Christianity, Culture, Vocation

Michael B. Crawford had a Ph.D. in philosophy, which led him to becoming a motorcycle mechanic. He explains the connection in his new book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work. From a review:

In his book Crawford argues for a fresh view of skilled labor, especially that of the traditional trades. Go ahead, he’s saying: Get your hands dirty. Own your work.

His book mixes descriptions of the pleasures and challenges of diagnosing faulty oil seals and rebuilding engines with philosophical views of work — he draws upon Aristotle, Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt, among others — and economic analyses for the decline of skilled labor. He laments in particular the recent demise of high-school shop classes, which gave many young men their first manual skills. (Crawford points out that his arguments apply equally to women and says he hopes one day to work on a 1960 Volkswagen bug with his two young daughters.)

Skilled manual labor is far more cognitive than people realize, Crawford argues, and deserves more respect. That is especially true during tough economic times, when an independent tradesperson can make a decent and dignified living, and — this is important — can’t be outsourced. (You can’t get your car fixed in China.) “The question of what a good job looks like — of what sort of work is both secure and worthy of being honored — is more open now than it has been for a long time,” he writes.

Crawford believes that Americans, in their frenzy to send every kid to college in pursuit of information-age job skills, have lost something valuable. “My sense is that some kids are getting hustled off to college when they’d rather be learning to build things or fix things, and that includes kids who are very smart,” he says in an interview. . . .

“It’s a kind of reaction to a loss of contact with what it actually means to make things,” says Richard Sennett, a sociologist whose own book, The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008), explores related issues. It’s not a coincidence that a group of scholars is examining notions of what it means to practice a craft or trade at this point in time, says Sennett, who is on leave from New York University while teaching at the London School of Economics and Political Science. . . .

Bill Brown, a professor of English and visual art at Chicago, offers several explanations for the growing body of scholarship on the nature of work and objects. “When there’s a blip in the economy, people start looking up from their desks,” says Brown, whose own work on “thing theory” investigates the way inanimate objects form and transform human subjects. And as the world becomes more digitized — and its physical environment more degraded — people long for more contact with the material, he says.

(You can buy Crawford’s book by following the link above. You can buy Sennett’s by following this one: The Craftsman)

One Eternal Day assembles material from a number of sources on how nationalized health care can lead to rationing which can lead to passive euthanasia. The whole post is worth reading, but I call your attention to what is already happening in England:

From Wesley J. Smith’s blog, Secondhand Smoke, a series of posts describing how rationing actually works in a country that has nationalized health care.

In the UK, utilitarian bioethicists control who gets–and who is denied–treatment via the Orwellian named organization NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). NICE explicitly uses a quality of life judgment (QALY–quality adjusted life year) to determine which patients are worth treating. It has now denied coverage for anti-dementia medications to mild Alzheimer’s sufferers. From the abstract of the story in the British Medical Journal:

The hopes of people with mild Alzheimer’s disease have been dashed again by the agency that appraises treatments for use by the NHS in England and Wales, which has reaffirmed its original decision to deny them treatment with dementia drugs. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has issued amended guidance but still asserts that the drugs would not be cost effective for the mild stages of the disease.

The acronym of the board “N.I.C.E.” is described as Orwellian, which it is. But it is also the name of an organization in another dystopian novel that renders it even more scary. Before following the link, who can name it? And what would that connection add to the discussion?

Over at the First Things blog, there is a good discussion of the nature of hypocrisy, analyzing the charges against the South Carolina governor and adulterer Mark Sanford. First, Joe Carter:

The American Heritage Dictionary defines hypocrisy as “The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.” The British literary critic William Hazlitt once explained, “He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves”

By all appearances, Sanford does indeed believe in marital fidelity. His failures so far are due to his behaving in a way that does not comport with those values; a matter not of hypocrisy but of moral inconsistency. Such consistency is essential—particularly for democratically elected representatives—for establishing and maintaining trust. This is why private behavior has such public implications. The marital infidelity of a elected officials strong signal they are untrustworthy: If a man cannot be trusted to keep a sacred vow to an intimate, how can I trust him to keep his word to me, a stranger?

What we should expect of an elected official is that they be a person of integrity—that their character be a morally consistent whole. A person who is free of contradictory ethical impulses and actions is more likely to behave in a manner that is trustworthy. Even if we disagree with their views, we can deduce how they will act and make our judgments about them accordingly.

