Friday 25 May 2012

The Liberal Cocoon

From Michael Barone on Real Clear Politics:
It’s comfortable living in a cocoon — associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforces them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide.

Liberals have been doing this for a long time. In 1972, the movie critic Pauline Kael said it was odd that Richard Nixon was winning the election, because everyone she knew was for George McGovern.

Kael wasn’t clueless about the rest of America. She was just observing that her own social circle was politically parochial.

The rest of us have increasingly sought out comfortable cocoons, too. Journalist Bill Bishop, who lives in an Austin, Texas, neighborhood whose politics resemble Kael’s, started looking at national data.

It inspired him to write his 2009 book “The Big Sort,” which describes how Americans since the 1970s have increasingly sorted themselves out, moving to places where almost everybody shares their cultural orientation and political preference — and the others keep quiet about theirs.

Thus professionals with a choice of where to make their livings head for the San Francisco Bay Area if they’re liberal and for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (they really do call it that) if they’re conservative. Over the years the Bay Area becomes more liberal and the Metroplex more conservative.

But cocooning has an asymmetrical effect on liberals and conservatives. Even in a cocoon, conservatives cannot avoid liberal mainstream media, liberal Hollywood entertainment and, these days, the liberal Obama administration.

They’re made uncomfortably aware of the arguments of those on the other side. Which gives them an advantage in fashioning their own responses.

Liberals can protect themselves better against assaults from outside their cocoon. They can stay out of megachurches and make sure their remote controls never click on Fox News. They can stay off the AM radio dial so they will never hear Rush Limbaugh.

The problem is that this leaves them unprepared to make the best case for their side in public debate. They are too often not aware of holes in arguments that sound plausible when bandied between confreres entirely disposed to agree.

We have seen how this works on some issues this year.

Take the arguments developed by professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown Law that Obamacare’s mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. Some liberal scholars like Jack Balkin of Yale have addressed them with counterarguments of their own.

But liberal politicians and Eric Holder’s Justice Department remained clueless about them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asked whether Obamacare was unconstitutional, could only gasp: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

In March, after the Supreme Court heard extended oral argument on the case, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin was clearly flabbergasted that a majority of justices seemed to take the case against Obamacare’s constitutionality very seriously indeed.

Liberals better informed about the other side’s case might have drafted the legislation in a way to avoid this controversy. But nothing they heard in their cocoon alerted them to the danger.

Another case in point is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s law restricting the bargaining powers of public employee unions. The unions and the crowds in Madison, which is both the state capital and a university town and which with surrounding Dane County voted 73 to 26 percent for Barack Obama, egged each other on with cries that this would destroy the working class. No one they knew found this implausible.

The unions had an economic motive to oppose the laws and seek to recall first Republican legislators and then Walker himself. The law ended the automatic checkoff of union dues, which operated as an involuntary transfer of money from taxpayers to union leaders.

But voters declined to recall enough Republicans to give Democrats a majority in the Senate, and Walker currently leads Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in polls on the June 5 recall election.

The Madison mob seemed unaware that there were attractive arguments on Walker’s side.

Why should public employee union members pay less for health insurance and get fatter pensions than the taxpayers who pay their salaries? Why is it a bad thing for property taxes to be held down and for school districts to cut perks for union members enough to hire more teachers?

Beyond the Madison cocoon, in Wisconsin’s other 71 counties, which voted 55 to 44 percent for Walker in 2010, such arguments are evidently proving persuasive. Maybe liberals should listen to Rush every so often.
This kind of liberal cocooning explains how a bunch of Marquette professors can sign a letter attacking Paul Ryan’s budget. The problem with the letter is not that they disagree with Ryan. It’s that they simply can’t argue the case. Their letter entirely refuses to discuss specifics, and assumes that the concept of “solidarity” requires one to believe in ever increasing government spending, ever more generous welfare programs, and ever increasing dependency on government. Views at odds with this simply aren’t heard, and therefore are never contemplated.

We’ve run across this kind of insularity among our own political science colleagues — and political scientists are very far from being the biggest yahoos in academia. Compared to psychology, sociology and the humanities, the discipline is a refuge of sanity.

But during the 2008 election season, we had a colleague going on about how Sarah Palin had supposedly labeled the Iraq War a “mission from God.” This was, he believed, a terrible thing to say, although we wonder why Julia Ward Howe never is condemned for writing a song declaring that another war in American history was a mission from God. Anyway, our colleague did not seem to know who Julia Ward Howe was.

Having seen this debunked on Fox News, we corrected him and send a YouTube link putting the Palin remark in context. He relented on this issue, and we advised him that he needed to look at a broader range of media. He was offended, and demanded an apology. We, of course, will never apologize for giving somebody good advice, and didn’t in this case.

We likewise have a colleague who apologized to a class of students for showing them an interview that was broadcast on Fox News. It was an interview with an important policy maker, and it actually mattered little what outlet broadcast it. But he felt he needed to be apologetic for showing an interview on a channel that liberal academics consider to be outside the pale.

If this sort of thing happens in political science, imagine how bad things are in the humanities. But actually, we don’t have to imagine. We have blogged on multiple cases.

There Are Two Kinds of Countries in the World: ____ and _____

This is a cross-post from my solo blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.


A few days ago, Sean Langberg blogged about a subject that's long been a pet peeve of mine: how we classify countries when we try to talk about the international system, and the labels we apply to the resulting groups. I thought I'd take the cue to air my grievances on the topic and make a couple of simple suggestions.


Taxonomies require organizing principles, and the kernel of the classification system Americans usually use in international politics comes from modernization theory. Modernization theory's core idea is the teleological one that economic growth, urbanization, industrialization, and political democracy are the natural, desirable, and mutually reinforcing ends of social change, or "development" for short. Viewed through this lens, some wealthy, democratic countries appear to have arrived already, while the rest are playing catch-up. In other words, the former have "developed," while the latter are still "developing."


This conventional approach is plainly displayed in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) semi-annual World Economic Outlook reports, which sort countries into two bins: "advanced" and "emerging and developing." The former includes the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and a smattering of richer Asian countries, while the latter is, simply, everyone else. What, exactly, distinguishes these two groups is left unspecified--according to the April 2012 report, "This classification is not based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise, and it has evolved over time"--but the basic divide is the familiar one between the "West" and "the rest." The First World vs. Third World tags have largely faded from use since the Second World disappeared in the early 1990s, but the underlying concept is the same.


