Weightier Matters of the Law

Increase Education, Send Less Kids to College! (And Bring Back the Lyceum)

2012-01-29T21:21:00.001-06:00

Per personal and family ritual, we watched President Obama's State of the Union address this past Tuesday night. Much of the speech was what you would imagine-- a laundry (wish)list of policies, tweaks, and problems-to-be-solved, and not much ground was broken. One item that caught my attention was the President's discussion of college tuition and specifically, a proposal that would tie continuing federal aid for student loans and grants to controls on increases in tuition costs. (Discussed further here) This is a very worthwhile goal, and I have nothing to say against it. Except for the few families for whom money is no object, the rising costs of tuition (not to mention the boatload of other fees and costs associated with attending college) not only limit the amount of education that many students can afford, but also unduly limits their range of career choices following college.

However, my quibble is more with a policy that is closely associated with the drive to make college more affordable: an insistence that we need to be sending more students to college. The precise number we are supposed to aim for is never specified, but it is generally assumed to be something close to "all." Unlike the student aid proposal I described above, I have serious misgivings about whether this goal, (semi-)universal college, is socially desirable, particularly if by "college," you mean a four-year residential program. Colleges are already discovering a distressing number of students arrive at college, presumably with the means to pay and the proper criteria for admission, but who are woefully unprepared for the actual work required. There are additional concerns about the actual quality of education received by thousands of students at some accredited institutions. Four-year residential programs, in part because of their residential nature, are entirely too expensive for access to be expanded much beyond current capacity. And thus, I utter the words that will render me un-electable for any higher office for the remainder of my natural lifetime-- we should send less students to "college." Certainly no more than current enrollment, and quite possibly fewer.

This is not a plea for greater ignorance, or even less education, but rather for a reallocation of priorities. This is not a complaint about the relative lack of utility of a college education, but rather a plea that its benefits need to be spread more broadly but in a more efficient manner. Probably since the GI Bill, increasing college enrollment has been send as an end in itself, rather than simply a means to a more educated, and economically competitive population. It is, just like a spouse, kids, and home ownership, part of the birthright of every middle-class American, and quite a few who are not. We see frequent fretting, including during the State of the Union, that businesses, particularly in technology and engineering fields, are willing to hire additional workers, but are unable to find candidates with the requisite skills and background. The response, a misguided one in my opinion, has been to insist that sending more students to college will inevitably resolve this problem, with little concern about what actually happens during those four years.

Rather than focusing on educating in a compressed four-year timeframe, society needs to reorient around a model of lifetime learning. First, money that would be used to send additional students to college (or to maintain current enrollment) should, in part, be reallocated to primary and secondary education, areas that truly already serve all children. We should allocate that money based on the best research on educational inputs, but investing in better training and increased incentives (non-exclusive-test-based) for teachers should be a component. Second, we need to develop a range of educational opportunities that deliver quality training, not just for careers, but that also include enrichment in the basic sciences, arts, and humanities, without a residential component . Right now, we seem stuck with just three options: four-year full-time residential program, community college, or for-profit "career college."* We need to develop a broader spectrum of vehicles to deliver education, not just immediately post-college but at different stages of life. Third, we need to incentivize employers to invest more heavily and more broadly in their workers, not just in the simple ways of improving job-related skills, but also in providing time and money for education in the kind of things that make life truly meaningful. Here I am imagining something like increased corporate investment in the arts, and in something like the 19th century lyceum movement in America, devoted toward expanding public access for adults to continuing education and personal enrichment in the sciences and humanities in every town and city across the country.

Now, please permit me the following aside: I have a lot of friends in various levels of academia, including my own wife. Any kind of noise about cutting aid or reducing college enrollment (probably involving the closure of institutions) will inevitably provide the motivation for several heads worth of hair to spontaneously burst into flames, particularly given the abysmal job prospects that many graduate students and newly minted Ph.D.s face these days. I want to clearly allay that fear. Again, I do not see this see this set of proposals having the inevitable result of a net reduction of academic employment. To the contrary, I think it would remain at least static and quite possibly increase. As it stands, academics are typically faced with the following depressing choice: success and regular employment (and possibly tenure) at a four-year institution teaching 18-24 year olds, of which there are so few that finding one in your specialty, with complementary employment options for one's spouse, is practically a matter of pure serendipity, or scraping by while cobbling together a class here and a class there at a local community college. Just as these proposals intend to broaden the options available to students, it would broaden the employment options (and incomes) available to academics. That is not a topic I want to fully develop here, but I am open to discussing it in any comments.

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* There is also a cultural critique to be developed here based around relative perceptions of the quality of education obtained by students attending our current three options, namely that that receiving a bachelor's degree from a four-year accredited institution is a magnificent achievement, while an associate's degree from your local community college is somewhat less prestigious. It is almost certainly impossible to change the opinions of massive numbers of the population without some form of brainwashing, but the lack of appreciation for the education offered at less intensive and less costly institutions (as well as the overestimation of the talismanic value of a bachelor's degree, no matter its quality or content) is one obstacle to the development of a more diverse set of educational settings.

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The Nightstand (Jan. 29)

Rules of American Justice: a tale of three cases (Glenn Greenwald, Salon) and Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure (Glenn Greenwald, Salon)- Double dose of Greenwald this week.

The Long Goodbye (Doug Monroe, Atlanta Magazine)- Powerful not just on a personal level, but also for health policy wonks like me. Medicare makes payment for hospice services when, among other things, a physician certifies that the patient will die within the next six months. Of course, this is unknowable. There is a lot of overspending here, not to mention fraud.

Will Israel Attack Iran? (Ronen Bergman, NYT Magazine)- Answer: Uhh...yes.

Internet Regulation & the Economics of Privacy (Julian Sanchez, Cato@Liberty)- This will be a rare link to something from the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank). SOPA and its counterpart, PIPA, appear to be dead for the time being, though both will certainly reappear at some point in the future, just because industry wants it so bad. Sanchez does some excellent work here showing that, purely in economic terms, more protection for the content industry is simply not needed (i.e. there is no proof that piracy is really hurting Hollywood's bottom line).

Citizen Philosophers: Teaching Justice in Brazil (Carlos Fraenkel, Boston Review)- My first reaction to this piece was, "How could we get something like this running in the U.S.?" My second reaction, was just to laugh at my first reaction. Then, I just wept.

Come on, China, Buy Our Stuff (Adam Davidson, NYT Magazine)- Part of the logic of the pro-globalization forces of the late 1990s and early 2000s was precisely what Davidson explains has not come to pass.

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? (Alison Gopnik, WSJ)

The Nightstand (January 22, 2012)

2012-01-22T22:18:00.002-06:00

No post this week, just the Nightstand.

Mormonism Obsessed with Christ (Stephen Webb, First Things)

Soccer's Heavy Boredom (Brian Phillips, Grantland)- I have tried, tried, tried to love soccer, but I just can't bring myself to watch a whole game.

Two posts on taxes both from the NYT- Taxes at the Top (Paul Krugman) and Why Taxes Aren't as High as They Seem (David Leonhardt)

Does Austerity Promote Economic Growth (Robert Schiller, Project Syndicate)- In short, no (duh).

Private Inequity (James Surowiecki, The New Yorker)- Surowiecki on the economy-- always great.

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work (Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, NYT)

How the Educated Elite View Government (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog (WaPo))

What We Give Up for Health Care (Ezekiel Emanual, NYT) Key quote: "But liberals are wrong to ignore costs. The more we spend on health care, the less we can spend on other things we value. If liberals care about middle-class salaries, public education and other state-funded services, then they need to care about controlling health care costs every bit as much as conservatives do."

"[G]athering up a knowledge of all the...sufferings and abuses put upon them...."

2012-01-15T21:44:00.000-06:00

"And again, we would suggest for your consideration the propriety of all the saints gathering up a knowledge of all the facts, and sufferings and abuses put upon them....And also of the all the property and amount of damages which they have sustained, both of character and personal injuries, as well as real property; And also the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions, as far as they can get a hold of them and find them out. And perhaps a committee can be appointed to find out these things, and to take statements and affidavits; and also to gather up the libelous publications that are afloat; And all that are in the magazines, and in the encyclopedias, and all the libelous histories that are published, and are writing, and by whom, and present the whole concatenation of diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practised upon this people—That we may not only publish to all the world..." (Doctrine and Covenants 123:1-6)

Like just about anyone who follows politics closely, I spent the week parsing the results of the New Hampshire primary and its implications for the upcoming South Carolina primary this coming week. Until now, the conventional wisdom has been that Mitt Romney, a Mormon, could never win in the South. The politico-religious climate dominated by evangelical Christians was simply too inhospitable, and until not so long ago, downright violent (as discussed in Patrick Mason's excellent book). Now, some polls are showing Romney with a growing lead in SC, and it is flipping that conventional wisdom on its head.

Some observers, and I count myself among this number, have been surprised at how much the Mormon issue has not been a factor in this primary season. Granted that conservatives have had plenty of other complaints to make about the frontrunner, no matter their failure to make the charges stick. Nevertheless, seeing as how a large group of evangelical pastors and religious leaders met this past week to discuss solidifying behind a single not-Romney candidate, my suspicions are that the more ecumenical stage of the race is over. (Those leaders denied that Romney's Mormonism was a major point of discussion at the meeting, but if you believe that, I have a proverbial bridge to sell you) Not to mention that South Carolina is a state notorious for its dirty campaigning.

As quoted above, in 1839, while imprisoned in Missouri, Joseph Smith sent a letter to his followers instructing them to keep a historical record of the persecutions that they suffered. Its an idea that I would like to see revived during the 2012 election season, particularly in the South. First a disclaimer: I am not interested in grievance-mongering (a la the ADL) and this is certainly not an exercise in taking names for retribution (divine or human) later, as one portion of the above-quoted text might suggest. In fact, my preference would be that names are excluded from any publication. I am in full agreement with Joanna Brook's idea that the LDS persecution complex is somewhat overblown and that LDS need to work on a different response to such negativity than a reflexive hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

That disclaimer aside, the purpose of the organization I am envisioning would simply be to catalog and organize incidents or manifestations of anti-Mormon sentiment in South Carolina. Ideally, the focus would be kept local, rather than statewide. Its far less important to me to find out what one of the other candidates or their surrogates said at a campaign rally, than to have some record of that conversation you overheard in the local diner, that letter to the editor in a small-town newspaper, or the Sunday sermon in a prominent local church. Reporters will catch some of this, but most journalists: a) have no particular personal interest in this issue, and b) have a million other aspects of the race that need to be addressed in limited time and on deadline. The organization should be a loose confederation of part-time volunteer individuals, independent from the LDS Church, creating and organizing a joint database, which could eventually be shared publicly (preferably online).

The 2012 election is an almost perfect natural experiment, and not one that is likely to reoccur in the near future. This research could eventually be used by scholars a hundred years from now to build on the work that Patrick Mason did in the book I linked to earlier.

Author's Note: I swear I am not writing about Mitt Romney and the election every week, but it is the hot issue right now, so a more diverse reading experience will be coming your way soon.
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The Nightstand (January 8-14)

- How Large the Huddled Masses?: The Causes and Consequences of Public Misperceptions about Immigrant Populations (John Sides and Jack Citrin)- see also Sides' follow-up at the American Prospect and the Climate Progress series on the Debunking Handbook. What these articles represent to me is not confined to the issues of immigration or climate change, but a meta-issue of whether giving more (or better) information to people can help change their political opinions. This is a naturally liberal and optimistic view of human nature, but probably mistaken in my opinion. This approach neglects the importance of a priori values in filtering the information that they will accept, and the fact that some people simply are not persuaded by the "facts" as much as they are by the "truth." It seems pretty hopeless to me.

- Giving Advertising its Due (Ezra Klein, WaPo Wonkblog)- on the convergence of news, information, and advertising (particularly online)

- Why Is Inequality Higher in America? (Henry Farrell, The Monkey Cage)- An interesting take on comparative political structure (rather than more directly economic factors) as a key cause of inequality.

- And for a less thoughtful take on inequality, see Mitt Romney's statement discussed by Matthew Yglesias here.

- The Next Immigration Challenge (Dowell Myers, NYT Op-Ed)- Illegal immigration to the US is growing of a rate of about....zero. Now what to do to assimilate those already present.

- Arthur Brisbane and Selective Stenography (Glenn Greenwald, Salon)- Going forward, let's just assume that something Greenwald writes will be worth including here each week.

- Lockdown: The Coming War on General-Purpose Computing (Cory Doctorow, boing boing)- Cory Doctorow weaves copyright, SOPA, and the fragmentation of the human-electronic experience together.

- The Rise and Consequences of Inequality (Alan Krueger)- This link will direct you to a set of slides from this presentation by the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Mostly just graphs and they should be self-explanatory.

- Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift Over Role of Women (NYT)- From the front lines of a ridiculous fight between minority religious prerogatives and secular rights.

- We're all guilty of dehumanizing the enemy (Sebastian Junger, WaPo)- If you have not seen it yet, time to watch "Restrepo".

- Making It in America (Adam Davidson, The Atlantic)- If you don't want to read the whole thing, just listen to the recent Planet Money episode that covers the same ground.

Why I (Almost Certainly) Won't Be Voting "Romney" in 2012

2012-01-09T00:05:00.000-06:00

It sometimes seems that this blog has had more reboots than it has had posts in the past year. Sadly, all my good intentions do nothing to add hours on to the day or ideas inside my head. As is fitting the New Year, I am once again resolved to post more regularly here. I'm shooting for weekly-- no more and no less. Both for myself and others, I'll be adding a short section to the bottom of each post linking to some of most interesting things I've read during the week, be it news articles, blogs, books, etc. If you already follow longform.org or The Browser, most of this will be familiar. We'll call it the "Nightstand."
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Four years ago this coming October, I posted a very summary list of the reasons why I chose to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. I have spent the past nearly three and a half years not exactly being bowled over by what he has achieved, and in other cases, deeply disappointed in particular choices made in the White House. I suppose that is par for the course. Like your high school prom, a highly anticipated and even idolized candidate cannot possibly live up to all of the expectations that one puts on it. Instead of trying to come up with a exhaustive list of pro-Obama talking points that continue to be persuasive for me, I have decided to create a not-exhaustive list of the reasons why I will (almost certainly) not be voting for Mitt Romney in November.*

- The most important reason is also the most easily explained. Our politics and policy preferences are simply too far apart. I remain a very liberal European-style social democrat, and Romney is...well, who knows, but he is at best a moderate Republican. I will not enumerate a point-by-point comparison, but suffice it to say that a Romney administration will be government of the 1%, by the 1% and for the 1%. Some readers may think it is naive of me to believe that we do not already have such a government under Obama and the current Congress, and I will agree up to a point, but I do not think that protecting and governing on behalf of the 1% is Obama's raison d'etre, as it would be for Romney.

The following three reasons get at the relationship between a potential Romney presidency and our common faith of Mormonism. I have some very specific (and speculative) concerns about this relationship:

- The LDS Church gets blamed for everything that goes wrong in the US for the next four years. Now, you won't find most people blaming Obama's being black for everything he may have done wrong since 2008, at least in polite company. But you can certainly find that kind of rhetoric, particularly in certain circles on the Internet. And, as I suspect we will see later in the primary season as the other GOP nominees get more and more desperate, insulting and attacking Mormonism is, even in 2012, not as frowned upon as attacking racial minorities. If Romney is elected, I will always hope that he makes the right decisions and governs well on behalf of all Americans; however, mistakes will inevitably be made. I really do not want to see the mountain of articles and blog posts written in the next four years trying to trace every one of Romney's policy decisions and missteps back to Mormonism, no matter how attenuated the link.

- My second and third concerns have nothing to do with the world outside the LDS Church, but rather with the people inside it. Though it strives to be perceived as an "American as apple pie" type of religion, Mormonism retains some authoritarian and theocratic "resources" in its theology and organization from other periods in its history. There are some members that one encounters from time to time who would be more willing to give free rein to those theocratic resources (i.e. to establish principles and rules particular to the Mormon faith as those that ought to govern the whole of society) if given the chance. It is embedded right in Mormon scripture: "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion." (Doctrine and Covenants 121:39)
This kind of theocracy can be an ugly thing, particularly as it seeks to impose itself on a populace that is generally moving farther and farther away from the theocracy's most cherished principles. Again, this has nothing to do with what Mitt Romney will or wants to do, but what certain members of the LDS Church will expect, hope, and urge him to do. Those hopes will inevitably be dashed. Romney will certainly have women in his Cabinet and his administration (in spite of the LDS Church's counsel that women should remain in the home), will have coffee in the West Wing, and will serve alcohol at state functions (in spite of the LDS Church's health code, the Word of Wisdom). This is to say nothing about what Romney will or will not do with regards to more sensitive political issues, such as LGBT issues, abortion/contraception, etc. The inevitable disappointment does not mean that the urging and the teeth gnashing afterwards will be any less ugly.

- Finally, I fear that, if elected, many Mormons will regard President (Brother/Elder) Romney as a sort of de facto sixteenth Apostle, with all of the deference that that entails. It is disturbingly common to hear that General Authorities of the Church are not to be questioned, and that, when they have spoken, "the thinking is done." Just this morning, a member of my congregation said from the podium that is was essential that "the Priesthood become part of the Government, or the country would fall, and I would be happy to cast my vote this way." This quote is not an exaggeration, and was said in the most solemn tones. The implication was clear. It was not just that a member of the Church would rise to a position of visibility and high responsibility, but that "the Priesthood" (for Mormons, God's power delegated to men on the earth) would take the reins of government. Will this same criteria of deference and conformity be applied to policy decisions made by Romney, even if not closely related to Mormon principles? Will those members of the Church who do not display sufficient loyalty to and admiration for President Romney subject themselves to ostracism, or be passed over for church callings (positions or jobs) or other ecclesiastical responsibilities on that basis? Will one's heterodoxy on political issues single that individual out for suspicion by the rest of the membership? It is already difficult to be a liberal in the Church. I do not complain vocally or publicly about this, though I confess that my eye muscles have received quite the workout over the years from how many times I roll them during Sunday meetings. But I do not want to see one Church member's worldly success in the political arena to adversely affect my ability to worship weekly within the body of the Church or to navigate the various institutional gatekeepers that permit one full participation in the Church.

Some readers may think that this is all a little overblown and speculative. That may be, and I would dearly, dearly love to be wrong about all of it. But what I want most dearly is to never have to find out.

*I will confine this to Romney since he is the consensus front-runner and there is only a small (and ever-shrinking) possibility that he will not be the eventual nominee. I also give myself a caveat simply because truth is stranger than fiction and I can imagine some circumstance that would cause me to abstain from voting or switching to Romney-- like Obama personally shooting a person at point blank range at halftime of the Super Bowl. Even then, I might give him the benefit of the doubt depending on the identity of the person he shot.
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The Nightstand (January 1-7, 2012)

- Harder for Americans to Rise from Lower Rungs (NYT, Jason DeParle)- For some, income inequality is not big deal if society is sufficiently mobile socioeconomically. Trouble is, America ranks far behind Canada and Western Europe on both measures. Key quote: “The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.”

- Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins (Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi)- Per usual, an angry and witty Taibbi points out that not only the Iowa caucus, but the entire electoral process, is a sham created to cover up that our candidates are all vetted, paid for, and subservient to the 1%.

- The Decline of the Public Good (Robert Reich)

- Chemerinsky on Texas Election Cases (Erwin Chemerinsky, ABA Journal)- I took a civil rights law class from Chemerinsky in law school (Duke) and there is none better. Also, being a Texas (at least for the moment), these cases have an important effect on the value of my vote come this November.

- Migrants' New Paths Reshaping Latin America (Damien Cave, NYT)- Being a former missionary in Mexico, I'm fascinated by what goes on in Latin America.

- The Global Revolt and Latin America (Roger Burbach, NACLA)- With the various protest movements ongoing in the US, Europe and the Middle East, this is the first coverage I've seen of similar social and economic protests in Latin America.

- What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success (Anu Partanen, Atlantic Monthly)- I love some of these ideas, but to make them happen, we'd basically have to deport 90% of the adult population of the United States and replace them with Finns. That might be reason in itself to give it a try.

- Exploration of Experiences and Psychological Health of Same-sex Attracted Latter-day Saints- These are the initial results coming out of a relatively large (1500+) study being run out of Utah State University. Extremely interesting, though I find self-reporting always a little less reliable. Nevertheless, there is no more scientific test for this. But it is always better to have some kind of broad statistical evidence over anecdote.

- Reversal of Fortune (Patrick Radden Keefe, Vanity Fair)- I've been working on the Chevron-Ecuador case in my day job for the past year, so its probably best that I leave this without further annotation.

- How Many Stephen Colberts Are There? (Charles McGrath, NYT)- Love Colbert. I wish this article had delved a little more deeply into his personal life, but still very interesting.

Gambling Away Their Future

2011-08-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

In the basement of the building where my office is located, there is a small convenience store. I go down there at least once a week for a mid-afternoon snack if the day seems to be dragging on too long. Without fail, every single time I am in the shop, at least one other person in the shop is buying a Texas state lottery ticket. From what I can tell, there appear to be about 20 "games" or variations on the lottery going on in this state at any given time, as the store has a counter to ceiling display of the various tickets, scratch-offs, etc.

I have always lived in places, and associated with people a majority of whom find the idea of a lottery (and by extension, gambling) morally objectionable. Though I am certain that there is some individual variation, the most common explanation for this opinion is that gambling or a lottery is trying to get something ($) for no honest labor. I follow that reasoning, and I can understand why it makes sense to some people as a principle on which to object to gambling. On the other hand, it goes too far. You could use the same criterion to reject a great many other things that these same people find totally unobjectionable, including: the stock market* (explained below), multi-level marketing, and large estate-tax-free inheritances.

The lottery, and the numerous participants that I see on an almost daily basis, bother me for another reason-- lotteries exploit the poor. My observations, which I am reasonably certain could be backed up by more rigorous statistical evidence, are that the people I see buying into the lottery are not the other well-compensated professionals that inhabit my building. Rather, they are the secretaries, the other support staff, security guards, etc. The existence of lotteries are evidence that the broader economic system is broken, that so-called "honest" labor is not deemed to pay well enough, and that resort to other, less-certain means is desirable. Lotteries naturally prey on the human inability to appropriately account for risk, reward and probability. We are born optimists. But worse, they prey on desperation, status/class anxiety resulting from inequality, and greed born of deprivation.

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*Except for people who are granted stock options in their employer, most investors hold equity positions in companies that they do not work for. In addition, some employees who are granted stock options are not in any personal position to affect the performance of those investments. To those two groups, a stock's price would fluctuate, and generate gains or losses, solely on chance and the efforts of other people. Thus, there is arguably no moral difference (there is certainly an economic difference) between gambling and investing. One could argue that investment gains, like interest on a bond, are the price investors charge for the use of their money as capital in an enterprise, but that same logic would purify lotteries and gambling that are directed towards education or other socially salutary purposes (e.g. NC and TX)

The Debt Ceiling and Collective Punishment

2011-07-26T14:01:00.000-05:00

There is a strong (and growing) chance that, barring an epidemic of reasonableness breaking out in the nation's capital, the US will default on its debts sometime in early August, perhaps as early as a week from today. At that point, the government will not be able to meet all of its financial obligations, including interest payments on the debt, Social Security payments, Medicare reimbursement, etc. However, it will continue to be able to meet some of those obligations. Therefore, one effect would be that the President and his administration would have to prioritize certain kinds of payments that would be made first, while other types of payments may not be made at all.

As long as priorities have to be set, I would like to see the following: instead of cutting of Medicare, Social Security, military salaries, etc. entirely, let's cut them only in those states whose Senators will not support a clean debt limit hike. Every state has two Senators (that makes assigning responsibility easier than by representation in the House of Representatives, which varies widely by state), so if both your Senators support, or reject, a debt ceiling hike, you get 100%, or 0%, respectively, of whatever money the federal government is able to set aside for those purposes. If your state is split, you get 50%. (Using Senators instead of Representatives also makes the math easier) Its pretty well-established that many, if not most, of the states whose Senators will likely reject a clean debt ceiling hike are government spending mooches, so they have even more to lose.1

Its a form of collective punishment. Likely nothing will persuade citizens to move their Senators (and Representatives) to support debt ceiling increases, or moving said leaders out of office, than depriving them of their increasingly invisible government benefits. Someone might argue that what this proposal really does is hurt the poor and the vulnerable who are dependent on these benefits, a charge to which I am particularly sensitive. However, when the choice is between depriving all of the poor, or depriving only a portion of the poor (and a disproportionate number of the white rural poor who voted Republican at that), I would almost always choose the latter. But, as the cliche goes, elections have consequences, and they ought not to just have consequences for the ruling class, but for those that elect them.

I'm fully aware of how politically infeasible this kind of proposal would be. Collective punishment is a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war, and after all, politics is war by other means (Joe Klein on Gingrich in the New Yorker). Any President who tried it would be committing electoral suicide for him/herself and their party, since any swing state that was deprived would henceforth cease to be a swing state. But one can dream...

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1 I am presuming for the purpose of this post, and I think with good reason, that a "clean" debt ceiling vote would break down on predictably partisan lines, with Democrats voting for and Republicans voting against. That means that NC (where I grew up) gets 50% of its payments, Texas (the state in which I currently reside) gets nothing (as does Utah, where many family members reside), while NY and CA would get 100%.

The "Mammon of Unrighteousness" and the Means of Production

2011-06-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to teach a Sunday School class that focused on Jesus' teachings on wealth and material goods as found in the New Testament. Part of the assigned reading came from Luke 16 and the parable of the unjust steward. I will confess that I have always thought this particular story and especially the moral that Jesus seems to draw from it incredibly puzzling. Following the parable (which briefly is the story of a servant, who upon being notified that he is being fired, cheats his master by writing down the debts of his master's debtors), Jesus proclaims, "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when y fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." (Luke 16:9). Like I said before, I find this advice puzzling. Jesus (both through the parable and in his counsel afterwards) seems to applaud the actions of the dishonest steward, and encourage his followers to make friends of those who appreciate ill-gotten gains. That feels strange to me, and not an entirely accurate reflection of the Savior's ethics.

As with many things, the problem is partially remedied by consulting a better translation of the Bible (KJV --> NRSV). The NRSV renders the same verse "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes." The phrase "by means of" seems to entirely change the meaning of the passage, from one of seeking friends with questionable morals to using dishonest wealth to make the kind of friends that will be able to advance your spiritual progression. Read in conjunction with the parable that follows, that of Lazarus and the rich man, this seems like a teaching that is much more consistent with the remainder of Jesus' sayings.

But what are we to do with "dishonest wealth" (or in the KJV, the "mammon of unrighteousness")? As I read it, Jesus has completely glossed over the issue of teaching how wealth ought to be obtained and moved ahead to how we ought to use it. In our time (not unlike Jesus' own), the systems and methods of wealth accumulation are morally suspect. To a greater or lesser extent, the wealth and goods of this world and the economic systems that produce them necessitate the exploitation of the poor, the destruction of the environment, the tearing apart of the social fabric through inequality, and other assorted evils. Even if we do not directly participate in these systems on the production side, our mass consumerism taints our wealth (if not necessarily our income) and possessions by association and makes us, at the very least, complicit in such injustices. Thus, we all are proud owners of the model-year top-of-the-line mammon of unrighteousness and Satan controls the means of its production.

Again, I think that Jesus glosses over this step, not because it is not important, but because he assumes it. Only those of us most committed to radically separating ourselves from the world's means of production and consumption (meaning a kind of "living off the grid") could hope to escape this guilt-by-association. Rather, Jesus fruitfully turns to the question of what we can do to remedy the guilt. His answer: "make friends." What does that mean? I believe that it means to use the mammon of unrighteousness to cure those ills and harms that were caused through its production-- to feed and clothe the poor, to smooth the rough edges of the economy on the least fortunate, and to break down walls of class, privilege, and division.

This is not a call to renounce all money (though such an imperative is not difficult to find in the Gospels). Money and wealth are necessary to provide for our families and to aid in building up our communities. Out of this necessity, we make whatever psychological and spiritual accommodation we have to with the decidedly disinterested attitude that Jesus and the early Christians had towards wealth accumulation and a "middle-class" lifestyle, as contrasted with our contemporary dogged pursuit of both. Absent the most radical kind of renunciation, we cannot avoid the mammon of unrighteousness. What remains to be done is to use it in such a way that guarantees not only our present comfort, but our eternal happiness.

Open Letter/Prayer of Thanksgiving to MTV and the Makers of "16 and Pregnant"

2011-06-03T00:27:00.000-05:00

Dear MTV and the Directors/Producers of "16 and Pregnant":

I just saw this week's episode, featuring a young couple from Draper, Utah who found themselves pregnant during high school. Thank you for the fact that she was not Mormon. I know, its silly and naive to think that this same sort of thing does not happen to Mormons both in and outside of Utah; of course it does. But you helped me avoid an unfortunate piece of my religious culture that I would rather ignore for the time being. Also, thanks for the fact that she attended a Catholic high school and so was not surrounded by a bunch of judgmental Mormon youth and their parents. That was helpful (for me) too.

That is all. In the name of Lady Gaga, amen.

