Category Archives: Current Events

Francis Bacon: Humanist artist who believed life “is meaningless” (Part 3)

October 11, 2011 – 12:10 pm

I first read about Bacon in a book by Francis Schaeffer.

John Whitehead in an article noted:

—


Bacon’s work epitomizes the spirit of twentieth century man—a grasping for meaning and dignity within an environment of dehumanization and meaninglessness. He once said: “Nietzsche forecast our future for us—he was the Cassandra of the nineteenth century—he told us it’s all so meaningless we might as well be extraordinary.”

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Below is a portion of an article by Os Guinness

“I come too early. My time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way.” Nietzsche“To be a man means to reach toward being God.” Jean Paul Sartre“In seeking to become angels we may become less than men.” Pascal“True civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turntables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.” Baudelaire“It is becoming more and more obvious, that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is mankind’s greatest danger.” Carl Jung

“It is in our hearts that the evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked Out.” Bertrand Russell

“Oh great gods, how far he lies from his destination!” Fillini, Fellini’s Satyricon1

 

Western culture is marked at the present moment by a distinct slowing of momentum, or perhaps, more accurately, by a decline in purposefulness and an increase in cultural introspection. This temporary lull, this vacuum in thought and effective action, has been created by the convergence of three cultural trends, each emphasizing a loss of direction. The first is the erosion of the Christian basis of Western culture, an erosion with deep historical causes and clearly visible results. The second is the failure of optimistic humanism to provide an effective alternative in the leadership of the post-Christian culture. And the third is the failure of our generation’s counter culture to demonstrate a credible alternative to either of the other two — Western Christianity and humanism.

The convergence of these three factors in the late sixties marks this period as especially important. What is at stake is nothing less than the direction of Western man. Only a few years ago the dismissal of Christianity was held to be a prerequisite for cultural advance. The decline of Christianity thus represented a cure for man’s problems, not a cause. So with the dawning of optimistic humanism the decline of Christianity was welcomed. Its adherents would be the only losers.

But that was yesterday. And contemporary yesterdays have a habit of suddenly seeming a hundred years ago. Today the cultural memory of traditional values hangs precariously like late autumn leaves, and in the new wintry bleakness optimism itself is greying. Now it appears that all of Western culture may be the loser.

My purpose is first to examine humanism, partially as a movement in itself but even more as a backdrop against which to appreciate the need for an alternative; then to chart the alternative offered by the counter culture with all its kaleidescopic variety; and finally, to present a third way as a more viable option in the light of man’s current situation. The weaknesses in both humanism and the counter culture are pointed out, not to negate much that has been extremely sensitive and intensely human, but to show the inevitability of their failures. The critique at least serves to illustrate certain mistakes that must not be repeated, and it highlights important questions and dilemmas with which further alternatives must grapple.

A third way is desperately necessary because the present options are growing more obviously unacceptable. And, in fact, there is a Third Way — one which is becoming increasingly welcome to a large number of sensitive searchers and free-spirited individuals who make up a major part of those dissatisfied with things as they are. This Third Way holds the promise of realism without despair, involvement without frustration, hope without romanticism. It combines a concern for humanness with intellectual integrity, a love of truth with a love of beauty, conviction with compassion and deep spirituality. But this is running ahead.

The Surfacing of Pessimism

Now we can see an important point more clearly. Optimistic humanism was only one stream of secular humanism. Its reverse was pessimistic humanism, and if the optimism was characteristically strong in academic circles, it is now evident that pessimism was more prevalent in the wider reality of life. Pessimistic humanism was always there, like a subterranean stream, murky in its depths and dark in its apprehension of dilemmas. It is this subterranean stream that is now threatening to surface and usurp the dignity and dominance of optimistic humanism.

Again we must go back in history to realize the full importance of this surfacing pessimism. Its genius was to see that behind the apparent stability of the nineteenth-century world in which modern humanism was born stood a different reality. Both Nietzsche and Kirkegaard were men who lived in passionate revolt against the smugness of the nineteenth century, particularly against the cheapness of its religious faith and the brash confidence of its secular reasoning, or generally against its shallow optimism, wordy idealism and tendency to conform. Such a smug world was not just false but dangerously foolish, if the true nature of reality lay elsewhere.

It is amazing that this subterranean pessimism was not taken more seriously earlier. But it was derided as the “Devil’s Party” — the poets, philosophers and prophets of chaos and catastrophe — and all too easy to dismiss.13 Some were ignored. Their repeated warnings were simply relegated to the status of cultural myth having only an innocuous respectability. In 1832 Hemrich Heine had said, “Do you hear the little bell tinkle? Kneel down — one brings the sacraments for a dying God.”14 Nietzsche’s later cry of the death of God and his searching diagnosis (“Everything lacks meaning. What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The goal is lacking; the answer is lacking to our ‘Why?’”)15 were not taken seriously either. After all, wasn’t Heine a poet, and wasn’t Nietzsche later deranged?

Other warnings were dismissed as only to be expected from the theory or temperament of their particular authors. Repeatedly in the 1930s, George Orwell depicted Western intellectuals as men who in blithe ignorance were sawing off the very branch on which they were sitting. Malcolm Muggeridge in his articles lanced open the “death wish of liberalism.” C. S. Lewis carefully made his exposures in “The Funeral of a Great Myth.”16 But the serious disquiet of Orwell, the humorous if testy honesty of Muggeridge and the gentle clarity and utter reasonableness of C. S. Lewis were before their time. They were predictable. They were ignored.

But the rising tide of disquiet cannot now be ignored. It is becoming the accepted mood of much recent judgment, as a hundred illustrations could quickly show. Writing in 1961 specifically on problems of Western culture, Frantz Fanon mocked, “Look at them today, swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.”17 In the same context, Jean Paul Sartre challenged, “Let us look at ourselves if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us. First we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip tease of our humanism.”18 These two men could easily be dismissed as pessimistic, prejudiced politically and philosophically, but the disquiet does not stop there. Coming closer to the heart of humanism and speaking almost as an heir to a distinguished humanist house, Aldous Huxley described himself this way: “I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead and the other powerless to be born, and have made in a curious way the worst of both.”19 From the world of science John Rader Platt, the American biophysicist, said, “The world has now become too dangerous for anything less than Utopia.”20 Norman O. Brown, a man famous for the lyrical romanticism of his visions, admitted, “Today even the survival of humanity is a utopian hope.”21

There can be no stable equilibrium between optimism and pessimism but only an uneasy oscillation between the two. Optimistic humanism is strong in its stress on the aspirations of man but weak in its understanding of his aberrations. Accordingly, it lacks a base for the fulfillment of the former and its solutions to the latter are deficient; thus its ultimate optimism is eternally romantic. Pessimistic humanism, on the other hand, insists on the absurdity of man’s aspirations and speaks to the heart of his aberrations, but the price of its realism is the constant pull toward despair. This clear contrast throws further light on the current crisis.

