logos redux

“In elite academic settings, it is commonly asserted that impartiality is not only a myth, but also a fraud perpetuated by the privileged. Since all legal standards, in this view, are subjective and culturally determined, the defenders of objectivity are merely disguising their exercise of power. And so the scales of justice — really the scales of power — need to be weighted by judges to favor the ‘weak’ and the ‘powerless.’ Sotomayor’s decision in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano is disturbing because it seems to affirm this judicial philosophy. The New Haven, Conn., firefighters who studied for and passed a promotion examination (including a Hispanic) were denied a benefit they had earned, entirely because of their skin color. Because they were not part of a group deemed ‘powerless,’ they were rendered powerless as individuals. Empathy turns out to be selective empathy — not for human beings, but for social groups.”

Michael Gerson, “A Disturbing Judicial Philosophy,” Washington Post

“The aspiration to impartiality is just that — it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”

Sonia Sotomayor

Did you catch that? She pretends to pay a compliment to the rule of law by referring to the “aspiration” to impartiality. “Aspiration” is a nice-sounding word. Everybody should “aspire” to something, and those who “aspire” usually do so toward something good and admirable.

But she then declares this particular “aspiration” is actually a denial of reality. This is a subtle and clever twisting of words. She in one breath calls up a noble and right judicial ethic and labels it by implication false, out-of-touch, or downright deceptive. Striving for a goal in despite of the known facts is surely to be shunned. Nobody wants to be caught “aspiring” to something in direct contradiction to fact.

Sotomayor apparently thinks impartiality is a silly illusion, and time to disregard it. Fourteenth Amendment be damned. Silly white males thinking we could have a thing like “equal protection under the law.”

I travel to a large construction site and clean out port-a-potties. That’s right. We drive small tanker trucks with a hose and a tube on the end and stop at about 80 or 90 units a day, suck out the stuff, refill them with water and a sanitizer tablet, scrub down the inside, replace the tp and move on. Not glamorous. But it pays well, and that’s the key right now, with bills to pay and a baby on the way.

What struck, me however, as I rode along with one of my co-workers today, learning the ropes, was that this is an important job that someone needs to do and do well. This construction site is like a small city, and sanitation and health concerns are a big factor, not to mention the simple fact that people working on a job site for several years need to be able to use the toilet in relatively decent environment.

The guy that was training me was kind of amazing. I’ll call him John. He was a middle-aged man who married a few years ago, has a couple of step-kids and a step-grandson and a wife with some psychological difficulties. As he told me his story I realized that he had lots of reasons to be bitter. Things had been hard for him. He had been treated poorly by his last employer. His wife’s condition was preventing him from getting health insurance. And he’s in late middle age working the job that everybody on the site doesn’t want for less money than 90% of the guys out there (almost all of whom are union).

But he wasn’t bitter. He took pride in his job, and not because he was simple or naive. He knew it wasn’t glamorous, that sometimes it sucks. He knew that when the site shuts down because of rain (like today) and all the union guys go home and still get a full day’s pay we stay out there and keep cleaning port-a-potties. But that wasn’t really the point. He understood that his job was his job and that’s what he’s paid for and that’s what he does… and he does it well. He was respectful, not just to the boss or the foreman, but to me, the new guy, and to everyone we met. He wasn’t too proud to be satisfied with the work he had to do, and he wasn’t too much of a hard-ass to be patient and teach me the ropes, explaining the details of a port-a-potty detail. At the end of the day he even bought me a soda.

This impressed me. And it made me think. Sometimes as Christians we act like ‘building the kingdom’ is an automatic ticket to truth and beauty, which we conceive of in Utopian fashion, as a world in which ’sh*t don’t stink.’ But it does. I don’t know how this works out with an optimistic view of what God is making this world to be, but I think that perhaps there’s something important about the idea that it’s our conception of what is worthwhile and meaningful that will change as much is it is that nothing hard or smelly will be required of us. I think contentment can be an overused word in Christian circles implying that lack of ambition or dreams is a virtue. But at the same time contentment is a virtue. I have a choice between being bitter that right now my calling seems to be cleaning up construction workers’ toilets, or being content and thankful that God has given me a better paying job than I’ve had through seminary and a way to provide for my family. May I be like John.

His website (under construction) is here.

Admittedly, I don’t know much about this other than what is presented here, and I’m sure Shell has a different side of the story but some of this seems pretty damnable. There’s a reason they’ve worked so hard to avoid trial for so long.

“He had in fact been a strict socialist at Oxford. Everything ought to be run by the State; private enterprise and independent professions were for him the great evil. he then went away and became a schoolmaster. After about ten years of that he came to see me. he said his political views had been wholly reversed. You never heard a fuller recantation. He now saw that state interference was fatal. What had converted him was his experience as a schoolmaster of the Ministry of Education–a set of ignorant meddlers armed with insufferable powers to pester, hamper, and interrupt the work of real, practical teachers who knew the subjects they taught, who knew boys, parents, and all the real conditions of their work. It makes no difference to the point of the story whether you agree with his view of the Ministry; the important thing is that he held that view. For the real point fo the story, and of his visit, when it came, nearly took my breath away. Thinking thus, he had come to see whether I had any influence which might help him get a job in the Ministry of Education.

Continue reading here.

HT: Mark

Please, Hollywood, make this movie!

