Declaration of Independents by Nick Gillespie & Matt Welch

I heard about The Declaration of Independents when the authors were interviewed by John Stossel on his TV show. I love the play on words in the title and I love the subtitle: How Libertarian Politics CAN FIX What’s Wrong With America.  I have a soft spot for libertarians. 

Unfortunately, the book was sophomoric boiler plate stuff. Not a lot of original thinking. Although I probably agree with most of what they say, it was uninspiring. They write in a very unserious way, so definitionally, it’s hard to take them serious. 

They believe that because we live in a era that is increasingly individualistic, this is the perfect time for a libertarian triumph. I agree. We are able to customize just about everything around us, yet we have a government that increasingly takes away our choices. It’s hard to see how young people, who grew up with non-fat, half-caf vanilla bean latte, with a double pump of sweetener, a single pump of white mocha, double-cupped and made upside down are going to be OK with exactly one choice in government run retirement plans or four Obamacare options or one choice of school to send their children to based on their zip code. 

So what is libertarianism anyways? Here’s how they define it: “[It] is about a default preference for the freedom to peaceably pursue happiness as we define it without interference from the government.” Sounds good to me.

They site examples of how things are moving in a freedom-loving direction including rock-n-roll loving Iranians, airline deregulation, the move away from “the company man” to a much more entrepreneurial economy, to the pluralism engendered by the web. We as a people have become “The people formerly known as the audience.” as stated by Jay Rosen. One-size-does-NOT-fit-all.

They believe that because of our mounting debt, the door will open soon to some real reforms in areas the government has the biggest footprint: K-12 education, health care, and retirement. These are are the biggest areas, with the most expensive and least efficient systems in our society, and are begging for customization and transformation.

The authors would love it if we would stop giving our reflexive support the two dinosaur parties that carry the blame for so much of what’s wrong with our system today. I feel this is a worthy thought, but practically impossible. Our system was built for two parties. The only way for another party to appear is that one must first go. The Republican party was built on the ash heap of the Whigs. The Democratic party has always existed. There is simply no precedent for a third-party rising to power. And our nation is so polarized and knee-jerk loyal, I don’t see either party going away anytime soon. The real trick would be to do what actually has been done in the past and highjack one of the major parties. I think libertarians will find the best fit in the Republican party, but you could make a case for either one. Whichever party allows themselves to be co-opted by libertarian philosophy will enjoy the benefit of majority support for a long time. 

For policy prescriptions, they have a few ideas to transform the big three: Education, Health Care, and Retirement. In Education, basically vouchers. The money follows the kid. Open up the health care system we have to real free market reforms. Privatize Social Security. I’m with them on all this. Their details, however are very slim. I do believe, like them, that these areas are way too important to leave to the government. 

Good thoughts. We’ll need something more serious to take us forward.

*Fun Fact: One of the authors, Matt Welch, grew up in the tiny neighborhood I live in, Lakewood Village.

Inventing Freedom by Daniel Hannan

After hearing him interviewed by Dennis Prager on his radio show, I decided to add Daniel Hannan’s book, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples made the Modern World. How glad I am that I did. This is a great, non-apologetic book that pulls no punches and unabashedly promotes Western, English values.

Hannan is British and a Member of Parliament in the UK. He’s also very aware of the culture and details of the EU. In addition, he’s a lover of America. This background gives him an insight into Western culture not unlike his predecessor, Alexis de’ Tocqueville, whom many claim singularly understood America and its values. 

He begins by contrasting his background growing up in both the English-speaking UK and his family’s experiences in Peru. Although he loves Peru, he readily admits that the English-speaking world has better and more successful values and systems in place. In a world where it's politically incorrect to make judgments like that, his take is refreshing. 