Four Pillars of Optimistic Humanism

Optimistic humanism is being exposed as idealism without sufficient ideals. More accurately, its ideals are impossible to attain without a sufficient basis in truth, and this is just what its rationalistic premises are unable to provide. This is the key weakness of each of the four central pillars of optimistic humanism.

The first pillar is the belief in reason. Here optimistic humanism is forced to its initial leap of faith… Much of what was called reasoning is now more properly called rationalizing.

Modern philosophy also has reduced the pretentions of reason. For man, speaking from a finite reference point without divine revelation, to claim to have found a “universal” is not just to be mistaken. The claim itself is meaningless. For most modern men, objectivity, universals or absolutes are in a realm beyond the scope of reason; in this realm there is only the existential, non-rational, subjective understanding of truth.

Both psychology and philosophy have thus clipped the proud wings of rationalism and the unlimited usefulness of reason by itself. By rationalism I do not mean “rationalism” as opposed to “empiricism” but rather the hidden premise common to both — the humanist’s leap of faith in which the critical faculty of reason is tacitly made into an absolute and used as a super-tool to marshal particulars and claim meaning which in fact is proper only to the world of universals.

The second pillar is the belief in progress. The orientation toward the future introduced into Western culture by Christian linear teleology was secularized by the Enlightenment. Ostensibly it had been given objective scientific support by the evolutionary theory. It was widely believed that nature was marching forward inevitably to higher and higher views of life (as expressed, for instance, in the philosophy of Herbert Spencer). But this is now being drastically undermined. Many point to evidence of an evolutionary crisis, somewhat tarnishing the comfortable image of inevitable progress with man at the center of the stage controlling his own evolution. Some even predict the extinction of the human species.

The third pillar is the belief in science as the guide to human progress and the provider of an alternative to both religion and morals. If “evolution is good,” then evolution must be allowed to proceed and the very process of change becomes absolutized.

The fourth pillar is the belief in the self-sufficiency of man. A persistent erosion of man’s view of himself is occurring. The fact that man has made so many significant scientific discoveries points strongly to the significance of man, yet the content of these same scientific discoveries underscores his insignificance. Man finds himself dwarfed bodily by the vast stretches of space and belittled temporally by the long reaches of time. Humanists are caught in a strange dilemma. If they affirm the greatness of man, it is only at the expense of ignoring his aberrations. If they regard human aberrations seriously, they have to escape the dilemma raised, either by blaming the situation on God (and how often those most strongly affirming the non-existence of God have a perverse propensity to question his goodness!) or by reducing man to the point of insignificance where his aberrations are no longer a problem. During World War II, Einstein, plagued by the mounting monstrosity of man against man, was heard to mutter to himself, “After all, this is a small star.”23 He escaped the dilemmas of man’s crime and evil but only at the price of undermining man’s significance.

Notes

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 125, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), p. 96; C. G. Jung. “Epilogue,” Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York: Routledge Books, 1933); Bertrand Russell, Has Man a Future? (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 110; Federico Fellini, Fellini’s Satyricon, ed. Darlo Zanelli, trans. Eugene Walters and John Matthews (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970), p. 269.
  • Quoted in Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (London: John Murray Ltd., 1971), p. 104.
  • Quoted in ibid., p. 101.
  • Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1966), p. 44.
  • Ibid.,p.417.
  • Michael Harrington, The Accidental Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 31.
  • Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (New York: Mentor Books, 1951).
  • Julian Huxley, ed., The Humanist Frame (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1961), p. 44.
  • Ibid.,p.7.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Hymn of Man.”
  • J. Huxley, p. 6.
  • Ibid., p. 26.
  • Harrington, p. 35.
  • Heinrich Heine, quoted in WaIter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p. 375.
  • Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1-2, quoted in Kaufmann, p. 103.
  • C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd., 1967), p. 82.
  • Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 251.
  • lbid., p.21.
  • Letter of Aldous Huxley to Sibylle Bedford quoted in Time, May 4, 1970.
  • J. R. Platt, The Step to Man (New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 1966), p. 196.
  • Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death (London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1968), p. 267.
  • See discussion in Nigel Calder, Technopolis (London: MacGibbon & Kee Ltd., 1969), pp. 98-99.
  • Arnold Toynbee, “Changing Attitudes towards Death in the Modern Western World” in Arnold Toynbee and others, Man’s Concern with Death (London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1968), p. 125.
  • Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1967), p. 15.
  • Viktor E. Frankl, “Reductionism and Nihilism” in Beyond Reductionism, ed. Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smythies (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1969), p. 398.
  • Mortimer J. Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (London: Holt, Rinehart & Winston Ltd., 1967).
  • Quoted in T. M. Kitwood, What Is Human? (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1970), p. 49.
  • Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, IV, 1, as quoted in Kaufmann, pp. 83-84.
  • Harrington, p. 26.
  • Koestler, p. 313.
  • Fanon, pp. 251-52.
  • Harrington, p. 36.
  • Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, Standard Works of Freud, 21 (London: The Hogarth Press Ltd., 1961), p. 91-92.
  • Albert Camus, The Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962), pp. 243-44.
  • Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 125.
  • Quoted in Gay, p. 65.
  • Quoted in Kitwood, p. 54.
  • Erich Heller, The Disinherited Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 75.
  • Nietzsche, p. 409.
  • Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, I, 11, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 160.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed (New York: Signet Classics, 1962), pp. 384-85.
  • Camus, The Rebel, p. 199.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, Inc., 1968), p. 733.
  • Quoted in Camus, The Rebel, p. 58.
  • Quoted in ibid., p. 62.
  • Quoted in ibid.
  • Quoted in ibid.
  • Heller, p. 76.
  • Nietzsche, Zarathustra’s Prologue, 4, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 126.
  • Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 191.
  • Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (London: Methuen, 1957), p. 566.
  • Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1956).
  • Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958).
  • Yoko Ono, Grapefruit (London: Peter Owen Ltd., 1970).
  • Paul Simon, The Paul Simon Songbook, C.B.S. 62579.
  • Jean Luc Godard, La Chinoise, filmed 1967.
  • Quoted in H. R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1970), p. 174.
  • Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p.321.
  • Chores and Roy Medvedev, A Question of Madness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).
  • “Psychoadaptation, or How to Handle Dissenters,” Time,September 27, 1971, p. 45.
  • lbid., p.44.
  • Quoted in Harrison Salisbury, “Introduction,” The Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), p. ix.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (New York: Bantam Books, 1958), p. 71.
  • Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 123.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York: Routledge Books, 1956).
  • R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 24.
  • Ibid., p.24.
  • David Cooper, ed., The Dialectics of Liberation (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968).
  • Malcolm Muggeridge, Tread Softly for You Tread on My Jokes (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.), p. 28.
  • Ibid., p. 29.
  • Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs (Glasgow: Fontana, 1970), p. 70.
  • Ibid., p. 44.
  • Ibid., p. 339.
  • Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art, trans. Anna Bostock (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963).
  • Lewis Feuer, “What Is Alienation? The Career of a Concept,” New Politics, Spring 1962, pp. 116-34.
  • Fischer, p. 80.
  • Erich Frornm, Marx’s Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1961).
  • Hermann Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 4 vols. (Nutley, N.J.: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1957); The Twilight of Western Thought (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1960).
  • Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1968); Escape from Reason(Downers Grove, III.: InterVarsity Press, 1968).
  • J. A. Rushdoony, “Preface,” Dooyeweerd, The Twilight of Western Thought, p. 9.
  • Camus, The Rebel, p. 16.
  • Nietzsche in a letter to Gersdorff, November 7, 1970, quoted in Erich Heller, p. 70.
  • Ibid., p.181.
  • Fromm, Sane Society, p. 360.
  • Laing, The Politics of Experience, p. 118.

