Part-Time Pundit

Winning the Debate by Silencing the Opposition

Anyone who has taken a Constitution class in high school knows that the First Amendment protects the right of all people to express almost any idea they want in the public square (with the exceptions of inciting riots, threats of violence, etc). Yet there is one group the various pundits insist need to be silenced for the sake of our nation and that is Christians.

Recently, Lou Dobbs lamented the influence religion has on politics. He said churches “are driving that political adventurism as those leaders conflate religion and politics.” Apparently he suggests the government should do something about shutting up those damn Christians who keep expressing their points of view.

In a democratic republic such as this one, all people get an equal say in what they believe the state should be about. That includes atheists, agnostics, wiccans, Jews, Muslims and even those pesky Christians. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those groups expressing any of there views. A diverse and tolerant society requires nothing less.

The idea that the Bill of Rights, under the moniker of the Separation of Church and state, is designed to restrict citizens from petitioning their government based on some perceived ideological characteristic is absurd. We’ll skip past the fact that the First Amendment requires institutional separation, not state mandated atheism.

What Lou Dobbs, and others like him, are upset about is that they are on the losing side of issues. And what do they suggest to fix it? Convincing arguments? Helpful debates? No. They want to silence the opposition. This is un-American and the citing of “national values” to stifle free speech borders on absurd. If you can’t handle a country where all people get their say, well, I do question your patriotism.

The bold assertion that the people in the pews are separated from the people behind the pulpit is novel and interesting, considering it is coming from someone who has little grasp on what people in the pews believe or want. Apparently Dobbs things that the people in the pews are at once automatons that follow whatever their pastor says but at the same time acutely aware that their pastors “are a class unto themself.” Either they’re stupid or their not. With the amount of “church shopping” that goes on, it’s pretty clear that if the people don’t like the message, they go somewhere else.

Most importantly, what Dobbs is lamenting is that people aren’t blaming immigrants for the immigration problem. When the government of the United States and Mexico signal to their people loud and clear that they aren’t going to enforce the law, what did you expect was going to happen? Imagine a college town saying they aren’t going to enforce drinking laws for a weekend. You’d have a town full of drunk freshmen passed out in the gutter. Duh.

There is more to the debate than blaming immigrants versus amnesty and proposals take that into account. Of course people think the border should be secured but they don’t necessarily believe that immigrants should be rounded up for what really amounts to a failure of the government.

The attempt to silence Christians should be called what it is, censorship. No one is trying to mandate forced Christianity down the throats of citizens. No one is attempting to silence non-Christian points of view. It is long past time that Christians are cynically discriminated against simply because they don’t hold to whatever elites consider the “right point of view” to be. Because you know if those same Christians were saying the same things, they’d be pointing towards them as proof they’re right.

May 14th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Politics, The MSM | 30 comments

Home Rule Begins in Northern Ireland Once More

Northern Ireland has for years been ruled from England. There have been several attempts to come to a compromise solution to let Northern Ireland rule itself since the Good Friday agreements. It appears that finally home rule is about to begin again there.

This is good news, not only because home rule is beginning again, but because both sides are expressing hope that it will work this time. Both Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness have said they believe the bloodshed over the territory has come to a close. However, this bright spot on another conflict coming to a close was overshadowed by the press inserting their politics into the story.

The conflict is not or has never been about religion. Ever. Yet the press continues to write on the conflict in terms of a fight against Catholics and Protestants. A few details would be helpful.

For many years, the British exerted complete control over Ireland. In 1921 the Irish Free State was formed free of British control. However, this territory did not include what is now called Northern Ireland. Many Irish believe that those territories rightly belong to Ireland as they were taken from them by the British centuries ago. Since that time, the nationalists had fought against the unionists to gain control over Northern Ireland.

Ireland is basically a Catholic country; England is obviously Protestant under the Church of England. The two nations have obvious religious identities. However, because a nation has a religious identity does not mean that every action that nation performs finds its origins in religion. The nationalists believe Northern Ireland is theirs (Ireland), the unions believe it belongs to them (England). The basis for those arguments have no support or recourse to religion.

The attempts to make the conflict (or hopefully the former conflict) about religion is politically driven by ideologues who want to paint religion as nothing but causing wars, devastation and destruction. It is disheartening, to say the least, that the so-called objective media has fully-throatedly adopted the propaganda of the anti-theists.

That said, I’m hopeful like other bloggers that the conflict is over.

May 8th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | International, Military / War, Politics, Religion, The MSM | one comment

Why Abstinence Education Does Not Work (and It’s Not What You Think)

Every few months the abstinence education advocates and the comprehensive sex ed advocates trade studies back and forth. “Comprehensive sex ed works!” “Abstinence education works!” The back-and-forth clubbing of studies may make for good headlines but largely misses the point.

While it can be argued that comprehensive sex ed may increase sexual activity (much like the anti-drug program DARE has increased teen drug use in many cases), the success or failure of abstinence education relies on factors largely outside the classroom. Simplistic one-factor statistical analysis is not useful in dealing with a problem that involves more than one variable.

The fact is, teenage (and childhood) sexual activity is a new historical phenomena. Abstinence education was all that there was for centuries and it works. The spread of sexually transmitted disease, teenage motherhood, single motherhood, and broken homes being the norm has never been seen on this magnitude in the history of mankind. It is naïve to think that a 45 minute lecture will be all that is needed to reverse that tide in any meaningful way.

The problem found its biggest catalyst in the sixties under the guise of the “sexual revolution”. It is important to realize that it is the generation of youth in the sixties who are making the policy decision today. That generation steeped themselves in anti-authority rhetoric; it should come as no surprise that they now rail against parental involvement.

For some time, it has only been that generation who has been preaching the sexual liberation message from the rooftops. Those who held to chastity simply remained effectively silent out of a false sense of modesty. It was a “false sense” because modesty strives to put sexuality in its proper place, this reaction however was not modest, it was prudish which seeks to avoid all discussion to begin with. It is this prudishness cloaked in modesty that has led to one of the biggest criticisms of the chastity ideology… that it really is about “sex being a dirty thing.” I know of no one who believes in chastity that thinks sex is some dirty chore married people are bound to do from time to time.

It is important to also take into account all the messages children get about sex from sources outside the classroom. One only needs to watch a few sitcoms, listen to a few of the Billboard Top 40 songs, or look at a few magazines, and we see only one ideology of sex presented (i.e. loose and cheap sex). When no other message is conveyed, we should not be surprised that “kids will just have sex.” That is also why it is so invidious that organizations would use the hammer of the United States Constitution to drive out any competing ideas (or at least those that treat chastity seriously) out of the public square.

On a personal note, before I was married I had considered the priesthood. I found it quite telling that the most frequent response people had to that (including Catholics) was “but you can’t have sex!” It was as if they thought I didn’t already know that and the Church was hiding it from me. Hey, thanks for the hot tip guys!

However, the most important implication about those exclamations was that it was about sex. Not that I couldn’t have a wife, or a family, or that I could get lonely (and in fact, I never heard those objections). Celibacy, or more crudely not having sex, is viewed not as an acceptable sexual option but an outright heresy. Life without sex is a life not worth living, apparently.

The common social idea, even among adults, is that not having sex is a crime against humanity. Take a look at the number of people who insist that the Catholic Church should allow married priests even though they explicitly reject the Catholic Church and its doctrine outright. People who have no interest in the Church, her ministers or her teaching are passionately and loudly interested in the sexual freedom of her clerics.

Further, the reduction of sex to a “medical issue” has dehumanized it and drained it of its value. The comprehensive sex ed crowd describes their material as “medically accurate”. Abstinence education, the last time I checked, doesn’t try to rewrite our biological knowledge. When the only consequences considered are disease prevention and pregnancy, is it any wonder that men and women can’t relate to each other as well anymore?

This creates a situation where people are less free to choose to be chaste. Or more accurately, they are pressured to not be chaste. It’s an unacceptable lifestyle. It’s a socially intolerable lifestyle. People who don’t have sex are pariahs. Is it any wonder “kids just have sex?” Society insists nothing less. That’s why people will argue with a straight face that because X% of people have premarital sex that makes it okay and moral to do so.

Abstinence education will always be handicapped in a society that insists from every quarter that free sex is the only way to live. Until our movies, music, television, and magazines reflect a level of sexual maturity beyond that of a seventh grade boy, this trend will likely continue. Parents will have to display and engender the sexual morality they wish their children to have. In the meantime, those who can speak intelligently, passionately, and openly about chastity must be allowed their say in the public square. A free country requires nothing less.

May 4th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Culture, Pro-Life, Religion, Sex, The MSM | 3 comments

Conservatives vs. Anti-Liberals

2006 has been billed as the end of the conservative movement. This is due largely to the mistaken idea that conservatism is the same as Republicanism. What the voters rejected was corruption and good-ole’ boy politics. The election clearly showed the divide between conservatives and Republicans. However, there is one additional distinction that needs to be made.

