramatically changed.

The country united around grief. But that unity was quickly channeled into war. First Afghanistan. Then Iraq.

Afghanistan made some sense. After all, that's where the perpetrator was hiding, Osama bin Laden. We had worldwide support. The Arab world was more sympathetic to us than ever. It was a tremendous opportunity to end our long term differences.

Iraq was different. It had nothing to do with 9-11. The Arab world wasn't buying it. An opportunity for reconciliation turned into heightened alienation. Some holdovers from the Reagan era -- neoconservatives -- saw this as a chance to reshape the Middle East. It was probably well intentioned if culturally ignorant. Bush naively called "Mission Accomplished" 

We said it was about fighting terrorism. We said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t. But the war happened anyway. The military-industrial complex got its blank check. The media played along. The public, stunned and scared, mostly nodded. In my little town of 20,000, the mayor barricaded the courthouse in case of jihadists in Indiana.

America went from being the world's grieving friend to its unpredictable enforcer. Endless war became a business model. Fear became a political strategy. The Patriot Act. Wiretapping. Airport scanners. A surveillance state wrapped in a flag. Fear allowed all that.

At home, Bush tried Reaganomics 2.0. The economy soared -- and then crashed. Everyone loved deregulation until the housing bubble burst. Banks gambled and lost, but got bailed out. Homeowners didn’t. Ordinary Americans watched their savings disappear while Wall Street collected bonuses. It was 1929 with PowerPoint. Wall Street was rescued. The rest got a foreclosure notice.

And then came something no one expected.

24. Barack Obama.

A Black man (with a name that sounded a little too much like Osama) rose on a message of hope. He was calm, intellectual, composed. He spoke with clarity and conviction. He didn’t scream. He inspired. For a moment, it felt like the country might be ready to grow up.

Obama inherited a recession and two wars. He passed the Affordable Care Act -- a messy, compromised attempt at universal healthcare based on something Republicans had done in Massachusetts. He brought troops home. He stabilized the economy. He killed the real Osama. And in the process, he became both a symbol of progress and a trigger for backlash.

For millions, Obama was proof that the American Dream was still alive. That the words of 1776 still meant something. For others, he was the nightmare they’d always feared. Not because of what he did -- but because of what he represented.

They called him a socialist. They called him a Muslim. They said he was born in Kenya. Some didn’t even try to hide their racism. 

It was enough that gay marriage became legal during his presidency. No, he wasn't on the Supreme Court. He had nothing to do with making it happen. But for many it might as well have been him. 

The Tea Party rose, claiming to be about reducing the deficit -- a deficit that came back under Bush and was exacerbated by the bailouts of the recession. But mostly what the Tea Party did was grind Obama's movement to a halt. Attempts to fix immigration were stopped in their tracks, making the situation snowball into what we have today.

Every effort was made to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, as if there was something immoral about the government helping people get health care. Bring back Hoover and let the church do it. Better yet, make them get a job with good health care. In his last major act in Congress, John McCain stopped the repeal of the ACA by voting against his party, which was trying to kill it more out of vengeance than for a good reason.

Gun violence had dropped to historic lows during the Clinton years, thanks in part to the federal assault weapons ban. But under President Bush, the Republican-led Congress let the ban expire in 2004. The floodgates opened. Assault-style weapons returned to the shelves, and gun violence has climbed ever since, with school shootings especially rising in popularity. That lapse let a genie out that we may never get back in the bottle.

We say that people kill people, not guns. While that is true, the correlation lands the blame for our current crisis squarely on 2004 and a Republican Congress.

25. Conspiracies were increasingly America's favorite brew. The undercurrent of white grievance found a new fuel source. Facebook and Twitter rose to the challenge, and feeble minds were putty in the hands of foreign social media accounts.

Obama tried to lead from the center. His presidency was more careful than revolutionary. But just his presence in the White House felt like too much for some. Too much change too quickly.

He wore a tan suit. Scandal. He put Dijon mustard on a hamburger. Un-American. He cried after a school shooting. Weak.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party kept shifting. Reagan’s dog whistles had become bullhorns. Moderates were pushed out. The word “compromise” became a slur. More than any other single force, Fox reshaped America. Rupert Murdoch skillfully wielded it as a propaganda channel -- it was forced to admit in court that it was actually more entertainment than objective news. Meanwhile, innocent minds were manipulated into outrage at whatever Fox wanted them to be upset about.

