Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Postmortem on NH
Ron Paul’s second place showing in NH illustrates the perennial weakness of Romney. But a win is a win.
Still, winning big in NH reinforces his image as an Eastern Republican. The Rockefeller Republican repristinated.
But it seems to me that SC is a do-or-die state for Santorum. If he can’t win there, it’s hard to see him picking up primaries further down the line.
If Romney wins SC, it’s hard to see who’s going to stop him. If Santorum wins SC, then Florida may well be High Noon.
If Romney wins SC or Florida, I’ll probably tune out of the campaign season until November.
Ron Paul remains unlikely to net the nomination. He’s the ephemeral figurehead of a political movement. In principle, the movement will outlive him. Whether it waxes or wanes depends, in part, on how Ron Paul copes with losing.
If he runs as an independent, and hands the election to Obama, that will damage the movement. That will also damage Rand Paul–his heir apparent.
Ron Paul supporters will try to shift the blame to the GOP for failing to nominate a candidate they could vote for. That excuse is convincing to the faithful, but it won’t play as well outside the compound. To some extent the political fortunes of libertarianism depend on how Ron Paul deals with defeat. If he’s a spoiler, that will damage the cause going forward.
Conversely, if Romney loses to Obama, that will damage the Republican establishment. And if Santorum loses to Obama, that will damage the religious right.
The Shooting Salvationist
Mark Driscoll has come under fire for his brand of muscular Christianity. If you ask me, I don't cotton to his limp-wristed piety. Here's the real McCoy:
www.theshootingsalvationist.com
The Shooting Salvationist chronicles what may be the most famous story you have never heard. In the 1920’s, the Reverend J. Frank Norris railed against vice and conspiracies he saw everywhere to a congregation of more than 10,000 at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the largest congregation in America, the first “megachurch.” Norris controlled a radio station, a tabloid newspaper and a valuable tract of land in downtown Fort Worth. Constantly at odds with the oil boomtown’s civic leaders, he aggressively defended his activism, observing, “John the Baptist was into politics.”
Following the death of William Jennings Bryan, Norris was a national figure poised to become the leading fundamentalist in America. This changed, however, in a moment of violence one sweltering Saturday in July when he shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. Norris was indicted for murder and, if convicted, would be executed in the state of Texas’ electric chair.
At a time when newspaper wire services and national retailers were unifying American popular culture as never before, Norris’ murder trial was front-page news from coast to coast. Set during the Jazz Age, when Prohibition was the law of the land, The Shooting Salvationist leads to a courtroom drama pitting some of the most powerful lawyers of the era against each other with the life of a wildly popular, and equally loathed, religious leader hanging in the balance.
www.theshootingsalvationist.com
Obama is not the First Islam-Friendly President
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.de1b6202342d998e00eb801ac291148e.b41&show_article=1
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Paulestinian Liberation Organization
JONATHAN SAID:
As an aside, I notice that this site has attacked Ron Paul more than any other political candidate (correct me if I'm wrong). Which I assume indicates that, Steve, you believe that Ron Paul is the worst or perhaps most dangerous candidate?
i) Some of his policies, if enacted, would be dangerous.
ii) He’s better in some respects and worse in other respects.
iii) However, it’s not just about Ron Paul. He’s a leader of a movement. The movement is bigger than Ron Paul.
I’m not just judging his candidacy by the candidate, but by the larger movement he spearheads.
To take some examples: in the past I’ve tangled with self-hating Americans like John Lofton and his venomous contributors. They are part of the movement.
I’ve tangled with Jew-haters like Mike Butler and Tim Harris. They are part of the movement.
I’ve tangled with white supremacists (“Kinists”). They are part of the movement.
Same thing with Stormfront. And I could go…and on…and on…
iv) On a related note, the Ron Paul movement has apparently corned a dark corner of the Reformed world. As a Calvinist, I take a personal interest in that unsavory development.
v) On another related note, the movement also has some roots in Xrecon. Now, I don’t regard that as inherently bad. Indeed, there are some good things about that association.
Unfortunately, Xrecon hasn’t matured properly. To a great extent it’s populated by the lunatic fringe.
There are exceptions. Doug Wilson and New St. Andrews may represent the last best hope of Xrecon.
However, I don’t know a lot about that. Frank Turk or Tim Enloe could probably offer a more informed perspective.
vi) Ron Paul’s movement is also redefining “true” conservatism. In the market place of ideas, Paul and his followers are entitled to define and promote their own version of conservatism, but I reserve the right to oppose that definition.
vii) Bottom line, it’s not just a question of supporting or opposing the candidate, but supporting or opposing the movement he represents.
Chickendove
MCELVEEN: Talk about the understanding of the military. And let’s go to you, Speaker Gingrich. Recently, Dr. Paul referred to you as a chicken hawk because you didn’t serve.
SAWYER: Congressman Paul, would you say that again? Would you -- would you use that phrase again?
PAUL: Yeah. I -- I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments aren’t -- they -- they have no right to send our kids off to war, and -- and not be even against the wars that we have. I’m trying to stop the wars, but at least, you know, I went when they called me up.
PAUL: I need one quick follow-up. When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids, and I went.
