It has been a long established problem with the communications plans of the Democrats that, unlike the Republicans, their nuanced messages simply do not distill succinctly to a bumper-sticker platform. Want to know what Republicans (pace amici, I differentiate between Republicans and Conservatives) stand for? Try this out:

Traditional Values. Low Taxes. Small Government. Strong military.

Guiding, succinct, and can fit easily with room to spare on the back of your Tahoe. Try that with a Democratic stance. Take, say, the particularly thorny issue of gay marriage. The Republican formulation is “TRADITIONAL VALUES,” leaving it pretty clear that their platform is a “No” on that one. But what’s the Democratic stance? “Well, we note that the objective fact is that marriage is a ceremony performed on top of a civil recognition of the granting of a marriage license, so in fact no one really has a marriage. You technically have a civil union whose paperwork is signed by an officiant with a state-recognized right so to do, but who also, in many cases, is a representative of a religious order…”. Undoubtedly someone who considers the matter could be led to the same point of view, but who’s, honestly, going to stay awake that long or fight their gut response long enough to allow their mind to be changed? If the R’s can put their platform on a bumper sticker, the D’s would have to print it on police tape and wrap it around their Prius nine times.

Ergo, match made in heaven. Tom could give the D’s the succinctness to, as the rhetorical scholar Foghorn J. Leghorn once said, “Spit it out, Son!”

Case in point, in the article dated 23 January 2010, Friedman gives these one-liners:

” What the country needs most now is not more government stimulus, but more stimulation. We need to get millions of American kids, not just the geniuses, excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again.

• Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of “Start-Up America.”

• The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things, is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things. (bene scriptu!)

• Without inventing more new products and services that make people more productive, healthier or entertained — that we can sell around the world — we’ll never be able to afford the health care our people need, let alone pay off our debts.

• You want more good jobs, spawn more Steve Jobs.

It helps that I agree with Friendman’s conclusion: Grow America by business and communities organizing together to create commercial successes. It’s pretty much the pat Silicon Valley liberal / independent software hacker mantra.

“Obama speech causes nationwide stir”

Apparently, parents are contemplating keeping kids at home so that they will not be exposed to the president’s address.

What?

It’s not like Mr. Obama is saying “You should tell your parents to support the inclusion of the public option.” He’s going to talk to the boys and girls of this, the nation in which he functions as the chief executive officer, and tell them that education is important and that being part of the 30% of the high school population that doesn’t make it to graduation is a less-than-stellar idea.

What’s to complain about?

Obama is not Stalin (talk to me after you compare Obama’s pogram efficacy to Old Joe’s). Obama is not Hitler (talk to me after you compare their internment camp policies). He’s the president who won his position by a democratic process. Even if you don’t like what he says, even if you cringe at every word (as I did under the malapropism mudslides that came with the infrequent public addresses of GW Bush), to say that you’re going to prevent exposure to the ideas by plugging your years or keeping your kids home in protest is the height of willful ignorance.

For the record, other luminary organizations that engaged in this behavior were: Catholic Church on “does Jupiter have moons (15th-17th century),” recording industry (circa 2000), “should the testimony of this girl be used to hang women as witches? (late 17th c., Salem, MA). See how well those worked out?

I don’t know what misplaced sense of loyalty would encourage parents to “sick-out” their kid to avoid a “study hard, this country needs you” speech. Mr. Obama is trying to say “education is important as are the skills in critical thinking it engenders.” Putting a kid on sick-out says exactly the opposite to the child. When I was a child, the president (and his wife) frequently advised us to “Just Say No,” in an era where international competition is stronger, we’re up to our eyeballs in Chinese debt, and can only seem to grow our economy by inventing crazy debt instruments, having a president say “Just Say Yes to Basic Education” is needed and ought be heard.

{ Incidentally, having spent time in Holland it’s funny that in that country there is nothing that proscribes being both far-right and gay, as the late Pim Fortuyn exemplified }

When I heard that Governor Mark Sanford (R) of South Carolina had returned after an emotionally-tormented powder spent visiting his South American mistress, I took it merely as another opportunity to gloat about not being a member of the party that thinks it should dictate the moral terms of the nation’s life — least of all the while its members act to the contrary. In short, schadenfreude.