Birtherism. Fake news. Online rage. The internet wasn’t just connecting people. It was radicalizing them. And cable news wasn’t informing people. It was inflaming them.

By the end of Obama’s presidency, America was breaking.

The backlash wasn’t just political. It was cultural, racial, psychological. The mere idea of a changing America -- less white, less Christian, more complex -- was enough to ignite a movement. One that would soon storm the stage in a red hat. 

Obama and Two Free Years of College

I thought it was clever to release some short teasers in relation to the upcoming State of the Union address. The first is apparently a proposal to give two free years of community college to all Americans who are willing to work for it.

1. My first thought of course was, "Not going to happen." Even if they liked it, where would Congress find the money for a project like this one?

My second thought was, "Clever, knowing that Congress will never go for something like this. It sets up the next Democratic candidate for President as a potential selling or "get out the vote" point.

My third thought was, "It's probably a bad idea when you get into the implications."

2. For one thing, for something like this really to pay off, whoever the planners were (and that in itself is a major problem--no one, Republican or Democrat--ever agrees on what the outcomes of education are really supposed to be) would need to be very specific about what these two years of education were supposed to achieve. That is to say, what are the outcomes America is looking for with these two years.

A good basic education, with courses like writing and psychology, certainly adds value to any person. Basic math skills, a sense of history--all good stuff for anyone to have rattling around in their heads. Basically, we're looking to give the least educated segment of the American population what they should have received in high school but didn't because they dropped out. That would be a good thing, if they would go for it.

Of course many adjuncts at community colleges are not as high up on the academic totem pole as those who teach at a private or more public institution (you usually get what you pay for). So we're talking about adding value in some cases, rather than a state of the art education, IMO. Nevertheless, community colleges are a good thing and serve a wide range of people (of all capacities). And I want to be clear that I believe there are gems of teachers at community colleges who give more value than Harvard.

3. But, money changes things. If community colleges were suddenly where the money was, then the quality of teachers at community colleges would improve over time.

But more questionable is the fact that this would effectively kill large numbers of private colleges, unless they could get in on the dough as well. I can see "school voucher" programs develop so that private schools could get this money too.

Private colleges are already endangered because of community schools. I wouldn't be surprised if some schools in the near future go to a two-tier tuition rate, one of which applies to general education courses and another of which applies to major classes. So you would take psychology online for a price comparable to Ivy Tech but you would then pay a higher tuition (with smaller classes) to take a course like Anatomy and Physiology.

Bottom line: This proposal would create immense and I think ultimately very unhealthy upheaval in American higher education, with harmful unintended consequences.

4. What I would support are free vocational training and placement programs that could be associated with community colleges. In order to receive welfare, you would have to enroll in these programs, successfully graduate from them, and then take a placement in an appropriate workplace.

Indeed, I would be delighted to see grocery stores and work places develop, whose main source of income is money redirected from current welfare programs into a channel of help that requires training and work to receive.

Like Obama's proposal, I doubt this idea will ever see the light of day...

Sectarian Violence in the Middle East

I had the opportunity to go to a luncheon on "Sectarian Violence in the Middle East" on Monday in San Diego, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank out of Washington. It was two panelists and a moderator. One panelist member was Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of Islamic Studies at Notre Dame. The other was Mona Yocubian, who works for USAID.

The two panelists didn't agree on everything, but the moderator was able to pull out some common ground about the current crisis with ISIS and such.

1. The first is that the current situation is more complicated than ever.
I was probably the least informed person in the room. The number of individual groups in the Middle East is mind numbing. It's not just Sunni and Shia. There are Alawites and Hezbollah and all sorts of other gradations. They ally for somethings, pull against each other for others.

Dictators like Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, perhaps even Hosni Mubarak, were oppressive leaders who did/do evil things. But their removal in each case has left a vacuum of group fighting against group that, at least for the moment, seems even worse than before. Who's to say where it will all go?

My Monday reading group (Charles Taylor) has highlighted a complicating factor that wasn't discussed--the impact of modern individualism on the Middle East. Individualism has empowered radical Muslim individuals to leave saner communities and separate into factions of radical individuals like Al-Qaeda.

And as this event indicated, even Middle East experts themselves don't always agree on the analysis or prescription. That puts any US administration in a tough spot, needing to listen to multiple voices before making any decisions.

