Entries from April 2008 ↓

Justin and I begin to talk about the Strategic Defense Initiative and the impact that policy had in the past.Star Wars? How did we start talking about this? from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

We’ve known about FOX news for a long time… their conservative slant and their guise of being “fair and balanced”. Many people have exposed this over the years as a counter-argument to the idea that the media is liberal.
Never before (to my knowledge) though, have military analysts been suspect in the same way… and not just on FOX. Senior military guys who get paid as “analysts” from all the major news networks and given high level access to the pentagon are lying to the American public to keep their jobs and their access… and that’s the plan by the administration!
Here is an excerpt from a NY Times article… and though you can claim that the NY Times is liberal, you can’t say they don’t have high journalistic standards of accuracy and fairness…

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

To me, this is an outrage piled upon us by the administration that has forced a dumb war down our throats and then lied to us about it OVER and OVER in seemingly every way possible.

I guess the only thing we can do about it is elect a new administration that will run the Pentagon differently!

Is Love a Choice?

I recently told someone that love is a choice.  C.S. Lewis was asked by a friend once, “Is it easy to love God?”  He responded, “It is easy to those who do it.”  This response, by one of the greatest layman apologists of all time, illustrates the personal choice of love in our relationship to God.  If we choose to love God, then the act of loving God becomes easy.  If this is true of our love for God, surely it is true of our love for others.  Yet, the Doctrine of Election has led me to reevaluate this underlying assumption. Why is it that love is sometimes easy and sometimes really, really hard?  Is this fact a reflection on the heart of an individual or could it be that love is not just a choice but also something else?  Could there be some hidden duality in love that transcends our comprehension? Asking this question made me think about our conceptions of love and how much control we really have over it.  In the end, my exploration of this concept led me full circle.

In today’s world the meaning of love has in many ways lost its value.  Its definition changes depending on the person you ask.  Couples debate the difference between loving each other and “being in love” implying that one has a higher meaning.  We use phrases like, “I loved that movie” or “I love ice cream” when really we mean that we have a fondness for a particular thing.  We confuse love with infatuation, which, similar to love, can cause blindness.  As a result, the verb and noun forms of love have increasingly been used to describe reactions rather than decisions.  I believe this is true in many dating relationships today – it describes a reaction TO a person rather than a decision FOR a person.  I believe that the purest definition of love is the act of putting the other person’s happiness ahead of your own.  To do this, the person must be prepared to sacrifice his or her own happiness, and in that sacrifice, find true happiness.  I believe that this is something one must consciously choose to do.  The decision to love is the hardest part of love.  But once the decision is made, as the Lewis quote exposes, the decision becomes easy and even effortless.  Therefore, I believe that not loving someone is also a choice and sometimes the easiest thing to do in order to preserve our individuality and sense of purpose and not sacrifice our own happiness.

What I have struggled with recently is the notion that choosing not to love someone is an inherently selfish choice.  Timothy Keller says, “A love relationship limits your personal options…Human beings are most free and alive in relationships of love.  We only become ourselves in love, and yet healthy love relationships involve mutual, unselfish service, a mutual loss of independence.”  Therefore, choosing to not love allows someone to remain independent and continue pursuing his or her own individual way.  Keller goes on to say, “It can’t be just one way.  Both sides must say to the other, ‘I will adjust to you.  I will change for you.  I’ll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me.’  If only one party does all the sacrificing and giving, and the other does all the ordering and taking, the relationship will be exploitative and will oppress and distort the lives of both people.”

Today’s young generation is on average getting married much later in life than when their parents were married.  I believe one of the reasons for this trend is the desire of many to remain independent for a longer period before they sacrifice their independence for a marriage.  If love means losing independence (and not at the same time becoming “most free and alive” as Keller notes), then the choice to not love, or resist love, is the easier choice.  Sacrifice and less independence go against the individualism prevalent in today’s thinking.  But, as we know from our love for Christ and His love for us, through love (and through the restrictions of love), we are set free.  Unfortunately, many lose sight of the freedom that is gained in the love of a marriage.  Instead of new dreams being dreamt, new possibilities being created, and new adventures being realized, there is a view that one has to sacrifice his or her identity and self-proclaimed purpose in life in order to make a marriage successful. How is this view not inherently selfish?  Are not two greater than one?  And three greater than two?  A person’s identity and purpose in life can be made complete and more fully realized in a marriage!  Both parties can have their cake and eat it too!!  But, the common view is that marriage is more like a prison or a compromise, with too many restrictions, rather  than the human relational representation of Christ’s sacrificial and freeing love for us.

Keller later quotes C.S. Lewis, “Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.”  C.S. Lewis, in this quote, touches upon an interesting concept.  Could the very act of choosing not to love make it increasingly difficult to choose love in the future?  If someone has never risked a broken heart, how can they then expect to be truly selfless to another human being in this life?  Doesn’t selflessness require risk and sacrifice?  Does risk aversion to love, with little to no experience with self-sacrifice, lead to systemic and ingrained selfishness?