Yet I read the actual harvested emails and I was, quite honestly, moved. It’s clear this man is quite over the moon with this woman and their letters, particularly hers, are warm, tender, full of that Brazilian triesteza that makes slow samba with sangria so nice on Sunday evenings’ sunset.

Said “Maria:”

You have not brought complication or are not bringing complication to my life, on the contrary you’ve fullfiled (sic) me with happiness and made me aware how you can feel when you love somebody. I can think with my head but only feel with my heart so I can’t avoid it even knowing is hopelessly impossible

Honestly, could you not put a slow samba beat under that, read it, and bill it as a something from the João Gilberto back-catalog?

and…

Send you millions of kisses that will last till we get in touch again. best wishes from the deepest of my heart.

Said Sanford, steamily:

…you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light

Source: The State

My goodness. These are clearly people in love. In some ways, I was surpised to see this level of attraction and infatuation in middle age. Our media-enabled view seems to say that this kind of smoldering infatuation is the sole realm of teenagers. Maybe the Boomer generation is coming to peace with the idea that you may not have to look and act like your 20-year old version but can still have a rich emotional life ( cf. Diane Lane in “Unfaithful”).

And what of the the erstwhile Mrs. Sanford: the poor humiliated wife. To be on the “I prefer thee less” in this story must be excruciating and she is suffering an indignity that I do severely doubt and marriage could recover from. This interaction is a grand emotional infidelity. But I must give her credit in not showing up to the press conference. The tableaux of the by-the-man-standing wife in the boardroom suit is ridiculously dated. It would have been tantamount to carrying a sign saying “I’ve been grievously humiliated, and am here for your viewing pleasure.” Good for her, it’s a tiny beach-head of dignity that she may still hold.

So I moved from callow gloating, to a more considered view of the emotional torment of the parties involved. This is where I should have been first, I now realize, but 8 years of Bush rule were hard on heartstrings all around.

I was very much kind of feeling sorry for the guy until I read the following:

wish I could wish it away, but this soul-mate feel I alluded too is real and in that regard I sure don’t want to be the person complicating your life. I looked to where I often look for advice and counsel, and in I Corinthians 13 it simply says that, “ Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude, Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in the wrong, but rejoices in the right, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things”.

Boy, it takes real brass balls, you over-entitled megalomaniac, to quote I Corinthians 13 at your mistress and to portray yourself as her educator or tutor.

I don’t celebrate the shattering of any home, but where are those W. Somerset Maugham men who bolt out on the family and say “I love this woman and for once I’m going to live my life like I need to — I am an unfaithful man, a lousy father, but I must be with this woman, she is my life!” Or, failing that couldn’t they adopt the steely silence of the patricians because That’s What Our Type of People Do?

O tempora, in our world we don’t even have men making bad, harsh decisions who take the blame and live with it. No instead it’s simpering, it’s “I disappointed X, I let people down.” That’s not contrition (Mrs. Sanford is insulted by this), nor is it passionate depth of true love (“Maria” is ill served by this) it’s hoping to not loose too much station in the exchange for having had your cake and having eaten it too. Consider Edward VIII, who gave up his crown to be with Wallis Simpson, does the governor of South Carolina have so much more to loose?

It’s weasly cowardice then. I’m sick of the lack of responsibility the Baby Boomers have shown in handling public lives. He says to her: “…helping you live a better — not more complicated life.” Such pomposity!

But in the end, this is the eternal story of our condition, uncertainty and unhappiness, stability and family set against an unruly cerebro-chemical mush-pot animating us. I hope all these people moving through darkness come into peaceful world.

I shall let those who founded the country speak for themselves:

“The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

~ George Washington

“I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

“The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

“A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.”

~ James Madison

“I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end… where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice.”

~ John F. Kennedy

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.”