Author

Os Guinness is an Englishman born in China during the war with Japan and educated at the University of London. He has traveled widely in the East and lectured to student groups in Europe, the United States and Canada. His major work was with Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland.

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By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Taxes are going up if Bush tax cuts are not made permanent

October 11, 2011 – 11:58 am

Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History

Everyone wants to know more about the budget and here is some key information with a chart from the Heritage Foundation and a video from the Cato Institute about the Laffer Curve. In a year and half (end of 2012) the Bush Tax Cuts will expire. However, is that wise? Not if you understand the Laffer Curve.

Taxes are projected to increase rapidly under various policy scenarios. If the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire and more middle-class Americans are required to pay the alternative minimum tax (AMT), taxes will reach unprecedented levels. The tax burden will climb even if those tax breaks are extended. President Obama’s budget, which cuts some taxes and raises others, also increases the overall tax burden.

PERCENTAGE OF GDP

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Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History

Source: Heritage Foundation calculations based on Congressional Budget Office and White House Office of Management and Budget data.

Chart 19 of 42

In Depth

  • Policy Papers for Researchers

  • Technical Notes

    The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More

  • Authors

    Emily GoffResearch Assistant
    Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
    Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in President Obama | Comments (0)

Big Bad Wall St Corporations

October 11, 2011 – 8:51 am

I found this article interesting from the Wall Street Journal:

  • OCTOBER 10, 2011

The Corporate Exec: Hollywood Demon

Nazis are getting old, moviemakers don’t want to offend foreign audiences, so corporate types top the list of evil stereotypes

By EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN

It is not surprising that pop-culture protesters are now intent on occupying Wall Street. For the past decade, Hollywood has been casting financiers as the demonic villains of society. In the multiplexes, businessmen have replaced even terrorists as villains.

In the Warner Bros. political thriller “Syriana,” for example, the villain is not al Qaeda, an enemy state, the mafia, or even a psychotic serial killer. Rather, it’s the big oil companies who manipulate terrorism, wars and social unrest to drive up oil prices.

Tracks of the root-of-evil corporate villain are everywhere in post-Cold War Hollywood. Consider Paramount’s 2004 remake of the 1962 classic, “The Manchurian Candidate.” In John Frankenheimer’s original film, the villain-behind-the-villain is the Soviet Union, whose nefarious agents, with the help of Chinese Communists, abduct an American soldier in Korea and turn him into a sleeper assassin. In the new version, the venue is transposed from Korea in 1950 to Kuwait in 1991, and the defunct Soviet Union is replaced as the resident evil. The new villain is—you guessed it—the Manchurian Global Corporation, an American company loosely modeled on the Halliburton Corporation.

As the director, Jonathan Demme, explains in his DVD commentary, he avoided making the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein the replacement villain, because he did not want to “negatively stereotype” Muslims. Not only was neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq mentioned in a film about the Iraq-Kuwait war, but the Manchurian corporation’s technicians rewire the brains of abducted U.S. soldiers with false memories of al Qaeda-type jihadists so that they will lay the blame for terrorist acts committed by American businessmen on an innocent Muslim jihadist. So Hollywood lays a new rap on greedy corporations: deluding the public about terrorism.

Why don’t the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and physically handicapped people to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain a liaison in Hollywood to protect their image. The studios themselves often have an “outreach program” in which executives are assigned to review scripts and characters with representatives from these groups, evaluate their complaints, and attempt to avoid potential brouhahas.

Finding evil villains is not as easy as it was in the days when a director could choose among Nazis, communists, the KGB and Mafiosi, though they have served in a pinch. The 2002 apocalyptic thriller, “Sum of All Fears,” was based on the Tom Clancy novel in which Muslim extremists explode a nuclear bomb in Baltimore. But Paramount decided to change the villains to Nazi businessmen residing in South Africa to avoid offending Arab-American and Islamic groups. “The list of non-offensive villains narrows quickly once you get past the tired clichés of Nazis,” a top talent agency executive pointed out to me in an email. “You’d be surprised at how short the list is.” And even Nazis have now aged out of contemporary-movie contention.

