I agree with everything you wrote except this: “ Now, however, it seems the very common and shared moral underpinnings have gone away. We are many people of many different moral underpinnings arguing not about how to take the next step forward, but about which direction we should go at all.”
There are people with NO moral underpinning who know EXACTLY in what direction America should be heading; they’re called Marxist radicals, and they control the Democrat Party. Marxism IS evil incarnate, and must be opposed each and every time it raises its bloody head. To do less would be immoral.
There is an ongoing series of conservative, mostly young men, who believe we need to revert to a Catholic world order with Catholic morality taught and the government adopting in through policy. I'm not opposed to reconnecting with natural law and using it as foundational to the country, but I'm not sure I want a Catholic worldview to be the default.
Brilliant. Glad it's public, I'm planning to share it around, and especially want to show it to my editor, who's been asking what direction conservatives can move in, to create a party away from the chaos.
One question though -- and this is a genuine question -- how should Believers who are conservative handle the chronically ill, the mentally ill, opioid use, deaths of despair? The Left has co-opted the "caring economy" and health policy; how does the Right take it back? I absolutely get your argument for a decentralized federal government, but I worry about issues that might be too large now (due to decisions in the past, probably) to be handled by states. Unless, of course, those states so choose.
It all seems...I don't know, tentacled maybe. (Yes, there's a peculiar image). Tentacles reaching deep into culture and the economy. Surgery would be deep, and painful, and slow. And might not help.
Final thought: I keep telling people that the far left and the far right seem very close in philosophy, just separated by a tiny little space. What will happen when they realize?
To answer your question, we need to remove dependency on government for these helps and restore it as a service of community. Before the government stepped in to provide services such as these, they were charitable endeavors - families, communities, churches- provided locally and freely. That is where we must return.
The government (broad term, I know) is typically inefficient in providing these services, too. That leads to waste and the government's response to waste is typically more waste: "we failed because we didn't spend enough on the problem." The welfare system is a prime example. Massive amounts of money spent but, ultimately, not solving the problems at the root.
Thank you! It is a massive amount of money and waste, and friends in New York City talk about an entire culture of dependence. (They're conservative Democrats). I know that in my rural area, the social workers know the people who receive benefits and can focus on the best services (or no services). I don't know if they're an equal substitute for the charity of the past, but they work hard and do their best.
We also have charitable foundations that are working on it, with government.
And you're quite right about inadequate analysis of the problem. "We didn't spend enough money" is a lazy answer. Waste and dependence issues need to be looked at. And maybe history, to see why the system we have was created in the first place.
This is impressive and deeply considered. This needs to be considered seriously by Believers. Also, as a side note, this is clarifying for my doctoral project. Thank you.
You clearly spent the weekend in thought! I’ll try to be pithy.
1) Based on your ideas above, I am curious as to your thoughts on the economic model championed by Hilarie Belloc & Gilbert Chesterton known as Distributism. The name is misleading—it is about distributing power, not wealthy.
2) A professor of mine years ago argued that post-modernism is actually hyper-modernism. The modern project to eradicate pain/discomfort/suffering (aka, fallen humanity) failed. True post-modernism should be a return to classical pursuits/esteeming of virtue…while holding on to the nice things the scientific Revolution produced. Doubling down on modernism by trying to change language (eg, talking death to death by with distractions) is hyper-modernism.
Fascinating to me that you can believe “The world hates the things of God” but seem to reject systemic racism in the United States as a possibility. Those two seem to go hand-in-hand to me.
I know of no one who dismisses systemic racism as a "possibility." Systemic racism was the reality in our country for nearly its first 100 years, and in the Democrat-controlled South under Jim Crow through the mid-1960s. Racism and tribalism persist, of course, but black immigrants from West Africa and the Caribbean routinely reach the middle and upper classes, as well as the peaks of power and prestige in this country, within a generation. We need to dig deeper to unpack the causes of the persistent black (and white) underclasses rather than pointing to the vaguely defined "systemic racism" as the boogeyman holding people back at this time.
I think racism is real. I think it is possible for there to be systemic racism. I just do not think there is currently a system of racism in place in the United States. I think the arguments that claim there is currently systemic racism in the United States are unfalsifiable arguments. I think there was absolutely, at one time in this country, systemic racism.
Harvard Business Review printed a study in 2016 that showed that African-Americans and Asian-Americans who “whitened” their resumes got significantly more invitations to interview. That seems both racist and systemic to me. Racism does not require a law (e.g., Jim Crow) or regulation (e.g., red-lining) to by systemic. I’m also perfectly willing to believe that the people making the interview decisions don’t even recognize the bias.
There are also studies of significant levels of medical students who believe that African-Americans have thicker skin and can tolerate pain better than Whites. And, other studies showing African-Americans are under-prescribed pain treatment as a result of this misconception. Not a result of law or regulation. But, systemic and a pervasive.
Most folks, I believe, would admit systemic racism is a possibility. But it as a far-fetched possibility that does not align with reality. Prejudice is real, because we humans are not made perfect through political action, but prejudice does not align with a certain political motives. All the talk of systemic racism only exacerbates the left/right dichotomy Erick wrote about above.
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10870 Studies such as this (this is not the only one) indicate to me that systemic racism is a real possibility. As a Christian, I’m called to work for the oppressed. If this study is accurate, minorities are being oppressed in the hiring process. Ignoring that isn’t Biblical, nor good for the country.
Oh my god I read the study. Garbage not transferable. Students and lay persons are used. Not representative. The bias is ready In Suzy from Princeton. I am a scientist, a nurse practitioner and I’m concerned without a picture how do we know you are not a bot or a troll. Im offended at this article passing off something as scientific which it is not. Please, I’m not that gullible. Reprehensible.
Thanks for providing the study. No thinking person denies that prejudice exists, as we are all sinners. To say racism is systemic, though, is to say it is part of our political/societal framework/system by design. That is very different than saying some people are prejudiced to the point of racism. If it is part of our system, it is because of some of the parts, not because of the whole.
The problem, then, is a matter of “fixing” parts without dismantling the whole. Unless, of course, dismantling the whole is the end.
One place where I believe we differ is that in order to be systemic the racism needs to be planned or designed into the process. Harvard Business Review printed a study in 2016 showing that African-Americans and Asian-Americans who “whitened” their resumes got significantly more invitations for interviews. The study claimed that was true of companies who claimed to be making efforts to hire minorities.
This study, below, shows that half of medical students surveyed believed that African-Americans have thicker skin than Whites and tolerate pain better (no basis in fact for that belief). Other studies show that African-Americans are under prescribed pain medication as a result of this misconception.
My sense that there is still systemic racism is not based on a belief that there are significant, ongoing, government-sponsored efforts to advantage one race over another. But, I do believe there are disparate outcomes by race that are being influenced by unidentified causes.
Make sure you are working on your own “systemic” racism. Did you have someone of color over this weekend? Do you have 10 friends of Asian, Hispanic, Polynesian, African, Botswanan, Catholic, Hindi, Jewish etc etc persuasion? Someone I know who has hurled insults and jargon and vituperative mean speak to conservative thinkers has a log in her eye. I looked at her Facebook page this weekend and she went to an all girl prep school and there was one person of color in her reunion photo. I was taken aback. How could that be? Did she denounce that? Check it. Are you doing something about “sysyemic” racism in your bedroom, dining room, living room and kitchen?
Erick,
I agree with everything you wrote except this: “ Now, however, it seems the very common and shared moral underpinnings have gone away. We are many people of many different moral underpinnings arguing not about how to take the next step forward, but about which direction we should go at all.”
There are people with NO moral underpinning who know EXACTLY in what direction America should be heading; they’re called Marxist radicals, and they control the Democrat Party. Marxism IS evil incarnate, and must be opposed each and every time it raises its bloody head. To do less would be immoral.
Hey Erick, I am just curious what you meant by “Catholic authoritarianism?”