Mi Patrimonio Mexicano (My Mexican Heritage) - now bilingual

2011-04-25T00:34:00.000-05:00

Recently, a dear friend from my two years in Mexico contacted me and asked me to write more frequently in Spanish, so I thought that I would take that opportunity for this particular topic. The English can be found in full below.

Hace unos días, un amigo querido que conocí durante mis dos años en Mexíco me escribió y me pidió que escribiera mas frecuentemente en el español, entonces pienso que este es el momento apropiado con este tema. La traduccion plena se encuentra mas abajo.

Mi esposa y yo tenemos un hábito que, a lo mejor, parece muy extraño a nuestros amigos americanos. Durante la Semana Santa y las fiestas navideñas, muy a menudo nos encontrarás sentado en la sofá o la cama, viendo programas de television en el idioma español que muestran ceremonias de el catolicismo. Esta semana pasada, pasamos la noche de viernes viendo una emisión de La Pasión de Iztapalapa, una tradicion de casi 180 años. Tambien vimos un poquito de las estaciones de la cruz por el papa Benedicto XVI desde Roma. Y cada 12 de diciembre, nos puede encontrar viendo el espectáculo de las mañanitas a la Virgen de Guadalupe desde su basilica en la Ciudad de México. Aunque no creemos en todas las cosas que estos acontecimientos simbolicen, y aunque estas ceremonias no pertenecen a nuestra nacionalidad o communidad religiosa, sentimos un respecto profundo y nostalgia por estas tradiciones porque los dos pasamos mucho tiempo entre el pueblo mexicano, y como resultado, desarrollamos un amor grande por esta gente. (Yo era misionero en la Misión México Tampico por dos años y mi esposa vivia en Guadalajara por unos años cuando era joven, y despues servía como misionera en el estado de Washington entre los trabajadores inmigrantes, que eran mexicanos en mayor parte.) Yo siento muy fuerte "de estar en casa" con estas tradiciones culturales, aun cuando no son mias, y este sentimiento va más alla de las casualidades de mi país natal. Y porque pertenecemos a una iglesia que está tan pobre en liturgia, especialmente en cuanto a la Semana Santa, debemos agarrarlo dondequiera se encuentra.

My wife and I have a habit that likely seems strange to most of our American friends. During Holy Week and the season of Christmas, you will not infrequently find us watching Spanish-language television broadcasts of Roman Catholic religious services. Just this past week, we spent our Friday night viewing a broadcast of the Passion Play of Itztapalapa, a tradition nearly 180 years old. We also watched a portion of Pope Benedict XVI's Stations of the Cross from the Colosseum in Rome. On any December 12, you can probably catch us watching the birthday celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe from the basilica in Mexico City. Even though we do not believe in all of the things that these events symbolize, and that these ceremonies do not belong to either our nationalities or our religious community, we both feel respect and nostalgia for these traditions because of time that we both spent among the Mexican people, and the deep love that we developed as a result. (I was a missionary in the Tampico Mexico area for two years and my wife lived in Guadalajara for a time as a child, then served a mission in Washington state among migrant workers, many of who were Mexican). I know that feel a deep sense of belonging in cultural traditions not technically my own which transcends the accidents of my place of birth. And since we belong to a church that is poor in liturgy, particularly surrounding the Easter season, we will take it wherever we can get it.

Two recent religion book reviews

2011-04-18T00:25:00.000-05:00

My wife encouraged me to add more book reviews to my blogging habits, so I thought I would give that a try.

Just wanted to add two quick book reviews here-

The first is American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by David Campbell and Robert Putnam (of Bowling Alone fame). So much has been written about this book elsewhere, that I do not have anything to add to the conversation-- other than that it has my unequivocal recommendation. The authors do an incredible job of weaving sociological and statistical insights with detailed on-the-ground observations and vignettes that give the text a very complete scope. For a book that relies heavily on statistics, it is remarkably easy to read. I have neither seen nor heard of another such accessible text that gives such a good picture not just of where American religion is today, but where it is going.

The second book is The Myth of American Religious Freedom by David Sehat, a historian at Georgia State University. While I also liked this book, I would add that it is mis-titled. The title should have been A History of How Religious Persons Violated Other Americans' Freedom, which after all, is a pretty good title for a book, and could have been one quite a bit longer than this one, weighing in at a slim 294 pages. The author sets for himself the purpose to explode myths of religious freedom on both the political left and the right-- first, that there is and has been a strict separation (or wall) between church and state and secondly, that religion is indispensable, both then and now, to the preservation of American freedom. (Sehat also adds a third myth- the myth of religious decline, meaning that religion was once important to the American project, but has ceased to be so). It strikes me that the first myth is an essentially historical question (Did the Founders establish a wall between church and state?), while the second represents a question of analysis that will necessarily evoke value judgments about the nature of "religion" and "freedom." Though the two questions do not quite stand directly on par, the author gets credit for achieving the goals that he has set out for himself, though in a way that will undoubtedly be more pleasing to partisans of one side more than the other.

Sehat traces the history of American religious conduct since prior to the American Revolution up to the present time, purportedly by examining the stories of those who fell outside of the religious mainstream. This is a kind of historical reading, though the eyes of dissenters, pioneered by Howard Zinn and others, and I thought more could have been done with it here, particularly with non-Christian Americans. He manages to disprove the liberal myth of separation by identifying and examining the persistent influence of something he terms the "moral establishment," which is a loose group, changing in composition over time, but generally representing the mean of American religious life. At the same time, the myth of religion's contribution to the progress of freedom is disproven by simply showing what a nasty piece of work the moral establishment was (and is), due to its reliance on, as the author terms it, "coercion" rather than more democratic means of "consensus."

The truth as Sehat recognizes it is that religion has consistently been tied into American history, politics, and society, but most frequently to the detriment of American freedom. Here we miss what would have been a worthwhile leap out of the straight historical narrative of is (or was) and into the ethical framework of ought, a leap with which I understand some historians are predictably uncomfortable. But the question remains worth asking: should a more solid separation of church and state been enforced? (which is to say nothing of who or how it would have been enforced, given that large portions of the most powerful institutions in American life either constituted or were heavily dominated by, the moral establishment) Or likewise, what should have changed about American religious practice to make it a more positive contributor to American freedom?

Looking to this latter question, one area I would like to see further research and analysis is the capitalist-industrial-evangelical fusion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wherein large portions of the moral establishment acquiesced in and promoted the demands of capital over and against labor, and took the side of the mighty property owners against the working class. Can we imagine an alternative form of the moral establishment which took the rights of labor and the welfare of the working class as a guiding principle? Roman Catholicism did this, but at the time, as a minority under suspicion, it did not yet form part of the moral establishment. Likewise, there are plenty of examples of religious communities operating under principles of religious socialism or collectivism (e.g. the Mormon United Order, the Oneida Community, the Amana colonies), but none achieved size or longevity of any kind and most were later subsumed by the capitalist hegemony. What religious tenets or other accidents of history needed to change to create a group that could have served this purpose?

Despite feeling that Sehat could have gone farther (and that it was somewhat misleadingly titled), The Myth of American Religious Freedom is still a worthwhile read, particularly in an age such as our own, shot through with religious conflict, bad history, and Founder-worship.

Extreme Advertising

2011-04-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

On Monday, Amazon announced that it would begin selling its Kindle e-reader device at a $25 discount. The new pricing comes with a catch-- the newly discounted device, given an Orwellian name like "Kindle with Special Offers" loads your Kindle with ads that replace the current author portrait screen savers and run in the Kindle home screen. For now, Amazon promises that ads will not be placed within e-books, though one wonders for how long such a promise will be kept.

In the past two weeks, we have seen two other ad-related blowups-- first, the fight over the fifth season of Mad Men had at least something to do with the network's desire to see more produce placement in the show (a show about the 1960s no less) and second, the lawsuit over Time Warner Cable's allowing customers to stream their cable channels to an iPad tablet (which almost certainly has something to do with lost ad revenue for content providers). For someone who loves books and loves reading, it is distressing to see the ad wars carry over into books. When I read, I want as few distractions as possible and I specifically don't want a reminder that there is some other non-book thing which I should be wanting to buy at this very moment.

My wife can tell you that I love A1 Steak Sauce. Indeed, I put A1 on many things that are not steak or even meat, including french fries, tater tots, and even the occasional baked potato. I sometimes joke with my wife that to me, these things are mere "A1 Delivery Vehicles." The point is that I don't want my books, TV shows, movies, theater, etc. to merely become "Ad Delivery Vehicles." But it looks like we are increasingly entering a world in which nothing is worth doing for itself, but only as a means for rabid capitalists to point us towards some other commodity, which practically makes Mad Men a vehicle for prophecy itself.

Value of a Life-- Going Up?

2011-02-24T00:28:00.000-06:00

Just a quickie set of thoughts here. On February 16, the New York Times reported that several federal agencies had recently increased the value those agencies placed on human life. For example, the NYT stated that the EPA was now using a value of $8.1 million per life, up from $6.8 during the previous administration, and that the FDA was using a value of $7.9 million, up by more than half from $5 million in 2008. On first glance, it seems crude to even suggest that anyone or anything, much less the government, can place a value on "a" human life, not any particular human life, just "a" life. To some degree, many of us subscribe to the more Romantic notion that the value of a life (and in particular our own lives and the lives of those that we care about) is infinite and incalculable. Nevertheless, there are quite good reasons to allow the government to set these kinds of values-- governments typically use such values in calculating the relative costs and benefits of a particular policy or regulation, and courts and attorneys use these values or those similar to them in order to compensate those who have lost loved ones due to negligence, etc.

But rather than defending the practice of placing a monetary value on a human life, the question I want to ask is: why is it going up and why is it going up at this particular moment? The technical answer is easy: the value of a life goes up because Americans are self-reporting greater risk aversion and increased self-evaluation. But why ought the value of a life to go up? Millions are unemployed (and many for increasingly lengthy periods of joblessness), entire cities are being swallowed by blight (e.g. Detroit), and contemporary governmental budget strains foresee a coming time when the government will take a greater portion of our personal wealth (in some form or another) but we will receive fewer benefits and services in return. By simple supply-and-demand, our current economic predicament suggests that our lives ought to be valued more cheaply (i.e. the supply of persons has risen (through population growth) while the demand for persons (employment + other productive activities) has remained the same or fallen). Nevertheless, the valuation has risen sharply precisely when the US has entered this prolonged recession. I wish I had some kind of answer, but for now, I am just intrigued by the question.

More Sunday School goodness

2011-01-31T13:23:00.000-06:00

Last week, approximately a month too late, we finally had our Gospel Doctrine class on the birth of Jesus (Matthew 2; Luke 2). I decided to pick up the story a little earlier and discuss Matthew's genealogy of Jesus (actually Joseph) in Matthew 1. We discussed a number of issues related to this genealogy, and I wanted to end by discussing the women listed in that genealogy. Women were not typically listed in Hebrew genealogies (see the Old Testament), so this makes Matthew's exceptional in that regard. Matthew's genealogy lists four women (five if you count Mary)- Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. On first glance, not a terribly auspicious group. Tamar pretended to be a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law Judah, Rahab was a prostitute who betrayed her own city of Jericho (to the benefit of the Israelites), and Bathsheba was an adulteress for whom David slew Uriah the Hittite, which leaves Ruth, who went by night and after uncovering his "feet," slept beside a strange man. I remarked to the class that this was a group of "scandalous" women, and apparently, as a whole, not one dedicated to our contemporary ideals of modesty or chastity. A member of the class took serious issue with my depiction of Ruth as being like the other "scandalous" women. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that, even if pure and virtuous, Ruth is "scandalous" by her inclusion in the lineage of David (and later Jesus), even though she was a "Moabitess," a non-Israelite by birth. Moreover, as pointed out in a footnote to the NRSV, in ancient Hebrew literature, sometimes a "foot" is not just a foot. I'll keep this PG-13 by not making that point more explicit. Whether Ruth was or was not a virtuous woman is really completely beside the point I am trying to make, and was beside the larger point that I was making in discussing the inclusion of these women in Jesus' genealogy.

The distressing tendency of female Biblical figures to fall into the Madonna/whore dichotomy (and disproportionately on the latter side of the division) is well known, and its too disturbing to elaborate on here. My purpose is to point out that we have an inability to appreciate and find meaning in the stories and lives of characters in the scriptures, unless they can be simply categorized as a paragon of virtue or a cautionary tale. Ruth, in the LDS Church, has been cast in the virtuous role, and there is a cultural blind spot to those parts of her tale that do not seem to conform with this preconceived notion. There are likewise figures on the other side, whose virtues are too easily ignored because of the role in which they are cast. We ought to have greater appreciation for the fact that these facile categories obscure more about human nature than their elucidate, particularly given that the space between triumphant virtue and abject moral failure is one that most of us occupy every day of our lives.

The Pre-Reformation Spirit of Correlation

2011-01-17T00:09:00.000-06:00

I just finished Diarmaid MacCulloch's excellent book The Reformation: A History. It's dense and long, but I highly recommend it as a one-volume history of the whole sweep of that period (see the link to Amazon in my left sidebar). There was a particular part of the story of the Reformation that stuck out to me as it relates to an experience I recently had teaching Sunday School in our ward.

Prior to and during the period of the Reformation (if not also after), the Roman Catholic Church vigorously suppressed the reading of the Bible in the vernacular languages of Europe by its laity. Pope Paul V, in 1606, said "Do you not know that so much reading of Scripture ruins the Catholic religion?" In Italy, those wishing to read such a Bible had to obtain the permission of their local bishop. Given that access to the Bible was a support, if not a direct impetus, to the evangelism of Protestant and Reformed movements, the Catholic Church's concern has the benefit of having been practically prophetic. In response to a priest who warned him against publishing scriptures for the common man, William Tyndale said "before very long I shall cause a plough boy to know the scriptures better than you do!" (This quote was cited by Elder D. Todd Christofferson in the April 2010 General Conference, and has been cited in numerous other conference talks and Church publications, primarily because of its appeal as a kind of ironic quasi-prophecy regarding Joseph Smith). Particularly given the generally poor state of education among priests at the time, this prediction has unquestionably come true in our own age.

Now to my experience. I have been teaching Gospel Doctrine in our ward for the past 14 months or so. As part of the first lesson of this year's New Testament curriculum, which has the purpose of introducing the New Testament and trying to get class members motivated to read and keep up with each week's lessons, I prepared a short handout. The handout contained a list of extracurricular resources, including alternative translations of the Bible, textbooks, recorded lectures, and study aids, that class members could use as part of their personal study. In explaining the handout, I emphasized at least twice that the handout was in no sense a syllabus for the class and that these resources were purely for personal use as an enrichment to one's own study of the scriptures. I made such a handout because I have generally found that Church members are interested in knowing more about the scriptures, but do not know where to find good material. I tried to be judicious in creating that list of resources, and chose materials that could be appreciated by non-academics, and that generally reflected whatever scholarly consensus exists regarding the New Testament. As a corollary to this point, with one exception, I did not list materials either published by the Church or by Deseret Book, solely since I assume that most members are familiar with the range of materials available from those sources. At first, there appeared to be no problem. However, immediately following the end of that class, I was pulled aside by the Sunday School President who informed me, citing and pointing to a copy of the Church Handbook of Instructions, that we were to only teach from Church-published or -approved materials, and that he would issue such a clarification to the class the following Sunday.

It may not be readily apparent what this experience has to do with the Reformation, so let me explain-- I see a similar idea at work in both. The goal is to achieve total message control. There is no way that the Correlation Committee (the primary drivers behind the emphasis of "only-use-Church-approved-materials") could ban the use of the scriptures by regular members of the LDS Church, even if they wanted to (which I am not arguing that they do). It is one thing to pull such a feat off in the nascent age of mass printing; it is quite another to do it in the age of the Internet. But the Bible, like any text, does not speak for itself. It must be interpreted. Controlling the interpretation of the text is just as good as controlling the dissemination of the text itself. For Reformation-era Catholics, removing the possibility of direct access to the Bible was a means of preventing the rise of a diversity of opinions or interpretations regarding the meaning of Scripture, or under a still more sinister interpretation of events, to prevent the laity from realizing the weaknesses or errors of their teaching. Modern Mormons are, by contrast, allowed (even strongly encouraged) to read frequently from a personal copy of the scriptures. Nevertheless, there are strong social and institutional norms that pull one's gaze away from "outside" resources and toward Correlation's One True Interpretation of the Scriptures (TM). Not least among these norms is an explicit prohibition on using non-approved materials in lessons, which is published not only in the CHI but in every manual produced by Correlation. That the list of approved materials is extremely short and is entirely populated by products of Correlation can render the system a perfect echo chamber. However, my experience emphasized not just the norm that the teachers were not to use or cite from non-approved resources in lessons (I made it clear that I did not), but that regular class members should not be given suggestions as to resources that they could, in their own discretion, choose to utilize as part of their personal scripture study. This is total message control, not just in the chapel, but in the home, just the way the pre-Reformation Catholic hierarchy liked it.

I wish that, as a people, we were trusted more. I wish that there was less fear about what was "non-approved sources" and less simple trust in the contents of the approved ones. I wish that this incident did not feel like a compromise of my personal integrity. Mostly, I wish that questions, disagreements, and doubts could be faced with boldness and hard-won knowledge, instead of shame and fear.

Recalculating Eisenhower

2011-01-02T20:37:00.001-06:00

In April 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech entitled "The Chance for Peace" before a group of journalists and newspaper editors. In that speech, he said the following:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Coming across this quotation several days ago, and thinking back to my previous post on the federal budget, I wondered how Ike's comparisons would hold up in 2010. As I alluded to in that post, American defense spending sums to more than half of all the defense spending worldwide. That means that the United States alone spends more on its defense and military than all the other nations of the world...combined. Let's take a look at the numbers:

"One modern heavy bomber"- Northrup Grumman B-2 Spirit (the "stealth bomber")- total program cost (avg./aircraft) - $2.87 billion in 2010 dollars.
"Modern brick school"- average cost to build a high school in 2008- ~$20 million. Furnishing and staffing the school would cost about half this again, so we'll work with a figure of $30 million. That works out to 95.67 modern high schools for each stealth bomber, of which the United States has 20 in active service. That works out to nearly 2,000 brand new schools merely for those bombers currently in active service.
"Electric power plants"- recent estimates from different parts of the country put the cost of a new coal power plant generating sufficient energy to power 150,000 homes would cost $1 billion. So instead of 120,000 homes in Ike's day, two modern coal plants would power over 300,000 (per plane). It should be said that nuclear plants cost considerably more, equivalent to 3 or 4 such bombers.
"Fully equipped hospitals"- a recently constructed modern hospital in Waco, Texas cost approximately $32 million to build. Staffing and equipping a modern hospital obviously costs a great deal more than the school, but even assuming a total cost of $100 million, a single B-2 bomber would buy nearly 30 such hospitals.
"Concrete highway"- to build a six-lane Interstate freeway costs between $7-$12 million per mile (less extensive roads can cost less than $1 million per mile in some states). Even taking the high estimate, you could build almost 240 miles of interstate highway. Perhaps more importantly, the average cost to construct a mile of light rail in the United states is $35 million. That's 80 miles of light rail, or the length of my daily commute to and from Houston twice over.
"Fighter plane"- the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter costs approximately $89 million.
"Bushels of wheat"- worldwide, wheat prices are about $6 per bushel. That works out to about $3 million for Eisenhower's half million bushels. For $6, that gets us about 500 million bushels of wheat. To make this a more useful figure, for each F-35, of which the military plans to buy more than 2,000, we could buy every man, woman, and child in America one and a half Big Mac extra value meals.
"Destroyer"- each of the Navy's new Zumwalt-class destroyers is estimated to cost about $3.3 billion.
"New home"- For the price of the average new home sold in the United States in October 2010 (cost $248,000), that means we could build over 13,000 such new homes. For an average family, that means housing nearly 40,000 people, a fivefold increase from Eisenhower's day.

Obviously, none of the above makes the United States' amount of military spending self-evidently excessive, nor establishes that the alternative expenditure is more worthwhile. But, as President Eisenhower pointed out, every penny that we dedicate to building something for the military could have been spent in other ways. Over the next few years as we hear the inevitable back-and-forth of deficit reduction, I expect that we will hear the words "non-defense discretionary spending." The implicit assertion behind this concept is that we spend Monopoly money on the military, but real dollars on everything else. Nobody actually believes that, but it is not until we attempt to lay out the opportunity costs of all those planes, ships, and guns, that it becomes more clear what a "theft" it represents.

The Filibernie of 2010

2010-12-12T23:07:00.000-06:00

What words can one possibly add to Senator Bernie Sanders' epic not-really-a-filibuster this past Friday? Since it went on for eight and a half hours, not much. No doubt that it was a terrific piece of political theater, unlikely to shape any substantive policy (but for the purest example of political theater imaginable, see Bill Clinton's appearance in the White House briefing room at approximately the same time). I am however, utterly disappointed in the lack of media coverage the speech attracted after the fact. For one rare moment, Senator Sanders managed to break through the corporate PR-speak talking points that have become the stock in trade of both political parties, and spoke the truth to power about the miserable inequality and injustice in the American political and economic system. If you missed the speech (broadcast live and in its entirety on CSPAN, which practically guarantees that everyone missed it), and gathered your news from the 24-hour cable networks and a couple of prominent national newspapers the next day, you would hardly have been able to detect any trace that someone had given a speech that lasted almost the entire workday of most Americans. Where was the thoughtful analysis of Sanders' bold claims? Where was the counter-evidence? Is the system really as bad as he says it is? Or is he just some old crank rattling off a bunch of misleading and meaningless figures? As with all stories that don't quite fit with the media's preferred simple left-and-right narrative, or which discomfits the corporate overlords, it is best that such things are simply forgotten, now and forever.

What I Am Reading- E-Mail Edition

2010-11-21T22:56:00.000-06:00

A couple of months ago, I wrote here on my need for a digital diet. I would be lying if I said that I had made any significant progress on decreasing the quantity of my time spent reading online. However, I can say that I have been making a concerted effort to read more carefully and slowly, thus avoiding the problems of a decreased attention span that I was worried about. I thought that it would be useful to set out what exactly I spend all of that time reading on a daily basis and why I cannot manage to give it up. This time, I will limit myself to things that are delivered directly to my inbox on a regular basis. I will reserve a separate page for blogs and for other websites.

1) New York Times - I get a summary of the NYT headlines twice a day, first thing in the morning and the afternoon update when the markets close. I certainly cannot say that I read it "cover-to-cover" if such a thing even exists on the Internet. I will generally read 1-2 articles in the top headlines, along with a scattering of articles in the Nation, World, Politics, and Business sections. I generally steer clear of the editorials, but I do follow a couple of the major op-ed writers (e.g. Krugman) and guest contributors. On Fridays, I receive the Movies and Books update. I don't really make decisions on what I want to see at the movies based on reviews, but I do take a lot of recommendations for books from the NYT.

2) Washington Post- I get a daily e-mail from the WP similar to the one I described in the NYT. I tend to read fewer articles here, since many of the top stories are duplicative of what I have already read in the NYT. I do make a practice of reading more deeply in some of the political or policy analysis pieces, since I expect the WP to have a deeper expertise in the area that any other publication. I also read any of E.J. Dionne's columns, and other columns with topics of interest (though I tend to find the WP's main political columnists pretty pathetic). I also receive the Sunday Agenda and Sunday Roundup, which give me the gist of what was said by policymakers on the major Sunday morning talk shows, shows that I generally miss while I am away at church.

3) Slatest - For those who are not familiar, the online magazine Slate sends out a list of 12 links to some of the most important stories three times a day-- morning, afternoon, and evening. The idea was introduced back in 2009, and I find that the idea appeals to me more than its execution. The original plan was that the Slatest could track a couple of stories as they developed throughout the day across a variety of the most reputable sources, including major blogs, national newspapers, and wire services. In reality, 6-8 of the 12 links are the same from one edition to another. Not quite as dynamic as I had hoped. Many of the stories that Slatest links to are things that I already picked up in the WP or the NYT, but Slatest tends to round out my reading with articles from newspapers in Chicago, Boston, or the West Coast. Slatest will also pick up some quirky story from time to time that makes for just fun reading. Again, I cannot say that I ever read all 12 stories (again because of the duplication from other sources and between editions), but I generally read 2-3 each time Slatest is published.

4) Wonkbook - Technically this is a Washington Post product, but it seems different enough to list here. Ezra Klein, a prolific liberal blogger, created this daily morning roundup of policy news as a regular part of his blog now hosted at the WP. I like it because it tends to focus a little more on policy, featuring the opinions of experts and academics, rather than politicians and their talking points. I read it in its entirety.

5) The Browser- This is a daily e-mail digest of 10-15 really interesting stories from around the web. It does a good job of avoiding most of the mainstream American journalism like you see on Slatest, but picks up overseas stories, longer essays, and items of cultural and artistic interest. I generally read 1-3 stories from each edition.

6) Today's Big Thing- I almost don't want to admit that I follow this, but here goes anyway. This is a frivolous and fun little list of 5-6 viral videos that are going around the Web on a daily basis. Its good for a couple of laughs at the end of a long day. I typically watch 1 or 2.

7) Houston Press- Weekly e-mail from Houston's alternative weekly magazine. Usually stories of local interest only. I generally read the main story maybe once a month.

8) New York Review of Books- Biweekly e-mail from literary magazine. These are typically longer reviews than found in the weekly NYT and they are a little more selective in picking titles of higher quality and significance. I read 1-2 essays in each edition.

9) NPR Book Notes- Another set of book articles. Not focused entirely on reviews. This is a recent addition for me. I read 1-2 articles in each weekly edition.

So that's it. Like I said above, we have not even scratched the surface of what I read in terms of blogs and print materials, much less other websites I follow daily by other means.

Rome Temple Groundbreaking

2010-10-24T20:03:00.001-05:00

Three years ago this month, I published a post on this blog (one of my first) comparing my impressions of visiting Temple Square in Salt Lake City with my first visit to the Vatican in Rome. A year later, in the October 2008 General Conference, President Monson announced that the LDS Church would be building a temple in Rome, Italy. At that time, I updated my original post with some thoughts about my aspirations (and fears) about this project. Curiously, I still receive a new comment on that post about every six months. As I checked my Google Analytics stats a couple of weeks ago, that post is by several orders of magnitude my most viewed. Needless to say, I find this puzzling (if not a little disappointing). The only explanation that I can find is that one of the pictures I used comes up early in a Google Images search for the Vatican, and that my post is one of the first links in a search for "LDS Rome temple" or some variation thereof. I never imagined that the post would get the kind of readership it did; if I had, I might have done a more thoughtful and nuanced job of it.

The main thrust of the original post was my own preference for the human warmth of Temple Square vs. the stony opulence of the Vatican. Some might say that I am biased, since I am Mormon and not Catholic, to which I would reply, "Well, duh." I think that some took the post to be too combative and too critical of the Vatican, especially given a history of anti-Catholic sentiment among Mormons. Maybe the "vs." in the post's title set it up to be too much of a competition. Such was not my intention. The point was never to put the two tourist attractions up against one another as proof of either institution's value or truth claims. That would have been silly. But, as I stated towards the beginning of my original post, no Mormon who visits the Vatican can escape the comparison, even if only in his own head. In all frankness, while I retain my own preference (for reasons that are personal and biased), I am not entirely convinced that, for a more objective observer, Temple Square comes off favorably at all in the comparison. More on that below. At the very least, I was allowed to tour the Vatican and enjoy all of the sights without being molested by missionaries asking for people who might want to talk to them about becoming Catholic.

Many of the comments to the updated post fell into two categories: an overenthusiastic defense of Catholicism or an overenthusiastic defense of Mormonism. (Note: While the post currently shows only seven comments, several others were deleted for content and tone). One (Catholic) commenter accused me of having a "holy envy" towards the Roman Catholic Church, and chiding me for comparing the two where the LDS Church's contributions to Western civilization are so much slighter than those of the Roman Catholic Church's. The two points are linked. I will concede the holy envy point. To equate what Mormons have historically created in the world of art, architecture, music, and thought on par with what Catholics (or those influenced by the Catholic tradition) have created would be a fool's errand. That is not to say that all of those contributions have been unequivocally positive (ditto Mormonism). But it remains an apples-to-oranges comparison. The LDS Church is currently less than 200 years old, when compared with a history of nearly 2000 years for the Catholic Church. The LDS Church has never had the level of political power or patronage that the Catholic Church has wielded over the centuries. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church at only 200 years old had not produced any of its most enduring and beautiful patrimony. One could argue that most, if not all, of what is most awe-inspiring about the Vatican (and by extension, the Catholic Church) mostly originates in its second millennium of existence. I hope that Mormonism has a brighter future as it ages and matures. Anyone who knows me would never mistake me for a proponent for the shallow kitsch that passes as Mormon culture in the late 20th and early 21st century.

