Introducing the Person / Position Paradox
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. … And so my job is not to worry about those people — I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
And what if he then admits he was in error?
In this case, I said something that’s just completely wrong.
Is that hypocrisy (see above) — or humility? And come to that: in politics, is honesty a vice?
**
But I’m sliding from religion into politics here, unless you take the Gettysburg Address as one of the central documents — akin to a scripture — of American civil religion. Or remember it was the Bible translator John Wyclif who said those words about government of, by, and for the people first…
Religion, not politics, is my concern and my “beat” — but right now, the “Warfare of Science With Theology” (to quote the apt title of Andrew Dickson White’s celebrated 1895 book) is once again in full swing, so the question of whether Rep. Broun’s positions as a a member of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and chairman of the US House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, given his views on voting according to his reading of the Bible, is also an instance of the Person / Position Paradox?
**
It seems to me that questions such as these are of vital to many of us. The question is: are they vital to our democratic principles — or to our salvation?
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zen:
October 7th, 2012 at 3:50 am
God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.
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Hmmm……Bible rejects the Big Bang theory….I’m rusty on Sunday school but I recall this:
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“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. “
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It is not often that, with a single statement, a man can damage the intellectual reputation of Christians, Conservatives, Republicans, Doctors, Scientists and members of Congress. While discrediting the last one is easy, impugning all simultaneously requires the services of a high-octane Crackpot. Bravo, Congressman – it is not every day someone rejects all of the hard sciences, basic empiricism, formal logic and science going back to Newton, Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo.
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He’s making the woman who thinks that she’s an Orc look like a responsible statesman.
Charles Cameron:
October 7th, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Hi Zen:
What can I say? In the immediate context in which it was given, the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet, his speech was well received. As it ripples out into wider circles, not so much. Neither the future nor the past is very evenly distributed.
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[ for any who didn’t read it, Zen’s ref to the woman who thinks she’s an Orc is to my follow-up companion post ]
Michael Robinson:
October 7th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Life just looks a little different among those who speak mainstream Republican in Georgia. For example, could the UN really be aiming at world domination through the Cobb County zoning board’s plans for constructing four foot sidewalks for walkers and joggers and an eight foot wide multi-use trail? Is a local transportation sales tax for Atlanta part of a United Nations plot?
Charles Cameron:
October 7th, 2012 at 9:55 pm
U Thant? Now there’s a name to conjure us old fogeys with!
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BTW, I believe I owe you an h/t for pointing me to Rep. Paul Broun’s speech.
Mr. X:
October 8th, 2012 at 3:17 am
Michael,
The power of Alex Jones is demonstrated again!
I can anticipate, on the flip side, now that Russia has started blocking certain Monsanto GMO corn varieties, that the hardcore Russophobe crowd in D.C. will stand with Monsanto in solidarity. I’ve already predicted here that the increasing shipments of AKs and .223 rounds to Wal-Marts from Izmash and the Tula works respectively will be soon cited by eternal WWIII theorist J.R. Nyquist and his Twitter fans as proof that Putin is arming the bitter clingers to fight Washington. Better dust off that Small Wars Journal piece about fighting Tea Partyers boys…
But will the Economist’s old lead editor Edward Lucas volunteer to eat the Monsanto stuff like the cancer prone lab rats did in Caen, France? Doubt it.
Mr. X:
October 8th, 2012 at 3:20 am
Sorry, the (currently fully legal, semi auto) AKs aren’t sold at Wal-Marts but at fine gun dealers across America, who have them on back order — especially the pending Izmash shotguns with AK-style stocks.
I just found the spectacle of the New York Times taking U.S. gun culture seriously and non-condescendingly so odd that I wondered if the whole thing was a conspiracy to fuel the ‘connecting the dots from the Kremlin to bitter clingers’ fire.
Charles Cameron:
October 8th, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Fair’s fair: