Tipsy has a post about some lady who is ostentatiously living by the precepts for women set forth in the Bible: things like “growing out her hair, making her own clothes, covering her head, obeying her husband, rising before dawn, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church, and even camping out in the front yard during her period.”

There is apparently some debate about whether she is intentionally mocking the Bible or not, but, in any case, she’s being criticized as at least misguided because the New Testament trumps the Old Testament from whence most (all?) of these anachronistic practices spring.

But here’s the rub as I see it: I don’t think any Christian groups have gotten rid of the Old Testament entirely. And there is some sort of human editorial process in making decisions about which provisions are deemed eternal commandments of God and which are deemed passing preferences of the tribesmen who wrote them down. Because unlike certain legislation, the passing preferences are unfortunately lacking in expiration clauses.

The process of picking and choosing which Old Testament instructions are still required is a human effort. And I think the lady’s efforts to follow Biblical law and the discussion surrounding it underscores the human element in making these distinctions. For me, a nonbeliever, this has value if believers are more likely to consider justifications for their own choices. “God told me so” is an abdication of responsibility for the moral choices one makes. Hopefully this sort of exercise leads to further discussion, “God told me so, and God is right because . . .”

Because of the current events of today, the Christian attitude toward gays is a concern of mine. It’s hardly uniform, but for those who have decided that homosexuality is anathema, it’s not enough to say that it’s true because “the Bible tells me so.” Or, at least if they do, there should be an explanation about why those provisions of the Old Testament are operative when so many others are not. Otherwise, as Jefferson put it, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them” to make these judgments.

As a younger man, when I considered books like Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead instructive, I recall the concept of gratitude playing a non-trivial role in my assessment of the political and social landscape. In particular, entities that were insufficiently grateful. For some reason, it bothered me that poor people were not grateful for the government assistance they received, black people were not grateful to northern whites for freeing them from slavery, European countries (especially France) that deigned to criticize U.S. foreign policy were not sufficiently grateful to the U.S. for freeing them from the Nazis.

Leaving aside for a second that I was misguided about who owed gratitude to whom and in what measure, it beats me why I thought the gratitude relationship involved me at all. As an adolescent or early adult, I had done bugger all to deserve gratitude from anyone. If anything, I was insufficiently appreciative of all my parents had done to support me. Apparently I fancied myself, in recent political parlance, a maker rather than a taker – despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s also evident that I thought my tribal affiliations entitled me to reflected gratitude. I was an upper middle class white male from the northern half of the United States. And for that, world, YOU’RE WELCOME!

So, I’ve drifted away from this mindset. And thank goodness. But I was hardly unique. A lot of that sort of thinking seems to fester on today. What’s behind it? I can guess. For starters, there is this assumption that there is a default status quo and any deviation from that status quo is a sign of benevolence. If I have acquired money or objects, then it must be mine. I must be entitled to it. It is, without discussion, just that I should retain it. If government removes this money from my possession and transfers it to the possession of someone else who has not managed to acquire as much money; well, that’s akin to robbery, and if I don’t complain too loudly, you better goddamn well appreciate my grudging acquiescence.

Similarly, there is a status quo where the United States is geopolitically ascendant in the world and white men are ascendant in the United States. Any shift away from that status quo demands respect.

An emotional need for respect, I think, underlies the desire for gratitude. One argument for favoring charity over government assistance is that those with money can choose the charities they like. But, I think another aspect of charity is that the recipient is compelled to recognize it as such – they are supplicants, they are not entitled to this money. (Entitlement being closely related to property and, as such, carrying a bunch of questions about who is entitled, why, under what circumstances, and for how long?) Makes me think of that Seinfeld bit about getting hand.

Jerry: I know, you told me you like her, everything is going good.

George: No everything is *not* going good. I’m very uncomfortable. I have no power. I mean, why should she have the upper hand. *Once* in my life I would like the upper hand. I have no hand– no hand at all. She has the hand; I have *no* hand…

George: How do I get the hand?

Jerry: We all want the hand. Hand is tough to get. You gotta get the hand right from the opening.

I walk my kids to school most mornings. It’s a short walk, but I love having a consistent time to chat with them. Today it was frosty out, about 32 degrees. My son thought maybe it had something to do with the hole in the ozone layer. He had read that the ozone layer was the part of the earth that kept our planet from getting too hot or too cold.

I demurred because: a) weather is different from climate; and b) I didn’t think that accurately captured the function of the ozone layer. Still, it brought home in a more visceral way the potential effects of climate change denialism. For me, the climate change debate has largely been an abstract debate. I know the vast majority of credible scientists say that climate change is observable, say that it is caused by human activity, and predict grim things to happen on earth because of it in the not too distant future. I also know that there are some that wish to disregard such predictions because it would unduly interfere with short term profits. And, there are still others that want to ignore such predictions as a part of the culture war I don’t fully understand. Near as I can figure, they are willing to endure flooding and unstable weather because hippies suck. Or something.

Still and all, it’s been a pretty abstract debate for me. I generally have the sense that the worst of it won’t take place until I’m pretty old or dead. But, there is a better chance that my kids will have to deal with the fallout. And, why do you want my kids to be collateral damage in your psychotic war against Al Gore?

Last week, I linked to an article about I-69 moving along with an award of a contract for a stretch around Bloomington. Today Ryan Sabalow has an article“There is no money to finish anything of consequence, much beyond routine maintenance and a few minor projects,” said Rep. Jeff Espich, chairman of the House’s tax-writing and finance committee.

