The Centuries-Old Rap Battle Rages On

Ok ok. I know the nerd factor of this video is over the top; I get that. But after years of reading from different sides of the global economic debate we find ourselves in (should the government attempt to mediate the economy, and if so, how?), it's exciting and fun to see them displayed as a rap battle with such brilliant execution.

This is the second video in a series by EconStories.TV featuring the competing ideas of historic economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek (who the creators obviously favor). Here's the first. I'd recommend skipping to 1:30 to get straight to it.

Ten Years

Today marks ten years straight my lovely wife Erin and I have been together, either married or dating. Never has a man been so blessed.

I once heard a pastor say that trying to find Mr. or Miss Right is silly, because people change over time. This is undeniably true when you start dating at seventeen; neither of us are the same person we were studying for the SAT or going to prom. We have been given the strange, sweet chance to grow up together before growing old together. To become new people together, over and over again. I'm learning that all good things in life take time. And this is certainly one of the good things.

Jukebox the Ghost – "Schizophrenia" and "Empire"

For some reason I just discovered Jukebox the Ghost's latest album, and it rocks.

Jukebox the Ghost – "Schizophrenia"


Jukebox the Ghost – "Empire"

Quotes: Teddy Roosevelt, "The Man in the Arena"

Another in my "this guy was awesome" series, if you can call it that. I recently read Teddy Roosevelt's Citizenship in a Republic speech, which is well-known for its quote about "the man in the arena." I loved it, particularly for Roosevelt's emphasis on the importance of common wisdom, character, and integrity among citizens to the greatness of a state, which I think is at the heart of Conservatism. I thought I'd post some of my favorite quotes here, beginning of course with "the man in the arena."

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.

My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property.

If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty.

The closet philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who from his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the mob-leader, and the insincere man who to achieve power promises what by no possibility can be performed, are not merely useless but noxious.

Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country.

Teddy Roosevelt

I was also awed by Roosevelt's pragmatism, his willingness to gather and use good ideas no matter their source, a talent which seems lost in our polarized age. The following paragraphs on socialism and individualism struck me as the kind of sorely-need language that would tragically spell destruction for a politician today.

Real Men Don't Make Ads Like This

You know what the answer to all the world's social ills is? Greed? Addiction? Racism? Crime? Suicide? Sex slavery?

Easy: celebrities telling us not to do these things.



This is so sickeningly stupid.

God's Politics

A few years ago a friend posed a question to me about the Civil Rights movement. While he fully believed in its spirit and purpose, he had doubts about Martin Luther King Jr.'s use of the church as a conduit for political activism. My friend saw Jesus' ministry as apolitical.  Much to the chagrin of Jews who were looking for a political revolutionary, Jesus was much more concerned with changing hearts than governments, healing the sick than ending authoritarian oppression. My friend wondered if it was appropriate for MLK to claim that his social ideals were God's ideals, that the war on state-sanctioned racism was a holy war. Certainly the cause of Civil Rights has a crucial place in society, but is that place the church?

I remember my answer to his question jumping out of my mouth before I knew where it came from or really what it meant: "If the Christianity has nothing to say about Civil Rights, then I don't want to be a Christian."

That statement came from a sense of justice rooted somewhere deep in my gut, but it's not something I have believed for most of my life. I have much more often taken the stance that faith informs our politics, but it does not dictate them. The church teaches us the way of Jesus, and we bring these teachings with us wherever we go, even into the voting booth. But it is not the church's place to tell us what God believes about school vouchers or the estate tax or agricultural subsidies. Certainly Jesus' teaching did not focus on issues like these.

Case in point, I once sparked a long email exchange with a former pastor of mine about a sign explaining "why we buy fair trade coffee" which hung in our church. I felt it was inappropriate for us to endorse something that was tinged with political activism, something that not everyone agrees is an effective means of helping the poor. My pastor was thoughtful and open, and his textured response included this: "I believe we Christians must strongly resist an abstract faith, an abstracted faith, a faith that is spiritualized and removed from the concrete situation of the world and its attending social realities." I chewed on this for a while, but ultimately I rejected it.

With this background I moved to DC in 2009, and somewhat haphazardly stepped into an inter-denominational church community with Mennonite roots. There I found a melting pot of people with views on social justice and the political implications of the Christian faith that I had never encountered before. I heard America's military actions and Arizona's controversial immigration law decried from the pulpit. I met people who are passionate about the ideas of Jim Wallis, John Yoder, N.T. Wright, and Wendell Berry. I was introduced for the first time to the idea that the evangelical emphasis on the cross as Christ's ministry's sole purpose has robbed the church of his ministry's fuller meaning: a radical revolution of the social structure of Jesus' day. Whereas the tradition I grew up in focused on Christ as teacher and eternal Saviour, the tradition I stepped into focused on him as healer and instigator of God's kingdom on earth (with a great many present, active implications for the culture, justice, and yes politics of our age).

As a result, my faith is once again bending. Each week I am challenged by this community to hear Jesus' teaching in different ways, to scrape off the old, comfortable interpretations I have of scripture and read it anew again. I'm not about to go out tomorrow and start preaching liberation theology (I am often surprised by how little this community focuses the teachings of Paul which are so crucial to the Presbyterian convictions I am familiar with), but I know I have much to learn from the social justice tradition. I'm reading, asking, listening, debating (sometimes arguing) my way through it, and I can feel my perspectives shift as I do.

So should churches openly support the Civil Rights Act? Compassionate immigration reform? Isolationist foreign policy? Fair Trade coffee? I don't know. All I can say is my answer used to be "no," and now it's not. But my answer to the bigger question—"Who is this Jesus?"—continues to gather complexity, nuance, texture, and I hope, truth.

Regarding Your First Letter to Barbara Walters

My grandmother, Norma Scott, passed away last weekend after battling Alzheimer's for almost a decade. She was an amazing woman, perhaps the most faithful Christian I have met, and her funeral was a gentle and peaceful experience. Though it was sorrowful, we all knew she was happier to be with the God she prayed to hours a day for so many years than suffering here.

At her memorial service the pastor read an email from a friend of his who had been diagnosed with cancer and learned he would not live much longer. In it he wrote, "I have some news for you. Very soon I will be leaving to go to the land of the living. My only regret is that I must leave some people who I love very much here in the land of the dying."

Here—the land of the dying. God's kingdom come—the land of the living. This paradox has been deep in my thoughts this week.

When my family returned from the funeral we were going through a box of my grandmother's things, and in it I found three letters written to her forty years ago. They were each in response to a letter she had written first, and I cannot tell you how funny and endearing it was to read the authors' reactions to my grandmother's scrutiny. She was a spirited and opinionated woman, and her character shown from the pages. One was a letter of apology from the Prudential Insurance Company of America, regarding some disparaging comments made about Heisman Trophy winner Pat Sullivan on a television program they sponsored. The second was a letter from Walter Mondale, written just before his inauguration as Vice President, assuring my grandmother that he was indeed a Christian and thanking her for praying for him.

The third... Well the third was so funny I thought I'd post it here. It made me think of letters I have written in the past, and wonder if they were inspired by the same passion she had. Maybe fervent letters to vice presidents and television programs are in my future. Here is the letter, followed by a transcript of the text:

August 13, 1968

Dear Mrs. Scott:

On behalf of TODAY, I wish to apologize for the error which was made in our reply to your first letter to Barbara Walters. Because of the great volume of mail which is handled by the TODAY staff, such mistakes do occur...they are human errors and are, fortunately, infrequent. Please accept our apologies.

You may be sure that your criticisms of Miss Walters' and Mr. Hugh Downs' views have been shared with all concerned, and noted in our weekly report to the TODAY staff and NBC News executives.

Thank you so much for your patience, and for taking the time and trouble to write.

Sincerely yours,
Ronee Gebrow
TODAY staff

(By the way, if you love old letters, check out Letters of Note.)

Mad in Craft

April Fools'!

As you may have guessed, yesterday's post about my newfound love for college basketball was a little April Fools' joke for folks who know I don't follow sports. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a whole basketball game on TV in my entire life.

You might be wondering how I suddenly became so knowledgeable about this year's March Madness season. When I had the idea for this post I knew it would be tough to pull off, so I emailed my dear friend and basketball/football expert Dr. Michael W. Sawyer and asked him if he would like to write a post about March Madness, as me. He graciously accepted, and I thought he did an amazing job. He is pictured above, in the center, with our friend Christian on the left and some guy on the right who probably has something to do with basketball too.

My apologies to the folks whose comments I deleted because they hinted the post might be a joke. I wanted to keep the game afoot. Feel free to re-post them and I promise I won't take them down.

My favorite April Fools' 2011 joke I've seen so far was Google's "autocompleter" prank. If you know a good one please share!

A Descent into Madness

Update: April Fools'!

I have a confession which I'm a little afraid to make public. I've been overcome with madness the last few weeks. March Madness. It started with caving in and completing a bracket with some of my coworkers earlier this month. Turns out this was the perfect year to fill out a bracket without knowing anything about basketball. To say this year has been unpredictable is a bit of an understatement. Of the 6 million brackets submitted to ESPN's online competition, only 2 correctly picked the final four. That's right, 2 out of 6 million. The odds of contracting leprosy in the US are around one in three million. After the first round of games I was in first place in the office and my interest was piqued.

Then, during a routine skimming of the prattling discourse over at HuffPo, I came upon this inspiring story about VCU and I was hooked. I've always resonated with the underdog and VCU perfectly embodies the term. Finishing 4th in the Colonial League, and losing 5 of 8 games in February, many people were shocked they made it into the tournament. Coach Shaka Smart didn't even get the team together to watch the Selection Sunday show, so insecure was as he about their chances.

The Rams lack a true star, but solid play from Jamie Skeen and Bradford Burgess along with excellent coaching have pulled them through so far. Only one of their games has even been close, a thrilling 71-70 overtime victory over Florida State. Brandon Rozzell sparked the rams coming off the bench to provide 16 points in just 24 minutes of play. There is much to be said for the strength of team playing together.

I'll be the first to admit I've been dismissive of sports in the past, but with all of the bickering and division going on in the country it's great to find a story that brings people together. Perhaps the political world has something to learn from the selfless play and sacrifice of VCU. Their inspired performance has certainly won me over, which was no easy task. So let me throw my official endorsement behind college basketball and March Madness. I encourage you to join in and watch the Final Four this weekend. You can experience the games online here. I for one will certainly be watching as history is made.

Image: RMTip21