2007 June archive at Zeal For Truth

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Archive for June, 2007

Should High Schoolers have Free-Speech Rights?

Published by Thainamu June 29, 2007 in General. 29 Comments

Why did the issue of a HS student showing off for the TV cameras make it all the way to the Supreme court? And why was the margin of defeat for this case so small?

Yes, students should have some rights, but speech advocating drug use, speech mouthing off to their teachers, and abusive language of all sorts should NOT be protected speech in any public high school. For that matter, “good” speech at the wrong time shouldn’t be permitted either. Who runs these places, anyway?

I’m with Justice Thomas on this one: “In light of the history of American public education,” Justice Thomas said, “it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment ‘freedom of speech’ encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools.”

I’m a bit more sympathetic with the high schooler in England who has gone to court because she wouldn’t remove her purity ring. I see the school’s point that the ring is not a part of dress code, but it does appear to have religious significance, and religious symbols are allowed to be worn with the school uniform. One big difference I see in these two cases involving the rights of teenagers is that in the former case the freedom is generally disruptive to a learning environment while the latter isn’t. Schools have a purpose, and that purpose isn’t so students can exercise their constitutional rights. It is so they can learn.

The Power to Pardon

Published by Kenneth Martens June 28, 2007 in General and Politics. 9 Comments

A curious part of modern justice systems is the power to pardon. In America, the government is divided into three separate branches: judicial, legislative, and executive. You might expect that pardons, being related to justice, would come from the judicial branch. Not so. The power to pardon rests in the executive branch, and specifically, solely in the President. State governments give similar power to governors, with similarly few restrictions. The American system is descended from the British tradition in which the power to pardon was held only by the king.

Daniel T. Kobil has a written an article called “The Quality of Mercy Strained: Wresting the Pardoning Power from the King.” [ Link to the article ] He argues that the power to pardon is too open to abuse. The executive’s power should be limited. I summarize his article below.

Kobil classifies pardons into two broad categories.

Justice-enhancing
Justice-neutral

Justice-enhancing

A justice-enhancing pardon seeks to remedy a defect in the administration of justice. A President may erase a wrongful conviction, or commute a disproportionately harsh sentence. Traditionally, Presidents and governors have made little use of justice-enhancing pardons, partly owing to fear of the political fallout. Kobil mentions California Governor Edmund Brown, who declined to commute the death sentence of Richard Lindsey because “a legislator with the swing vote on an important piece of legislation for migrant workers was strongly in favor of the execution and would withhold his support if Brown granted clemency.” In 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned three anarchists who had been wrongfully convicted of a bombing. “Not surprisingly, he was not reelected to a second term as governor.”

Justice-neutral

A justice-neutral pardon is one that serves the public good, but not necessarily justice. For example, President Washington issued an unconditional pardon after the Whiskey Rebellion. President Johnson offered pardons after the Civil War. Carter pardoned Vietnam draft dodgers. None of these serve to fix any defects in the justice system. They are at odds with justice. Presidents issue such pardons when they believe the result will be better for the public than the strict adherence to justice and the rule of law.

The Problem

The power to pardon is intended to enhance justice, but in reality it rarely works that way. Kobil shows that presidents don’t issue many pardons. Even a deserving person is unlikely to receive a pardon. The political fallout is too great. No politician can afford to risk his public support. The few pardons that do get issued are politically motivated:

As Edward Hammock, the former chairman of the New York State Board of Parole, which reviews clemency applications for the governor, notes: “[W]ith the governor, it’s not the individual case he’s looking at. He picks a few from that pool of eligible individuals on the basis of a political statement he wants to make.“

The Solution

Kobil proposes dividing the power to pardon into two parts.

The clemency process should be bifurcated. While the executive alone would remain responsible for making occasional justice-neutral clemency decisions, justice-enhancing clemency decisions would be made by a professional board that is independent of the political pressures which inevitably distort the decisions of elected officials. Such a board could, like the federal judiciary, be appointed during good behavior, and be selected based on expertise in various areas relevant to assessing the fairness of the punishment imposed.

In other words, the President only gets the power to issue justice-neutral pardons. Justice-enhancing pardons would be handled by a non-political board, which could issue pardons to those who deserve them. Kobil proposes that the board should examine pardon applications and issue pardons when any of the following conditions are met:

Substantial Doubt of Guilt
Diminished Mental Capacity, Retardation, Intoxication, or Minority
Disparate Sentencing: Proportionality - For example, “it is fundamentally unfair to sentence one offender to death, while another offender judged to be equally culpable receives a lesser sentence.”
Disparate Sentencing: Special Circumstances - “A reason for granting clemency based on disparate sentencing exists when a sentence is disproportionate in light of the offender’s age or terminal illness. A seventeen-year-old murderer and a ninety-year-old murderer are not affected in the same way by the passage of time: life imprisonment would result in differing degrees of disadvantage for each. Similarly, a five-year sentence given to an offender in the waning stages of a battle with AIDS amounts to life imprisonment.”
Sentencing That is Unrelated to Deserts - “Clemency also is properly granted where there is a substantial likelihood that the sentence was based on factors such as the race or gender of the criminal or victim, rather than on the punishment the individual deserved.”
Crimes Committed out of Necessity, Coercion, or Adherence to Moral Principles - The punishment should fit the circumstances of the crime. “A mother who steals to feed and clothe her children is not as morally blameworthy as one who steals to buy a new television.”
Crimes in Which the Offender Has Suffered Enough - “If an offender who assaulted someone was blinded as a result of injuries received in the fight, and the damage can be said to fairly approximate what she deserved for her crime, further punishment would be excessive and should be remitted.”

The President retains the power to issue justice-neutral pardons. Kobil suggests further that the President be required to give his reasons for issuing a pardon. Each presidential pardon will be immediately forwarded to Congress, which may veto it by a supermajority vote.

Kobil’s suggestion would likely require a Constitutional amendment, so it is unlikely to be implemented. If it were, it would prevent abuses such as President Clinton’s decision to issue hundreds of last-minute pardons as he left office. Under Kobil’s system, those pardons would be reviewed by Congress before becoming effective. The system would have a check against a rogue President. No such check exists today.

Show me the Law (Before I Show you the Money)

Published by Colin June 27, 2007 in General. 11 Comments

Ed and Elaine Brown have been making international news by doing nothing. They hang out at their New Hampshire home, have friends over to visit and don’t bother anyone. Their property is completely self-sufficient - they take no energy from any of their neighbors. But doing nothing includes not paying federal income taxes.

The Browns have argued that there is no law stating that they must pay incomes taxes. According to them, they will gladly fork over the taxes on their $1.9 million of unreported income upon being shown the law. “The bottom line is: Show us the law, we will pay what you ask,” declared Brown last week.

The most obvious counter-argument is the 16th amendment: “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

There has been a lot of recent revisionism taking a look at how that amendment was ratified, including Aaron Russo’s Freedom To Fascism - an overall poorly produced, but still informative documentary. Historians interviewed by the Boston Globe note that the Brown’s claims have no validity.

I think that the best interpretation of this story has come from Ron Paul - who agrees that the law is the law, but that it is a bad law. He argued yesterday on FOX News that while the Browns are wrong about their interpretation of the law (or lack thereof) - they are engaging in legitimate civil disobedience - and that should not be condemned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZnzGredcIs

The pragmatic reality is - I don’t like paying taxes - no one does. The IRS should be abolished and the 16th amendment repealed. However, there are legal channels through which to accomplish those goals. Not paying one’s taxes is a legitimate protest (not for Christians mind – see Romans 13:6-7), but there should come with that an expectation that the government will be cracking down.

D.C. Voucher Program Results Impressive

Published by Sadie June 26, 2007 in General. 21 Comments

As an elementary school teacher in the public education system, I am required to join the local (OEA) and national (NEA) teacher unions. Recently, the NEA celibrated “150 years in education,” and all of their “accomplishments” as a union and how far the United States has come in the past century in terms of educating children. Quite frankly, I was dumbfounded. Recent history alone has shown that Americans are increasingly appalled at the state of education in our country. So much so, that President George Bush ran on an education platform in the 2000 election and won the presidency promising to enact the “No Child Left Behind” legislation.

Since that legislation, debate has raged in favor of improving public education through federal law or de-federalizing education to a certain extent through the use of vouchers and other school choice options. It is fair to say that parents are often unhappy with the level of education their children are recieving in the public education system.

Recently a trial voucher program was piloted in the District of Columbia in Washington D.C. The Washington Post reports that this voucher program provides $ 7,500 vouchers (about half the average public expediture per student in the D.C. area) to 1,800 K-12 students who live in the D.C. area and come from low income families to transfer to private schools and escape the troubled D.C. public schools. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Educational Sciences was released recently. The report studied five key outcomes of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: school differences; academic achievement; parental perceptions of school satisfaction and safety; student reports of school satisfaction and safety; and the impact of using a scholarship.

Key findings of the report include:

After one year, there was no clear evidence of a statistically significant difference in test scores between students who were offered a scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship, over the seven month school year.

Overall, students who were offered the scholarship were performing in math and reading at levels comparable to students not offered a scholarship;

The study’s results showed a positive impact on math achievement for two subgroups of students: students who had not previously attended a D.C. public school classified as in need of improvement and students with relatively higher baseline test scores.

The Program had a substantial and consistently positive impact on parental satisfaction and their perceptions of school safety.

Of the parents whose child received a scholarship, 74% gave their child’s school a grade of “A” or “B” compared to 55% of parents whose children did not receive scholarships.

It would seem then, looking at these facts, that the voucher program was sucessful in its first year because students maintained reading scores, gained in math scores, met parental expectations, and managed to do this in a period of seven months. Remember, this was done with approximately half the funds that would have been spent of these students in the same year in public schools.

Others, such as Washington Post reporters Amit R. Paley and Theola Lab disagree, their article cites voucher programs as being irrelevant and goes so far as to suggest that vouchers programs have recieved a failing grade.

Faith Problems, 1

Published by cchrisr June 26, 2007 in Religion. 0 Comments

It seems that the word “faith” is used in many ways today. Some use it to refer to religious tradition in general. Others use it to refer to some kind of mystic spirituality. Neither of those really explain what it is. Kierkegaard thinks of faith as “infinitely and personally and passionately interested on behalf of his own eternal happiness for his relationship to this truth” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 23). For Kierkegaard, it is faith and only faith that allows inspiration to arise. What can we define as this kind of faith? I believe we, like Kierkegaard, can find this answer in the character of Abraham.

The story of Abraham can be lengthy, but Kierkegaard hones in on one in particular: God’s test at Mount Moriah. God tells Abraham to take his son (Isaac for Jews and Christians, Ishmael for Muslims), go to a mountain, and sacrifice him. In his Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard looks at some of the different aspects of the story: could this be a suspension of human ethics? Kierkegaard defines the ethical as the universal law of conduct. If this is the case, then faith is the paradox “that the particular is higher than the universal” (Fear and Trembling, 46). Because of this, one cannot see Abraham as a tragic hero because in the end, the ethical wins. The tragic hero remains in the ethical. Tragic heroes may perform the actions like Abraham had to (e.g. Agamemnon, Brutus), but they remain situated in their duty to the universal. The tragic hero does not perform from a duty to something higher than the universal. We are left with two choices before the end of Abraham’s story: “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all mediation” (F&T, 56).

Abraham was a knight of faith, not a tragic hero. One can become the latter by one’s own power and many can give that one counsel. No one can understand the knight of faith because faith is, ultimately, a miracle. Faith is not a tragedy.

The Fracturing Of The Reformed Faith

Published by Bryan June 25, 2007 in Religion. 3 Comments

Although I’ll be focusing on the Reformed Faith in this entry I am doing so only becasue I’m more familiar with it then most other Christian traditions. I presume that many of the situations that I speak about here can be seen in other traditions as well. I know it will apply to Baptists, of which there is a baptists denomination for every minor belief, and likely to a lesser extent in many of the more traditional traditions.

Last week a link was posted on this blog by another to an address by Steve Schilissel about what he viewed, in 1988, as wrong with the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). To be very, very, brief in his eyes the denomination has become to liberal and left behind it’s roots. To quote from his conclusion:

Our confessions should form the basis of who is allowed to stay in and who must go out. Scripture is unchanging in its character precisely because its author is unchanging. Here we must stand. But I am afraid that the Christian Reformed Church has contracted Ecclesiastical Aids. We seem not to have the will to fight those microbes that are invading the body. Be they ever so insidious, calculating, dishonest, arrogant or destructive, above all, we want comfort. We do not want the truth; we want to be polite. We are polite-ing ourselves to death. Along with a loss of the will to fight, many have lost the will to live. Where, my brothers and sisters, is your heroic Dutch blood, and why is it not boiling?

This is a common complaint in the Reformed Tradition. In and of itself I do not have much issue with it. If you have a confession that tells you what it means to be within that tradition you should work on keeping yourself inside of that tradition or remove yourself from it. Redefining a tradition every generation or so really does away with the need for traditions at all.

I do however have a problem with the way, and spirit, that the need to keep a tradition together is often applied. Not every belief that a tradition holds to is part of that tradition’s foundation. It seems that more and more there is no diversity allowed within a tradition. The area roped off for those who actually have the right traditional beliefs becomes smaller and smaller each year. This only serves to create a fracturing of denominations, and then each denomination claims to hold to the true historic tradition while the other ones have gone astray.

The Christian Reformed Church that Schlissel speaks about has had this happen to it even before he was ever a member of it. The Canadian and American Reformed Church (CanRC) split from the CRC long ago over theological differences, and it is still occurring with the more recent creation of the United Reformed Church.

When any break occurs in a Dutch Reformed Denomination (that is any denomination that follows the Three Forms of Unity(3FU)) you pretty much are saying that the denomination your breaking from is outside of the tradition becasue the 3FU requires complete adherence to it to be a member in their churches. If you don’t hold to the 3FU, your not Dutch Reformed.

This is slightly different from the Presbyterian Reformed Tradition whose confession, that is Westminster, does not require each church member to be in complete agreement with it. Yet although you would think that this would allow more room within their denominations for a range of beliefs, that has been far from the case. John Frame has an excellent essay entitled Machen’s Warrior Children where he looks at a number of controversies that have divided Presbyterian denomination. I think the most important thing that Frame says, and it applies to both the Dutch and Presbyterian traditions, as well as those in most Christian traditions, is in the recommendations that follow his essay:

“Reformed people need to do much more thinking about what constitutes a test of orthodoxy…The assumption seems to be that any difference of opinion amounts to a test of fellowship, that any truth I possess gives me the right to disrupt the peace of the church until everybody comes to agree with me. But surely there are some disagreements that are not tests of orthodoxy, some differences that should be tolerated within the church”

How are we to present our faith to the world if we spend most of our time arguing among our own traditions not to mention the Christian faith as a whole? I want to have a broad church. I still am all for having different traditions within the Christian faith becasue we will not be able to agree on everything, but those traditions should not be as quick to close their doors as they have been in the past. We all need to pick our battles more carefully and be a lot more charitable with those who disagree with us.

Women in Church Leadership: A Brief Defense of the Evangelical Egalitarian Position

Published by Jasen Tracy June 25, 2007 in Religion. 3 Comments

Given such passages as 1st Timothy 2:8-15, “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” and 1st Timothy 3 where the assumption is that candidates for the office of overseer will be men, it might seem that the complementarian position is unassailable.There are reasons to think otherwise however.

1) Passages that show examples of women exercising teaching and/or religious authority over men

Deborah - As a judge in pre-monarchical Israel she wielded considerable power, both legal and religious (Judges 4). She settled disputes, told a male leader what the will of God was, and together with Barak lead the people in a hymn of celebration (Judges 5). Some of those hymn lyrics were very flattering of Deborah. Verse 7 - “The peasantry ceased in Israel, Until I, Deborah, arose, Until I arouse, a mother in Israel.”

Some might object that Deborah’s role was allowed only because of lack of male leadership (especially on Barak’s part), but it should be noted that scripture only raises that issue concerning Deborah’s role (or more accurately, Barak’s lack of a role) as military leader, not her position as judge and prophetess. If there were anything wrong with Deborah’s role she could have judged along side her husbandLappidoth , and have him give the decisions (thus ensuring male authority). In addition, there was another judge and military leader at the same time, Shamgar, who could have assumed Deborah’s position (and especially Barak’s military role) if a male leader was strictly necessary.

Huldah - King Josiah (one of the godly kings) sent a delegation lead by the High Priest to her in order to inquire about a scripture passage (2nd Chronicles 34:14-33). Huldah provides an authoritative application of the passage to the High Priest and thus to King Josiah. If a male leader was needed for an authoritative application of scripture, contemporaries ofHuldah, such as Jeremiah and Zephaniah could have been sought.

Priscilla - Along with her husband Aquila, she helped Paul establish a church in Ephesus, making her a co-leader in evangelism and church planting (Acts 28:18-28).They also instructed the male leader Apollos “in the way of God.”The fact that Priscilla is listed before her husband in the teaching of Apollos, when she is not in some of the other passages where she and her husband are mentioned, could imply that she was more prominent in the teaching field than her husband. In any event, there’s no doubt she had some teaching authority in religious matters over a man.

Junia - Along with Andronicus is called “outstanding among the apostles.”(Romans 16:7). It’s not certain exactly what this position meant, but it’s certainly a position of some leadership. In 1st Thessalonians 2:6 - Paul calls himself and his co-workers apostles and notes that they have “been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel” and that “as apostles of Christ we might have exerted our authority.”

Phoebe - Paul (Romans 16:1) calls her “a servant” of the church of Cenchrea. Some translations render “servant” as deaconess, which might be a good translation given Phoebe’s gender. However, it’s the same word that is translated as deacon or deacons elsewhere, such as in Philippians 1. That’s a mixed signal to say the least if male leadership is required.

Women prophets - In 1st Corinthians 11rules are given for women’s dress while they are prophesying in mixed gatherings. But what is a prophet (other than one who prophecies)? It can mean someone who speaks for God, especially revealing future events. However, according to Crosswalk’s Greek Lexicon a prophet is defined as, “in the religious assemblies of the Christians, they were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak, having power to instruct, comfort, encourage, rebuke, convict, and stimulate, their hearers.” Thus, Paul here assumes a measure of authority for women.

2) Elements within the complementarian proof-texts and other passages are dismissed as cultural

Looking at 1st Timothy 2 again, it certainly seems that verses 13-15 (including the baffling statement that women will be saved through child-bearing) that the prohibition of women teaching men can be taken as a trans-cultural absolute command. However, it would also apply to verse 9’s command against braided hair. If verse 9 can be taken as applying culturally, then it’s likely verse 12 can be as well.

In 1st Corinthians 11it’s stated that “nature itself” is said to show that long hair is a disgrace for a man and that women must pray with their head covered. Paul says that “if anyone wants to be contentious about this about this, we have no other practice - nor do the churches of God.”This is condemnation in the strongest possible terms, and the reason given “nature itself” certainly does not seem to be a culturally specific reason.

So why do most not following these commands today? Perhaps a part of the reason is examples in scripture of men having long hair, such as the prophet Samuel (something he would hardly do if long hair being a disgrace was an absolute).It seems we must take the hair commands in 1st Corinthians 11 to be cultural, or we would have a contradiction in scripture.

There are other examples of passages that everyone takes to be cultural, such as the “holy kiss” passages. Is there a reason to think that the passages that limit the role of women in church leadership are such passages? There were many practical reasons to limit women in leadership. Women at the time were less educated and in some places it’s clear that the women the N.T. letters address were quarrelsome and spoke out of place. More seriously, society largely was not ready for woman leaders, and having such would have been a hindrance to the evangelistic mission of the early church.

Given the passages about women leaders in scripture, including some that exercised teaching and religious authority over men, there arises an apparent contradiction with passages such as 1st Timothy 2. Either “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” and passages that assume male leadership have to be taken as limited to situation the passage was addressing, or it has to be explained why it wasn’t wrong for women leaders in scripture to exercise the authority that they did. There is a clear cultural application for some related passages (long hair for men, head coverings for women, braided hair prohibition, etc). We also have the examples of women such asHuldah and Priscilla. The best approach then to the whole witness of scripture, is to assume that the passages limiting women’s leadership possibilities in the church are for the specific situations addressed by those passages and are not absolutes.

[They are other topics that would need to be addressed for a complete understanding of the issue, such as the effect the creation, the fall, and new creation has on leadership.They’ve been omitted for space reasons, but I can write about those some other time of anyone is actually interested].

Senate Magically Fixes All Our Energy Problems

Published by Colin June 22, 2007 in General. 5 Comments

My first reaction to legislation like this is always to laugh. If we can just raise gas mileage on cars by simply speaking such change into existence, why stop at 35 mpg? We should just mandate 70 or 150 mpg. I wanted to touch on some of the major flaws in this bill and explain very clearly why everything they claim they want to accomplish by it will only leave all of us worse off.

In an eleventh-hour compromise fashioned after two days of closed-door meetings, an agreement was reached to increase average fuel economy by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon for cars, SUVs and pickup trucks by 2020… Supporters said the new requirement would save 2.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2025, when large numbers of the more fuel-stingy cars will be on the road.

It’s not that automakers don’t want to make more fuel-efficient cars - its the fact that gas mileage isn’t the only measure of efficiency in the total package. In fact, the most important factor to both consumers and producers is cost. The optimum price, where consumer and producer interests intersect, is the most accurate measure of this overall figure. An increase in gas mileage is going to raise the cost of the vehicle significantly. It will require the use of technology improvements that have not yet been refined by market processes. Imagine if the government had mandated all computers be 486s in 1989. That would have required all the companies to scramble and throw their R&D money into that venture rather than explore some of the other, much more market relevant technology that has got us to where we are today. Every investment has a cost and a risk - shouldn’t the automakers and auto consumers, who have the most interest in efficiency here, be left alone to make the best compromise?

But the legislation provides a bonanza to farmers and the ethanol industry. It requires ethanol production to grow to at least 36 billion gallon a year by 2022, a sevenfold increase of the amount of ethanol processed last year.

My man Stossel takes down this stupidity here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9QQcP_Y1II

But the reality is that for every mandated barrel of ethanol produced, the price for basic food staples here, and much more tragically, in the third world, rises. It could be argued that this is the law of unintended consequences in action - but the consequences are so well known and demonstrated that it’s hard to assume that our politicians don’t know about it.

Price gouging provisions that make it unlawful to charge an “unconscionably excessive” price for oil products including gasoline and give the federal government new authority to investigate oil industry market manipulation.

Ah yes, just wait folks, this vote will be pulled out as the election heats up. Naturally this is more a bill about economic morality (see the precise legal term “unconscionably excessive”) than about economic law. For that aspect, see this article from the Mises institute entitled: Price Gouging Saves Lives. The reality is that if I am stuck on the Oregon Coast with 1/16th of a tank of gas and a devastating tsunami about to hit, I would like to see gas at about $75 a gallon. No lines, no shortages - I can buy enough to get me up into the coast range mountains and be safe. People will not be encouraged to buy more gas than they need and take it from everyone else. That is the beauty of the price-system - it is the most efficient and, dare I say “moral” way of distributing goods and services.

This bill completely ignores the price system and assumes that a bunch of old white men in DC, whose only specialty is getting elected, are more capable of making broad and sweeping economic decisions than the experts in the industry and the consumers themselves.

The War on Choice

Published by gurr8 June 21, 2007 in Politics and Current Events. 15 Comments

A majority of Ontarians support the idea of extending Ontario’s smoking ban (Smoke Free Ontario) to include rental apartments. That’s right, people’s private residences. I’ll pause for a moment while our Libertarian readers catch their breath. 37% of respondents opposed such a ban. This is actually good news given that only 15% of Ontarians smoke. Assuming all 15% are against such a ban, that leaves 22% of Ontario’s non-smokers out of the “self-righteous, anti-choice” category.

It is certainly easy to see the logical progression taken by the 60% of the population that would try to regulate a legal activity within private residences. They assume:

1. Second-hand smoke has been proven scientifically to cause cancer.
2. Such a ban would have no effect on them personally.
3. Those smokers should quit anyway.
4. It is acceptable for the government to make moral choices for people.

While one can certainly understand the logical progression leading to support of this ban, there is only one problem with these steps; each and every one of them is false.

The “science” behind the second-hand smoke craze is at best shaky and at worst outright deception. In fact, a massive study of 118,000 people over 40 years found no major effect associated with second-hand smoke. While the evidence continues to point to second hand smoke being virtually harmless, momentum continues to push public opinion the other way.

It is human nature to be more concerned about one’s personal interests than the freedom of others. That fact alone, however, is not sufficient to justify selfishness in our modern world. The foundation of a free society is freedom of choice. While a balance must always be struck between personal freedom and the “common good”, weight should always be given to freedom first. Charles Mingus eloquently highlighted this fact in his adaptation of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem:

One day they came and they took the Communists
And I said nothing because I was not a Communist
Then one day they came and they took the people of the Jewish faith
And I said nothing because I had no faith left
One day they came and they took the unionists
And I said nothing because I was not a unionist
One day they burned the Catholic churches
And I said nothing because I was born a Protestant
Then one day they came and they took me
And I could say nothing because I was as guilty as they were
For not speaking out and saying that all men have a right to freedom

Perhaps the proposed ban won’t affect that 60% of the population, but where do we draw the line? What happens when a majority of the population decides that you shouldn’t enjoy chocolate? Drink coffee? Eat fast food? Slug back a beer? Cook food that has an odour? Perhaps even those who support smoking bans in bars would have a different opinion if they owned a restaurant and were told they could serve only vegetarian meals and bottled water.

The Western World is running into many tough questions and choices as we try to allow personal freedom while also creating a good society for everyone. We will have many difficult choices as we tackle the problem of global climate change (which requires collective action to resolve). Abortion, spanking, gay marriage and polygamy are all issues that will continue to spark a great deal of controversy. While the answer is not always clear-cut, it should always be deliberated within the paradigm that individual freedom of choice is of paramount importance in a just and free society.

I said I was sorry!

Published by Thainamu June 20, 2007 in General. 8 Comments

I’ve just read The Five Languages of Apology by Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas. This author is more famous for his book The Five Love Languages (Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch). I’ve read both books and the Love book is a better book, but I found value in the Apology book too. I’m tempted to make fun of Christian self-help books, but apologizing isn’t particularly easy for me, so I decided to read it.

The author says there are five apology languages. His list:

Express regret – “I’m sorry.”
Accept responsibility – “I was wrong.”
Make restitution – “What can I do to make it right?”
Repent genuinely – “I’ll try not to do that again.”
Request forgiveness – “Will you please forgive me.”

While reading this book I kept thinking that maybe all five things were needed for an apology to really be absolutely complete. But the author did make a convincing point: If the person who offends me tries to apologize but fails to mention the one thing of the above five that I really want to hear, then the apology doesn’t sound sincere to me.

For instance, I’m a number 2. I don’t think someone has apologized unless they’ve actually said the words, “I was wrong” so that my sense of justice is satisfied. I don’t care if they say “I’m sorry,” just so they admit they were wrong. I don’t need for them to make it up to me, or to ask for forgiveness, because once they admit they were wrong, all is forgiven as far as I’m concerned.

My daughter, on the other hand, is a number 1. She wants the offender to feel regret, and to express regret, because her feelings have been hurt. When I need to apologize to her, it is hard enough for me to tell her “I was wrong,” but that’s not good enough unless I go on to say, “I’m sorry.”

There are two things I would add to his list. The first is something I came up with years ago when someone did something evil to one of my young children. This man tried to apologize to me, but I couldn’t accept his apology because he wouldn’t actually admit the facts of what he did, nor admit they were actually wrong. After that nasty episode in my life, I concluded that the very first step in apologizing is for the two parties to actually agree on the facts of what wrong was committed. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

The second is something I learned from a Peacemakers course I was forced to take once. It is hard to apologize when you feel like the other person is just as much at fault, or more so, than you are. Or that the other person provoked you into sinning by their initial and equally-sinful actions. In cases like that, it helps to think in terms of apologizing for your part in the conflict. That is a way to accept responsibility for the wrong you did without actually accepting responsibility for the entire conflict. Somehow, this concept has been very freeing for me. I can apologize for my portion of the problem and move on without demanding justice in the form of an apology from the other person. I’ve done my part whether or not the other person accepts responsibility for his or her part.

Apologizing is something we all have to do from time to time but most of us probably don’t find it all that easy to do. This book doesn’t deal with the issue of us getting over our pride so we are willing apologize; that would be a different book. This book gives some concrete ways to apologize so that those we’ve offended will hear and accept our apology.

The book doesn’t make as much of a point as I would between moral and non-moral things we apologize for, which is an important distinction for me. Nor does it discuss the fact that we use the words “I’m sorry” to mean “Excuse me” or “I’m sad for your loss.”

Zeal For Truth