On a Saturday morning, when my brain should be occupied by strategy for my kid’s soccer game or by the prospect of college football, I find myself wrestling with the idea that our notions of property are so deeply embedded in our culture, we don’t have a good vocabulary for discussing the underlying assumptions of property; particularly in the context of a policy debate. That can’t be normal.

I don’t have any good answers at the moment, and I’ve almost certainly covered this ground before. But, advocates of the property status quo can just say, “I think people ought to be able to keep what’s theirs.” It’s simple and sounds utterly reasonable; almost unassailable.

To contest this, someone who thinks that more equity is necessary to preserve the health of our political and economic systems has to spend a great deal of time and a great number of words deconstructing the word “theirs”; making arguments about when property rights vest in a person such that the thing can be said to be “theirs,” that property rights do not exist in any enforceable sense absent the cooperation of the government, and suggesting that the point at which rights vest is, itself, a policy choice and mostly arbitrary.

If you have to spend that much effort and verbiage countering a simple sentence, chances are, you’re going to lose the debate unless the listener is uncommonly patient and open minded.

Anyway, that’s what I woke up thinking about. Maybe I need a hobby.

I’ve seen a couple of references online to a recent study showing “US abortion rates plummet with free birth control.”

But that’s really beside the point. While a lot of the focus is on the horrors of killing babies, when presented with an effective way of reducing that number, a lot of abortion rights opponents are strangely unmoved. Or, it’s strange if one takes at face value the rhetoric about holocausts of murdered babies and whatnot. Less openly discussed is a desire that people, particularly women, stop engaging in unsanctioned sexual activity.

Having both of those goals is fine. There are reasons – not ones I agree with necessarily – for both policy desires. But, birth control and studies such as these serve to highlight priorities. It presents a choice. Which is worse? Unsanctioned sex or murdered babies? Seems like a no-brainer; baby-murdering seems like the worst thing ever if that’s honestly what you think is happening at an abortion clinic. Turning a blind eye to the painted Jezebels in your midst seems like a small price to pay.

And yet. A very small number of abortion rights opponents are willing to get on board with policies that make birth control more widely available.

Providing free birth control to women and teens in Missouri at high risk of unplanned pregnancies led to a drastic drop in abortion rates and teenage mothers, a study published Thursday found.

If the same results were replicated across the United States, free birth control could prevent 1,060,370 unplanned pregnancies and 873,250 abortions a year.

Teens and unmarried women might have sex – they might even get the idea that their behavior is acceptable; but you’ll have 873,250 fewer baby murders each year. Hopefully I’m not being disrespectful by saying that I simply don’t grasp your worldview if this is a close choice.

The construction of I-69 through the southern part of Indiana is still plugging along. Eric Bradner has an article in the Evansville Courier Press about the award of a $57.5 million contract to build a piece of it in Monroe County. Apparently that is for a 4 mile stretch of the total project which is 142 miles long.

I’m all for infrastructure and transportation and am a little excited to see how this one affects driving in Indiana. But, it is a reminder that we subsidize automobile traffic too; and we should keep that in mind when folks periodically complain about rail transportation not paying for itself.

I’ve been re-reading Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” lately. This isn’t a novel observation, but I see in the Mormons a pattern I guess is present in a lot of successful religions:

1. Prophet receives revelation and gathers followers.
2. Followers are persecuted.
3. Persecution tightly binds followers into a cohesive unit.
4. Followers escape persecution and gain temporal power.
5. Despite temporal power, followers continue to nurse feelings of persecution.

The Mormons were hounded out of every place they landed. (Not entirely without reason, it seems. Joseph Smith was not, apparently, a noble and lovable figure when it came to non-believers.) But, when Smith was killed and Brigham Young led them out to Utah, they gained temporal power but continued to nurse the traditions of persecution.

Christians were persecuted by the Romans, but eventually, they took over the Empire and Western Europe and, yet, you can go to Worldnet Daily, probably right this minute, and find some story about how unfairly Christians are treated these days.

Jews were persecuted, escaped, gained temporal power, lost it, and were persecuted again – quite a bit. I’m not sure where to put them today on the temporal power/persecution continuum.

I don’t, honestly, know enough about Islam to put fit it in this pattern with any precision. I know that Muhammad was chased out of Mecca, went to Medina for awhile, then came back to Mecca where Islam exploded out of the Arabian peninsula. I imagine Muhammad’s time of exile figures prominently in the Islamic tradition and, regardless of the ebb and flow of temporal power, sees their religion as being under attack from non-believers.

I think that persecution, real or imagined, is useful in creating a barrier between the particular religious community and the Other. It creates feelings of solidarity with one another and a feeling of distinction from non-believers.

Another one of those “deserves a book – I’m going to give it 15 minutes before coffee” posts; so I apologize. It seems to me that there is a continuing trend toward consolidation of power away from local government and toward state government. I’m not enough of a student of Indiana history to know whether, if this sense is accurate, it’s something new or just one of those ebbs and flows you get. (For example, on the federal level, the tug of war between the Presidency and the Congress is cyclical.)

Mainly what brought this to mind was reading Kyle Stokes report on State Superintendent of Education, Tony Bennett’s, desire to give the State more power to run local school districts; along with a recent observation on this blog about efforts to increasingly regularize the functioning of trial courts under state, judicial governance.

There is also, off the top of my head, the Kernan-Shepard report which had a lot of (as yet mainly unimplemented) ideas for government reform that included state funding of the local judiciary. In 2008, the General Assembly passed legislation that took away local property tax levies as a source of school general fund revenues. The State also shifted funding for child welfare services from county property taxes to the State.

Like I said, a lot more to unpack than I have time for. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has felt a shift in power from local to State and whether that’s a good, bad, or indifferent.