Next year in Twitter!

Since I've not been posting much lately (busy at work and home - life happens), I've been forwarding stuff worth reading and hopefully worth laughing over. You can blame my eldest daughter Meghann for this one. If you find it sacrilegious, tough. I think it's hysterical. Enjoy.

Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah

Still laughing...Wait'll you read the thread between God and Mark Zuckerberg on the new Facebook look (and I'm with God on this one, for sure!)

But next year, may our ceremony be faster, divided into bite-sized chunks, and with each utterance no more than 140 characters. And so we say together,

NEXT YEAR IN TWITTER

Meet them where they're at

The folks over at Sacred Sandwich made me laugh out loud yet again today. Needs no further comment.

I think they're related

[Stereotypical blogger apology for not posting recently elided. As if you noticed anyway.]

By sheer happenstance I read two thoughtful posts this morning on completely different topics that seem to me to be related at their core. The first was Clay Shirky's Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (h.t. Jeff Atwood). The second was Brant Hansen's FAQ #24: Shouldn't We Just Stay Where We Are, and Work for Change, Rather than Abandoning the Church? I recommend reading both.

Why is a post about the demise of publishing (and that's what Clay ultimately declares - the death not just of newspapers but of publishing as we know knew it) related to a piece on how hard it is for each individual to decide whether to stay in an institutional church? Because at their core, both have much the same cause, and you're soaking in it. It's the Internet.

Now stay with me for a bit. This isn't yet another "the Internet is the source of all the world's evil" rants. Nor is it a wide-eyed "in the future we'll all live online all the time, our real-world bodies fed through tubes while we work and frolic in virtual reality." Instead, Clay looked at how the Internet has destroyed the traditional newspaper's business model, and Brant mentioned twice the traditional 501c3 American church (for you overseas readers, 501c3 is the part of Federal law dealing with the establishment of non-profit corporations). And anything that is a corporation, even a non-profit one, has by definition a "business model." Which is one of the things I have against traditional American churches, but you knew that.

Anyway, I left a comment on Brant's blog excerpting from Clay's piece, and I am going to do the same here, except I am going strike some things by Clay and insert some comments of my own, like this. See if then you see the same thing I do.

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers churches, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption megachurches and religious legislative agendas as the means for reaching more people, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry a church. Leadership becomes faith-based program-based, while employees believers who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments "emergent" services, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries institutions at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers churches is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry organized religion they knew is visibly going away.

...

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers traditional church demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers churches to replace the one the internet just broke.

With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production worship have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data direct relationships. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry industrial (institutional) religion, because the core problem publishing industrial religion solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.

...

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers traditional church, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

...

The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost gathering people to worship got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag dealer, and the law firm hiring a secretary, and that kid down the block selling his bike the pothead, the homosexual, the abused and that kid down the block nobody talks to were all able to use that infrastructure to get out of their old relationship with the publisher church, they did. They’d never really signed up to fund the Baghdad bureau $42,000 A/V system anyway.

...

Print media Traditional church does much of society’s heavy journalistic charitable lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case visiting the elderly and the sick - to supporting the local food pantry. This coverage charity creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers church members, because the work of print journalists church members is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts the family of those served to communities in which they live to bloggers. The newspaper church people often note that newspapers churches benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business missional model. So who covers all that news helps all those people if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people existing churches lose their jobs members?

...

Society doesn’t need newspapers churches. What we need is journalism the body of believers. For a century centuries, the imperatives to strengthen journalism the body of Christ and to strengthen newspapers traditional churches have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism God's people instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ ’save the church’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

Did any of that resonate? Or is it just me?

Do you feel entitled?

The other day I wrote that if Repuglicans are so against the stimulus plan, they shouldn't accept any of its funds for their states. And to my mild surprise some governors and legislatures have been talking about doing just that. Although for the most part the discussions seem much less centered on whether taking the money is "right" and more around concern for some of the strings attached to the funds. In other words, if the Congressional sow had made some of the teats a bit more long-term in funding, they'd be happily suckling already. Even so, it's made for some fine political theater.