There is an ongoing series of conservative, mostly young men, who believe we need to revert to a Catholic world order with Catholic morality taught and the government adopting in through policy. I'm not opposed to reconnecting with natural law and using it as foundational to the country, but I'm not sure I want a Catholic worldview to be the default.
This ex-Catholic certainly doesn’t want that worldview to be the default.
Erick, thank you for this timely exhortation. It is what we used to call, back in the charismatic days, a word of wisdom.
Truly, our armor of God consists not of truncheons, not of AR's nor of AK's, nor of angry words, nor of needlessly destructive acts.
Our armor of God is, for God's purposes, protective and effective. we strengthen our position with what is true, not with lies nor with vain rhetoric.
Then we can legitimately wear a breastplate of divine--not our own-- righteousness.
We can henceforth venture out, having set our course according to the gospel of peace.
We know then that we are protected by the Lord's faith shield.
That faith renders ineffective the flaming arrows of the evil one.
With our minds protected by a helmet of the Lord's salvation, we can then accurately wield the sword of the holy spirit, which is God's Word to us.
This is better than politics and vain rhetoric.
Amen!!!!
Brilliant. Glad it's public, I'm planning to share it around, and especially want to show it to my editor, who's been asking what direction conservatives can move in, to create a party away from the chaos.
One question though -- and this is a genuine question -- how should Believers who are conservative handle the chronically ill, the mentally ill, opioid use, deaths of despair? The Left has co-opted the "caring economy" and health policy; how does the Right take it back? I absolutely get your argument for a decentralized federal government, but I worry about issues that might be too large now (due to decisions in the past, probably) to be handled by states. Unless, of course, those states so choose.
It all seems...I don't know, tentacled maybe. (Yes, there's a peculiar image). Tentacles reaching deep into culture and the economy. Surgery would be deep, and painful, and slow. And might not help.
Final thought: I keep telling people that the far left and the far right seem very close in philosophy, just separated by a tiny little space. What will happen when they realize?
To answer your question, we need to remove dependency on government for these helps and restore it as a service of community. Before the government stepped in to provide services such as these, they were charitable endeavors - families, communities, churches- provided locally and freely. That is where we must return.
The government (broad term, I know) is typically inefficient in providing these services, too. That leads to waste and the government's response to waste is typically more waste: "we failed because we didn't spend enough on the problem." The welfare system is a prime example. Massive amounts of money spent but, ultimately, not solving the problems at the root.
Thank you! It is a massive amount of money and waste, and friends in New York City talk about an entire culture of dependence. (They're conservative Democrats). I know that in my rural area, the social workers know the people who receive benefits and can focus on the best services (or no services). I don't know if they're an equal substitute for the charity of the past, but they work hard and do their best.
We also have charitable foundations that are working on it, with government.
And you're quite right about inadequate analysis of the problem. "We didn't spend enough money" is a lazy answer. Waste and dependence issues need to be looked at. And maybe history, to see why the system we have was created in the first place.
This is impressive and deeply considered. This needs to be considered seriously by Believers. Also, as a side note, this is clarifying for my doctoral project. Thank you.
You clearly spent the weekend in thought! I’ll try to be pithy.
1) Based on your ideas above, I am curious as to your thoughts on the economic model championed by Hilarie Belloc & Gilbert Chesterton known as Distributism. The name is misleading—it is about distributing power, not wealthy.
2) A professor of mine years ago argued that post-modernism is actually hyper-modernism. The modern project to eradicate pain/discomfort/suffering (aka, fallen humanity) failed. True post-modernism should be a return to classical pursuits/esteeming of virtue…while holding on to the nice things the scientific Revolution produced. Doubling down on modernism by trying to change language (eg, talking death to death by with distractions) is hyper-modernism.
My nerd-self is heading to the coffee maker now.
Erick, may you never die. You spill truth all over the place.
Fascinating to me that you can believe “The world hates the things of God” but seem to reject systemic racism in the United States as a possibility. Those two seem to go hand-in-hand to me.
