Erick Erickson's Blog, page 118

Is Ryan Lizza An Idiot or Willfully Distorting Christian Theology?

From Ben Domenech's excellent Transom, I found out some news I did not have when I wrote yesterday about Ryan Lizza's The New Yorker article where he got major, substantive facts wrong.

One of the things Lizza did was tie Michele Bachmann to Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey, who Lizza opined are "dominionists." Well, Schaeffer may be dead, but Nancy Pearcey is very much alive and has her own website. She has responded to Lizza's piece.

The take-away from Ryan Lizza's hit piece on Michele Bachmann in the New Yorker is this: "Dominionist" is the new "fundamentalist" — the preferred term of abuse, intended to arouse fear and contempt, and downgrade the status of targeted groups of people.

Never mind that most of those people have never heard the term — including me. Bachmann told Lizza that a major influence on her thinking was my book Total Truth ("Bachmann told me [it] was a 'wonderful' book"), along with the work of Francis Schaeffer, who I studied under.

Lizza labeled the two of us Dominionists. Dozens of liberal websites have picked up the story and repeated the charge.

I had to Google the term to discover whether there really is such a group.

Will Lizza and The New Yorker bother to correct what increasingly looks like an intentional smear as opposed to a wholesale misunderstanding of Christian theology and terminology?

Ezra Klein vs. the Dictionary

Ezra Klein is the twenty something leftwing hack who has never had a real job in the private sector beyond the lefty think tank and pundit shops in DC. Somehow or another he got a cushy gig pretending to be objective at the Washington Post where he continues to mouth off on economic policy from a decidedly left-wing bent.

It's gotten so bad that Ezra Klein is forced to play word games and lie to win an argument on social security. Klein wants to win an argument against the Republicans on social security. So what does he do? He has to reinvent a new definition of ponzi scheme.

Klein relies on liberal blogger/polisci guy Jonathan Bernstein to give him his definition, which is to define a ponzi scheme as "a fraud that relies on new investors being unaware of the program's financing mechanism." And OH MY GOSH!!!!! social security is fully transparent therefore it cannot be a Ponzi scheme.

EZRA IS BETTER THAN WELL WHO CARES. HE WINS!!!!!

Except he only wins by willfully changing the definition of a ponzi scheme. I say willfully because he can't be that stupid can he?

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

From Webster's Dictionary:

an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risk

From Wikipedia:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors.

And my personal favorite comes from the Securities and Exchange Commission:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk.

Social security takes my money that I am forced to invest in the system and pays it to people who were forced into the system before me. The only major difference with a dictionary definition ponzi scheme is that the system is not designed to incentivize future risk on my part. But then it does not have to because I am forced into the program. And it sounds pretty damn close to the SEC definition of a ponzi scheme.

Ezra Klein can manipulate all the words he wants, but when you get to the actual definition of a ponzi scheme, social security sure as heck looks a lot like one.

By the way, exit point: it is still a ponzi scheme by Klein's definition isn't it? How many people really know that their social security is funded based on IOU's? Don't people think their social security money goes into a separate, segregated fund when it really is being used to fund the federal government? I betcha most are under that impression.

Back In For Boortz This Morning

Reminded again he has more vacation days than me, I'm filling in for Neal Boortz today. I'll get into my top post this morning about folks in the media acting so dumb when it comes to religion and we'll explore Ms. Maxy's rants as well.

You can listen live this morning by clicking right here and call in live at 1-877-310-2100.

I'm on from 8:35 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET.

Consider this an open thread.

Morning Briefing for August 31, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For August 31, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. The Left: still quite unhinged about Dick Cheney.

2. The Shame of Colin Powell

3. Obama continues to politicize 9/11 anniversary

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1. The Left: still quite unhinged about Dick Cheney.

You probably remember him.

