Bill's Notes

How many players on a cricket team? Tea first or cream first? Huh?

There are two platforms from which Democrats can criticize GOP correction:

1. We innocent Democrats, incorruptible by nature except for the occasional bad apple, declare you Republicans horribly corrupt and shame shame shame on you!

2. We Democrats know a little something about corruption, and we gotta say, in the past six years, you Republicans have raised a few eyebrows even on our side of the aisle. We consider the bar raised.

I considered Criticism No. 2 honest, legitimate criticism, and criticism No. 1 to be politically naive and historically illiterate. I remember Tony Coelho. I remember Jim Wright. And a boatload of others.

Corruption, like sin, is well-distributed throughout the population. It's a charge the party of our power likes to cast at the party in power. It's a cute accusation, and sometimes individual scandals are serious, but rarely do you find a massive infestation of corruption in people out of power. That would be like trying to sleep your way to the top in Hollywood and starting with the screenwriter.

Anyway, with the GOP out of power, this is gonna be a lot of fun. It starts already. Check out Instapundit on "Abscam" Murtha [he ended up facilitating some of the corrupt activity, and even though he didn't take the money, he didn't exactly come out smelling like roses] and "Impeacement" Hastings [recommended for impeachment].

As you can see [] your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of this FULLY ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station!

Robert Benchley's paradox roughly states, "There are two kinds of people in the world ... those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't." What makes it so clever is that you prove Benchley right by disagreeing with him.

Donald Westlake once wrote a short story about a planet that became hopelessly divided on the topic of Benchley's paradox ... the anti-Bens and pro-Bens. It was cynical and funny and I read it in a magazine back in high school [Editor's Note: Liar!].

The "sandwich" controversy reminded me of it. I can see "pro-burrito" and "anti-burrito" partisans fighting it out on some dusty plain 1,000 years from now, after the sandwich decision is the only piece of writing to survive from our time (except for a single comic strip of Blondie) ... and they assume we must have worshipped the sandwich. Is the burrito really worthy of worship? Partisans will have to fight it out, and the winners on that god-forsaken plain will get to write the history.

*****


UPDATE: Oops. Make that I read it in college. Appeared in December 1983, well after my 1982 graduation date. IndustrialBlog intentionally distorted this complex issue regrets the error.

A heavy rotation of Led Zeppelin's Thank You has led to a serious ear worm. This used to be one of my favorite songs, but overlistening has caused it to become an annoyance (the lyrics don't help ... inspiration look/see? )

I hope this post will make it stop.

If the sun refused to shine
I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea
there will still be you and me.

Kind of woman, I give you my all
Kind of woman, nothing more.

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain,
tears of love lost in the days gone by.
My love is strong, with you there is no wrong,
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my, my
inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look... see.

And so today, my world it smiles,
your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
And thanks to you it will be done,
for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad,
happiness....I'm glad.

You know that I think that most people's Christian faith, including my own, is on most days nothing more than boojy respectability or feel-goodism or goody-two-shoes-ism dressed up in fancy vestments and accompanied by pretty words and minor chords.

That is, we're Christians as long as it doesn't cost us too much. Yet there's a Cross on every church for a reason: That's the price for reconciliation. God tells us that the path to God goes through the cross. No other way to get there.

What does that mean? Boils down to this, IMHO: Faith despite pain, hope despite pain, love despite pain. Our dreams get nailed to the cross, and we keep going. Our hopes get dashed, and we keep going. Others abuse and malicious seek to hurt us -- and succeed -- we forgive them and keep going. We give into temptation after temptation, and work our way through the 10 Commandments, and we turn back and try again.

The cross means that Christianity isn't feel-good-ism and isn't goody-two-shoes-ism: It's a radical call to remain faithful, even when we have no reason, even when it hurts, even when the world says we're crazy. Jesus Himself said count the cost of following Him. And then showed us what He meant at Calvary. Yes, there are rewards for following Him -- enormous graces and peace and lots of good feelings. But as we've been told many times, feeling good isn't the point. You can feel good with a beer. Yet ... to me at least, it's too often about doing what I need to do to feel good. Must be the addict in me.

And I think that the cross, at least when it comes to my Christian walk, often finds its purpose in reminding me of the difference between this "Feel Good" ethic and a real ethic of Christian sacrifice. We don't live in a world where we encounter struggles until we find God, and then we feel good forever. Well, actually if you include the next life, we do. But the path between our struggles and that living with God goes through the Cross.

Fortunately, the actually-getting-nailed-to-it was taken care of.

Okay, I've gone to the end of my thinking. I'm not happy with this post because I think it's too abstract. So I'll kick this question: What does it mean to take up your cross daily and follow Christ? And I mean in concrete terms, in your daily life, the thing you do today and tomorrow.

Via Dean Esmay is this article on the seemingly innocuous, but philosophically crucial, question: Is a burrito a sandwich?

I wrote my thoughts here.

Slightly edited version of my comment follows:

I'm glad I didn't have to decide; this is a can of worms. Let's see ... what are the distinguishing characteristics of a sandwich. Well, a burrito uses a tortilla. So maybe "unleavened bread" versus "leavened" bread, but I'm not sure tortillas are unleavened, and dear God, how can you describe the distinguishing characteristic of a sandwich as coming down to yeast?

I suppose, as a Platonist, we would have to look at the Purest Form of the Sandwich. This would be a bread-like product used to wrap around other food products that cannot be easily eaten with the hands. The key is that the finished product can be eaten with the hands. Can you eat a burrito with your hands? Yes, you can, but you'll have to get an assist with aluminum foil and wax paper — which may distinguish it from a sandwich. Or not.

Sandwich purists (called Historial Sandwichists) would no doubt argue that the salient question is the Earl of Sandwich test. Can the product be eaten at the gambling tables without making a mess? The answer for a burrito is clearly "No."

However, this to ignore the evolving definition of the sandwich, which seems a bit flat-headed. Surely the Earl of Sandwich would be unable to gamble and eat a hot meatball sandwich at the same time, yet would we seriously deny the sandwichness of a hot meatball sandwich? I'm not prepared to do that.

While I agree that my argument is open to many counter-arguments, I would lean toward burrito as a sandwich, only after answering this question — is the burrito covered with some kind of sauce or garnish? If it's covered, it's clearly meant to be eaten with a knife and fork, and it's no longer a sandwich. However, a burrito wrapped up cleanly and eaten with the hands — it's a sandwich.

Look for a reversal on appeals ... and go all the way to the Mass. Supreme Court, who will no doubt rule that anything can be called a sandwich, as long as the person eating it thinks it's a sandwich.

When I wrote the culture war post, I was concerned, as Harry pointed out, that my argument would be susceptible to the charge of "Well, what about this divisive topic?" or "This one". Particularly, Iraq.

But I stuck with the post anyway, and stand by it now. But I would like to adjust my opinion; I think one mistake I've made is overlinking the culture war with political conflict. I really see them as separate issues, though they contain overlapping areas. Imagine two mylar drawings on top of each other. Sometimes they line up and appear as one, and other times they don't line up and appear as two. That's kind of what I'm getting at. Thus, the Dems are not automatically one way in the culture war, and the Republicans the other.

What I'm saying is I do believe this issue of sexual morality is the thing that's most dividing us and that the issue of sexual morality is the fundamental fault line in Western Civilization.

However, as in any abstract hierarchy, you could go deeper, all the way to epistemology if you want. I think sexual morality however is a good, concrete issue on an abstract hierarchy that both reifies the differences below it (that is, the fundamental worldview differences beneath) while helping to explain much of the behavior differences above. And I stand by it.

That doesn't mean someone else couldn't divide up the cultural war differently. And perhaps the idea of a neat fault line in Western Civilization is an oversimplication -- perhaps there are many such divisions. Perhaps what we have is not a simple fracture, but a compound one. Right now, I'm looking at it as a simple fracture. We'll see where it goes from there.

Harry, also in the comments,
argues about "power and control" in the Catholic hierarchy; at which point, he has merely started to argue one side of the cultural war. The point was to get the lay of the land first. Arguing one side over the other wasn't the point of the post. However, he was correct in naming the issues of power and control -- and that's exactly what I was saying. The question "Does it matter who you sleep with ..." leads directly to issues of power and control (I would also add "advise" and "influence"), which is exactly what I was getting at. This fault line is about power and control over sex.

Perhaps Harry or someone else can make a stronger argument that this fundamental issue of power is ultimately more divisive in our culture, power more broadly speaking, of which the issue of sex is a subset. You could make the argument that there are twin fault lines of sex and money, for example. I just don't see our culture as divided about money as about sex. Your mileage may vary.

Also in the comments, Harry says that I have "perhaps intentional[ly] distort[ed]" a complex issue. If there's to be any progress in a discussion, it's a bad idea to accuse the other side of bad faith.

...

Now what did Chris want me to address?

*****

By the way, here's a good idea of what I mean by an important difference in the cultural war. And it's about sex.