First a definition. Western civilization is defined as having 3 things: Rule of Law, Personal Liberty, and Representative Government. Few nations can rightfully be said to have all three. From these evolve institutions such as elected legislators, habeas corpus, free contract, equality before the law, open markets, a free press, religious freedom and jury trials. These are not coincidences, but the natural products of Western civilization. These are the things found in the Anglosphere. These are what the patriots in America fought for. They are the things we must continue to fight for against those intent on bringing our system more in line with autocratic foreign models.

But why the Anglosphere? Why do these values coincide with the English language? Winston Churchill sums it up with this, we share “the same language, the same hymns and, more or less the same ideals.” Our heritage travels with the language. English, unlike other languages, is such a free and open language “free to assimilate anything it found useful.” English is creative and expresses ideas in words not found in other languages. Free language leads to free minds.

Largely, the Anglosphere is Protestant. We sing the same hymns. This is important to the development of Western civilization because Protestantism, more than other religions rejected hierarchy and embraced equality. Protestantism began with questioning authority and that DNA has never been eradicated. There was no way this mentality was not going to infuse into the larger culture. 

The patriots who fought for American independence used such a word like "patriot" because they sought to harken back to an inheritance of ideals firmly grounded in English history. They claimed Common Law, the Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights as their own. Language, religion, and ideals thread throughout and unify the Anglosphere and create better and more prosperous societies. 

These values stand out as unique in a world described by Hobbes as, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The Anglosphere stood athwart History and yelled, “Stop.”

Many of these institutions had their genesis in the earliest of the English-speaking people, the Anglo-Saxons. These primitive people brought with them to England “three interrelated concepts that were to transform humankind.” First, personal autonomy which included private property and contract rights. Second, representative governance. Third, the rule of law above the whims of a king. Today, we benefit from their unique worldview. 

Eventually the Anglo-Saxons ruled England according to their principles, but were dealt a severe setback with the conquest by William of Normandy in 1066. Although the Anglo-Saxon legislative body, the Witan, eventually gave way to the Norman barons, the common people continued their Angle-Saxon practices. The people held fast to their values, but it took six centuries to undo the damage wrought by the French overlords. 

In 1215, the authoritarian Norman structure began to be reigned in with the signing of the Magna Carta, the foundational charter of the Anglosphere. This document ensured that the people would have a form of representative government, that the King was not a law unto himself. Without these institutions, rights become on paper only with no means of redress. In fact, this ability to have a voice in the government so infused England, that England largely avoided the history of many other nations of peasants revolting against their overlords. The reason? England didn’t have peasants. It  didn’t even have the word. Apparently new scholarship has shown, that even at the most local levels, commoners lived free lives and largely governed themselves. They were no one’s “peasants.” 

When the English-speaking people crossed the sea to the New World, they not only did not leave their ideas behind, but “brought with them a stronger dose of exceptionalism than those who stayed behind and, in their new home, distilled it to yet greater potency.” They enshrined private property to a greater degree than ever before and with that created Capitalism, the most moral of all economic systems. Private property rights that continued after death allowed for inheritance rights and foundations for charities and improvements on property that might take generations to manifest themselves. In fact, “four centuries ago, it was taken for granted that liberty, property, and private virtue were interconnected. The unique emphasis on ownership in England and North Americas was regarded as a bulwark against tyranny and an invitation to private benevolence.”

The American colonists had The Glorious Revolution to thank for their Anglosphere inheritance. “James II was deposed by the solemn decision of a full and legitimate Parliament.” It became understood that the British people now had the right to hire and fire their kings. A bloodless overthrow of a monarch was itself somewhat miraculous, but the resulting principles and capitalist-democratic society directly inspired the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But even the English did not believe they were breaking new ground in the Glorious Revolution. They simply harkened back to their history, the Common Law, representative government of the Anglo-Saxons, the repeated complaints and petitions against the king, the Magna Carta and solidified all they had reaped from their ancestors. Then passed it on to us. In fact, de’ Tocqueville describes an American as “the Englishman left to himself.” What a compliment.