…anyway, Darth Cheney has a book out today ("In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir"): and the Left is acting – about as you'd expect, honestly (note that I'm including in that list a bunch of people who are still trying to pretend that they're not on the Left, these days). The shrieking is highly amusing, not least for the reason that most of the poor schmucks doing it are fairly transparently trying to avoid thinking about the fact that the current administration is more or less doing a Cargo Cult imitation of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice's foreign policy. Which is to say, if you look at it from a distance and squint then it kind of looks like the previous administration's foreign policy… but get up close and you realize that it's all bamboo and palm fronds where steel should be. Not to mention all the people standing around and scratching their heads over why the magic spells weren't working.

Then again, that's an improvement over our 2008 expectations with regard to this administration.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. The Shame of Colin Powell

There are few spectacles more sad than to see a man burn down his own integrity. Watching someone who has lived their life according to a certain ethos, in this case I will be referring to "Duty. Honor. Country.", and callously cast that lodestar aside for no discernable reason other than to settle a score shames those who witness the act nearly as much as it shames the perpetrator. Nearly.

Some very few times we are given the opportunity to appropriately redress a wrong. I say appropriately because a wrong needs to be righted in the same manner in which it was inflicted. A private apology never atones for a public insult. When that opportunity presents itself and is declined one is left with no other possible conclusion than one is dealing with a person devoid of honor and integrity.

This past weekend retired general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell was presented with the golden opportunity to right a grave injustice he inflicted upon colleagues, upon the man to whom he owed his loyalty, and upon his nation.

He not only declined to do so, he dismissed the notion that he had anything to do with the wrong.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Obama continues to politicize 9/11 anniversary

The Obama regime shamelessly issued two sets of documents setting guidelines on how to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks against United States.

One set of the 9/11 commemoration guidelines, entitled "9/11 Anniversary Planning," is for domestic audiences and highlights Obama's continuing attempts to politicize the 9/11 anniversary as a campaign propaganda tool. The second set of 9/11 commemoration guidelines is for foreign audiences

According to the New York Times, the guidelines list what themes to underscore — and the tone to set.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Ms. Maxy and the Entitlement Mentality

Ace of Spades discovered Ms. Maxy on YouTube. I cleaned it up and put her on air today for Neal Boortz.

You can listen to the edited version that I played by clicking right here.

I am filling in for Neal Boortz today

Reminded again he has more vacation days than me, I'm filling in for Neal Boortz today. I'll get into my top post this morning about folks in the media acting so dumb when it comes to religion and we'll explore Ms. Maxy's rants as well.

You can listen live this morning by clicking right here and call in live at 1-877-310-2100.

I'm on from 8:35 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET.

Consider this an open thread.

When Smart People Write Dumb Things

Whether you agree with Bill Keller of the New York Times or not, the man is not dumb. Whether you agree with Kathleen Parker or not, she is not dumb. Same with Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker. Yes, they may be center-left (or depending on who you talk to, center-right for Parker) and yes, Lizza is arguably more than center-left as is Keller. But these are not really dumb people.

Yet this past week they've really written some dumb stuff and it is not just a reflection on them, but a reflection on the entire American press corp and its assorted editorialists. In short, instead of lecturing candidates on how the candidates should shut up about religion, it is really obvious the American political press should shut the hell up when it comes to issues of heaven and, well, hell.

Ed Morrisey noted at Hot Air that the media really is ignorant about religion. More specifically, the media is ignorant about Christianity. Even supposedly professing Christians in the media are ignorant about Christianity, the religion a majority of Americans profess to believe in.

Via Ed Morrisey, I found this great column by Douglas Groothuis, a Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. It is important because it points out the egregious errors in Ryan Lizza's New Yorker hit job on Michele Bachmann.

Ryan Lizza's piece is important because a great many reporters in America and editorialists read it and it shaped their world view and opinion on Michele Bachmann and evangelicals. That in turn has colored their reporting and editorial coverage.

Bill Keller of the New York Times admits Lizza's article shaped his view.

