Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Christian Carnival CCLXI Posted

    … at The Ignorant Historian.  There’s some good stuff in there.  I also remind folks of the new archive I’m maintaining here.

  • Christian Carnival Archive

    I have created a new Christian Carnival Archive, which includes posts to date, and also links to the previous archives, so that you can have one central place from which to locate all available Christian Carnival editions.

  • Government Oversight in Action

    The only thing worse than lack of oversight may be oversight. Citigroup is supposed to refuse delivery of a plane they ordered in 2005. I’d love to know the bottom line, but paying a penalty for breaking a contract doesn’t sound like a good use of the money either. Oh, it was a French company. Well, that’s OK then …

  • A Note from my Wife

    … discussing the John Webb Winter Golf Tournament, which is what consumes our family at this time of year. Take a look. It’s a good cause.

  • Free Speech and Savings Possible

    … at one blow. Eliminate these. I have never been able to understand how controls on the money people use in order to speak could be considered consistent with free speech. In fact, it’s a way to control speech.

    So we could eliminate regulations, reduce the federal budget, make it easier to get into campaigning by getting rid of complicated language, and eliminate the headaches of people who have to figure out a “good” limit on contributions when there is no such thing.

    Oh, and by the way, I considered Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire one of my most useful RSS feeds.

  • Bad Reasons for Getting Out of a War

    I’m an opponent of the Iraq war, but I oppose it on strategic grounds. Even now, I believe that we have gained very little, and are in fact worse off than when we started. After a period of time we will find that Iraq has become another haven for terrorists, perhaps not as bad as Afghanistan was, but definitely not safe and friendly. We can blame that on the idea that we can create a government in such a state that is both democratic and reliably friendly, and do so by force from the outside.

    For some odd reason, foreigners killing local folks, however they may express their justification, just don’t become popular with the same local folks. Sometimes you have to do it, but don’t expect it to make you popular. So if you are carrying out a war in order to become popular, for some reason you’re likely to fail.

    Stupid, conflicting aims – lousy results. We similarly harmed our own interests when we pushed for early elections for the Palestinians, and then were shocked by the results. (Ex-President Bush take note: People do freely choose terrorists as their rulers.)

    But then there are bad reasons for getting out of a war, for example:

    • The people will start to love us if we go home after the invasion.
    • Force is really unnecessary if we just talk enough.
    • We’re really tired of fighting the war.
    • This is harder than we thought when we started.

    Thus I view with some alarm this report that only 1/3 of Americans support sending more troops to Afghanistan. In this case the point is not popularity, though we may be able to aid the current government. The point is hunting terrorists, in a place where actual terrorists live. As long as that is a viable option, we need to be willing to use the necessary resources. When it is strategically right, we need to be able to move on.

    Now I must give a hat tip to Dr. Michael Westmoreland-White, who alerted me to this report. In his case I must note that he is consistently opposed the war, in fact, all wars. That is a consistent and moral position, even though I disagree.

    The folks that get on my nerves are the ones who are happy to invade, kill a few thousand people, and then get out because it’s inconvenient. They don’t oppose war; they oppose inconvenience. Theirs is not a moral choice; it’s a position into which they drift for their own comfort.

    Americans have a bad habit of supporting the glory of a quick invasion when we can see the enemy running and dying. It’s the hard job of cleaning up afterward for which we lack the stomach. That’s the worst of all possible combinations; it’s childish and immature. A nation with our kind of firepower can’t afford to be so childish and immature.

  • The Need for my Series on Interpreting the Bible

    … amongst many other things.

    As I’m preparing to move forward in this series, which covers only one small area, I find this post from the generally enlightening Jason Rosenhouse, who lauds simplistic arguments in putting down other simplistic arguments.

    He approvingly quotes Coyne:

    Unfortunately, some theologians with a deistic bent seem to think that they speak for all the faithful. These were the critics who denounced Dawkins and his colleagues for not grappling with every subtle theological argument for the existence of God, for not steeping themselves in the complex history of theology. . . .

    Just so! In the same way as I would accuse someone of finding the least qualified person who calls himself a scientist, say someone with a high school level of scientific knowledge, I object when someone targets their arguments against theism at the level of the church pews.

    Certain people on the non-theistic side of this debate expect theists to drop to the lowest common denominator while not treating scientists in the same way. It’s fine if they wish to argue in that fashion, but they shouldn’t be surprised when those with more than a high school knowledge of theology find their arguments unconvincing.

    The success of Dawkins et. al. is more due to the miserable level of Christian knowledge than to any brilliance on Dawkins part. On theology, he writes like a rank amateur–and I say that as one who deeply admires his scientific writing.

    In the very manner I outlined in my previous post, these folks imagine a set of beliefs, note that this set of beliefs conflicts with evolution, and then announce that evolution cannot be reconciled with Christianity.

    But since that set of imaginary beliefs is hardly even related to my own beliefs, and those of many other Christians, I can hardly be expected to concern myself with reconciling the discrepancies, can I?

    (Let me call attention also to Tony Mitchell’s recent post The Dilemma of Science and Faith.)

  • A Thousand Word Picture

    … or perhaps forbidding a thousand words, at Exploring our Matrix.

  • Using Greek and Hebrew in Preaching

    Bill Mounce has some excellent suggestions.

  • Dr. Reich Stirs up some Hornets

    I’ve been following Dr. Reich’s blog ever since I discovered it during the primary season. He was Labor Secretary during the Clinton administration, and I recall not always agreeing with him at the time, though I don’t recall the details. In any case, from the time when TARP was passed through the auto industry bailout, and now in specific testimony and writing regarding the stimulus package, I have to say that I have found him extremely thoughtful and constructive.

    Thus it’s interesting to note that no less (or greater!) a trio than Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh have misconstrued some of his testimony to congress, and of course have begun yelling about it. (Media Matters reports on it, HT to Robert Reich.)

    Of course, there is a group of people, fortunately small I think, who believe that every attempt to be inclusive is automatically an attack on white men. As a white man myself, I repudiate such notions. I believe that each of us is made better as society becomes more inclusive and that the expansion of the economy in size, in creativity, in competition, and in diversity is well worth any temporary displacement.

    Dr. Reich is merely asking that we make sure that the jobs created by the stimulus go to a broad range of people–an admirable goal. In any case, his suggestions are serious enough to merit careful and substantial debate, not a mauling by shallow political entertainers.

    I know, what fantasy land to I [want to] live in?