After the Glorious Revolution, the second great Anglosphere Civil War occurred with the American Revolution. It was here that Englishmen once again asserted their rights against a tyrannical king. Again, they were not breaking new ground, but claiming their English birthright to live as free men. Even the revered English orator Edmund Burke recognized that the Americans were more British than his fellow countrymen, holding fast to the essential and peculiar idea of liberty that distinguished the English-speaking peoples. 

In the creation of the British Empire, England spread her values far and wide through the world. Many other nations that do not share an ethnic heritage with Britain now share a cultural one. We can see the benefits in ways like longevity, height, and equal opportunity. Today we see an Anglosphere spreading from America and Britain to Canada, the Netherlands, India, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as other nations where the English-speaking people have had an influence. Sadly, this group does not include much of Europe. 

Yet this success has paradoxically produced it’s own enemies. Those who would instinctively root for an underdog will never see the Anglosphere as an underdog. It is not. Its successful values, ideas, and institutions have allowed it to usually come out on top. It’s why our enemies, foreign and domestic, try to tear us down and make no secret of their hatred for us. Our strength makes others look weak.

Today, that success in in peril as the institutions and values that created it come under attack. Hannan states, “Once you reject the notion of exceptionalism as intrinsically chauvinistic, you quickly reject the institutions on which that exceptionalism rested: absolute property rights, free speech, devolved government, personal autonomy. Bit by bit, your country starts to look like everyone else’s.”

What a shame if we were to squander so great a birthright.

Tides of War by Steven Pressfield

I decided to read Tides of War by Steven Pressfield when I heard Dr. Larry Arne and Hugh Hewitt discussing it on Hewitt’s radio show. They mentioned it was a great book on the Greek hero, Alcibiades. Since I had never heard of Alcibiades and they spoke of him as if everyone who considers themselves educated would have understood the reference, I had to get the book so as not to embarrass myself in educated company.

Little did I know, it was actually a fact-based fictional account of the man. Since his life spanned most of the 4th century B.C., the events he is a part of weave in and out of the most memorable of ancient Greek history. Therefore, this fun, quick read helped me to put other actual historical accounts into one narrative. 

The story is told by an old man to his grandson who is fascinated with Grandpa’s stories. After describing all the great men he has encountered in his life, his grandson asks if one in particular haunted him. In fact, the grandfather replies, the story of one client in particular kept returning to him lately. It is the story of Polemides, the man who assassinated Alcibiades.

The story weaves the grandfather’s words with those of Polemides. It is a wonderful conceit as the story moves from modern day to the old days. 

Polemides describes his love/hate relationship with the marvelous Alcibiades. In the context of the story, we focus mainly on the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens for control of the Greek city-states. 

Alcibiades is an unstoppable, charismatic warrior and therefore strikes terror into the hearts of the power-hungry ruling elite of Athens. He is a master strategist, and in a bold, unconventional move, convinces the Athenians to attack the Sicilian city of Syracuse. It is a dangerous and complicated maneuver for hegemony over Greece. Once the attack is launched, Athens has cold-feet and abandons the effort and Alcibiades is recalled home for trial for treasonous and reckless behavior. 

He escapes into the waiting arms of his enemy, Sparta. From here on, he fights for the Spartans against his beloved, and in his view, corrupt, Athens. Polemides, however is left to torture and rot in Syracuse until his “friend” Alcibiades plucks him free. 

After years of battle with Athens, Alcibiades double-crosses the Spartans and with Polemides returns as a hero in Athens. 

Once again, Alcibiades is consumed with an another audacious scheme - attack the Persians, after allying themselves with Sparta. Alcibiades’ plan is to win in Persia and then turn on the Spartans. The whole enterprise is once again cut short by the power-protecting Athenian leadership.

Now both Sparta and Athens want Alcibiades dead. Polemides has suffered terribly as he has followed Alcibiades through thick and thin. Finally, he is hired by the Spartans to kill Alcibiades. Although he doesn’t actually kill the man, he is there at his death. 

I feel like I have a much greater feel for the political and military history of ancient Greece after reading this novel. I’ll have to see if he has any other fact-based fictional accounts.

God and the Astronomers by Robert Jastrow

My favorite thinker, Dennis Prager, has recommended God and the Astronomers by Robert Jastrow multiple times as a book that had a profound impact on him. So of course I had to read it.

This short book, written in 1978, is so clear and concise and such an easy read for anyone concerned with a supposed Religion vs. Science dilemma. 

Robert Jastrow was a world-renown astronomer, the one-time head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor of Astronomy and Geology at Columbia, and Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth. He begins his book by stating, “When an astronomer writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by some strange developments going on in astronomy – partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues.” 

He is particularly curious about his fellow scientists who claim to follow the evidence wherever it leads in an unbiased manner. Yet when the evidence begins to line up with a Biblical viewpoint, suddenly the “unbiased, evidence-following” becomes unhinged. The burgeoning acceptance of the Big Bang Theory, in direct contradiction to the eternal universe theory, made scientist, inexplicably, angry. Where was the anger coming from? It seemed an odd response.

In his understated humor, he states, “It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.”

The first time the Genesis story began find scientific backing came with the discovery in 1913 that the universe was expanding. Even Einstein was disturbed by an expanding universe because it implied a beginning – a time when the expansion started.

Then Hubble came along and his telescope showed the universe to be of an unimaginable size. Hubble postulated and Hubble’s law: “the faster away a galaxy is, the faster it moves.” So not only was the universe expanding, it wasn’t slowing down! Therefore, based on the theories and the evidence, the universe definitely had a beginning.  Like Genesis says, “In the beginning...”

Scientist began to theorize that while the universe had a beginning, it was not THE beginning. Perhaps the universe began with a Big Bang, expanded until it exhausted itself, and then collapsed back on itself to begin again with another Big Bang. The fatal flaw to this argument is the lack of fresh hydrogen needed to restart the process. Hydrogen is turned into heavier elements within stars. The process cannot be reversed. 

Faced with the evidence for beginning, scientist responded with statements such as, “the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me... I simply do not believe [it].” Or, “I would like to reject it.” Or, “It cannot really be true.” It seems that science had become a religion itself, complete with its own dogmas.

And with the idea of a beginning, science hits a wall. It cannot and never will be able to answer the question, “What came before the Big Bang?” “Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? Was the Universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials?” And when science reaches its limits, “the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized.”

He ends the book with this wonderful metaphor, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Real Education by Charles Murray

I found Real Education by one of my favorite thinkers, Charles Murray, fascinating. The subtitle is “Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality” and the book focuses on each of the truths in turn. Murray believes the educational system is living a lie and aims to correct these fundamental misconceptions. He states, “The unifying theme of the [book] is that we are unrealistic about students at every level of academic ability -- asking too much from those at the bottom, asking the wrong things from those in the middle, and asking too little from those at the top.”

The four truths he promulgates are:

1. Ability varies.
2. Half of the children are below average.
3. Too many people are going to college.
4. America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted.

You can see these statements are not only heretical, but push uncomfortably into territory the educational behemoth has staked out for itself. 

Ability varies. Murray shows how with the theory of multiple intelligences, it is assumed that everyone excels in at least one of them. However, research shows that only four of the main seven contribute to academic ability and those are closely related to each other. Therefore, someone with may have high bodily-kinesthetic abilities, but that doesn’t correlate to academic success. It may correlate to other kinds of success, however, but not academic. 

Half of the children are below average. So the question becomes, can we raise the academic ability of those who are below average in the intelligences that matter most to academic success? Apparently, very little. 

Those at the lowest level of ability are able to rise a little and become a little less below average. But basic ability seems to be fairly fixed. (He’s not talking about taking a talented, but underachieving youngster out of an atrocious school and seeing him rise in a more conducive environment. He’s talking about ability regardless of environment.) In fact, he believes we have already made the leap at which most schools are adequate and the source of underachievement is not bad schools. The dream of raising up the bottom half through fundamental reform of the public schools is a romantic dream and a “triumph of hope over experience.”

