Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For April 15, 2020

April 14

To Gleaves Whitney and his blogpost on what has caused Americans to be so strongly divided. In the end, he blames it on Post Modernism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

With many words Whitney in the end gives an traditional-American centric  view of what ails us. And that view is that despite our past imperfections, the real threat is what's new: Post Modernism. But such a view minimizes our nation's past indiscretions.

I don't think that many minority scholars would so easily describe America as having merely struggling to navigate polarities. From our founding fathers, we have been dominated by the post-Cold War definition of tribalism: extreme loyalty to a group, and I would add that such loyalty would trump commitment to universal moral values and including recognizing our equality. And while we could place part of the blame for that on the need for security, it is also do for the need for significance where significance is found in superiority. And again, the founding fathers embraced such tribaiism rather than try to give us mechanisms to temper it. The Federalists, many of whom contributed to the writing of The Constitution, used slander to describe those whose political and economic ideas they threatening and thus opposed them.

In addition, I am not sure about the diversity Toqueville saw because racial diversity was treated with more than just social distancing. Actually, America was founded on white supremacy. This is evident from land acquisition, The Constitution, rights recognized, wealth distribution, and society's pecking order. The exploitation of others was so much a part of American life as well as that of the Western World that Post Modernists saw that the real destroyer of any unified view of the world were those who came from Christianity and the Enlightenment. Post Modernists were simply that those who claimed to have a certain, especially exclusive, knowledge of what is truth denied that truth with their actions.

And thus, Whitney's description of Post Modernism invites the same divide that he writes against elsewhere.

But perhaps the reasons, as well as cures, for our divisions are simpler than what Whitney proposes. To Martin Luther King Jr., what divided us was not based in our animal nature or any deep philosophical divide. It was based on the fact that we value things more than people.

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To David Deavel and his blogpost charging that the Covid-19 response in this nation has been an vast overreaction and that some of the stats being reported are inflated.  IN the end, he wants an end to the lockdown that he seems not to have though was necessary. He does make a valid point in noting that the lockdown has hurt our economy. this appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Statsistics used in my response use statistics reported in the website: www.covid19stats.com and the worldometers.info/world-population websites.

I understand the conservative reaction to the Covid-19 response. The change is so drastic that the resulting dissonance looks for relief, and denying the threat of the virus is the easiest form of relief.

But one only needs to review the results of what has been happening in other nations  to see why our current response, though uncomfortable and threatening to some more than others, is certainly justified.

Italy saw 12.83% of those infected with the virus die and the demand on their healthcare resources was overwhelming.  Even with their late lockdown, they saw 0.263% f their people infected in just a couple of months. Spain, like Italy, responded late and saw  death rate from the infection of 10.44% while 0.364% of their population was infected in just a couple of months.

Sweden and the UK have not followed the same path that the US has and the rates from  the virus are at 8.39% and 12.67% respectively. But it should also be added that their rates of infection are below ours.

The unfortunate part of Deavel's work here deals with selective focus and the charge of inflated statistics. Little does he know that many deaths that were caused or contributed to by Covid-19 were not attributed to the virus because the person was not tested. And he seems to forget how the virus has hit minority communities very hard.

The model responses to the virus can be seen in places like Germany and South Korea. These nations responded much sooner to the virus than other nations. Both their infection and death rates are below that of the US.

I've been tracking the statistics for my state and I can say that what Deavel has been reporting has not occurred here. In addition, NYC resources were overwhelmed to the point that they opened field hospitals, built temporary hospital facilities, and saw the arrival of  Navy hospital ship--the latter was not for Covid-19 patients. Some hospitals had to transfer their Covid-19 patients to designated hospitals after their own treatment equipment broke down because of the demand those patients created on their systems.

At least part of the US has been shutdown for 1 and 1/2 months and we have already seen 580,000+ infections with a current death rate of 4.06%. And again, not all Covid-19 deaths are being recorded as such because not all have been tested for the virus. Part of that was because there is a shortage of tests here. Without the lockdown, those numbers would very easily be higher. And Deavel's point about not shutting down for the last flu season ignores what medical experts say about the death rate of the flu vs that of the virus.

Huge and sudden changes in the parts of life that we love create dissonance. And the easiest way to relief the dissonance is to deny the the circumstances. And as normal as that is,  it cannot argue against the facts on the ground. No one who has instituted a lockdown believe that such a response can be maintained. That is because of the economic realities of our lives here. At the same time, we can't afford to deny the other reality, the threat of the virus. And that is what Deavel seems to have done.

Comments Which Conservataives Block From Their Blogs For April 1, 2020

March 29

To Gleaves Whitney and his blogpost that tries to recognize the demands of the healthcare and economic implications of the current pandemic. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

One positive feature of the article about the current crisis is that the writer, Gleaves Whitney, recognizes that there is more than one reality that must be addressed by the government's response. That is unlike the President's response to climate change which only recognizes some short-term financial realities.

With the current approach, it seems that the healthcare resources reality is trumping all other concerns. Why? Because even with the current measures, our heathcare system, as well as the realities faced by our public servants, are so massive that further measures in terms of trying to limit the spread of the virus are being demanded without concern for our economic realities.

There is an uncovered economic reality that we need to be vigilant about. That is whether the economic measures being taken to soften the economic impact are going to compromise the future of social safety nets like Medicare and Social Security. For it would be an easily sell to provide needed immediate relief to those without jobs without telling us that they are bankrupting Medicare and/or Social Security in order to do so

Finally, we should note that the bulk of the response to the economic fallout of the recession of 2007-2008 fell on Barack Obama's shoulders, not those of George Bush. Bush's presidency expired before most of economic fallout was felt by America.

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March 31

To R. Scott Clark and Carl Trueman for Clark’s blog and its partial quoting of an article written by Trueman for the First Things blog. In that quote, Trueman talks about how Christianity isn’t there to fight against the plagues as much as to fight against the comforts that numb us to our sinfulness and position before God. Clark’s post appears in Heidelblog.

Source of cited article: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/03/deaths-delayed

So it isn't part of the Church's job to 'fight against physical plagues? It isn't our job to help those affected or contribute in whatever way we can to help and heal people? Is it also more important for us to preach fire and brimstone against enjoying comforts that God has provided for us?

When one reads the article, Trueman makes some good points about not assuming the reasons for the pandemic. However, this quote alone indicates an opportunism in using current events to preach about man's sinfulness and position before God. And in that sense, we are extracting out of the Gospel God's love and compassion for us in the preachers of the Gospel if not in the message itself. Religious opportunism gives way to manipulation. And reliance on manipulation to convert people is not the same as reliance on the Spirit to give new life at the hearing of the Gospel.

This one-sided approach to what Christianity battles against portrays God as being more punitive than He is compassionate. It isn't that God isn't punitive, it is that God uses both blessings and  pestilence to get our attention. Both show our dependence on Him. And his blessings show His love for us and his plagues and other forms of trials are there to help us to change. If the balance in preaching about the the two is significantly in line with Trueman's  statement about Christianity not being there that much to battle against the trials, then our treatment of unbelievers during times of great suffering might also cause us to misrepresent God and the Gospel since we too may not be fighting against what causes suffering of others .

It seems to me that, for many of us, God uses the comforts that come from His blessings as much, if not more, than the trials to show our dependence on Him for everything. And He has so blessed many of us with those comforts because He knows that we are weak. At the same time, we should be aware that for others, God has given them many more trials than He has given us. And part of that is so that instead making treasures on earth out of the comforts He sends our way, that we share share those comforts with others to teach about God's love.