Barna Group, an evangelical company based in California, found that 46 percent reported no change [in their life from church attendance]. About a quarter of Americans said their life was greatly affected by church attendance and another quarter said it was somewhat influential.

Remember this as the foundation for the rest of the numbers. Otherwise, it’s just interesting that nearly half of the people who go to church are not being changed by the experience…which could mean a number of things. It could mean that they simply found a church that says things they agree with. It could mean that they aren’t really paying attention. It could mean that what they hear simply isn’t relevant to their daily lives. We just don’t know.

The second thing to note is the polling methodology. Barna writes:

This report is based upon telephone interviews conducted in the OmniPoll? (part of Barna Group’s Barna Poll series). This study consisted of a random sample of 1,022 adults selected from across the continental United States, age 18 and older. The research included 150 interviews conducted among people using cell phones. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Minimal statistical weighting was used to calibrate the aggregate sample to known population percentages in relation to several key demographic variables

All this means is that it was pretty standard, which is a good start. I wonder about the 150 cell phone calls…firstly that it’s only 150 out of 1,022, and secondly that these people actually answered a call from someone they didn’t know and answered these questions. I wouldn’t. I’m definitely in the “don’t bother me” section of such things.

The problem lies earlier when they write, “…Barna Group surveyed Americans who have attended a Christian church sometime in the past…” So someone who hasn’t attended church in fifty years (or more) would still be included. Given the problem churches have with ongoing attendance, this is absolutely going to skew the numbers downward. I think a better method might have been to pick churches at random and then poll their membership. Or perhaps asking, “Do you remember the last time you went to church?” and if they said, “No.” then their response should not be counted because if you can’t remember it, it isn’t likely you can answer questions about it.

Back in the Post, we find this: “Two-thirds of respondents said they had felt “a real and personal connection” with God while attending church.” Remember that only “about a quarter” had felt their lives had been changed by attending church. So if everyone who felt their lives changed also had a personal connection with God…then 5/12 (about 41 percent) of the people who felt a connection with God were not changed by the experience. That’s interesting to me because one would tend to think that connecting to the Almighty (or whatever one calls it) would change them. Apparently not. Maybe 41 percent of people were told by God, “Everything is just fine like it is. Don’t change a thing.

Next we find this:

Among weekly church attenders, 44 percent said they felt God’s presence every week and 18 percent said they had that experience once a month.

Unfortunately, we aren’t told how many of the 1,022 people who were polled attend church weekly. SO this is a factoid devoid of any meaning. We also aren’t told what weekly means – how many weeks in a row does one have to go before it is “weekly?” If they miss a single week, is their status revoked? If so, how far back into the past or forward into the future does that revocation reach?

This is the next factoid:

Of those who attended in the previous week, 50 percent could not recall walking away with a significant new understanding.

Again, we have no idea how many people this is. Two? Nine hundred and twelve? Such details matter.

“Significant new understanding” is also undefined. I understand that they are letting people define that however they want, and that should result in more positive responses than if it were defined for them. In that light, it is surprisingly low.

What it does managed to do is show some real researcher bias in that it supposes that the purpose of going to church is to get significant new understandings of faith/God. Somehow, I think that by the time someone has gone to church “weekly” for fifty years or so, they probably are not looking for that. The can find deep meaning in the service without it being a learning experience. It may simply deepen their faith or increase the level of a significant older understanding. It’s important to understand how unimportant this question is, because Barna says it is “One of the most significant gaps uncovered by the research was the fact that most people cannot recall gaining any new spiritual insights the last time they attended church.” In this case, at least, we are told that “most” means 61 percent.

Flipping back to the horse’s mouth, we learn that “connecting with God is perhaps the most important outcome facilitated by churches.” Yet “most” (meaningless term) “describe these encounters as rare.” What does that say about churches failing in their most important outcome? And who says this is the most important outcome?

Churches score much better in the categories of “feeling cared for” and “helping the poor.” However, there is a significant minority of people who don’t identify this at all.

Also, the size of a church doesn’t seem to matter appreciably.

Tim Tebow’s pastor, Wayne Hanson, says he knows why the Denver Broncos are 7-1 since installing Tebow as quarterback – it’s the player’s faith.

“It’s not luck,” Hanson said according to TMZ. “Luck isn’t winning six games in a row. It’s favor. God’s favor.”
snip
Very few people, even the ultra religious, believe God cares about the result of a football game. There are plenty of believers on the other teams also.