But Lizza was fundamentally wrong on some basic fundamentals. It's one thing to not like Francis Schaeffer. If you are Catholic, you probably won't like him. But it is a whole different ball game to get Francis Schaeffer wrong. And Lizza either willfully or out of ignorance flat out misinterprets and misrepresents Francis Schaeffer — a very mainstream Protestant theologian who Lizza portrays as making up some fringy element in Christianity.

Here's Groothius:

Lizza notes that Bachmann was influenced by the writings of Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-84), an evangelical minister, theologian, and philosopher. Schaeffer, along with the contemporary writer Nancy Pearcey and others, are "dominionists." That is, they believe that "Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy secular institutions until Christ returns." Worse yet, Schaeffer, in A Christian Manifesto (1981), supposedly "argued for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe vs. Wade isn't reversed." Lizza also writes of the influence of the prolific author Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), who advocated "a pure Christian theocracy in which Old Testament law…would be instituted." Bachman is allegedly thick as thieves with all these "exotic" subversives—and should be exposed as such.

Having read reams of books from all these authors (and every book by Schaeffer) over the last thirty-five years, as well as having taught many of these books at the graduate level, I assign Mr. Lizza the grade of "F." Consider four reasons.

First, Rushdoony argued for a position he called reconstructionism (not theocracy), which would have made biblical law the civil law of the land. However, neither Rushdoony nor his followers desired to impose this system through violence or illegal activity, but rather see it come to fruition through a long-term change of minds and institutions.

Second, Rushdoony's devotees make up but an infinitesimal fraction of Christian conservatives. The vast majority of those who have been influenced by certain aspects of Rushdoony's writings emphatically reject his understanding of biblical law, as do I.

Third, the key Christian influences on Bachman are not Rushdoony and his followers, but Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey. Schaeffer referred to Rushdoony's views on mandating biblical law as "insanity," and never sanctioned any form of theocracy. (The name "Rushdoony" does not even appear in the index of Schaeffer's five-volume collected works.) Schaeffer explicitly condemned theocracy in A Christian Manifesto (p. 120-1). Nor did he call for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe V. Wade were not overturned. Schaeffer rather explained various ways of resisting tyranny according to a Christian worldview and in light of church history. He saw "civil disobedience" (his phrase) as a last resort and did not stipulate any specific conditions under which it would be advisable in America. In fact, Schaeffer worried (on p. 126) that speaking of civil disobedience is "frightening because there are so many kooky people around." Further, "anarchy is never appropriate."

Then there is Bill Keller and his ridiculous quiz for the candidates that has nothing to do with national security, foreign policy, or domestic affairs and everything to do with their religious world view. But Keller admits that Lizza's article helped shape his view. And if Lizza got things woefully wrong, Keller goes even further off the rails.

Mollie Hemmingway rightly points out that either Keller is engaged in satire or he is a deeply religious bigot — and ill informed at that. Keller is, by the way, fairly well known to have some sort of bias against Catholics or at least does his best to leave that impression with people.

Then, perhaps most egregiously for me because so many think she is one of us, Kathleen Parker weighs in on Perry and his religion. In her Washington Post column, Parker writes:

If we establish Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, then we contradict the biblical view that God created the world just 6,500 years ago.

This one keeps coming back up with lefties who heard Perry say he believes in creationism. "OMG!!!! He thinks the world is like 6,000 years old," is the typical reaction and one Kathleen Parker is having here.

What ignorance. That Parker would leap to this conclusion is, along with Lizza grossly misrepresenting a mainstream theologian as fringe and Keller conflating Catholic theology with various shades of protestant theology, either bigotry against actual believing Christians or just simply dumb. I hope I either misunderstand the point or it is just dumb.

I am a practicing, evangelical Christian. I believe in creation. All my friends in church believe in creationism. And to my knowledge, not a single one of them nor I believe the world is 6500 years old. In fact, I, like Kathleen Parker, was under the impression that the world is 4.5 billion years old. But according to Kathleen Parker, if I believe in creationism, i must think the world started 6500 years ago despite what I actually believe. Nevermind that in Genesis the sun and moon weren't even created until the third or forth day so how could anyone even possibly say how long a day and a night were the first few days, let alone how even biblical literalists such as myself and others recognize days could very well have been phases and not 24 hour calendar days.