What's so distasteful about the conventional approach are its connotations of hierarchy and even moral superiority. A couple dozen countries, mostly "white" and European, are described as having reached the desired end state, while the rest of the world struggles and strains to catch up. The rich and powerful have matured; a few fortunate others are just now emerging from backwardness; and the rest remain retarded in their development.

There are other ways to do this. Back when Marxism was still alive and kicking, some social scientists used it to divide the world into a "center" and a "periphery" defined by the economic exploitation and political subjugation of the latter by the former. Dubbed dependency theory, this scheme died a bitter death for empirical, political, and sociological reasons. Empirically, dependency theory couldn't really explain how some once-peripheral countries eventually got much richer in spite of their supposed subjugation. Politically, the import-substitution policies dependency theorists prescribed were a bust. Sociologically, dependency theory got tagged (with justification) as part of a wider leftist political project, so it was further deflated by the ideological and practical collapse of Communism in the late 1980s. All of that said, dependency theory did present a reasoned alternative to the neoliberal scheme it opposed, and, in so doing, it spotlighted some important realities of the international system.

Some have tried to classify countries along religious or cultural lines, but I think these attempts have generally been less successful. The most prominent expression of this approach in the U.S. comes from Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" writings, in which he argued that the fundamental sources of conflict between states in the post-Cold War world would be cultural rather than ideological or economic. This thesis seems to find some echoes in the Global War on Terror, but critics have rightfully taken Huntington to task for reducing the fantastic diversity and rapidly-evolving cultural constellations of so many countries to a single, simple identity defined primarily by their dominant religions.

More generally, I wonder if the distinction between sacred and secular generally means that states aren't the relevant units for global taxonomies based on religion. Perhaps clans, families, or souls would be more fitting. Ongoing attempts by some Muslims to establish a caliphate imply that it is at least theoretically possible to sort international political units into insider and outsider groups based on religious practice, but the fact that these groupings generally contain one or zero countries should tell us something about their disutility as global classification schemes.

For comparing countries, wealth seems like a perfectly good yardstick, in no small part because national wealth is so tightly linked to the forms of power that drive contemporary international relations. But then why not talk about money instead of this fuzzier idea of development? This is what the World Bank does nowadays, and its low-income, middle-income, and high-income designations--based strictly on gross national income (GNI) per capita--would seem to offer more analytical leverage than the IMF's "developed" vs. "emerging" distinction without all the ugly baggage. The Economist takes this approach, too, and seems no worse for it.

For people concerned about the broader package of liberal constructs--the values and institutional forms that most authors probably have in mind when they refer to the "West"--why not make those criteria explicit and be more transparent about how their measured? Observers who are primarily interested in domestic politics might consider the organization of a country's political economy to compare it with others. This could be done by considering procedures to select national leaders on the one hand and prevailing sources of wealth generation on the other. Meanwhile, people who are more interested in the organization of the international system could look explicitly at formal and informal entanglements among states to identify relevant communities in a way that escapes the tired and broken bifurcations of East vs. West and North vs. South.

Whatever your preferred solution, I beg you, please, stop, stop, STOP referring to countries as "developed" and "developing." And if you find that you must, at least put those awful labels in quotes.

Bark like a dog!

I'd write a lengthy comment on this, but with my new administrative responsibilities, I have a full day of meetings on liberal arts assessment and impact -- oh, and some kind of silly discussion on the instrumentalization of education and the vocational turn. Whatever. I'll just say that this should take care of my presentation at new faculty orientation next month.... From Department of Omnishambles: Karl Marx's end of year department assessment:



ht: Sherrill Stroschein

Thursday 24 May 2012

Marquette Campus Leftists Attack Paul Ryan Budget

Not news: a bunch of mostly leftist faculty recently signed a letter attacking Paul Ryan’s budget plan. The Journal-Sentinel puffed the story as though college faculty being liberal and opposed to Republicans really was news.

Now what is news: a majority of those faculty who signed the letter also signed petitions to recall Scott Walker, according to Entitlement Mentality Monitor.

In spite of the use of the language of Catholic social justice teaching, the impetus behind the letter was merely your standard liberal-let politics.

Although there were some exceptions (one person whose name was on the letter opposed the hiring of lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien, and was attacked for it) the list of signers is laced with people who oppose Catholic teaching on abortion, oppose Catholic teaching on homosexuality, favor gay marriage, and only use the phrase “social justice” to promote a liberal political agenda.

One piece of evidence of this can be seen by comparing the list of people who signed the letter attacking Ryan with a letter signed by dozens of Marquette faculty in the wake of the refusal of Marquette to hire an outspoken lesbian (and opponent of Church teaching) as Dean of Arts and Sciences. Signing this letter were twenty of the same people who signed the anti-Ryan letter.

Indeed, the anti-Ryan letter was signed by faculty who are at the forefront of the gay lobby on campus, including Nancy Snow and Ed de St. Aubin. Indeed, if one omits eleven faculty in Theology who signed the anti-Ryan letter but not the pro-lesbian dean letter, almost half (20 of 41) of the faculty who signed the anti-Ryan letter also signed the pro-lesbian dean letter.

Add to this the fact that some Theology faculty who did not sign the lesbian dean letter are quite leftist and politically correct. Brian Massingale, for example, is a promoter of the notion of “white privilege,” a concept designed to guilt or intimidate whites into accepting a whole array of leftist policies — on pain of being labeled a defender of “white privilege.” Robert L. Masson likewise uses the same strategy in his classes to promote a narrow leftist policy agenda. In fact, Masson uses Massingale’s book in his class.

Which puts into perspective the claim of the anti-Ryan letter to be reflecting Catholic social teaching. At a place like Marquette, Catholic teaching is virtually always invoked to support a liberal agenda — more government programs, more social spending, more income redistribution — and virtually never to support a ban or abortion, or upholding heterosexual marriage.

The people who sign such letters, in other words, are (with a few exceptions) merely liberals or leftists. The “Catholic” stuff is just window dressing.

Right to the razor's edge...or not




With Obama's proposed $487bn cuts in defense spending over the next ten years and the potential for another $500bn in cuts through sequestration set to kick in next January if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach the grand bargain compromise on the budget, lots of folks are now harping about the looming threat to American national security if the cuts take hold.

Earlier this month, General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., assistant commandant, U.S. Marine Corps concluded that: “We have a tendency to view sequestration as a budget issue, but it’s really not a budget issue. It’s a re-ordering of our national priorities — it’s what we won’t be able to do. And certainly at the strategic level, I think what the Secretary has said is, we won’t be able to implement the strategy as currently written if sequestration goes into effect.”

Even without the threat of sequestration, Republicans have been blasting Obama's ten-year $487bn reduction plan. Recall Romney's debate performance back in January when he warned that
We simply cannot continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the hope of the Earth
Earlier this year, Senator Joe Lieberman warned that the administration's planned cuts posed an "unacceptable risk to our national security."

But, what exactly are we talking about here? And, how big should the U.S. national security budget be? (Not a rhetorical question)

Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer from the National Priorities Project have a post over at TomsDispatch.com that presents a more accurate cost projection of the annual national security budget. They calculate that the number is nearly $1 trillion when we calculate the base line DoD budget ($530bn) plus supplemental war spending ($88bn), the costs of nuclear weapons at DoE ($18bn), costs of homeland security ($49bn), international security assistance programs ($14bn), veterans programs ($138bn), pensions and retirement benefits for non-veteran military employees ($55bn), and miscellaneous "defense related activities" ($8bn) for a grand total of $931bn this year. Furthermore, if we include the interest on borrowing plus the various black box intelligence items the total cost of national security almost certainly exceeds $1 trillion.

That's $1 trillion a year under the Obama administration -- a position that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has described as taking defense spending "right to the razor's edge." Hardly.

Even in an era of severe fiscal constraints and demands for greater austerity -- coupled with dramatically declining support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- real cuts in the national security budget still remain off-limits for both Republicans and Democrats. Despite the expense, both parties remain committed to a strategy of "primacy" defined principally in terms of the projection of global military power.

It is time for us to have a real debate about re-ordering our national strategic priorities. How much is enough? (I repeat, this is not a rhetorical question.) For the past decade we've simply been coasting along with a set of unchecked assumptions about the centrality of a massive and expanding global U.S. military presence to our overall strategic posture. It is really hard to see how these expansive commitments have enhanced America's overall strategic position (and for those counting, the stimulus effect of "military Keynesianism" hasn't appeared to have worked either). It's probably not the best way for this to happen, but a collapse of the budget talks and the sequestration triggered by the the 2011 Budget Control Act is probably the only way we'll be able to have a real debate on the overall strategic priorities -- something that is needed more than ever.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

How the Sausage is Made



Two years ago, Der Spiegel published an audio recording of secret negotiations involving many of the world's most important leaders meeting together on Friday, December 18, 2009, during the Copenhagen climate summit:

The world's most powerful politicians were gathered in the "Arne Jacobsen" conference room in Copenhagen's Bella Center, negotiating ways to protect the world's climate. US President Barack Obama was perched on the edge of a wooden chair with blue upholstery, talking to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The blue turban of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was bobbing over the tops of a few hastily assembled potted plants. The meeting was soon dubbed the "mini-summit of the 25."

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was there, representing the African continent, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon was standing nearby. Only one important world leader was missing, an absence that came to symbolize the failure of the climate summit: Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao...

Now, for the first time, SPIEGEL is in a position to reconstruct the decisive hour-and-a-half meeting on that fateful Friday. Audio recordings of historical significance, in the form of two sound files that total 1.2 gigabytes in size and that were created by accident, serve as the basis for the analysis. The Copenhagen protocol shows how the meeting Gordon Brown called "the most important conference since the Second World War" ended in a diplomatic zero.

The video posted above includes many of the most important sound snippets, accompanied by photos of the speakers and some important contextual information.

Der Spiegel's online version of the article includes key quotations from the meeting. Essentially, European leaders like Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown were urging their colleagues to come to an agreement about both near-term and long-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Asian negotiators, including top Chinese diplomat He Yafei, argued against the sizable emissions reductions target under discussion (50%), even though "Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg pointed out that it was the Indians who had proposed the inclusion of concrete emissions reductions for the industrialized nations in the treaty."

European leaders and China's negotiator Yafei had a surprisingly tense back-and-forth exchange that nicely summarizes some of the most important international politics undergirding the climate change debate. The western leaders accused the Chinese of seeking double standards, wanting to free ride on environmental commitments made by the affluent states:
The words suddenly burst out of French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "I say this with all due respect and in all friendship." Everyone in the room, which included two dozen heads of state, knew that he meant precisely the opposite of what he was saying. "With all due respect to China," the French president continued, speaking in French.

The West, Sarkozy said, had pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent. "And in return, China, which will soon be the biggest economic power in the world, says to the world: Commitments apply to you, but not to us."

Sarkozy, gaining momentum, then said: "This is utterly unacceptable!" And then the French president stoked the diplomatic conflict even further when he said: "This is about the essentials, and one has to react to this hypocrisy!"

Angela Merkel also joined the fray, by referencing the scientific evidence necessitating that China join a binding agreement for significant emissions reductions:
Merkel took one last stab. The reduction of greenhouse gases by 50 percent, that is, limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, was a reference to what is written in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Then she directed a dramatic appeal at the countries seeking to block the treaty: "Let us suppose 100 percent reduction, that is, no CO2 in the developed countries anymore. Even then, with the (target of) two degrees, you have to reduce carbon emissions in the developing countries. That is the truth."

China's negotiator, He Yafei was unmoved, and placed the blame for climate change -- as well as the responsibility to act -- squarely on the shoulders of affluent states:
The Chinese negotiator... took on the French president's gaffe, and said: "I heard President Sarkozy talk about hypocrisy. I think I'm trying to avoid such words myself. I am trying to go into the arguments and debate about historical responsibility."

He Yafei decided to give the group a lesson in history: "People tend to forget where it is from. In the past 200 years of industrialization developed countries contributed more than 80 percent of emissions. Whoever created this problem is responsible for the catastrophe we are facing."

Seeking to break the impasse, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke pragmatically about the need for action from both the advanced economies and the large developing states (India and China).
"From the perspective of the developed countries, in order for us to be able to mobilize the political will within each of our countries to not only engage in substantial mitigation efforts ourselves, which are very difficult, but to also then channel some of the resources from our countries into developing countries, is a very heavy lift," Obama said. Then, speaking directly to China, he added: "If there is no sense of mutuality in this process, it is going to be difficult for us to ever move forward in a significant way."

However, Obama also suggested in his remarks that the problem need not be addressed in the current meeting since "We will try to give some opportunities for its resolution outside of this multilateral setting."

Indeed, not long after this meeting, the US, China, India and other players cut a deal involving near-term (2020) emissions reduction targets that countries would set for themselves. This was described by climate activist Bryony Worthington as a "voluntary 'pledge and review later' type agreement with minimum enforcement." Worthington and many other observers thus considered the summit "a spectacular failure on many levels."

The final deal was made, as Der Spiegel notes, without direct input from the Europeans. In other words, the key decisions were not made at the meeting documented in the audio recording. In fact, the high-level mini-summit adjourned at the request of the Chinese negotiator, and the major developing states met separately:
The Indians had reserved a room one floor down, where Prime Minister Singh met with his counterparts, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and South Africa President Jacob Zuma. Wen Jiabao was also there.

Shortly before 7 p.m., US President Obama burst into the cozy little meeting of rising economic powers.

At that meeting, everything that was important to the Europeans was removed from the draft agreement, particularly the concrete emissions reduction targets. Later on, the Europeans -- like the other diplomats from all the other powerless countries, who had been left to wait in the plenary chamber -- had no choice but to rubberstamp the meager result.
IR scholars rarely have access to this kind of (nearly) real-time "insider" data, though it is telling that virtually all of the world leaders make claims that we would have expected. In that way, this audio recording is like the Wikileaks documents. The evidence reveals what we think we already know about how the sausage is made.


Note: Thanks to Miranda Schreurs (posting on a mailing list) for pointing me to the audio recording.

Monday 21 May 2012

Dwelling in a Tent


Lately I am feeling a bit like I imagine Sarah felt when she and Abraham left their home in Haran to go into the wilderness of Canaan, to".. the land that I will shew thee" (Genesis 12:1).

Or how Sariah must have felt when Lehi asked her to leave the comfort and the beauty of her home in Jerusalem for the unknown of the Arabian desert.

We just moved and are sort of homeless at the moment, bouncing back and forth between family until we can figure out where we need to be. Jon and I have been having a bit of an existential crisis; re-evaluating our goals and priorities in life and trying to figure out just exactly how and where we want to raise our family and serve the Lord. Even though Jon has a good job in Salt Lake City he may (in the next several months) have the possibility of accepting a job that would require our family to live further away from family and possibly in some very remote parts of the United States, but which would have the possibility of doing some really incredible service work for some of the poorest citizens in the US.  I desperately would like to set down some roots, sink them deep into the ground, but I can't help but feel the Lord might have something else planned for us. It makes me feel all topsy turvey inside.

Stepping out into the unknown is scary, and I have been re-reading the stories of Sarah and Sariah to get a better understanding of how they had the faith to do what they did.

As I re-read the story of Lehi and Sariah leaving Jerusalem I was really struck by this verse in 1 Nephi 2:15 in which Nephi simply states, "And my father dwelt in a tent." This verse is often used light heartily as the shortest verse in the Book of Mormon, yet this one little verse is packed full of meaning.  It indicates that Nephi and his family had finally made a choice. They had officially given up their affluent, city dwelling, stable life style for the difficultly and uncertainty of being guided by the Lord in the desert. That couldn't have been an easy to choice to make, or an easy road to follow. Yet look at the incredible things that came as a result of that one choice!

I think what I am coming to learn, slowly, is that the Lord expects each of us to "dwell in a tent", in a figurative way.  Even though ancient peoples often pitched their tents for long periods of time, tents (unlike houses) are not permanent structures and can (and were) taken down in order to move on to a richer part of land, escape conflict, or simply because the Lord commanded it. Today those who"dwell in a tent" are those whose hearts are open to the Lord and are are willing to go where He wants them to go-- instead of being tied down by their houses, their riches, or their desire for comfort. To  truly be an instrument in the hands of the Lord, like Sarah and Abraham or Lehi and Sariah, we must be willing to leave everything behind  if it is required of us and go where the Lord directs.

That is hard.

Really hard.

Yet Sarah did it.

And so did Sariah-- though I really can't blame her for having her moments of murmuring.

Last week as Jon and I drove away from our little house it dawned on me that, once you take all the people who are dear to you out of it, a house is really nothing more than a big box to store stuff in. When we die we will take nothing of this life with us except for our bodies and our intelligence, everything else will be left behind. And truly, the more I think about it, the more I see that each and every one of us on this earth  are already "dwelling in a tent".  None of us are permanent fixtures on this earth, we are all "strangers in a strange land" (Exodus 2:22) who are just passing through on our way towards our eternal home-- our promised land.

When I think about it that way I see just how silly it is to put our faith  in material things, like our homes and our possessions. Yet it is so easy to do. I am so grateful that the Lord let me see my little house for what it really was-- just a tent-- one of many of the stops Jon and I will take before we get to where our real home is.

Even so, I will always be grateful that Jon and I had the chance to pitch our tent in such a wonderful part of the world for a time. Even though it hurts, so much, to take out those stakes, fold up my blankets, load my camels, and move on-- not really knowing where we are going-- I have  faith that the Lord will lead us to another fertile part of the wilderness. Where we can again pitch our tent -- whether it be for a few months, a year, 25, or 50 -- to help build His kingdom until we are called to move on... or are taken home to the land where we truly belong.

Friday 18 May 2012

George Zimmerman: Another Political Prosecution?

A column by Alan Dershowitz in the New York Daily News:
A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.

There is, of course, no assurance that the special prosecutor handling the case, State Attorney Angela Corey, will do the right thing. Because until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful and professional.

She was aware when she submitted an affidavit that it did not contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She deliberately withheld evidence that supported Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. The New York Times has reported that the police had “a full face picture” of Zimmerman, before paramedics treated him, that showed “a bloodied nose.” The prosecutor also had photographic evidence of bruises to the back of his head.

But none of this was included in any affidavit.

Now there is much more extensive medical evidence that would tend to support Zimmerman’s version of events. This version, if true, would establish self-defense even if Zimmerman had improperly followed, harassed and provoked Martin.

A defendant, under Florida law, loses his “stand your ground” defense if he provoked the encounter — but he retains traditional self-defense if he reasonably believed his life was in danger and his only recourse was to employ deadly force.

Thus, if Zimmerman verbally provoked Martin, but Martin then got on top of Zimmerman and banged his head into the ground, broke his nose, bloodied his eyes and persisted in attacking Zimmerman — and if Zimmerman couldn’t protect himself from further attack except by shooting Martin — he would have the right to do that. (The prosecution has already admitted that it has no evidence that Zimmerman started the actual fight.)