The voters were also turned off by the campaigning style of the Republicans. Namely, the only GOP platform that was heard was why we should vote Democratic. Sure, some nuggets were tossed in like tax cuts. By and large, the GOP used scare tactics to convince conservatives to vote for them. We didn’t buy it. Not because we’ve become liberals, but because we realize if we don’t “throw the bums out”, the GOP will be less and less honest.

The biggest problem remains that many of the prominent voices of the conservative movement aren’t conservatives. Take Ann Coulter for instance. Sure, she’s pro-life and if asked would support conservative causes. She doesn’t earn a living by advancing conservatism. She earns her living by being an anti-liberal.

In her latest column, she advocates for no position. She is arguing against them. No, scratch that. She’s basically doing a comedy routine against Democrats. Much of opinions journalism has become more about pejorative than persuasion. That’s what sells columns and books. People turn on Ann Coulter on Fox News to see the fur fly, not to be informed. She does entertain. She does not advocate.

Good thinkers need to both point out flaws in opposing positions and advocate for their own. The aloof don’t engage other ideas and their thought atrophies. The unthinking mindlessly attack ideas they disagree with. The childish simply carp on political opponents.

Even when Ann Coulter isn’t selling columns, she still does her comedy routine. Recently she was asked several questions by students. She responded with her usual battery of jokes. Ted Kennedy jokes are no longer funny because of her tired repetition of “inflatable dirigible” cracks. At least Rush Limbaugh intersperses advocacy between his jokes and changes them up every now and then.

Having seen Ann Coulter give a speech, her talks are no different. Largely it is a stand-up comedy routine. I’m not sure why people drop the kind of money they do on her. The jokes aren’t even funny.

There is a real temptation to engage in the constant political mudslinging that masquerades as “thought” in the press. The problem certainly isn’t confined to the right either. For every Coulter there is a Franken. Most people don’t think about politics anymore. The media can’t even cover political debates without the mudslinging template. We’ve moved from a society that discusses ideas to a society that discusses people.

Knowing what you are against is one thing. It is more important to know what you are for. In all of Coulter’s books, columns and speaking engagements, it’s hard to know what she’s for.

It is imperative that true political debate become the norm. There will likely always be mudslinging pundits and C-list bloggers muddying the waters. A little needling back and forth isn’t a bad thing either. In fact, it’s quite healthy. That should not translate into wholesale abandonment of ideas. The Ann Coulters of the world need to be moved to the background.

January 3rd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Politics, The MSM | 4 comments

The Media Mob: “Written by partisans to be read by the naïve”

It seems standard fare for second-rate columnists to write broadsides against bloggers. It’s particularly ironic for the journalistic community to berate blogs for poor writing. After all, blogs have supplanted journalism for the literary gutter. To then boast displays the arrogance of someone who claims bragging rights for finished in second-to-last place.

It is true; blogs “produce minimal reportage”. However, most blogs don’t claim that they are even trying to report. Many bloggers quite clearly state they are giving their opinion on events. This is in contrast to most journalists who claim to report but merely shroud their opinion journalism in the faux cloak of “objective reporting.”

What blogs do accomplish, at least the few that actually try to be media instead of diary, is fact-check the “objective journalists.” This is where the real contempt for bloggers comes from. Blogs have outted journalistic frauds that would have gone undiscovered despite all the checks and balances in the traditional media.

It is true that our educational system has produced a couple of generations of people wholly intellectually unsuited for intelligent political discourse. That is not a problem of blogs, it is a problem of society. Let’s be honest, it’s not like reductionistic discourse doesn’t have a home in the traditional media too. Before blogs there were sound bites. Before blogs reporting, at least on political matters, was largely receiving faxes from the national parties and repeating their talking points. Fatuity is not unknown to the 24 hour news channels or the nightly news.

Blogs, for their part are quite easily played by the media and politicians alike. All a journalist has to do is criticize blogs and a previously unknown journalist becomes news of the hour on the Internet. Most bloggers do behave like yard apes. The only difference between most bloggers and most journalists is that the later has a sense of elitism about being an ape because they happen to wear a suit while doing it.

Blaming blogs of the “decay” of journalism is more than a little absurd. Journalism was already in a state of decay long before blogs because of their monopolistic attitudes that allowed them to get sloppy. Bloggers took the “journalistic” reigns because of the dramatic failure of the traditional media to (1) report the news effectively and accurately, (2) to be objective or at least honest about their bias, and (3) adapt to the information needs of society.

The free market requires many outlets so that consumers can pick the outlet that meets their needs. If no outlet exists, one will be created and so it was with blogs. That isn’t to say all blogs are worthy outlets, they aren’t. Most of the hundred or so million blogs get trivial amounts of traffic. However, there are serious blogs out there and serious organizations trying to get blogging professionalized (see the Media Bloggers Association which I am a part of).

It’s true that finding a decent blog is like finding a needle in a haystack, but with blogging soon to be on the decline to more serious players will stand out. For those nostalgic for the “good ole days” of journalism, this is decay. For society who wants and need solid, reliable and accurate information and opinion, it is progress. Painful progress, but progress nonetheless.

December 21st, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Blogging, Politics, The MSM | 3 comments

Associated Press Embraces Bias and Supports Abortionists in News Coverage

This clip is from the Associated Press stylebook. It is used by newspapers across the country to provide guidelines in how stories should be written. By and large, many guidelines are neutral and simple are matters of style (i.e. capitalization, punctuation, etc). However, in this one entry, standing unique in comparison to the whole guide, the AP picks sides in the abortion debate and insists that the pro-abortion side be the one supported in news coverage.

If Planned Parenthood wants to use pro-choice and anti-abortion, that’s there perogative. However, the Associated Press, as journalists, pretend to be objective in their reporting. In this case, they choose propaganda terms to portray those against abortion in the worst light and those who support it in the best light. Framing, apparently, is not just for politicians anymore.

The particular interesting part of this guideline is that it is objectively false. The words pro-life and anti-abortion are simply not interchangeable. The largest pro-life group in the United States is the Roman Catholic Church with roughly 60 million members. Evangelical Christians, for as much press as the get, are a pittance in comparison to this number. Further, evangelicals and other Christian churches very quickly get highly variable on the issue of abortion, or for that matter, any “difficult” theological concept.

The US Catholic Church terms pro-life as including not only abortion, but contraception, capital punishment, euthanasia, stem cell research, cloning, and reproductive technologies. To pigeonhole the Catholic Church’s prolife stance as simply being against abortion is to disregard factual reporting and adopting lockstep propagandist talking points from Planned Parenthood. Lobbyists are free to do this, objective journalists should not be.

The media, at large, is just as guilty as the Associated Press on this point. They will not use the term pro-life if it can be avoided and in so doing, they give up objective reporting and become lobbyists. Here is a clear case were bias can be proven the next time someone suggests there is no bias in the press.

September 1st, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Pro-Life, The MSM | 6 comments

Art Imitates Life: Survivor and Racism

Amid all the furor about the show Survivor beginning next season with teams organized on racial lines, one thing has been lost. While Survivor is just a TV show (a.k.a. not real life), in reality society in the United States is divided along these same lines without as much of a peep of criticism. New York City officials want to extend their power over what other people watch on TV, but refuse to police their own boroughs for racial equity. As examples, there are Black radio stations, White radio stations and Latino radio stations. The same applies for television. Communities are very frequently divided along racial lines. When the communities aren’t geographically, the groups will divide themselves socially. Here at the University of Illinois we have “white” homecoming and “black” homecoming. There are black culture houses, Latino culture houses, and Asian culture houses. Even the dorms have managed to segregate themselves more-or-less on racial lines. Is it a sign of American racism? Hardly. It is proof-positive that the race-based policies of the left have brought out the exact opposite of what they intended. These policies have enshrined that there are in fact, different groups of Americans that get different sets of rights. You have African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Caucasians, yet no one seems to view themselves as simply “American”. Because the lines of division are so clear, the competition between the various groups for a better package of rights is intense. The rivalry between the black lobbyists and the Latino lobbyists is well known. Anyone who dares criticize a policy presented by one of these groups is immediately labeled a racist, bigot, or xenophobe. The politics of hate are most present here, by the people supposedly trying to bring about “unity”. The fact is, unity is inherently destroyed unless people view themselves as part of something bigger. If African-Americans view themselves as primarily African-Americans, or whites as whites, or Latinos as Latinos, then there can be no unified America. It is simply a fact of life when there is an “us” and a “them”, there exists tension between them. Highlighting the division and granting rights based on it has only entrenched it that division, not eliminated it. So why not have a race-based Survivor series? It’s basically just a reflection of American society where instead of trying to be a unified people, the races compete against each other for more cookies. Art, in this case, really does imitate life.

August 25th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Politics, The MSM | no comments