There are few subjects that I feel confident in speaking for God on, but I’m pretty confident that God doesn’t care about football games. If he did; then football would have been around for much long. Perhaps Moses would have said, instead of “Let my people go!”, “I’ll see you on the gridiron, Pharoah!”

But there are a few things missing from Wetzel’s observations.

Like: “It’s been a magical ride and one, no doubt, that has aided the image of, and interest in, Evangelical Christianity. A likeable spokesman will always do that.”

Gee, I thought Jesus was the Evangelical Christianity spokesman. I REALLY haven’t seen any evidence of anyone anywhere being interested in Evangelical Christianity “because Tebow does it.” And, for the record, if they did, it would wrong-hearted of them to do so. Evangelical Christianity teaches that Christ works on a person’s heart…not Tebow. Even if Tebow were giving lengthy sermons to the masses after each win, theologically, it would still not be Tebow doing the work. At best, he’d be the tool in the hands of the Master.

Then there is this earlier statement, which I can only characterize as “bat-guano crazy”:

Comments like these aren’t helping Tim Tebow. And they aren’t helping gain acceptance for the faith Tebow is willing to serve as public representative.

Newsflash: Christianity is not accepted in the American mainstream!

Wha?

Get real. Please.

According to the latest iteration of Wikipedia’s “Religion in America“, Christianity is the largest religion in the United States, with some 76% of us claiming to be Christian and 26.3% claim to be evangelical Christians. In a ranking of US and Canadian Churches, Southern Baptists rank second (with over sixteen million members) and the Church of God in Christ ranks fifth (with over five million members). Both of those are evangelical denominations. There are more Christians in the US than in any country in the world.

And while we’re at it, this:

“Tebowing,” as it has become known, is one of the things that Jesus spoke against, according to the Bible. Matthew 6:5-8 reads:

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

You would think Tebow’s pastor might want to talk to him about that. Apparently, you’d be wrong.

The study, by sociologists Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice and Kristen Schultz Lee of the University at Buffalo, found that many atheists want their children exposed to religion so that they can make up their own minds on what to believe. In addition, church may provide a better understanding of morality and ethics, and occasionally attending services may ease the conflict between spouses who disagree over the value of religion to their children, the study contends.

The research, published in the December issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, was based on in-depth interviews with 275 scientists at 21 “elite” research universities in the United States. Sixty-one percent of the participants described themselves as either atheists or agnostics, and 17 percent of the non-believers had attended church more than once in the past year.

This is both encouraging and discouraging to me.

It is encouraging because it shows that people are willing to expose their children to a variety of experiences in order to help them become well-rounded individuals who are grounded in the culture in which they live. It shows an open-mindedness that I find rather refreshing. They have made up their mind that they do not believe, but are willing to allow others – including their children – to feel differently. In fact, they are encouraging them to do so.

It is discouraging because it also says that atheists feel pressured to go to church just to get along with the people most important in their lives. The do not believe and they see the whole process as so much empty time spent wishing they were elsewhere. Yet they are pressured to accept what they find unacceptable to such an extent that they find it impossible to refuse.

It also shows that there is a very real level of ignorance about Christianity, not just among its adherents, but among those who study it as well. Don’t the spouses of agnostics/atheists realize that there is no spiritual value to a person going to service with no belief in it? Why would they push their spouses to be dishonest about who they are?

As well, there are denominations who do not express a creedal philosophy about even the existence of God. The Universalist Unitarian Church, for example, believe that each person is free to determine their own belief as to the existence of God. I have to wonder where this group fits in with the research – and how many scientists who go to other churches would gladly go to a UU group.

Or what about the Ethical Union? If scientists are pressured to go to Christian services; then are their spouses willing to go to Ethical functions? How about the slightly more churchy (in that they meet on Sundays and such) Ethical Society (or Ethical Culture Society)?

This is the most disappointing, but possibly most honest, statement in the article:

Columnist Michael Kinsley confessed to being a “nonbeliever” in the Los Angeles Times last month. In an op-ed piece he conceded, “That puts me in the only religious grouping in America whose members are effectively barred from any hope of becoming president, due to widespread public prejudice against them. There will be a Mormon president, a Jewish president, an openly gay president before there will be a president who says publicly that he doesn’t believe in God.”