N.T. Wright’s book Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense should be on your shelf. It’s just one of those kind of books. If you’re a Christian, and it’s not on your shelf, it should be because you’ve loaned it out. If you’re not a Christian, and it’s not on your shelf it should be because your giving it a careful read. This book has been billed as the Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis) for our generation, and in my opinion that’s not an unfair description. In the book Wright seeks to lay out the why’s and the what’s of Christianity. What is so beautiful about it is that he presents the Christian faith in an historically accurate and yet contemporarily relevant way (I know, I hate the word relevant too, but I couldn’t think of a better one).

On the one hand he summarily but authoritatively dismisses some of the silliness of contemporary evangelicalism and liberalism (i.e. escapism, gnosticism and pluralism) but at the same time he provides a Biblically sound understanding of what Christianity is and why it fits with what we humans know that we need. This is why it should be read by both Christians and non-Christians. For many evangelicals it will challenge prevalent views of Christianity as a means of escape from worldly existence through special knowledge, and for non-Christians it will provide an understanding of Christianity that engages with and critiques other possible understandings of the world they find themselves in. It is not overly shy or self-abasing, but it does recognize failures among Christians that may serve as impediments to a proper appreciation of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

Furthermore, the book is well rounded. It is divided into three parts. Part One addresses what we might call common universal awareness. It hits the fact that all of us are aware that this world isn’t satisfactory as it stands and that there are things about being human that tell you that there is a reason for that. So, early on you see that this isn’t so much an evidentiary book about the proofs for the existence of god. It is aiming to hit people at a much deeper level. The questions have more to do with what does it mean to be human than ‘is there a divinity.’ This may sound a bit wishy-washy but it isn’t. What Wright explores in this portion of the book are things like the desire for justice, the awareness of a spiritual dimension to life, and the fact of needed, desired and yet constantly broken relationships. He acknowledges and presses these points and then compares the various responses to them showing that Christianity is the only thing that really makes sense of all this.

Part 2 explores the incomprehensibility of God alongside the fact that He has made Himself known. One of the fundamental arguments of the book from Part 1 is that there are three basic options in thinking about humanity and divinity. One is Pantheism (or Panentheism) which argues that all is divine and the divine is (in) all. The problem with this is that it offers no answer to evil, or even to stagnation. The world simply is what it is and all of our longings for justice and truth are misplaced because all that is is divine. The second option leads to things like gnosticism or deism in which there may be a divinity but it is far off and unconcerned with this world. Again, our longings for justice and spirituality are misplaced on this conception. The degree to which this view influences evangelicalism is frightening. This is the view that sees the world operating according to Natural Law and only being interrupted occasionally by a ’supernatural’ divinity.

In contrast Wright argues for a third option in which heaven and earth significantly overlap and interlock, but in which human rebellion has led to an unnatural and impermanent estrangement. Within this framework Part 2 of Wright’s book explores, Israel (including not only her history but her theology and symbolic understandings of her relationship to God), Jesus and the Church as the community that lives by the indwelling of God’s Spirit. Needless to say this is a long section of the book. Wright makes historical arguments, but at the same time challenges worldviews that assume that science sets the limits to what can be believed as credible. His earlier spade work in Part 1 allows him to question empiricism without appearing naive or intellectually unaware.

I will post on Part 3 shortly. In the meantime, order the book.

So here it is, the comment that has galvanized the debate thus far: “Um, all of the legal defense funds out there, um, they’re looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don’t make law, I know. Um, um — [laughter] — I know. I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it, and, I’m … you know. [laughter]” Obviously, my first reaction is disgust. Such a crass statement of the knowing failure of the judiciary in America to limit themselves to what they are charged with doing is disgusting. At the same time, there are those who will say, look, the law isn’t clear on every eventuality so in clarifying gray areas of course appellate courts make policy. In a sense this is true. Judicial precedent is in a sense policy making in that it sets the policy (in the broad sense of what is to be done) that will be followed in the future in similar situations. I get it. There is a sense in which authoritative interpretation is policy making. But that is not what Sotomayor meant and it is not what she has done.

Sotomayor simply is an activist judge. Consider this example quoted from the New York Times:

“Her most high-profile case involved New Haven’s decision to toss out tests used to evaluate candidates for promotion in the fire department because there were no minority candidates at the top of the list.

She was part of a panel that rejected the challenge brought by white firefighters who scored high but were denied promotion. Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff, argued that it was unfair he was denied promotion after he had studied intensively for the exam and even paid for special coaching to overcome his dyslexia.”

Many of you no doubt remember this. It was a flagrant example of a judge deciding that her conception of “fairness” (defined as equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity) trumped the law. This is not simply interpreting a gray area and thus setting precedent. This is making up policy according to one’s own ideology. Further, it could be argued that it is a racist ideology.

If you think that is over the top consider this quote: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001. Or this: ““Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

The foundation of our political system is the rule of law. This goes all the way back to early Puritans such as Samuel Rutherford who wrote the famous treatise Lex Rex (Law is King). When we decide that one’s credentials for a judicial seat have more to do with ethnic identity, personal experiences or potential for empathy than commitment to reading, understanding and applying the law as it is established we have forgone the rule of law and established an oligarchy. What is worse, however, is that we have established an oligarchy masquerading as a Liberal democracy. Far be it from me to assume unquestioningly that Liberal democracy is the end-all-be-all for political ills, but a government that pretends to be operating on principles of freedom and the rule of law, while at the same time subverting the law and confiscating power to themselves is surely to be despised.