Too many people are going to college. Murray estimates that between 10-20% of all students are mentally equipped to handle the rigors of a true college education. He further makes the case that colleges are not delivering a good, quality liberal arts education anyways. In fact, most students should be receiving that in high school. In addition, college as we know it is becoming obsolete. With the invention of the internet, the educational establishment is being blown wide open. Finally, the correlation of a college degree with monetary success is not necessarily true and the resulting stratification of society is an outcome to be avoided. 

This chapter hearkens back to the book I just read, Cultural Literacy, and makes the same case that even at the elementary level, our kids are not getting a true education. Creating a core of knowledge that all children proceed through is the best way to educate our citizens, not expecting everyone to go to college and pick it up there. 

He illustrates the difference between our current standards and a core knowledge format. Current Standards: “Read a variety of literature such as folktales, fairytales, poetry, newspapers, magazines, & Internet Web sites.” Core Knowledge Standards: Read “poetry by Lewis Carroll, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Eve Merriam & Ogden Nash. Read or are read Alice in Wonderland, tales from The Arabian Nights, “The Little Match Girl,” “William Tell,” selections from Wind in the Willows, Norse myths, Greek & Roman myths, & folktales from around the world.” See the difference. Business as usual hitting and missing key cultural components vs. a true education for all students. 

College has become a no-cost (to the employer) way of screening applicants, has lengthened the time of adolescence, has cost parents a small fortune, has wasted the time of most students, and has led to assumption that the graduates are actually educated. Sigh. 

Murray summarizes the theory behind college today quite nicely: First, we will set up a common goal for every young person that represents educational success. We will call it a B.A. We will then make it difficult or impossible for most people to achieve this goal. For those who can, achieving the goal will take four years no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward for reaching the goal that often has little to do with the content of what has been learned. We will lure large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability or motivation to try to achieve the goal and then fail. We will then stigmatize everyone who fails to achieve it. 

America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. Ideally, college should be for the 10-20% of our most gifted students. Although it is not politically correct to say, these students are the ones who will end up in influential positions in society (whether we like it or not). “All we can do is try to educate members of the elite to be conscious of, and prepared to meet, the obligations that go with the roles they play.” “The elite is already smart. It needs to be wise.”

Murray calls for a revival of a classical liberal education in college that best teaches the elite to do its duty to society. He advocates rigor in verbal expression, rigor in forming judgments using the study of history, rigor in thinking about virtue and the good starting with Aristotle and the cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, practical wisdom, and justice, as well as Biblical virtues and wisdom, and finally humility. Our elite must be taught what it is to fail. The responsibility of leadership must only be bestowed on those who know how badly things can go wrong. 

Finally, Murray advocates viewing education as a funnel. Those in the lower half are represented by the narrow end. The gains in this area are minimal and the focus should be on core knowledge. Those with the most ability are represented by the wide opening picturing the almost limitless possibilities of the elite. This is the opposite of our current system where gains by the bottom half are the most sought after. 

Instead, group children by ability and treat them differently. Pure heresy, I know. The kids know who is at the top anyways, why try to paper over it. Instead focus on the needs of each group. Teach the bottom half how to make a living and become productive citizens rather than college drop-outs. Offer school choice so kids can go to the school which best fits their abilities. Focus on the overall success of the students in life, not simply math and reading scores which necessarily focus only on those with high academic ability. Forget degrees as the one and only path to success and create a system that embraces interning, credentialing, and entrepreneurship. Open up our current one-size-fits-all system to welcome and facilitate different paths and abilities. 

Redefine the goal of education - “to bring children into adulthood having discovered things they enjoy doing and doing them at the outermost limits of their potential.”

Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss

I read Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, because I was interested into some insight into the man who is our president. However, my first thought upon beginning the biography was to ask myself, “Who cares?” Why does this guy even care about where Barack Obama comes from? We already know who he is. Then I had to remind myself, “Well, he IS the president of the United States, and only a handful of people can say that. I suppose he’s worthy of a biography.”

Unfortunately, I came away with even less of an understanding of who Barack Obama is than when I started reading the book.

Maraniss scrupulously researches his subject. In fact, the amount of hard work he put into finding the details of Barack Obama’s life is quite impressive. He starts with the great grandparents on both Obama’s mother and father’s side. Therefore his journey begins in remote parts of both Kenya and Kansas. 

While these stories are interesting, in the way I suppose everyone’s story is interesting, what struck me is how normal their lives were. Of course, living in Kenya is not “normal” for me, but quite “normal” for a Kenyan. Barack Obama’s ancestors lived, married, divorced, moved, had tragedy befall them, watched children grow up to either make them proud but also disappoint in some ways, and generally had the kind of lives you would expect to hear about if you dug deep enough into your own history.

Of course, Barack Obama Sr. live a bit of an extraordinary life. Tapped early as a hope for a free Kenya, he was educated in America. But like many “gifted” people, he wasted his opportunities and didn’t end up amounting to much. He died while married to his fourth wife in a drunk driving accident. The tryst for which he became famous, with Stanley Ann Dunham, was nothing more than a blip in an otherwise narcissistic life.

He and (Stanley) Ann met at the University of Hawaii when she was, maybe, barely 18 and he several  years older. She became pregnant within weeks of meeting him. Since she didn’t know he was already married and had two children back in Kenya, she agreed to marry him in Hawaii. The “marriage” was over by the time Barack II was born. There’s little evidence they ever even lived together. He was as absent from Barack Obama’s life as an absent father can be.

Later, Ann met and married an Indonesian man who was in a similar situation as Barack Sr. He was sent to America to be educated and return to Indonesia to further the success of his nation. After trying to stay in America, he and Ann finally realized that time was up and they had to move back to the island nation. “Barry” was then about 5 and enrolled in the Indonesian school and took on his stepfather’s last name. 

As that marriage broke up, Barry was sent back to Hawaii to be raised by his grandparents and sent to an elite prep school, Punahou, on scholarship. Although he has a group of pot-smoking friends, called the Choom Gang, the author reinforces the idea again and again that Barry never felt that he belonged anywhere. 

Barry, changing his name to Barack, goes off to Occidental in Los Angeles, where once again, he hangs with his pot-smoking roommates. He prefers basketball to politics and never leads anything. Two years later, he transfers to Columbia in New York. There he remains off campus, making little impression on either students or professors. Those who remember him, remember him as smart, a good conversationalist, always listening, always talking about his Kenyan dad. He sticks with the international students. Once again, this seems to be a sign that he doesn’t feel he belongs.

With his New York girlfriend, Genevieve, an Australian, we start to get glimpses into who Obama is. The truth is, it appears to me at least, that there is not a lot of “there, there.” He writes her obtuse letters, trying yet failing, to reveal himself, “I don’t distinguish between struggling with the world and struggling with myself... I enter a pact with other people, in other forces in the world, that their problems are mine and mine theirs, and the contradictions within us are between us and to be found in the movement of the sea, or the tears of a child or the New York Post sports page. The minute others imprint my senses, they become me and I must deal with them or else close part of myself or make myself and the world smaller, lukewarm. And the helpful part of this is to populate both my nightmares and my visions, and gives me the necessary illusion that my struggles are the struggles of the first man, the river is the original river, and that my brief interludes outside the limits of the human construct are still connected to what’s going on within.”

Huh? I consider myself smart and well-read, but I have never read anything as insipid as this. What does this even mean?

Even though Genevieve was very similar to Barack in many ways, after a year of being together, even living together, she still could not say she knew who he was. He never really let her inside. I would say, that there was not that much to reveal. He seems like he’s simply acting a role, this is what a deep and thoughtful human would be like, if I was one. 