I agree with him. And given the predilection of fringe religious groups to have apocalyptic beliefs, it is frightening that such a person would be judged to be more ready to be President than a sane person who would not try to destroy the world.

The facts are pretty straight forward. Several years ago, Mike McCreary witnessed Jerry Sandusky raping a boy in the shower room. McCreary, who was then a graduate assistant, reported the “incident” to Head Coach Joe Paterno. Paterno, in turn, reported it to his superiors. No one ever reported it to the authorities. No one.

Stop and think about that. A ten year old kid was raped by an adult. Another adult sees it, but does nothing. Then another is told, and he does nothing. Then another. How many adults does it take to report the rape of a child? The answer should be: One. But at Penn State, that was the wrong answer. (Wikipedia has a short blurb about this horrifying crime, but I haven’t had time to verify what is being said). Even more heinous is the Pennsylvania law that relieves everyone involved (except the guy at the top) from any legal responsibility.

Is there any way to tell a child who has been that they are less important than to shrug off what happened to them? Yes. By allowing those who toss their shoulders to escape any legal liability. This is not someone who was caught with questionable pictures on their work computer, after all…he was seen by an eye-witness in the act of abusing a kid.

Bill Phillips wants to understand why this total lack of concern for child rape happened. He thinks he may have stumbled across something to consider – the famous Milgram experiment:

“But male groups bond by suppressing shame and promoting the idea that their group is invulnerable,” [William Pollack, Ph.D., an associate clinical professor in the psychiatry department at the Harvard Medical School] continues. “So their focus is on one another and not—in this case—the victim.”

For me, this should be filed under the category of “Yes, so what?” It doesn’t change any of the actions that were perpetrated on any of the victims and it doesn’t in any way change the fact that multiple men, in positions of responsibility, said little and did less.

I think this is more about “football” than it is about “male bonding.” If it had been a graduate math assistant who walked into his mentor’s office and found him diddling a pre-pubescent child (male or female doesn’t matter – or shouldn’t), and if that assistant then reported it to his dean…I have a hard time seeing where this would have been shrugged off. You know why? Because no one gives out a national title for math. Hence, no one will overlook the fact of pedophilia being a quirk in the character of the best mathematician in the world.

But football?

When was the last time you heard of ANYONE rioting because a person who knew a child was raped and did nothing was fired? I’ve never even heard of Catholics have a RALLY in support of a priest accused of such a thing (of course, there HAVE been very few of them).

This is how I see it: Sandusky was excused from raping children because he was part of a winning football team. So…what other crimes have gone unreported at Penn State? What evidence is there that Penn State is any less willing to do this than any other college that has made football a national obsession and institutional priority?

The explanation given by Phillips basically says that the men at Penn State did this because this is the kind of things that men do. As a man, it infuriates me that a psychologist wants to explain this away as simply “how men think in groups.” It is, in my experience, true. However, it has long passed the time when we should ask why this is so. It has long passed the time when we should, as a society, consider this normal and accept it as an excuse for bad behavior. It puts our men at risk for being victimized and for being victimizers.

There is no inherent reason why men should act badly in the company of other men. If, as the psychologists that Phillips’ cites claim, male mentorship is so vitally important to men, and the survival of the group is so much more important than the well-being of one member…then why on would the group not purge itself of a self-destructive member who will drag them down into oblivion? In other words, groups of men SHOULD be able to hold each other to higher standards of behavior and push each other to achieve greatness while embracing their entire existence, rather than cutting off their emotional intelligence and moral compass.

Then there is this:

Also, female groups tend to connect around doing the right thing. “When women get together,” says Pollack, “they assess what the right or best thing is, and then decide as a group how to accomplish it.

I understand that Pollack is talking about data that describes differences in the way men and women behave. However, described this way, it makes it look like it is somehow inherently feminine for a group to determine what is morally and ethically right. By that line of thinking, we just need our men to be more feminine and they’d be okay.

We just need to get people to grow up. People need to re-learn what it means to be a good person. And then they need to be held accountable to that standard.

There really isn’t any good reason. It’s convenient not to have to change banks. But it is not responsible for me, as a consumer, to reward such a poor steward of my money. As a Christian, it is unconscionable that I should continue to reward such an immoral business – which continues to be profitable while the rest of the country suffers.

So the question becomes: Where do I move my business. There are several small banks in the area, and I am researching them to decide which one I like best. But I know that even small banks are in the business of business. And small businesses pay into organizations that buy lobbyists just like the big boys do. So while trading to a smaller (potential) criminal is better than staying with an enormous criminal…it isn’t quite as satisfying as I’d like.