2. A second is that America and the West need to be very cautious about the way we intervene.
It seems like we push on one problem and two more spring up somewhere else. So we support the removal of Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood takes over. We don't know who to support in Syria. Bashar al-Assad is a bad guy, but the other side has become ISIS, which is a bad guy, maybe even worse.

On the panel, Moosa thought we needed just to stop intervening and to let the situation take its course, to let Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the region fight their own battle. There was vocal support and a significant pocket of clapping around the room for that.

Yocubian, who of course is in the broader Obama administration, took a more nuanced approach and suggested there are many things we can do in terms of aid and such that do not necessarily involve military intervention. She pointed out that Obama has tried to be very careful about intervening and that there are of course many hawks in Congress who think he should be intervening more. I know I thought we probably should have intervened before ISIS took Mosul and took over billions in monetary assets.

Obviously it's very complicated. I get that our intervention almost always seems to create more problems later. But you can't let Hitler take over the world either. Eventually it comes home to roost, when you might at least have nipped something in the bud. Liberals don't like Obama for intervening at all. But, given that he comes from that camp, surely it says something when he intervenes. Surely it says that it was REALLY important to intervene in this case or he wouldn't have done it.

Moosa advocated something like those capitalists who would have us just let an economic crisis play itself out without doing anything about it. Just let the Middle East play itself out and it will eventually right itself.

I disagree, even though I agree we should intervene as little as possible. In economics, I disagree in part because of the three or four years of Hades in destroyed lives. Better five years of moderate economic pain than three years of total decimation. It certainly seems to have worked in the recent economic crisis. How many small groups (like Christians in the Middle East) would be wiped out as the region rights itself?

I disagree secondly because I doubt it really would right itself. There has to be some unifying factor that can transcend factionalism. This is arguably in fact what happened in the origins of Islam. A common deity, a common ethic, a common sense of human worth, allowed rival factions on the Arabian peninsula to come together (of course the expansionary wars against non-Muslims helped too ;-).

3. My notes are at the office, so I don't remember what the moderator's third take-away was. I may have merged it above. I'll make up one that was also clear from the session. :-)

Most of us are way out of our depth on these issues. Policy and decision makers need to be listening to lots of different experts on the Middle East. Inevitably, our leaders have to make these decisions, but they need to make them with fear and trembling, talking to a lot of other people, including the leaders of other countries. We surely need to pray for them. The smartest of the smartest are hardly able to untie these knots.

The Race to Cooperate

I'll be giving out an award on Friday to whichever party in Washington cooperates the most to avoid the sequester.  I want to give the award in a three-way tie between Republicans, Democrats, and the President.  I'm more expecting that I won't be able to give out the award at all.

Status Quo

After billions of dollars and two years of anguish, we are left where we began.  Obama is president again. The Republicans are in control of the House, and the Democrats are in control of the Senate.

House Republicans have already signaled that there will be no taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  That means that the cliff of automatic defense and other cuts loom at the end of the year without any clear avoidance.  The Tea Partiers won't compromise.  It's not clear that Obama will compromise on the tax issue any more.  Scarily, it looks like we may face two more years of gridlock again.

The Health Care debate is over.  It will go into effect.  There will be no repeal.  It is a non-issue from this point on.

The Republican Party will try to reorient itself around Latinos.  I think a lot of Republicans will shift in favor of the Dream Act, and we will see bipartisan immigration reform early next year.

The economy will continue to improve unless Congress does something stupid (which is possible).  It was going to improve no matter who was elected because the economic crisis is over.  If Romney had been elected, it would have continued to improve.  It will continue to improve under Obama unless gridlock kills it, which is possible.

The national debt now remains THE major issue.  If the Democrats are smart (and we'll have to see), they will focus a lot of energy on debt reduction these next four years or else their goose is cooked in 2016--unless of course the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot like they did this time.

There will of course be no more bail-outs because they were a one time, bi-partisan emergency move during the greatest recession since the Great Depression.  They will not come up again, barring another global economic crisis.

America is not moving in a socially conservative direction.  For example, all the most socially conservative candidates on the issue of abortion lost.  I think evangelicals have a choice to make.  The frontal assault is a losing battle.  What if we tried to influence by example rather than force to convert? I personally believe that is the Wesleyan way.

Christian Vote Matrix

If you want to decide who to vote for as a Christian mathematically:

1. Go through the list and decide between Obama and Romney on that issue.
2. If one issue is more important to you than another, double or triple that vote.
3. Add up the totals.  That's who to vote for.