This is a fact-specific case, in which much turns on what the jury believes beyond a reasonable doubt. It must resolve all such doubts in favor of the defendant, because our system of justice insists that it is better for 10 guilty defendants to go free than for even one innocent to be wrongfully convicted.

You wouldn’t know that from listening to Corey, who announced that her jobs was “to do justice for Trayvon Martin” — not for George Zimmerman.

As many see it, her additional job is to prevent riots of the sort that followed the acquittal of the policemen who beat Rodney King.

Indeed, Mansfield Frazier, a columnist for the Daily Beast, has suggested that it is the responsibility of the legal system to “avert a large scale racial calamity.” He has urged Zimmerman’s defense lawyer to become a “savior” by brokering a deal to plead his client guilty to a crime that “has him back on the streets within this decade.”

But it is not the role of a defense lawyer to save the world or the country. His job — his only job — is to get the best result for his client, by all legal and ethical means.
So the argument is that Zimmerman needs to go to jail to keep black people from rioting. Or maybe to keep black gangs from beating up whites in retaliation.

This thus begins to look a bit like the Duke rape case, where an elected prosecutor, needed the votes of the local black community, brought charges against white Lacrosse players. The entire case collapsed.

The argument, of course, is demeaning to the majority of black people who — while understandably sensitive about racial injustice — don’t embrace a lynch mob mentality, and will accept the verdict of a fair legal process.

As for the minority of blacks who don’t think this way: they are what cops and riot police (and concealed carry) are for.

Five Things for Friday: MIA Edition

It has been a few weeks since I have had consistent Internet access and so I feel like I have been really MIA (missing in action) for awhile. I thought that for this post I'd just post pictures that might give you an idea of what I have been up to.

-1-

GRADUATION! 

 

 Trying out his "batwings". Does anyone know why Masters robes are so ridiculous looking? They are bizarre.

 

Another classic family picture. I think it might be a LONG LONG time before we get one that isn't chaos-- beautiful chaos-- but chaos nonetheless! 


Just trying it on for size.

-2-

MOVING, MOVING AND MORE MOVING!



I feel so blessed we have been able to sell our house so quickly, and to such a wonderful couple. It has really been an answer to prayers. But it has been SO HARD to leave our house behind. The house is almost 100 years old and Jon and I poured our blood, sweat and hearts into remodeling it. We took something old and ugly and made it  beautiful and charming and have loved (almost) every moment of doing it.

I bawled like a baby as we were driving away. We were so happy there and it is hard to believe we will be as happy anywhere else. Two of our children were born in that house and  it is SO hard to leave that behind. I have been sort of emotional this last week but I am doing better now, as long as I don't think too much about it. 

-3-

OREGON! 



We flew with Jon's family to go visit his uncle and aunt in Oregon. It was the kids first time on an airplane and they loved it-- as you can tell by Rose's face. 

 


In fact, when I asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was they both, without hesitation, said it was the plane ride! 

My favorite part was catching this 20lb beauty. 



Apparently I need to learn how to hold a fish, this was awkward... and slimy.

-4-

My other favorite part of the trip was driving around in our rental car minivan, which I affectionately dubbed our "swagger wagon."



It was a brand new, top of the line, Town and Country minivan with leather seats, three TVs built in, and more gizmos then we could figure out what do with. It was awesome and-- even though I once swore a blood oath I would never drive a minivan-- at this point in my life I would take even an ugly one in a heartbeat. Cramming three kids into their car seats in the back of our little Pontiac Sunfire (whose air conditioning just went out) is getting old. Hopefully with Jon's new job it won't take us too long to save up for one-- probably with much less "bling" than the rental car, but it was fun to dream.
 Sort of like test driving a BMW or Lamborghini... but "parents of lots of small children" style :)

 
-5-

Right now we are sort of homeless and are living with family till we find a place to be. I hate not having things figured out, but I just have to keep reminding myself that where ever Jon and the kids are-- that is all the "home" we need. Besides, this guy just makes everything better.


Have a great weekend and don't forget to check out The Gift of Giving Life book tour that will be going on the next few weeks! We have been getting some great feedback on the book... which is exciting!

If you want to link to your own "Five Things for Friday" post you can use the tool below to add your link. 1) Please link to the URL of your blog post and not your main blog and 2) Please include a link back here.

Tom Barrett Supports Gay Marriage

You can find his name here.

Not a surprise, really, since he is a liberal. But when Wisconsin got to vote on the issue, it decisively voted against gay marriage.

With Barrett, as with Obama, this has to be seen as an appeal to the socially liberal base of the Democratic Party. The political calculation, obviously, is that the increased intensity of support from gay activists and their liberal allies will outweigh the loss of social conservatives who might otherwise be inclined to vote for the Democrat.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Marquette Center for Peacemaking: Demonstrate at NATO Meeting

Marquette’s Center for Peacemaking has never pretended to be any sort of academic enterprise. Rather, it has simply been a center for left-wing activism.

Nothing illustrates this better than an e-mail from the Center, received today.
Peace Action Organizing Bus to Chicago

The NATO Summit is just days away! Fifty heads of state will be meeting in Chicago to potentially pledge billions in funding to the ongoing war in Afghanistan as well as to make important decisions that will affect the peace and stability of our entire planet. In response to the NATO Summit, Peace Action-WI is organizing a bus from Milwaukee to the Counter Summit in Chicago.

Bus pick-up is Sunday, May 20, 8:00 a.m, outside Peace Action (1001 E. Keefe Ave.) Tickets are $20 roundtrip.

Call Peace Action 414-964-5158 or stop in their office to purchase your tickets and more information.

Among those scheduled to appear at the rally...

Reiner Braun - ICC No to War - No to NATO, Germany
Malik Mujahid - Muslim Peace Council
Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Vijay Prashad - author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter
Leah Bolger - President, Veterans For Peace
Carlos Montes - Committee Stop FBI Repression
Kari Fulton - Environmental Justice Network
Larry Holmes - International Action Center


Center for Peacemaking

The Marquette University Center for Peacemaking strives to empower the University and the wider community to explore together the necessary skills to become informed, spiritually-centered, nonviolent peacemakers. Rooted in the Ignatian charism, the Center works with a spirit of confidence and joy to achieve an awakening to the complementary relationship of scholarship, spirituality, non-violent living, and the active struggle for peace and justice.
Of course, there is plenty of room to debate the war in Afghanistan. But the Center for Peacemaking isn’t interested in debate. Their assumption is that any U.S. military action is evil and imperialistic, and that demonstrating against it is the obvious response.

