“and the power of his words”…
I believe that a truly effective leader, a leader for the long haul, knows who he is and where he is going and—by the example of his life and the power of his words—brings others with him.
To many of our conservative friends,
For instance, Ramesh Ponnuru and at least one emailer on The Corner,
liberal snobbery…
I like the last couple of sentences:
“Barack Obama’s degrees from Columbia and Harvard law school may be proof of intellectual agility, but they do not guarantee good sense. For this, as William Buckley suggested 45 years ago, we are better advised to rely on graduates of the University of Idaho, or even the opinions of stewardesses.”
I remember, as a child, hearing my father say of an encounter with an especially arrogant woman at a party: “She has been educated beyond her level of intelligence.”
Why is it that most of the really wise people I’ve known–and I’ve been around a lot of highly intelligent, highly educated people–are not that highly educated?
And the wisest of all, at least in my life, have been very smart people who could express themselves on any level of erudition they chose–but they they chose mostly to speak in simple terms to simple people in ways that anyone could understand. They were able to break down highly complex concepts into terms even a child could grasp, though it might go past a snob.
The simple fact is that it doesn’t take a great deal of education, not even a course in elementary logic, to be able to think clearly and logically about most things.
Most of the self-described intellectuals I encounter either in real life or in books or online may be be able to conceptualize to unsurpassed heights, or trade erudite phrases with other elites, and yet are unable to grasp the simplest dynamics of real people, their relationships, their dreams, or their fears.
Guess which group I value most for governance?
I found this to be a useful blog post on the subject:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/the-best/
dearest professor…
We’re not trying to reduce a deficit that already exists. Or, more precisely, shrink a budget that existed before the current crisis. We’re trying to reduce the <i>projected</i> deficit that will not kick in in time to act as a stimulus, but will create runaway inflation and kill any recovery that would otherwise occur.
originalism and the 14th and 15th Amendments…
The two biggest controversies surrounding Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court have been her handling of that case and her comments about how ethnicity can affect judges’ reasoning.
In a much-talked-about New York Times piece (“When Judicial Activism Suits the Right”), Ramesh Ponnuru talks about two controversies regarding the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, her ruling on Ricci (which the Court is due to rule on this Monday) and her views on the affects judges’ ethnicity have or should have on their rulings.
And then he takes on (at least some of) his conservative brethren:
The debates on these issues are highlighting a deep inconsistency in the way my fellow conservatives approach race and the law. Many conservatives oppose Judge Sotomayor’s nomination because she does not appear to support originalism, the notion that legal texts, including the Constitution, should be interpreted according to the meaning that the informed public assumed them to have when they became law. We argue as well that judges should try to overcome the biases of their backgrounds in the name of self-restraint. But when it comes to the race cases before the Supreme Court, too many conservatives abandon both originalism and judicial restraint.
I think Ramesh is right in warning conservatives against trying to “even the scales” (my owrds) by overreaching from the right as the courts have been doing for decades, largely from the left.
Where I think he goes wrong is in confusing two very different concepts (both associated, historically, with conservatism), originalism and original intent:
In fact [in the voting rights case], none of the justices — not even Justice Thomas, the most originalist member of the court — discussed any historical evidence about what the ratifiers of the 15th Amendment intended.
Ramesh then makes a similar point regarding Ricci and the 14th Amendment.
In my extremely elementary understanding of the terms, the difference between originalism and original intent is that originalism analyzes the grammatical/textual meaning of a law, while original intent tries to discern the mind of those who pass the law. If this is correct, isn’t it entirely logical that a law can be written in such a way that it actually means something more than its writers were aware? I know this happens fairly frequently in legislation. Couldn’t something like that happen in a constitutional amendment?
Isn’t there the possibility of there being a logic built into the text of which the writers were unaware? And I mean this even with contemporaneous usages and syntax?
I read the 14th Amendment—and I think I have a fairly accurate understanding of mid-19th Century grammar and style—and I see its logical conclusion quite clearly barring segregation. To me it is not really consequential that its writers failed to see that.
Unless some of them did, but didn’t say so.
My understanding of mid-19th Century America is that even abolitionists—even Lincoln himself—had what, from our early 21st Century perspective, we would label thoroughly racist views. Lincoln himself argued forcefully and repeatedly that being anti-slavery did not mean intermingling of the races, either in neighborhoods or culturally or genetically. It’s difficult to tell, looking back, whether Lincoln himself actually believed what he argued or whether it was his usual skillful spin.
These people were captives of their time and place. Even if they thought it, they didn’t dare say it.
I think they had no idea the social and legal forces they were unleashing with the post-Civil War amendments. But we do. Or should.
Let the words and the grammar rule. It’s not our fault that generation either didn’t understand their import, or didn’t want to admit it.
originalism…
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Consitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in it modern sense. And that the language of our Constitution is already undergoing interpretations unknown to its founders, will I believe appear to all unbiassed Enquirers into the history of its origin and adoption.
To Henry Lee, 25 June 1824
DLC: Madison Papers
“Construe the Constitution according to the plain and ordinary meaning of its language, to the common intendment of the time and those who framed it.”
intimacy with Christ…
Ken Boa, in No Turning Back—Seven Crucial Characteristics for Finishing Well:
1. Intimacy with Christ
Our highest calling is to grow in our knowledge of Christ and to make Him known to others. Does our desire to know Christ exceed all other aspirations? If not, whatever is taking His place in the center of our affections must yield to Him if we are to know the joy of bearing spiritual fruit. A key secret of those who finish well is to focus more on loving Jesus than on avoiding sin. The more we love Jesus, the more we will learn to put our confidence in Him alone.
Lately, God has been doing some cleanup work in my heart. Real intimacy with him has become harder and harder over the years. And now? As I am in the thick of Reinventing Charles 3.0, I need him more than ever. And yet…
I also need more (and different) vocational skills, from What-I-do-for-a-Living tools, to learning how to run my own business, to a whole new level of personal and professional networking.
On the one hand are the various skillsets I need to feed, clothe, and house my family, and to prosper and help others.
On the other hand is a person (me) who has been carefully crafted for intimacy with the God of the Universe.
Pretty easy to see where the priority of focus needs to be. Not so easy doing it.
That’s what makes what God did for me this morning so special. I woke to the sound of thunder and thoughts loaded with worry over a certain work-related issue. Before I could even begin collecting my thoughts, I suddenly started thinking about Jesus. It was as if I had spent the night by the road, awoke in the morning to continue my journey…and was distracted by a visitor before I could even reach down to pick up my load.
It was not something I had to make myself do. A discipline. Or an exercise of the will.
It just happened.
And I realized, for maybe the ten-thousandth time, that Christ is bigger than any load I carry.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
Obamacare and abortion…
John McCormack reports that “Obamacare would make public and private insurance plans cover abortion.”
In July 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama told a group of Planned Parenthood activists that he would require coverage for abortion in both his public plan and in private insurance plans:
In my mind reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, and so it is at the center, the heart of the plan that I propose. … we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It’ll be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services… We also will subsidize those who prefer to stay in the private insurance market except the insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care, including reproductive care.
Contacted afterward by the Chicago Tribune, an Obama spokesman said that “reproductive services” included abortions. Now, Obama plans to follow through on this campaign promise without taking the political hit for this deeply unpopular proposal….
But Obama and his administration are trying to do everything they can to obscure this fact. Asked at today’s press briefing if Obama should support an amendment to prohibit abortion funding in order to achieve his oft-stated goal of reducing the number of abortions, Robert Gibbs said that “the President and this administration agree that that’s — a benefit package is better left to experts in the medical field to determine how best and what procedures to cover.”
Why is President Obama no longer willing to say explicitly, as he did in 2007, that his plan should mandate abortion coverage? Does Obama really think it’s possible to simultaneously subsidize abortions and reduce the incidence of abortion?
okay, I’m slow picking up this blog thing…
I admit it.
Came across another great blog this morning. One that has already past the “1-million-visitors Site Meter threshold.” Last February. (For the record, the humble blog you’re reading now is scheduled to reach that threshold about the time they finish building the Starship Enterprise. The third one. Anyway…)
It’s called The Other McCain. I don’t yet know the first name of this McCain person, or whether it’s a man or woman. Or who gave him/her permission to do this blog thing.
I just know it looks like a good blog.
Anyway, this morning’s post ( SIGTARP Strikes: IG Barofsky Report Says Treasury Not Tracking Bailout Cash), reacts to a report from The Hill about a top government watchdog blasting the administration for “rejecting ‘common sense’ by not requiring banks receiving billions of dollars in government money to say how they are using the money.”
Here’s what The Other McCain has to say about it:
This SIGTARP report is a perfect example of why the Obama adminstration hates IGs. The Democrats just want to shovel money out the door and don’t care who gets it, except to be sure their well-connected friends get their share.
According to the liberal neo-Keynesian economic gospel, as long as the federal government does X-billion dollars of deficit spending, that will produce X-plus-Y amount of stimulus value (where Y = Magic Government Spending Multiplier Effect) without regard to whether the money ends up feeding orphans or supplying the mistresses of Goldman Sachs executives with bustiers and garter belts
Unfortunately for liberals, the stupid taxpayers can never seem to comprehend the nuances of neo-Keynesian theory the way Nobel Prize-winning genius Paul Krugman does.
No matter how many times they’re lectured about this “stimulus”/bailout brilliance, the idiots who pay the taxes get a little miffed to discover that their great-grandchildren’s future has been hocked to pay for new wallpaper and wainscoting in the executive lavatory of a giant banking conglomerate which — as every expert in Washington explained last fall — was so frantically in need of cash that the branch managers were sending tellers to sell plasma to the blood bank, merely to prevent a complete catastrophic meltdown in the global finance system.
Those stupid taxpayers are like that. They have a habit of remembering irrelevant minor details like those 90-point headlines on the front pages of all the newspapers:
CRISIS LOOMS: WORLD ECONOMY TEETERS ON BRINK OF FINAL APOCALYPSE; CONGRESS DESPERATELY FIGHTS TO AVERT ECONOMIC DOOMSDAY; PLAGUES OF LOCUSTS, FROGS FEAREDDamned idiot taxpayers. What do they know about economics and budgets and stuff that only people with Ivy League Ph.Ds can ever hope to understand?
Wow. I certainly agree with that…
raw power, huh? let’s try some of that…
Rich Lowry, on The Corner:
Democrats are having a tough time of it on health care and Obama’s numbers are sinking, but they still have one enormous advantage, as E. J. Dionne reminds us today: raw power. No matter how incoherent the Democrats’ health-care program is or how unpersuasive they are in selling it, they still have a lot of votes to play with.
Question:
Isn’t “raw power” an awfully risky tactic? They’d basically be passing very iffy stuff over the dead bodies of the voters.
All I can say on their behalf is that it had better work or they’ll be in the minority for the next 50 years…