~ Barack Obama

Heh, everyone always quotes Brandeis.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

This means that Obama is actively giving weaponry to tear him down to his enemies, press, and to the citizens of this country. He’s offering us the crowbars wherewith to prise him from the edifice of his recently-gained power.

This is accountability: putting the means of your undermining in the hands of your enemies before, not ad hoc, and making that drive you towards excellence.

Previously, my list was:

1. King of Thailand
2. Carla Bruni
3. Angela Merkel of Germany, for freaking out so stylishly when she got the Bush back-rub treatment

Now it is

1. Barack Hussein Obama, POTUS
2. King of all Cosmos
3. Carla Bruni
4. King of Thailand

It was a hard choice…

versus

In all seriousness, I recall my mom once saying that in her childhood, the Kennedy era, they thought that the government were “cool” guys. I remember her saying this to me and thinking, this is somewhere in the Bush I era, “you’ve got to be joking.” Something died between Vietnam, Watergate, and has, I believe, for my generation, been dead until the election of Obama. Not ever having seen it before, we didn’t know to miss it. Having seen it again, I don’t think that I could well settle for less again.

“It’s your Kennedy moment”.

When asked to expand he continued: “You know, that place in history and time that you’re always going to remember where you were and what you were doing.”

I shall always remember yesterday evening: the repudiation of the insanity of the Bush debacle, the fresh air of hope, the sense that an old way of doing things had come to an end. It was a wonderful day.

As i have cringed for the last 8 years every time the president started talking, as a promisory not on the mellifluous rhetoric that we shall enjoy for the next 4 years:

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. Watch Obama’s speech in its entirety »

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they’ve achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.

And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you’ve given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best — the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who’s been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education.

There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those — to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Stunning, beautiful, eloquent. If he can lead, and we can do, with only a third that power, then this country will truly transform itself.

My entire life there’s been been one woman, and fellow Longhorn, who has made public service a core part of her life ( and getting rich in banking or oil, or both; about par for the course for Texipublican candidates ): Kay Baily Hutchinson.

I disagree with her on a great many topics, but I agree with her on more than just a few. Keep in mind that this woman served in the Texas legislature before I was born and has been a serving senator since 1993. Now she certainly had a bit of trouble here in Travis county about some misconduct around state resources used for her campaign, but these were not substantiated in a court of law.

There’s no way Sarah Palin is more qualified than KBH and not giving KBH the chance to politely decline is just an insult to her service record.

Using special cameras, Getty photographs the president’s usually-invisible advisor

If you’ve been paying to the ongoing return of the Enlightenment, you know the name Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a famous evolutionary biologist who, of late, has been spreading the message of atheism.

Dawkins’ primary book that has been the subject of a great many counter-opinions is “The God Delusion”. Lauren and I both noticed that RD was doing a book-signing at BookPeople downtown ( although I’m very thankful to live in a town where BookPeople exists ) and we resolved to attend…but then we found out there would be an ancillary lecture that evening at my alma mater. As such, we decided to drop the commercial endeavor and head to attend the lecture that night at The Hogg Auditorium.

Dawkins delivered his “standard message” wherewith it is understood that the reader can make himself familiar via youtube. It generally falls into the summation that:

“Religion is a bronze aged explanation of an exceedingly complex and beautiful world around us — we would appreciate the world more sans the notion of an interventionist diety. Oh yeah, and evolution isn’t random you twats. And don’t call children ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ they’re obviously the children of Christian or Muslim parents, if we’re honest about it.”

Either side of the question that you stand on, you’d do well to see if you can refute Dawkins’ reasoning whilst remaining intellectually honest. I admit, I have a very hard time refuting his argument.

The four compelling questions Dawkins gives falls into this.

Reductio ad unum absurdumque

Dawkins (imaginary interlocutor): “List all the gods you think are false. “
Christian / Muslim / Jew / Zoroastrian: Done.
Dawkins: Now just one more.

More exactly spelled out at Friendly Atheist.