The other set of commenters (primarily writing in response to the comment I referenced above) fall into the predictable pattern of far too many Mormons, that of a nearly congenital inability to see anything good outside of their own faith tradition. Several LDS commenters wanted to compare the Vatican to the temple itself, and not to Temple Square. While some of the fault lies with the comparison that I first proposed, there is a fundamental way in which the Vatican and the temple differ so as to render any such comparison of little utility. St. Peter's Basilica (and the attached buildings) is a house of worship, but for nearly all 365 days each year, it is open to the public as a tourist attraction. While Temple Square is a tourist attraction, the Temple itself (or at least its interior) is off limits to the public-- it is used purely for worship. This is not meant as a value judgment on either, but merely to point out their differences. Some of these commenters were too harsh in their critique of the value that the Catholic Church places on the ornamentation of the Vatican buildings. That critique is off base first because it ignores that these buildings simply serve a different purpose from LDS temples, but also because it ignores that others' definition of what constitutes "worship" may be significantly broader than our own.

So now the LDS Church has finally broken ground on the Rome temple. An architectural rendering is found at the top of this post. I am pleased that the temple is not one of the cookie-cutter mini-temples. As far as I can tell, the design of this temple is original, as I have not see any other temple with these particular features. One cannot know what the interior may look like without attending the temple once completed (or at least the open house), but I am hopefully that there will be some originality there as well. Despite what many of co-religionists will be tempted to argue ("The ordinances are what matter, no what the building looks like"), the image that the temple presents does matter. If not, we could just do the ordinances in a barn. To the contrary, the LDS Church spends millions of dollars on each of its temples (far more than the Catholic Church spends on its buildings abroad, I might add), precisely because we do care what kind of image these edifices project. I am also heartened by the fact that the temple grounds appear to indicate plans for a visitor's center and an arts/cultural center (those would be the buildings to the left and top of the temple itself. The building to the right is likely an ordinary meetinghouse). I am hopeful that the Church will avail itself of the opportunity to feature art and LDS history that is local to Europe, and not put up the same ten or twelve paintings that we have in every building and temple elsewhere in the Church.

Overall, I am encouraged by the plans that have been put forth. It remains to be seen how they will be implemented, but what I have seen leaves me more sanguine about what the Rome Temple could become.

The Federal Budget Game

2010-10-10T23:41:00.000-05:00

Recently this article by scholars at Harvard Business School and Duke University has been getting a lot of attention. Its not a long article, so by all means, read it in its entirety. The gist of the article is that, based on a survey of a representative sample of over 5,000 Americans, Americans have no clue about the present state of wealth (not income) inequality in this country, but also that their desired distribution of wealth differs vastly from reality (in fact, Americans would find the distribution of wealth in Sweden to be most agreeable). While the first conclusion is worrying, the second is generally heartening. The fact that more people approve of a more equal distribution of wealth ought to be celebrated. However, survey results cannot confer on any distribution of wealth the status of "true," "fair," or "right." More robust ethical reflection is necessary to determine such things. Nevertheless, studies like these are not without utility. They show us what people believe, but more helpfully, suggest why they may act in certain ways or promote certain policies. This is particularly interesting when a group's erroneous views may contribute to a lack of support for rational policymaking.

I thought that it might be a useful experiment to apply similar techniques to government spending, and in particular the U.S. budget. What I have laid out below are two quizzes, or rather one quiz and one survey. The quiz asks how much of the federal budget is allocated to specific programs. The survey asks, if you had total budgetary discretion, how much of the federal budget you would allocate to those same programs. Please take both but follow the instructions carefully and complete both the quiz and the survey before looking at the answers to the quiz itself. The effect is ruined if you see the answers before taking the survey.

First, the basics. President Obama's requested federal budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is estimated to be $1.415 trillion dollars. This includes only discretionary spending, meaning that the President and/or Congress can change the amount allocated for each program or department from year to year. That figure does not include mandatory spending, or programs which must be paid out (i.e. entitlements), which consists primarily of Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, other income security programs (unemployment, food stamps), interest on the national debt, etc. Many of these mandatory programs are not paid for through general income taxes, but through other forms of taxation. With those categories included, the federal budget is $3.69 trillion. The estimated deficit appears to be nearly the size of the entire discretionary budget; or about $1.3 trillion dollars. I have not included every category of discretionary spending, so you should not expect the numbers to add up to 100%. Please don't cheat by looking these numbers up elsewhere. The point is not to test what you know, but to see what you think.

The answers to the quiz are embedded in the post itself. However, the text is blacked out so you have to highlight it in order to see it. Obviously, this is not a real research study. It is mostly for fun, but also to make a point, which will be discussed below. If you want to share, feel free to leave your answers in a comment below.

1. What percentage of the federal discretionary budget do you believe is spent in the following discretionary categories?

a. Defense/national security (Overseas operations, soldiers, equipment, etc.)- 63%
b. Foreign aid - <1%
c. Housing/Urban Development- 4.5%
d. Education (includes grants to states) - 9.9%
e. Federally funded research and development* - 10.4%
f. Transportation (highways, rail)- 7%
g. Governmental salaries- 1.4%

* This number includes some defense-related research; therefore, there may be some overlap between this category and the defense/national security category.

2. What percentage of the overall federal (discretionary and mandatory) budget do you believe is spent in the following mandatory categories?

a. Medicare- 13.5%
b. Medicaid grants to states 7%
c. Unemployment - 2%
d. Food stamps- 2%
e. Social Security retirement/disability - 20%

3. What percentage of the discretionary federal budget do you believe should be allocated to the following priorities?

a. Defense/homeland security
b. Foreign aid
c. Housing/Community Development
d. Education
e. R&D
f. Transportation
g. Government salaries

4. What percentage of the overall federal budget do you believe should be allocated to the following priorities?

a. Medicare
b. Medicaid grants to states
c. Unemployment
d. Food stamps
e. Social Security retirement/disability
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Please leave your answers before reading below.
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Simply put, the point of this post is that anybody who tells you that they want to eliminate or significantly reduce the deficit by cutting non-defense discretionary spending is a know-nothing hack. Nearly 60% of the overall federal budget comes from four areas: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense-related programs. Of course, the reason that these budget line items were allowed to get so big in the first place is because there are interested parties and lobbyists pushing for more spending in these areas. And so cutting them is more difficult than budget cuts in many other areas which are not quite so large. Nevertheless, it is plainly foolhardy to believe that we can eliminate a deficit of the size of nearly the entire discretionary budget (more than 33% of the overall budget) by attacking only 40% of the overall budget. (And at the same time when we maintain a military that spends more than all of the other militaries of the world combined.)

Also, Americans' favorite choice for significantly reducing federal spending? Foreign aid. Of course, it is hard to see how we could spend less on this, and even have it show up in the budget. The Economist survey to which I linked does not list government salaries (particularly those of the legislative branch) as an option for spending cuts, though I am certain that if it were, it would come in a close second, if not first.

As I pointed out in my initial paragraph, none of this information, nor your answers to the above questions, can tell us what is the "right" or "perfect" federal budget. It is likely that many fair allocations exist. Nevertheless, it is even more likely, if not practically certain, that the current allocation is suboptimal, and not simply for the fact of spending too much on everything. My greater purpose here was to see if people could imagine more useful and prudent spending if they were provided with sufficiently complete and objective information about how our money is currently spent.

Some links- Death and Taxes; NYT Budget Graph
Note: I gathered budget data from several different sources. If there are problems in the way I have calculated percentages, I will gladly correct them if pointed to a better source. It is not easy to get simply, straight-forward information about this subject, which of course, is part of the problem in the first place. One of the chief problems is that different sources define spending categories differently, and some calculate percentages based on overall budget, while a few look at the discretionary budget. I have tried at the very least to be internally consistent, but I cannot claim infallibility.

The Modern Death of Civic-Mindedness

2010-09-30T08:58:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I had a long stretch of document review that needed to be done at work. As is my habit, I turned on a podcast for something to listen to, so that I would not "zone out" while staring at my screen for several hours. One of my selections was a recording from RadioWest by KUER in Salt Lake City on "The Changing Face of Retirement." The substance of the conversation is not my topic, but rather one particularly interesting exchange between one of the guests, Dr. Ken Dycktwald, an expert in gerontology and economic issues relating to retirement, and a call-in listener.

The listener remarked that she had a good job but was approaching an age when she could retire and claim Social Security benefits. Part of her job involved training young people to perform her job. Her question for Dr. Dycktwald was whether it would be better for society, in the context of the current economic and budgetary crisis, if she chose to retire and allow some younger person to take her job, or if she continued to work so that she was not drawing on Social Security so early in her life. Dr. Dycktwald seemed somewhat perplexed by her question, simply because he had never yet encountered someone who seemed to take societal consequences for such decisions seriously as a factor in making those decisions, or at least more seriously than a personal preference for one option or the other.

Alas, the listener's attitude is all too rare. Serious reflection on what is best for society as a whole, even if not best for me and my family, is in seriously short supply these days. The problem is particularly endemic in the United States, with its strong individualistic streak. Of course, there are plenty of people who are willing to extrapolate their personal preferences onto the rest of society, passing off their own choices as what the rest of us ought to want. That particular mode of thinking seems particularly ingrained in contemporary American society, and especially in its most vocal elements. But could a more thoughtful contemplation of societal costs and benefits rationalize the tough decisions about economics and governmental budgets that we will inevitably face in the coming years? Nothing would help more.

Call for Papers (Revised)- Faith and Knowledge Conference

2010-09-21T00:05:00.000-05:00

I posted this previously a couple of months ago, but a new version of the call for papers was recently released. Please take a look and submit proposals if you are interested.

The Intellectual Prospects for Mormonism”: The Third Biannual Faith and Knowledge Conference for LDS Graduate Students in Religion
Duke University
February 11-12, 2011

The Faith and Knowledge conference series was established in 2006 to bring together LDS graduate students and young faculty in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the intellectual interactions between religious faith and scholarship. In past conferences, graduate students have been invited to reflect upon aspects of their own intellectual reconciliations—or their failures to do so—between church and academy, and to offer fruitful solutions to fellow students undergoing similar intellectual journeys.
In keeping with these past objectives, we invite graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines working on issues related to religion (including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, ethics, history, and others) to consider Mormonism’s prospects. What intellectual and ethical issues do Mormons now face in the academy and in the intellectual world generally? What are Mormonism’s prospects for development, reconciliation, or heightened conflict?

The conference will feature a keynote address by Grant Hardy, author of Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide.

Papers should be brief, pointed comments of ten to fifteen minutes reflecting the author’s experience and designed to serve as starting points for discussion.
Travel and accommodations subsidies will be available for those who contribute papers.

The deadline for paper proposals has been extended to Oct 15, 2010. Short proposals (no more than 250 words) should be sent to Ariel Bybee Laughton ( ariel.laughton AT gmail.com). Presenters will be notified by November 15, 2010.

I am a 600-pound digital man

2010-09-19T00:40:00.000-05:00

My doctor recently recommended that I change my diet. It was not related to my weight, but to other nutritional issues. The nice side effect of paying greater attention to what I eat and how much I exercise has been a 15-pound weight loss that I was not expecting.

Those improvements in my overall health notwithstanding, digitally speaking, I am still a 600 pound man-- the kind of man you see on those crazy Discovery Channel/TLC shows that has to be cut out of the walls of his own home in order to go to the hospital. My daily digital consumption seems like one of those ridiculous diets they put Olympic athletes in training on-- 14 eggs, 10 pancakes, 7 sausage links, etc. For starters, I wake up with about 10-15 emails in my inbox. Most of these can be deleted with a slight glimpse, but a little less than half are news digests from NYT, WaPo, etc. that get me up to date on the latest news. About ten or so more of these types of emails will find themselves in my inbox throughout the rest of the day. And that's just for the car/bus ride to or from work. Throughout the day I have sprinkled a hundred or so posts on Google Reader (RSS aggregator), mostly short blurbs on politics, news analysis, general journalism, etc. Unfortunately, its the kind of volume that if I do not manage to clear it out each day, I practically have to schedule a block of time to work through it all. At the same time, I am visiting various websites touching on numerous topics of interest-- television/movies, science fiction, technology, politics, etc. And of course, I check Facebook and Twitter more times than I am comfortable admitting. The truth is, I am not so much browsing the Internet, as I am mainlining it directly into my brain. The heroin metaphor is not unintentional.

My media issues are not a problem of quality, but of volume. I actually think that I have pretty good standards when it comes to what I choose to read. What I consume on a daily basis has none of the following categories: 24-hour cable news, celebrity gossip, low-brow humor websites, or those crazy e-mail forwards from "that" uncle, which are the trans fats of the digital food pyramid. Then again, if you ask me each evening what I read, what was good, and what I thought about it, I probably could not offer you any intelligent commentary. I read so much, and have to do it so fast, that what I am left with are more often mere fleeting impressions, rather than actual ideas.

I recently read Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain and it was near-perfect diagnosis. If you read frequently on the Internet like I do, I highly recommend this book. Heck, even if you don't consume digital text the way I do, or know someone who does, I still recommend it. The gist of the book is that the quantity of information available through the Internet, the way in which it is presented, and the methods with which we have become accustomed to consuming it are fragmenting our minds and our consciousness. The author recounts finding himself increasingly unable to read long-form prose (longer essays, books) or track lengthy and detailed arguments, due to his exposure to shorter, more frequent bursts of information (e.g. blogs, Wikipedia, etc.) I am the last person in the world who is going to demonize blogs, Twitter, and their like, but I have seen some of the same problems in myself. As I stated earlier, I find myself less able to recall things that I have read, even very recently, and much less able to intelligently discuss it. It is increasingly difficult to read longer, multi-page quantities of prose.

What, then, is to be done? The immediately prior question is, of course, what do I want to get out of it? The simple answer is, I want to remain a reasonably (but higher-than-average) informed citizen, but one who is better able to recall, analyze, and discuss what I read on a daily basis. I aspire to read slightly less, but much better. I have considered the "digital detox," but like a complete renunciation of chocolate or Mt. Dew, obsession with quitting would likely lead to some ugly binge/purge cycles not unlike anorexia. A diet is necessary--but how? A couple of things I have learned:

1. Alert plug-ins, reminders, and pop-ups are your enemy, with tabbed browsers running a close second. I recently disabled the Gmail and Google Reader alert plug-ins from my browser at work. The constant "ding!" of fresh messages was too much of a siren song for me. Having to type in "www.gmail.com", etc. at least gives me time to reconsider whether I really have a moment to check that inbox. The Google Reader can be checked at certain intervals, for example, once upon arriving at the office, once at lunch, and once in the evening. Regrettably, because the nature of the work I do and the expectations of my supervising attorneys, the alerts on my work Outlook mailbox and Blackberry must remain on.

In my opinion, tabbed browsing is the single greatest innovation in Web browsing in the past 6-7 years. I was an early adopter of Firefox and Chrome, and IE eventually picked up on the technology, though I still use it only when forced to. However, the added ease and convenience of organizing items currently being or to be read is not without cost. Those six or seven tabs to Slate stories constantly remind me that I really need to plow through this long essay in the New Yorker. The better solution is to use synchronizing bookmarks (e.g. Google Bookmarks) to keep things that are "to be read but can't be read right now" in one place for safe keeping.

2. Time and distance can make the heart grow less fond. This is particularly true with the vast and varied amount of material I receive through my Google Reader feeds. Saving 20 or so stories from a website for a day or two before reading them often gives me the opportunity to reflect on whether it is really worth reading in the first place. When it seems like only one of two or three stories, the threshold is awfully low. But if it is one of 20+, one ought to be more discerning. Often the story has moved on from whatever initial notice you received. Other things sound interesting at the time, but coming around to it again, one often reads some better version of the same item elsewhere.

Will I succeed in reducing my daily kilobyte intake and regain full use of my faculties? Who knows? I have been at this an awfully long time, and it has been getting worse and not better for most of my past. But I am looking forward to trying and seeing how much better I might function when not plugged into the Matrix.

The Prop 8 (Perry) Decision for Laymen

2010-08-09T22:05:00.001-05:00

I am generally displeased with the quality of most journalism surrounding constitutional law and the cases interpreting and affecting it. Most of this kind of journalism tends to focus purely on the political (the motivation of the judges, which party will benefit, etc.), and even those few journalists who attempt sincerely and valiantly to explain the decisions (Linda Greenhouse, Dahlia Lithwick) generally write for those who have some degree of training in law or political science. What remains for consumption of the general public are a few choice and key quotes from the judge or panel's opinion. While these quotes may convey the essence of the decision, without any background or further exposition, they give readers the impression that these ideas were pulled out of thin air. This tends to decrease confidence in the integrity and wisdom of the judicial branch, and is deleterious to democracy in itself.

What I want to attempt to do here is describe and explain Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (the "Prop 8 case"), which struck down California's anti-same-sex marriage referendum on Wednesday, in a way that is comprehensible to someone who has never gone to law school (or for that matter, to college). I have made every effort to refrain from editorializing on the opinion's merits or on same-sex marriage in general.

Since many of you will not want to read all of what will be a quite long post, I have moved the key analysis and conclusions section to the beginning. If you wish to read the entirety of this piece, please skip to the horizontal line then return here when you reach the end.

Conclusions of Law

Based on the court's Findings of Fact (see below), the court made several conclusions interpreting the caselaw of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process (no state "[shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law") and Equal Protection Clauses (no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"). The analyses under each clause involves different legal theories and requirements; however, they are based on the same underlying determination-- that the right to marry is "fundamental." The "fundamental" status of a right depends on its history and legal tradition. The status of marriage as a fundamental right has a long pedigree in the United States. The key question is whether the right sought by plaintiffs is a new right, the right to same-sex marriage, or is the same "right to marry" as has long been recognized. To determine whether the right claimed by plaintiffs is the same fundamental right, the court examined the precise nature and content of the right sought. The court found that the chief characteristics of marriage that remain unchanged throughout history are: two parties giving free consent, forming a household, and supporting one another and their dependents. It determined that neither procreative ability nor specific and distinct gender roles were vital to marriage. Instead, under modern marriage principles, men and women are recognized as equals and are free to negotiate their own roles on the basis of their individual relationship. Individuals are granted a space of choice and intimacy in making decisions regarding their marriage, including whom they choose to marry. After establishing the core values of marriage, the court found that same-sex couples are "situated identically to opposite-sex couples in terms of their ability to perform the rights and obligations of marriage." Therefore, the court found that same-sex couples did not seek recognition of a new right, but rather of the same right to marry as is currently enjoyed by opposite-sex couples.

Having determined that the right to marry sought by plaintiffs was fundamental, the Due Process Clause prohibits government from burdening the exercise of that right unless it can show that the government has a "compelling interest" in burdening it and that the law is carefully limited and designed ("narrowly tailored") to accomplish that objective. [Under contemporary constitutional jurisprudence, this test is known as "strict scrutiny" and is the most stringent of the constitutional tests.] Furthermore, the court recognized that "fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." The court found that Prop 8 could not meet even the much lower test [known as "rational basis review"] of showing any legitimate government interest in preventing same-sex couples from marrying. The potential government interests identified by proponents are discussed below.

The Equal Protection Clause asks whether the government creates a classification that targets a "suspect class" (a class with a history of discrimination that may be unable to defend itself from such discrimination) or burdens a fundamental right. Plaintiffs argued, and the court accepted, that Prop 8 discriminated in allowing individuals to exercise a fundamental right both on the basis of gender (men could marry women, but could not marry other men, etc.) and on sexual orientation. These categories are both constitutionally protected, but courts have not subjected such classifications to strict scrutiny (i.e. they are not a suspect class). Nevertheless, the court found that gays and lesbians are the type of minority that the Equal Protection Clause was designed to protect, due to their history of discrimination based on false stereotypes. While the gender classification applies to heterosexuals and homosexuals alike, Prop 8 eliminates a right "only a gay man or a lesbian would exercise," therefore there was a classification uniquely damaging to homosexuals. As was the case with the Due Process Clause analysis cited above, the court found that the proponents could not even show any legitimate government interest to which Prop 8 was rationally related-- it could not pass even the weakest constitutional test.

The court went on to analyze rationales offered by the proponents as legitimate government interests that Prop 8 could advance, namely: (1) preserving "traditional marriage"; (2) proceeding with caution in enacting social change; (3) promoting opposite-sex parenting; (4) protecting the freedom of those who oppose same-sex marriage; and (5) distinguishing between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples. The court reviewed these rationales extensively, but determined in each case that a) that the rationale was not a legitimate one for government (e.g. tradition alone); b) that the rationale was not reasonable given the evidence provided (i.e. that same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples were fundamentally the same and that children were not adversely affected by being raised with two same-sex parents); or c) that Prop 8 would actually produce effects that damaged the interests identified by proponents (i.e. that the purpose was not reasonably related to what Prop 8 would actually cause).

Having reviewed and rejected all of the proposed interests, the court inferred, as supported by evidence in the trial record, that Prop 8's true motivation was not a legitimate government interest, but a "private moral view" about the immorality and inferiority of same-sex couples. The court then cited past Supreme Court cases stating that such beliefs are "not a proper basis on which to legislate."

Having found no "rational basis" for the law, but instead only an impermissible moral disapproval at the heart of Prop 8, the court declared Prop 8 unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Facts
I will not rehearse the facts of the Prop 8 saga, since I assume that they will be well-known to any who have an interest in reading what is to follow. What I will say is that in May 2008, the California Supreme Court held that California counties were required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In November of that same year, Proposition 8 revised the California Constitution to provide that marriage was between one man and one woman. In the intervening period, approximately 18,000 same-sex couples took advantage of the availability of marriage licenses. Those marriages were unaffected by Prop 8.

Grounds for Challenge
The plaintiffs, who are same-sex couples who had been denied marriage licenses following the passage of Prop 8, challenged the law under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. The proponents of Prop 8, who intervened in the case in lieu of the various state governmental officials who were named defendants (who had refused to defend the law), defended the law on the grounds that same-sex marriage would effect certain negative consequences that California had an interest in preventing by prohibiting the marriage of same-sex couples.

Review of Evidence
The court reviewed the testimony that had been provided at trial. [In the American federal court system, the trial court (or district court) hears the evidence and makes certain findings of fact. Appellate courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, may review the evidence produced at trial, but do not repeat the trial itself. Generally, such courts are confined to determining whether the trial court correct interpreted and applied the law to the facts as it found them.] Plaintiffs and proponents put on both lay (non-expert) and expert witnesses. The lay witnesses were primarily composed of the plaintiff couples, who testified as to why they wanted to be married, and persons who had been involved in the "Yes on 8" campaign (or ProtectMarriage), who testified regarding their efforts and motivations in opposing same-sex marriage. The trial judge had earlier explained at trial that he wished to have a full review of the status of gay and lesbians in society and the effects that same-sex marriage could potentially have on homosexual and heterosexual marriages. Thus, the expert witnesses ran the gamut from history, psychology, human development, economics, social epidemiology, and political science. The range and amount of testimony provided cannot even be effectively summarized in a space such as this (the opinion was 136 pages long), though I will provide some highlights below. However, the judge found that plaintiff's witnesses were generally credible in their testimony, and that proponents' experts lacked credibility. The judge stated his belief that the proponents had generally failed to provide any credible evidence that supported their bare assertions of negative consequences that would result from allowing same-sex marriage.

Plaintiffs' Expert Testimony
The plaintiffs' evidence consisted in part of the following ten points. Due to the fact that the judge adopted many of the expert's conclusions in his findings of fact, I have identified those findings by number. Plaintiffs' experts argued that:
(1) marriage in the US has always been a secular (or civic) institution and has undergone a number of changes and transformations over the course of American history (Finding #19);

(2) gays and lesbians are subject to widespread private and public discrimination and stigma, based on negative stereotypes of homosexuals that are without basis in fact (Findings #58, 67, 74-76, 78);

(3) same-sex couples and the state of California (and its cities and counties) have been subject to serious economic harm as a result of Prop 8 (Findings #64-66);

(4) same-sex couples are in all important respects similar to opposite-sex couples (Finding #48);

(5) allowing same-sex marriage would not have adverse effects on opposite-sex marriage (Finding #55);

(6) marriage has important benefits for the couple and any children raised in that marriage (Findings #50, 56);

(7) the stigma on gays and lesbians has negative effects on their mental health;

(8) homosexuality is a personality trait that is not chosen and is not amenable to change through therapy;

(9) children raised by same-sex couples are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual couples (Finding #69); and

(10) gays and lesbians do not possess a meaningful degree of political power.

Proponents' Expert Testimony
The proponents did not call many of their expert witnesses as they had originally planned. Their initial justification for this choice is that the experts feared exposing themselves to risks to their personal safety due to their testimony. However, after publication of the proceedings was prevented by a Supreme Court intervention, the plaintiffs still refused to call their witnesses. Plaintiffs offered the previously recorded testimony of two of proponents' experts. Those experts concluded that "religion lies at the heart of the hostility" against gays and lesbians and there was no evidence that children raised by same-sex couples fared worse than children raised by opposite-sex couples.

The proponents did offer the testimony of two expert witnesses. One of those witnesses, David Blankenhorn, was the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, a family values think tank. The court dismissed Blankenhorn's testimony for his lack of qualifications or support for his conclusions. He lacked formal training in the relevant fields, had no peer-reviewed publications, and his conclusions were not produced using reliable methods (i.e. scientific methods). Blankenhorn had testified that the state had a interest in preserving opposite-sex marriage in order to regulate the bearing and raising of children. This was important because children raised by married, biological parents do better than children in other environments. However, the court found that the evidence he used to arrive at this conclusion only compared married, biological parents with other living situations that were not the equivalent of married same-sex parents (e.g. single parents, step families). Blankenhorn also testified that three universal rules that governed marriage: that it was between a man and a woman, that only two spouses were involved, and that sex was involved. Finally, Blankenhorn testified that recognizing same-sex marriage would lead to the "deinstitutionalization" of marriage, which he defined as out-of-wedlock marriage, non-marital cohabitation, rising divorce rates, etc. The court found that he produced no credible evidence to support these conclusions. Besides the general lack of reliability in this opinions, the court found that Blankenhorn's testimony contradicted his own opinions in several respects. Proponent's second expert, Kenneth Miller, is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. The purpose of Miller's testimony was to show that gays and lesbians enjoyed significant political power. The court found that, because Miller had failed to consider key evidence and was not familiar with gay and lesbian politics, his testimony should be discounted. The court further found that Miller's previous writings contradicted his testimony as a witness for the proponents.

Findings of Fact
In addition to those findings of fact listed above under Plaintiff's Expert Testimony, the court made certain other findings of fact on which it based its legal conclusions. While space does not permit me to do so here, the court identified specific citations to the trial record, including documents and testimony offered by experts for both sides, that supported his findings. These findings include:
(1) CA, like other states, did not require that couples be willing or able to procreate in order to obtain a marriage license (Finding #21);

(2) Marriage requires free consent of the parties (Finding #23);

(3) Marriage has undergone significant changes in the course of American history, including the elimination of racial restrictions, the elimination of status of women as property of her husband, and the equalization of gender roles in marriage. These changes have not weakened marriage. (Findings #24-28, 33);

(4) Under current law, marital partners have equal obligations to one another and their dependents (Finding #32)

(5) Marriage is a state recognition with many purposes, including family stability, legitimating children, and establishing support obligations, and is used to provide benefits to certain couples (Findings #34-37);

(6) Marriage is good for the health and material well-being of those involved, including children (Findings #38-41);

(7) Same-sex behavior has a long history, though a separate identity for homosexuals developed in the late 19th century (Finding #42);

(8) Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of behavior, stable through adulthood, and is a fundamental and distinguishing characteristic of an individual's identity. It is not a choice and cannot be change through decision or therapy (Findings #43-44, 46);

(9) CA law already allows gays and lesbians to become parents (Finding #49);

(10) Domestic partnership is not equal to marriage, due to different symbolic meanings and benefits, and is inferior to marriage (Findings #52-54);

(11) Prop 8 requires unequal treatment and inferior treatment of same-sex couples vis a vis opposite-sex couples (Findings #59-60);

(12) Prop 8 codifies distinct traditional gender roles in marriage (Finding #61);

(13) Prop 8 does not affect the First Amendment rights of those opposed to same-sex marriage (Finding #62);

(14) Prop 8 does not affect other constitutional rights (Finding #63);

(15) Gender and sexual orientation of parents, r a child's genetic relationship to parents, are not factors in a child's adjustment. Opposite-sex couples are not required to produce well-adjusted children (Findings #69-73);

(16) Religious beliefs in the sinfulness or inferiority of homosexual relationships are harmful to gays and lesbians (Finding #77); and

(17) The campaign to pass Prop 8 was based on never-articulated and vague fears about homosexuals and stereotypes (Findings #79-80).

[If you have read this far, please return to the top and read the "Conclusions of Law" section.]

Two "Ticking Time Bombs" - Deficits & Unemployment

2010-08-01T17:39:00.000-05:00

Warning: There will be a lot of links in the post below. I am going for the "full Greenwald."

On Friday evening, my wife asked me what I was planning on doing this weekend. My reply was "As little as possible." These days it seems like that is exactly what the GOP has planned to do with existing budget deficits and the unemployment that will handicap the United States for the foreseeable future.