Since international markets provide Hollywood with 70% of its action-movie revenue, studios are finding it risky to use villains from potentially valuable markets such as China. When MGM set out to remake John Milius’s 1984 classic about Soviet invaders in America, “Red Dawn,” the new invaders were Chinese. Yet the version MGM plans to release in 2012 has been digitally altered and re-edited to make the primary villains North Koreans. North Korea is one of the few countries in which Hollywood does not distribute its movies.

For sci-fi and horror movies, there are always invaders from alien universes and zombies from another dimension, but even here it doesn’t hurt if they are in the greed business. In the 2009 movie “Avatar,” an avaricious mining corporation is behind the use of avatars to destroy the environment, culture and natives of the planet Pandora. This proved a lucrative decision since the movie earned a large share of its revenue in foreign countries, such as Brazil and China, where there is concern about corporate exploitation of their resources and environment.

Yet for reality-based politico-thrillers, the safest remaining characters are lily-white, impeccably dressed American corporate executives. They are especially useful as evildoers in films set abroad since their demonization does not risk gratuitously offending officials in countries either hosting the filming or supplying tax or production subsidies. “Mission Impossible 2” thus replaced the Russian and Chinese heavies that populated the old TV series with a Wall Street-type financier who controlled a pharmaceutical company that aimed to make a fortune by unleashing a horrific virus on the world. How? It owned the antidote. Here, as in other thrillers, businessmen’s crimes and killings are not just figurative.

Unlike other stereotype-challenged groups, CEOs and financiers have no connection with the studios’ outreach programs. Unprotected and unfeared—even as they finance movies—they’ve become an essential part of Hollywood’s casting. They are the new all-purpose money demons.

Mr. Epstein is author of “The Hollywood Economist” (Melville House, 2010).

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Bono has the wrong answer for the poor of the world (Part 4)

October 11, 2011 – 8:50 am

Bono has the wrong answer for the poor of the world (Part 4)

Bono praises the election of President Obama!!!

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This is a series of posts that show that Bono (who I have been listening to since 1983) has the wrong solution to the problem of worldwide hunger.

Max Brantley wrote on the Arkansas Times Blog:

Politico reports here that a group of celebrities, including former Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee, shouted a four-letter obscenity for cameras in a promotion to speak up against famine. Bleeps and labels to cover mouths obscure the actual word.

ONE, the Bono-founded organization, says: 

In the PSA, our celebrity supporters shout out one four letter word that the majority of viewers will find offensive, in order to shine a light on something only a minority seems to be offended by. I know the tone is a bit rough for ONE — that’s no accident. If it feels like a punch in the face, then good — mission accomplished. It’s time for a wakeup call and here’s the alarm. Love it? Great. Hate it? OK. Just don’t ignore it.

 I’m not sure I believe Huck did precisely as described.

Economic freedom and free trade need to be major pieces of the puzzle to solve this problem but President Obama and Bono do not get that.

Here is a link to a great article on Africa and the problem of hunger by Greg Mills. The article appeared on April 23, 2009 in the NY Times and it mentions Bono and below is a portion of an article about Greg Mills and what he had to say to the Cato Institute.

Why Africa Is Poor and What Africans Can Do about It

Published October 15, 2010 Africa , Foreign Aid 2 Comments
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Cato recently held a book launch for South African development expert Greg Mills (you can pre-order at Amazon). This is a very smart book by a man who has spent his professional life in the thick of the problem (bad governments making bad policy choices).

Economic growth does not require a secret formula. While countries from Asia to Latin America have emerged from poverty, Africa has failed to realize its potential in the 50 years since independence. Greg Mills, the former director of the South African Institute of International Affairs and one of South Africa’s most respected commentators, confronts the myths surrounding African development. He shows that African poverty was not caused by poor infrastructure, lack of market access or insufficient financial resources. Instead, the main reason Africans are poor is because their leaders have made bad policy choices. Please join us to hear why a growing number of African opinion makers and ordinary citizens believe that to emerge from poverty, Africa must embrace a far greater degree of political and economic freedom.

I recommend the podcast of the event (download MP3). Excellent comments by Marian L. Tupy, a policy analyst with the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

One of my favorite development economists wrote the lead blurb

“Poverty is now optional” is Greg Mills’ invigorating message’, Paul Collier, Oxford University, Author of The Bottom Billion and The Plundered Planet

African poverty has been optional for fifty years — just keep in mind that the African elites do just fine under the status quo. And so do the NGOs, who effectively get a commission cut of the western aid budgets (as does the consulting industry housed around the DC beltway).

Good job Cato! Now, if we can just inject some sanity into the NGOs and OECD aid agencies. The billowing aid continues to insulate the African leaders from the consequences of their policies (and of course insulates them from their own populations).

On aid, I was pleased to hear Greg Mills respond to questions, with, paraphrasing:

Obama said his Africa policy was to “double the aid”. In fact that is a clear signal that there is no Africa policy. An effective, Africa policy is far more nuanced and complex than “double the aid”. What is the point of aid if you do not have tools for measuring the effectiveness of that aid?

While we are at it, let’s measure the effective of NGOs! I would be perfectly happy to have the organization that I run measured. Also, measure the effectiveness of consultants.

(…) The average age of African leaders is 75. The average age of Africans is 25. The numbers for Europe are about 55, 45. I am stupified by how passive African electorates are. How long would Robert Mugabe have lasted in Serbia?

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Cato Institute, Mike Huckabee, President Obama | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Mutemath in Little Rock tonight at Revolution Music Room

October 11, 2011 – 8:38 am

I am going to see Mutemath tonight at 8:30pm tonight at the Revolution Music Room in downtown Little Rock.

Here is an old review I dug up on them:

2004 saw the debut of one of the most promising new acts in the Christian music scene. The demise of rock band Earthsuit gave birth to Mute Math, a then-three piece alternative act that brilliantly blended electronic and ambient elements with pop hooks and meaningful lyrics. Their debut project, Reset EP, was a slim but tight collection of seven tracks (with two being instrumental), seizing the attention of thousands of new fans and helping create an underground buzz that would soon prove itself to be a force to be reckoned with.In 2005, the much anticipated and promised full-length follow up never made its Summer release and fans only became hungrier for a debut LP. What most didn’t know was the band’s discontent for the way things were going. Mute Math’s intentions for the Reset EPwere different, with hopes for greater mainstream distribution. Instead, the Christian market moved faster on the EP than the mainstream, and before they knew it, Mute Math was, against their desire, tagged a “Christian band.” Frustrated, the band has finally had the LP pressed, but is only making it available at live shows, with no intentions of releasing it to the Christian market. So, Christian music listeners in large numbers are still wondering, and rightfully so, what is the band’s debut LP like anyway? Keeping in mind that Mute Math, which remains made up of members who share our faith, does not want to be labeled a “Christian band” so to speak, how does their self-titled full length album compare to the EP? Mute Mathopens with a signature drum-driven intro entitled “Collapse,” before breaking into the U2-esque “Typical.” From the album’s start, a more raw sound is noticeable. The production is a little less polished and bears a little more of a “live” feel. In fact, at times, it almost sounds like a different band entirely. More U2 and even Police influences can be drawn throughout the album’s duration, with a distinct absence for the ambience the EP introduced. A harmonic interlude entitled “After We Have Left Our Homes,” precedes the stellar “Chaos,” a song that could be heard live about as long as the band has been around but hadn’t been available in recorded form until now. Melodic pop follows in the form of the ambiguously spiritual “Noticed,” and the anti-worldly anthem “Without It.” Another highlight, the synth-kissed “Stare At The Sun” is sandwiched between two modest instrumental tracks, “Polite” and “Obsolete,” with the latter being the more memorable of the two. The EP contained the incredible techno-fueled title track that remains a live show highlight for the band’s set, and each instrumental offering on Mute Mathpales in comparison. 

“Break The Same” is a synth-heavy rock track that fairs better live, being somewhat tainted by distracting background effects, but is a nice addition to the album’s track list. The album winds down with the soft “You Are Mine,” which is somewhat reminiscent to the EP’s “OK,” and the synth-driven love song “Picture,” before coming to a strong finish with the serenading declaration “Stall Out.” Comparing Reset with Mute Math is tricky. Reset is a leaner offering with each track adding to the diverse and impressive abbreviated package, while the band may seemingly bite off a bit more than they can chew for some of Mute Math. On its own, however, Mute Mathis still an impressive alt rock album with a lot to offer. Too bad the only way any fan can get it right now is at the band’s live show or online at Zambooie. And even if the band intends to leave the Christian market behind, their beliefs shine through their music, if even just subtly, making Mute Math still a relevant and redeeming mainstream listen.

— Review date: 2/21/06, written by John DiBiase

Related posts:

Mutemath in Little Rock tonight at Revolution Music Room

I am going to see Mutemath tonight at 8:30pm tonight at the Revolution Music Room in downtown Little Rock. Here is an old review I dug up on them: 2004 saw the debut of one of the most promising new acts in the Christian music scene. The demise of rock band Earthsuit gave birth to […]

Mutemath a Christian band?

I have loved the music of Mutemath since the first time I heard them. I wanted to pass on a great review of their band. Mute Math: Is It Christian Music? posted by Patton Dodd | 11:50am Thursday August 2, 2007 A Burn or Burn profile of Mute Math almost writes itself. This is a band […]

 

“Music Monday”:Coldplay’s best songs of all time (Part 5)

“Music Monday”:Coldplay’s best songs of all time (Part 5) This is “Music Monday” and I always look at a band with some of their best music. I am currently looking at Coldplay’s best songs. Here are a few followed by another person’s preference: Hunter picked “Don’t Panic,” as his number 16 pick of Coldplay’s best […]

Former Weezer band member Mickey Welsh dead

CHICAGO (AP) — Former Weezer bass player Mikey Welsh, who also found success in his second career as an artist, died in aChicago hotel room, police said Sunday. Chicago police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said Welsh was supposed to check out of the Raffaello Hotel at 1 p.m. Saturday. When he didn’t, hotel staff went to his room, entered it and […]

 

“Music Monday”:Coldplay’s best songs of all time (Part 4)

Dave Hogan/ Getty Images This is “Music Monday” and I always look at a band with some of their best music. I am currently looking at Coldplay’s best songs. Here are a few followed by another person’s preference: For the 17th best Coldplay song of all-time, Hunter picks “42.” He notes, “You thought you might […]

Documentary on Coldplay (Part 2)

The best band in the world. Below I have linked some articles I have earlier about the search for meaning in life the band seems to involved in. Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion formed Coldplay in 1996 while going to University in London. The young band quickly established themselves in the […]

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Mutemath a Christian band?

October 11, 2011 – 8:36 am

I have loved the music of Mutemath since the first time I heard them. I wanted to pass on a great review of their band.

Mute Math: Is It Christian Music?

posted by Patton Dodd | 11:50am Thursday August 2, 2007

A Burn or Burn profile of Mute Math almost writes itself. This is a band whose lead singer once fronted Earthsuit, a band with crystal clear Christian credentials. This is also a band who sued its label, Warner, when the label’s Christian division marketed their music. And this is a band who–to their credit–has talked openly about the problem of being a bunch of Christian pop musicians who want to sing for audiences more diverse than your neighborhood Baptist youth group.
mutemath_idol.jpgThis is also a band with a hit song and a MTV video that is becoming a cult favorite. The lyrics to “Typical” could be about a thousand situations, but to my Burn-or-Burn-ing ears, they sound like the story of a Christian band wanting to become a regular band:

Come on, can I dream for one day?
There’s nothing that can’t be done

But how long should it take somebody

Before they can be someone?
Cuz I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feelin’ like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical?

For Mute Math, CCM equals “typical” and mainstream music equals “the other side”–and being “someone” means being someone more than a Christian rock star.
Then there’s that Michel Gondry-esque video for “Typical”, where the song is delivered forward but everything happens backward. It’s artfully done–check it out–and it’s a fabulous metaphor for a band who wants to push themselves along creatively and professionally, but also feels pulled back by their Christian industrial pasts. The video is as disorienting as the experience of being Mute Math, or, for that matter, the experience of being a Mute Math fan. Do we listen to the music, or do we watch what’s happening to the band? It’s almost impossible to do both at the same time.
Mute Math has, inevitably, been knocked by sources Christian and non as they’ve finagled their way out of the Christian music industry. But they seem to have pulled it off. Last week, they rocked David Letterman (John Mayer called it the Letterman “appearance of the year”) and their fan base is clearly growing.
As for me, I’m won over by Mute Math’s openness in talking about the struggles of being Christians who want to make music for more than just their fellow Christians. They haven’t shed the faith; just the faith industry. That distinction makes all the difference.
So, I say–burn ‘em: Download the album and add “Typical” to that “Summer ’07″ mix CD.

Related posts:

Mutemath in Little Rock tonight at Revolution Music Room

I am going to see Mutemath tonight at 8:30pm tonight at the Revolution Music Room in downtown Little Rock. Here is an old review I dug up on them: 2004 saw the debut of one of the most promising new acts in the Christian music scene. The demise of rock band Earthsuit gave birth to […]

Mutemath a Christian band?

I have loved the music of Mutemath since the first time I heard them. I wanted to pass on a great review of their band. Mute Math: Is It Christian Music? posted by Patton Dodd | 11:50am Thursday August 2, 2007 A Burn or Burn profile of Mute Math almost writes itself. This is a band […]

 

“Music Monday”:Coldplay’s best songs of all time (Part 5)

“Music Monday”:Coldplay’s best songs of all time (Part 5) This is “Music Monday” and I always look at a band with some of their best music. I am currently looking at Coldplay’s best songs. Here are a few followed by another person’s preference: Hunter picked “Don’t Panic,” as his number 16 pick of Coldplay’s best […]

Former Weezer band member Mickey Welsh dead

CHICAGO (AP) — Former Weezer bass player Mikey Welsh, who also found success in his second career as an artist, died in aChicago hotel room, police said Sunday. Chicago police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said Welsh was supposed to check out of the Raffaello Hotel at 1 p.m. Saturday. When he didn’t, hotel staff went to his room, entered it and […]

 

“Music Monday”:Coldplay’s best songs of all time (Part 4)

Dave Hogan/ Getty Images This is “Music Monday” and I always look at a band with some of their best music. I am currently looking at Coldplay’s best songs. Here are a few followed by another person’s preference: For the 17th best Coldplay song of all-time, Hunter picks “42.” He notes, “You thought you might […]

Documentary on Coldplay (Part 2)

The best band in the world. Below I have linked some articles I have earlier about the search for meaning in life the band seems to involved in. Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion formed Coldplay in 1996 while going to University in London. The young band quickly established themselves in the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Herman Cain tells Wall St marchers where to march

October 11, 2011 – 8:06 am

OCCUPY_2.jpg

The Arkansas Times Blog reported today:

Around 100 were on hand for tonight’s Occupy Little Rock planning meeting, the second since the group formed in Little Rock earlier this month. Organizers and attendees struggled with a somewhat complicated voting-by-hand-signals process, but the assembly did get some key points ironed out, including the start time and place for this Saturday’s march, and locations the group plans to picket.

Protestors with Occupy Little Rock will assemble this Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at Riverfest Amphitheater near the River Market. The march will begin at 10 a.m., with the group proceeding to the headquarters of Stephens Inc., the Little Rock branch of Bank of America, the U.S. Federal Building and the Arkansas State Capitol.

I heard Herman Cain’s speech and I noticed that re-directed the Wall St marchers where they should be marching.

Below is a great article on what the difference between the Tea Party and the Wall Street Marchers:

Tea Party, Meet Occupy Wall Street. OWS, Tea Party.

Posted by Jim Harper

Broad political movements are going to have none of the coherence that we demand of ourselves in ideological movements like libertarianism. The Tea Party has some people with views that libertarians and reject and many we embrace. Occupy Wall Street has a lot of people with views that libertarians reject and some that libertarians embrace—freedom from police abuse being one. (Such a favor the NYPD officer who pepper-sprayed female protesters did to OWS by driving attention and sympathy its way.)

That’s all caveat to sharing an image that’s making waves on the Facebook. It makes a hopeful statement, I think, about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its potential or actual kinship with Tea Partyism. There’s something wrong in the country, and this image suggests that there might be consensus on the framing of what’s wrong: the unity of government and corporate power against people’s freedom and prosperity.

There are plenty of reasons to reject the possibility of alliance between Tea Partyism and OWS, but not necessarily good ones. The easiest out is to pour this new wine into old bottles and characterize OWS as dirty hippies using retrograde protest tactics. Many are kinda like that. But that stuff was a couple of decades ago. No, wait—four decades ago. These kids have no direct knowledge or experience of, say, Kent State, and older observers might be too prone to fitting them into a pattern that doesn’t exist for them.

To the extent the substance of their grievance is, or can be turned to, corporations’ use of government power to win unjust power and profits for themselves, that’s a grievance I can sit in a drum circle for.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Cato Institute | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Republicans are no longer a rarity in Arkansas

October 11, 2011 – 7:55 am

John Brummett talks about how state lawmakers get paid today. It is problem that the Democrats created 20 years ago and the Republicans will have to correct in 2013.

In the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is an excellent article . The Republicans are going to take over soon and the Blue Arkansas Blog can rant and rave about it all they want but the good ole days for Democrats in Arkansas are over :

How to scare a governor

Show him a two-party system in Arkansas

By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

LITTLE ROCK — SOME OF us are old enough to remember when Arkansas, like the rest of the South, had only one party (Democratic), one crop (cotton), and one issue always lurking behind all the others.

But the times, they’re not only changing, they done changed. (Linguistic note: The insertion of the auxiliary “done” in a verb form means it’s in the tense known as the Southern Emphatic.)

Cotton long since has been challenged by rice, soybeans and even corn in the old Cotton Kingdom.

Even the race issue ain’t what she used to be, having lost much of its power. The days when an Orval Faubus could pull it out of his sleeve whenever he wanted another term in the Governor’s Mansion seem as far behind us as George Wallace’s time in Alabama, or Lester Maddox’s in Georgia.

These days the demagogues have to settle for unsatisfactory substitutes for the race issue like fear of Hispanic immigrants. The race card itself may be played only rarely, as when a white candidate dares run for office in a largely black constituency. People just don’t seem as scared of the Other as they used to be.

Most upsetting of all, Republicans are no longer a rarity. They could show up anywhere these days. One could be living next door. Some even inhabit state constitutional offices (land commissioner, secretary of state, even lieutenant governor), and comprise most of the state’s congressional delegation. The two-party system has even raised its heads in the state legislature, where Republicans seem to occupy more seats every year. The impertinence of it. Don’t these people know their place?

It’s alarming. Mike Beebe, who’s still governor and still a Democrat, certainly sounds alarmed. “It scares me a little bit . . .” he told a Lions Club at Conway the other day—twice. For he also noted that the state’s House of Representatives was dividing more along party lines than the Senate, “and it scares me.” And it’s not even Halloween yet.

If this state keeps getting more Americanized, the two-party system could become as much a fixture of state politics as it is in Congress. And the benefits of competition might be as widely recognized in politics as they are in business.

How alarming. The governor certainly sounded alarmed. And has reason to be. For where will it all end? At this rate, some of these uppity Republicans in the Ledge might even object when a governor chooses a good ol’ boy as director of higher education whether or not he’s legally qualified. They might even go so far as to ask the state’s attorney general for an opinion that reveals how little the governor really cares about the law he’s supposed to follow.

Now that’s scary.

This article was published today at 4:30 a.m.Editorial, Pages 14 on 10/11/2011

Editorial 14

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Jason Tolbert | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

“Tip Tuesday” Advice to Gene Simmons (Part 14)

October 11, 2011 – 12:58 am

Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed

 
photo

People Magazine reported:

You can’t always believe what you see on reality TV. Case in point: KISS bassist Gene Simmons finally proposed to longtime girlfriend Shannon Tweed.

Turns out, the proposal scene in Tuesday night’s finale of A&E’s reality show Gene Simmons Family Jewels was taped “several months ago,” a source confirmed, and it’s been a rocky road for the pair ever since.

Simmons, 61, and Tweed, 54, were vacationing in Belize when he proclaimed, “you’re the only friend I’ve got. You’re the only one I love … and you’re the only one I ever will love,” before getting down on one knee.

It remains to be seen whether Tweed will be saying “I do” and sticking with it. She did, however, tell PEOPLE in a recent interview that she had moved out of their home and that there was a “slim chance” of them getting back together. “You’re seeing this happy family,” Tweed said, “but in my heart, I am dying.”

The couple, who once described themselves as happily unmarried, have been together for 28 years and have two grown children Nick, 22, and Sophie, 18.

This season of Family Jewels has documented their troubles and family therapy sessions stemming from Simmons’s claim that he has slept with thousands of women. Last month, during a promotional tour, Tweed slammed Simmons for his infidelities and said their relationship had “pretty much unraveled.”

“I need some sort of commitment,” Tweed told PEOPLE, reiterating that their relationship is over if Simmons’s behavior continues. “Something has to give.”

On Monday, Tweed Tweeted that the proposal was “the most shocking moment” of her life.

________________

Marriage is about committment and the benefits of marriage are amazing. Take a look at this article:

Is marriage an old-fashioned, outmoded institution? Is it merely a piece of paper, having no real impact on our lives?

Researchers are finding that marriage has a much greater impact in our lives than many have assumed. This is especially true in the area of adult health and well-being. Sociologist Linda Waite and researcher Maggie Gallagher explain, “The evidence from four decades of research is surprisingly clear: a good marriage is both men’s and women’s best bet for living a long and healthy life.”1 Men and women who are in their first marriages, on average, enjoy significantly higher levels of physical and mental health than those who are either single, divorced or living together. The research on this is very strong.

Leading social scientist, James Q. Wilson, explains:

“Married people are happier than unmarried ones of the same age, not only in the United States, but in at least seventeen other countries where similar inquiries have been made. And there seems to be good reasons for that happiness. People who are married not only have higher incomes and enjoy greater emotional support, they tend to be healthier. Married people live longer than unmarried ones, not only in the United States but abroad.”2

Research conducted at the University of Massachusetts concludes,

“One of the most consistent observations in health research is that the married enjoy better health than those of other [relational] statuses.”3

Dr. Robert Coombs of UCLA reviewed more than 130 empirical studies published in this century on how marriage impacts well-being. He found that these studies indicate “an intimate link between marital status and personal well-being.”4

Alcoholism

Coombs, in his review, found that 70 percent of chronic problem drinkers were either divorced or separated, and only 15 percent were married. Single men are more than three times as likely to die of cirrhosis of the liver.5

Long and Healthy Life

Unmarried people spend twice as much time as patients in hospitals as their married peers and have lower activity levels.6

Research conducted at Erasmus University in Rotterdam reports that “married people have the lowest morbidity [illness] rates, while the divorced show the highest.” Professor Linda Waite of the University of Chicago finds that the “relationship between marriage and death rates has now reached the status of a truism, having been observed across numerous societies and among various social and demographic groups.”7

In Waites’ 1995 presidential address to the Population Association of America, she explained that the health benefits of marriage are so strong that a married man with heart disease can be expected to live, on average, 1400 days longer (nearly four years!) than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. This longer life expectancy is even greater for a married man who has cancer or is 20 pounds overweight compared to his healthy, but unmarried, counterpart. The advantages for women are similar.8

Additional research from Yale University indicates that a married man who smokes more than a pack a day can be expected to live as long as a divorced man who does not smoke. This researcher explains with a touch of humor, “If a man’s marriage is driving him to heavy smoking, he has a delicate statistical decision to make.”9

Dr. Coombs’ research agrees with these findings: “Virtually every study of mortality and marital status shows the unmarried of both sexes have higher death rates, whether by accident, disease, or self-inflicted wounds, and this is found in every country that maintains accurate health statistics.”10

Research published in JAMA finds that cures for cancer are significantly more successful (eight to 17 percent) when a patient is married and being married was comparable to being in an age category 10 years younger.11

Mental Health

Research dating back to 1936 shows that first-time psychiatric admission rates for males suffering from schizophrenia were 5.4 times greater for unmarried men than for married men. Dr. Benjamin Malzberg, the author of this study, concludes, “The evidence seems clear that the married population had, in general, much lower rates of mental disease than any of the other marital groups.”12

More recent research conducted jointly at Yale University and UCLA reports:

One of the most consistent findings in psychiatric epidemiology is that married persons enjoy better health than the unmarried. Researchers have consistently found the highest rates of mental disorder among the divorced and separated, the lowest rates among the married and intermediate rates among the single and widowed. They also found that a cohabiting partner could not replicate these benefits of marriage.13

General Happiness

A study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family examined the link between personal happiness and marital status in 17 industrialized nations that had “diverse social and institutional frameworks.” This study found:

“married persons have a significantly higher level of happiness than persons who are not married. This effect was independent of financial and heath-oriented protections offered by marriage and was also independent of other control variables including ones for sociodemographic conditions and national character.”14

Increased levels of happiness among the married was found in other studies as well.15

Miscellaneous

Additional research shows that marriage:

  • Provides the highest levels of sexual pleasure and fulfillment for men and women16
  • Protects against feelings of loneliness17
  • Protects women from domestic and general violence18
  • Enhances a parent’s ability to parent19
  • Helps create better, more reliable employees20
  • Increases individual earnings and savings21

Research conducted at the University of Colorado indicates why marriage is so beneficial to adults:

Generally, compared with those who are not married, married individuals eat better, take better care of themselves, and live a more stable, secure and scheduled lifestyle.22

Clearly, married men and women provide better things for society than their unmarried peers. Husbands and wives are not as likely to be a burden to the health care system or be a drain on a company’s health insurance benefits because of their better health and increased ability to recover from illness quicker and more successfully. They are less likely to miss work because of illness. They are not likely to jump from job to job. They are less likely to suffer from alcoholism and other substance abuse and less likely to engage in other risk behaviors. Married women are significantly less likely to be victims of any kind of violence, either by her spouse or by a stranger. They are less lonely and happier. Happier people make better citizens, employees and neighbors. Married people earn and invest more money. They report enjoying the job of parenting better and they are more successful at it. This mountain of social science research tells us marriage is a serious and valuable community treasure.

Copyright © 1996, Focus on the Family Action. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Steve Jobs’ Father

October 10, 2011 – 11:40 pm

(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve Jobs was a Buddhist: What is Buddhism? ,Did Steve Jobs help people even though he did not give away a lot of money? )

Another good article on Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs’ Father Was …

On a daily basis, I sit in awe at the amount of nonsense that pervades the world’s media. The latest is the preoccupation with the ethnicity of Steve Jobs’ birth father.

Steve Jobs was adopted at birth. And until his untimely death last week, as far as almost anyone in the world knew, Steve Jobs was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Jobs — father Paul and mother Clara.

In fact, as far as Steve Jobs himself was concerned, his only parents were Paul and Clara Jobs. As The New York Times reported nearly 15 years ago (“Creating Jobs,” January 12, 1997), “Jobs holds a firm belief that Paul and Clara Jobs were his true parents. A mention of his ‘adoptive parents’ is quickly cut off. ‘They were my parents,’ he says emphatically.”

But in reading much of the world’s press in the past week, one would be excused if he or she came to think of another man as Steve Jobs’ father.

The amount of attention paid to his birth father, a Syrian-born American named Abdulfattah Jandali, dwarfed the amount of attention paid to Paul (or, for that matter, Clara) Jobs.

By all accounts, Jandali is a fine man, and nothing written here is meant in any way to counter that assessment.

But I have to ask: Given that Jandali and Steve Jobs never once met, and that Steve Jobs thought only of Paul Jobs as his father, why all the attention to Jandali? And why no attention to Jobs’ birth mother?

For example, take this headline in the International Business Times: “Steve Jobs Dies: He Was The Most Famous Arab in the World.” Or the headline of this article in The New York Times: “Steve Jobs, Son of a Syrian, Is Embraced in the Arab World.”

I suspect that there are two unimpressive things going on here: political correctness and a widespread belief that blood is important and therefore adoptive parents aren’t a person’s “real” parents.

First, the political correctness.

The press feels bad for the Arab world in general and for Arab-Americans in particular. The former is almost never in the news for anything positive, and the latter are deemed victims of xenophobia and Islamophobia. So if one of the giants of our age can be declared an Arab and an Arab-American, many in the media are only too delighted to do so.

Though the birth father played no role whatsoever in the life of Steve Jobs, article after article has been written about Jandali. That this has been motivated by a desire to label Steve Jobs an Arab-American is further proven by the fact that we read nothing of the birth mother — which is particularly noteworthy given that those who are preoccupied with blood parents are almost always more preoccupied with the identity of the birth mother than that of the birth father. But the poor woman is merely a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a member of the only American group that is granted no special status by the Politically Correct.

So a man whose only parents were WASPs and one of whose birth parents was a WASP is now declared an Arab. Google “Steve Jobs Arab” and you’ll get 86 million hits.

The other unfortunate trend is the belief — widely held in the media, academia, the social work community and among the well-educated, generally — that adoptive parents are not one’s “real” parents. Even many adoptive parents have been convinced by social workers and others that their foreign-born sons or daughters must be educated in the language and culture of their birth group. Instead of regarding their Korean- or Chinese- or Honduran-born child as fully American, many American adoptive parents are convinced that they must teach their child Korean, Chinese or Spanish language and culture. And many of the particularly sophisticated are adamant that their children one day go to those countries to find their “birth families.”

Once each year on my radio show, I devote an hour to making the case for how much less blood matters than love and values. And for anyone who disagrees, I offer the following story.

One year, a man called in to tell me that while he nearly always agreed with me, I was simply wrong on this issue. He explained that he was the only child of Jewish Holocaust survivors and that the Nazis had murdered every one of his parents’ relatives. He was literally the only blood relative they had. Now, he asked, can I see how blood can be very important — and that a blood child is different from an adopted one?

I responded by asking this man to ask his parents one question: “Would you rather have a blood child who converted from Judaism to another religion or an adopted child who was a committed Jew?”

That one question changed his mind.

None of this is meant in any way as disrespectful to Arabs or Arab Americans. I would say this if his birth father was Jewish or Albanian or Greek: Steve Jobs was an American, the son of Paul and Clara Jobs. Period.

By Everette Hatcher III | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)