And this puts us into the very odd place of grade-school anthropology. That is, what was up with Santa coming? My Santa came and brought his presents on the day of the 25th and my familial presents had been opened the night of the night of the 24th. But, as school playground discussion will attest, some other infidels were brought both familial and non-visible third-party spectre’s presents on the morning of the 25th.

{{Aside One: For the record, I think my method is more sound in keeping the illusion alive }}

{{Aside Two: Isn’t it odd that my language for defending my way of having a personal relationship with Santa has already taken the language of holy war? }}

And what about kids born to Jewish, Muslim, or Persian parents? Does the hospital given them a sheet with the birth-certificate “NO, WE WOULD NOT LIKE SANTA TO COME”.¹

And what about the tooth fairy? Some kids got more loot under the pillow than others? Did I happen to lose my teeth with a great number of others and thus my tooth’s value on the fairy market was devalued such that it only merited a meagre dollar versus ten ( or, in foreshadow to the My Super-Sweet Sixteening of American Culture, $20 )? Or was the alternative explanation that my teeth were less desirable?

Even in my before 10th birthday I knew that something shifty was afoot.

And as Dawkins says, isn’t it a amazing that everyone who has one god is sure they’ve picked the right one.

Atheism destroys the magic of living, you cold, cold person

Well, first of all, this is simply baloney.

Is the magic of The Parthenon diminished because you understand the that it’s composed by Golden Sections? Dawkins makes the compelling case that the world of religious tales is less beautiful than that promised by religion. Consider the root of Abrahamic religion: God grants insert-patriarch-here some bloodthirsty right to slay some tribe, some right to stone some barbarian tribe to death, some right to farm some dusty tract of land in Mesopotamia.

If these men were in contact with the supreme force why were they quibbling over land usage and not discussing scientific or intellectual leaps forward like:

• The Cat’s Eye Nebula
  
  It should be noted that this was taken by the Hubble telescope; for showing the primitive grandfather to the Hubble, Galileo was almost burnt alive by Catholic nutjobs
• The function of the recursive mechanism of 4 simple codons in an acid as data storage mechanism that allows for all protein sequencing in the animal kingdom
• Economic behaviors that would enable buyout of the Egyptian oppressor without requiring bloodshed
• The Tampon

Dawkins argues that instead of the limited and quaint world offered to chieftains in dusty books by their interpersonal god, it is science that gives us a much more beautiful world to live in.

Burden of Proof

Many religiously minded people put forth the argument that “since one cannot prove X does not exist, it is just as reasonable to take the counter-position, X does exist”. Dawkins handily dismisses this claim using the “Russell’s Teapot” story. By this same reasoning, the aggrieved Kiwi in the article below has just as much right to be trusted as the police that locked him up:

SYDNEY — A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak “Australian”.

Arthur Ross Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police on February 11 and told them he was being raped at his home by the wombat and he needed help, The Nelson Mail newspaper reported.

Source

Well, as we can’t prove the man wasn’t raped by a wombat, we’ll have to not hold him accountable for his actions subsequent thereto ( “speaking Australian” ).

{{Aside: Although, I can think of a certain world political leader whose horrible rhetorical talents might be helped by meeting the Henry Higgins wombat. }}

The defense is simply nonsense. If we were to accept this argument then “The Devil Made Me Do It” would have to be made a valid legal defense ( and surely in this Christian nation of ours, that would occur overnight, right? ).

I always find this a compelling question, most religious folk would naturally say they believe in jurisprudence and fair trial. But if they likewise assert they believe in a supernatural, persoally-involved diety, “Possession” would have to become a valid defense. The science of equity i.e. “law” or belief in non-visible, singularly personal motivations beyond rational control: you can’t have both.

And one might say, that’s well and good, but who’s it harming, this ill-considered religiosity? Allow me to retort, er, report.

Non-interventionism == Death

Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Source

If a parent were to say that non-present, invisible voices told them to rape their children repeatedly and keep them in a cage in the basement it’d be called monstrous or attributed to mental illness.

What do we make of a person praying for help instead of turning to science? