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kudos to Better than Therapy for helping me find the Mark Noll article. I find Rick to be a natural compadre in the quest to improve the overall distribution of political habits of deliberation about politics among evangelicals.

Mark Noll writes that he doesn’t plan to vote because he has derived stances from his faith on seven issues: race, the value of life, taxes, trade, medicine, religious freedom and the international rule of law. He doesn’t plan to vote because he does not find anyone taking serious his combination of concerns. He also finds the public discourse intellectually stunted with the extreme partisanship resulting in a neglect of the public good.

First response:Noll’s negative characterization of US politics stems in part from how the inflammation of the cultural wars have been poisoning the US’s democracy for the past thirty some years. Relations between the parties have been more civil and productive in the past, a past that Noll as a historian wishes to harken us back towards.

I’m going to summarize the seven positions, provide some commentary.

Race: Noll describes the history of racism, its impact and the need for recompensation for the effects of racism.
comment:Noll sounds very much like William Sandy Darity Jr and his call for some recompensation. Noll’s idea of Marshall plans for inner-cities is very interesting. However, it is no surprise that these issues are not in play today. But I don’t see how because a particular issue isn’t important in an election should make one apathetic about who gets elected.

prolife: Noll is militantly prolife. He says that, “Assumptions that are nearly universal in human history testify that, without compelling reasons to the contrary, life should be favored over death.” Now, he is one of those sojourner-style pro-lifers that believes that economic support should be given to mothers to help them with giving birth and taking care of their children.

Comment:The assumption that we should conflate human life and personhood and treat personhood as beginning at conception has not been universal. Both Augustine and Aquinas did not share this view. There are observed facts about the fetal development process that pose some ambiguity as to when we are human beings, rather than potential human beings.
Noll frames the debate as all or nothing, as most pro-lifers do. This obscures how the concrete political question often in dispute is when we legally define the beginning of human personhood, or when the unborn has a legal status other than as part of his/her mother’s boday. Neither side is for the killing of human life, but the commandment not to kill does not rule out exceptions and applies to human beings and there has been some mystery, or room for disagreement, as to when we begin or end as human beings.
Noll needs to acknowledge that discerning right conduct in politics requires making fallible judgements as to what aspects of this fallen world of ours may or may not be changed. I would contend that there is no way that first trimester elective abortions are going to be made illegal again and so all political capital spent on this issue is a waste of resources.

Taxes:Noll is in favor of sharply progressive income taxes, since a good deal of our ability to earn wealth stems from how we have benefited from the social infrastructure of the US.
Comment:Its unclear what a sharply progressive income tax means, presumably one with a higher marginal tax-rate. I wish Noll had endorsed the USBIG that promises to simplify the enormous complexity of the US tax system with a simple progressive program where everyone above a certain age receives a direct transfer of a certain amount of income and then pays a flat marginal tax rate on the rest of their income.

Noll is correct that we benefit from living in the US. However, he skirts over whether or not fallen human nature entails that we pay attention to the bad incentive effects of too sharply progressive income taxes, like those of France, which are almost never actually enforced for good reason.

There are other ways to help the people of the under-developed world, which may merit us accepting higher taxes.

Trade:Noll is in general in favor of advancing more free-trade.
Comment:Noll seems to neglect how greater economic interdependence between nations causes them to need to become more political interdependent and mandate a need for more int’l governance. The argument is simple. In the course of doing business, legal disagreements happen and need to be resolved with implied or actual recourse to a legal authority that both sides accept. The problem is that with international trade, different trading parties may not both accept a particular legal authority. Globalization is often about the rising need for more extensive int’l governance to settle these conflicts and the defacto nature of the authorities that emerge.
Noll doesn’t consider arguments for trade-protections for under-developed countries with infant-industries who need to avoid over-dependency on fickle, foreign capital. He also doesn’t consider how the extensive poverty of many under-developed countries would make “free” trade, not very fair trade. Mostly, Noll seems to segregate the economic and political issues, in this regard. One can do that in academia, but not in real life.

medicine:Noll is in favor of ensuring basic medical coverage to all and the gov’t wielding its police-authority over parts of the medical system that act based on their perceived short-term self-interest.
comment:Sure, that would be a very good thing, which would require a more competitive political system to become an issue. But do we disregard proposed more moderate changes that emerge from our existing system because our ideal is not put on the table?

Regarding religious freedom:Modern World History affirms that the right to worship God or not as one wishes.
comment:In much of the world, religious beliefs/values are intertwined with the values that justify the existing state. How to increase religious freedom in those states from its preexisting fallen state is not so clear.

Regarding international rule of law:The US must exert int’l leadership, since it is the only nation that is in a position to do so. But we need checks against our authority to prevent us from over-extending ourselves in unilateral actions. Noll seems to accept that self-interest will never be removed from our int’l manipulations. He accepts that self-interest is a legitimate reason for the use of force, but only when the strictest standards of justice are observed.
comment:This is a wee bit vague. It doesn’t sound that far off from what Kerry stands for, except that he can’t use the language that Noll uses because of the number of anti-war democrats that would object. I think part of what has been characterized as flip-flopping by Kerry on this issue is his need to couch his stances more carefully as a politician.

Final point: The US political system is designed to promote strategic voting. I believe that we should work towards a viable third party system where third parties that bring positions like Nolls to the attention of the two main parties are rewarded more. Noll doesn’t seem to concern himself with possible structural changes that would make this more likely to be the case.

As far as I can recall, Kerry is pretty pro-free-trade. The only issue that would land Noll on the Republican side is Abortion. Bush has said that he doesn’t think the US is ready for making abortion illegal. If we read between the lines that likely means he wisely is not going to spend a lot of his political capital on the issue, not unlike Ronald Reagan.

I don’t see any compelling reason why Noll would not vote for Kerry. Sure, he’s not boldly advancing some of the more radical proposals that Noll would like to see made law, but he is closer than Bush in these regards.

But man would I like to get Noll to post at my blog.
dlw

I’m a little burned out over the election and its growing acrimony.

I won’t have time to watch the debates and spin them and I’ve pretty much said all I have to say on many of the issues. I feel like often times blogs are ways for ego-maniacs with lots of strong opinions on issues to cope with the fact that we really don’t have a lot of input on what gets decided.

So rather than cope with the yet indeterminacy as to who will be our president for the next four years, I’d like to start off pointing to the need for us to seek reconciliation, amelioration of the divides between us that will remain and likely widen regardless of who becomes president.

First though, I need to thank Evangelicals for Social Action for putting a little ad for this blog in their latest Prism E-pistle. I found an article in the National Catholic Reporter on A new approach to reducing abortions very interesting.

I myself entered my idea on how we may go about agreeing to redefine when legally human personhood begins into the IdeasHappens contest under the category of community. It will be available as of the first of October.

I also found LIFT EVERY VOICE!
A DECLARATION ON CHRISTIANITY AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA to be interesting. I agree that market fundamentalism is not wise and that the religious right’s political strategies/priorities are threatening the health of the US’s democracy. I don’t think we need to set out as absolutes concepts like “the public good” for us to foster a more just system. Too often such collectivistic language has had both unintended and intended negative consequences. As Christians we should accept the need to love our enemies, those we are in conflict with, and need not abstract from ubiquitous conflicts of interests that pervade our political-economic system to strive to let more than just our narrow self-interest affect how we are political.

That takes me back to my initial purpose in this entry.

How may reconciliation across the ideological divide, different sides in the cultural wars be acheived? Three suggestions for both sides.

1. Conservatives need to just say no to the continuation of the sort of character assassinations employed against Bill Clinton and that have been used some against Kerry.
2. Conservatives need to not frame outcomes of elections in quasi-apocalyptic language.
3. Conservatives need to be more civil in how they approach issues like Abortion and gay-marriages. They need to assess the likelihood of various policies becoming and staying law and choose their battles wisely.
1. Liberals need to acknowledge that cultural/religious conservatives are going to remain a political force in US politics for years to come.
2. Liberals need to learn from people like Nicholas Kristof to look for more common ground with cultural/religious conservatives.
3. Liberals also need to educate themselves more about USAmerican forms of Christianity and the nuances of what makes one an evangelical.

We all need to do a better job of being peacemakers after the election, since we’re going to need to reduce the acrimony in our country and government to deal, peacefully and productively, with the many difficult issues we have coming up.

dlw

I have not seen the movie, “Bush’s Brain” that is about Rove’s tactics for winning elections, but I would like to watch it. Josh Marshall has his own anecdote about Rove.

I had a brief talk with my mother last night. She told me she was going to vote for Bush mainly because she thinks he’s a better person than Kerry. I love my mother but its kind of hard to see how strong associational voting is for people.

I’ve pointed out in the past that habits of political deliberation are scarce and shallow and very much in need. I post links to the above mentioned work, not because I believe Republicans are evil and need to be vanquished. I think the Republican Party has shown itself to be better organized and far more strategic than the Democrats in their voter manipulations. I post the links because they show how easy and effective it is to manipulate the heuristics many people use today to decide who they will vote for. And it is important to repeat that the $take$ of US political election$ are so high that you can bet that there will naturally tend to be no-holds barred manipulations going on unless people stand up for more civility and transparency in the process by which we choose who will be our leaders.

I think that this will require for us to move to a viable third-party system, but in the short-run punishing the BushAdmin for its serious failings in the past four years and working toward a detente in the cultural wars will go a good ways to improving the competitive and fair nature of the US democracy.

dlw

ps. Grover Norquist makes his case that the Democrat Party will be seriously harmed if they continue to remain out of power. He points out how many sources of funding for the Democratic Party will dry up. This points to why it matters for us to work toward a detente in the cultural wars to maintain a competitive democracy where the democracy of the dollar will be trumped by popular democracy in many important issues.

dlw

Dick Howard’s NYTIMES commentary on Cornell West’s most recent book is descriptive and critical. The general impression is that, while West may have identified the problems as being how our post-9-11 insecurities have been manipulated and Market Fundamentalism left inadequately unchallenged, his solution consists of much wishful thinking. In other words, West does not come across as critically engaged with the fallen voting habits that exist in the US. One can ask whether the greater prevalence of habits of political deliberation necessary for a “deeper democracy” might not take some time to be inculcated.

In the meanwhile, Kerry could help defuse the cultural wars by adopting the CCCP’s proposal for changing when human personhood begins with nat’l referendums requiring a 75% majority.

dlw

Mark Shields provides a nice readable list of what doesn’t matter and what does matter for the outcomes of elections.

The factors he says matter are debates, events(often outside of the candidates control), and turn-out. I think key to turnout will be the Republican’s attempts to frame the election as about values, or Abortion/homosexual marriages. Kerry is already opposed to permitting homosexual marriages. If he came out in favor of the legal redefinition of when human personhood began along the lines I’ve set out, then that could go a good ways to thwarting the high turnout of socially and religiously conservative voters for Bush.

dlw

AP News has just recently come out with good news for Bush.

I don’t see why Kerry’s use of Dean-like slogans is a flip-flop. We can learn from experience and experience has shown that we really did mess up with going into Iraq on our own the way we did.

As a non-incumbent, Kerry has the right to change his rhetoric.

But what is at play here is, more or less, a battle of slogans. Cheney is using the flip-flop slogan and Kerry is finally going aggressive on Iraq.

I have to repeat myself in saying that if Kerry adopted my moderate pro-life agenda for the legal redefinition of when human personhood begins it would help him among prolife moderates without hurting him too much among his pro-choice base, since the nat’l referendum-based means for the legal redefinition of human personhood safeguards against the ability for any minority, religious or not, to impose their beliefs on the rest of the population.

dlw

according to Josh Marshall is the clear and coherent question that ought to be posed to all USAmericans to make them reflect on the BushAdministration. And so I’ll pose the same question to everyone that visits my blog and ask that they do the same to others as these are the sorts of discussions that should inform our votes in the upcoming election.

dlw

James Fallows thinks so, based on his analysis and comparison of how Bush spoke during his debate with Ann Richards prior to displacing her as gov’r of Texas. The article is lengthy but it has a lot of interesting stuff on the art of making political speeches or debates. An art that Bush is quite adroit at, as he proved last election. I remember one of my sisters telling me that they couldn’t possibly vote for Kerry after the debates.

dlw

I’m thankful again for knightopia for pointing to an excellent blog entry condensation of a conversation of top political wonks discussing the election.

Steve points to Joe Trippi as predicting that there will be a third party in the US in 2008. Sounds likes he thinks it will be one drawing upon the Deaniacs.

I’ve written in the past that in order for the US to develop a viable third party system, it will be necessary first to reduce the inflammation caused by the cultural wars in our political system. Or the viable third party would have to be a pragmatic coalition of existing third parties. Preferably it will be pragmatic, championing a host of neglected issues and changes in the political system that currently favor the main two parties.

Oh wait, I’m just describing my own Christian Pragmatic Progressive Party!

If I could offer any advice to John Kerry, I’d tell him to adopt the planks on abortion from my platform because I think they are geared best at effectively making abortions safer and rarer. Doing this will also thwart the religious rights movement to turn out the single-voter vote. It would especially be good to publicly establish the fact that it is highly unlikely that all elective abortions in the first trimester are going to be made illegal again and kept illegal. This makes attempts to reverse RoeVWade one of the most extravagant wastes of political capital in recent history.

There really is a need for new pro-life political activism strategies/leadership. Current strategies may focus on gradual changes, but their commitment to making all elective abortions illegal again and their non-civil rhetoric provokes an unwillingness by their pro-choice opponents to tread out onto the slippery slope by accepting the proposed compromises. The net effect is deadlock and more abortions that could have been prevented.

dlw

Over at my parent blog knightopia, my friend Steve points out the decisive move by Colin Powell to label the ongoing conflicts in Sudan as a genocide.

This is a serious development. One that will stretch our troop employment even further.

dlw

I feel like renting and watching “The 25th Hour” to commemorate 9-11. I remember that movie as profoundly affecting him as capturing the sort of soul-searching that ought to still be taking place in the wake of 9-11.

dlw

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