I did this in a half hour this morning, so obviously it can be improved... I've tried to word things in fresh ways, rather than using the catch phrases of the respective parties.

1. Moral Issues: Do you think that the federal government should enforce and implement Christian values that are specifically Christian (e.g., no gay marriage)?  If yes, one vote for Romney.  If no, one vote for Obama.
2. Moral Issues: Do you think that the government should be involved in helping those who currently do not have the means to take care of themselves (e.g., those in poverty, certain elderly)?  If yes, one vote for Obama.  If no, one vote for Romney.
3. Moral Issues: Do you think that monetary wealth is the same as personal property and thus that taxing is stealing if such monies are not used to benefit you personally without your permission (one vote Romney) or do you think that economic systems channel monetary wealth in different ways depending on how they are structured and thus that it is appropriate to distribute monies more evenly throughout the system (one vote Obama)?
4. Economy: Do you think that austerity measures and low taxes are more likely to grow the economy and thus help more people (one vote Romney) or stimulus and selective taxes (one vote Obama)?
5. Foreign Policy: Do you think Obama or Romney is more likely to facilitate greater long term peace in the world?
6. Foreign Policy: Do you think an Obama or Romney administration is more likely to see people come to Christ around the world in the long run?
7. Education: Do you think that the overall educational system in America will improve more under Obama or Romney?  Part of this equation is whether you think that the overall education situation will improve more if opportunities for private education are increased (Romney) or whether more attention needs to go to the public school system (Obama).
6. Judges: Do you think that Supreme Court judges need to be appointed who will eventually vote that Roe vs. Wade was inappropriate because the federal government was intruding on an issue that is more properly an issue for the States to decide (vote Romney) or do you think judges need to be appointed who will continue federal priority over the positions of individual states on these sorts of issues (vote Obama)?
7. Immigration: Do you think that law-abiding individuals (apart from their illegal status) who have lived in the US for decades, especially Latinas/os, should be given an opportunity to become legal?  If yes, one vote Obama.  If no, one vote Romney.
8. Abortion: Do you think that the law should do everything within its power to discourage abortion, including requiring intensely physical examinations (then one vote Romney) or do you think it is better to focus on preventing pregnancies and promoting adoption among those who might otherwise have an abortion (then one vote Obama).

Addendum: I have tried to word these in a way that, no matter which way you went, you could be expressing Christian values in your choice.  Here's the most important question of all for pastors out there: Would Christians who go both ways on the choices above feel comfortable in your church this Fall?  If not, are we not harming the church?

Obama kissing China's prime minister

I'm pretty sure the pictures are doctored, but these were in Vienna advertising the United Colors of Benetton. ;-)  The second one is Merkel of Germany kissing French Sarkozy.

State of the German Nation...

I spent a day of orientation here in Göttingen.  The afternoon was about what's going on right now in German politics and such.  Very interesting.  The Fulbrighters here are not a uniform group and so there were various fairly obvious hints at different political positions in the room.  I continue to consider myself a centrist, although if I were a German I suspect they would consider me somewhat right of center.

You might find the rundown interesting.  Here they have 20% sales tax.  43% of the Gross Domestic Product is in the state sector, which I think means that almost half of the jobs (in terms of money) are state related (of course university professors are usually employees of the state here--and students go to university for free).  The large taxes thus come back in free education and free health care.  Parents of unmarried children under 25 also get 6000 Euros per child back from their taxes.  The population is declining, so this is also partly meant to motivate having children.

The leader of the session this morning mentioned that most Germans do not want less taxes as long as Germany has such high debt. They also feel a sense of corporate responsibility that everyone have health care, although they also recognize the importance of motivating individuals to work rather than live off the system (the leader suggested there are perhaps a million people in Germany who are content simply to live off the social safety net).

A great number of changes have gone into effect in recent years.  They are tending to abolish the old system that sent budding auto mechanics to loser school.  They have broken their college system down into something the rest of the world can understand (with bachelor's and master's degrees).  They are ramping up how much work university students are expected to do (it used to be very leisurely indeed, taking up to 7 or 8 years).  Younger age schools are increasingly going to a full day as opposed to the old half day and come home at 1 to mama.

Obama enjoys a 75% approval rating in Europe in general in terms of his foreign policy (80 something percent in Germany).  While many Germans don't want to bail out Greece (much as many Americans opposed the TARP bailouts), the leader of the presentation thought it was inevitable that the EU would navigate a way through the crisis, for the sake of an EU that eventually was something like the United States of Europe. His hunch was that much of the debt in places like Greece, Italy, and Spain would be forgiven in return from some budgetary control and restructuring of their economic system.