The Center is, in other words, anti-intellectual. They don’t believe there are any intellectually challenging policy questions to be addressed, rather there is only the “struggle for peace and justice” with it always being obvious that peace and justice are on the left side of any issue.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

Half Way through the Dress Dare

I can't believe the month of May is already half way over. It has gone by so quickly, but then again my life has been pretty fast paced lately.

I just thought I'd check in and see if anyone else is still hanging in with the dress dare and is still wearing skirts and dresses!

I have been doing pretty good at the dare. I've worn a skirt or dress everyday this month so far. The only times I've worn pants have been to weed the yard and when we went salmon fishing in Oregon last week-- I figured those counted as "sports" in my book.


I've learned several things so far about myself and about dress wearing the last few weeks:

  •  I don't like having to wear a skirt. In the weeks leading up to this dress dare I was already wearing skirts and dresses several times a week and I was loving it. In fact, I didn't have any desire to wear pants or shorts at all. Yet as soon as I made it a rule that I couldn't wear pants I started to resent wearing skirts. I've found myself cursing my skirts this week and wishing I could wear pants. I think what discovered is that I like having the choice. While I think that after this I will wear skirts much more than I did before, I like knowing that if I wanted I could wear pants. Besides there are times when wearing pants is really just easier. For example, I thought it would be fun to wear a big flowing skirt on the beach while we were in Oregon. Wrong. I ended up having to safety pin it together in about 10 places and even then it still wanted to fly above my head. That was when I was cursing this dress dare the most. 
  • When I wear a skirt everyday it makes getting dressed for church different. Before when I got dressed for church any old skirt would do-- denim, casual, fancy, frilly-- it didn't matter what type it was because a skirt was a skirt. Now that I am wearing skirts  I've divided them into "day dresses" and "church dresses". I selected my nicest and fanciest skirts and dresses and set them apart as my church dresses and wear my more causal ones during the week. As a result I've found that I have been much more dressed up and "formal" at church than I was before. I like it a lot. It really makes me feel like I am putting on my "Sunday Best" and I think it has helped me keep the Sabbath day better than I did before.
  • The fuller the skirt the more comfortable and easier it is to wear. I now completely understand why women wore full length dresses. When your dress is long enough, and the skirt isn't very tight, you have a HUGE range of motion. You can sit cross legged, climb trees, chase around little kids on the floor and just about everything else you want to do (except for walking on the beach in the wind) without  reducing your range of motion or worry about being immodest. I am finding that some nf my favorite skirts are the ones that hit me about mid-calf and have full wide skirts.  They are pretty much like wearing pants, except much more comfy. 
  • I haven't ONCE been asked why I was wearing a skirt. I have found this odd, my only explanations are that 1) maybe no one notices, 2) everyone reads my blog ( I wish!) and so they know what I am up to, or 3) they already know that I am a bit of an odd fish and just chalk it up as one of my strange qualities.
Overall, I am still finding that I like wearing skirts and that I like how they make me feel. There is something about doing more "manly" things-- say, mowing the lawn or loading couches into a moving van-- in a skirt that brings me a lot of joy. But then again I am an odd fish.

I am still pondering and researching on the questions I had but I will share those insights later. In the meantime I'd love to hear how the dress dare is going for you!

Sunday 13 May 2012

Celebrating our Heavenly Mother on Mother's Day

The last two weeks have been wild and crazy. We have been in the process of graduating, selling and moving from our house, searching for a place to live, going on vacation, teaching my sister-in-law the temple preparation classes, and helping to get my brother-in-law ready for his mission to Taiwan. Not to mention publishing a book and a thesis in that time and chasing around three little children.Yikes.

I haven't had much time at the computer and so when I finally got a chance to sit down yesterday afternoon I was so excited to see that this article "A Mother There: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven" by David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido has finally been published in the BYU Studies Journal! About a year ago one of my professors from BYU shared a preliminary draft with me and told me that this paper was in the works. I was very moved the first time I read it and have been thinking a lot about this paper in the year since. I am so glad that it is finally available for others to read.

I think that in her review of the paper Valerie Hudson Cassler does a much better job explaining what this paper is all about. She says,

The article’s primary contribution is an inventory of every saying by Church leaders from the founding to the present concerning our Heavenly Mother.  That the Latter-day Saint Church alone among all the Christianities asserts that just as we have a Father in Heaven, so we also have a Mother in Heaven, is well known.  Latter-day Saints do not believe that God is an old bachelor—we believe that all divinity is both male and female, such that our Heavenly Father could not be a god unless there was an equally yoked Heavenly Mother by his side who was also a god. However, it is also true that you will not find Latter-day Saints saying much about their Heavenly Mother besides acknowledging her existence.  Indeed, in LDS culture, you will sense that Latter-day Saints feel they are expected not to rpeak of her.


...Paulsen and Pulido persuasively argue that the conventional LDS cultural notion that we are not to speak of Heavenly Mother is, in fact, wrong.  They are quick to add that speaking of Heavenly Mother should not be taken to include acts such as praying to Heavenly Mother.  Nevertheless, Paulsen and Pulido have “restored the paths to walk in”—that is, by the very act of publishing this article in BYU Studies, they have opened a door for the membership of the Church to speak openly of their belief in a Heavenly Mother, and to assert that silence about Heavenly Mother is not “sacred,” but a cultural artifact which is not supported by the General Authorities of the Church. 




... Before delving into the arguments made by Paulsen and Pulido, we must mention at the outset of this review that an important reason this article is path-breaking is because of the venue in which it was published.  BYU Studies, for those who are not acquainted with that journal, is an official publication of Brigham Young University, and its board includes general authorities of the Church.  In other words, it is in a league of its own, certainly no Sunstone or Dialogue, being scrupulously orthodox and formally affiliated with a Church institution, but also a different creature than the Ensign, being a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. 

Personally I have never felt  or been taught that it was wrong to talk about our Mother in Heaven, but maybe that was because of how I was raised. I remember being really astonished the first time that someone "called me out" for speaking too freely about her. I was even more surprised to discover that some of my faithful LDS friends had feeling of sadness or anger because they felt that she was "off limits" or "absent" from church teachings or from individual worship. I am so grateful for this article, sanctioned by General Authorities, that dispels that myth. It breaks my heart to think that there are women who have been feeling pain over a culturally constructed "silence" about their Mother in Heaven.


