The last swing state October 31, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 3 comments!!
How Running a Campaign Is Like Building a Megachurch October 30, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 1 commentBill Bishop in Slate on megachurches and campaigns:
The model for the modern political campaign is the evangelical megachurch.
This isn’t a partisan observation. Both George Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama adopted the basic organizing techniques that many ministers have been using since the 1970s to grow their churches to stupendous size. And why not? They work.
The megachurch was built on an idea born in India by an American missionary. Donald McGavran spent half a century overseas, and he used much of that time to discover the way churches could convert large numbers of people to Christianity. McGavran observed that converts didn’t come to the church one by one. They came in groups. And those groups were socially coherent—castes, villages, or families. The key to church growth wasn’t in bringing individuals to Christianity but in converting groups, peoples. And these groups would come if they were appealed to as a “homogenous unit.”
“The individual does not think of himself as a self-sufficient unit, but as a part of the group,” McGavran wrote in this 1955 book, The Bridges of God. People don’t want to come to a church where they hear a different language or eat strange foods. “Men like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic, or class barriers,” McGavran wrote. McGavran said ministers needed to understand the culture of their constituents and recommended that they use the insights of anthropology to tailor their appeals to homogenous groups.
HT: My Dad!
The Crunchy Cons are staying home October 29, 2008
Posted by Zack in Texas | 5 commentsThis is pretty amazing: Rod Dreher, conservative blogger and author of Crunchy Cons, is not going to vote this year.
If he’s representative of many other evangelicals, which I think he is, then this is really good news for Obama.
Here’s what he says:
This will be the first year since I was old enough to vote that I will not cast a ballot in a presidential election. I quote a character from Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” in my defense: “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy.”
I can’t vote for Barack Obama. He is a pro-abortion zealot and wrong on all the issues that matter most to social conservatives. Mind you, one should not be under any illusion that things will markedly improve under another Republican administration. But there is no question that on issues related to the sanctity of life and traditional marriage, an Obama administration, with a Democratic Congress at its back, would be far worse.
The best case that can be made for John McCain is that he would serve as something of a brake on runaway liberalism. But the country would be at significantly greater risk of war with the intemperate and bellicose McCain in the White House. That was clear months ago, but his conduct during the fall campaign–especially contrasted with Obama’s steadiness–has made me even more uneasy. His selection of Sarah Palin, while initially heartening to populist-minded social conservatives, has proved disastrous. Though plainly a politician of real talent, the parochial Palin is stunningly ill-suited for high office, and that’s a terrible mark against McCain’s judgment.
As both a conservative and a Republican, I confess that we deserve to lose this year. We have governed badly and have earned the wrath of voters, who will learn in due course how inadequate the nostrums of liberal Democrats are to the crisis of our times. If I cannot in good faith cast a vote against the Bush years by voting for Obama, I can at least do so by withholding my vote from McCain.
Sarah Palin the Marxist October 28, 2008
Posted by Zack in Alaska | 1 commentWho could have guessed! This from The New Yorker:
For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.
Rednecks for Obama October 27, 2008
Posted by Zack in Indiana | 4 commentsIntersection of SR 50/3/7 in downtown North Vernon, Indiana:
Statistical Dead-heat among born again voters October 23, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 24 commentsNew poll from The Barna Group:
Among born again voters there is a statistical dead-heat: 45% plan to vote for Sen. McCain, while 43% expect to cast a ballot for Sen. Obama.
Overhead in a rural Ohio Obama field office October 22, 2008
Posted by Zack in Ohio | write a comment“I don’t care if he has a four foot red tail, I’m voting for him!”
Spoken by a white man with a Southern accent, proudly covered in dirt and sweat from work, who had come in looking for a way to help.
Socialist Showdown! October 21, 2008
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 6 commentsIn an airport. I can see the screen, but can’t hear the sound. Lou Dobbs’ head and neck are floating and jiggling over the words, “Socialist Showdown! McCain attacks Obama.”
Oh wait, Palin is on now and her voice cuts through the din of the airport crowd. I can hear her saying, “That’s SOCIALISM!”
Do people even know what that is anymore?
When I worked as a union organizer, workers used used to stop in the middle of describing the abuse they were receiving in their (capitalist) jobs and say, “You know, it’s like Communism in there!”
Now Obama is getting his rebuttal in the CNN ticker. It says, “Obama: McCain controlled by defunct ideology.”
So it’s Socialism vs. a defunct ideology, I guess.
Jesus for president attack ad October 20, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 5 commentsIf Jesus ran for president…the attack ad! This is pretty funny:
Depression Economics Explained October 17, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 2 commentsIn case you’re interested — I’ve posted two pieces about economics over at my friend Ari Rabin-Havt’s Oxdown Gazette and the HuffingtonPost.
Depression Economics Explained: Speculative Bubbles
Depression Economics Explained: The Credit Crunch
My goal here is to dig down into the fundamental concepts we use to explain the economy. The concepts we’ve been raised on are inaccurate, and they’re causing a lot of problems right now.
Let me know what you think!