This sounds like a judgment, yes.  It is not meant to be.  Rather, it is my thought process that leads me to my next point.  Perhaps love is not just a choice, as I believe, and not just an unavoidable reaction or occurrence as much of our secular culture believes.  While the view that love is purely a choice puts all the responsibility of love on the individual, the view that love is something that “just happens” removes all responsibility.  Both of these views are perhaps incomplete.  Instead, love could be at the same time a choice AND an unavoidable occurrence.  In this way, the concept of love takes on the similar characteristic as the Doctrine of Election; you can have free will and election at the same time.  Thus, those who helplessly “fall in love” and those who choose love are both correct.  Right?

But this view also leaves something to be desired.  Doesn’t this duality make it easy to justify our love experiences from the standpoint of an unavoidable occurrence?  If love is in any way an unavoidable occurrence, don’t we also have a choice in how to respond to that occurrence?  If we helplessly “fall in love” with someone, isn’t that love only realized through the personal choice to act on that love?  Choice implies accountability, consequence, and risk, and therefore can be repugnant to modern audiences.  Those who divorce often justify their decisions by pointing to the unavoidable occurrence of “falling out of love”.  This is a choice to a perceived unavoidable occurrence.  The same phenomenon can occur at the beginning of a relationship as well.  Regardless of how love is analyzed, as purely a matter of choice, as purely a matter of unavoidable occurrence, or both, the need to choose, and act on that choice, is always present.  Therefore, I am led to conclude that love is still primarily a choice over and beyond an unavoidable occurrence.  Love can be easy, as in the case with family members, or it can be hard, as in the case with a stranger or enemy.  But I believe that the ability and proficiency to choose love is realized only through the practice of exercising that choice…regardless of the relationship.  This brings us back to the other insightful aspect of Lewis’s initial quote: “It is easy to those who do it.”  Love only becomes easy for those who choose to enter in.

I’m glad that SOMEBODY made this journey with a camera to let us in on this amazing place! It’s called makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro.

Did I mention dangerous? Un, yeah, just a little…

You must listen to this speech. Press play and sit back and listen to every word. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks against Vietnam and with the eloquence, spiritual depth and gravitas of Barack Obama. In fact, MLK is impossible to top, but I can see where Obama gets it. Inspiration. You can’t buy it, make it, or fake it. You either have the ability to inspire people, as Dr. King did so famously (and you see why after you listen to this speech), or you don’t.

I think this is what this country needs right now. To hear this message, to be inspired and LED by someone. That hasn’t happened since Bush did it on 9/11… Seems like a long time ago now, right? We’re stumbling as a country right now… on many fronts like the dollar, the environment, the economy and health care. We need someone that can rally the entire country around a common cause. Like FDR, like JFK, like MLK, and like BHO.

And you know what? Jeremiah Wright, like it or not, is smack dab in the middle of this tradition that Obama finds himself a part of. Listen to this speech and you won’t easily forget that King and Wright are both men of god. Black leaders who perfect their craft from the pulpit, sometimes by angrily challenging the establishment. Obama presumably never gave a sermon, and I’ve never seen him angry, but he was heavily influenced by his church in Chicago and the black experience it represented. He kept his eyes and mind open to the many cultures, people, and governments that crossed his wavy life path.

I think Senator Obama will continue to keep an open mind (with those big ears), and that, my friends, is what will make him a great president.

… and when you’re done with that one, watch this Jan 21st speech Obama gave at Dr. King’s Church in my hometown… Atlanta!

Y’know when you’re mad at nothing in particular except injustice? There’s big injustices in this world all around us and we care about them… but it’s the little injustices that happen right in front of our eyes that make the biggest impact.

Take, for example, my recent visit to Target. 2 or 3 weeks ago I went to Target and bought lots of stuff including a long-awaited iron skillet. I bought the better, bigger, enameled one so my girlfriend could cook those chickens she wanted. Great, so I take it home and before I even take it out of the packaging I notice the upgrade: the enamel was badly cracked under the handle. No problem, I thought, I’ll just exchange it next time I go… well 2 weeks later it was beginning to annoy me in the back seat so I make a special trip to Target.

2 problems occurred: first, I didn’t have my receipt. I know that helps but I’ve really never had a problem with an unopened unused exchange without a receipt in any store I’ve ever been in. That wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d only used a credit card, then they could find the transaction in their enormous database of transactions. But I chose to pay cash. That still is legal, right?

So with no receipt and having paid cash, I wait in line for customer service and nicely explain that all I want is another skillet that isn’t defective. I don’t need a refund so why is this a problem? Something about their “system” and their “policies” and a $20 limit for items paid for with cash. (mine was $27) Somehow explaining to them that I only wanted an EXCHANGE didn’t help. They stuck to their buerocratic guns and so did the manager.

Now, this injustice really isn’t going to harm me too much. I’ll just live with a chipped and damaged skillet for the rest of its’ (very long) life. No huge deal, the food will taste the same. The problem is that the taste in my mouth for Target has soured badly. And not because they won’t make an exception for me… but because that is their policy and no one seems to be able to balance “policy” and “customer service”. I was going to spend at least $100 today in there! I never leave that store for less than that and I didn’t feel like shopping after having been shot down over something so, yes, stupid. I’m a little ashamed complaining about it but it’s not the skillet that I’m really concerned with. I already can’t shop at Wal-Mart, where am I supposed to get my cheap Chinese stuff? I liked Target because they seemed different. Now, sadly, at least to this lone shopper, they don’t.

Oh yeah, Wal-Mart is still worse… but now Taerget is just the lesser Evil.

justin

PS: I’m not exactly sure this fits into the political debates of this blog, but I’m sure the connection is there!

It’s the draft, stupid. We have a volunteer military (of which my Skull Session partner was in!) who is bearing a tremendously disproportionate share of the burden in this war. The taxpayers have not (yet) been asked to pay the $3 billion/week tab, soldier caskets are prohibited by the white house and not one leader of this country including the members of congress, have asked the american public to do ANYTHING differently with our lives! It’s no wonder we’ve “tuned it out”, as Frank Rich puts it…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13rich.html

My feeling about this war hasn’t with the recent slowdown in violence. It is unpopular because it is misguided, even stupid, and the majority of the country has other things to worry about, like how they’re going to pay for their house or find a job… but if there was a draft… whoh boy baby you’d have a popular uprising even more fierce than in the 60’s. You’d see people finally voting their interests and standing up to speak out against the futility in injecting a western democracy into a complicated Muslim nation. Oh man, I’m done. Just the thought of it makes me all tingly inside… and that tingle ends abruptly when I think about a draft…

Can’t we find a better way out of that Mess-o-potamia?
justin

Many divisive issues in today’s world lack a nuanced approach in debate.  All too often, these issues are deliberately debated in black and white despite the inherent complexities and subtleties involved.  Take, for example, the global climate change debate.  On the right is the not-entirely unfounded fear that vast worldwide regulations to curtail global carbon dioxide emissions will create a decrease in the global standard of living by increasing unemployment and preventing developing countries from rising out of poverty.  On the left is the not-entirely unfounded fear that drastic changes today are necessary to prevent ecological catastrophe in the coming decades.  To the extremes on both sides, the environmentalist movement is seen as the safe haven for disillusioned socialists who need a front from which to operate and attack their old enemy, capitalism, or more appropriately, an ever increasing standard of living.  To the moderates on both sides, alternate energy planning seems like common sense approaches to curtailing an hypothesized human influence on global climate change.  

On both sides, there is a distinct lack of willingness to engage in debates on the science involved in the global climate change hypothesis.  Global warming alarmists resist academic responses to the accumulated climate data from geologists and ecologists that point to cyclical climate change as normal and inevitable.  Global warming deniers resist facing the data of computer models that consistently point to higher future temperatures.  

There is also a distinct lack of understanding of the implications of recent changes in more efficient living.  For example, some alternative energy “solutions”, like hydrogen fuel cells use more energy per unit in the long run than dinosaur juice.  Hybrid cars use several hundred pound batteries to augment the propulsion requirements and save in fuel efficiency.  As hybrid cars continue to increase on our roads, what are we to do with all these several hundred pound batteries as they reach the ends of their lives?  Advocates of alternative energy often champion other methods of energy accumulation like wind, solar, and water power.  Yet building damns, solar panels, and windmills require what?  Oil.  A lot of oil to come anywhere close to recouping the energy cost of development.  Additionally, as my friend in law school recently articulated, the water damns in the pacific northwest are coming under attack because of a changing ecology that affects the migration (and survival) of salmon.  Increases in nuclear power increases our need to dispose of spent fuel rods - another implication.  When farmers grow more corn than wheat in order to meet the perceived demand for bio-fuel, the prices of basic food goes up further exacerbating the challenge to poor people of buying food.  

The point is that any decision on energy policy will carry with it implications and journalists need to do a better job of discussing these implications with their audiences.  It seems all too easy, and common, to overlook these implications in favor of the black and white non-nuanced views of the opposing political philosophies.  As a result, it is easy to see that the public will be set up for a surprise when many of these implications begin to materialize.  If we are to have sound energy policy, we need to discuss these nuances in our dialogue.  We need to educate the American public and the global public of what implications will materialize with certain energy policy decisions.  The only recent article that I’ve seen that presents a fairly balanced look at energy development is this op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal.  Hopefully, more journalists and policy makers will articulate the subtleties and complexities of this important debate.