The Bible is pretty clear about banking – interest is not to be charged to fellow believers (also, profiting on food is a no-no – sorry restauranteurs)>. Yet this is so often overlooked that it might as well be cut out of the Bible. While conservatives like to crow about being “real Americans” and having a “Christian nation”…there is not a peep about the scriptural principles of banking. Muslims, by the way, are way ahead of us on this. Consider this:

An innovative approach applied by some banks for home loans, called Musharaka al-Mutanaqisa, allows for a floating rate in the form of rental. The bank and borrower form a partnership entity, both providing capital at an agreed percentage to purchase the property. The partnership entity then rents out the property to the borrower and charges rent. The bank and the borrower will then share the proceeds from this rent based on the current equity share of the partnership. At the same time, the borrower in the partnership entity also buys the bank’s share of the property at agreed installments until the full equity is transferred to the borrower and the partnership is ended. If default occurs, both the bank and the borrower receive a proportion of the proceeds from the sale of the property based on each party’s current equity.

The closest I can come to an example of this for American (Episcopal) Christians is The Episcopal Federal Credit Union in Phoenix, Arizona (which is, oddly enough, a division of the United Methodist Federal Credit Union). Or the Episcopal Community Federal Credit Union in Los Angeles. I’m sure these run by more traditional banking practices, but it is still a step in the right direction.

I have no idea how one starts a bank. I have no idea how one starts a bank based on non-traditional, but scripturally sound business practices. I don’t even have an idea in whose ear such a whispered idea might take wing…but perhaps someone will read this and take the idea further.

The post I want to deal with is this one dealing with the “problem” of men. It is difficult for me, as a heterosexual man, to hear myself referred to as a problem. Yes, patriarchy is the default position throughout the modern world and women are denigrated, abused, and violated in every country, and all too often without any thought of punishing their assailants.But should I be held responsible for all of the crimes that men commit throughout the world simply because I have mismatched chromosomes?

The knee-jerk reaction is to say, “No!” The reasons for that should be fairly obvious. But thinking closer on this issue reveals that, while I am not actively promoting patriarchy or attacking women, I do benefit from a position of status in society simply by being male. This was brought home to me anew when a colleague of mine (who is a woman) was discussing with me the difficulty she encounters as a teacher with international students who come from very heavily patriarchal societies. This is nothing I’ve ever had to contend with. This is what privilege means: to never even be aware of the struggles others encounter.

So I shouldn’t be held personally responsible for things I’ve never done, but I should be held responsible for understanding the privileged position I hold, and understand that it blinds me to the struggles others face. I should be held responsible for attempting to understand what they see when they look at me, not only as an individual, but as a symbol of an institution and society that still reinforce patriarchal as the norm.

It is a painful experience for me to hear others talk about how they have been hurt. To be blunt, I’d really like for them to simply not talk about it – because it makes it easier for me to enjoy my life without their pain getting in the way. Ignoring or minimizing their experience also relieves me of the responsibility to be an agent of change in the world. More than that, though, my knee-jerk reaction is a reiteration of the violence done to a person in the first place.

Part of my spiritual growth has been to resist this reactionary part of my being. To open my ears and my heart and simply become a witness to someone’s testimony of pain and abuse. It is an exercise in carefully planned vulnerability. It is an exercise in willfully experiencing heartbreak, again and again, because there is no end to the pain in the world.

So I read the comments that spoke of how women have been injured by simply insisting that they be allowed a “sacred space” for women only. My personal belief is that a person should be allowed to approach their spirituality in whatever fashion makes it more meaningful. Some need solitude, some need a congregation. Some need silence, some need clanging bells and a choir. Some need to be sheltered from men.

But I would be disingenuous if I were to stop with that. I do not believe we create a more peaceful world by sowing discord. We do not have a more just world by sowing injustice. We don’t create a more equal world by promoting inequality. We never find truth by closing our eyes to our own failings.

If radical feminism’s only answer to every problem in the world is to shoot for a world where no men exist; then it is a fool’s errand. If there is no chance at redemption for anyone who has a penis or a Y chromosome; then radical feminism has aligned itself with the iron-clad thinking of every two-bit dictator and oppressive ideology – including religious fundamentalism – that has ever existed. If the purpose is to improve the plight of women; then this approach will simply make enemies of those who should be allies. That’s a plan to fail. And one I simply cannot endorse.