He tires of her, and after graduation, he moves to Chicago. Even though he struggles with his “white vs. black” identity, he didn’t really connect with any black people at Occidental or Columbia. So he heads to Chicago, the epicenter of black political life. 

He takes a job as “community organizer.” Even his uncle, who also lives in Chicago, doesn’t know what that means. Basically, he heads door-to-door in the South Chicago neighborhood he is assigned to, talking with the people, identifying and training leaders, and listening to complaints. After a year, the big success results in getting an aldermen to attend a meeting about getting asbestos removed at one of the housing projects he represents. He spend the next year training his replacement before heading off to Harvard. He knows he’ll need more on his resumé if he’s ever to enter into politics, which seems, in some remote, far-off way, where he’s headed. 

The book ends here. 

It explains so little of who Barack Obama is or what he’s accomplished. But the part about what he did as a community organizer really stuck with me. It’s not clear what he did after Harvard, during which time he met and married his wife. Four years after graduation, he’s elected to the State Senate. He loses his race for US House, four years later. Is nominated in the primary for US Senate two years after that, gives a speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, and two years later starts his run for the Presidency. Was he doing more organizing or teaching or brushing up his resume in the four years before becoming a state senator? I don’t know. What I do know is that the Presidency is the longest job he’s ever had.

But now when I watch him speak, something clicks. He is still that "out of power, wishes he had power", community organizer. His job then was to get people riled up so that those in power would make the changes they desire. He’s still doing that. Except that he’s in power. Every once in a while he remembers that and then acts unilaterally as he assumed those he petitioned would do if they cared at all. Here is where his perception and reality clash. He would assume that the powerful didn’t act because... fill in the blank. But it was never a legitimate reason. He just had to get enough people fired up that the powerful would have to give in. Consequences didn’t matter. 

Watch his speeches. See him try to rally us vs. them. We are the community. He is the organizer. If we get angry enough and off our butts enough and DEMAND action, action will happen. And it will be good. And he can move on, checking off that box. He doesn’t want and has never wanted compromise. He didn’t compromise with the alderman. He wants action. He demands action. We are the masses who must rally behind him as he guides and directs us. “They” are the evil other side who must be forced to capitulate. 

He is leader the way a mob has a leader. He is not thoughtful. He speaks in platitudes like a true mob leader does. He rallies his base. He yells talking points. He makes inane statements with no ability to hear or compromise with the other side. He exercises power the way he assumes “they” would do it. It’s not so much that he’s a leftist/socialist, although no one denies he leans that way, it’s that he’s a cheerleading victocrat. And victocrats are not leaders, they are fascistic ideologues. 

I am not a community. I don’t want to be organized. I want to be left alone. 

Belief by Francis S. Collins

Francis Collins is a believer in God and a serious scientist. Since he regularly encounters people who have a hard time squaring those two positions, he edited a series of essay in his book, Belief. He aims to show you can believe in God “with all your mind.” He states in the intro, “... absolute proof of God’s existence is not going to be available in this life. But that doesn’t mean deeply rational arguments for faith are not available for inspection and debate by interested believers, seekers, and skeptics.”

He includes a wide variety of essay, some dating back many centuries, to the modern era. Not every one is even written by a traditional believer, but all point to a transcendent. And they are all fascinating. I could write a post on each, but I will try to confine myself.

Collins describes his own journey towards faith in God. It started with the idea of Moral Law. It appears that there is some standard of right and wrong written on the hearts of man. Evolutionary theory falls far short of explaining it. He calls the Moral Law, “an interesting signpost toward a holy and personal God.” From there, he studied religion seriously and became a believer.

Essay #1: N.T. Wright: Wright points out that we all long for some sort of cosmic justice, where in the world will be put right. We thirst for spirituality. These are other signposts pointing to the divine.