Our Mother in Heaven is not off limits, she is an important part of Later-day Saint doctrine and worship and it is proper and fitting that we should talk about her. I think that if there is any "danger" in talking about our Mother in Heaven it is temptation to speculate about her things that have not been revealed. We have been counseled not to pray to Her because we must follow the guidelines that God has laid out, and which Christ modeled, for proper worship. Nowhere in the scriptures does Christ, or anyone else, pray to our Mother in Heaven and so neither do we. In fact, the scriptures are abundantly abundant of examples of individuals and societies that have fallen into wickedness and destruction through the practice of idolatry-- which almost always included advanced forms of goddess worship.So while we are not separated or forbidden from knowing our Mother in Heaven we do need to make sure we are worshiping in the proper way that God has specified. Personally I wish that we knew more about her (and I am sure one day we will) but in the mean time we should not speculate on things that have not been revealed.

The wonderful thing about this paper is that the authors compile a beautiful list of everything that we do know about her. Happily, it was much more than I thought! They said,


In this paper we have briefly shown that historically there has been substantial discussion and elaboration on the roles and divinity of our Heavenly Mother, challenging academics’ claims that general authorities and other church leaders have limited Heavenly Mother’s role to reproduction. It also refutes the suspicion that they have advocated a position of sacred silence about her. We have found no record of a general authority advising us to be silent about our Heavenly Mother; indeed, as we have amply demonstrated, many general authorities have openly taught about her.

Additionally, while some have claimed that historically Heavenly Mother’s role has been marginalized or trivialized, we feel that honest consideration of the actual historical data provides a much more elevated view of Heavenly Mother. The Heavenly Mother portrayed in the teachings we examined is indeed a procreator and parent, as well as a divine person, a co-creator, a co-director of the Plan of Salvation, and a guide in both this life and the next.  Certainly, consideration of these points reinforces several important doctrines that we unquestioningly embrace, including divine embodiment, eternal families, divine relations, the deification of women, the eternal nature and value of gender, and the shared lineage of Gods and humans.  Far from degrading either the Heavenly Feminine or the earthly feminine, we feel that these teachings exalt both.  

I also especially loved this quote included in the paper by President Rudger Clawson (Quorum of the Twelve, 10 Oct. 1989 – 21 Jun. 1943) who said,

 “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mothers in our affections.”  Rather, “we honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype.”

So today as you honor and celebrate your earthly mothers don't forget to honor and celebrate your Divine Mother. She loves us, as much as our Father in Heaven does, and all mothers-- all women-- have been created in her image. That knowledge is incredible and  is definitely something worth celebrating on Mother's Day!

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Yet Another Way Affirmative Action Hurts

From Yahoo News:
Black and Latino students may be getting less critical, but helpful, feedback from teachers than their white counterparts, a new educational study indicates.

“The social implications of these results are important; many minority students might not be getting input from instructors that stimulates intellectual growth and fosters achievement,” study researcher Kent Harber, a Rutgers-Newark psychology professor, said in a press release.

This positive bias in feedback to minority students may be contributing to the achievement gap between white and minority students, a stubborn national problem, Harber said.

The study “tested” 113 white middle-school and high-school teachers in two public school districts, one middle class and white, and the other working class and racially mixed. Both are located in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area.

Harber and colleagues developed a poorly written essay that they gave to the teachers to grade, under the pretense that it was the work of a student. In some cases, the teachers believed the student was white, in others black and in others Latino.

The teachers believed their feedback would go directly to the student.

The researchers found that, indeed, the teachers were prone to give more praise and less criticism if they believed a minority student had written the paper, as opposed to a white student.

The researchers also considered the support the teacher received from colleagues and administration. This turned out to be an important factor if the teachers believed the student was black, with only teachers who lacked support showing the bias. However, when teachers thought the student was Latino, they showed the bias toward positive feedback regardless.

“These results indicate that the positive feedback bias may contribute to the insufficient challenge that undermines minority students’ academic achievement,” the researchers conclude.

The study appeared online April 30 in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Of course, the teachers may believe that minority students have had a tougher time in life, and that a poor essay represents a reasonable effort for them. But this pervasive belief that minority students are not “up to” the intellectual demands that white students can handle has more bad consequences than we can count.

Lefties: Then and Now

From Tom McMahon’s Four Block World.

Saturday 5 May 2012

Shouting Down a Speaker: Left Wing Fascism at the University of New Mexico



You can read an account of the event here.

The interesting thing here is that audience members, clearly sympathetic to the speaker, rushed the demonstrators and forced them out of the hall. Were they justified in doing that?

In this instance, yes.

Either you have the rule of law, or you have the state of nature. Had cops been present to quell the disruption and arrest the disruptors, then audience members would have been obligated to stand by and let the cops do their job. But no cops (apparently) were present.

In a state of nature, people have a right to use force if necessary to protect their rights. It is important that they not use more force than necessary, and in this case all that happened was that the disruptors were pushed or shoved out of the room, and there was a minor scrap over the page of slogans one demonstrator held.

Universities ought to maintain the rule of law. But often they do not, especially when the lawless are on the political left. That’s why we would like to see more cases where the audience uses the force necessary to eject people who have assaulted free speech.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Local Commentary: This is a women's issue, a global issue

Here is another beautifully written commentary by the BBRN's current president, Jennifer Stover.  The original published version can be found on the New Time's website: Click here
Midwifery and a women's right to choose her care provider during pregnancy and beyond is being threatened every day in California.  Please read on...

This is a women's issue, a global issue

How has a midwife impacted your life?

