Sept 16
To Gene Veith and his blogpost that criticizes Biden's social infrastructure bill especially in reference to its social aspects of providing child care and education that includes the 1st two years of community college for anyone. This appeared in the Cranach blog on Patheos. The comment below was put on pending. But there is a hack that allowed the comment to be posted against the algorithm that made the comment pending. The point is that it was blocked and would continue to be blocked without the hack.
And to think that Veith complained about my calling out his Okhahoman conservatism.
But his educational concerns assume several things. First, that the vast majority of community colleges are teaching leftist propaganda while gen-ed courses in universities do not with their courses in great books and history. Didn't some Christians complain earlier about how classic education was being forsaken earlier at schools like UPenn when they were throwing out the writings of Shakespear because of Post Modernism concerns?
Second, there is Veith's assumption that the first two-years of community college will automatically transfer in to universities, to both biblical and unbiblical--somewhat like the old regular and unleaded gas--colleges, and put those students into their 3rd year. I have worked with analyzing the transfer of credits from community college to 4 year schools to know that is not the case. If anything, the 2-year community college education means that a student will likely add a 5th year of college because not all of the credits will transfer in. And since it is unlikely that religion courses in community colleges rarely transfer into Christian colleges, I don't think that the transfer of course credit from community college to universities will work like what Veith imagined. Heck, even as a student at ORU, there were specific religion courses that transfer students had to take including the one transfer student we had from Rutgers.
Third, if Veith is so concerned about the poor quality of education in areas where there are poor and disadvantaged people. Of course he doesn't mention anything about how the shortage of funds for education and the lack of living wage jobs play a role in creating inadequate educational facilities and unstable homes.
What is Veith's main concern here? It is that the gov't might be more involved than it already is in our lives. But why is that a concern when the gov't is necessarily involved in our lives, that we are not keeping pace with many other 1st world nations in terms of education, and that we have the problem with student debt that we have? His Oklahoman conservatism, and this is not just a conservatism that is specific to Oklahoma, is suspicious of government involvement in anything other than punishing the bad guys and making sure that our military can kick any other nation's butt, If we have a working democracy, isn't gov't going to represent the people and thus we should not assume that its involvement is bad? But that is the key question here. Do we have a working democracy? And if not, how can we get one should be Veith's concern rather than assume that any big government is bad government because it is socialist leftist. BTW, big gov't ≠ leftist or socialists gov'ts. Such is a conservative myth.
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Sept 18
To R. Scott Clark and his very brief blogpost that quotes Ignatius about how the Church is at its best when it is hated by the world but the title of the blogpost is about how the Church should avoid seeking a new Christendom. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Not all hatred from the world should be desired by the Church. I believe it is Peter who points that out.
But the title of the blogpost does not seem to match up well with the content of the blogpost. One can comment on the title by saying that while avoiding Christendom, the Church must also avoid failing to speak prophetically to the world about its corporate sins.
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To John Horvat and his blogpost calling for Americans, primarily Christians, with [true] grit to stop up and replace government programs in the solving of America's problems. Here it is implied that these Christian Americans should be replacing government programs that address many of our social problems. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
A couple of the common retorts that conservatives often give to us socialists include socialism cannot work because there are not enough Christians or that socialism cannot work because people are sinners. And yet, we have the above article on how to solve America's problems. We just need Christians with '[true] grit' to step up to solve our problems.
Of course there is an agenda behind the above conservative approach. That agenda is to cut government spending so that we either can reduce or even eliminate taxes on the wealthy.
What is not considered in the above article is that the reason we have government programs, which btw have a mixed record, is because of the systemic and personal failures that included human pride, greed, or fear.
So Christian [true] grit is to replace government programs to solve our problems? There are at least two questions that need to be answered here. First, does the Church have the resources to solve all of the problems that the government is trying to mitigate? Second, does the Church have the will to solve the problems that government is trying address?
Of course, if we took the above article seriously, we could eliminate our defense department and law enforcement because all we need is Christians with [true] grit to step up and solve the problems they try to tackle. Of course everyone can see how laughable such an idea is. Then why don't we see how replacing government programs with Church solutions is also laughable? Don't we see that the Church lacks the desire to address all of the problems government is trying to address when we see church after church move out of the urban areas and into the comfortable suburbs? What percentage of megachurches exist in troubled urban areas?
There is also another agenda behind the above ideas expressed in the above article. That agenda is that the government should give special treatment to the Church so it can demonstrate its [true] grit. For perhaps centuries, religiously conservative Christians have looked to receive special treatment from the government. An example of that special treatment today is when the religiously conservative Christians want the legal right to discriminate against those in the LGBT community. During the Jim Crow era, many, not all, conservative Christians wanted, and got, the right to practice racial discrimination. And here we should note that racial discrimination still exists only it must be practiced in more subtle or marketable ways. Such an example is the current attacks on voting rights marketed as 'secure' elections.
When the government gives the Church special treatment, it often results in the Church gaining some level of supremacy or even domination over society. Why would conservative Christians favor that? It is because we religiously conservative Christians have a quite a penchant for hierarchy and authoritarianism. And so it is difficult for us to exist in an environment where equality and egalitarianism reside.
BTW, there is one more problem with the above article. What it says is that government is there only to represent some, not all, of the people. And the above article implies that government is there to represent a certain group of the haves so they can help the have-nots. And again, what is being asked for is discrimination with no evidence that the [true] grit haves would have either the resources or desire to address the problems that government is trying to address.
Yes, many government programs cannot solve our problems. But here we need to add the word alone to the end of that sentence. But government programs often mitigate the suffering of many people and they can do more when they are joined by those in the private sector. But currently, there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the private sector to help solve those problems, many of which have been either created or greatly added to by some elites from the private sector.
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