But today I was thinking that there's a similar situation we all play out at a personal level, and I see many of my conservative friends fall into the same moral trap. They end up saying one thing but doing another, being the ultimate hypocrites while proclaiming they stand on high ground and see Truth from afar. And that is what they talk about versus what they do with Social Security.

Conservatives across our land proclaim Social Security is "broken" and needs "fixing" (actually it's Medicare that's broken, but that's another topic - and the conservatives' last president helped break it more). They think people should save for their own retirement and that providing a safety net isn't the government's job. They argue that "entitlement" programs are morally wrong because they amplify and enable the lazy and unproductive members of our society at the expense of everyone else. And they point out the Social Security program is not really a trust into which we pay and then withdraw our own funds later based on interest accrued, but instead is an evil pay-as-you-go system that penalizes the current and future generations for the sins of the past generations not saving for their sunset years.

I always find that last argument to be rather ridiculous since all money is fungible and who says the dollar you put in the bank yesterday is the same dollar you take out today? I mean, banks make money by putting that dollar to work (it's called "leverage", a rather out of favor term now days) and the Federal government would do the same even if they were showing some account with your name on it and some balance next to it. If they went bankrupt in the process, your money would be gone either way, just as if it were in an uninsured bank in 1930. It's not like there's a national piggy bank at Fort Knox where your nest egg would grow.

But anyway, back to the overarching point, which is simply this: conservatives, including many I know at or near retirement age, believe Social Security is Wrong. Not just bad policy, but Wrong. An affront to the ideas of small government and people standing on their own two feet (maybe with the help of a walker) and Taking Care of Themselves, Dammit!

Fine.

Then don't take the money.

It's really that simple. If you believe a program is morally wrong (and all conservatives seem to conflate disagreements over policy with morality - which frankly just erodes their arguments over time, since everything large and small is made into a matter of Heaven and Hell, Life and Death, the triumph of Good over Evil), then it is morally wrong to take money from the program. And this time, you can't even argue that you are just taking your own money back, because remember, you pointed out it's a pay-as-you-go system! Your money is long gone, Grandpa. So you need to quit stealing money now from the wallets of the current generation - my kids gotta eat, I have to keep a roof over our heads, and hey, I need to save for my retirement, too.

And I would laugh in the face of any conservative who said they paid in to the program their entire working life and therefore are "entitled" to its funds. That's the problem with such things - one man's "money-sucking government program" is another's "entitlement", and usually the only difference is who is getting paid. I am always amazed at how perspectives change when it comes to applying one's own broad brush political beliefs to one's own life. Suddenly rationalizations abound. "Yeah, I know what I said about all that, but my situation is different! I deserve that money! It's my money! I worked for it!"

The nation is still roughly (53% to 47%) divided in half between liberals and conservatives. Think how much impact our patriotic seniors (who tend to be overwhelmingly conservative - at least when it comes to funding entitlement programs that aren't direct depositing into their bank accounts) could make if they all "just said no". Why, Social Security would go from being "broken" to a robust, ongoing entity. Since it still has a surplus for a while longer, such a widespread movement could even give the government enough money to change it over to a true trust and eliminate the heinous pay-as-you-go aspect. It would be about half the current size (since only those lazy liberals would be using it) and so the government could even lower the payroll taxes! And with lower taxes we all know comes economic good times, a boom for all, market nirvana.

I think it is the Right Thing to Do. If you are retired or near retirement and of a conservative bent, please don't take my money. Because otherwise, you're saying you're "entitled". Or you're just plain stealing. And you don't want to admit to either of those now, do you?

Train in vain

I received this in an email today because I am the webmaster for our church. I know or can anticipate all the arguments for this, but it's still a sad sign of the times.

Church Security Training Seminar - March 24 - Leawood, Kansas

The Center for Personal Protection and Safety will be conducting a one day Church Security Training Seminar on March 24th at Church of the Resurrection 13720 Roe Avenue, Leawood, Kansas.

Topics covered include:
-Seminar geared to a train-the -trainer environment
-Shots Fired: Guidance to Surviving an Active Shooter Incident
-Pros & cons of outsourced security guards supporting ministry organizations
-Keys to creating a healthy and safe workplace environment within your Church or Ministry
-Keys to recognizing signs of a potential crisis before it occurs
-Strategies for handling a difficult person in a public environment
-How to develop a Crisis Management Plan for your Church or Ministry
-How to train church leaders and congregation members to travel safely
-Interactive Session - Lets talk about your specific issues

Tuition: 250.00 

Punctuation nation

OK, I have a confession to make. Punctuation confuses me. Oh, not the normal stuff, like "its" versus "it's", or, e.g., like, really, really overusing commas, a lot, ya know? No, it is a subtle thing, and it is caused by my being a programmer. Let me explain.

I was taught that punctuation like commas and periods always goes inside quotation marks. This makes sense when the entire sentence, or most of it, is a quotation:

He said, "Put down the gun or I'll shoot!"

I get that. But in most programming languages syntax is very strict and you have to pay attention to "balanced" punctuation, especially concerning quotes (single and double), parentheses, braces and brackets. You can't "open" a clause with a balanced syntax element and not "close" it correctly.

So let's say I have a programming language that ends every "statement" with a semicolon and delimits "strings" (a series of characters meant to be expressed literally) with double quotes. Then this would be correct:

var greeting = "Hello, world";

And this would be incorrect:

var greeting = "Hello, world;"

The statement terminator would be inside the string, and hence, since a string is just a "literal", the compiler or interpreter would take the semicolon as part of the string and would complain because there wasn't a statement terminator at the expected end of the statement.

See my problem? I work in programming languages that are all "English-like" in one form or another, if only in their use of English verbs, but their punctuation differs from natural English in many subtle and not so subtle ways. So over time, unless the sentence is part of a direct quotation I've started moving the sentence-ending punctuation outside of the ending quote, even if it's wrong. For example, I would probably still write:

He said, "Put down the gun or I'll shoot!"

But I would end it differently with:

The word for today is "punctuation".

To me, the latter contains a quoted word, "punctuation", that is just "a string" (as in a programming language string) and therefore the termination of the sentence belongs outside of it else the syntax becomes "unbalanced" because I'd have the statement-terminator inside the string (and then it would just be part of the string, and not a statement-terminator).

It gets worse when we start talking about highly parenthetical sentences (and I am a highly parenthetical writer, if you haven't noticed). What should we do with what are normally sentence-ending punctuation marks when we express them inside parentheses and the closing parenthesis is at the end of a sentence? For example, the following is a no-brainer:

I love to write (even if I am not very good at it).

But what about this?

I love to write (even if I am not very good at it!)

Which, it seems to me, could also be written as:

I love to write (even if I am not very good at it!).

I've come to prefer the former but I have no real logical basis for it and could logically defend the latter, except the string of three punctuation marks in a row seems "inelegant" to me somehow.

And then, to be pedantic, the programmer in me is always worried about properly nesting punctuation. In many programming languages you can use both double quotes or single quotes to delimit strings, and if you are going to have single quotes as part of the string you typically surround the string with double quotes, and vice versa if the string is going to have double quotes in it you surround it with single quotes. Here are a few examples:

"Don't let O'Leary keep lyin' to y'all!"

'The quote of the day is "Seize the day!"'

It starts to get really complicated with all kinds of syntactical shenanigans when both single and double quotes need to be in the same string, but I won't go there for now - suffice it to say you're probably already happy you're not a programmer. Instead, what about when you're quoting a block from a work, and that quotation has quotes in it? Programmer that I am I usually dutifully change the embedded quotes to be different from the surrounding quotes, just so my paragraph will "compile". Or to put it another way, if I were quoting this very paragraph I would either surround it with single quotes (since "compile" has double quotes around it), or if I decided to go with double quotes around the quotation block (double quotes are my preferred quoting character) then I would alter "compile" to 'compile'.

And don't even get me started about parenthetical statements inside parenthetical statements (so do you embed the same parenthetical delimiters at each recursion? [or do you change them to show nesting?])

Does anyone else worry about $#!+ like this, or am I just insane?

¿Habla Christianol?

Remember that really politically incorrect scene in Airplane? Wait - all the scenes in Airplane are politically incorrect. I mean the one where no one can understand the two black guys and the stewardess flight attendant calls out, "Does anyone know how to speak jive?", and then the nun comes and translates, complete with subtitles. It's one of a list of scenes that keeps boiling around in my brain as a possible post on racism being casually accepted in modern comedies (with a whole special section just on films written or directed by John Hughes). But I didn't come to talk about that.

I came to talk about dialects. Private languages. Code. Secret vocabularies meant to keep "them" out. Whether "them" is The Man or just all the unwashed heathen. I think Christianese is like that. It is meant not to be a form of communication with the whole world but instead is a language of exclusion.

Now, I am not necessarily talking about Christian buzzword bingo. In some sense that just ends up being like any other hobby or club with its own lingo and slang - sorta nerdy to outsiders, but helping the enthusiasts to communicate densely and quickly about remote controlled airplane frequencies, Civil War reenactment tactics, the best way to chip out of a sand trap, or in our case, God. No, I mean people who pepper their day-to-day conversations with "Praise God!" and "Amen!" and "Thank the Lord!" To me, it all ends up sounding like they are extras on the PTL Club. I cringe and withdraw around people who talk like that, because I feel very excluded. And I think I am meant to.

I don't speak Christianese natively. In fact, it hardly comes to me at all. I not only feel uncomfortable saying "Praise God!" in normal, everyday interactions, I feel uncomfortable around people who spout it spontaneously (I presume). I don't know what medications I would have to take to make me talk like that, but I am sure they would be against the law. I don't wave my arm in the air during worship, either. I'd have to be pretty high to get to that state of mind, and I don't mean 'High on Jesus' - I mean stoned, out there, whacked, fucked up. And nothing I've taken in my ne'er-do-well days had me even close.

My grandparents, my mother's parents, were the most devout Christians I have ever met. Their entire lives were filled with nothing but love of the Lord. And they lived so you could see it and believe it. Their faith was simple, pure and covered the good times and the bad. They lived through true hardships, endured tragedies, and never waivered. They are my mental role models whenever I think about how I should act and believe as a Christian. And they never spoke like that.

Perhaps my discomfort stems from growing up in a staid denomination that starts with "M", who are not known for their displays of ecstatic worship, and now I attend a high church Protestant denomination that starts with "L" that is also known for being rather orderly and dry, not to say sedate, in service. Maybe if I had grown up in the brand of Christianity that has a broad classification of "E" as the starting letter, I would be better prepared for people around me exhibiting signs of clinical schizophrenia in public worship and conversation.

But even in my current under-expressive church there are times I don't feel comfortable with the language, the procedures, the expected behaviors. Here's a small example. During my brief and ego-destroying tenure as "Human Care Board Chair" (hey, it rhymes!), I remember starting my first meeting, not really knowing what to do, and being reminded in a gentle yet embarrassing way that, "Perhaps it would be best to start with a prayer." Oh, yeah - yeah, that would be how it's done, isn't it? So I asked the person who brought it up to do that, and she did a great job, and then we got down to business. But here's the thing - the business really was around praying, and being together, and realizing the relationships in the board were as important as any thing else we were trying to do, and I just don't think or talk that way. So I felt like the total outsider, and not long after that (but not for that reason), I resigned.

I pray, quite a bit any more. But I am not a public pray-er. I'm more of a Matthew 6 "in your room" kinda guy. So of course a church board meeting should start with a prayer. Of course it should. I just am not the kind to think that way. And hence, through nobody's fault but mine, I end up feeling excluded. Like I will never "get it", never be part of the club. I can't talk about football. I can't talk about hunting. I guess I can't talk about Christianity, either.

I believe in a God that loves me for who I am. But I am in a religion that loves me to conform to rituals, trappings and vocabulary that have accreted over 2,000 years. And recently (in terms of church history), part of the ritual has become the injection of the Holy Brand Name into every conversation, to prove we're converted, 'cause now we know the secret handshake and better still, the appropriate startling exclamations to release at random points when we talk. That way we know who's in, and who's out.

I don't get it.

But Jesus loves me anyway.

Praise God! Amen!

Divine Intervention

I don't know where I'm gonna live
I don't know if I'll find a place
I'd have to think about it some
And that I do not wish to face
I guess I'm counting on His
Divine intervention
I cannot understand my God
I don't know why it gets to me
One day my life is filled with joy
And then we find we disagree
All depending on His
Divine intervention
Alright
We're all counting on
His...divine
Does He love us?
Does He love us?
Does He love us?
Does He love us?
Hmmm now does He love us?
I look around
And all I see is destruction
We're all counting on His
Divine intervention
When He comes the sun shine
When He comes the sun shine
Sunshine, the sunshine
Here it comes...
- Matthew Sweet, Divine Intervention

Books that changed my life

Last weekend I got tagged on Facebook with the "16 albums" meme, which was:

Think of 16 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 35) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the wasu, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean.

It was a hard exercise to whittle it down to just 16 albums (my initial list had 35 and even that was cut down more than I would have liked). But it got me thinking - as much as music means and has meant to me in my life, I would say books have had an even greater impact. So, I put together a list of books using a similar thought process as the above. I didn't limit it to just 16, however, 'cause this time it's my list! Even so, there probably could have been more, but I held the line at the ones that really did change me forever. This list includes books from my earliest reading to something I just finished a few weeks ago. I may be missing some that are no longer in my library but that affected me earlier in life.

[List sorted by alphabetically by author.]

• American Ways - Gary Althen
• I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
  
• Whole Earth Catalog(s) - Stewart Brand, ed.
• Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
• The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
• Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
• The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
  
• Systemantics (now The Systems Bible) - John Gall
• My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George
• Neuromancer - William Gibson
• Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert
  
• The Bible - God
• Wonderful Life - Stephen Jay Gould
• The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich Hayek
• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
• Dune - Frank Herbert
  
• The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse
• Steal This Book - Abbie Hoffman
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter
• How to Lie With Statistics - Darrell Huff
• So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore - Jake Colsen (pen name for Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman)
  
• Up the Down Staircase - Bel Kaufman
• The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud
• Generous Orthodoxy - Brian McLaren
• A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller
  
• Lincoln's Virtues - William Lee Miller
• Little Britches - Ralph Moody
• Amazing Grace - Kathleen Norris
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
• Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - J.D. Salinger
• Horton Hears a Who - Dr. Seuss
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  
• East of Eden - John Steinbeck
• Schismatrix Plus - Bruce Sterling
• Bless the Beasts and the Children - Glendon Swarthout
• Sunshine Soldiers - Peter Tauber
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
• Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
• Night - Elie Wiesel
• The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
• A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

So, what books changed you? Opened your eyes? Made you look at the world in a completely different manner? Split your life into "before" and "after" pieces? Altered who you wanted to be? Affected you while you grew up, or as you matured, or as you age?

The public weal

Someone recently commented to me in an email thread, "I don't understand how you can trust a government of men to decide who needs what and who can do without what... I hope that's not how you really feel... don't you believe that each of us should be responsible for our own choices including who we give to?" The author was/is up in arms over the Stimulus Package® and thinks it's a waste of money. And it very well may be. But we no longer live in times where either Democraps nor Repuglicans can leave such a situation alone. The Bush administration got to piss away three quarters of a trillion dollars and threw that all into the hands of a few bankers to help then-Treasury Secretary Paulson's former Wall Street buddies. Doesn't Obama get to throw away the same amount as he sees fit? Isn't that the definition of "fair"?

Seriously, I tire of the whole debate around government and what it should and should not spend money on. First, I tire of the Repuglicans, because in the first six years of the Bush reign when they controlled both the legislative and executive branches they followed him like little sheep, and only when the GOP in Congress got their asses kicked in 2006, and Bush II got more and more and more inept unpopular and they realized they were going to get their asses kicked some more in 2008 did they suddenly exclaim that they were "Shocked!, Yes, shocked!" that their president hadn't been a True Small Government Conservative™ all along, and had (with their advice and consent) grown the government as much as anyone in modern times. Of course, the so-called "small government" conservatives in the GOP let him do that because they're not really into small government (that would mean less pork), they just want certain parts of the government to grow before others.

Now, it seems to me that Repugnicrats are willing to waste away trillions of dollars in a war of their own making in Iraq and call unpatriotic anyone who questions the reasons we went to war or the reasons we stayed. They are also willing to waste hundreds of billions on creating departments to whittle away at our civil liberties. They seem real content at giving my money to big business, too. Democraps, on the other hand, want to spray the money across the land and hope some of it sticks and grows. Sure, they like to spend! They like to spend, spend, spend. It's what they do. BUT SO DO THE REPUGLICANS. They just don't agree on what to waste it on.

The good thing about pendulums is they swing both ways, and we've had eight years of pissing money down the "national security" rathole, and now we get to spend some time pissing it down the "domestic programs" rathole. Note that as far as I can tell, no one in this country beyond those few who vote Libertarian and actually mean it really believes the government should spend less. They just want it to spend on what they think is important at the expense of what the other side thinks important. Even most hard core libertarians will say that there needs to be the Rule of Law™ if for no other reason than to enforce contract and property law. That always reminds me of the apocryphal Winston Churchill joke:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course...
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

Why am I reminded of that joke? Well, folks, with the rule of law comes law. And rule. And laws and rule (the authority to enforce them) means government. The minute you say we need the rule of law, you've admitted to needing a government. And you've admitted there are things the government needs to do. And the minute you need a government that actually does things (as opposed to what was tried in the pre-Constitutional United States under the wimpy and ineffectual Articles of Confederation), you need to pay for it. And the minute you need to pay for it, you need taxes, or some simulacra of the same - fees, duties, stamps, eminent domain (the Federal government financed its first 100+ years selling land it acquired by treaty, war or theft). And with all of that then comes the primary issue, which is, "What is it the government should do, to whom, and how much should it cost?" And at that point we're just haggling over the price, not the act itself. Because someone is going to get screwed.

Every time anyone shouts, "There otter be a law!", they've really just exclaimed, "The government should be bigger!"

"Every law grows the size of the government. Therefore, people who want more laws want more government."
- Lehmer's theorem

And conservatives want laws just as much if not more than liberals. They want anti-immigration laws. They want anti-drug laws. They want English-language-only laws. And each of those laws, if passed and the Supreme Court upholds them, creates a bureaucracy behind them that needs to be fed, and a Drug Czar, Immigration Czar or Ministry of Truth to run them. Repuglicans laugh and point at Democrapic initiatives as "frivolous" and a waste of taxpayer money, and then every election year like clockwork they try and pass an anti-flag burning law to show how "patriotic" they are. Humbug! They're wasting my money just arguing over such things, and if it actually got passed they'd waste more money enforcing it!

Basically, in the end, I think of "liberals" as pols who want to spend my money on things that don't work but at least are intended to help people, and "conservatives" as pols who want to spend my money on things that don't work but at least are intended to hurt people. But both want to spend my money. I no longer get very angry over what it's spent on, because almost all of it's wasted, no matter which party is in power. But we as a citizenry want our laws. We're just shouting over which ones. Nobody ever campaigns on a ticket of "If elected, I will do my best to make sure there will be no new laws for two years!" Yet that is the only thing that could check the growth of government.

In the "debate" over the Stimulus Package®, I got real upset with the GOP Congresscritters because they got to posture and pose and vote against it KNOWING FULL WELL IT WAS GOING TO PASS AND THEIR STATES WERE GOING TO GET THE PORK ANYWAY. That's the best of both worlds to these reprehensible creatures. I was actually surprised to see a few Repuglican governors at least making noises the other day about saying, "No, thanks" to some of the money. Per my post of the other day, that was a stand I didn't expect to see get taken. I don't ascribe it to their convictions, since the only convictions I think career politicians have are when they get caught and tried. I am sure they'll get pressed and will "bow to the pressure" and spend the bucks, because money's money and that's the only thing these creatures know. But as far as political theater goes it was a good play for 15 minutes of podium time.

And as for the original question's concern about whether I can "trust a government of men", well, what makes anyone think we can trust a charity or denomination board either, since those are also comprised of "men" (in the gender-neutral meaning of "humans"), nor are they typically elected in any sense I would consider (small "d") democratic? I can't necessarily even trust myself when I give. How do I know to whom, what and how much to give? Do my motives count?

Yet at some point we must take collective action around things large enough to overwhelm not just individuals but cities, counties, states and our country. We must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately. And therefore with collective action comes the typical inefficiencies and stupidities of man. But to do nothing is also a collective action, and it is often the one with the worst consequences. To expect perfection from our country's government is as asinine as to expect perfection from ourselves. Neither is achievable, and that simply needs to be factored into the equation when acting.

So, to get off the rant and actually answer the underlying question, years ago in the email salon I run we did a series of discussions around "What purpose, if any, should the government serve?" In my third post in that series, entitled 'The Public Weal', I wrote the following, which I include here in total. It still mostly stands for what I think, although as my faith deepens, so does my concern for the people less well off than me, who I don't see most conservatives leaping in to help out of their own pocket (hey, my conservative church spends TWO WHOLE PERCENT of its million-plus dollar budget on "human care needs", and even much of that is aimed at the needs of its own church members). I guess what I am saying is the libertarian me thinks the following is the bare minimum, and the Christian me thinks the minimum isn't enough.

THE PUBLIC WEAL

So far, I have written that I think a government should be able to defend itself and the nation at large to ensure its continuance, and to collect revenue to enable its operation. In the past, some libertarians were known to state their position on gov't as being that it should consist of "a militia, the roads system, and the post". I do not necessarily agree with all of that. For one thing, I think the Post Office's legal monopoly on first class mail should be abolished, and moreover that it should be completely (ENTIRELY) privatized. At one time it took something like gov't involvement to safeguard the transit of letters and make sure they could get somewhere quickly via appropriate protection, roads, and the like, but I don't worry about that any more. In fact, I've read opinions that the reason the gov't does continue to keep control of the mail is so they can monitor it better.

Instead, I would say that the gov't should be concerned more with "a militia, the roads system, and the public weal". The last point could explode into the modern welfare state we already have, or worse, the ones the Europeans have, so let me explain some of the limitations I place on this statement, and some of my reasoning behind making it.

What made me place this subject at this place in the list is related to the first two reasons, which are both aimed at continuing the existence of the gov't and the nation. Looking over history, one thing that seems to imperil a gov't's continued existence more effectively than anything else is when a large number of people don't just "feel" they are not being protected by their gov't, but they KNOW it, because they are hungry (or starving), cold, homeless, or otherwise in truly straightened, life-threatening circumstances to which the gov't turns a blind eye. It doesn't take many years of that before unease changes into unrest which morphs into revolt. And the types of revolts that occur based on these causes tend to erect something just as bad or worse in their place. The Jacobins. The Bolsheviks. The Nazis. The Maoists.

So, to me, it seems somewhat self-evident that it is in the gov't's best interests to ensure some basic measure of survival for all, especially for those at the very bottom, who, if pushed, literally have "nothing left to lose", and who make such good riot fodder for demagogues and provocateurs. I would submit the following guidelines as a starting point:

1) No one in the United States should EVER starve to death, period.

2) No one in the United States should EVER freeze to death, period.

3) No one in the United States should EVER live out of doors, period.

(All of the above tempered by obvious factors like "Except mountaineers". :-)

A fourth item that could belong in the above list would be health care, as in:

4) No one in the United States should EVER bleed to death, period.

(Tempered by all sorts of obvious restrictions, but basically summing up John's minimal health care system argument.)

However, due to the complexity of that one, I am leaving it for another post.

Note: I am NOT saying that:

1) The gov't needs to provide more than the basic daily caloric requirement.

2) The gov't needs to provide high-dollar Gore-Tex coats and designer clothes to the indigent.

3) The gov't needs to provide individual housing to the homeless.

In fact, I am quite content that any "charity" (I prefer the term "social stabilization") be as unappealing as possible, if only to minimize any desire to depend on it for longer than absolutely necessary. Therefore, I would suggest:

1) The gov't can decide that soup kitchens more effeciently and cost-effectively fulfill the first requirement than food stamps and other subsidies, and that bean soup and bread every day is a filling staple that will keep people from starving and interest them in finding their own alternatives as quickly as possible.

2) The gov't can decide that warm and dry clothing can include military surplus and rip-off counterfeit designer clothing captured in raids (the latter they already do distribute to some limited extent), and that in all other cases, fashion is not the issue, but durability and stoutness are. If the homeless end up clothed like the Amish, well, at least they're dry and warm.

3) The gov't can decide that dormitory/barracks style housing IS shelter, and that privacy is less important than protection from the elements.

There will be objections about the loss of "dignity" for the supplicants in the above cases, but I come from a religious tradition that teaches dignity is much less important than humility, and that it's time we all got us some of the latter. If someone is truly in need, that is not the time to worry about their self-esteem (or to put it another way - if they're worried about their self-esteem, they may not be truly in need, yet).

"Self-Esteem, n. - An erroneous appraisement."
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Also, I am completely for "work for welfare" types of programs. I do not see these as an affront to the needy. I see them as a way to give value for value received, indeed, to change the transaction from "welfare" or "charity" to "work for hire". I believe some of the programs of this type that FDR brought about in the 1930s, such as the CCC and the WPA, helped produce some really cool things that we enjoy to this day, and that otherwise wouldn't have existed. The junior high school Mike and I attended had a huge mural on one staircase in the Thomas Hart Benton style that was a WPA effort, for example. Many trails I have hiked were laid down by the CCC. Value received for value given - what can POSSIBLY be wrong with that?

In the end, one of the things a gov't represents is a safety net, a protection and a protector. Any reading of Rousseau's "Social Contract" or Mill's "On Liberty" talks about the "social contract", in which we give up some of our freedom to a more central authority (a chief, a warlord, a king, a modern nation-state) in return for protection. Not just from crime, not just from foreign invasion, but from truly disastrous circumstances. Help recovering from natural disasters seems an obvious gov't function (except for the people who build their houses on barrier islands! :-) . But as the Great Depression taught Hoover after his hands off approach to relief lost him re-election, widespread financial disaster is just as catastrophic to the people who suffer its consequences, and the gov't should at least ensure no one *dies* as a result of such things.

Some argue that charity is the church's job, not gov't's, and that has some historical precedent. Of course, it has such precedent in societies that were (a) not secular and pluralistic, and (b) where the church had a monopoly, and everyone was required to tithe, creating essentially a 10% welfare tax. I do not see "private charity only" being viable in today's society. The gov't is the only entity big enough and with resources enough to provide widespread relief functions. And if it doesn't, if the protector isn't protecting us, then the social contract can rightfully be seen as being null and void by the other party. So in the end, some minimum concern with the life and health of the citizenry IS a gov't function, and MUST be. To ignore that or pretend it is not is to risk real revolt in dire times.