Oh, and it is not just me and my church anecdote. The data backs it up. Polling on the subject is horrible if only because the topic is both extremely complicated to ask about and very nuanced, but a Gallup survey in 2010 found that more than 78% of Americans believe in a creator playing an active role in creation. Roughly 40% of Americans believed in 2010 that God created man in his image in the past 10,000 years in a form that largely has not changed — Gallup did not poll to see if these people actually believe the world was created in the last 10,000 years too. 38% believe God guided the process over time. Included in that latter subset are 49% of people with post graduate degrees claiming God played a role.

But somehow, when Perry or any other Christian politician says he believes in "creation", Kathleen Parker and a host of other editorialists and reporters think he means the whole world was created in the past 6500 or so years.

These examples are, at best, deeply, deeply ignorant of Christianity and have taken atheist formed stereotypes of Christianity and treated them as mainstream depictions of evangelicals. These are complex questions for which even within Christianity there is no settled answer. Labeling the whole of the Christians who actually believe their scripture as some group of fringe nuts is rather vile and we could never expect reporters and editorialists to do the same of other mainstream religions.

In fact, were any Christian to raise similar points about Islam, the media would immediately call them bigots — dare I say despite the Christians having a more thorough understanding of Islam than the same members of press willfully bashing Christians and painting Christians as bigots if they engage in discussions on Islam.

In Ed Morrisey's great piece on this subject, he quotes from Rick Perry's book Fed Up!.

Let's be clear: I don't believe government, which taxes people regardless of their faith, should espouse a specific faith. I also don't think we should allow a small minority of atheists to sanitize our civil dialogue on religious references.

What's sad is the American press corp at the national level is largely devoid of practicing Christians and these largely secular, if not out and out atheist, reporters are attempting to write about and cover a religion most Americans profess to believe in and they write about it with either ignorance or outright contempt.

It's not the politicians who should stop talking about religion. It is the American press corps who should shut up.

Morning Briefing for August 30, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For August 30, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. When Smart People Write Dumb Things

2. President Obama has Tour Buses Flown to Stump Speeches

3. Polling catastrophe for President Obama

4. OK, Obama, Repeal the Entire Payroll Tax..But Save Social Security

5. An Open Letter to GOP NLRB Member Brian Hayes: Please Resign Immediately

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1. When Smart People Write Dumb Things

Whether you agree with Bill Keller of the New York Times or not, the man is not dumb. Whether you agree with Kathleen Parker or not, she is not dumb. Same with Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker. Yes, they may be center-left (or depending on who you talk to, center-right for Parker) and yes, Lizza is arguably more than center-left as is Keller. But these are not really dumb people.

Yet this past week they've really written some dumb stuff and it is not just a reflection on them, but a reflection on the entire American press corp and its assorted editorialists. In short, instead of lecturing candidates on how the candidates should shut up about religion, it is really obvious the American political press should shut the hell up when it comes to issues of heaven and, well, hell.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. President Obama has Tour Buses Flown to Stump Speeches

President Obama has been touring all over the midwest these past few weeks, giving speeches to crowds of fans, anxious to hear what's next on his agenda. One could be forgiven for believing that these are less about pushing the president's current agenda, and more about launching the reelection campaign, however this is a charge that the administration adamantly denies.

But there is a very simple reason that this is viewed as more of a campaign effort. Boasting bulletproof windows, five inch thick doors, and it's own oxygen supply, the President has made the rounds for these speeches in a multi-million dollar bus, dubbed "The Beast" by it's critics. There's been no shortage of opinions from people and pundits on this bus and how having the President tour around the midwest in a caravan of cars and seated on a tour bus sends the message that he is on the campaign trail and using taxpayer dollars to do it.