I was not aware that I was coming at such an interesting time of change in Germany.  Just this past summer, Germany did away with compulsory military service.  Just this past summer, Germany switched from 9 year higher school (13 grades) to 8 years (12 grades like ours).

There are of course all the usual German funnities.  They are massively into recycling (e.g., paper, organic, the rest) and we have three trash cans to separate things.  But the truth is, the city people have sophisticated machines that separate it anyway.  All the stuff from the houses is poured together in the truck. ;-)  It's just a cultural reminder (and profit to the people who sell the different cans) to have individual households continue to separate.

Pets are taxed, but are allowed in restaurants.  There was a court ruling that stated that noise was a natural phenomenon from children.  It is thus against the law to complain too much about how loud children are.  Interesting comments on how views on balanced budgets and debt levels relate to growing economies.  It was mentioned that Japanese debt is 200% of GDP... and that the Yen continues to grow in value. ;-)

It would be nice if people in countries like the US could go abroad to places like England and Germany for a bit.  Germans who resent America usually soften when they come to the States and see what it's really like.  By the same token, I suspect a lot of popular feeling in America on a host of issues would soften if we just got out a little bit more.

The Last Ten Years (Part 2)

In memory of 9-11, I started a look back at the last 10 years yesterday.  I didn't feel like yesterdays run from 2000-2007 would cause that much of a stir.  We've had a little time to cool down.  When I was blogging through these things at the time I got some pretty strong reactions.

Today's post I suspect will be much more sensitive, not because it deals with more momentous topics.  What could be more momentous than 9-11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?  It is because we are still living through it and emotions are still charged.  I don't know if I'll write a 15 or 20 year look back, but today's post will not be particularly controversial in 5 years, because our emotions will have moved on.  This is a great lesson to learn in the midst of political heat.

So I present my sense of the last 5 years or so.  And so that you can read my feelings, I am trying not to write them in with emotion, but in an attempt to be as objective as possible (knowing that no one can be completely objective).

2008
In 2008, America entered into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  Bush was still in office. When voting today we will have a tendency to blame Obama since he is the one in office right now, but he cannot be blamed for causing the current economic crisis, although you might accuse him of worsening it or not helping the recovery enough. 

Which of these you think is correct will depend on your sense of whether his stimulus package helped, hurt, or didn't do anything.  Certainly the stimulus package added a significant amount to our national debt, so those who view our current state through this lens see Obama as worsening the crisis.  Others say it didn't help or didn't help much.

These are more matters for the experts than for people like you and me.  There is no question that the economy has improved significantly from what it was in 2008, although the recent debt ceiling crisis and downgrade of the US credit rating has left us with a bit of a roller coaster these last weeks. And of course President Bush passed a couple stimulus packages like this, so to distinguish themselves from Obama on this issue, the Republican party has had to move to the right and oppose a position it once had.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Pretty much everyone agrees that the "Great Recession" that came on in 2008 was a result of the collapse of the housing bubble.  People had been saying it was coming for years.  Although it happened on Bush's watch, and although I'm not willing to completely absolve his administration of blame, something much bigger than his presidency stands behind this crisis.

Materialism.  I was tempted to say "greed," but I do not mean to use a word that might allow us ordinary people to absolve ourselves too easily.  Depending on your political flavor, you will tend to blame one end or the other.  One side wants to blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--and thus blame poor people who wanted to live in a house but couldn't afford one.  The other side wants to blame greedy traders and hedge fund brokers who bet against the market and, most significantly, bundled up massive amounts of debt and then played with them like they were a volley ball.

One side would say our problem was that we were not living within our means.  I believe this is indeed true.    Those who are militant capitalists tend to say only this.  But it was also, in my opinion, a good example of what happens when capitalism is left uncontrolled.  We did not and still do not have a good sense of the kinds of regulations we need in this electronic age to help capitalism do what it is supposed to do without causing these sorts of crises.  I vigorously disagree with that economic philosophy (libertarian, Ron Paul) that says the problem is that we have regulations at all.  History, in my opinion, begs to differ.

I think it is significant that it was a Republican President who triggered all the TARP bailouts.  To me, this--along of course with the majority of economists--demonstrates their necessity.  "Too big to fail" was something the Bush administration understood as reality.  In the end, the bailouts did not end up causing as much debt as initially thought.  GM and Chrysler paid their loans back.  Some of the banks paid back significant amounts.

The consequence, very interesting to watch, is that in order to oppose the bail-outs, Republicans have had to move to the economic right of President Bush.  The result is a quite dramatic shift in the Republican party these last three years toward libertarianism, which historically of course is a quite different political party.

2009
Obama's first year in office involved continued work to pull our economy out of its nose dive.  Obama, with the Democrats having taken both houses in reaction to the Iraq War and economic crisis, passed a stimulus package in February to try to bolster the economy.  We will have to let the economists debate whether this is the correct approach.  Major economists like Martin Feldstein and Paul Krugman urged it.  It was not some Democratic desire to spend, spend, spend.  It was pushed by a dominant economic perspective--one that President Bush and the Republican party of the first decade of the 2000s accepted.

2010
Ironically, the death of Ted Kennedy kept a Democratically controlled House and Senate from passing the kind of health care bill they had been trying for 50 years to pass.  But they were able to pass a modified health care plan that involved the free market.  Individuals would be required to buy health care and the resulting system would make it possible for most Americans to be covered.

The Democrats were not able to get a "public option" in which the government would provide health care to everyone.  The compromise was a mandate for all Americans to buy health care, much as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts.  The result is that Republicans have had to move further to the right in order to oppose "Obamacare," as it is derisively called.  What used to be libertarian values have gained dominance in the Republican party.

Many have done so by a "strict constructionist" reading of the commerce clause of the Constitution after many, many decades of a broader interpretation.  The clause has been used for 70 years to allow for things such as this mandate in the health care plan.  But idealists in the Republican party are now--somewhat ironically--finding in the current economic crisis reasons to try to turn the American economic system back to the time before the New Deal, which was brought on by the Great Depression.

2009 also saw the rise of the power of the "Tea Party," a group of libertarians who resonate strongly with the revolutionary actions of various colonists in New England against English taxation in the lead up to the Revolutionary War.  The group strongly opposes government "intrusion" into local life, as well as taxation--particularly taxation at a different rate for larger incomes than for lower ones.

The Republican party recognized the power of this group as Republican candidates with this flavor were elected in troves, while traditional Republicans were voted out.  The result was that the Republicans retook the House of Representatives with a vengeance, and not with traditional Republicans, but Tea Party Republicans.

2011
American anger against Obama's health care overhaul was perhaps the major presenting reason for the massive vote of Democrats out of the House.  But it was probably also the perception that the Democratically controlled Congress used political manipulation to get it through, despite strong objections from a very vocal part of the populace. Now, a strongly controlled Republican House came into office with common goals--to reduce the size and power of the federal government and to lower the overwhelming amount of American debt.

The result was a loggerheads over budget and the ensuing crisis over raising the debt ceiling.  While the Tea Party did not get as much as it wanted, the resulting deals tipped very heavily toward their boundaries rather than those of President Obama, who himself was strongly criticized by his own party for giving away the kitchen sink.  Traditional Republicans like John Boehner found themselves unable to broker deals that prior Republicans would have considered quite pleasing.

The inability of Congress to get things done was viewed very negatively by the American people.  Congress' approval rating dipped to the lowest in its history and Obama's also dipped to his lowest ever. Standard and Poor for the first time in history downgraded America's credit rating, partially because the debt was not lowered more, partially because of the inability of Congress and the President to get necessary things done.

As I write today on September 11, 2011, we enter into an election season in which Obama faces a difficult road to re-election, and all the leading Republican candidates are courting Tea Party values.  Rick Perry, if elected, seems to want to return America back to some of its pre-Great Depression economic structures.  But if this look at the last 10 years says anything, it says that a very, very lot can change in a year's time.

We'll see what happens...

Thank you President and Congress!

I was beginning to despair whether Congress could get a passable bill together.  Once again, thanks to all those who recognized the importance of compromising to get the greater good done.  Thanks to Obama for working with Boehner when his own party disagreed.  Thanks to all the Republicans and Democrats who swallowed hard and voted for this thing.  Thanks to the Tea Party for getting us on a deficit reduction path, I think, not knowing where this current path will lead.  I also suspect that everyone who voted against this bill is too dangerous an idealist to be in Congress, whichever side they were on.

We'll see what happens next...

Birtherism, Racism, and Xenophobia...

Given that no one has ever asked any other president to produce his birth certificate, is it really possible to explain the birther phenomenon apart from a conscious or subconscious element of racism and/or xenophobia?  I pose it as an honest question, but I sincerely have not been able to come up with any likely answer other than yes.

I am long convinced that most of us do not believe what we believe because of evidence or a real interest in the objective truth.  We believe what we believe overwhelmingly because we want to believe certain things.  Only someone who is willing to change his or her opinion given reasonable evidence is really interested in the truth.  This more than anything else is what education is supposed to teach you.

Budget Thoughts...

I know few of you are interested in my thoughts on economics or the budget--and it is especially a shame to speak of such things in the middle of Holy Week--but I am sitting here watching Hannity interview Sarah Palin and thought I would jot down my thoughts.

1. The S & P announcement, whatever the politics behind it, confirms to me that Obama's budget proposal is not enough.  We should be looking at something more extensive like the bipartisan budget commission's recommendations this past Fall.

2. The debt ceiling has to be raised.  I think almost everyone recognizes this, and it is really too serious of an issue to use for political bargaining.  Anyone who votes against it is a danger to the US, almost on the level of impeachment.  We should immediately eliminate from our minds any candidate who suggests we should not do so--these are very, very dangerous, loony people.

3. Ryan's proposal to privatize Medicare and push Medicaid down to the states is a non-starter.  Not only does it have no chance of passing--I get so annoyed with people who can't handle reality and prefer to beat their heads against the wall until they knock themselves out--it seems to deconstruct the very purpose of these programs, which was to provide medical care for the most vulnerable in our society--the elderly and those unable to take care of themselves.  Instead, it likely lops off these in favor of those partially able to take care of themselves.  Cut it we must, finance it some other way we must.  But Ryan's idea is DOA, period.

4. We should increase revenues at the same time we make deep cuts.  Perhaps we could compromise by only  returning to pre-Bush rates for those who earn over 500,000.  Or perhaps we could institute a flat tax on these individuals without any exemptions.  I am as unconvinced as ever that tax breaks at this level for this group return more economically than the taxes do, and there is no moral argument to be made here that stands up against even the smallest scrutiny.

My thoughts in troubling times...  It's compromise, compromise, compromise.  The fear that Congress and the President will not be able to compromise, more than anything else, stands behind the S&P statement.

Political Cartoon of the Day ;-)

What did you make of Obama?

I'm in Chicago for the day and wasn't able to listen to Obama last night.  What did he say?  What is your evaluation?

I was thinking last night that it would be fun to start an electronic newspaper that solicited articles on topics with the goal of posting calmly argued but contrasting points of view on contemporary questions.  Then maybe editors could post a summary of the debate, including the comments, the next day.  The ground rules would simply be the rules of logic and the scientific method of using evidence to form hypotheses.

Oh well...

Why I like Obama and despise Congress

Once again, I am left shaking my head at:

• House Democrats who won't compromise on extending tax cuts for those earning over $250,000.
• Republicans who won't compromise on extending unemployment benefits for another year.
• Those who think Obama operates like an ideological liberal.

Obama has done exactly what I would do.  He knows he'll never extend unemployment without compromising with the Republicans on tax cuts.  He knows he can't win with Republicans over the tax cuts.

So he's acted the way he has acted consistently.  He is a realist.  He is getting what he can get and compromising as necessary.  Congress, meanwhile, continues to be as gridlocked as ever.  If it's this bad now, things will go nowhere for the next two years.

FOX: "Bailout clipped taxpayers for $25 Billion"...

If you can't see, I'm smiling.  This FOX news article is about the fact that the current estimate for what the TARP bailout will cost the American people in the end is $25 billion.  The initial payout was $700 billion and the current final tally is half a previous estimate that was itself considered overly optimistic.

So what I'm smiling at is FOX's begrudging wording of the news in the worse way possible.  The news is that Bush/Obama's bailouts saved the economy and quickly stabilized the world economy for way, way less than anyone hoped.  The news is that Bush and Obama's decision was the right one and that FOX and the Tea Party were wrong on this one.

But I will take the faint praise of the FOX article anyway: "The bailout fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, became hugely unpopular with the public and in Congress. Advocates and even some critics, however, credit it for stabilizing the financial sector in the wake of Wall Street's meltdown in 2008."  Read between the lines: even economists who oppose the TARP bailout recognize that it stabilized the financial sector. 

The anger of the American people, at least on this particular subject, was misplaced, based on ignorance, and fanned by conservative rabble rousers who were wrong, at least on this one.