I’ll write about the political implications of this elsewhere, but right now, I’d like to take on the religious implications. To put it bluntly, Jeffress has set himself up as the gatekeeper of God. That takes a lot of chuzpah…or pigheadedness.

Or it simply takes a theology that assures someone that they are the “chosen” by God and everyone who disagrees is not. That’s what I call a theology of arrogance. If it isn’t arrogant to believe that one denomination – not broad school of religion, but a single narrow denomination – is the only one who can possibly know and understand God’s will…then what exactly is?

I believe that my brand of Christianity is right…for me. But I would never consider forcing someone else to confess to my beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I am not hesitant to share what I believe when I think it is proper to do so. But when I do, I am sharing what I have come to believe about an infinite being that is beyond my ability to understand. I freely admit that I could be wrong.

I’ve studied the Bible, off and on, for most of my life. Sometimes I studied it in a group, and sometimes I studied it alone. Sometimes I thought every word was meant literally and later on I realized that couldn’t possibly be true. There are works of poetry in the Bible; there is analogy and parable and allegory. It can’t possibly all be true.

So any theology that says, “This wisdom in this book is limited to that which is literal!” is not being honest about the book it is reading. And when a theology starts with such a dishonest foundation, it cannot help but bring forth rotten fruit. Beyond that, any critical thinking which seeks to examine this core untruth is immediately attacked, because any sliver of untruth found anywhere in the Bible would then unravel all of the pretense of literal representation of the word of God.

It’s a theology that is intellectually and morally lazy. It is afraid to force adherents to learn critical thinking skills that would allow them to challenge the bounds of literal interpretation. It teaches individuals to turn off their own brains and rely on those of the professional class of behavioral controllers that call themselves “pastors.” Because it cripples their intellectual curiosity, it castrates their moral compass. They become entirely dependent, mindless drones that can do nothing but repeat the same tired slogans they have been taught.

If, as I believe, there is a being that is infinite and powerful beyond our ability to understand – if there is a God – then I can’t believe God would want mindless worship, even if it is overwrought with emotion. It seems to me that God would want mindful, thoughtful, and earnest searching and the respectful and positive worship that naturally flows from it.

Which one is on top? Let’s look at the primary calendar. There are three contests in January: Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida (which is in violation of primary rules, but who cares?). Currently, Perry leads in Nevada by 5 and in South Carolina by 12. He gets both of those. But Perry gets walloped by Romney in Florida.

This gives Romney a lead in delegates, but Perry has picked up two unofficial wins and has some shine going into February. Perry will continue to hang on through the southern and western states, but Romney will get all of the big states left – New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Possibly even Virginia. By the time Romney takes California in June, it will simply be confirmation of the inevitable.

But Christie is popular in Florida. So maybe Romney still wins, but Christie shows he’s a major candidate with a close second finish. He’ll finish second in Texas, behind Perry. Christie will win in New York and Pennsylvania. If he can take Ohio and Wisconsin from Romney, and can take Georgia, Iowa, and Tennessee from Perry…he’ll make it a three-way battle. And he’s going to look a lot better than either of the other two Governors.

Here’s a blunt assessment of each candidate’s downside: Romney’s a Mormon and is linked to his own health-care plan on which Obama based the national plan. Perry is a little too much hat and not enough cattle…or an abundance of style with an absence of substance. Christie is fat.

I’m willing to be enough Americans will look at their own waistline and get over any problems with anyone’s weight.

So give Christie the nomination, if he wants it.

Then there’s the general election. Unemployment is still around nine percent and isn’t going down substantially. In ’92 and ’80 and ’76, unemployment was between seven and eight percent, and each time voters turned out an incumbent President seeking re-election. There isn’t much Obama can do about the unemployment rate, and there isn’t much chance of anyone forgetting the economy.

Obama isn’t even popular within his own Party. Fully twenty percent of Democrats in California aren’t happy with him. In the last three months, his approval in that state has fallen from 54 to 46 percent. In Florida, Obama is within the margin of error in a head-to-head with Romney and Ron Paul. Obama holds 79% and 80% approval among liberals, but among moderates, his approval dives to 64%. Only 15% of Democrats disapprove of his job performance, but 52% of non-affiliated voters hate it.

He’s sunk.