It appears however, that this might not be the case. According to some sources he hasn't really been riding these buses much at all. They say, he's been flying them.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Polling catastrophe for President Obama

I mentioned recently that broader polling pools favor Democrats, so when a big new poll of adults comes out from Gallup that shows Barack Obama to be in trouble, I take notice.

The facts: Gallup's results are a three day rolling average of daily poll of 1,500 adults. Telephone poll, no mention given of mobile phone handling. MoE 3.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. OK, Obama, Repeal the Entire Payroll Tax..But Save Social Security

After Labor Day, Obama plans to unveil his highly unanticipated jobs plan. Much like his first jobs plan, this one will include massive stimulus handouts to special interests, prodigal infrastructure spending (as much as $556 billion), unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefits, and more welfare transfer payments. Concurrently, he will inveigh against "rich" job creators and offer a healthy dose of vapid rhetoric regarding regulatory reform. However, there will be something new – something more appealing to the skeptical electorate; extending the one-year cut in payroll taxes.

Obama intuitively knows that his failed Keynesian policies have been checkmated, and will no longer resonate with the public. Accordingly, he plans to one-up Republicans in their own playbook, by offering a tax cut. He will request that Congress renew the payroll tax cut for another year, keeping the employee's share of the tax at 4.2%.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. An Open Letter to GOP NLRB Member Brian Hayes: Please Resign Immediately

Dear Member Hayes:

Our nation stands at the precipice of disaster, its future generations are indebted due to the overindulgent spending of politicians from both political parties. Our unemployment is untenably high, our welfare roles expanded beyond reason, both with no signs of easing. Meanwhile, our nation's job creators are burdened with an over-regulating, activist government whose sole existence at this point is to appease special constituencies. It is for these reasons, and more, that you are urged to resign your position as a member of the National Labor Relations Board.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Creationism and Smart People Gone Stupid #EERS

I'm not sure when so many smart people became so stupid, but suddenly as a Christian who believes in creation, Kathleen Parker, Bill Keller, Ryan Lizza, and others want me to know I think the world was created 6500 years ago, not the 4.5 billion or so years ago I've always thought.

What is making so many smart people so stupid.

We'll get into that tonight and revisit some broken windows. The show starts at 7:05 p.m. ET.

You can listen live at http://wsbradio.com and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK.

Consider this an open thread.

Politico's Mike Allen: From McCain's Senility to Perry's Stupidity

This is par for the course for the Politico.

Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin are fixated on whether Rick Perry is too stupid to be President.

Back in 2008, the same Mike Allen wondered if John McCain was going senile and making him unfit for the Presidency.

This is rather typical of the Politico, which would rather be first than be right. Let me just repeat what I have written and documented before about the Politico.

The problem is that the Politico has a habit of being lazy and running whatever is fed to them on silver spoons.  And the Obama campaign is in the driver's seat feeding them premium dog food for their regurgitation.  The Politico's instinct, like any in the media pack, is to go to its master before going to a stranger, so it feeds from the left more than the right. Again, the Politico would rather be first than be accurate. After all, they can correct the story later.

Let's review, shall we?

They ran the "Fred Thompson to drop out story" the day before the Iowa Caucus, which was not true.

Posited that Hillary had no lock on Pennsylvania in the primary when the data in their own article showed otherwise.

Claimed the Thompson campaign had few people show up at rallies despite video evidence proving the opposite.

Attacked Jed Babbin of Human Events while screwing up his biography and then not correcting it for days, even though multiple attempts were made to get the error corrected.

Mischaracterized Craig Shirley's relationship to the McCain campaign to psensationalize his departure therefrom.

Pushed the "Is John McCain old and senile" line against McCain, mimicking Obama's talking points.

Attacked Sarah Palin pretty openly and unapologetically.

Mischaracterized Sarah Palin's statements for shock value.

Let's not forget John Edwards dropping out.

etc, etc, etc.