Filings: Dad to the Bone

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(About “Filings”)



Every parent either knows – or feels – by heart the words to the “Sunrise, Sunset” song in “Fiddler on the Roof”:



Is this the little girl I carried,

is this the little boy at play?



When I hear this the memory that flashes in my mind is not that of carrying either of my two daughters up to bed, or of piggyback rides. Instead I think of a family photo a few years ago. In it my girls – then about 10 and 5 – and I have been wrestling. I am standing and in each hand I’ve got an ankle of one of the girls and I’m holding them both upside down and off the ground, not unlike a proud poulterer holding up a couple of prizewinners at the State Fair. Imagining the picture now I can still hear the shrieks and giggles.

At this point in their lives – and for this moment now permanently frozen on film – I am Dad the Undefeated and, in their eyes, larger than life. Meanwhile, in the moments that I write this, the next line from that song is passing through my mind: “I don’t remember getting older, when did they?” If asked to reenact the scene today my response would have to be, “One at a time.”

As I flip through my mental photo album the girls seem to grow suddenly in a series of jerks and jumps. Of course I know they are really changing everyday, judging by the continuous trips to the shoe store and cries of, “But I just bought you those pants!” I also can’t help noticing in this album that as they are getting bigger, I seem to be getting – perhaps ever-so-slightly – smaller.

Once when my oldest was very little and concerned that we might be imminently attacked by bears in our own front yard, she was greatly comforted when I assured her that if any bears came near her I’d grab them and twist their noses. Today the same promise still stands regarding boys, not bears, but it’s clear that my powers are coming more into perspective. While there are times when it may seem, in my daughters’ eyes, that I can still rise up and blot out the sun, I cannot stop it from moving across the sky. I am shade, however, standing between them and the heat of the world. I will continue to do so as long as I can stand.

Of course, brute force has always been of limited application. To be a proper protector my defenses have had to be – and must remain – more subtle. Jesus once told his disciples that it was better for them that he go away. His meaning was that his power both in their lives and in the world would ultimately be much greater by his living in them rather than with them. I don’t construe this to mean my girls are better off without me, but rather that I must devote my time with them to preparing them to live on fruitfully, just as Jesus did in his three years with the disciples. The time together already seems all too short.

When they were little, their well-being depended on instant obedience to my authority and that of their mother. It was not expected or accepted of them to ponder whether or not we meant what we said or whether our instructions supported their personhood or hurt their self-esteem. “No,” “stop” and “don’t” could keep them from a boiling pot, a busy street or a strange dog. As they get older they are still at risk from natural forces, careless strangers and unpredictable human animals interested only in their own gratification. “No,” “stop” and “don’t” might still have an effect, but it’s better to teach them the underlying reasons and standards for moral conduct so they can also work out the “Yeses,” “do’s” and “go-for-its.” In that way my influence can carry on a lot further than my authority will ever be able to.

For my influence to be effective, however, I have to keep learning and examining myself both for my own benefit as well as theirs. Like it or not, my life will be a standard that my daughters will use to judge men on in the future and I want to set the bar pretty high with no apologies to the young fellas coming along. Perfect or not, it is mine to carry. On one level my girls may see me as “Dad of Dads, Keeper of the Remote and King of Rude Noises,” but they should also know at a deeper level that I have laid and will lay down my life for them. As they grow older I hope that they will not settle for any man who will not do the same, even though the kind interested only in the “lay down” part may be all too common.

If you have daughters I think you know what I mean, and I hope you, too, are preparing yourself and them to live by your influence and that of Jesus while submitting to the authority of God. If you have sons, I pray that you are preparing them to a similar standard and helping them grow into their own responsibilities.

And if you have sons that may be hanging around my daughters, you might want to warn them about that nose thing.

Saving something…but I don’t think it’s Social Security

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I find the resistance of Democratic Party leaders to privatizing a portion of our Social Security accounts puzzling. Not that I’m shocked by partisanship or politics – that’s expected. Nor am I surprised by a sense of vision that can’t see farther than one step ahead – that’s plain human nature and not the exclusive province of Democrats or Republicans.



No, the thing I can’t figure out is which typical Democratic constituency is being served by their opposition. Is it the young, energized base? Not hardly – I can’t imagine that anyone under age 30 has much hope they’ll ever see a dime from Social Security in its present form. Is it the unions? Don’t think so – union memberships are used to having their pension funds managed for a healthy return (do you think CALPERS management would last long investing for a 3% return?). The Hollywood Set? Perhaps – these people are used to saying lines written for them by others and are capable of projecting impressive outrage or heart-rending grief, but I don’t think many of them are spending a lot of time trying to decide whether the direct deposit option is right for them. The Northeastern elites? Again unlikely – though isn’t it fun to think what our political culture would be like today if Papa Joe Kennedy had thrown all his money into T-bills?



I guess that leaves those people dependent upon government checks for their living expenses. In which case, holding the course and steering Social Security into an obvious crash and burn scenario clearly indicates that it’s really about power and not the general welfare.



I haven’t seen enough of President Bush’s proposals to determine if it’s the right course – and I’m not even convinced that, constitutionally, this is the government’s responsibility in the first place, but I do know that a formula of fewer workers, more retired people with longer lifespans, and ever increasing costs is about as stable as, oh, Howard Dean.



The scope of the problem is especially well laid out in the latest The American Enterprise magazine. Editor Karl Zinsmeister in his Bird’s Eye column cites what Democrat Bob Kerrey and Republican Warren Rudman said a couple years ago:




“Suppose a member of Congress introduced legislation called the Social Security Do Nothing Act. Under this bill, promised retirement benefits would be cut…by 35 percent for today’s newborns. Alternatively, payroll taxes would go up by roughly 40 percent…. These are the choices under the Do Nothing Plan.”





Zinsmeister also provides a detailed description of everything that was happening, politically or otherwise, the year Social Security was passed. There was an exciting new entertainment media called radio, and hot inventions like the electric typewriter and the ballpoint pen. 68% of the U.S. had electricity and 32% had telephones. Life expectancy was 59 years and a few months. Against that backdrop he asks:




So: Do you want to base your security in old age on a program engineered at the same time as the Model A and the vacuum-tube radio? Has work changed much since the era when slopping pigs for Auntie Em was a typical job? Does the boundary between state and individual look different now that the USSR has gone from progressive polestar to oppressive flop? Has American finance advanced from the decades when the only choices for ordinary savers were the passbook, the mason jar, or the mattress? Are the retirement goals of Americans still the same as in the days when the Bambino retired? Or is it time for Social Security to enjoy a major-league update?



The answer, I think, is obvious. Nothing but a government welfare program could ever last this long in unimproved form. Our transportation networks, our medical services, our economy are all light-years better than they were in 1935. So why are we still stuck with a gramophone/Hupmobile/fountain pen system of public pensions?





Aside from this common sense observation, his article also notes that our already mind-boggling, acknowledged, national debt does not even mention future Social Security and Medicare benefits:




…The unfunded entitlements of the New Deal and Great Society are collapsing on themselves. For perspective, start with the fact that our officially acknowledged national debt, source of much caterwauling, currently totals $7.6 trillion. Unfortunately, the government’s promises of future Social Security checks and Medicare reimbursements are not counted in our official debt. Those obligations pile up off the books, out of sight, and out of mind. But they are real obligations that will have to be paid. And when economists sit down and do the math on those commitments, the totals are staggering: The retirement checks promised to today’s population add up to $10 trillion more than the payroll-tax revenues slated to flow in over the next generation.



That dwarfs our on-budget debt. Put together our official debt and our unfunded Social Security obligations and you have a sum larger than the entire value of all the companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Our Social Security deficits are real, scary, and unsustainable, no matter what Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid may say.





I encourage you to use the link and read the entire article on-line (heck, I encourage you to buy a subscription to the magazine for that matter). I think you’ll find that whoever the Democratic leadership thinks they’re looking out for, it’s probably not you – unless you happen to be in Congress, that is.


Shocking the Monkey: Noted Anthropologist Exposed as Fraud

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Facts and proof can be sticky things for academics – especially when they prove you’re a liar. This article in the February 19th Guardian reports that German anthropologist and professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten – who in his 30 year career had claimed to have found the missing link between Neanderthals and modern humans – has been shown to have falsified dates, fabricated evidence and plagiarized other researchers.

His “finds” such as the supposedly 36,000-year-old “Hahnhöfersand Man”, “Binshof-Speyer Woman” and “Paderborn-Sande Man” were all misdated by tens of thousands of years (the latter, in fact, was determined to have died in the 1700s – A.D., that is).

“Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago,” said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. “Prof Protsch’s work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish.”

Protsch’s earthshaking – and textbook rewriting – discoveries had lead to a prominent and rather lavish lifestyle, suggesting that if his ethics and motives had themselves been submitted for carbon dating they would have proven to be among the oldest known to man.

Be sure to check out Scrappleface for its funny take on the story.

Fear, loathing and the first “new” media

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1. Got home. 2. Unloaded the car. 3. Flipped on the computer and started checking my favorite blogs after two days without internet access. Step 3 always used to be to check the headlines from the accumulated newspapers, but it’s a new era. Couldn’t have missed much, it’s only two days, right?

Whoa – Hunter S. Thompson shot himself to death! I was surprised, but not shocked, I guess. (And why isn’t there a punctuation mark that indicates suprise but not shock? I mean if we can have a colon and a semi-colon, can’t we have a semi-exclamation?) Not that I’d ever given it a lot of thought, but I just figured that when he died he’d go out like a kamikaze moth, wings flaming, spiraling down into the fire – and filing one last report. Or that maybe he’d just disappear. Mysterious circumstances would be cited.

I turned to my bookcases, looking for my well-thumbed paperback collection of Thompson’s best, The Great Shark Hunt. Gone, dammit, when did that happen? I’d picked up the book shortly after I got out of college, a journalism degree stuffed in the bottom of my luggage while I wondered why I’d ever pursued such a thing. By that time Thompson had already created his “brand” (a novel concept at that time) and was well on his way to becoming a caricature of himself. But when I read him I again felt the surge and the spark to wield words to bring a reader into a different light, especially such classics as his early reporting on the Hell’s Angels and the L.A. “Brown Power” movement. It was so energizing after dealing with all the Woodward and Bernstein wannabees (or “Woodsteins” as one of my profs called them). I’d return to the book often over the years when I had trouble remembering what good writing looked like.

Thompson brought a subjective, experiential voice to stories that was brand new. I suppose there had always been a “you are there” aspect to the best reporting up until that time, but he took it to the “I am here, you are here, and man, what a rush!” level. He was referred to by some as “the new media” and credited with creating “gonzo” journalism, though in my mind the term came to be associated more with a way of living than a way of writing. Nevertheless, I think he put the first emphatic boot into the door that eventually opened the way to the blogosphere. Some may see that as a reach, or as trivializing his talent, but his voice – or at least the space his voice carved out – is very much a part of many of the best “citizen journalist” efforts. Of course, the subjectiveness he offered also lead to many of the abuses in the now mainstream media that also helped lead to the blogosphere.

Not all will agree, of course (Mitch Berg), and I certainly don’t hold up Thompson’s excesses and decline as models. In his latter years he became, perhaps inescapably, a parody of himself, but I’d check in from time to time with his “Hey, Rube” columns for ESPN.com. But I couldn’t read him, however, without picturing Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character, Duke (I suppose Thompson’s death means Trudeau gets to keep his lungs in his chest after all). And as much as I think he contributed to our current communications culture I acknowledge that his example has unfortunately also spawned those who think that attitude and over-medication alone are sufficient to pass for genius.

They miss the point. And I miss my copy of “The Great Shark Hunt.”

Filings: That thing you do

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Note: Filings will be an ongoing section of this blog where the posts focus specifically on issues of Christian life. The name comes about because “filings” are the natural by-product of Proverbs 27:17: “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”



Stones Cry Out posted earlier this week some observations on Ron Sider’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, based on Sider’s own article about the book that appeared in Christianity Today’s Books and Culture.



According to Sider, there is little statistical evidence to show that the lifestyles of evangelicals in America are much different from those of the rest of the world around them. In areas such as divorce, promiscuity, tithing and more, separate surveys by the Gallup and the Barna organizations show evangelicals are virtually the same as their neighbors when it comes to what we’d call virtue. (Be sure to go over to Stones and read the post and the related comments).



I don’t know Sider’s overall philosophy, agenda or the fruit in his life, or the way the questions were worded by the Gallup and Barna organizations, but this is worth each of us examining ourselves. Does my behavior line up with my beliefs? What would someone observing my behavior think my beliefs are? Does my life give people an opportunity to draw closer to God, or turn away because I have nothing better to offer them than what they’ve already got? Am I renewing my mind, learning to know God through his word, even if it puts me at odds with the conventional reasoning (of any flavor) that’s around me? Can it be seen in me?










Update:

Minfidel: When legislating morality, let’s have a show of feet

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Churches United in Ministry and the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition think it’s the proper exercise of their faith to exhort the government to take from everybody in order to help the poor (see my earlier post). Setting aside for the moment the question of – if their efforts are successful – how much of this money will survive the legislative process and ever end up in the hands of those its supposedly aimed at, I have realized that maybe these groups and I aren’t really so far apart.



I mean, what if these groups, representing mainline churches and synagogues, were to put their philosophy into practice within their own congregations? That is, what if they said that they could no longer rely on freewill offerings, but in order to support social and economic justice they were morally obliged to assess a mandatory tax on every one of their members, based on a fixed rate they had prayerfully considered? To make it all appear legal they could let their members vote on it.



I wonder how many would vote with their feet?

The Minfidel: 11th hour revelation

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I was thinking more Nigel Tufnel than Nihilist in Golf Pants when I extended my list of reasons for conservative blogging in Minnesota to 11. It was, because, you know, 11 is more than 10.



Perusing the NIGP’s blog today, however, I see that he has pretty much staked out the whole top 11 list concept. Oh well, great minds and all that. I apologize to him for unintentional poaching.



You know, the concept of a nihilist golfer conjures quite an image. Do golf pants even come in Goth? Are they black plaid? Golfing with him could be interesting, but with that name I’m not letting him keep score.