The Science of Refutation

"Bless me, what do they teach them at these school?"
Thus spoke Professor Digory Kirk at the end of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Earlier in the book he had lamented the apparent lack of logical training in modern schools, a fact which has been proven over and over again in government-funded schools across the world and is as true today as it was when Lewis wrote in 1950.
The current health care debate has many more details than I can possible comment on, but one of the more puzzling aspects of this is the very public debate over death panels. If I am hearing correctly, former Governor Sarah Palin first alerted most of us to the essential nature of this aspect of the Obamacare plan, not as something spelled out in a particular section of the bill, but as something that would take place in essence if the bill were passed as is. There is a big difference between saying we are going to pull the plug on Grandma and doing it because it makes sense to someone in authority because Grandma is just too much of a drain on the money pot.
The interesting thing about this for me has been the apparent lack of ability to form a real refutation of this charge. Everyone I have listened to, speaking from the left, has denied the death panel charge and said something to the effect of, "Of course we would never want to do that" without ever actually saying it would not happen. All they really ever get around to saying is that the bill does not call for death panels. But again, this is different from saying we will write language in that prevents the bill from being enacted in such a way as to make death panels a essential characteristic of Obamacare.
Doug Wilson wrote on this a while back from a different point, but I think the point still stands. You can read his post here. If you want to refute a charge, it is important that you speak to what the charge actually says. Neither Palin nor anyone else said that on line such-and-such of the bill it says there will be death panels composed to determine if it is in the best interest of the government or the people to continue paying for medicine or treatment for the elderly or terminally ill. What they said it that the language of the bill is sufficiently weak as to allow for this to take place and that given human nature and the federal government, it most certainly will eventually list in that direction if imposed as is.
So all these media guys and senators and whatnot running around saying it's ridiculous to suggest that the bill has death panels written in are not refuting the charge, they are stating the obvious, which is not what the charge is about. The charge of death panels is about the consequences of ideas, not about what words are on the page.
If this health care bill is passed, this is what will happen down the road.
"Why don't they teach logic at these schools?"

Ron Paul on Homeschooling

Ron Paul gave the commencement address to a group of 14 homeschooled students recently. A nice write-up about it and what Ron Paul said about homeschooling can be found at "The Facts." Essentially, Paul reiterated the reason thinking homeschoolers homeschool, because they are passionate about their children and know that they are the ones in charge, not the state.

“It’s very important we encourage home-schooling and make sure it’s always legal, and our governments never decide they know best,” Paul said. “Too often, our government would like to be the parent. Home-schoolers know exactly who’s responsible for education, and that’s the parent.”

A big thanks to Representative Paul for taking the hard stand, as he usually does, on what matters.

On This Day in History

On May 16, 1532 Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor of England. This was done because he could not condone either the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine or the marriage of Henry to Anny Boleyn.
Thomas More (1478 - 1535) was the leading anti-Protestant in England at the time of the Reformation. More spoke vehemently against Luther and his views. He held a number of offices in English politics as he worked his way up to being Lord Chancellor.
In 1530, however, he had refused to sign a letter asking the Papacy for an annulment of the marriage of Henry to Catherine. This put a serious wedge between the monarchy and More. The decision of the monarchy to terminate the Roman Catholic Church and institute the Church of England with the king as the head did not sit well with More. Whereupon, in 1531 he refused to take an oath demonstrating loyalty to the king as the Head of the Church of England.
In 1532, following several attempts, More was finally allowed to resign when it became clear that no reunion between the King and More was going to take place. The next year when More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England, Henry had More arrested on charges of accepting bribes and high treason, although no evidence existed for either crime.
In 1534 More appeared before a parliamentary commission and accepted that Parliament had the right to declare Anne the legitimate queen of England but refused to swear an oath himself to that effect. More's problem was not with the Act of Succession, but with the language in it that declared the Parliament had more right that the Pope to legislate in matters of religion.
More was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1535 he was brought to trial for denying the validity of the Act of Succession, which he did not do. More maintained he could not be convicted of denial of the Act if he did not actually deny the Act. He refused to answer questions related to the King's authority as Head of the Church or any of his opinions on the subject.
Nevertheless, the jury convicted him of the crime of high treason based on testimony of other witnesses. More was executed on July 6, 1535 by decapitation.
More was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1886.
A fantastic film version of his life and trial exists in the adaption of A Man for All Seasons.

Socialism in Silas Marner

While reading Silas Marner with my students, I have been struck by the very subtle leanings of its author, George Eliot (aka, Mary Ann Evans). The Darwinism and anti-religious statements were expected, but somehow I missed that Evans (Eliot) had been influenced by Marx as well.
Eliot published Silas Marner in 1861, a good thirteen years after Marx and Engels hit the bookshelves with The Communist Manifesto. I had been reading various statements about class without very little recognition of what Eliot was subtly trying to suggest. Then, all of a sudden, she came out and said it.

...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that—gardening does.

Aaron's comment on the possibility of finding pretty much anything Eppie wants for her new garden betrays Eliot's thinking about the haves and have nots of England in the nineteenth century. If only those who have so much would give to those who have very little, there would surely be plenty to go around.
The socialism is subtle, and undeveloped, which actually makes it more dangerous. If Eliot threw it out there very obviously, the novel might be dismissed as extremist ranting. However, if Eliot simply subtly suggests the ideas and lets them develop in the mind of her reader, then eventually the fruit will come. Socialism won't look so bad once we think about how nice it would be if everyone could eat all they wanted.
No one initiating something as dangerous as Socialism goes around talking about the bad parts of the plan. That would be dumb. They use the strategy of Eliot and suggest what might be better if things were done just a little differently. Who could argue against wasted fruits and vegetables, after all?
Remember this the next time our leaders suggest Smart Meters so that everyone will have enough electricity to heat them and keep them cool.

Election Day

Today is Election Day. I doubt anyone could not know that this year. But nonetheless, get out and vote. Vote for leaders for our nation who will uphold the sanctity of human life. Vote for leaders for our nation who will cherish godliness more than wealth. Vote for leaders for our nation who will lead and not follow.
I am off to my local precinct in just a few minutes to see if I can get in before I have to go to school. I hope I can vote this morning. I have decided to vote for Chuck Baldwin for President since Ron Paul could not be persuaded to run as an independent. I understand Paul's choice, though I wish it weren't true. It will be generations before an independent will be elected to any major political office. We are stuck in a two-party system, whether we like it or not. That being said, I will also be voting Democratic in a couple of races here. After looking through the candidates, I believe the choices are solid choices. They best represent what I would like to see happen in this country.
Well, here we go. Enjoy the returns tonight. It is sure to be an interesting evening.

Attempting to follow politics

With my attention on my M.A. so far, I have been unable to really follow politics like I'd like. I did get to watch the third presidential debate and I have seen the skits SNL has been putting on (though I missed Palin on Saturday night) thanks to YouTube.
I have kept up with Doug Wilson's thoughts on Governor Palin over at his Blog and Mablog site. Very interesting stuff. Andrew Kern's insights at CiRCE are also excellent. I honestly don't know who to vote for. I am not stimulated by either of our two presidential candidates. I also do not buy the "throiwng your vote away" philosophy. In the absence of a write-in candidate I may follow Chesterton's advice and vote for the worse of the evils out there just so we can really see how bad it is.
Gar DeMar's website had a article on not losing sight of where the real action is this election season: the House of Representatives. I'm still pondering all this in my mind and looking at the options. I doubt I'll give any secrets away here even once the election is past.
I always enjoy watching election returns come in. November 4 is right around the corner.

Aha!

I hate it when movies do weird things to books. I have a sick kiddo so we are watching a lot more movies than usual. The other day we were watching Piglet's Big Movie in which the entire corpus of Pooh is given a thorough historical revision so that Piglet is the main character in every story. One which jumped out at me and I was hoping was the same in the book however was the story of how Kanga and Roo first came to the Hundred Acre Wood. It is a cute story in which the other animals are all threatened by this newcomer so they engineer a plan to kidnap Roo and make Kanga promise to go away and never return. In Piglet's Big Movie, there is a great scene where Rabbit is explaining this plan, which included replacing Roo with Piglet, and Rabbit says they will all say Aha!
Piglet rightly asks what "Aha" means and Rabbit responds, "Aha means 'this is the way things are...and this is the way they were meant to be." Of course this is not the way the narrative goes in Mine's classic book, but the essence is the same.
Aha means maintaining the status quo. The people who get to determine what the status quo are is another question altogether. If we were good orthodox, biblically minded individuals we would immediately recognize that this is a question of authority and therefore must be submitted to God's pattern of governmental division. There are three spheres of government instituted in Scripture for the authoritarian rule of mankind: Civil, Family, and Church. Befre asking what the status quo is and whether it should or could be challenged we need to determine who made it the status quo and what level of authority they had to make it so. If a father gives an underage child authority to consume large quantities of alcohol, he is challenging the status quo. Does he have the authority to challenge the status quo in this way? There is where the real question is.
If a ruling authority has made a decision within its right to make a decision, this constitutes an area where the status quo should not be challenged, or at least not challenged in a rebellious or disrespectful manner. If a ruling authority has established a rule outside his authority, this form of status quo should be challenged, but how?
The current homeshcooling case in California comes to mind. This is clearly a case in which the state, or civil, authority has overstepped its legitimate authority and established a status quo that needs to be challenged. Homeschoolers all over the country, and Classical Christian schools as well, have been challenging the notion that the state is the appropriate agency for the education of our young people. We have been doing this as legally as we can (I know of many who flat-out resorted to illegal homeschooling when all attempts at reasonable compromise were exhausted). The state is not the authority granted the control over the education of children, that authority is clearly given to families in the Scriptures (Deut. 6:4-9, Eph. 6:4).
The history of government-controlled education goes back, at least as far as Plato. In the Republic, Plato recommended that the state take control of the education of the young in order to guarantee their training would be carried out as the state wished it to be carried out. Many people object to my calling "public education" government-controlled education or "public schools" government-controlled schools. I don't know why except that calling them what they are makes it increasingly difficult ignore what is going on. When the federal government determines what books can and cannot be used in the classroom, who can and cannot teach in the classroom, who can and cannot go to certain schools, and what can and cannot be eaten during the day, we have a government-controlled education system.
Those of us involved with homeschooling or private education have decided that we will challenge the status quo here. We will do so as biblically as we can, which means we will honor and respect the authority that the state does have while challenging the authority it does not have (Acts. 4:8-12, 18-20).
Hopefully we will not have to resort to Rabbit's "Aha!" Hopefully we can reform our world, through the saving power of the gospel, so that all spheres of government take their cue from Christ and stay in their pre-appointed jurisdictions.

Belloc on our Civil Religion

Hilarie Belloc (1870-1953) understood what Rousseau was trying to say about civil religion in the Social Contract. This quote from his essay "The Modern Man" explains it very well.

You may deny any one of the old doctrines and few will be shocked, but you may not ridicule the flag or the Crown, not interrupt the two minutes' silence on Armistice Day....

Rousseau argued that rather than have any transcendental religion, such as Christianity, we must find unity, or uniformity, in our religion of state, or civil religion. The elements of this civil religion are flags and national holidays. Imagine how right Belloc is when you think of the fourth of July versus the feast of Ascension or some other religious festival. Despite lapel pin campaigns to remember that "Jesus is the reason for the Season," we have excised much of the Christian aspects of Christmas from any and all public displays of the celebration. Now imagine that instead of Armistice Day, a day I never heard of celebrating until recently (apparently we don't think much of World War 1 in America), we ignored or interrupted 9/11 celebrations. Which would get you in more trouble politically or socially?

We have a civil religion in our country and it doesn't reflect much of a Christian character. God help us train the next generation to pay more attention to the transcendental and eternal things than just be flag wavers and public holiday devotees.

Recession, Depression, and our Stimulus Package.

I was listening to Dr. George Grant's Gileskirk lecture on the Great Depression the other day (the 2001 edition, available from WordMP3.com) and was struck by his list of the steps taken by the Federal government to avoid or stave off depression.
According to Grant, first the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply in the US 62 times from 1920 to 1929. When the inflation caused a downturn in the market, Hoover tried some interference strategies to hold off the stock market crash. This was designed to prop up the market. It resulted in a massive loss of confidence in the market and sped up the depression instead of thwarting it. In 1931 Hoover launched a massive spending program to try to "outspend" the depression. Finally, when all this caught up with the treasury, Hoover had to put a very large tax hike in place to stop the bleeding. This obviously did not help, as we all know from our parents, grandparents, and the history books.
I wonder how much inflation has been happening in the last decade. The reason this concerns me is that our current stimulus package reminds me an awful lot of Hoover's spending program to try to revitalize the economy in the 1930's.
We apparently learned nothing from the Great Depression. But then, when do we?

The Ides of March

I can't believe I let the 15th of March slip by without a little tribute to Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was murdered by the Senate on the 15th of March in 44 BC so that he would not attain to the status of king or empoeror in the Roman State. This murder set off a chain of events that led directly to that very thing taking place. Octavius Caesar, Julius' adopted grand-nephew was made the sole ruler of the Roman world in 27 BC. Why did Julius Caesar die?
The whole saga has been so immortalized by Shakespeare that we can hardly think of the death without dear Brutus and Caesar's dying words "Et tu, Brute." Yet in all liklihood this phrase was never uttered (that's OK though, Washington never cut down a cherry tree either). The sentiment is the same. Caesar died because of what others were afraid of. Caesar was simply about twenty years ahead of his time. He was unable to grasp what his grand-nephew took hold of and weilded with expert skill, the people of Rome. Caesar thought he could man-handle the people. Augustus knew they had to be worked like clay. Caesar thought he could do whatever he wanted to and with the Senate. Augustus knew he had to make them think they needed him. In the end, Caesar died because he wanted too much, too fast.
Augustus was successful because he handled the situation with far more prudence and care.
We are all political playthings, at least it feels that way. As long as the leaders give us rebate stimulus packages, we won't revolt. Actually we would eb unlikely to revolt even if they didn't give us stimulus packages. We are way too lazy for anything as difficult and trying as a revolt.