The big upcoming budget fight for the rest of this year, and probably into the next Congress, will be whether, or to what extent, the "Bush tax cuts" ought to be extended. Good estimates from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget find that a full extension of the tax cuts will add $3.28 trillion to cumulative deficits between 2011 and 2018. Alternate proposals would include allowing the tax cuts to expire only for those Americans earning more than $250,000 per year but extending them for those making less than that. As pointed out this morning by William Gale in the Washington Post, the Bush tax cuts are estimated to account for approximately 25% of the budget deficit this year. That is not a majority, nor likely even a plurality of the budget deficit. Other large line items contributing to the deficit include the TARP and Recovery Act measures (one-time expenses), and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which will supposedly end sometime in the next ten-year budget window, but who knows?). These are all on the side of tax expenditures, while the revenue side has certainly been reduced by the reduced taxable income and assets caused by the recession itself. Allowing all tax cuts to expire would have a more helpful effect on the immediate and long-term budget deficit; however, a large portion of the work can be done by allowing higher-income earners to bear the brunt of the increases. Moreover, since the GOP wants to pretend that nothing was wrong with the Bush tax cuts in the first place, allowing any tax cuts to expire will be difficult politically. Allowing all of them to expire, particularly in a time fraught with middle-class anxiety, is next to impossible, even if it was desirable.

While swallowing this deficit camel (Note: The idea that tax cuts "pay for themselves" or that they have a stimulative effect far in excess of their ultimate cost to the deficit, I find to be laughable. At least four prominent conservative economists (as well as just about everybody else who knows anything about the problem), agree with me.), the GOP simultaneously strains at the gnat of additional stimulus (particularly in the form of extended unemployment benefits). Unemployment benefits, extended even to periods of several years, are not threats to the long-term deficit. Quite to the contrary, they are among the most effective forms of direct stimulus, as those without jobs are likely to spend nearly every dime they receive as unemployment benefits on basic necessities. Even if unemployment benefits were a form of pure deficit spending, without any correlating stimulative effect, they would be the right thing to do, as I will explain shortly. But to insist that a $3 trillion tax expenditure is no problem, while filibustering an extension of unemployment benefits with a cost of $33 billion smacks of a profound lack of seriousness about dealing with deficits.

The extension of unemployment benefits would be a priority of the second order if it were reasonably anticipated that prospects for employment were to improve rapidly in the short- to medium-term. Such is emphatically NOT the case. Estimates range anywhere from 5 to 11 years to restore employment to pre-recession levels. While the long-term deficit is no doubt a ticking time bomb that will need to be tackled with some tough and courageous policies over the next decade and into the future, persistent high unemployment is a crisis RIGHT NOW and into the future. More (and more targeted) short-term stimulus is one answer, with deficits being handled in the medium- to long-term. For those of us not personally associated with someone with a long-term unemployment issue, the high numbers of the unemployment can tend to blur into mere statistics. But the full cost of long-term unemployment is not something that can be appreciated solely on the basis of a GDP figure, deficit numbers, or the monthly U16 report. The true costs of unemployment are a deterioration in the nation's stock of human capital, in the form of unrealized investments in education, training, etc. Perhaps this is most profound for youth growing up in homes where one or both parents may be suffering from long-term unemployment. Lack of savings for education and enriching experiences in one's youth cannot be easily regained once that youth is spent. That means that the full and true cost of this recession will not be known until 15-25 years from now, when today's youngsters are entering the workforce in full for the first time. One of the most important governmental priorities in this recession is to support education (i.e. by not forcing state budget cuts in education and teacher layoffs) and put money in the hands of families so that they can make their own investments in human capital. That is why, aside from any stimulative effect it might have, it is imperative that Congress put the extension of unemployment benefits beyond the reach of short-sighted legislative maneuvers. Ergo, unemployment benefits should be extended almost indefinitely, or at least until our unemployment figures hit a certain stable and acceptable floor (probably between 5 and 6 percent, 3% being defined as full employment). At the same time, short-term measures to forestall cuts in education expenditures and further targeted stimulus must be put in place.

There can be no recovery in the broader economy without a recovery in employment as soon as possible. Consumer spending and tax revenues will not get back to where they need to be until reliable and steady incomes can be put back into the hands of all of America's working populace. In the meantime, the human cost of unemployment and resulting dislocations is too high to wait for the jobs to come back.

3rd Annual Faith and Knowledge Conference- Duke/UNC

2010-07-26T22:11:00.001-05:00

A Call for Papers

“The Intellectual Prospects for Mormonism”: The Third Biannual Faith and Knowledge Conference for LDS Graduate Students in Religion

Duke University/University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

February 2011

The Faith and Knowledge conference series was established in 2006 to bring together LDS graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the intellectual interactions between religious faith and scholarship. In past conferences, graduate students have been invited to reflect upon aspects of their own personal intellectual reconciliations—or their own failures to do so—between church and academy, and to offer fruitful solutions to fellow students undergoing similar intellectual journeys.

In keeping with these past objectives, we invite graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines (including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, ethics, history, and others) to consider Mormonism’s intellectual prospects. The Latter-day Saints are now a powerful institutional presence on the American scene, but they are not likely to have a significant intellectual presence in the Academy until scholarship and intellectuality are more fully integrated into Mormon life. An inquiry into the intellectual prospects of Mormonism must then address many questions. Such considerations may include, but are not limited to, the following inquiries:

How can we describe the changing nature of Mormon thought in the current era?
Where are the centers of intellectual creativity among Mormon scholars and thinkers today?
Will Mormon theology ever win the respect of other theologians?
Can the work of Mormon theologians be of any value to ordinary Latter-day Saints?
What theorists are of value in explicating Mormon thought?
What is the state of Mormon theorizing about an embodied God? Is it registering with other Christian thinkers?
Does Mormonism have anything to say to the world other than “join us?”
Are we making any headway on theorizing Mormon praxis?
Can ordinary Mormons make their peace with modern biblical scholarship? How can this be accomplished?
What is the role of Mormon scholars in integrating scriptural scholarship into Mormon life?
How can Mormons combat the “nice people–wacky religion” syndrome?
Does inter-faith dialogue dilute or intensify Mormon thought?
Why should Mormons participate in theological dialogue with non-Mormons?
Is a Mormon background a handicap or a help in getting a job in a non-Mormon institution?

Panelist papers should last approximately 10 minutes. Short proposals (no more than 250 words) should be sent to Ariel Bybee Laughton (ariel.laughton@gmail.com) by October 1, 2010. Presenters will be notified by December 1, 2010. Conference participants will be eligible to apply for financial assistance with travel and lodging expenses.

A thought experiment on Church statistics

2010-07-12T23:44:00.003-05:00

Meaningful statistical information on the LDS Church is notoriously hard to come by, in spite of excellent work being done by Ziff and others here. The Church has its own department for creating and investigating such information, but seems reticent to share that news elsewhere. Other studies by outside third parties are necessarily incomplete, since they are inevitably based on samples, and those samples are generally heavily weighted towards American members of the Church living in the Mormon Corridor.

But instead of simply bemoaning the lack of statistical information, lets take a step in a more positive direction. Name a statistical measure of anything related to the LDS Church that would tell you something that you thought would shed light on the current health and progress of the Church, or would simply scratch some nagging itch in your own mind.

There are only two rules:

1. You do not have to pick a statistic that you know is actually collected in real life (either by the Church or by some other party); however, pick a measure that could conceivably be collected and reported in some kind of comprehensive and accurate way. A bad example of this would be: "I want to know the number of sacrament cups used worldwide each week as a proxy for how many worthy members of the Church attend their Sabbath services." This statistic does not work because it is difficult to see a) how this statistic would be collected, and b) even if it could be, how accurately the statistic would reflect on the purpose of its collection. It would be inconceivable to put an observer in every meeting of the Church each week to see how many people are taking the sacrament. Someone might suggest using instead the number of sacrament cups ordered by each unit. However, I do not know whether all units in the Church worldwide order sacrament cups from the same distributor (probably the Church). Furthermore, even if good information on the orders was available, Church units certainly keep an unused inventory of the cups, so it would be hard to determine how many of them were actually used given that unused cups are probably thrown away each week after the sacrament.

2. Don't pick financial information. Its an arbitrary rule, but a sound one. Beyond the fact that I am not sure that financial or budgetary information qualifies as a statistic, this answer is just a cop-out. We're all curious. We would probably all want to know how much $ the Church has, or how much it spends on BYU, temples, etc. So try thinking a little harder about it.

Answering the question for myself, I would love to see the numbers on the net number of temple marriages contracted each year. To show what I mean by net, I mean only living members of the Church (no proxy sealings counted), and subtract out all divorces by Church members (both civil and temple but only count each divorce once) and any occurrence where a temple-married member has their name removed from the records of the Church. Exclude also any second temple marriages for persons over the age of 50. In my opinion, getting married in the temple is a good proxy for the general spiritual health of the Church membership, especially for the youth. No doubt an imperfect one, but likely the best that would be available. This information could easily be gathered from the Church's records department and would not likely include any investigation outside official Church records. As far as why I made the choices I did on delineating the metric, I think it ought to be clear why sealings for the dead are excluded. I want divorces subtracted because of course, if temple marriage signals the formation of a family (the fundamental unit of the Church...and of society, as Church leaders continuously remind us), then divorce signals the dissolution of that family. Because a dissolution of the sealing bond sometimes occurs some time after a civil divorce is finalized (except possibly in the case of major transgression), and in some circumstances that I am aware of, sealing bonds are not dissolved until the remarriage of one of the partners (usually the female), we need to account for civil divorces. I waffled on counting name removal the same as divorce. Technically speaking the sealing bond should be broken, but if a name is removed for excommunication pursuant to transgression, then it may still be that the family remains together, the transgressor is rebaptized and the sealing "reactivated." In that case, we count both the name removal and the re-sealing, and it comes out a wash. The reason why I exclude second marriages involving members over 50 is that usually these occur when one party to the original marriage dies, but after a great deal of the child rearing is complete. I do not think that it indicates how healthy the Church is spiritually or how well the youth are absorbing the lessons on the importance of temple marriage that an older widow or a widower finds another mate. Thus, a young adult who marries in the temple, but is later divorced from the first spouse or whose first spouses dies, and then remarries soon thereafter to another young adult, gets counted. This is a new family, and one that still reflects the purpose for which the statistic is collected. However, Elder Nelson's recent remarriage following the death of his wife, would not be counted.

So you have now read the above too-long justification for my own choice. Of course, there are literally dozens of statistics I would like to see other than the one described above. What would you choose and why?

Response to Ebert- Video Games can be Art

2010-07-06T23:12:00.004-05:00

Back in April, Roger Ebert, the highly-esteemed Chicago film critic, wrote a post on his blog entitled "Video Games can never be art." I suspect that I do not need to explain the gist of his post. In response, he received over 4500 comments, overwhelmingly in disagreement with Mr. Ebert.

Wisely, last week Mr. Ebert walked back his comments somewhat in his follow-up post "Okay, kids, play on my lawn." He correctly admitted that it was foolish and wrong of him to discount that video games as a medium could never attain the status of Art, given that the future of video games is completely unknown. Furthermore, Mr. Ebert acknowledges that his firsthand experience with modern video games is almost completely non-existent and that "I would never review a movie I had not seen." Well put.

As almost anyone who has seen a Rothko or Jackson Pollock or experienced John Cage's "4'33" for the first time can attest, the question "What is Art?" can be a tricky one to answer. Any attempt to achieve a universally acceptable and effective definition is bound to be unsuccessful.

I have been playing video games since I was about 5 years old, having received the original NES and Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt as a Christmas present. I had the NES, followed by the Super Nintendo, followed by PC games, and most recently have been enjoying the Nintendo Wii. In addition to my own game systems, I have had plenty of experience playing video games on the various XBox, Playstation and Sega systems. I can say that rarely have any of my experiences attained the status of Art, but there are a couple. Various titles in the Final Fantasy series come to mind. Those with more extensive gaming experience, such as Mr. Ebert's other correspondents, can likely name more. And as the genre grows and matures, it undoubtedly will produce Art that qualifies with even the best literature, movies, music, and other visual art currently being produced. (Note that even games that are not Art may contain art, particularly including music. If film scores qualify as art, why can't video game scores?) We need to remember that this medium is less than 50 years old by most counts, and has primarily been the province of the young and relatively uncultured for most of its history. As that changes, and the first generations who truly grew up with household gaming (as well as a well-rounded mix of other cultural experiences) move into the production of games, the medium will mature, grow, and flower.

One of Ebert's chief arguments against video games as Art seems to be that the experience of playing a video game leaves the outcome to be determined by the player and that a video game can be "won" unlike other forms of Art. This is peculiar to the genre, but not fatal to its claim to Art status. In some sense, video game players are collaborators in creating a game. The game as shipped, marketing, and sold in stores can never be Art. It is inert and lifeless. The same can be said of a CD or DVD sitting on the racks at Wal-Mart or Best Buy, no matter what the quality of the music or film embedded on that medium. Nevertheless, unlike a video game, the playback experience of the CD or DVD is fixed at the moment of its recording, as for that matter, is the experience of reading a book. Someone reading this will certainly point out that all experience of Art involves some measure of subjectivity, which is true. We are all conditioned in our response to Art but cultural influences and our own personal history, amongst other factors. But this does not detract from my point, but rather strengthens it. The element of malleability or subjectivity in an experience of Art does not render the object or experience "not Art."

One who plays a video game is filling in the blanks left by the creator. The game as Art is incomplete until played. By the same token of those items discussed above, our previous experiences of playing video games, as well as other education and experience, affects the way that a gamer interacts with the setting and interface provided. The choices of how the blanks may be filled in can be more or less limited, at the discretion of the game creator. For most popular games, the choice is simply die or advance. But for others (and I am thinking of the Fable games for XBox and the Elder Scrolls series for PC), there is a much more choose-your-own-adventure flavor to the storytelling. And at their heart, this is what truly great games (and movies, books, etc.) do-- they tell stories, and allow players to participate in their telling, as if reading the lines of a soliloquy or a choral response to Greek tragedy.

If you want to see a more gung-ho take on the "Video games=Art" argument, watch the video found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9y6MYDSAww.

Sitting on my shelf is a copy of Tom Bissell's "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter" waiting to be picked up. Its probably third in my queue following my current read (an excellent, if lengthy, tome on Teddy Roosevelt and the environment) and Ariel's dissertation. I may have more thoughts on the above following that read, and if so, I may post them here.

Why I am not watching the Kagan confirmation hearings

2010-06-30T01:52:00.002-05:00

Because I am an attorney and because I happen to love constitutional law, one might think that I would be glued to my television this week during the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan to be appointed as a justice on the Supreme Court. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. I will read the daily dispatches in the New York Times and might catch the soundbites on CNN, but I can think of a list longer than my arm of things more worth my time.

As Kagan has herself pointed out, these hearings are "vapid and hollow charade." The Senators are going to repeat partisan talking points that bear little relation to the complexities of constitutional law and the nominee will say just enough to be confirmed but no more. As others have emphasized, these hearings ought to work as a civic event to educate the public regarding constitutional interpretations and the content and progress of our civic freedoms. However, it is hard to see how an environment where both participants are just trying to score points is conducive to educational outcomes. At first glance, this does not appear to signal that the Socratic dialogue between professor and student in a law school would be educationally useful, but having been there myself, I think that most students (and probably most professors) are simply trying not to look stupid or unprepared. However, in the present case, I do not think that anyone believes that Elena Kagan is stupid. From all reports, she seems to have been consciously preparing for this moment her whole life; she is unlikely to screw it up now by saying something risky. And on the other side, I do not think that the Senators will be able to say anything that will convince me that half of them are not complete morons.

McChrystal's Firing

2010-06-30T01:28:00.003-05:00

Another unanticipated break from blogging. My ongoing intention has been to post more regular and briefer posts, and in a more timely fashion than I have traditionally been accustomed to. So tonight, I am actually going to start that project and have two posts for your reading pleasure.

Last week, President Obama relieved Gen. Stanley McChrystal of his command over American forces in Afghanistan, following revelations from this Rolling Stone article. McChrystal's various disparaging remarks regarding members of the Administration, including the President himself, are well known and do not need to be repeated here.

In the days and hours leading up to the announcement of Gen. McChrystal's "firing" and replacement with Gen. David Petraeus, I felt ambivalent about letting him go. On the one hand, he had clearly committed a misdeed worthy of the punishment he received. The Constitution clearly establishes the principle of civilian control of the military. If one of the privates or captains in Afghanistan had made similar disparaging remarks to a newspaper regarding Gen. McChrystal, he would have been discharged immediately. One simply does not criticize or complain about superior officers to the press or the public. And in this case, the President, as commander-in-chief, is everyone's superior officer. Some may worry that this deprives those who serve in the military of some measure of their First Amendment freedom of speech. Technically that is true, and such deprivation has been accepted as one of the costs of enlisting in the military. However, no one is insisting that Gen. McChrystal must like President Obama and the members of his foreign policy team, or that he cannot criticize them vociferously in private. However, once he stepped over the line by repeating those criticisms to a journalist, he has made himself the focus of and an obstacle to the mission, the ultimate no-no for any soldier, no matter what rank.

On the other hand, I am personally tired of the seeing this pattern: member of political (or military) leadership commits very public and very embarrassing gaffe, he or she is fired or "resigns", we all pretend that the problem is solved. The McChrystal incident is not a perfect illustration of this problem, because the norm which he violated is so well-understood and so dangerous if transgressed. Nevertheless, his criticisms go to the heart of the problems with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-- military leaders (I believe) understand what our political leaders sometimes fail to, that victory, in any form that would be immediately recognizable to Americans is simply not going to happen in these conflicts. On the negative effects that the prolonged state of war is having on our military personnel, I highly recommend this great op-ed by Andrew Bacevich in the Washington Post. The problem in general is that when one of these embarrassing statements or mistakes is made, no serious conversation regarding the merits is generated. The resignation or firing is a purely face-saving move, but one that leaves the government temporarily disrupted and crippled until a suitable replacement can be found. We need to have that conversation about Afghanistan, not to mention 10 or 20 other issues. We ought to be able to rely on journalists to generate this kind of discussion, but they are increasingly unable or unwilling to challenge or diverge from the self-serving narratives that emerge from Washington. And so the disgraced shuffles off into the shadows, only to reemerge shortly thereafter with a new lobbyist position or a generous pension (as in McChrystal's case). Its pointless, if not counterproductive, and we need to find a better way to deal with these types of situations as a government, but more importantly as a public.

To Those About to Buy a House, We Warn You

2010-04-11T20:27:00.003-05:00

Item for Sale: one (1) house. But it is not just a house, of course. Tied up in the physical structure is a complex tangle of myths, aspirations, and obligations. Among the obligations, though certainly not alone in that category, is the thirty-year mortgage that you recently "qualified for." We will come back to that later. The myths and aspirations attached to the house are oh so preciously American. "Owning" (again, we will return to this) your own home carries with it the promise of independence, and after all, isn't independence what generations of American men and women have worked, fought, died, and hoped for? Though most realtors or homebuilders are too polite or discreet to mention such a relationship, this "independence" ought to have its own line item on the good faith estimate attached to the contract. "No more landlords for us," it might say-- this structure is ours to do with as we please. The house, or in more evocative Western parlance, the homestead, is supposed to say something about us as a family, both to others, but perhaps more importantly to ourselves. It says that we are our own masters, that we have toiled on this earth to carve out a little piece of soil, wood, and stone that we can call our own, that we have claimed a piece of our by-golly God-given heritage. It also signals that we are "adults," that we have successfully navigated that most crucial of transitions from children living with their parents, to a twenty-something living alone or with friends in more transient quarters, to a full-fledged and fully-actualized grown-up.

If you were or are fortunate enough to be born into what remains of a middle class in this country, at times it seems that you were handed a certificate shortly after birth which promised you: 1) a college education, 2) fulfilling work, and 3) a house for you, a beautiful or handsome spouse, and your two-point-whatever accomplished and way-above-average children. But the cake is a lie.

As I said before, if you are like nearly everybody out there buying a home and not close to retirement, there will be a significant amount of debt related to the purchase of the home, which will necessitate a mortgage. And while you are signing this contract that promised you the independence of owning your own home (its in those disclosures somewhere), what it resembles more closely is an agreement for a fixed term of servitude. This house will hang around your neck for at least thirty years like, well, a house. While you may tell yourself that you are cleverly storing up value in your home equity, if you are one of the lucky many to have bought a home in the last five years, you are almost certainly allocating about 80-90% of your monthly mortgage payment to interest and escrow. And chances are that any equity you might have already earned has been obliterated in the recent sharp decline in nationwide home values. Thus, should you choose to sell this house, you will not see a dime of this "value," because what you have been paying is basically.......rent. But don't get angry at the banks, or the mortgage brokers, or the realtors. The legally mandated disclosures were all there-- the property taxes, the interest, the insurance, etc. Of course, they never disclosed the repair costs, the higher utility bills, nor the value of your precious time (precious because it is so rare, since an absurd portion of your waking hours are spent toiling at your "fulfilling work" to earn enough to pay that mortgage) spent maintaining and beautifying the home, because that is all part of the dream of the independent American home owner. Thus we trade what likely adds up to decades of our lives, in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars above the "value" of the house, and all the forfeited happiness from toil at jobs that we hate and our failure to take time for ourselves to grow and prosper in a non-material sense, in a desperate attempt to hold onto something that will only be "ours" in anything more than the most paltry, technical sense after more than a third of our statistical longevity has passed us by.

So if you already own a home, I am so, so sorry. We bought into the myth-- the one that says that all right-thinking adults have to own a house, and that all other options are necessarily dishonorable and irresponsible.

If you do not own a home, but are thinking about it, run while you still can. Save yourselves.

The Solution to All Your Prime-Time Television Problems (TM)

2010-02-21T21:18:00.005-06:00

I thought I would do something completely different for a change. I'm a little burned out and disappointed with politics right now and most of my thinking and writing on Mormon issues goes into my own Sunday School teaching right now. So this will be something a little lighter, but, sad as it may be, still in the front of my mind.

I watch more TV than I can be proud of. It seems as if I have at least one hour-long show I watch every night of the week, except on Sunday, and most nights it is more like two or three. Of course, the advent of the DVR has made it both easier and harder to deal with this level of viewership. I am not required to schedule my life around my favorite shows and can theoretically watch an hour-long show in 40 minutes (or a half-hour show in 20, unless they are on BBC America or PBS), which makes a difference when you are watching two or three shows a night. However, those same advantages make it possible to watch two or three shows a night and still feel like there is time left over to do something else.

Even though I really do love some of these shows, from time to time I find myself wishing that they would come to some conclusion or simply be cancelled, especially those that are going on into their fifth or sixth season or beyond. Plus, I have the frustration that most of us have shared of having a really beloved program cancelled prematurely, while there was still plenty of good storytelling to be done (see Kings or Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). How do we correct this imbalance and frankly, cosmic injustice? I present to you The Solution to All Your Prime-Time Television Problems (TM)*

1. No reality TV. None. This needs absolutely no explanation.

2. All new shows will be limited to four seasons. This is the linchpin of my plan. Some shows just overstay their welcome (e.g. ER, which kids were watching when I was in high school. I am now almost 30). Putting a cap on the number of seasons focuses the writers and producers on storytelling. Beginning. Middle. End. Not Beginning...Middle...Middle...Middle...uh oh we just got canceled. (e.g. Heroes). What show could not put together a complete, complex story arc within four seasons of 18-24 episodes a piece? I could probably film all the good parts of the Bible (OT and NT) in 96 hour-long episodes. That ends up being the length of about 48 feature films or almost more than you could watch if you watched one two-hour movie every week for a year. You think Lost really needed more than four seasons to tell its whole story? Three words: Nikki and Paolo. Case closed. I cannot think of a single show that has improved in its fifth, sixth, etc. season over what it was doing in its first or second. The fifth or sixth season is also prime time for the original regular (and beloved) characters to start jumping ship for the movies, another show, etc. After that, its all downhill. (e.g. X-files)

2a. All currently running shows will be grandfathered in by allowing them two seasons beyond their current one (if necessary). In my recent experience, early notification of cancellation has saved at least two shows-- Lost and Battlestar Galactica, with a possible third being Alias. Anyone who watched these shows can tell you that in the late second and third season, these shows really started to wander. They had lost their original trajectory or raison d'etre. And everybody knew it. When the producers of Lost announced that they would wrap the show up in two more seasons, the quality of the late fourth season immediately picked up. Same with BSG. The show had started to wander from the goal (Earth). While still executing science fiction on a high level, watching began to tax one's patience. The final season brought the show home (literally and figuratively), with the possible exception of that mess of an ending. Bottom line: if Lost can gather its many scattered threads in two seasons, anybody can.

2b. (Almost) all shows will be guaranteed two seasons. Four seasons is plenty to tell a great story. But some stories do not deserve to be told. Nevertheless, everybody has their favorites, even if the ratings don't justify keeping a show on for another two years. Two seasons will not be enough to satisfy some folks, but letting producers know that two seasons is their initial threshold will drive them to build and orient the story towards a possible initial deadline.

2c. The first sentence of 2b says "almost," because television executives will be allowed to cancel some truly abominable shows after one complete season. These opportunities are limited. A network gets three each season (one for every two nights of prime-time programming). A network also gets one chance to pull the plug on a show that just does not work at all before the initial season is even up.

2d. Under the above system, renewal for a second season is considered automatic as a default option until a network plays one of its four possible cancellation cards. Once a show is renewed during the second season, it can either be renewed for one or two additional seasons. The choice between one or two additional seasons is locked-in and irrevocable once made. All renewal decisions must be made before the midpoint of the season, allowing those shows that are not being picked up for any additional seasons to bring their story to a proper close. Some may think that this system will lead all executives to go for the one-season renewal every time, just to avoid the risk. This would be true, except....

2e. Like athletes, shows that are offered one season at their "home" network may opt to take a contract with another network for two seasons. As a concession, the home network can insist on the show skipping one season (coming back to that later) and not erring on its new network until the subsequent season.

What does this mean for the decision-making of a TV exec and the viewing possibilities of your average TV consumer? Knowing that the network will be locked in with almost every show (with the possible exception of four) for two seasons, judgment and decision-making will be front-loaded. Producers and writers will have to offer more up-front for networks to take a chance on their shows. Ultimately, because of costs, this means that less pilots will be produced and less shows will be given that chance to air for the first time each season, thereby decreasing the choices available to consumers. However, in the long run, this will likely mean that more shows will get the chance to air, since shows that are camping on prime timeslots for six or seven years will be cleared off the schedule promptly.

3. The year will be divided into three TV seasons: fall (beginning in August), spring (beginning in January), and summer (beginning in May/June). Shows on the major networks will either be fall or spring shows, but cannot air during both. Shows that transfer from one network to another may switch seasons, thus if a show transfers from ABC to NBC but ABC keeps it off the air for one season (fall), it may begin airing in either the spring season or the following fall season. Summer is reserved for shows on basic cable (we'll call it the Mad Men or My Boys season), vacations without your DVR, catching up on your backlog of reading, and going to the movies. Basic cable shows can also air during the fall or spring seasons. The institution of two separate and independent television seasons also adds to the total number of possible shows that can be aired by each network, also increasing viewer choice.

3a. Shows will air weekly (or more often) and consecutively. There will be no skipping weeks except for major sporting events (Olympics, World Series, March Madness) and major political happenings (SOTU, Election Night, etc.).

4. For those of you doing the math at home, you are probably thinking, "if a show has to start in August and end by the beginning of January, (or start in January and end sometime in May or June), how will you fit a 24-episode season into only 20 weeks or less?" Answer- you won't. Television seasons should shorter. A season of 24 (which is one of my favorites) feels interminable at this point. Furthermore, it only contains about 12-16 good episodes. Anyone who doubts me should go back and watch season 1, where Jack's wife Terri loses her memory and wanders around for three or four episodes. The rest is just filler. Part of what makes TV seasons seem so long is that airing 20-24 episodes, along with skipping five or six weeks (or more) along the way, means that shows last over half the year. That is a pretty heavy demand on a thread of your attention for a medium that is not known for inducing improvements in attention spans. I cannot sustain my attention on a book that I am reading in bits and pieces for longer than a month. So TV seasons will be anywhere between 16-18 episodes, which builds in some flexibility for starting later than August 1st, or for the aforementioned major sporting events.

5. Now for those of you who can still do math after my fourth point, you might be thinking "I thought he promised us 96 hours in four seasons? Now it sounds more like 72 hours, which is about three seasons worth of episodes." You got me. That was a dishonest "hook" to get you to read the rest of the post. Welcome to television.

_________________________________________

* Before someone brings this up in the very first comment, I want to point out that I am well aware that creative issues are not the only, nor even the chief driver of what gets put on television. Advertising and network politics (hi, Jay Leno, didn't see you standing there) are more powerful influences. I openly admit that my scheme is a pipe dream and could never possibly be adopted. But tell me I'm wrong.

How we can make "Everything that is Wrong with LDS Gospel Teaching" right

2010-01-31T19:02:00.001-06:00

Having recently been called as a Sunday School teacher in my ward, I followed John C.'s three-part series on "Everything that is Wrong with LDS Gospel Teaching" at BCC three weeks ago with great interest. I have been deeply dissatisfied with my experience in Sunday School for several years now, and now feel like I have the opportunity to make things better (if not for others, than at least for myself). Below I have tried to synthesize what I believe are some of the major points to emerge from John C.'s posts (as well the 300+ comments) followed by my own take (in italics), based on personal experience as both a teacher and student and my personal teaching philosophy. I obviously won't be able to address each and every worthwhile point that was made, but I've tried to identify the 11 most important (and possibly some subpoints).