BY JENNIFER STOVER

In many cultures around the world, midwives are revered members of the community. Working
 
autonomously, they are respected as important health care practitioners. Sadly, this is not the case in the United States. As the male-dominated medical profession rose in power, it systematically stamped out women being cared for by women. First they didn’t allow women access to medical schools, and then came a propaganda campaign slandering midwives and the profession—essentially wiping midwifery care off the United States map.
What they failed to realize is that women will always gravitate toward women during the intensity of the birth process. At this vulnerable time, they yearn for an intangible quality of caring that a woman provides. This is true all around the world. Also, they hadn’t understood that women are called to midwifery in much the same way as a religious calling. Hearing the call, they began to serve the rural and urban poor in inner-city slums and the mountains of Kentucky. Some of these women went to nursing school and began the Association of Certified Nurse Midwives. In order to practice legally, they gave up their autonomy and agreed to practice under the supervision of doctors. SLO’s first Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) began practicing in the early ’80s at General Hospital: Rhea Liama, Marilyn Rice, Rosanna Meyers, and Pennie Hall. At times, they caught as many as 100 babies a month!
Hearing the call, they began to support birthing women in their hippie communes or faith-based communities, risking imprisonment. In our community, some of these early rebels were Marianne Doshi, Cynthia Muther, Toni Torrey, Surja Johnson, Fawn Gilbride, and Harvest Steadman. Some of the women who heard the call spearheaded the political fight to legalize direct entry midwives or non-nurse midwives. Los Osos resident Sue O’Connor was chairwoman of the California Association of Midwives during this struggle. Finally, in 1993, the California Association of Midwives got legislation passed in California, which created a path to legalization. In 1996, a SLO County midwife, Brenda Ramler, was in the first group of women to sit for the exam and became the eighth woman licensed to practice midwifery in the state of California. These legal midwives are still fighting. They are fighting to receive reimbursement for their services from the insurance industry for their clients. Many are unable to purchase the life-saving tools of their trade, such as sutures, anti-hemorrhagic medication, or antibiotics. They can’t order life-saving tests such as blood work or prenatal ultra sounds. Because of malpractice fears, most doctors are unwilling to be connected in any professional way with them, and yet the regulations call for doctor “supervision.” Recently, Edana Hall of Holistic Midwifery Care traveled to Sacramento to attend a California Medical Board Interested Parties Workshop where all of these issues were discussed. And so the fight for recognition and autonomy goes on.
This is a women’s issue. This is a trade infringement issue. This is an individual’s rights issue. This is an American issue, the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. This is a world health issue. The World Health Organization’s Millennium Development Goals call for 350,000 more midwives worldwide as an essential part of the solution to lowering the infant and maternal mortality rate around the globe.
Since 1991, from the Sudan to Switzerland, Haiti to Afghanistan, May 5 has been celebrated as the International Day of the Midwife. Now, for the first time in San Luis Obispo history, we will celebrate this important day. The international theme for 2012’s celebration is Midwives Save Lives. In this spirit, the Birth & Baby Resource Network has united with these providers of healthy births: Community Health Centers, French Family Birthing Center, Sierra Vista Birth Center, and General Hospital and Family Care Clinics Charitable Foundation. The goal is to create a real and virtual interactive midwifery project highlighting the midwives of our community, past and present.
Did you know that more than 40 midwives have served the women and families of this county? The midwives will gather during the Birth and Baby Fair in Mission Plaza’s amphitheater at 10:30 a.m. on May 5, where we will pay them the respect they have earned for 40 years of quality care. At the Birth and Baby Resource Network’s midwifery booth, families can register their babies’ names for the Midwifery Tree art installation, write thank-you cards, or have photos taken with their midwives. They can learn about the history of midwifery, and the skills the modern midwife has for guiding moms and babies safely through pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period—or participate in an oral history project answering the question, “How has a midwife impacted your life?” The Midwifery Tree will continue to grow throughout the day with each baby in this county born into the hands of a midwife being represented by a leaf on the tree. To get started, go to bbrn.org.

The Tolerant, Compassionate Left: Facebook Death Threat Against Vicki McKenna

Here is the story about it, and below is the screen capture of a nasty threat made against conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna.

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Gratitude For Our Sponsorship


We are very pleased to announce that we have received a very generous contribution from the General Hospital & Family Care Clinics Charitable Foundation for the Midwifery Project!

On Tuesday night, members from the Foundation met with BBRN president, Jennifer Stover, and other BBRN members, to present us with a check.  This extremely appreciated donation is making our project possible, and we are sending a huge wave of gratitude!



Did you know when General Hospital closed people in the community tried to start our county's first free standing birth center? General Hospital had a long history of being a leader in moving our hospitals toward a more family centered approach to birth and postpartum. This hospital was the first in the county to allow certified nurse midwives to catch babies. The nurses and midwives who worked at General Hospital spear headed hospital water birth, the breastfeeding warm line, babies rooming in, fathers staying after the birth, and baby friendly certification. The Foundation didn't want to see these family centered practices lost to the community. They knew quality maternity care doesn't come from nice wall paper or fancy wall photos but from the quality of caring shown by the people who work with women and their babies. To be chosen to carry on this message is humbling.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Dress Dare

A year ago one of my blogging friends  posted that she was doing the "Dress Dare" hosted by the young Catholic women who blog at "Defining Beauty". Here is the details of their dare.

Here we go!

The Official Rules are:

Wear dresses and skirts throughout the month of May.

Exceptions:  Snoozing {zzz} and Exercising.

Honor Mary, grow closer to Jesus.

Be beautiful--- be YOU!

My first reaction to the dare was NO WAY HOSEA!

I couldn't fathom how anyone could wear a dress every day, for a whole month. It seemed a little crazy to me and not a bit of fun.  I found myself thinking, "Come on this is the 21st century! Didn't our great-grandmothers fight so that we wouldn't have to wear dresses? Why would you revert back?" 

Then after Abe was born I found myself wearing lots of skirts (because none of my pants fit) and much to my surprise I discovered that I really loved wearing skirts. They made me feel different-- in a good way-- and now, even though my pants fit again, I find I am still wearing skhrts more than I used to.

In the last few months I have been thinking about this scripture in Deuteronomy 22:5, in which Moses gives instructions to the children of Israel.
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.

I don't really understand  the whole context of why or where this counsel was given, but I am intrigued by the fact that it was given. I not even sure if the counsel is talking about dresses or not because people dressed differently back then. Yet I have been impressed that this was something a prophet of God felt compelled to counsel his people about. And obviously even back in Moses time it appears there was some cross dressing going on! I'd like to understand if there is something more to this scripture that I don't understand.

Is there spiritual significance in having men and women dress differently?

What are the consequences when men and women begin to dress the same, or to switch traditional clothing?

Have women lost something, something I can't even put my finger on, because we don't wear dresses any more?   

These are questions I'd like better answers to.

So this May I am going to take the Dress Dare and wear a skirt every day this month (except for today because I forgot that it was May 1st and I am wearing jeans, oops:) only making exceptions for sleeping and sports.

It is sort of an experiment.

First, I want to see if I can actually do it and second, I hope to figure out a little bit more about what that scripture in Deuteronomy means to me and try to find answers to my questions.

Besides, every time I wear a dress Rose tells me I am " pretty princess"-- so I'll have some good moral support

Anyone else up for the challenge?