I know of no one who dismisses systemic racism as a "possibility." Systemic racism was the reality in our country for nearly its first 100 years, and in the Democrat-controlled South under Jim Crow through the mid-1960s. Racism and tribalism persist, of course, but black immigrants from West Africa and the Caribbean routinely reach the middle and upper classes, as well as the peaks of power and prestige in this country, within a generation. We need to dig deeper to unpack the causes of the persistent black (and white) underclasses rather than pointing to the vaguely defined "systemic racism" as the boogeyman holding people back at this time.
I think racism is real. I think it is possible for there to be systemic racism. I just do not think there is currently a system of racism in place in the United States. I think the arguments that claim there is currently systemic racism in the United States are unfalsifiable arguments. I think there was absolutely, at one time in this country, systemic racism.
Harvard Business Review printed a study in 2016 that showed that African-Americans and Asian-Americans who “whitened” their resumes got significantly more invitations to interview. That seems both racist and systemic to me. Racism does not require a law (e.g., Jim Crow) or regulation (e.g., red-lining) to by systemic. I’m also perfectly willing to believe that the people making the interview decisions don’t even recognize the bias.
There are also studies of significant levels of medical students who believe that African-Americans have thicker skin and can tolerate pain better than Whites. And, other studies showing African-Americans are under-prescribed pain treatment as a result of this misconception. Not a result of law or regulation. But, systemic and a pervasive.
Most folks, I believe, would admit systemic racism is a possibility. But it as a far-fetched possibility that does not align with reality. Prejudice is real, because we humans are not made perfect through political action, but prejudice does not align with a certain political motives. All the talk of systemic racism only exacerbates the left/right dichotomy Erick wrote about above.
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10870 Studies such as this (this is not the only one) indicate to me that systemic racism is a real possibility. As a Christian, I’m called to work for the oppressed. If this study is accurate, minorities are being oppressed in the hiring process. Ignoring that isn’t Biblical, nor good for the country.
Oh my god I read the study. Garbage not transferable. Students and lay persons are used. Not representative. The bias is ready In Suzy from Princeton. I am a scientist, a nurse practitioner and I’m concerned without a picture how do we know you are not a bot or a troll. Im offended at this article passing off something as scientific which it is not. Please, I’m not that gullible. Reprehensible.
Thanks for providing the study. No thinking person denies that prejudice exists, as we are all sinners. To say racism is systemic, though, is to say it is part of our political/societal framework/system by design. That is very different than saying some people are prejudiced to the point of racism. If it is part of our system, it is because of some of the parts, not because of the whole.
The problem, then, is a matter of “fixing” parts without dismantling the whole. Unless, of course, dismantling the whole is the end.
One place where I believe we differ is that in order to be systemic the racism needs to be planned or designed into the process. Harvard Business Review printed a study in 2016 showing that African-Americans and Asian-Americans who “whitened” their resumes got significantly more invitations for interviews. The study claimed that was true of companies who claimed to be making efforts to hire minorities.
This study, below, shows that half of medical students surveyed believed that African-Americans have thicker skin than Whites and tolerate pain better (no basis in fact for that belief). Other studies show that African-Americans are under prescribed pain medication as a result of this misconception.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/4296
My sense that there is still systemic racism is not based on a belief that there are significant, ongoing, government-sponsored efforts to advantage one race over another. But, I do believe there are disparate outcomes by race that are being influenced by unidentified causes.
Make sure you are working on your own “systemic” racism. Did you have someone of color over this weekend? Do you have 10 friends of Asian, Hispanic, Polynesian, African, Botswanan, Catholic, Hindi, Jewish etc etc persuasion? Someone I know who has hurled insults and jargon and vituperative mean speak to conservative thinkers has a log in her eye. I looked at her Facebook page this weekend and she went to an all girl prep school and there was one person of color in her reunion photo. I was taken aback. How could that be? Did she denounce that? Check it. Are you doing something about “sysyemic” racism in your bedroom, dining room, living room and kitchen?
This is a hard read for a guy who wants to fix things. I’m going to keep praying for the strength to turn my will and words over to our loving Savior.
Thank you for reminding us that God is still in control, even when there is only chaos around us.