Sunday School is "dead boring," primarily as the result of homogeneity and repetition (see John C. post #1). There was not much pushback from this from commenters, though I suspect that the active participants in the Bloggernacle tend to self-select for those who are generally dissatisfied with their experience in weekly church meetings. However, this is becoming less and less true with the passage of time.

I confess that I am 100% in agreement with John C.'s initial statement that, as currently implemented, a member of the Church can learn everything that they are going to learn from Sunday School in approximately 4-5 years. My experience in Sunday School over the past five years has been generally poor, with a few bright spots here and there. Of course, making these more interesting is not always the solution. I have had a few teachers try to make things more interesting, but have generally done so at the expense of the Spirit and/or good taste.

Part of the problem lies in the Correlated curriculum materials provided by the Church for the Gospel Doctrine classes (comment #11, post #1). A key part of failure of these materials is that they are focused less on teaching the scriptures, rather than teaching a simple version of Gospel principles that can in some way be related to these scriptures. (see John C.'s posts #2 and #3). The means by which this failure of the curriculum has resulted in poor teaching is that what ought to be used as a last resort for unexperienced or time-strapped teachers has become the model for how lessons ought to be taught. (see John C.'s post #2; smallaxe's comment #45 to post #3)

Again, I'm in agreement here. I loathe the manuals that we are asked to teach from. I think the manuals do a vast disservice to the members and insults the actual content of the scriptures by insisting that these narratives can be crammed into tiny contemporary LDS orthodoxy boxes. My general approach is to use the manual as a last resort if I am strapped for time or if no better idea presents itself.

Engaged teachers and students can resolve some of the boredom issues, but are not a panacea (various comments to post #1). The larger issue is to what extent does the responsibility for good classes lie with the teacher and to what degree does it lie with the producers of the curriculum. (see SilverRain's comment #33 to post #2)

I do not have an easy answer for this. I would place the greater responsibility with the teacher, since he or she is presumably more familiar with the particular circumstances of the class that they teach while the curriculum committee is tasked with the admittedly difficult task of preparing materials that will be used all over the world by members of the Church with vastly different backgrounds and levels of commitment to the Gospel and the Church. A good teacher can overcome a poor curriculum, but will likely have to be comfortable deviating from that curriculum somewhat, and will have to teach classes that are willing to accept some measure of deviation. Of course, this is a personal preference only.

There is a great deal of disagreement as to the degree to which "dumbing down" the lessons for new members or the recently reactivated is a) required and/or b) prudent. One standard solution arises: two classes - regular SS and "advanced" SS (Dave's comment #3 to post #2). Or for a variant on that solution- bump the "slow" folks back down to Gospel Principles until they learn enough to join everybody else in Gospel Doctrine. (rameumptom's comment # 41 to post #2)

For a long time, I was in the two-track Sunday School camp. Older members who were ready for a little more meat could opt into the "advanced" class or alternatively, less experienced or less knowledgeable members could stay in Gospel Principles until they were ready to move up. However satisfying this solution may be as a matter of pedagogy, it does not sound like a positive development for the character of the members of our Church. There are plenty of scriptures from the Book of Mormon that denounce the division of people based on classes or the level of knowledge that they were able to achieve. Again, no easy answer here. I would opt for a model where all members of the class are challenged on a consistent basis and that the teacher sets expectations for the student at a high level. I am an optimist in believing that most people will generally seek to meet the expectations that are set.

There is some disagreement as to whether the responsibility of the Gospel Doctrine teacher is to actually "teach something" or simply facilitate a discussion among class members (see john f.'s comment #30 to post #1).

I stand resolutely in the category of people that believes that it is the job of the Gospel Doctrine to actually teach the class. Again, the teacher will be most familiar with the needs and capabilities of their own class. Some classes may be capable of amazing, inspiring, and thought-provoking discussions. Other classes may simply not be up to that level. I presume that the Lord and/or the bishop of my ward has called the teacher to actually teach and not because he believed that person would be a really great facilitator of other people's conversation.

A lack of teaching technique for some persons called to teach may explain a large portion of bad lessons (see JNS comment #33 and RAB #56 to post #1).

I believe that pedagogical skills, like leadership ability, are something that people are just born with and cannot be taught. That does not mean that some people are always going to be condemned to being poor teachers or that they should not have the opportunity to teach. To the contrary, with sufficient preparation and some work on improving teaching skills, I suspect that most members of the Church can be serviceable teachers for the purposes of Church classes. However, the preparation required for that person to excel may be a great deal more that for other persons who have more natural teaching abilities.

Finding the right balance between abstract gospel principles and real-life application is difficult. Opinions vary.

No easy answer here. I suspect that it is a matter of personal preference for each member of the class, as well as the teacher. I have always preferred acquiring knowledge on the level of abstract principles rather than more concrete examples. This holds true even outside the Church setting. As a law student, I was always much more comfortable understanding a principle on the basis of the "black letter law" rather than having it introduced to me through a series of discrete cases, all of which had different facts and circumstances. The Church's official philosophy appears to clearly side with teaching more towards real-life application. I would argue, as I did above, that too much emphasis on application ends up missing what the scriptures actually say in favor of teaching what we believe they ought to say.

The need for multiple teachers to appeal to students who respond to different teaching styles. (see Natalie B. comment # 67 to post #1)

We have six different Gospel Doctrine teachers for two different Gospel Doctrine classes in my ward. I think that it is a wonderful system. I don't think that the teaching style of any two of these teachers is the same. Some are extremely "by-the-manual" kinds of teachers, while others (including myself) are pretty much making up their own lessons. It is likely that each of these styles appeals to a least some portion of the class, so presumably every person gets a lesson taught to their learning style at least once a month. According to the bishop, the classes are supposed to be divided up alphabetically by last name; nevertheless, I have noticed some people migrating from the class they ought to be in just to hear another teacher. And lest you believe that I am boasting that everyone in the ward is flocking to my class, I have seen some students who ought to be in my class choosing to attend the other, including one family doing so just this morning.

Nobody is confident in their opinion regarding how much deviation from the instructions and questions set forth in the manual is acceptable. (see Amri comment #29 to post #2)

This goes hand in hand with the problems with the manuals themselves. If the manuals were perfect, no deviation would be necessary. Seeing as how I believe that the manuals are not perfect, I have to decide what degree of deviation from the manual is optimal. In contrast to most people, who believe that in Sunday School, no deviation or use of outside materials is permitted, the manual explicitly instructs teachers to "be judicious" in their use of outside materials. That is an exception that a lawyer can drive a semi truck through. What we are really dealing with are at least two sets of expectations- the teachers' and the students'. While a teacher may feel comfortable with less-than-average reliance on the manual alone, as long as students retain the manuals-only norm, the teaching will be less than effective. It will take a simultaneous development of comfort with teaching that is not delivered to us in a shrink-wrapped package for a non-manual-based teaching strategy to be totally effective.

Standardized lessons which are presented in a standardized format do not "convey what is important about the Gospel" (John C.'s post #3)

As I mentioned above, I am not a fan of our Sunday School manuals. One reason is that, as I read the questions it asks, I do not find myself inspired or passionate about the answers to the questions. The things that interest me and that really get me excited about teaching and learning generally are not presented in our manuals. I am a firm believer that a class can be better if the teacher is passionate about the principles that they teach, if they feel personally invested in the content of the lesson. And more to John C.'s point, the lessons often focus on only the most superficial issues with the Gospel and do not get down to the questions that require us to exercise our minds and our spirits, to grasp after the divine.

Whether we should not simply be teaching the what of reading the scriptures, but the how (reading and interpretation methods)

While I personally would be very interested in such a component to our class, I think it is beyond the capacities or desires of about 90% of those who attend Sunday School. I have no doubt that improved reading and interpretation techniques would lead to improved discussions in our classes, but when we struggle to get members to just read the lesson materials on a weekly basis, adding an additional layer of complexity just does not seem prudent.

Reid's faux pas - much ado about nothing

2010-01-10T21:10:00.007-06:00

The weekend's big political story has been the controversy surrounding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)'s unfortunate remarks regarding then-candidate Barack Obama's race during the 2008 presidential campaign, as reported in Mark Halperin's new book. According to Halperin's book, Senator Reid stated that America would be more receptive to Obama as president because he was "light-skinned" and did not have a "Negro dialect." The new Republican attack wants to demand that Reid be treated the same as former Majority Leader Trent Lott, who was forced to resign after he commented that the country would have been better off had it elected segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948 and avoided all its subsequent problems. See Josh Marshall's take here, as I think he has hit the nail on the head.

This is a purely false and specious equivalence. First, the statements themselves. Taken even without the broader context, Senator Reid's comments were a compliment to President Obama. Make no mistake, his choice of particular words and terms was incredibly antiquated, not to mention unfortunate and bone-headed. Any insults were directed at white Americans who still harbor racist attitudes, who Reid believes (and he is no doubt correct) will have a less difficult time accepting a "light-skinned" African-American who does not speak like a stereotyped black person. For all the hoopla about Obama being the first black president, his is more a transitional racial achievement, since so many things about him seem to indicate his "whiteness."

Sen. Lott on the other hand was complimenting Strom Thurmond, the man who set a record for filibustering for over 24 hours to stop the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act and never renounced his defense of segregation (all while having a child with a black maid). Senator Lott had the gall to claim that the country could have avoided all its problems if it had elected Strom Thurmond back in 1948. What problems, you say? Based on Thurmond's record, any problems with black people and their "civil rights."

Context, of course, matters. Sen. Reid, despite a prodigious list of other wince-inducing public statements, has no history of recorded racism. His scores as a legislator from the NAACP have been very strong. If this particular statement had not been made, there is little in his record that would suggest that Sen. Reid held racist attitudes. Sen. Lott, on the other hand, has a long record of support for Southern, Confederate causes, including some groups related to the KKK. His statement regarding Strom Thurmond only seems to confirm what seems to have been certain even if that statement had never been made.

Whatever other problems you may have with Sen. Reid, this ridiculous comparison needs to be put to rest immediately. (And as for these people commenting on the Times & Seasons thread regarding its designation of Sen. Reid as "Mormon of the Year," they make me feel embarrassed to be an American and even more embarrassed to be Mormon.)

Courage and Leadership

2010-01-09T23:04:00.003-06:00

This will be brief as I get back into the blogging groove from a too-long holiday hiatus.

A man died last month. While a few news publications made note of his death, it likely went unnoticed and largely unmourned by your average American. The man was Yegor Gaidar, the first finance minister of the new Russia and later its prime minister for a brief period. Mr. Gaidar was most famous for his decision to rapidly move Russia, then in transition from the Soviet command economy, towards a liberalized and privatized modern economy. Its immediate effects were devastating. Those of us old enough to remember the Russian transition period (it is in fact one of my first political memories) may chiefly remember the numerous bread lines in Russian stores due to shortages and hyperinflation. These hardships were the direct result of Mr. Gaidar's policies.

I heard Mr. Gaidar speak twice while at Duke University and have a signed copy (now read) of his account of the Russian transition period and the economic decisions for which he was so widely vilified by his countrymen. My own knowledge of macroeconomics is weak enough (as attested to by my grades) to leave me wholly unfit to make judgments about Mr. Gaidar's reforms. Nevertheless, I have great respect for his courage as a leader. Few of us can understand the uncertainty of that period, particularly regarding the task of reforming a 75-year old command economy, something that had not been tried successfully at that time. Mr. Gaidar's decisions were bold, but extremely unpopular and painful for thousands if not millions of Russian citizens. However, they were the indispensable foundation of moving Russia away from its Soviet past. I imagine that Mr. Gaidar must have known that his political future would be imperiled by these decisions. The retribution was swift-- his tenure as finance minister lasted less than six months and a later stint as prime minister fared little better. He attempted to return to democratic politics later in his life, but his reputation for the early missteps of the Russian market followed him.

Nations, if they are to prosper and progress, must have courageous leaders. The world in which we live, even if not in the midst of a crisis such as the Soviet transition, is an extremely complex one. Decisions on governing are necessarily made in the face of uncertainty and imperfect choices. But decisions must be made. Through their decisions, courageous leaders may become unpopular and lose the confidence of their friends and countrymen. The most courageous and correct decisions may hurt those that the leaders were chosen or elected to serve. Courageous leadership is not automatically rewarded by its beneficiaries and may require the sacrifice of personal ambition. But, despite its seeming rarity, it is indispensable.

By this defense of "courageous leadership," I do not mean to imply that an unpopular decision, by virtue of its unpopularity, necessarily possesses a high degree of merit. But neither is popularity an infallible proof of merit. My point is that the United States, at this moment in its history, faces a number of difficult choices in its near-term future-- decisions about health care, climate change, war and peace, constitutional protections, and national priorities, among others. Current national leadership is driven too much by electoral politics and how decisions will play out in the news media and for the "average American." This does not mean that our leaders are irredeemably flawed or self-serving villains; only that they are human. We need leaders NOW who are willing to throw it all away for the sake of being right. I was struck by the following quote from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (who ought to know a little something about being unpopular):

The test is whether you have people willing to do the things that are deeply unpopular, deeply hard to understand, knowing that they're necessary to do and better than the alternatives.

President Obama once said he was willing to be a one-term president in order to make the right decisions and get important things done. Show me.

Demise of the BYU Women's Research Institute

2009-11-02T23:28:00.004-06:00

On October 29, 2009, Brigham Young University announced that it would be closing the Women's Research Institute, the program which housed the university's women's studies minor. I am fortunate enough to know someone who was previously affiliated with the WRI -- my wife Ariel, who taught at the WRI in the summer of 2006. I have invited her to share her thoughts on this event.

Three years ago, I had the opportunity to take a break from my Ph.D. program at Duke and spend a summer as visiting faculty at the Women’s Research Institute at Brigham Young University. Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, director of the Women’s Research Institute, invited me to teach Introduction to Women’s Studies, the core course requirement for the women’s studies minor, during BYU’s spring term. In need of both teaching experience and money, I agreed to teach the course even though I had a number of reservations about doing so. First of all, I had been a student at BYU for 5 years and had never even known they taught women’s studies courses at all. Was anyone going to enroll? But more importantly, I was fresh out of a graduate women’s studies course at Duke, an institution with a “real” women’s studies department and an active feminist agenda. I did not want to teach anything but a serious women’s studies syllabus—something I could teach at any university that would deal with touchy issues such as female sexuality. And was I even allowed to say “feminism” at BYU without ending up in my bishop’s office? Would it be like my previous two summers of teaching Book of Mormon in the religion department, where veteran religion professors regularly snuck into the back of my class to evaluate my orthodoxy?

I was glad to find that my fears were largely unfounded. Ballif-Spanvill, a highly intelligent and well-educated woman with the kindly appearance of an elementary school teacher, had mastered the art of treading lightly around the powers that be in order to keep the WRI largely autonomous. Because of her political savvy, the WRI was a haven of academic freedom for feminist scholars such as myself. While there, I was given free reign over what I could teach, the materials I could use, and the topics I could discuss. Ballif-Spanvill even tried to help me get through the BYU “honor code” computer filters to conduct my research on pornography. But what amazed me most about the WRI is the freedom I felt there not only as a feminist but also as a LDS scholar. While discussing issues such as sexual abuse, lesbianism, body image, and sex work, I was able to speak more openly and confidently about women’s issues than I ever had before because of the religious demographic of the classroom. While we discussed many of the same subjects that would have been part of the curriculum at any other university, there was also a place for testimony and for the reconciliation of fact with faith. It was a unique experience and one that I will never forget.

I had toyed with the idea of returning to the WRI one day when BYU was willing to put more resources into women’s studies and would finally fund some regular professorships in the WRI. Instead, the administration has decided to eliminate the WRI altogether, supposedly “streamlining and strengthening” the women’s studies minor by relocating it to the sociology department. I am skeptical. While the elimination of such a relatively-unpopular minor may seem like the logical choice in the midst of a serious economic recession, the administration of BYU must consider the long-term results of this choice. Women’s studies is not only a department but a symbol of social progress and a commitment to equality at universities around the world. It can be of no coincidence that the WRI was founded in 1978, only shortly after LDS African Americans were allowed to hold the priesthood and in the midst of debate over the Equal Rights Amendment, an era in which both BYU and the Church were seeking ways in which to express their dedication to racial and gender equality. Has the need for such visual symbolism ceased in this time of Proposition 8? Hardly.

In emphasizing the symbolic value of the WRI, I do not wish to demean the actual academic value of women’s studies at BYU. The WRI has served over the past thirty-one years to pursue specific goals central not only to the feminist agenda but also to the Gospel of Jesus Christ: to promote the education of women, to recognize and eliminate the exploitation of women, and to end violence and abuse of women. In light of these considerations, one might even argue that the goals and achievements of the WRI are of greater social, political, and even eternal importance than those of most other departments at BYU. Yet in eliminating the WRI and burying the women’s studies minor in the sociology department, the administration is marginalizing these aims and reinforcing to the world (once again) that money-making lawyers and accountants glorify God better than engaged citizens sensitized to social injustice and committed to change.

Book review- Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy

2009-09-21T23:27:00.007-05:00

I just finished David Robert's Devils Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy and thought that I would give it a brief review. This was my first book-length treatment of the handcart pioneers. The depth of my familiarity to this point has been the various classic anecdotes shared in a thousand talks and General Conference addresses since the pioneers first reached Utah. So, I found myself with a lot to learn.

For anyone coming after me who wants to read this book, I offer the following warning. Read the first chapter, then skip to about page 78. The author, who has written several books previously on a variety of topics relating to the American West, but without any previous experience or expertise in Mormonism, gives us, in the early part of the second chapter, his own personal views on the life and work of the Prophet Joseph Smith. His view takes the stance that between two reasonable and plausible interpretations of various acts of Joseph Smith, one that makes him look like a good person, and one that makes him look like a no-good scoundrel, Roberts inevitably chooses the latter on every occasion. Roberts still pretends that Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History is the definitive biography of Joseph Smith. Writing in 2008, acting not only as if Rough Stone Rolling is not at least the former's equal in scholarly rigor, but acting as if RSR simply did not exist, is inexcusable from a historian's point of view. While Robert's opinions of Joseph Smith may not be supported by RSR, the arguments made in that book must at least be dealt with.

Perhaps more importantly, Joseph Smith's story is ultimately irrelevant to the story of the handcart pioneers. Obviously, the visions of the Prophet Joseph Smith point towards the ultimate motivation of the handcart pioneers, but Joseph Smith was not responsible for any of the decisions that lead to the handcart disaster. He did not make the decisions, nor do any of the principles which he taught illuminate the reasons for the various acts of mismanagement that lead to the deaths of so many.

Which brings me to the author's ultimate argument: that Brigham Young was responsible for the deaths of the handcart pioneers, and that he ordered them to their deaths because he valued life so cheaply. In the author's defense, I will point out that this is at least John Taylor's estimation of Young's motivation. In a letter responding to Young's accusation of overspending on the provisions of the handcart pioneers in New York, Taylor lowers the condemnatory hammer, sarcastically stating that he was unaware that money was to be valued more highly than lives in the handcart enterprises. (I apologize that I do not have the quote in front of me, but the book was already returned to the library). However, other than this single quote from Taylor, who was in NY at the time that the serious decisions regarding the handcart journey were being made, the author provides little in the way of evidence for Young's callousness. What he does show is that Young was likely misinformed, overly optimistic, and overzealous regarding the handcart pioneers. This assessment is one I can get behind. Brigham Young was overly optimistic about the time it would require for the handcart pioneers to cross the plains and how much the members of the teams could handle on a daily basis. He was anxious to get the handcart pioneers to Zion as quickly as possible, which probably lead him to discount some opinions contrary to his position. And he was certainly surrounded by other parties at least as zealous as himself, encouraging some careless decision-making. However, none of this proves callousness or a lack of respect for human life. In fact, Brigham Young's eventual order for a dramatic rescue of the handcart pioneers (once their dire position was made clear to him by recent arrivals to the valley from the trail) tends to show the opposite. He may have been tardy, but not unconcerned.

At one point, the author takes issue with an exhibit from a church history site which depicts the unfolding of the handcart tragedy as a series of falling dominoes, representing the numerous circumstances that put the handcart pioneers in danger. In this, he is correct. Various of those "circumstances" were not in fact circumstances at all, but were the result of multiple human decisions, some of which were not taken in full light of the facts or with the proper goal of preserving and safeguarding human life in mind. To paraphrase the famous quip regarding guns, snow, hunger and cold did not kill the handcart pioneers, poor decision-making did.

Roberts finishes his story of the Martin and Willie companies with about 50-75 pages left in the book. One of the final chapters is one of the more interesting, and deals with Roberts' tour of various church history sites along the Mormon Trail. Roberts opines that the missionary-docents misrepresent some aspects of the handcart history (they probably do) and that the practice of Mormon youth recreating portions of the handcart journey over a short distance probably does a disservice to the memory of the handcart pioneers by cheapening their suffering, which is in his mind the chief feature of the tale. Opinions on this may vary, and may be particularly vehement among those who have done a handcart "trek." However, it is certain that a journey of a couple of days, with adequate food and water on hand, in clement conditions, with emergency aid available, and stepping into a couple of "cow patties" along the way do not remotely equate to the handcart pioneer's months of suffering in cold and hunger, nearly no prospect of rescue or return, during which death stalked them at every turn. One can argue whether it was meant to encourage association with their experiences, reflection, loyalty, humility, or a mix of them all. In my opinion, this chapter is one of Roberts' more original contributions to the scholarship surrounding the handcart tragedy.

For member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a familiar anecdote with which anyone questioning the necessity of the handcart pioneer's sacrifice and the guilt behind any of their leaders' decisions must deal. I quote it in part below:

Some years after the Martin company made their journey to Salt Lake City, a teacher in a Church class commented how foolish it was for the Martin company to come across the plains when it did. The teacher criticized the Church leaders for allowing a company to make such a journey without more supplies and protection.

I was an old man sitting in the classroom listening, then I spoke out, asking that the criticism be stopped, ‘Mistake to send the Handcart Company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife was in it. … We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church, because everyone of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives, for we became acquainted with Him in our extremities.

......

‘Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart? No. Neither then nor any minute of my life since. The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company.’

The argument here, in short, is that the sufferings of the handcart pioneers were necessary for the individual's salvation and ultimately, for the building up of Zion. Roberts notes and documents that one of the premises of this argument, that no member of the handcart companies ever apostatized, is false. Several members of the handcart companies, including some of their subcaptains, did ultimately apostatize, and their experience on the handcart trail contributed to that decision. Furthermore, those who died along the trail are not available to answer whether the handcart trek was worth it in their minds. Could the handcart pioneers have become acquainted with God's mercy and care without suffering what they did? Second-guessing from this distance seems imprudent. But some Saints obviously did. Pioneer companies and handcart companies besides the ill-fated Martin and Willie companies made it through with fewer deaths and injuries and their material contributions and testimonies too contributed heavily to the establishment of the Church in the Salt Lake Valley and throughout the West.

To sum up: I thought this book (besides the portion I recommend be excluded above) was a decent history of the handcart pioneers. My disclaimer of course is that I have read no others. My eyes were certainly opened to some of the excesses involved in the handcart enterprises and occasions where better decisions could ultimately have been made, saving the lives of hundreds, with no ill effects on the establishment of Zion. The author's bias against Mormonism and Brigham Young (though sympathetic to the pioneers) was clear from the beginning; but since an unbiased history could likely never be told, it is more important to be aware of the bias than to dismiss the book out of hand because of it.

Teabagger ancestors

2009-09-15T22:34:00.003-05:00

I keep thinking that the 9/12 teabagger rally in Washington DC reminded me of some other major public event in DC? I'm trying to narrow it down.

Let's think...

Nearly all white? Check.
Funny costumes? Check.
Lots of ignorant Southerners? Check.
Patriotic flag-waving? Check.
Overt racism? Check.
Concerned about wanting to "take back our country"? Check.
Intimidation by the threat of violence? Check.

Now I think I remember the event I was thinking of...

A Trust Betrayed

2009-09-13T20:34:00.003-05:00

I watched the President's speech on health care Wednesday. During it, I wondered to myself "How did we get to this place? Why is this even necessary?" Despite an improvement in public opinion regarding health care reform after the speech (and presumably a result of it), I still believe that the prospects for true health care reform are circling the drain ("true" meaning a public option, physician and hospital payment reform, significant measures at cost control, etc.). But why? In my opinion, it comes down to trust. A trust that was misplaced. A trust that was betrayed.

President Obama trusted Congress. In the opinion of some, he "overlearned" the lesson's of President Clinton's failure at achieving health care reform in the 90s. Instead of dictating a finished bill, he turned the process of actual policymaking - "legislating" - over to Congress, which is, according to our system, a "legislature." He trusted them, including significant majorities of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, to take care of working out the messy details of policy, armed with their collective experience and the expertise of witnesses and staffers. He trusted them to look beyond narrow electoral advantage, to ignore armies of lobbyists and dumptruck loads of special interest money squeezing through every crack in campaign finance law, and to have a broader vision for themselves and their country than the next two to six years. He trusted them to think in terms of the interests of ordinary Americans, and forget partisanship, sectionalism, and personal aggrandizement. That trust was misplaced and betrayed.

President Obama trusted Republicans too. He did not order Congressional Democrats to pass health care reform without consulting Democrats, or by using parliamentary procedure to make it happen without the need for Republican votes. He trusted that the Republicans would recognize the way the wind was blowing, after having been handed significant defeats at nearly every electoral level. He trusted them to engage in constructively building a solution for America's health care system, and in particular, a solution that would actually solve the problems of access, cost, and quality, instead of solving their credibility and loyalty problems with a couple hundred deranged constituents back home. He trusted them to be true to their political principles, but also to be true to the charge they were given to seek the common welfare of Americans. In short, he trusted them to act like adults. That trust was misplaced and betrayed.

Finally, President Obama trusted the American people. He trusted them to be intelligent consumers of information-- to not believe every thing that they saw on the TV, in their e-mail, or on a blog post. He trusted them to not make decisions based on mere rumor and innuendo. He trusted them to be broad-minded and open-hearted, to be concerned about the welfare of their fellow Americans as much as they would be concerned about the welfare of their siblings or cousins. He trusted them to not give in to cheap forms of public discourse and to not participate in a degradation of the national political atmosphere. That trust was also misplaced and betrayed.

This trust was lightly given, handed over despite no previous evidence of any of its recipients being trustworthy. I am not one generally disgusted by legislative politics (the "sausage-making"), but I am beginning to think differently. I see little reason to believe that Congress as a whole, despite the good intentions of a significant plurality of its members, to make necessary changes on the big issues in ways that would significantly benefit large portions of the American populace. And the American people? When they happen to get something right (electing Obama), it is practically a matter of dumb luck. To paraphrase The Dark Knight, President Obama "thought we could be decent men in an indecent time." I remain unconvinced.

The Future: A Speculation

2009-08-30T22:33:00.000-05:00

Take heed of the above title. The following is written primarily in the spirit of speculation rather than any confident prognostication. My grades in college macro- and micro-economics were not high enough for anyone to take what I am about to write without a large dose of salt.

We are now 21 months into the current recession (adopting the estimate that the recession began in December 2007). Some economists and pundits have interpreted a number of key economic indicators and measures to mean that we may have begun to emerge from the recession, or at least are approaching the bottom. Note the number of qualifiers in the previous sentence. It also appears that foreign economies have also begun to emerge from the global recession.

I am heartened by this news, and continue to be optimistic that the global economy will experience a measure of recovery throughout the remainder of this year and will be well on its way back to normalcy sometime in 2010, largely due to the efforts of political and economic leaders who intervened to avert a more serious crisis.

Nevertheless, I have lingering concerns about the employment prospects for the near and long term future. I will point you to two articles, both in the spirit of serious reflection, but one obviously a little more fanciful than the first. See here and here.

The first article, from The New Republic, notes the potential for a "jobless recovery," the concept that businesses and industries may return to former levels of activity, but without rehiring many of the workers who were fired during the worst part of the recession. I tend to agree with this prediction. I believe that recovery may be slow going at first, and that employment will lag far behind other indicators of economic progress. Some firms may return to previous levels of activity, but will have grown accustomed to doing more with less. Those who remained employed will have become very productive in their efforts to impress managers and keep their jobs (I can personally attest to this). Therefore, we will not see firms rehiring at former levels. Of particular concern is that the major driver of the American economy, consumer purchases, may remain lower for the foreseeable future. (See here). Without consumer purchasing as a driver, both here and abroad, major commercial businesses are unlikely to invest heavily in additional employees. If the American economy does not find another key driver of progress (green energy is generally thought to be the most likely candidate), look for sustained high unemployment for many years to come.

The second article, from the Washington Post, reflects on the growing (and coming) displacement of workers with computers and other machines. This is often a great boon to most of our lives, due to increased convenience and less human error (think of an ATM or making plane reservations online). However, it comes at a cost. Those ATMs replaced real humans who were bank tellers, and websites like Travelocity and Expedia practically decimated the demand for human travel agents. To put it crudely, the ongoing march of technology will make large numbers of Americans unnecessary and unemployable in the economy. The difficult decision is what comes next. Faced with a large underclass of unemployables (who are growing older due to better medical care), the stark choices presented us will be: higher (and more progressive) taxes or let them starve. Taxing the haves at high levels in order to redistribute to the poor is, of course, a matter of the social contract, but also a means to maintain social order. Nevertheless, it will be difficult and controversial.

I don't mean the above ruminations to be a downer. I do not consider myself to be one of the doomsayers, constantly afraid of my own shadow (and those of others) and seeing the end of the republic around every piece of negative news. Nevertheless, I believe that the near- and long-term future will present us with a stark set of choices about how we will react to the plight of our countrymen, and it is one that our political and popular discourse is ill-adapted to handle well.

RIP Sen. Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T22:26:00.003-05:00

There are going to be many obituaries and eulogies for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. This will not be one of them. It would best serve us (and perhaps best please him) that, in the words he spoke in a eulogy for his assassinated brother Robert, he "not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

In the days, weeks and months to come, more nuanced reflections on his life will become increasingly common. His many personal failings will become a particular focus for some. Already, in some less civilized portions of American society, this has already begun to take place. For now, I am content merely to list what I found today as this man's incredibly long list of legislative accomplishments.

Federal Election Campaign Amendments of 1974 - contribution limits and public financing for presidential elections (post-Watergate)
COBRA - extending employer-based health insurance after leaving a job
Americans with Diabilities Act - set new standards for accessibility of public facilities for persons with disabilities; prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of disability
SCHIP - provide public health insurance to low-income children
Mental Health Parity Act - equalize treatment of mental health issues in health insurance
HIPAA - allowed employees to retain insurance when moving to a new job; protection of personal health information
Ryan White AIDS Act - provide assistance to states who operate programs designed to help AIDS patients
INA Act of 1965 - ended quota system in immigration favoring northern Europeans
National Cancer Act of 1971 - quadrupled the amount of federal research funding for cancer treatment
Title IX - equal funding for men's and women's sports on college campuses
Blocking Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court - basically every good thing that has happened judicially over the past 20 years
National Teachers Corps - the predecessor of Teach for America
Anti-Apartheid Act - banned purchase of certain goods from South Africa under apartheid
Civil Rights Act of 1991
National and Community Service Trust Act- created Americorps to expand volunteerism and provide grants to students who volunteer after college
Two increases in the minimum wage
Head Start - providing meals and early education to underprivileged pre-school children
WIC - food assistance to low-income women and children
Meals on Wheels - federal program delivering found to homebound senior citizens
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - free education to children with disabilities
Lowering the voting age to 18
Refugee Act - provision of humanitarian assistance, resettlement, and asylum to foreign refugees
Civil Rights Commission amendments - expanded CRC's jurisdiction to discrimination on the basis of disability
Creation of MLK Jr. Day
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - allowing persons to sue for past wages if they have been the victim of unequal pay on the basis of gender discrimination
Increased access for the disabled to polling places
Family and Medical Leave Act- provided up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for family emergencies or newborn infants
FHA amendments to help the disabled - prohibiting discrimination against the disabled in housing
Even Start - early education and literacy for underprivileged children and families
Fuel assistance for low-income families
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty - cut in half the nuclear arsenals of the US and Soviet Union
Removal of prohibition on female combat pilots
Direct student loans from the federal government
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families - welfare-to-work assistance
Gulf Coast Recovery Act - emergency funding for recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
PROTECT Act - enhanced Amber Alert
No Child Left Behind - federal standards in education (initially supported, but never fully funded, much to Sen. Kennedy's dismay)
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
Family Opportunity Act of 2006 - allows states to expand Medicaid coverage to special needs children
Eliminated the poll tax from the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Violence Against Women Act - allowing battered women to move freely and establish residence without their husband's permission
1994 Crime Act - put over 100,000 additional police on the streets of American cities
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - regulates the government's use of electronic surveillance

The common thread of course is that most of Senator Kennedy's principal legislative achievements were on behalf of people very different from himself-- the disabled, the poor, the jobless, the victims.

The chief parlor game in Washington D.C., and in newsrooms around the country, tonight and for the next several weeks, is whether Kennedy's death will make health care reform more or less likely. For what it is worth, my hope, wish and anticipation is that this will be the final push needed to make serious health care reform happen. The irony will be that the cause for which Senator Kennedy lived and fought so long will be the one he had to die to achieve.

What I Haven't Seen in a Very Long Time

2009-08-23T21:32:00.000-05:00

See here (and then follow the video link)

Thursday's press conference by the Scottish Minister of Justice Kenny MacAskill regarding the release of alleged PanAm 103 bomber Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi left me a little shocked. Personally, I am agnostic regarding the release of Al-Megrahi to Libya on "compassionate" grounds. I would have been happy either way.

The shocking thing was the eloquence, bespeaking careful deliberation and attention, with which Mr. MacAskill announced the decision for Al-Megrahi's release. I have rarely seen its like on that side of the pond or on this one. The detailed and thoughtful manner in which Mr. MacAskill explained this decision indicates that he takes his audience (primarily the Scottish and wider British polity, but also the international community) seriously as an intelligent and equally thoughtful consumer of information and participant in the social and political life of the nation. It is altogether refreshing to see a politician and leader not think and speak in easily consumable soundbites, which taken together may not add up to saying very much at all-- essentially talking down to us as passive recipients of information. It is even more remarkable given that, in his capacity as a Cabinet Minister in the Scottish Parliament, Mr. MacAskill is unelected (he is an elected member of the Scottish Parliament however).

Regardless of the merits of the decision (Al-Megrahi's reception in Libya on Friday seems to have put Mr. MacAskill's decision in a very poor light), the way in which it was received by British and American policymakers was predictable and useless, even if the release of Al-Megrahi turns out to have been in poor judgment. Mr. MacAskill handed us a clear opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue about the nature of terrorism, the proper handling of terrorist suspects and those convicted of terrorism, and the limits of current anti-terrorism policies here and in the UK. That invitation was shoved back in his face like a cream pie.

Stupidity, self-deception, and charity

2009-08-06T13:27:00.000-05:00

Hearing or reading things like this (or this) continue to trouble me profoundly. It is tempting to believe that these are problems of simple ignorance-- problems that, with a sufficiently large bullhorn, can be remedied with simple but forceful education. However, after recently finishing Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, a mid-1990s study on evolutionary psychology, I have come to suspect that their is something deeper and more firmly entrenched at work.

The human capacity for self-deception is well...practically limitless. But if, as I believe, most of us pride ourselves on searching for and accepting "truth," why is their self-deception? To put it simply, it helps (or helped) us reproduce better, in two ways. The simple version of the argument goes as follows: Under Darwinism, the (unconscious?) goal of organisms is to perpetuate their genes through their offspring. Males in almost all species, who can conceivably reproduce with many females during any reproductive cycle, have the ability to have many, many more offspring over their lifetime than do females, who are generally burdened with gestating and raising the offspring, which limits their lifetime fertility. Thus males seek after raw quantity of offspring, while females focus more on the quality of the few offspring they are able to produce, hoping that an achieved fitness will enable those offspring to reproduce prodigiously in future generations.

The first reason for which self-deception may have evolved has to do with how females go about converting their few offspring into worthy future reproducers. Females primarily pursue quality of offspring through male parental investment (MPI). A male's MPI will likely inhibit the number of other females with which he could reproduce. Thus, a male has an incentive to deceive the female regarding the level of MPI he is willing to provide. In response, females would have likely developed a mental mechanism to detect deception. But it is the male's counter-measure which is truly intriguing. At some point, males may have developed a mechanism which heightened the sincerity of their deception by deceiving the males themselves regarding their less-than-noble intentions. Being utterly convinced of their intention to provide a high level of MPI enabled those males to be utterly convincing to females. Ergo, those males who could self-deceive reproduced more than those males who did not possess the new fangled mental equipment. (Note that over a period of thousands of years, the mental machinery for deception, self-deception, and deceptiveness detection would have spread through both males and females in the population). Whew, that took longer than expected.

The second reason for which self-deception may have evolved also involves sexual selection. Under this theory, men are better able to achieve status and power through deception, or rather deception is one apt tool among many that males (and females) are able to call upon to achieve status and power. Status and power translate into higher reproductive potential in males. Again, self-deception enabled the ambitious to be more able deceivers, and thus to achieve status and power more readily.

Now, what was all this about? My point, going back to the introduction, is that at some point in our evolution, human beings developed a capacity for self-deception. Originally, this self-deception was designed for purely reproductive purposes. It may still serve that purpose or it may not. However it is unlikely to have become dormant merely because its usefulness has declined. (Note: This is because this capacity would have taken thousands and tens of thousands of years to develop through natural selection. It would not disappear in the few hundred years since our species outgrew its usefulness, if we have at all). Therefore, nearly all humans would likely possess this unconscious capacity to deceive ourselves, all the better to deceive others. I make the point about self-deceptions unconscious nature to show that self-deception is not malicious, or at least not intentionally so.

So I pointed out a couple of examples in the first sentence of incredibly bone-headed behavior as evidence for human being's capacity for self-deception. I say this without sarcasm or malice, because being a human trait, self-deception is one with which we are all afflicted. It actually inspires me to be more charitable towards those with whom I disagree. Many of them believe some things which are false (and even demonstrably so, not just a mere difference of opinion). However, they believe them for powerful reasons that have little or nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the idea...and they are not even aware of it. The phenomenon we call cognitive dissonance would have arisen as part of our capacity for self-deception, in fact to deepen it. Self-deception is still a tool in the search for status and power. Believing certain false ideas because of self-deception, and therefore being a very believer in that idea, may have little utility in the larger population or among other communities, but could be incredibly useful in signaling one's status or potential in one's own community. For example, take the "birthers." I can predict, with near certainty, that there are few, if any birthers, on the faculties at Harvard or Yale. Believing such a thing, or at least publicizing it to others, would cause an extreme loss of face, resulting in loss of standing in the intellectual community. (This does not, of course, preclude faculty members at Harvard and Yale being self-deceived in other areas, which actually contribute to their status and standing). However, a recent poll showed that 53% of Southerners polled said they did not believe or were not sure that President Obama was born in the U.S. For a variety of factors, involving politics, racial history, and our baser emotions, being a "birther" may have some utility for some people in the South.

As I alluded to before, humanity's capacity for self-deception is a double-edged sword. I can point fingers at the absurdities that other folks believe, while being ignorant of the many ways in which I have deceived myself into believe a host of other half-truths and silliness. In sum, I am encouraged by Wright's admonition towards the close of The Moral Animal, asking us to be more generous with one another and more introspective and thoughtful about our own ideas. The self-deceived need not remain so.

Townhall ambushes

2009-08-04T17:15:00.002-05:00

What may end up being the big news story of the week ( and perhaps the whole month of August) is the disruption of House members' townhall meetings and other public gatherings with their constituents by "teabaggers" and other assorted conservative activists. By their own admission and by order of their organizers, the goal of such activists is to disrupt these events and prevent communication between the Representative and his or her constituents, particularly as it regards health care reform.

I support the right of all citizens to peacefully (and sometimes not so peacefully) petition their government and make their voices heard. However, this behavior is absolutely juvenile. It is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your own ears (and the ears of those standing around you) and going "Lalalalalala...I can't hear you!" The activists' goal is not to move the debate in one direction or another or to influence the legislators with alternative proposals. Their purpose is to stop the process dead in its tracks and frankly, to intimidate the legislators among their own people. It is mobocracy and an attempt at governing through fear. If the "teabaggers" have some positive and constructive suggestions for legislative enactments that actually accomplish some of what needs to be accomplished in health care reform (more universal coverage, lower cost, etc.), by all means, share it. Share it loudly if need be. But let's put this childish and foolish behavior behind us.

Thoughts on the proposed "Mormon Review"

2009-08-04T11:39:00.003-05:00

Sunday night, my wife (who has collaborated with Richard Bushman on the Faith & Knowledge conference for the past three years) received the following (a shorter version of which is posted here at T&S):

Out of the Best Books: Introducing the Mormon Review

By Richard Lyman Bushman

The scripture that begins “and as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom, yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” may have been Joseph Smith’s favorite. He quoted it twice in the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer, and made the study of the best books the chief work of his School of the Prophets at Kirtland. Since his time, the scripture has been a favorite of all who appreciate the wide compass of Joseph Smith’s search for truth. It is inscribed in steel letters in the stairwell of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU.

We launch the Mormon Review, an online journal of cultural criticism, in the spirit of seeking wisdom out of the best books. We ask: What is the meaning of this signal scripture in our time? How do we seek wisdom out of books today? We invite all who are engaged with Mormon culture to join this inquiry.

The task, as we conceive it, is to pursue the meaning for Mormons of the millions of items that constitute our larger cultural world. What are we to make of the books, movies, art, music, politics, and exhibitions swirling about in our environment? Contributors are invited to examine films, plays, art of any kind, TV shows, children’s books, philosophical treatises, novels, histories, documentaries, scriptures from other traditions, political speeches, poetry, popular songs, video games, entertainment sites like Disneyland--any cultural artifact that awakens their Mormon sensibilities. The only restriction is that these items must not be Mormon. Books by Mormons and about Mormons are reviewed in other journals. The Mormon Review will look outward. We believe the spirit of the best books scripture is to search outside of Mormonism for wisdom.

The phrase “best books” implies discrimination, and we know that even the classics must be read critically. They should not be naively accepted as gospel. We must be prepared to contest the thought of even the most honored writers and artists. The Mormon Review offers a public forum where Mormons can teach one another by exercising their critical powers on significant works

But criticism implies appreciation as well as attack. The “best books” scripture assures us that the best books contain wisdom. Working in that spirit, the characteristic Mormon perspective may more often be positive than negative. Are we not enjoined to seek after things virtuous, lovely, and of good report?

The wisdom Mormons find in their reading is most commonly a literary version of their own beliefs. We like to discover the familiar in unfamiliar places. We laugh at ourselves for wanting to baptize every great writer as a Mormon. But this practice need not embarrass us. Mormon criticism attempts to absorb the larger world, piece by piece, into Mormon culture. One way to make a text our own is to recognize the familiar in the unfamiliar. In hearing echoes of our own belief in great texts, we inevitably deepen our understanding and widen the scope of our faith.

We do not envision a single line of Mormon cultural criticism emerging from this undertaking. We expect each response to be individual and idiosyncratic. In our view, Mormon criticism will be the sum of many variegated parts. When accumulated and deposited, however, the essays submitted to the Mormon Review will form, we believe, an invaluable archive of twenty-first-century Mormons grappling with their world.

Essays of any length (optimally four or five pages) should be submitted through the review’s website. Reviews will be accepted beginning August 1 for the launch of the journal on September 1, 2009. The editorial board will judge essays on their relevance to Mormon culture, clarity of expression, and general interest.

I think that this is a tremendously worthwhile project, though I have some questions about how it will be executed. There are other fora where Mormons review non-Mormon cultural items (Meridian Magazine and Deseret News come to mind). Unfortunately, such reviews generally offer little more than a generic prude's point of view. They could have been written by any concerned conservative Christian author or just be a press release from Dr. James Dobson. In short, there is nothing particularly "Mormon" about the review itself, aside from its author.

This is the hurdle that the Mormon Review must overcome if it will distinguish itself as a more thoughtful version of the vanilla Mormon reviews described above. I have heard (or read) Bushman speak (or write) about his opinion that Mormonism has not yet proven to the world what non-theological contribution it has to make to humanity. The Mormon Review can be an important part of finding this community's special "something" or at least exploring whether Mormonism has anything non-theological to offer humanity. It seems that Bushman and the Mormon Review's editorial board have already recognized that there is not one strand of thinking that will be a Mormon viewpoint. Perhaps that by evaluating cultural productions based on Mormon principles and values, the participants may begin to nail down what exactly those principles are, and those that are relevant to cultural production (aside, that is, from the aforementioned generic prudishness). This is important to recognize, but will require a level of erudition and nuance that has previously been missing from Mormon efforts to engage a larger culture.

Red vs. Blue Economies

2009-08-03T17:52:00.002-05:00

Ezra Klein (him again) and Andrew Sullivan (yes, I am a fan) both have stories (here, here and here) today on Ross Douthat's column in the NYT, in which Douthat argues that red-state economic models (specifically Texas, where I currently reside) may be more useful for emulation than blue-state economic models (in particular California). As you might expect, that argument is somewhat against the weight of the evidence.

California is a mess, no question about that. The housing market and unemployment are quite bad and the recent budget cuts are going to be quite painful for many Californians.

It is also true that Texas has responded better than most to the current recession. Last time I checked, unemployment was lower than the national average. In my own experience, some people here have lost their jobs but the consumer and housing markets have remained relatively healthy in spite of all the bad news. However, there is a price to be paid in all this. In terms of a social safety net, Texas is a quite miserly. Its levels of poverty and lack of health insurance (both for the general population and specifically for children) are among the worst in the nation. (See Klein's chart here). Texas has some special challenges-- in particular the large immigrant population-- but of course that is shared by California as well. Texas also has natural resources and industries that contribute a goodly share of the state's tax base, but somehow it has been difficult to translate these revenues into benefits and services for the most disadvantaged. Part of it is a question of priorities-- while I noted yesterday that Americans are more individualistic than Europeans, Texans are the epitome of this attitude.

Getting away from these two states, the bottom line is the twenty-five most prosperous states (by average income) are overwhelmingly blue states (21-4 in favor). The least prosperous states...well why belabor the point? But all of this obscures the real issue. The health of a state's economy cannot be measured solely by its per capita output or income, or the average price of a home. There must be room for a metric which reflects how broadly the benefits of prosperity are shared. No doubt this may reorder the list somewhat, but we have to move away from the abstraction that it is the states that have $X in income and remember that the ones truly suffering are not states, but individuals, families, and children.

Why Not a Moral Case for Health Care Reform?

2009-08-02T22:05:00.000-05:00

Author's note: Yes, I am aware that Ezra Klein wrote a post called "What Happened to the Moral Case for Health Care Reform?" here. This post was half-done by the time that appeared and I never consider it to be bad to be on the same frequency as Ezra Klein.

The past several weeks have seen an almost-unprecedented level of attention given to President Obama's (and Congress') attempts to reform the American health care system. As observed by the editors at The New Republic here, a useful but sometimes unfortunate amount of attention has gone to the admittedly wonkish details of reforming the system (the taxes, the precise structure of "health insurance exchanges," will there be a public option?, etc.), to the detriment of the "moral case for health care reform." Among the strongest proponents and supporters of comprehensive health care reform (among whom I count myself), the moral case is the most compelling and often the original reason we were drawn to this particular cause above or beyond any others. Why the disconnect?

Before going any further, it might be important to recognize that any time President Obama or Congressional leaders mention "47 million uninsured Americans," the moral case is being made implicitly. But why not just put it out there?

First, the moral case that has been made by other countries in their own pursuit of health care reform (specifically moving towards universal coverage) may not work so well on Americans. In general, Americans are less enthusiastic and more suspicious of government involvement in economy and providing forms of "welfare" to its citizens. Americans tend to be more individually focused than European countries, which have a more communitarian ethos. This has its positives (better welfare in Europe) and negatives (less individual rights in favor of group rights in Europe). But for appeals to "justice", "fairness" and "equity/equality", there will always be a higher threshold to cross on this side of the Atlantic.

Second, at this particular point in their history, Americans are (and with good reason) narrowly focused on the cost of additional government programs and growing budget deficits. While some of us are not as concerned as certain GOP politicians claim to be, it does not pay to be flippant about endless deficits and the growing U.S. debt (neither of which I believe is a necessary or certain outcome of health care reform). In that sense, talking about the details of cost, tax incidence, and "bending the curve" is inescapable.

Third and finally (and most perjoratively I might add), many of the persons at whom such arguments are aimed, namely, those who are not already convinced that health care reform must pass, don't really give a damn about "the other"-- those who don't have insurance, or who are losing their insurance, their livelihood, their savings, or their health because of a lack of coverage or inadequate benefits. These are the people Andrew Sullivan is describing (even if not consciously) when he says:

I believe in capitalism in as much as history has yet to show a more efficient or democratic way of allocating resources and rewarding effort. But to believe only in capitalism, to see this money-making machine as an end-in-itself, is spiritual death. And if capitalism is to survive, a citizenry capable of retaining spiritual perspective is critical.

Amen.

Back with a Vengence (and some changes)

2009-07-30T15:40:00.000-05:00

(Father), it has been approximately seven months since my last post.

I have decided to take WMotL live again. My absence was originally unplanned, the result of an increasing workload at home and at the office. However, as the months passed and I reflected on my dormant blog, my failure to post became more deliberate. I actively declined posting, even after the suggestion of my wife and friends that I pick it up again. This decision was only in part due to the many other things that were calling me away from the keyboard-- a new (and growing) child, a new home, a new city, a new job (my first real one!) and my need for a period to sort out how all of these priorities would somehow fit together. The other factor is that I was much less interested in what I used to blog about. This blog was originally conceived as a Mormon blog, a blog for Mormons (and interested non-Mormons) by a Mormon about Mormonism. Though I occasionally branched off in my posts, the Mormonism-related content continued to be the heart of WMotL. However, I came to a point where I felt that I had little original or worthwhile to contribute to those conversations which take place elsewhere in the "Bloggernacle."

Consistent with those conclusions, I have proposed to begin posting here again, but with a few changes. Whereas I estimate that 90% of my former posts were somehow Mormon-related with 10% being entirely unrelated, I intend to approximately reverse that proportion. I anticipate that the large majority of my posts will in the future be politics- or current events-oriented. Given the still-existing time constraints, these posts will generally be shorter, perhaps more frequent, and hopefully more timely and interesting. Given this focus, I may look for opportunities to cross-post elsewhere and find new ways to publicize this blog in non-Mormon fora. I hope that my old habitual readers will continue to follow what goes on here and comment actively.

AHLDuke

Faith and Knowledge Conference- Accommodation Subsidy

2008-12-30T16:42:00.000-06:00

As previously announced, the second Faith and Knowledge Conference for LDS graduate students in religious studies programs and related fields, entitled "Reconciliations and Reformulations," will be held at Harvard Divinity School on February 20-21, 2009.

The program has now been finalized and participants have been notified of their acceptance. The organizing committee is pleased to be able at this time to offer fully-subsidized accommodations (room plus breakfast and lunch Saturday) to THREE additional graduate students in order to facilitate their attendance and participation at this conference as well.

In order to apply for this subsidy, please send an email to the committee at org@faithandknowledge.org stating your interest and verifiable status as a graduate student in religious studies or another related field. Additional information about the conference can be found at the conference website, http://www.faithandknowledge.org/.

Nuremberg it ain't

2008-12-12T13:59:00.001-06:00

This week brought the latest development in the prosecution of five Blackwater private security guards for the shooting deaths of 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007. The development: the formal unsealing of the Justice Department's indictment of the guards and the surrender of the accused to federal authorities.

What's my particular interest in this case? The guards chose to surrender themselves in Salt Lake City, Utah. Why Utah, you ask? Great question. Let's review the geography:

Venue ordinarily reserved for prosecution of crimes committed overseas: Washington, D.C.
Place where atrocities occurred: Baghdad, Iraq
Place where accused's employer has its HQ: Moyock, North Carolina
Homes of the accused:

Dustin Heard, Knoxville, TN
Evan Liberty, Rochester, NH
Nick Slatten, Sparta, TN
Paul Slough, Keller, TX
Donald Ball, West Valley, UT

Oh so there it is. Out of all of the places a trial like this could be held, they picked the home state of one defendant. I don't want to go into all the niceties of "minimum contacts" and personal jurisdiction, but surrendering and asking for trial in Utah is certainly legal, at least in the loosest sense of the word.

But why surrender in Utah? News sources are reporting that it is in order to be in a "more conservative, pro-gun" jurisdiction. Puh-leeze. Utah fits that description, clearly, but aren't Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina also full of hicks clinging to their guns? (Disclosure: I lived in NC for 26 years--and my entire family still resides there-- until I moved to Texas, so I do not think I am speaking from ignorance.) And any of them would be closer than the place where the trial actually ought to be held- Washington, DC.

So it can't just be conservatism and "pro-gunness," right? What else might there be? From the AP, we learn that the guards wanted a jury pool "more likely to support the Iraq war." In 2006, Utah was one of only three states (including its neighbors in Idaho and Wyoming- does anybody actually live in Wyoming?) where not-my-President Bush had a 50%+ approval rating. In 2007, it became the only state with that lofty distinction. However, at the same time support for the Iraq War (and Pres. Bush's handling of it) was only at 41%, right around the time that President Hinckley made some negative remarks about the consequences of the war. Granted, at the exact same time, support for the war among the broader American populace was at 23%. Behind. The. Curve. Its part of that "dangerous culture of obedience" that former SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson identified that same year. When Utahns are becoming sought for their propensity to side favorably with mercenaries and war criminals, we are in dangerous territory. (And yes, I know that not everybody in Utah is Mormon. But the 41% that still supported the Iraq War in 2007 definitely are, and those are the people that the defense attorneys are hoping will make it on the jury. The rest of them just finished voting for Obama.)

Utah- now known for the greatest snow on earth, Sundance, Mormons, natural beauty, and a lack of accountability for "war crimes."

The Passage of Prop 8 - Three Consequences

2008-11-06T10:36:00.000-06:00

By almost all accounts, it appears that CA voters approved Proposition 8, which eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry in the state, on Tuesday. Opponents of the measure still have rapidly fading hopes that thousands of uncounted absentee ballots will reverse this outcome, but Prop 8's passage appears substantially certain at this point. As has been noted widely, Prop 8's passage would not have been likely or possible without heavy involvement, both financial and otherwise, from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From my own observations, here is what I see for California Mormons, and the Church more broadly, in the near future.

1. A hollow victory- It seems fairly clear that Prop 8's passage will only delay the arrival of gay marriage in California, not prevent it. In the eight years since Prop 22, which was similar in language but was only a statute, rather than a constitutional amendment, almost 10% of opposition to same-sex marriage has fallen off. Furthermore, exit polls (which I know, incorrectly predicted a loss for Prop 8) indicated that the under-30 crowd overwhelmingly voted against it (67-31) while the retiree set voted in favor 57-43. This means that in another ten to twenty years, a large portion of support for measures like Prop 8 will simply die of natural causes, ushering in a more tolerant electorate.

Also, legal challenges against Prop 8's passage have already started. Their merits and prospects are debatable, but it shows that this battle ain't over. This could end up in SCOTUS, which does not look favorable for gay marriage advocates right now, but could look much more so in another four years. I fully anticipate that a pro-gay-marriage proposition will be on the CA ballot at the next election, followed by a responding ballot proposition depending on who wins the first. (No matter what side of the SSM debate you are on, I think that we can all agree that the ability to amend the state constitution based on a simple 50%+1 majority is positively ridiculous. A 2/3rds requirement I can get behind, but the purpose of constitutions is the protection of the rights of the minority. If a simple majority can change the constitution, it is not doing its job.) Which leads me to the second consequence...

2. A massive Mormon exodus from California- The next ten years or so are going to be quite expensive for California Mormons. If, as I alluded to in the first section, we see a series of back-and-forth ballot propositions on SSM in California every two years or so, few members of the Church will be able to afford to live in California (as if it were not hard enough already). They are facing: higher federal taxes on their $200K+ income (Obama), CA's already crazy-high state taxes (which may grow due to budget shortfalls), and a special "Mormon tax," which will end up being an extra ~$5-25K or more every couple of years to a "Yes/No on ___" campaign. It may finally get to the point where opposing gay marriage prevents California Mormons from building their food storage, having more kids, sending those kids on missions/to college, and saving for retirement. At that point, they will bolt for Utah and other points in red states. That leaves CA church units in the hands of 1) less-affluent members of the Church who were not donating to the campaigns in the first place, and 2) those who did not donate because of their support for SSM. Of course, this may end up being a boon to Utah and other "receiver" states since many of these members will be high-functioning members of society and the Church.

3. A brooding storm- The next few years are going to be very trying for members of the Church, both in California and elsewhere. We can break this down into several headings:
Missionary work- As I alluded to earlier, the vote of the under-30 set was overwhelmingly in favor of allowing SSM. In addition, people with any college education voted against Prop 8 by a wide margin. I suspect that something similar is afoot in other states, to a lesser extent in the South and Midwest, but still true in urban areas and college towns of those regions. Because the Church's crucial involvement in passing Prop 8 is so widely known (thanks Internet!), missionary work in this demographic is going to suffer terribly. Affluent college-educated folks are your future mission presidents, bishops, stake presidents, etc. and a whole lot of them will never give the missionaries a sympathetic ear after this.
Getting things done- In the next couple of years, whenever the Church wants to accomplish anything that requires any kind of public approval (building a new building, etc.) in CA or any of the more liberal states, they are going to find a whole lot of obstructions put up by those whose approval they need. I feel like most liberal-minded people looked at Mormons pre-Prop 8 and said: "well, they have some crazy beliefs but they seem to be genuinely good and kind people." Those days are over. We have become a "hiss and a byword."
The opinion of others- this could fall equally under the previous heading, but I will elaborate further here. The number of people I have seen on the Internet swearing an eternal hostility towards the Church, not because of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, an embodied God, etc., but because of our advocacy on Prop 8, is absolutely frightening. I suspect we will see more of the attitude that this unfortunate commercial espouses. In the mind of SSM advocates, because of our open and public involvement in this political issue, everything we do will be put under the most rigorous scrutiny, and any criticism is fair game. We have already seen public protests at temples and meetinghouses, which is, in my mind, extremely unfortunate, but again, we are getting no more free passes ever again.
The membership- You might have read stories in the news or elsewhere on the Internet about people leaving the Church because of the Yes on 8 campaign. I don't have any personal anecdotes, but it seems like Yes on 8 is really going to tear apart the fabric of families, wards, and neighborhoods within the Church. My sense is that a lot of these people were inactive anyway, and while it is still a great loss, it is not likely to be felt in individual wards and stakes. But there is a "ticking time bomb" out there of members who have been hurt, either on their own behalf or on behalf of friends, relatives, and neighbors, and this pain is going to fester and stew. Some are just waiting for some other excuse to push them over the edge into inactivity or more direct measures to end their membership. If the "Yes on 8" campaigns repeats itself in the near future (see my #1 above) that will likely be sufficient excuse for many.
Also, any thawing on the SSA issue is over. Members who struggle with SSA but are trying to stay active and chaste are going to sense the increased hostility towards those like them, not because of Prop 8 itself, but because of the sometimes hostile and inflammatory rhetoric used in the campaign. They too are likely to bolt.

These prognostications are somewhat hyperbolic (and intentionally so), but not so far outside the realm of possibility that they should not be taken seriously.

Why I Voted For Barack Obama

2008-10-13T20:57:00.003-05:00

With the exception of various Mitt Romney-related posts, I have tried to stay away from explicitly political posts on this blog. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE politics. I could watch CNN all day; I could even probably watch CSPAN for....maybe a half hour. I have been content over the past several months to let that little Barack Obama banner sit over on the side of this blog and speak for itself. But I voted for Obama this morning here in Texas as soon as the polls opened, and now I am going to explain a little bit as to why.

First, I think it is important to explain that I do not want to get bogged down in details about positions and issues. Issues are hugely important and decisions on who to vote for should be determined by the sum total of a voter's feelings on many different issues, not just one or two that produce knee-jerk reactions. No candidate is a perfect match. Like I said, I don't want to go down a list of those here, but it suffices that I am comfortable that my own beliefs about most of the issues are much more closely aligned with Sen. Obama than they are with Sen. McCain.

What I want to do here is give a couple more meta-reasons why I voted for Obama:

Because "dumb but likeable" (Bush) had eight years in the White House. We can't give her (Palin) four or eight more. Isn't it time to give "intelligent and thoughtful" a turn?
Because those who mock the idea of "community organizing" lack the compassion to lead a country as diverse and unequal as this one
Because we need leaders who understand that "citizen of the world" and "redistribution of wealth" are not naughty words
Because most of the people out there yelling "Marxist! Socialist!" at Obama don't really know what those words mean
Because while Sen. Obama may have one acquaintance or friend (I don't care which) who was a terrorist 30 years ago, when Obama was 8 years old, Sen. McCain has hundreds and thousands of bigoted and hateful supporters today in 2008
Because Sen. Obama has mobilized youth in this campaign like no candidate in recent history and his presidency will reinstill hope in those youth in a difficult era in American history ("the children are our future..."); McCain's victory may bring joy to a couple of dying old people
Because we need someone who understands that when asked, "When does life begin?", the only right answer is "that's above my paygrade."

Mormon liberals, liberal Mormons, and the inadequacy of labels

2008-10-12T19:06:00.001-05:00

Among all the insults that a Mormon might throw at you, few epithets are as damning (in their eyes) as "liberal." My goal in this post is specifically not to rehash the familiar and troubling political imbalance among Church members nor to decisively crush all criticisms that liberals can't be good Mormons. Rather, I merely want to examine my own (dis)comfort with the label.

On one hand, I am totally comfortable with being known as a Mormon. I suspect that most of my frequent readers will need no explanation on what that means, but for the sake of some others and in order to point out exactly where I stand, I will make it explicit. I believe that divine beings, including God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, are real and not merely mythological constructs of a particular culture or religion. I believe that human beings are offspring of these divine entities and possess divine characteristics and potential that are unique in nature. I believe that man, through (mis)use of a divine gift of choice or agency, is fallen from its noble potential, but that through the historically real sacrifice of Jesus Christ (the Atonement), men can be redeemed from their own errors. I believe that in 1820, Joseph Smith did in fact have a direct experience with the divine (the First Vision) through which he was called to set up an institution that continues to enjoy divine approbation. I believe that part of Joseph's role was the revelation of the Book of Mormon, which I believe has an inspired origin. I believe that another part of Joseph's role was the receipt of a power and instrumentality (the priesthood) through which we can experience part of God's power in the Church. I have tried to state the preceding in language that might be understood by non-Mormons, and is broad enough to bring me into agreement with most who claim to be Mormons. Obviously, we may differ on details, but I am satisfied that what I have stated above qualifies me as a Mormon, and excludes me from any other religious affiliation (with the possible exception of the UUs).

At the same time, I am very at home with being called politically liberal. Among many other things, that means that I am in favor of a strong and comprehensive social safety net, progressive taxation, civil rights, pacifism, abolition of the death penalty, protection of the environment, promotion of the interests of the impoverished and oppressed, adherence to international law, universal health care, increased economic equality, and generally the proposition that enlightened government has something positive to contribute to the life of humanity, and something that the raw logic of the market cannot offer. I am generally uncomfortable with platforms, statements of principles, and mission statements; however, I can generally sign on to many of the sentiments of the 2008 Democratic Party platform (which has been criticized, rightly IMO, here) or to the Euston Manifesto.

My comfort with each label in isolation is not matched by my comfort in their combination, at least as applied to me. By my own discomfort, I mean no criticism of those who have adopted this label, such as this person (who happens to be a personal friend). Your mileage may vary.

The convergence of "liberal" and "Mormon" has two possibilities, as alluded to in the title: liberal Mormons and Mormon liberals.

My discomfort with the title of "liberal Mormon" comes from the fact that it tends to imply, among Mormons, something more than simply my political leanings. It suggests that there is something not-quite-orthodox about the way I practice Mormonism. In particular, it suggests to some that I am less than "faithful"- that I have compromised some of the high ideals of Mormonism for my own selfish desires. While the gory details of my testimony might differ from your average Iron Rod TBM, I attend church, hold FHE with my family, go to the temple, pay tithing, and obey the Word of Wisdom, etc. in what I imagine is the same way as 99% of the other active members of the Church. I think I sin no more, and perhaps somewhat less, than those who consider themselves within the orthodox mainstream. An objective observer, not seeing inside my thoughts, would be hard pressed to label my practice of Mormonism as in anyway liberal. I am also uncomfortable with the way in which the label "liberal Mormon" seems to qualify my "Mormon-ness", either by asserting that I am not 100% Mormon, or that my identity as a liberal must take precedence over my Mormon self- like saying "Oh, I'm not a Mormon; I'm a liberal Mormon."

My discomfort with being called a "liberal Mormon" is matched by my unease with its mirror twin, "Mormon liberal." The reasons behind my discomfort are also parallel. Again, I fear that such a label implies that there is a special Mormon nature about my liberal political views. While my personal belief is that my Mormonism is a complement to and support of some of my liberal positions, my liberal identity does not derive in particular from Mormonism and the development of that identity was largely independent (though simultaneous) of my spiritual growth within Mormonism. You might have a hard time distinguishing my politics from a liberal Jew, liberal Protestant, or liberal Catholic. To put it more succinctly, the two simply do not intersect on a frequent basis. Also, I worry that "Mormon liberal" places a higher value on my Mormonism than on my liberal identity. Some might question the sincerity of my liberal views, claiming that they are held merely to be "different," or to be "cool" within the Mormon circles that I travel. But I believe that certain of my positions are currently as an inseparable and dear part of my self as my testimony.

Of course, I anticipate growth and change in my political views over the course of my lifetime, but the same is true of the content of my testimony. In neither case do I anticipate an imminent and radical departure from my current worldview, religious or political.

Brief thoughts on the first day of Confererence October 2008

2008-10-05T00:51:00.001-05:00

- Rome temple?! SWEET! (See one post below) But where are they going to put it? I don't know that it will fit too well in urban Rome. Maybe in the suburbs like the rest of our temples?
- Greater Kansas City area- I did not catch on to this like some people did. I don't read too much into it, but it seems like an odd way to announce a temple. Maybe they have not found a spot yet? On the other hand, as I mentioned above, all of our temples could best be described as in the Greater _______ area, since they are almost universally in the suburbs, with the exception of Manhattan.
- Big ups to Elder Perry for the Thoreau references. Walden is one of my favorite books and I could listen to a whole session of talks focusing on what Latter-day Saints could take away from that.
- My wife also mentioned during Elder Perry's talk: do you think that Deseret Book will start stocking copies of Walden and we will see them flying off the Utah shelves at B&N, Borders, etc.? Mormons have bought stranger and less valuable things after seeing them mentioned in conference, I suppose.
- Nothing about Prop 8 yet? Really? Given the kind of behavior that seems to be going on (and encouraged in California), I thought there would be solicitations from the pulpit this morning with the address of protectmarriage.com scrolling across the screen like a crawler on CNN. Maybe those in charge realize that this really does go out all of the world and nobody in other countries wants to hear about our political crap.
- Elder Oaks talk- the "white shirt" comment- note that Elder Oaks only said that deacons, teachers, and priests should be careful to always wear white shirts during sacrament. Elder Oaks was a lawyer so I suspect he will understand the following law Latin and how it applies to his statement: Inclusio unius est exclusio alterius- the inclusion of one means the exclusion of the others- which means I don't have to wear a white shirt ever, except to the temple.
- I think Elder Uchtdorf consistently gives the most solid talks of any of the General Authorities I have seen. He steers away from anything remotely controversial (at least in my memory) and gives simple talks about faith, hope, and love for the Lord and each other.
- Elder Wirthlin looked worse this Conference than last.
- Isn't it ironic that the French guy got up and decried all the over-intellectualizing of the Gospel?
- Elder Corbridge's talk had a certain je ne sais quoi that I did not like. The rhetorical style was just a little funny. It was not the content, but I cannot exactly put my finger on what it is.
- Elder Christofferson's talk about building Zion- superb. This is something I could hear about all day, and I wonder with the growing economic mess, if we won't be hearing a lot more about this sort of law of consecreation stuff. Helping the poor, paying larger fast offerings, etc. IMO its been too long already.
- Elder Scott said some things that I think the girls over at FMH would be delighted to hear.
- Generally, I think that Priesthood session is consistently a let-down, especially after such good sessions earlier in the day. Maybe I just get a little burned out as the day goes on, or maybe the GAs purposefully don't save the good stuff for last, just so the sisters don't miss out on something and scream bloody murder. j/k

From the WMoL Archives- The Vatican vs. Temple Square

2008-10-05T00:08:00.006-05:00

Given this morning's announcement of a new temple in Rome, Italy, I thought it might be appropriate to republish one of my first posts, now updated.

My wife and I took a week-long trip to Rome this past October. My wife had spent a couple of months in Rome several years ago as a student, and had been dying to go back (with me) ever since. It was also one of our last chances to take a big European vacation before the birth of our first child. Like any tourist in Rome, we had to make a stop at the Vatican.

If I had to guess, I would think that many Mormons feel a certain kind of secret and shameful envy of the Catholic Church (which they would never admit to, of course) due to its size, wealth, and power. Not too mention competition, especially for any missionary who served in heavily Catholic countries. I don't think that is necessarily an admirable character trait, but just putting that out there. Being a Mormon visiting the Vatican, you cannot help but reflect on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Both are the physical and hierarchical centers of their respective faiths, and high-volume tourist spots to boot. Plus, with this new development of a temple in Rome, you cannot ignore the tension and metaphor of plopping the perfect symbol of Mormonism right down into the heart of Roman Catholicism.

Here are some of my impressions about how they compare.

Temple Square is best described as an experience rather than simply a sight. Everything about it is clearly aimed at impressing the visitor. From the sister missionaries in every conceivable language, to the visitor's centers, the carefully manicured landscaping, and everything around it, it is also a highly-managed experience (or at least we want it to be so). Temple Square is beautiful, magically so, at almost any time of year (I am sure they have quite the budget for gardening). For many of us, it is chiefly significant because of memories we have of it (first visits, weddings, etc.) and images that we see during General Conference. While one is aware that President Monson and other General Authorities occupy the huge office tower on Temple Square, your chances of bumping into them, or making an appointment to see them, are slim to none. If Temple Square is meant to send a message, the message is: this must be true because this is pretty and it makes you feel good.

The Vatican is also impressive, but more than this, it is overwhelming. This is the rhetoric and symbology of power, writ large. Everything is on a huge scale at the Vatican- the churches, the columns, the statues, etc. The sheer amount of art housed in St. Peter's and in the Vatican Museums is almost absurd. The art is beautiful, and the result of centuries of men's attempts to put God's (and the Church's) glory into some kind of visual representation. It is enough to make one feel small beside it (most likely an intentional effect). Famous pieces of art, like Rodin's Thinker (the original), are shoved off into some obscure corner where you would never notice unless you proceeded through very deliberately. Without the aid of sister missionaries (I don't think the Swiss Guard counts), most people will see the Vatican without the aid of a tour guide. Instead, you are left to yourself in awe of the riches and influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The experience is almost tiring. If the Vatican is meant to send a message, the message is: this must be true because how else would we get all this stuff?

Temple Square, while beautiful, is anything but overwhelming. I remember on my first visit there, how disappointed I was in the size of the SLC Temple. I guess it always just looked bigger on TV. The Conference Center, while much larger, is far too functional to be great art. Even the Church Office Building, while large, is only comparatively large with other huge skyscrapers in downtown SLC (like the Wells Fargo Building). And it is hardly an architectural masterpiece. On the other hand, St. Peter's is, by law, the largest and tallest building in all of Rome. The visitor's centers and Church Museum house no art by anyone instantly recognizable as being from one of the great masters, like the Vatican's Rafael and Michelangelo.

For my part, I choose the beauty and simplicity of Temple Square. It avoids the oppressive and overbearing nature of the Vatican, as well as the unfortunate times when Catholic art and architecture slips into the realm of the gaudy and morbid (there aren't any bones or relics on Temple Square that I am aware of). While the Vatican is all stone and cold, Temple Square exudes a much more human warmth.

As the Church sets about to build a temple in the Eternal City, tons of questions come to mind. The ones that intrigue me here are questions of its design. Will this be a small temple or a large temple? Will the Church attempt to imitate an older style of architecture or will it look more or less the same as all of the other temples we currently build? I think to build another cookie cutter temple in Rome would be to miss out on a great opportunity. Plus, I cannot think of another city where we currently have a temple where such a high value is placed on art and the aesthetic, not to mention really really old things. A gleaming white brand new temple would just look out of place. And finally, will the Church put the same old 10 or 20 pictures in the Rome Temple that we use in every temple? I mean, the temple is never intended to serve as a museum for the patrons, and we only let visitors in once, but our art compares so poorly with the masters of Europe that I think it would be another missed opportunity to stick with the traditional and safe.

I, for one, will be following the developments surrounding the building of the Rome Italy temple with great interest and cannot wait to take my family back to Rome at a time when we can fit in a trip to a new "Temple Square" along with the standard sightseeing.

The Unofficial 16th Apostle

2008-10-01T17:20:00.003-05:00

Just in time for General Conference, a brief observation about a man from whom we will undoubtedly hear on this sacred biannual occasion: C.S. Lewis.

I have not done any kind of scientific study on this, but I am willing to go on record here as saying that C.S. Lewis is the most quoted non-Mormon non-scriptural person in the entire realm of LDS discourses. Hardly a month goes by when I don't hear his name at least once in a sacrament meeting talk or Sunday School lesson. And I am almost 100% sure that at some point this weekend, some GA will not be able to resist the urge to quote him. At this point, I almost giggle every time I hear it.

I must confess here that I have not read much of Lewis' work. I have not read his two most famous "Christian" works- Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters and only barely made it through two or three of the Narnia books as a boy. Nevertheless, even if Lewis is only deserving of half of his reputation, he would likely still rank as one of the great writers and thinkers of modern Christianity.

But none of this quite explains the acute Mormon affinity for quoting him. There are plenty of great Christian writers and thinkers that Latter-day Saints don't go out of their way to embrace. Why other Christians like him is perfectly understandable- he is one of their own. He speaks their language and defends their cause. But what of ourselves? Do his works have a particular resonance with Mormon doctrine, either official or popular? (And if so, how has this point remained so well-hidden from the rest of "orthodox" Christendom? I mean, if the Mormons like him so much, something has to be wrong with him, right?) What was C.S. Lewis' opinion of Mormons or Mormon doctrine, if he had one at all?

Perhaps C.S. Lewis puts the broader "Christian" cause so eloquently, and we therefore crave his words. This leads to the more troubling implication of this post, which is: why have we not produced a C.S. Lewis of our own, someone whose writings can articulate Mormonism so well for a broad audience? Part of it, of course is structural- no one outside of the Church leadership would dare to set themselves up as the go-to thinker on Mormonism and no one within the leadership is trusted enough by outsiders to give the story to them straight. But is there anything else that is holding us back? Especially after the year we've had (FLDS in Texas, Mitt Romney), we could use an eloquent and well-respected spokesman right about now.

New Challenge to Politics Ban for Tax Exempt Entities - How will it affect the Church?

2008-09-30T15:04:00.004-05:00

I saw the following story yesterday while reading the news: 33 Pastors Flout Tax Law with Political Sermons. Anyone who has spent long enough in the Bloggernacle, with the constant hand-wringing in some quarters over the Church losing its tax exemption due to interference in political issues such as Prop 8, is familiar with the basics. Section 501(c)(3) organizations, which are tax-exempt under federal law, may not participate in partisan political campaigns or risk losing their exempt status. What the above story reports is the next step in potentially eliminating this limitation.

This is a storm that has been brewing for some time in my mind. Religion and partisan politics have become increasingly intertwined in the last 20 or so years. (Duh) This years Republican primary process included one candidate who was a former pastor and did not seem to have completely left his old career behind him. The IRS has occasionally jumped on a church here or there for excessively politicizing its services (see the All Saints case from a couple of years ago for a particularly weak case that the IRS picked up), but to my knowledge such things are rare. But both pastors and politicians want to push this thing further. Hence, the above move to create a test case that would hopefully render the politics ban for tax-exempt institutions void by judicial order.

One can of course debate the merits of the politics ban. On one side, it is certainly an infringement of free speech- for many people, their religious beliefs both lead to certain positions on public issues, but also compel them to speak publicly about them. When individual members of a church do so, its OK, but when someone stands at a pulpit and does it, the IRS finds that unacceptable. On the other side, the politics ban insures that we are not giving a tax subsidy to organizations whose purposes are primarily partisan and political (501(c)(3) organizations include a wide variety of institutions). I can say that I have personally been grateful for the tax-exempt regulations on more than one occasion during my attendance at Church meetings.

Which brings me to the point that I really wanted to make here- if the politics ban on tax exempt entities disappears in a couple of months, what happens with the Church? Will it abandon its policy (pretense) of political neutrality or does it not depend on the threat of losing the tax exemption? Is there a doctrinal foundation for political neutrality standing apart from the preservation of the Church's tax exemption and if so, what is it?

As a final note, as someone who has studied the tax exempt issue in some depth, I do not buy into the arguments that the Church's tax exemption is already at risk due to its participation in campaigns such as Prop 8. So lets steer comments away from that and towards addressing the questions I asked above.

The irony of Glenn Beck

2008-09-11T00:01:00.001-05:00

Again, I give you all my sincerest apologies as my aforementioned bar-exam-related "brief hiatus" suddenly morphed into a new-baby-related break which ran into my new-job-related break and thus almost two months without a serious post.

I guess I was excited back in 2006 when I heard that an active Mormon was going to get his own prime-time news show on a major cable news network. I mean, since we lost Jane Clayson in the morning and Ken Jennings in primetime, major national television was relatively Mormon-free. Unfortunately, it only took a couple of episodes for the shine to wear off. I mean, I understand that bigotry and igorance is acceptable and practically de rigueur for talk radio these days, but on CNN HN. I mean, isn't Lou Dobbs enough for the Ted Turner media empire?!

Of course, he is obviously attracting some viewers since his show is still on the air, and based on conversations I've had, I think that a number of Mormons find his really-conservative-but-not-Republican shtick to be attractive. Which brings me to what is the somewhat confusing irony of Beck's notoriety: he is a terrible public example of a Mormon, and yet represents so many Mormons all too well. I think that his views on immigrants, Muslims, and climate change (among other issues) are perfectly appalling, but I fear that too many of my co-religionists hold similar sentiments. So do I lament Beck's fame as an public Mormon figure because I do not want either myself or my church to be painted with his brush, or rather do I lament the fact that he is so shockingly typical?

Seen August 2008 in the parking lot of the Raleigh NC Temple

2008-09-01T08:40:00.001-05:00

Oh, the horror....

And yes, where I come from, they (but not I) still call it "The War of Northern Aggression."

More substantive post(s) coming very soon...

Faith and Knowledge Conference 2009 - Call for Papers

2008-07-19T23:01:00.007-05:00

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Reconciliations and Reformulations":
A Conference for LDS Graduate Students in Religious Studies
Harvard University, February 20-21, 2009

Many Latter-day Saints experience their scholarship and their religion as clashing cultures, each with its competing values and contradictory conclusions. Religious studies students especially struggle to reconcile their faith and the knowledge they acquire in graduate school. The forms this reconciliation takes (including the failure to achieve reconciliation) become crucial episodes in a student's life history. The purpose of the Faith and Knowledge Conference for 2009 is to provide a forum for exploring these attempts at reconciliation.

We invite paper proposals from graduate students in religious studies and other related fields in the following four categories:

I. Gender and Sexuality
The academic discipline of religion is interacting more and more with methodologies and theories borrowed from gender and sexuality studies. As LDS scholars, to what extent do we engage in or disregard these methodologies? Can we take more expansive views of homosexuality, feminism, and other related issues than Mormon theology traditionally does without compromising our faith? Can feminist theology, queer theory, and similar approaches be useful to LDS scholars or must they be rejected altogether? How do more traditional viewpoints inform our academic scholarship, and how may the more expansive contemporary views of such issues inform both our academic scholarship and our understanding of the Gospel? Is reconciliation possible (or even needed) between these academic paradigms and the faith of the LDS scholar?

II. Scripture
LDS scholars commonly perceive a tension between "academic" and "devotional" approaches to scripture. Can scholarly methodologies (the historical-critical method, literary criticism, etc.) be usefully incorporated into the study or interpretation of LDS scripture, both ancient and modern, or must they be abandoned or subordinated to faith-based understandings? What investments do LDS scholars of scripture bring to the academic table and in what ways do they manifest themselves in productive or unproductive ways in LDS scholarship? Can academic approaches to the Bible be helpful in the study of revealed scripture, and if so, do they require some kinds of reconciliations or transformations? Is there and/or should there be a unique LDS scriptural hermeneutic, and what would it look like?

III. Pluralism
The approaches of religions to their own truth-claims may be divided into three categories: exclusivist religions, which assert that theirs is the sole bearer of truth and salvation; inclusivist religions, which recognize that other traditions possess enough truth to qualify them for salvation; and finally, pluralist religions, which hold that all traditions are equal paths to God. In a time of globalization, Latter-day Saint interactions with other religions, both Christian and non-Christian, raise questions about our view of ourselves. As we learn to appreciate the depth of other religious traditions, we wonder if our exclusivist view on truth is sustainable and defensible. How do we react to the theological and political dilemmas that exclusive claims to salvation through Jesus Christ or through Mormon rituals entail? Can a Mormon pluralism exist, or must we take on the burden of exclusivism?

IV. The Place of Religious Scholarship in the Church
Religious scholars and scholarship occupy an ambiguous role in the Church. Religious scholarship is cited when it supports Church teachings but rejected when it suggests that Church positions may be problematic. Moreover, the scholar who raises questions of this find falls under suspicion. Given current Church culture, what can an LDS scholar of religion bring to the table? Can a scholar utilize his/her tools and scholarship in a pastoral role? Can LDS religious scholars work to remove the stigma in the Church associated with the academic study of religion, and especially the academic study of Mormonism? Specifically, in what ways can areas of religious scholarship contribute positively to the spiritual and cultural life of the Church?

Panelist papers or presentations should last approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Short proposals (no more than 250 words) should be submitted via the conference website (http://www.faithandknowledge.org/submissions.php) by OCTOBER 1, 2008.
Presenters will be notified by December 1, 2008. Conference participants will be eligible to apply for financial assistance with travel and lodging expenses.
Please send further inquiries about to the conference to
org@faithandknowledge.org.

Brief hiatus- be patient

2008-07-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a two-week break from blogging while I prepare for the Texas bar exam. I have a couple of post ideas on deck in the ol' noggin but I don't want to get too involved in writing while I have the biggest test of my life coming up in less than 13 days.

Wish me luck...

Profile of Elder Christofferson in Duke Law alumni magazine

2008-07-14T08:21:00.000-05:00

This came in the mail last week. See page 43 for a profile of Elder Christofferson. There is not a lot of new information here, but it was still cool to see an article devoted to an apostle in a publication from my school.

Humble About Our Certainties

2008-07-08T11:00:00.001-05:00

NOTE: This post is NOT about gay marriage.

We are a very certain people. To tweak the old saying, among Mormons you could cut the certainty with a knife. After all, we are the folks that infamously exalt "I know" over "I believe." Or, as my friend Brigham would say, Mormons like certainty.

But is all of our certainty healthy or justified? In Isaiah, we read, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." Naturally, we are so certain that this scripture applies perfectly to others, but never to ourselves. "That's the way the world thinks, but in the Church we know better." or "Bro. So-and-So believes that the Gospel requires us to do X, but I know that what the Lord really wants is Y." Any of this sound familiar? Sadly, these kinds of statements reveal very little about God, but incredible amounts about our own character, as I illustrate below...

I believe that I am a good and rational being, doing the best I can according to the light I have been given (which, I am certain, is more light than anyone else has). If I did not sincerely believe that, I would change my thoughts and behavior, right? Believing that God too must be good and rational (like me) and furthermore possessing all light and knowledge, he must act, feel, and think the same way that I do. In the end though, this logical move constructs God in my own image rather than mandating that I conform to his. In spite of my own certainty, the belief in our own individual goodness and rationality has lead members of the Church (among all others) to behave and think in different ways and to build gods to our own taste and specifications. Living as a Mormon in a predominantly Protestant nation and region, as well as observing and participating in discussions in the Bloggernacle, are ample evidence of that proposition.

Another illustration: Joseph Smith said, "Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive; and at the same time more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of His punishments, and more ready to detect in every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be..." Some folks (like me) grasp quickly onto the first half of this statement, embracing God's "liberality" (ignoring that this word would have lacked its modern political connotation for him) and open-mindedness as models for our own behavior. Others (like so many of the anonymous commenters who have recently graced this blog with their presence) would likely latch onto the second half of the statement, emphasizing God's justice (always inflicted on others) and impeccable morality (which would of course conform to their own morality). My point here is not to point fingers at any one group or way of thinking. Blame for such hypocrisy is to be spread widely here. Which part of the quote we prefer, as well as the types of scriptures that we prefer (from the title of this blog, my own preference is clear), ultimately tells us who we are and where we stand but does not further illuminate the nature of God.

I suspect that at some future day, when we "know as we are known," we will see that the true God is quite different than the small gods we have built for ourselves. That goes for all of us. I suspect that what He will reveal at that time will show us that His thinking and His plans have always been a mystery to us, seen only through a glass darkly. And I suspect that He will care about quite a few things that we have forgotten, and likewise not give a fig for many of our most cherished certainties. Should we not then be humble in our contemporary assertions of God's thoughts and our determination that we do know His mind and will?

Mormon woman appears on "30 Days." Hilarity does NOT ensue.

2008-06-26T23:52:00.001-05:00

The timing was ironic, a little spooky even. Just last week I posted about one of my favorite TV shows, "30 Days," and imagined only briefly what a "Mormon" episode might look like and whether anyone would care. This Sunday, as has been reported elsewhere, the Church will formally announce the mobilization of its members to advocate for the passage of an amendment to the state constitution of California that would clearly define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman. If I was really into conspiracy theories, I think this week's happenings would probably set me off.

This past Tuesday night, a Mormon woman appeared on "30 Days." The theme of the episode was same-sex or gay adoption. Our Mormon mother was assigned to live with a gay couple who were raising four children that they got from foster care. It was, in a word, awkward. Extremely awkward. When Morgan Spurlock, the show's creator and narrator, announced a few minutes into the show that this lady was "a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons," my wife audibly groaned. I thought about reaching for a big tub of popcorn and a cold root beer. Fireworks- like the Fourth of July come early!

The Good- Kati (this sister's name), to her credit, did not explicitly lay the responsibility for her beliefs about same-sex adoption on the Church. More importantly, she did not lay the responsibility for her stubbornness and lack of charity on the Church either. In fact, if it were not for Spurlock "outing" her (oh, the irony) as part of introducing the cast, it is likely that nobody would have known that she was Mormon. From what I saw, she could have been a member of any conservative Christian denomination. (First, consider the implications of that.) In one instance, she did tell the couple that she knew her beliefs were true because she had prayed about them and received an answer. In another scene, she attended the couple's gay-friendly church, and could be seen to be holding a standard Quad. However, while setting off our Mo-dar, either of these two things would have completely eluded any non-Mormon watchers. I was thankful that her affiliation was kept on the down-low, not only for my own peace of mind, but, as I will further explore below, because I am not sure that opposition to same-sex adoption can be considered a Church position or doctrine.