Want an obscure and meaningless reference? We haven’t had three back-to-back two-term Presidents since Jefferson-Madison-Monroe. Clinton-Bush-Obama? I just don’t see it.

So from where I see it…the race is Christie’s for the taking. So why wouldn’t he?

With apologies to Mel Brooks, sometimes it isn’t good to be the king. Whoever beats Obama next year is going to get an economy on life-support, and a mandate to let it die. It’s a good way to ruin a promising career. It’s better to be the king-maker and store up chips for a run another year.

So I expect Christie will eventually say that he enthusiastically supports Romney and head up his Northeastern campaign. Then he’ll step up into the Attorney General’s position. From there, he can decide whether or not he wants to knock off Frank Lautenberg in the polls or wait for Father Time to do his dirty work (Lautenberg looks healthy, but had a cancer scare not long ago – and he’s OLD!). Or he could quietly investigate any of about a thousand rumors of wrongdoing by NJ’s other Senator Bob Menendez. Christie could quietly step into the role he filled so well during the Bush Administration and, in doing so, broaden and deepen his political connections across the country while burnishing his credentials as a law-and-order kind of guy.

Even if he never decides to take the plunge for the Big Job, that seems to be the kind of reputation that Governor Christie would enjoy building. It’s the kind of job that’s almost impossible to build an argument against him taking.

…that measure, developed over 40 years ago, is inexact at best. It doesn’t include non-cash benefits–things such as food and housing subsidies–that can play a key role in supporting families.

I’ll try not to be overly sarcastic here. Through our collective representation, we, as a society, decided that people who earn less than a certain amount of money are considered poor and live in poverty. We also found that, in a country with as rich of blessings as we have, that is unacceptable. So we created programs – like food stamps and rent subsidies – that help make up the gap between what a family actually earns and what is considered minimally acceptable. Find that the programs that are intended to “help make up the gap” actually do “help make up the gap” only means that our programs are successful – so remember THAT the next time someone tells you that government can’t accomplish anything.

There are two purposes to telling such a story. One is to say what I have just said – “Look! We are making progress in the War on Poverty (remember that?)! We are successful!” But that isn’t what’s going on here. What’s happening is an attempt to minimize the problem of poverty. Take, for example, this quote from the same article:

…many or most poor Americans have things such as internet service, cable TV and dishwashers–not luxuries, to be sure, but not the picture of destitution that the word poverty often brings to mind.

Yes, people are not truly poor if they have a dishwasher…which, in case it isn’t known, is generally standard issue for modern (built in the last twenty years) housing projects. Of course, it is possible to get by without one – I never had one until I was an adult. But if we are going to use this argument to debate if we give too much aid to the poor (and make no mistake, that IS what it is for); then we need to do a cost-benefit analysis that shows if using a dishwasher is cheaper over the life of the appliance than it would be not having it. To do that, figure in the fact that dishwashers use less water and less soap, and because they tend to use hotter water, they cut down on communicable diseases. These, incidentally, are arguments any appliance salesman can repeat.

And the internet? Anyone who doesn’t have access is in danger of being seriously disconnected from work and school. Would it be more adaptive to hinder the poor from developing job skills, or to give them a tool they can use to break into the digital age? If we truly want to compete with the world economy; then we are going to have to invest in doing so. And providing high-speed internet for those who can’t afford it is the modern equivalent of building thousands of public libraries.

Cable TV is a different matter – but only because of the way we choose to use our televisions. Television could easily be used to supplement education, and there is no shortage of educational television programs. As a father of pre-schoolers, I absolutely LOVE educational television. But I can only get it on cable. The major networks simply do not see any return on their money. Captain Kangeroo and Mister Rogers are gone and Sesame Street is struggling (my personal opinion). But my kids get lessons on colors and shapes and math and phonics…from cable TV.

This has its basis in the belief that people absolutely deserve anything and everything that comes down the pike. If a person is poor or fat or anything less than absolutely perfect; then it is their fault. All they have to do is change! There is no such thing as simply not having as many resources as someone else. There is no such thing as not having the opportunities as someone else. It is radical individuality.

It’s why people will now unabashedly clap when the topic of letting someone die because they can’t afford health care comes up. People don’t deserve to live! If they wanted to live; then they would get a better job that gave them insurance…which, incidentally, is an expense forced on employers by governmental over-regulation.

The truly sad thing is that what should be a “Let them eat cake!” moment failed to even make a dent on our national psyche. God save us from ourselves.