Since the chickenhawk charge comes up periodically in debates over national security, it’s worth addressing:
i) For all I know, Gingrich may be a chickenhawk.
ii) All things being equal, I think it would be good if presidential candidates had some military experience.
At the same time, that has to be balanced against other considerations when we size up a candidate.
iii) Military experience is not a Constitutional requirement to be POTUS. So it’s ironic that a “Constitutionalist” like Ron Paul would resort to an unconstitutional objection.
iv) Ron Paul’s objection generates a paradox. On the one hand he seems to think the POTUS ought to have military experience. On the other hand he promotes a noninterventionist policy which would vastly curtail opportunities for active duty military experience.
What if Rand Paul runs for POTUS some day? Does his lack of military experience disqualify him from being Commander-in-Chief?
v) It might seem intuitively obvious that veterans look out for fellow veterans. We’d expect soldiers to be sympathetic to the plight of their comrades.
But in a fallen world, that presumption is questionable. Take the Walter Reed scandal. Military officers were in charge of the hospital. Yet they were derelict. It was a civilian (Robert Gates) who had to clean house.
vi) We’re not “sending kids off to war.” At present we have a volunteer army. Soldiers are adults. Soldiers can vote.
vii) Ron Paul was drafted. It doesn’t take courage to be drafted. Draftees can do courageous things on the battlefield, but it wasn’t a courageous act for Ron Paul to be drafted. And it wasn’t courageous for Ron Paul to go when he was called up. If anything, it would take more courage to break the law and face the consequences.
viii) To my knowledge, Ron Paul didn’t have a very dangerous assignment.
ix) Why is Ron Paul bragging about his military service, anyway? Doesn’t he think Viet Nam was an illegal,
“meddlesome,” war? Given his point of view, wasn’t it dishonorable for Ron Paul to contribute to the war effort?
“meddlesome,” war? Given his point of view, wasn’t it dishonorable for Ron Paul to contribute to the war effort?
Why wasn’t he a war protester like Jane Fonda? Seems like Ron Paul only opposes war at a safe distance. When it doesn’t cost him anything politically or professionally. If Gingrich is a chickenhawk, what is Paul–a chickendove?
Hot on the trail
I’m going to comment on this article:
This raises an interesting question of how to assess conflicting reports. I don’t have the inside scoop. So how should an outsider like me evaluate the evidence when insiders disagree about what was said?
Responding to the column, CBS News quoted Ron Paul's spokesman Jesse Benton as saying that, "Eric Dondero is a disgruntled former staffer who was fired for performance issues." "He has zero credibility and should not be taken seriously," Benton added.
For all I know, that could be true. But it’s not convincing:
i) To say someone’s a disgruntled former employee is a cliché routinely used to preemptively discredit whistleblowers.
ii) Here’s one Ron Paul staffer dissing another Ron Paul staffer. But why assume Jesse Benton is credible while Eric Dondero is not?
iii) Why did it take 15 years to find out that Dondero had “performance issues”?
iv) By definition, a current employee will publicly defend his boss. Benton is like the White House press secretary.
The remarks by Dr. Leon Hadar, an Israeli and U.S. citizen, who used to be among Paul's foreign policy advisors during his 2008 presidential campaign, came a day after another former Paul aide, Eric Dondero, wrote in his blog that the presidential hopeful “wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all.”
"He will be glad to see the conflict resolved and he said it's the right of Israel to attack Iran if it thinks that is necessary - but it shouldn't expect the U.S. to clean the mess," he said, adding that Paul is "very familiar with Israel's history. I didn't hear his conversations with his former aide, but I personally have never heard him say anything against Israel or the Jews."
For all I know, Hadar is correct. However:
i) Notice the argument from silence.
ii) He was associated with Ron Paul for one year (2008), whereas Dondero was associated with Ron Paul for 15 years (or so I’ve read). So Dondero would be in a position to know far more about Ron Paul’s actual views than Hadar.
iii) And it’s not just Dondero. David Bahnsen also has inside information about Ron Paul and his inner clique.
There’s credible evidence that Ron Paul says one thing in private and another thing in public.
And it’s not just what he says. It’s also a question of what other speakers said at Von Mises Institute conferences (according to David Bahnsen). If Ron Paul attended these conferences year after year, that tells you where his sympathies lie.
Monday, January 09, 2012
Infidels on the run
Misotheist Chris Hallquist has “reviewed” Keener’s monograph on miracles. I’ll review his review:
The book’s primary thesis is simply that eyewitnesses do offer miracle claims, a thesis simple enough but one sometimes neglected when some scholars approach accounts in the Gospels. The secondary thesis is that supernatural explanations, while not suitable in every case, should be welcome on the scholarly table along with other explanations often discussed (p. 1)
This is what I call a weaselly thesis statement because it clearly says much less than what Keener wants to say. It lets him that hint at some very controversial claims, but because he’s officially only defending these seemingly banal claims, it gets him off the hook from really having to defend his views.
Hallquist’s conspiratorial interpretation notwithstanding, there’s nothing sneaky about Keener’s thesis. Keener is a NT scholar. Liberal NT scholars typically relegate miracles to legendary embellishment by redactors who didn’t observe the events they report. So that’s what Keener is responding to.
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