What is making people so angry?

I'll confess I'm at a loss.  There is so much anger toward the government right now and the Obama administration, but the equation doesn't add up to me.  People will say things like, I bet those Christians who voted for Obama regret it now.  But I'm never quite sure what they are pointing to.

These are elements of anger I hear:

1. Big deficit and getting bigger exponentially
2. Unemployment
3. Health care legislation
4. "Big government" (is this code for health care legislation?)
5. Socialism (is this code for health care legislation?)
6. Bail outs of banks, GM, Chrysler, etc...
7. Attitude toward immigration

But I think there's more to it than this, predispositions and missing elements.  What would you say are the missing elements in the equation, if you think there are?

New York Times quotes...

... with which I agree. Nothing to gloat about here. It's like the oil spill. Mentally very happy to see it capped. Too emotionally drained from the cost to celebrate with much exuberance.
_________
From the NYT
... "The speech also made us reflect on how little Mr. Bush accomplished by needlessly invading Iraq in March 2003 — and then ludicrously declaring victory two months later.

"Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction proved to be Bush administration propaganda. The war has not created a new era of democracy in the Middle East — or in Iraq for that matter. There are stirrings of democratic politics in Iraq that give us hope. But there is no government six months after national elections.

"In many ways, the war made Americans less safe, creating a new organization of terrorists and diverting the nation’s military resources and political will from Afghanistan. Deprived of its main adversary, a strong Iraq, Iran was left freer to pursue its nuclear program, to direct and finance extremist groups and to meddle in Iraq...

"There was no victory to declare last night, and Mr. Obama was right not to try."

Historic Health Care Bill passes

I know that feelings run high on this one. Indeed, there will be challenges ahead of various kinds. Republicans in the Senate will try to stop the fixes. There will be legal challenges made, and we know that the make-up of the Supreme Court leans "conservative." Frankly, might a Republican Congress and President completely reverse it in three years?

In any case, I wanted the historical marker here. If you can do it civilly, what is your prediction for the days to come--specifically (generic ranting isn't what I'm looking for)? Do you agree with the independent budget office that it will reduce the deficit over 100 billion dollars in ten years and a trillion in 20? Does it foretell a huge defeat for the Democratic party in the Fall and next presidential election? Will there be riots? Will the insured forget about it if there is no real change to their insurance? Will those who have to get insurance ultimately be glad to have it? Will it lead to the greatest fracture between the states and the government since the Civil War? Will someone try to assassinate certain lead Democrats? Will history look back at this decision as a crucial moment in the decline of the United States as a superpower, or will history wonder why anyone ever argued against it?

Again, civilly, specifically, what do you think the concrete consequences will be? If I remember, I might check back in a year to reflect on what things look like then.

State of the Union

If you saw my post on "Church and Politics" yesterday, Obama's State of the Union gives us a good chance to apply it. Was there, for example, anything in his speech that the church should specifically take a position on? Using Mouw and Henry's criteria, I don' t think there was. As individuals we might have more or less informed opinions, but I can't think of anything in the speech where the church should take a specific position.

So on issues like health care, Supreme Court decisions on corporate giving to campaigns, whether or not filibusters are appropriate, how to stimulate the economy, even environmental legislation, Mouw and Henry would say the church should not advocate a specific proposal or approach. Rather, the church stands for general principles--we should make sure no one goes without food, clothing, or essential medical treatment. We should be good stewards of the world God has given us. Etc.

The only potential item is seems to me that even comes close to a church position item was lifting a ban on homosexuals serving in the military. Yet it seems to me that even this issue is different from the church taking a position on whether God favors homosexual behavior. Even this issue seems to be about people rather than practice. Coercive Christian traditions such as the Calvinist tradition might feel compelled to say "no," even though we are talking here about the presence of individuals in a secular, non-Christian institution and not about Christians or what takes place in the church. Questions of how people will behave around certain other people again fall into the area of "individual expertise" (namely psychology and sociology) rather than general principles the church sets down.

Other traditions that believe in free will, "persuasive" Christian traditions such as Arminian ones, will more naturally let individual responsibility and action take its own course in the secular arena while trying to persuade individuals to Christ. All of that is to say, it is not at all clear to me that even this is a subject on which the church would take an official stand if the general principle Mouw and Henry set down is valid. Individuals certainly may, with varying degrees of expertise and or sense of God's leading them.

What do you think?