The Bad- Kati would feel right at home with the maxim "When the prophet speaks, the thinking is done." When asked to explain her opposition to same-sex adoption, she constantly fell back on the refrain of "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman" or "I don't believe that two gay people should be raising children." It was obvious to both my wife and I that this is not a subject about which she had reflected very much prior to this experience. In part, this fits well with the goal of the show, which is to expose people to new experiences, new ways of life, and new thoughts. However, it could not help but trouble me to see her be incapable of marshalling any better argument for her opposition than "I believe it's not right." Exclusively moral-based arguments, especially those rooted in subjective spiritual experiences (and by subjective I mean individualized, not false), tend to be unconvincing to those who do not share those beliefs or have not had those same spiritual experiences. My concern is that I believed she treated a general dislike of homosexual activity in the Church as a blanket license to not think seriously about the relative merits of our public policies and moral judgments about activities involving homosexuals, but which are not intrinsically linked with their homosexuality.

The Ugly- Completely unrelated to any Mormon elements within the show, what really made my blood boil was the attitude and behavior of the biological relatives (mother, aunt, uncle, sister) of one of the boys that the gay couple had taken in from foster care. Yes, they are alive. No, they were not in jail. The whole clan had a (temporarily) nice backyard cookout at the gay couple's home, at which the family which had abandoned this child proceeded to berate Kati for her opposition to homosexual adoption, which would have deprived their little boy of a loving home. As my wife's mission companion used to say, "Hey kettle, you black!" I understand that some people, despite their mistakes and failures, have the momentary clarity to recognize that a child, while biologically theirs, might be better off being raised with just about anybody else. I applaud that foresight, but doubt that the voluntary abandonment of a child, even if wise, gives one much moral high ground from which to cast rocks at others.

Conclusion
Does the Church's opposition to SSM, as expressed in their recent letter to CA congregations, demand that we oppose same-sex adoption with equal vigor? This is far from obvious and to my knowledge, such a position has never been expressed clearly in any official Church publication, including a First Presidency letter. (I am open to being proven wrong on this point though. Same-sex adoption is clearly illegal in the state of Utah.) Indeed, I think there are strong arguments why same-sex adoption is deserving of our support and admiration, regardless of what we think about SSM or homosexuality in general. The foster care system is a mess, in spite of the best efforts of well-meaning social workers and generous families. There are simply not enough willing permanent home providers among the straight population to take in all the kids that might need it. Also, gay families (yes I said it), because they are generally not first-choice adoptive parents, don't get the "cream of the crop" and end up taking more kids with disabilities, and other "un-adoptables." And thus, we open up the opportunity to adopt to same-sex couples. Further, far from simply being a kind of "last resort," gay parents have not proven to be demonstrably less capable of raising well-adjusted functioning children to adulthood in our society. It does not have a long enough history and the data are still out there. If they are able to do so, it may be even more laudable given the general opposition they face from the rest of us despite their best efforts.

New look for WMoL

2008-06-25T22:29:00.006-05:00

WMoL is almost a year old, so I decided it was high time for a major makeover to the blog's layout. I would have liked to have done the new layout in mid-July, which would be closer to the blog's actual one-year anniversary, but I will be about a week away from taking the bar exam at that point, and I am guessing I will have some higher priorities around that time. Anyway, I am not sure whether I really believed last year that I would still be going at this a year later, but it feels good. I am still committed to keeping up with my blogging into the foreseeable future (even if you don't hear much from me for the next month or so). I continue to enjoy what others in the Bloggernacle are writing, and I still feel that I have something to add to those conversations through my own blog. My friend Brigham got me obsessed with checking my Google Analytics stats and that has me even more excited to keep writing.

I hope to add a couple more things to the new layout in the next couple of days. For instance, I want to put a written comments policy on the front page. I have recently had to delete a couple of comments here or there that I did not feel were appropriate to our conversations here. I think that if I develop a publish a written comments policy, that will at least put all commenters on constructive notice, whether or not they take the time to read or observe it. In addition, I would like to put up a brief annotated link list in the sidebar, like you find on other major LDS blogs like BCC and T&S. I am constantly finding things all over the Internet, LDS-related and not, that I would like to post here, but which don't merit a full blog post. So look for that too.

Thank a Third-worlder for those pills - part II

2008-06-19T07:38:00.003-05:00

Just an update: my article just went live on the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law website here.

An abstract follows: The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most important players in the field of clinical research on human beings. Increasingly in recent years, "Big Pharma" in the United States and elsewhere has turned to foreign populations to test its new products. The purpose of this note is to examine how existing sources of quasi-legal and ethical regulation address the troublesome issues raised by this increase in international human experimentation. First, the note gives a brief history of human experimentation and its regulation, giving special focus to the events of the twentieth century that have most affected the development of the bioethics movement. Next, it describes and compares several instruments of international regulation of human subject experimentation. Finally, it examines some of the difficult ethical issues associated with international research on human subjects. In this discussion, the greatest amount of attention will be given to clinical trials performed by the pharmaceutical industry. Other types of international research on human subjects exist, but research by the pharmaceutical companies poses its own special regulatory and ethical problems. (18 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 181)

For those who were wondering, yes, as a matter of fact we do publish the Fall 2007 issue in the middle of summer 2008.

"[T]he best hour of television you're ever going to see in your life"

2008-06-18T21:13:00.002-05:00

The title captures precisely how Morgan Spurlock, the auteur behind the well-known documentary Super Size Me, described the third episode of the third season of his FX show "30 Days." For those unfamiliar with the format, it essentially follows the formula of Super Size Me, placing a person into some unfamiliar or extreme living condition for 30 days. Past episodes have included requiring a worker from an abortion clinic to live at a pro-life women's shelter, requiring an atheist to live with a Christian family, and following Spurlock and his wife as they lived on minimum wage for a month. Last night's episode found a red state, red-meat-eating redneck from my own home state, NC, going to CA to live with vegan PETA members and work on in an farm animal rescue operation.

While Spurlock's self-assessment is clearly hyperbolic, "30 Days" has become one of my favorite hours of television ever. I love "Lost" and "The Office" as much as the next guy, but in my opinion, few shows on television have the ability to be as thought-provoking and interesting, instead of pandering to our hunger for simple, don't-bother-me-with-those-"idea"-things entertainment. Spurlock certainly has a poorly-concealed liberal bias (which, incidentally, I don't mind), but the primary message of the show seems to be the promotion of tolerance and inclusiveness, rather than something overtly political.

I tried to imagine a Mormon episode (either a Mormon going to live with an Evangelical family or vice versa) but frankly, despite what you might think, I doubt it would be very interesting. The groups have far too much in common as far as everyday living habits and values for there to be much friction, which is what the show thrives on of course. An episode devoted to someone living among polygamists has been suggested on the show's website, and while that would definitely be worth watching, I seriously doubt that the FLDS would be willing to voluntarily endure such heavy and constant scrutiny and exposure at this particular moment.

You can learn more about the show here.
If you want a short list of particularly strong episodes, my personal favorites are the following: Immigration (season 2, episode 1), Straight Man in a Gay World (season 1, episode 4), and last night's Animal Rights (season 3, episode 3).

Other thought-provoking television I enjoy: Frontline- pretty much the gold standard as far as TV documentaries in my opinion, but sometimes a little hit-or-miss as far as subject matter (I'm a little tired of the war on terror- related episodes). They were, however, co-sponsors of last year's The Mormons.
Also, if you need a book for your book club, try The Trouble with Diversity.

On Leaving One's Church in Protest - some context

2008-06-15T22:44:00.002-05:00

As many of you might have heard or read, a couple of weeks back, presidential candidate Barack Obama resigned his membership in Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Some have criticized the candidate's move as either too long overdue or too politically expedient to be sincere. I think that this type of move is ripe for misunderstanding by Mormons (who I acknowledge are not likely to vote for Obama in the first place, but this won't be my first time tilting at windmills), so I will try to add some context. These observations come from lots of places, most notably my own upbringing as a Protestant, in an area where most of the churches and churchgoing folks were Protestant (few Catholics and Mormons, zero Jews or Muslims, etc.), and in a family that has experienced more than one church-swap.

From time to time in the Bloggernacle or in personal encounters with others, one is likely to encounter someone who has left the Church for "political" or religious reasons. I am not talking about those who claim to have “discovered” that the Book of Mormon isn’t authentic or who believe that Joseph Smith was a total fraud, and therefore leave the Church. Rather, I am talking about those who learn about the injustices of the priesthood ban, or will take exception to the treatment of some group within the Church (gays, women, singles, etc.), and subsequently decide to leave the Church in protest. In the minds of many, the kind of person who leaves their church over some controversy or misunderstanding is one of "those people"-- apostates, infidels, etc.

First, the context. Mormons consider their Church to be TOTAL- The Only True And Living (no I did not make that up). Few Protestant Christians that I know would claim the same for their own congregations or denominations. Most Protestants identify primarily as Christians and only later, if at all, as members of a particular denomination. They recognize members of other Protestant denominations as fellow Christians and as members of some common thing they call "the Church," the boundaries of which are never quite explained or brought up in polite conversation. For most, this obviously excludes Mormons and for some, Catholics as well. But overall, it casts a pretty wide net. Choosing a denomination or a church within a denomination (which can often vary as much as churches in different denominations) is a matter of personal preferences for style of music and preaching, personnel, and the demographics of the congregation. For this reason, changing congregations or denominations, which frequently requires little more effort than sending a letter to the congregation's secretary, is completely acceptable to your average Protestant. The difference between most of these denominations (particularly in the South, which has its own religious culture completely apart from any denomination) is like the difference between vanilla, French vanilla, and maybe some chocolate/vanilla swirl- after all, it's still vanilla.

Mormons frequently sneer when it is suggested that a Protestant would change churches or denominations simply because "they (don't) like the preacher there." After all, isn't that what Barack Obama did? Nevertheless, people within my own family, good Christians all, have changed churches for reasons far more mundane than this. In my own childhood, my parents left the first church I ever attended (a Southern Baptist congregation) to take our family to the local Methodist church, simply because they had a better youth program (ward-shopping anyone?). My grandparents recently left their Baptist church because of serious problems with their preacher (too dictatorial). My uncle and aunt also left their congregation over some undisclosed conflict with something going on at the church (which certainly did not rise to the level of anything doctrinal). In all of the moves I have seen, the split is reasonably amicable- people will still call you, talk to you when you run into one another at the grocery store, have dinner with you, etc. In other words, it's NOT a big deal!

I hope that this will explain Senator Obama's move, at least a little bit. For most of my Mormon audience, I imagine that abandoning one's church, especially one to which one claims to have such a strong emotional bond and history, seems to be a drastic and shocking move. However, for the average American Protestant, switching congregations is completely ordinary, and something that he/she may do several times during their life.

Next, a defense of the sanctity of conscience...

Thank a Third-worlder for those pills.

2008-05-27T14:30:00.000-05:00

The Mormon-Utah-depression-prescription drug use meme seems to be everywhere these days. In some cases, it appears as a legitimate and serious concern, and occasionally as a farce (see second paragraph, third line).

My own issue in this post is not Mormons and prescription drugs, by prescription drugs in general, and more specifically how we come to obtain them. I recently wrote a student note for a forthcoming issue of the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law on the international ethical codes which apply to pharmaceutical companies and CROs (contract research organizations) as they conduct human clinical trial all over the world. Most of these codes and the principles contained therein are inspired by the Nuremberg Code that emerged from the Nazi War Crimes trials following WWII. I will not go into further detail about the codes, but will point you to my forthcoming article if you want to know more. However, the most important of these codes has historically been the World Medical Association's (kind of like an international AMA) Declaration of Helsinki.

Earlier this month, the FDA announced that it would no longer follow the Declaration of Helsinki. The likely effect of this change will be to push more pharmaceutical clinical trials abroad, to areas with large populations of the poor and sick, such as Eastern Europe, Africa, and India. Anyone who has seen the movie The Constant Gardener is probably familiar with this phenomenon. Americans are notoriously unwilling to undertake the risk of clinical trials, even though the drugs produced are primarily for their consumption. The pharmaceutical companies and researchers are being given more leeway to self-regulate the conduct of these trials with very little oversight either at home or abroad. The FDA does not conduct its own ethical review of such studies, and medical personnel in foreign countries are generally not equipped or educated to conduct such a review; further, the financial incentives given to them by the drug companies and CROs puts the objectivity of any such review seriously in doubt.

More specifically, any tests of improved treatment protocols may now be tested against a placebo rather than against the best existing treatment, which is what the Helsinki Declaration would have called for. That means people in the Third World who believe that they are receiving treatment for serious illnesses may in fact be receiving...sugar pills. The use of a placebo is designed to make the comparative results of clinical trials clearer and more impressive. But at what moral cost? All this so that Americans can enjoy the fruits of such research. (Pharmaceutical companies are under no obligation, and generally do not, provide the tested drugs to the former test subjects once the clinical trial is concluded.) The moral distributive economics of this situation are unacceptable to me- one party bears all the risk (primarily chosen because of their poor health status, poverty, and accessibility) while another enjoys all of the benefit.

As Latter-day Saints, we acknowledge that all of us are God' children. The life of my American neighbor ought not to be preferred over that of an African, Indian, Pole, Czech, or Vietnamese. The use of these people to provide members of rich and privileged societies with life-saving drugs, while the risks and long-term consequences to their health are ignored, is a moral outrage and a sad continuing legacy of imperialism. It needs to stop. So, at the very least, Mormons (and everyone else) should say a prayer for the Third-worlders when you pop those pills tonight.

If anyone is interested in learning further about this topic, see Sonia Shah's book, The Body Hunters, which was a major jumping-off point for my own research and writing. Ms. Shah posted on another blog about this development here.

Content analysis of a Deseret Book catalog

2008-05-22T18:47:00.006-05:00

Finally! It has been a long month+ indeed but I am back. Since my last post, I have been swamped with exams, graduation, vacations, and the beginning of bar review, with nary a moment for blogging. But I have a much lighter schedule now, and should find time for more regular posts.

After that aside, I would prefer to jump right into the meat of the post. Of course, it turns out that the intro to the post really is the meat so here goes...

I've been meaning to write this post for about six months now. I wanted to analyze your typical Deseret Book catalog, which I receive approximately every month or so, to see what was in it, how the items were placed relative to one another, and in what proportion. I kept putting it off because I would get the Christmas issue and say, "well the Christmas issue is going to have a little more kitsch than a normal catalog, so it would hardly be fair to judge them on that basis." Then you get a Conference edition, and then its Mother's Day, and it would really be unfair to judge a company on the basis of what is essentially the catalog version of the sappiest Hallmark card ever. Hence my delay.

Earlier this week, the summer issue of the catalog arrived in my mailbox. By this point, my patience is nearly exhausted and so I forge ahead. In the final analysis, what I was missing all along is that Deseret Book does not just put out bad holiday catalogs....they are ALL terrible! Like raze it to the ground and let's start from scratch terrible.

The title and first page of the summer catalog feature a new book by everyone's favorite motivate-a-Mormon, John Bytheway. His most recent book carries the unfortunate title Golf: Lessons I Learned While Looking for My Ball. My wife finds this funny, since it tends to bring to mind musings by Brother Bytheway on his testicular integrity. Pages 3 through 11 run the gamut from really bad Mormon historical fiction through really bad Mormon adult fiction all the way to really bad Mormon youth fiction. On pages 12 and 13, we stumble upon the first items that might endanger us with actually learning something- a book on pornography (in the shape of an iPhone no less- now you've reminded me that I can get porn on one of those, I really have learned something!) and an audiobook on Mormon perspectives on C.S. Lewis. If I am not mistaken, catalogs ought to lead with something that a well-adjusted intelligent person with disposable income might actually want to purchase, kind of like that "hook" that sucks you into the latest novel, but here Deseret Book makes us wait until we are nearly halfway through the catalog. Not good business, people, not good business. It might be time to call Sheri Dew back into the Relief Society presidency as a third counselor.

Next we find a solid six pages of videos and music, more or less LDS-related. I don't listen to Mormon music (other than a little Mo'Tab on Sundays) or watch Mormon movies, so I can hardly have an informed opinion. However, I do hang out with Mormons in and out of Utah all the time, and I have never even seen one of these CDs, much less heard them (except of course Mo'Tab) so I don't think that Jenny Phillps qualifies as either a "highly requested recording artist" or worthy of a greatest hits album. And if you think you need six CDs to contain all of Michael McLean's best songs, let's talk another time.

On the next two pages, we find that from last month's Mother's Day issue, almost entirely female-oriented, Deseret Book is going to remind women of their place this summer. You get two pages full of motivational material, but don't worry, nothing that might require you to open your scriptures. It's nearly June, so its the men's turn, right? Father's Day, as in your average ward sacrament meeting, is a small footnote in this catalog, relegated to page 26. The contrast with the previous women's material could hardly be greater. The men's pages are dominated by historical and biographical literature (but not of the fictional kind), featuring LDS heroes such as Brigham Young, Hugh Nibley, and Henry Eyring, and other notable figures such as US Presidents, the Founding Fathers, soldiers and pilots. None of that sissy namby-pamby emotionalism for the Priest....oh wait, never mind. See page 28. The Holy Secret by James L. Ferrell. Is that like Oprah's The Secret? And more importantly for Mormons, will it make me rich like Oprah's The Secret? Finally, no good catalog for Father's Day would be complete without a half page of the one gift that every dad already knows that he doesn't want -- TIES, especially the ones that are good to wear to the office or the courtroom, like ties with Captain Moroni and the Stripling Warriors.

I wish I could say that this was a particularly poor example of Deseret Book's offering, but in the end it may be the least pathetic catalog in recent memory. Even so, if you are looking for something edifying or thoughtful, with the exception of a small speed bump on pages 12 and 13, do not pass GO and do not collect the latest Mo'Tab CD, go straight to the Father's Day pages, four of the LAST SIX PAGES in the catalog. Everything you need from Deseret Book in four pages in a 30+ page catalog. Unfortunately, while I scan the horizon for someone to blame, I realize that it's US and no one else. The old law of supply and demand, biting us in our rears at the gas pump and at Deseret Book. And so in the immortal words of the late Jerry Falwell, I say: "I point the thing in [the Mormons'] face and say you helped this happen."

Holy scripture, holy myth (part III- the politics of the Bible)

2008-04-13T22:02:00.002-05:00

This will be my final post in a three-part series about the way the Old Testament is, and perhaps ought to be, interpreted in the LDS Church. Here I will explore possible reasons why the Latter-day Saints and the Church have been slow to embrace new scholarly theories about the Bible and why this fact is not likely to change in the near future.

Keep your friends close...
My Hebrew Bible/Old Testament professor often refers to the "politics of Biblical studies." This concept does not refer to American partisan politics (though it certainly may have some application there), but is equally if not more vehement in its division. The politics of Biblical studies has to do with how various parties use and interpret the Bible to (dis)establish its authority. On one side, you have the stalwart Bible fundamentalists, fearlessly defending biblical inerrancy and the God-given authority of the Bible to resolve all of our concerns in the modern age. On the other, there is another group, mostly secular academics, who are more willing to give naturalistic explanations for the Bible's content and any number of justifications for why its authority on us today ought to be limited, if not eliminated completely. Of course, rather than simply being two camps, these groups form two extremes on a spectrum.

My question is why have Latter-day Saints been so slow to adopt new theories about the Bible and, in spite of a lack of belief in biblical inerrancy, tended to side with the Christian fundamentalists on issues of the Bible's history, and therefore its authority in our individual and communal lives? My own answer is to say that the club that Mormons most want to join is the "mainstream Christian" club, not the secular intellectual club. The Mormon angst over the constant refrain of "Mormons are not Christians" echoing from the South and Midwest is practically palpable. The folks holding the veto power over our inclusion are of course the Southern Baptists and Evangelicals, precisely the people who want to maximize the Bible's modern authority. Adopting new theories about the history and content of the Bible almost invariably tends to limit its authority (though I hope to have shown in earlier posts in this series why that is not absolutely necessary). Therefore, embracing any such theory would simply give the "Bible-maximalists" that much more ammunition to say "Just as we thought! We knew you weren't Christian!" Accepting both the Book of Mormon, other modern scripture, and continuing revelation as sources of doctrinal authority on par or above with the Bible means that we already have two strikes against us. Any kind of rhetoric that would denigrate the place and the authority of the Bible among our people would, in the eyes of those so eager to make nice, be the final straw. This is, of course, what Elder Ballard's talk at the April 2007 GC was all about. In my mind, that talk was entirely aimed at redressing an imbalance in scriptural emphases that had started with Ezra Taft Benson's increased emphasis on the Book of Mormon in the 1980s. The pendulum had swung too far towards the Book of Mormon and the membership of the Church was neglecting the Bible. Our tenuous membership in the "Christian club" would be in serious jeopardy unless we gently coaxed the pendulum back in the direction of the Bible.

The BYU Connection

The foregoing was an example of the ideological reasons why I think that the way that ancient scripture, and in particular the Bible, is taught and interpreted in the LDS Church is unlikely to change in the near future. What follows is a related, but more practical, reason.Another facet of this issue is how the Bible is treated by Church educators. In my own mind, the most important sources for our doctrine on the scriptures and their interpretation are: 1) the General Authorities, 2) the Religious Education faculty at BYU, and 3) the Church Education System. (In one of my early posts on this blog, I explained how the BYU faculty and CES serve as separate loci of doctrine-making authority within the Church, alongside the General Authorities) What we receive in classes in individual wards and branches is almost certainly filtered in some way through one if not all of these sources.

Why the General Authorities do not adopt these secular theories is a no-brainer: most, if not all of them, are completely unfamiliar with such theories. Running the Church does not exactly leave a lot of time for "light reading" in scholarly journals and manuscripts in ancient languages. Besides, from a market-oriented perspective, demand for pure scriptural "knowledge" is quite low in the Church. We generally expect GAs to help us "feel" something rather than teach us facts. The same can generally be said of CES personnel, who in general are not required to have much if any training beyond a bachelor's degree and some Church-sponsored courses.

However, we could expect more of those who teach in Religious Education at BYU, who presumably ought to have the advanced training and skills to learn and impart this information. First of all, as a general matter, this matter of their superior qualifications and training may not be true. Reviewing the qualifications of BYU faculty shows that not all have advanced degrees in relevant fields (OT, NT, other ancient studies fields), and fewer have those advanced degrees from institutions other than BYU (after all, you can't teach what you don't know). Further those who do receive advanced education from institutions other than BYU return to Provo and are routinely socialized into an environment where their secular qualifications and methods are devalued, if not looked at with suspicion and mistrust. Their fellow BYU colleagues are their most significant peers and since BYU Religious Ed faculty do not, as a rule, tend to move on to other colleges, they begin teaching and writing to the expectations of the Provo clique rather than to those of the scholarly world at large. Also, the College of Religious Education is currently directed by someone with a CES background, and thus he and the department he leads can be expected to embody the biases of that institution. Therefore, it may be unreasonable to expect that the members of the faculty will offer content that differs significantly from the CES-Correlation orthodoxy.

In my personal opinion, the ideas about the historical or mythical nature of scritpure that I have laid out in previous posts in this series are worthy of analysis and discussion by members of the Church, even stopping short of outright acceptance. (If I did not think so, I would not have written about them. I am emphatically NOT doing this simply to stir up unnecessary controversy.) But we don't, at least not currently in any Church-sponsored forum with which I am familiar. Furthermore, those forums where such discussions might take place (Sunstone, Dialogue, the Bloggernacle, etc.) are looked down upon by those most in a position to change the status quo. I think that there are reasons, good and bad, for this, and I have laid out a couple of them here. I would be interested to see whether anyone else sees any merit in changing the way we teach ancient scripture and what the prospects are for such change in the near future (say, our lifetimes).

Post-script: I had this post half-formed in my mind as of last weekend's General Conference, and I have left the above part as it was at that time. However, Elder Holland's talk "My Words...Never Cease" would seem to refute some portion of my hypothesis. Here we have a General Authority, no less an Apostle, making direct or indirect references to two very scholarly ideas (albeit ones in no way antagonistic to LDS claims) in his address: Markan priority and Q (sayings of Jesus). For those who were previously familiar with such ideas, like myself, it was quite shocking to hear them over the pulpit, primarily as a result of my own deflated expectations. However, in the long run I doubt that it changes much. Those who were not familiar with those ideas previously may have simply ignored it. A couple of intrepid and curious souls may have the audacity to ask questions in Church settings or look up something on the Internet or at a nearby library. Hardly a revolution...

Women Kan't stay home

2008-04-04T23:30:00.004-05:00

Will feminists in the Church begin counting time in terms of AJBT (After Julie Beck's Talk)? In commemoration of the first General Conference after the now- infamous "Mothers Who Know", I offer the following:

I will admit that I am no expert on Kantian moral philosophy. Somebody out there in the Bloggernacle is bound to have done some serious graduate-level studies on his philosophy. If so, feel free to help out here (that goes for all the rest of you too). However, I think I probably read Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals no less than a half-dozen times during my undergraduate years. So I hope I learned something...

It seems to me that the Church's counsel that women (and particularly mothers) should remain in the home is grounded primarily in a utilitarian ethic. Utilitarianism (a branch of consequentialist ethics), in short, views the moral quality of an act based on the consequences of that act. Women are asked to stay home because the consequences of that act, the better rearing of children and a higher quality family and home life. On the other hand, it might also be grounded in a theory of virtue ethics, which would view the decision to stay home as evidence of a desirable character trait, such as selflessness or charity. (I am not sure that a virtue ethicist would see obedience qua obedience as a virtue.)

But what about a deontological theory, one based on duty? Can a rule of "women should remain in the home" be grounded in deontological moral philosophy? Probably the most famous of the deontological theories is Kant's categorical imperative. In its first formulation, Kant said "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Can we will that our notion that women ought to stay home be universalized? As a practical matter, I am not sure that the removal of all women from the market economy is even possible. Furthermore, I don't think that such a thing would be desirable. Many women (perhaps most women) make valuable and essential contributions in their workplaces, including such formative areas as medicine and education. Also, are we sure that all women would make more valuable contributions in the home? From personal experience, I doubt that very seriously. On the other hand, I think that the opposite rule, that "all women should work outside the home", fails the first test of the categorical imperative as well.

The second formulation of the categorical imperative is as follows: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end." This is diametrically opposed to a consequentialist ethic, and, as I noted above, I think that is the primary ground in moral philosophy for the Church's counsel. It would be difficult to see how asking women to remain in the home in order to improve the quality of their family's home life and to raise children does not treat them as means to those ends. However, the second formulation says that we should not treat others "merely as a means to an end." Is there some way in which asking women to remain in the home treats them as an end-in-themselves? For some women, perhaps this is true. But for many, such as those who overtly objected to elements of Pres. Beck's last Conference talk, they do not feel as though they are being taking seriously as individuals apart from their families and children (this was my primary interpretation of the backlash to that speech in my earlier post on that subject). Again, another rule that demands that all women enter the workforce, presumably in order to increase the GDP or to push the cause of feminism forward, would just as easily fail this rule.

The third formulation is "Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends." This third formulation seems to simply run both the first and second together. We must ask whether we can will a rule that will treat all those under that rule as ends in themselves. I won't analyze this separately, since the rule already failed both of the first two rules.

Where does this leave us? As you might have guess, Kantian moral philosophy is all about how you define and delimit the rule. While we might more readily accept a rule that some women or my wife/sister/daughter/etc. ought to stay home, Kantian philosophy would reject them all, since they must in the end be universalized. What Kantian ethics might support is a rule that allows individual women and their families to choose their own situation. Leaving women an open choice as to their situation is a rule which can (and in my opinion ought to be) universalized (it is essentially the rule that operates outside the Church), and furthermore it treats women as ends in themselves (though whether it treats their children as means only is an open question in my mind).

I want to know people's thoughts, especially those who might have a little more background in moral philosophy who can help me work out the kinks in this admittedly under-developed and cursorily-described hypothesis (or if necessary, shoot it down altogether).

The Incredible Shrinking Endowment

2008-03-20T12:54:00.004-05:00

My wife and I went to the temple last night. Another change to the endowment ceremony was announced. Due to explicit instructions by the First Presidency in the announcement, I won't discuss details (though I have registered my frustration with this non-essential secrecy in another post). Safe to say that it is nothing serious, and I am not sure anyone can argue with me on that.

However, it got me thinking about temple ceremony changes in the future. Looking across the ordinances, baptism takes about 30 seconds, confirmation about the same, initiatory takes about 5 minutes, and the sealing takes about 2 minutes (at least when doing vicarious ordinances). But the endowment takes a whopping hour and a half, maybe longer. I have always felt like as temple work accelerated in the Millennium, the ordinance itself would get much shorter. What do you think?

Since we can't talk about it, I won't ask what you think the "irreducible core" of the endowment ordinance is, but it is worth thinking about.