Most surprisingly, Sarah Palin has been credited as re-kindling a populist streak in the American psyche.  But unlike her predecessors, who’s rhetoric has been aimed at large corporations and the injustice of economic inequality, Palin’s rhetoric has largely been aimed at the excesses of government… and the danger its size and power pose to the American people.

This shift in the popuist movement has not gone un-noticed.  Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times, has an interesting piece discussing the evolution of American populism — and has arrived with some surprising conclusions.  According to Bai, there is an undoubtable “underlying shift” in the meaning of American Populism:

Most Democrats, after all, persist in embracing populism as it existed in the early part of the last century — that is, strictly as a function of economic inequality. In this worldview, the oppressed are the poor, and the oppressors are the corporate interests who exploit them. That made sense 75 years ago, when a relatively small number of corporations — oil and coal companies, steel producers, car makers — controlled a vast segment of the work force and when government was a comparatively anemic enterprise. In recent decades, however, as technology has reshaped the economy, more and more Americans have gone to work for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves, while government has exploded in size and influence.

As the economy changed, and as the corporate entity exercised less influence on the life of the individual, the need for political opposition also decreased.  Even so, Bai does not view this as symptomatic of a philosophical detour.  Although the target of populism is not the same as it once was, the principles and ideals driving the movement continue to be rooted in a certain animosity towards institutions that have become too powerful or too reckless with the lives of the public at large.

[T]oday’s only viable brand of populism… is not principally about the struggling worker versus his corporate master. It is about the individual versus the institution…

You do not have to be working for the minimum wage, after all, to seethe about the effects of the Wall Street meltdown on your retirement savings or the spilled oil creeping toward your shores. You simply have to fear that large institutions generally exercise too much power and too little responsibility in society.

This new American populism is why the federal deficit has emerged as a chief concern for voters, as it did in Mr. Perot’s era — not because it presents an imminent crisis of its own, necessarily, but because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness, a disconnectedness from the reality of daily life.

Bai makes some other interesting points; if you wish to read the rest of his piece in its entirety, you can do so here: NYTimes.com.

I’ll leave you with this closing question: if anti-trust legislation is needed to prevent private corporations from exercising too much power over the american public, shouldn’t we have an anti-trust system to break up government when it gets too big?

For those of you interested in reading more about the subject, I want to recommend an article I found on “The New Atlantis” titled “Proportionality in Warfare”.   The author makes some excellent points; but I must warn you… this is a thorough discussion.  Here is an interesting snippet to whet your appetite:

Many clerics, journalists, and professors, however, have invented a wholly different interpretation and use, making the theory more and more stringent, particularly with regard to civilian deaths. In fact, they have reinterpreted it to a point where it is pretty much impossible to find a war or conflict that can be justified. Historically, just war theory was meant to be an alternative to Christian pacifism; now, for some of its advocates, it is pacifism’s functional equivalent — a kind of cover for people who are not prepared to admit that there are no wars they will support.

via The New Atlantis » Proportionality in Warfare.

Nevertheless, I read the paper for a reason… within its pages contain some of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking articles and ideas in printed media.  As I was looking through the February 6th issue, a particular article caught my eye–it was titled “Before I die”… and as I skimmed the subtitle I discovered that this article was actually written in 1938 by a 17 year old student by the name of N.J. Carpenter.  As I began to read his words, I could only help but think how wonderful it was that such an innocent mind could be so honest about life… how such a young person could have such a clear view of what really matters in life… and what does not… and perhaps most importantly, what constitutes a life well-lived.

I would hope copyright law would allow me to quote a short excerpt for the benefit of the reader.  He begins with an introduction:

It may seem very strange to the reader that one of my tender age should already be thinking about that inevitable end to which even the paths of glory lead. However, this essay is not really concerned with death, but rather with life, my future life. I have set down here the things which I, at this age, believe essential to happiness and complete enjoyment of life. Some of them will doubtless seem very odd to the reader; others will perhaps be completely in accord with his own wishes. At any rate, they compose a synopsis of the things which I sincerely desire to have done before I leave this world and pass on to the life hereafter or to oblivion…

He then talks about one of life’s most universal desires — the desire for love..