Sanford believes that there is an objective moral standard and that his sin (his word) was a result of his external actions being inconsistent with his internal beliefs. Many of his detractors, however, believe that because all moral standards are subjective and internal, behavior can’t be objectively immoral, it can only be inconsistent. For people like Maddow, Sanford’s flaw is not that he acted immorally, but that he expected others to adhere to a standard that he himself failed to keep.

Now, Francis Beckwith:

Ironically, the real hypocrites seem to be Rachel Maddow and like-minded critics. For given their view of liberal autonomy and the sanctity of “personal choices,” it seems fair to say that they really do not believe that outsiders can condemn the judgments and private acts of others since Maddow et. al. do not actually believe there is one correct view of a rightly ordered life. Yet, Maddow and company do not hesitate to issue stern judgments about the inconsistency between the beliefs and the behaviors of people like Sanford, as if there was one correct view of a rightly ordered life. But, as we know, Maddow and company really don’t believe that. Consequently, they, and not their objects of ridicule, are the real hypocrites.

Congress is fighting over an administrative proposal to expand the definition of switchblades so as to ban certain currently-legal pocketknives:

Opponents of the Obama administration’s plan to expand the definition of “switchblades” and block the importing of many common pocketknives suffered an early setback in Congress this week, but they vow the Capitol Hill knife fight isn’t over.

“Everyone from our first responders, law enforcement officials, Boy Scouts and hunters will be affected by this regulation,” said Rep. Bob Latta, Ohio Republican, after the House Rules Committee rejected his bill to block the change. “It is unacceptable to think that we as citizens cannot carry a pocketknife for work or recreation purposes.” . . .

Critics of the regulation - including U.S. knife manufacturers and collectors, the National Rifle Association, sportsmen’s groups and a bipartisan group of at least 79 House members - say it would rewrite U.S. law defining what constitutes a switchblade and potentially make de facto criminals of the estimated 35 million Americans who use folding knives. . . .

The new knife rules proposed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would affect the interpretation of the Switchblade Knife Act of 1958 to include any spring-assisted or one-handed-opening knife.

The law defines a “switchblade” as any knife having a blade that opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button or other device in the handle, or by operation of inertia or gravity.

Customs officials dismiss fears that the new language will outlaw ordinary pocketknives, saying the change was issued to clear up conflicting guidelines for border agents about what constitutes an illegal switchblade that cannot be imported into the United States. The rule could be imposed within 30 days if not blocked.

A review of case law “in consideration of the health and public safety concerns raised by such importations” prompted the agency to revoke the ruling that allowed the importing of knives with spring- and release-assisted opening mechanisms, CBP spokeswoman Jenny L. Burke said.

Customs officials argue the rule deals only with imported merchandise, and does not affect knives already in the country or that are manufactured domestically.

Beyond these specific knives in question–do any of you have one?–and the merits of these new regulations is another issue. The Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear arms.” Firearms aren’t the only kind of “arms,” so should it protect the right even to bear a switchblade?

Social conservatives have been pushing a moral agenda. But now so many of them have been caught in moral failures, they are getting an immoral reputation, to the point that other Republicans don’t want to be associated with them or their issues. That is the main point of an article in the conservative Washington Times with the headline Social conservatives fall from moral high ground: Republicans retreat from values claims:

Social conservatives, the once-powerful force that focused the Republican agenda on moral virtue and family values, have suffered a diminished brand on the national political landscape as a steady stream of their icons have fallen prey to the vices they once preached against.

Extramarital affairs, gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution and sexual pursuit of minors have taken a toll on the GOP. . . .

Mr. Perkins said distancing itself from its family-values platform in order to insulate itself from charges of hypocrisy is a bigger threat to the Republican Party.

He said Republicans have been moving in that direction since former Rep. Mark Foley, Florida Republican, resigned from office in 2006 amid allegations he sent sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages to underage male congressional pages.

“I think they have tried to solve the issue by running from it,” Mr. Perkins said. “They don’t want to talk about moral values.”

Notice what is happening: The transgressions are not underscoring the importance of adhering to moral behavior; they are making politicians disassociate themselves from saying anything about morality, lest they someday transgress. And anyone raising moral issues is going to be associated with the malefactors. See how that works.

Now that social conservatives no longer have the moral high ground–a region currently occupied by gay marriage activists–what now?

China, Cuba, Burma, and other authoritarian regimes are censoring news of the Iranian uprisings, lest their people get ideas.

What do you think will be the fruit of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran?

The leftist president of Honduras was overthrown in what has been called a military coup that is being condemned by Chavez, Castro, and the Obama administration. And yet, according to this account, the military was following a court order to defend the Honduran constitution and the rule of law:

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya’s next move will be. It’s not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

We are on a week-long road trip, headed first to the Consortium of Classical and Lutheran Education conference at our church body’s last boarding school in Concordia, Missouri, and then to visit family in Oklahoma. This blog, however, will not go on hiatus, even for a week, since my new blogging software lets me post things now that will pop up later, so you’ll see new postings all week. (There might not be quite as many and they may not be as up-to-date as usual, so please bear with me.) I’ll check in and do some postings as I can, but I’m not sure about my internet connections in the long course of this journey. If something striking is in the news that begs for our attention, feel free to post a comment about it in that day’s offering.

So play nice! No, we’re not there yet! Stop that bickering. Stop beating on your brother. Or I’ll turn this car around!

The House passed a bill, now to go to the Senate, to purify the climate. Its prime mechanism will be to require companies to buy pollution allowances from companies that don’t pollute as much as they are allowed to.

The House narrowly passed an ambitious climate bill yesterday that would establish national limits on greenhouse gases, create a complex trading system for emission permits and provide incentives to alter how individuals and corporations use energy.

The bill passed 219 to 212 after a furious lobbying push by the White House and party leaders won over farm-state Democrats who had complained that it was too costly, and liberals who wondered if it was too watered down to work. Even after that effort, 44 Democrats voted against the legislation.

The bill, if it became law, would lead to vast changes in the ways energy is made, sold and used in the United States — putting new costs over time on electricity from fossil fuels and directing new billions to “clean” power from sources such as the wind and the sun.

It would require U.S. emissions to decline 17 percent by 2020. To make that happen, the bill would create an economy that trades in greenhouse gases. Polluters would be required to buy “credits” to cover their emissions; Midwestern farmers, among others, could sell “offsets” for things they didn’t emit; and Wall Street could turn those commodities into a new market.

“Create an economy”! Pollution credits bought and sold on Wall Street! This sounds like a free market solution, but is it?

And if carbon dioxide is counted as a harmful “emission,” does that mean we will have to pay somebody every time we exhale?

Joshua Muravchik believes that the uprisings in Iran will mark the beginning of the end of radical, jihadist Islam:

Even if the Iranian regime succeeds in suppressing the protests and imposes the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by force of bullets, mass arrests and hired thugs, it will have forfeited its legitimacy, which has always rested on an element of consent as well as coercion. Most Iranians revered Ayatollah Khomeini, but when his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, declared the election results settled, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets, deriding his anointed candidate with chants of “Death to the dictator!”

“Even if they manage to hang on for a month or a couple of years, they’ve shed the blood of their people,” says Egyptian publisher and columnist Hisham Kassem. “It’s over.”

The downfall or discrediting of the regime in Tehran would deal a body blow to global Islamism which, despite its deep intellectual roots, first achieved real influence politically with the Iranian revolution of 1979. And it would also represent just the most recent — and most dramatic — in a string of setbacks for radical Islam. Election outcomes over the past two years have completely undone the momentum that Islamists had achieved with their strong showing at the polls in Egypt in 2005 and Palestine in 2006.

He recounts a whole list of recent jihadist political setbacks, including in Lebanon–where Hezbollah got trounced in a recent election–and Northern Africa and Indonesia.

The two posts below come from two different articles and are based on two different scientific discoveries. If you read the original links, you will find that the time periods they describe overlap. Both deal with the proto-European cave-dwellers when they were dwelling alongside the Neanderthals. Now let’s put the two findings together. . . .What do we learn?

Archeologists have found a hollowed-out bird bone, into which was carved five finger holes and a mouthpiece, making a flute. Scientists dated it at more than 35,000 years ago, which means it was made in the last major ice age. It was found in a cave in Germany that contained wall paintings and sculptures. This link gives the story and also something to click so you can hear what it sounds like.