#2 Plato: Using the Socratic method, Plato walks the reader through his classical arguments for faith and reason.

#3 Augustine: Augustine argues that because there is absolute truth, there must be and absolute mind. He, like Plato, uses the Socratic method to lead the reader to a Divine Source of Truth, which we can call God, who exists above us and our earthly reality.

#4 Anselm of Canterbury: He argues that what we can imagine, must exist. So we can imagine God, therefore, there must BE a God.

#5 Thomas Aquinas: From the Summa Theologica, Aquinas posits an “Unmoved Mover” or first cause of the world.

#6 John Locke: Our own faculties of reason lead one to believe that the creator must be still more reasonable. It must be eternal and cogitative in order to produce us. 

#7 Blaise Pascal: Pascal argues the we should believe because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

#8 Os Guinness: God’s Truth is a robust Truth. Truth is everywhere at all times. Truth can be discovered and is available to us and makes us free of manipulation.

#9 Madeleine L’Engle: The famous author describes the search for Truth as frightening because it demands something from us. Real Truth, found in Jesus, transcends mere rational truth and gives us something to both live and die for.

#10 Dorothy Sayers: She links history to Scripture to make Jesus and his disciples “really” real. 

#11 John Stott: Belief is a battle of ideas and we must believe in the power of Truth. 

#12 David Elton Trueblood: He encourages the reader not to deny others’ religious experiences, but to rationally test them to see if they have borne fruit.

#13 Keith Ward: He challenges the notion that religion is simply a social construct.

#14 Art Lindsley: He defends absolute truth in our relativistic world. If we know there is evil, there must be good and only God defines what is good. 

#15 Desmond Tutu: He believes that in the face of true evil, we can be confident, because the oppressed have already won. Truth is on their side. “We humans can tolerate suffering but we cannot tolerate meaninglessness.”

#16 Elie Wiesel: After suffering tremendously in the Holocaust, he explores true evil and our response to it.

#17 Tim Keller: The church is filled with fallen and flawed people. That where Grace comes in. In fact, we cannot critique Christianity and Christians without first starting with the framework given us by Christianity. 

#18 Martin Luther King Jr.: We must have both a tough mind and a tender heart. 

#19 Paul Brand: We are the hands of Christ.

#20 John Polkinghorne: God gave us the ability to explore and understand our world through science.

#21 C.S. Lewis: He expounds on miracles.

#22 Alister McGrath: We all search for meaning. Yet our longing requires a leap of faith.

#23 Thomas Merton: We must engage in mystical contemplation by accepting God’s gift of Himself. 

#24 Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Coming from the evil world of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer describes true love and true enemies. He reminds us that our enemies, the ones we are called to love, are those that “are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love.” Jesus modeled how we are to treat enemies when He dies to save His own enemies.

#25 Viktor Frankl: Another Holocaust victim, describes man’s will for meaning. 

#26 Mother Teresa: We must love those around us with all our hearts!

#27 Mahatma Gandhi: If we fear God, we will not fear anything else. Truth is on our side.

#28 The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso): Science must be guided by moral ethics for “values, creativity and spirituality, as well as deeper metaphysical questions, lie outside the scope of scientific inquiry.” Science and spirituality can have a collaborative relationship and can be closer than ever. 

#29 G.K. Chesterton: “He expounds ont the collaboration of faith and reason like this, ‘It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.’”

#30 Hans Küng: He attacks Freud’s atheism.

#31 Alvin Plantinga: He compares evolution to naturalism to show them in opposition to each other. Fascinating stuff.

#32 Antony Flew: The famous atheist came to belief in God because of (1.) nature obeys laws, (2.) the existence of intelligent and purpose-driven beings, and (3.) the existence of nature.

Every essay was fascinating and more than a few WAY over my head. If I had the time, I could spend hours reviewing and digesting each one. I’m sure that if the authors were to read my piddly summaries, they would cringe. I apologize for not doing them justice.