Before I die there is another great desire I must fulfill, and that is to have felt a truly great love…  [i know that] my life will not be complete until I have actually experienced that burning flame and know that I am at last in love, truly in love.  I want to feel that my whole heart and soul are set on one girl whom I wish to be a perfect angel in my eyes…  I know that when I am at last really in love then I will start living a different, better life, filled with new pleasures that I never knew existed…

And finally, and perhaps most amazingly, he desires to feel great sorrow… a telling admission that shows, in my opinion, a profound insight into the human heart…

It is my belief that, as in the case of love, no man has lived until he has felt sorrow.  It molds us and teaches us that there is a far deeper significance to life than might be supposed if one passed through this world forever happy and carefree.

I’m not sure if this is at all relevant, but it is perhaps for this reason that Jesus tells us on the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.”

Of all the things I have read this year… this piece is, without doubt, one of the most worthwhile… feel free to read the whole thing.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

True… True…

The binary oppressor/victim narrative goes something like this: the United States for the last half-century—through its embrace of neocolonialism and imperialism, and then again through its birthing of globalized capitalism—is at fault for most of the mess outside the West.

We as the bad guys impose, dictate, exploit, ignore, and manipulate the more noble Other to such a degree that he is forced to lash out in understandable, though often dangerous ways.

This is a sort of all-inclusive worldview that in postmodern fashion pits those with “power” against those without it. And in such a simplistic bipolar world, only a few gifted Western elite intellectuals, of superior intelligence, empathy, and insight, can reach across the divide, understand the Other, and find common ground, by accommodating the West to alternate paradigms of politics, culture, and economic and social life…

Then something messy comes along that doesn’t fit the neat paradigm like the purple-finger elections in Iraq, Tiananmen Square, or the most recent democracy demonstrations in Iran that confound that easy calculus. Just when you are singularly prepared, in bold face-to-face diplomacy, to understand the historic grievances of an unshaved, Nehru-coated Ahmadinejad, and to make the necessary apologies and accommodations, thousands of Iranians hit the street in Levis, with English-lettered protest signs, hitting their cell-phones and chanting Western-like protests again indigenous Iranian theocratic fascism.

So how can it be, that anyone would wish to model their politics after Western-style free speech and consensual government, given our culpability for so many global pathologies? The even weirder result that follows is that we become skeptical of the pro-Western Columbian, Israeli, Iraqi—and Iranian—as somehow less “authentic” by the very fact of his good will to, and admiration of, us (contrary to everything one has been taught in post-colonial classes).

In that vein, Obama is almost more at ease with virulent anti-Westerners, whose grievances Obama has long studied (and perhaps in large part entertained), and whose estrangement alone offers opportunity for Obama’s sophisticated multicultural insight and singular narcissistic magnanimity.

via Again, Why the Diffidence? – Victor Davis Hanson – The Corner on National Review Online.

“The question whether things really exist outside of us and as we see them is absolutely meaningless. … The question is almost as absurd as wondering whether blue is really blue, objectively blue”

-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The book’s basic outline is well constructed.  First, D’souza systematically questions many of the “new Athiesm’s” presuppositions about Christianity.  He points out that Christianity, far from causing the moral tragedies of the modern world… has, in fact, been the changing force that helped overcome these very moral travesties.  For example, Christianity lifted women out of the second-class status Roman society had imposed upon them; it was the impetus for the great artists of our time: Michalengelo, Da Vinchi, Mozart, Bach, Handel… etc… ; it helped create the concept of western government — a concept based around the Christian principle that society must fight against the inherent sinful nature of man and must keep leader’s actions in check.  These are but a few of Christianity’s contributions to world history…  

D’souza then calls Athiesm out — asking it to provide the same answers it chides Christianity for failing to answer.  When tragedy happens, Where is Atheism?  Atheism cannot console the victims of tradgey… nor can it condemn the aggressor.  When Athiest rulers murder millions of their subjects… where is Athiesm’s defense (or apology?).  When Athiesm claims rationality as their trump card… on what basis can they claim that rationality alone provides all answers?  For all it’s proponents, Athiesm still has much to account for.

What’s So Great About Christianity may be the best piece of Christian apologetics in the past decade;  don’t pass it up! 

What develops around the video or stereo culture is not a narcissistic imagry, but an effect of frantic self-referentiality, a short-circuit which immediately hooks up like with like, and, in doind, emphasizes their surface intensity and deeper meaninglessness.  This is the special effect of our times.  The ecstasy of the polaroid is of the same order:  to hold the object and its image almost simultaneously as if the conception of light of ancient physics or metaphysics, in which each object was thought to secrete doubles or negatives of itself that we pick up with our eyes, has become reality.  It is a dream.  It is the optical materilization of a magical process.  The polariod photo is a sort of ecstatic membrane that has come away from the real object.

‘LIVE OR DIE’: the graffiti message on the pier at Santa Monica is mysterious, because we really have no choice between life and death.  If you live, you live, if you die, you die.  It is like saying ‘be yourself, or don’t be!’  It is stupid, and yet it is enigmatic.  You could read it to mean that you should live intensely or else disappear, but that is banal.  Following the model of ‘pay or die!’, ‘your money or your life!’, it would become ‘your life or your life!”.  Stupid again, since you cannot exchange life for itself.  And yet there is poetic force in this implaceable tautollogy, as there always is when there is nothing to be understood.  In the end, the lesson of this graffiti is perhaps: ‘ if you get more stupid than me, you die!’

I like how he doesn’t see a need for some ultimate conclusion on the meaning of the statement… nothing irks me more then philosophers who get caught up in the meaningless questions.  Even so, it seems he contemplates the statement long enough to expose it for what it is–and in doing so causes his reader to view the common and banal with a fresh perspective.  And you wondered why I like this guy so much… 

So, assuming you are a theist, what do you say to the atheist who asks, “You don’t (chuckle) actually believe in God, do you (snicker)?”…

No matter what evidence you give, the supercilious atheist finds a way to dismiss it. To him, it is not the case that your evidence for God is valid but nevertheless is cancelled out by his superior evidence against God. No, in the atheist’s mind your evidence does not even count as evidence…  

the atheist refuses to expand his mental universe by also believing in the transcendent things that the theist believes in: God, souls, angels and demons, for example. The atheist restricts himself to a sort of tunnel vision.

And this is where atheism becomes vulnerable. The atheist does not disbelieve in God because he has neutrally examined all the evidence, and drawn the proper conclusion that there is no God. On the contrary, the atheist radically misconstrues the plentiful evidence for God, and he does this because of his false worldview, which tells him that only the physical really exists. Before he has examined the evidence, the atheist thinks he knows that nothing non-physical actually exists, and this assumption governs how he responds to the evidence.

There is only one effective way to respond to the supercilious atheist’s question: Speak his language, the language of evidence and reasoning, of logic and proof… Say something like the following:

“I believe in God because that’s what the evidence shows. But before you try to debunk my evidence, we have to ask, what are your criteria for deciding whether a God exists, and how do you know that these criteria are correct? 

So when the atheist asserts that there is no evidence that any miracle has occurred, ask him: “What sort of evidence for a miracle would you regard as being valid? And how do you know ahead of time that any miracle not validated by this type of evidence must not have occurred?”
 

This is only a short portion of the entire article; the author goes on to take you through almost an entire debate … focusing on the weaknesses of the typical atheist position.  It is really a useful article for BOTH sides… atheist and theist alike.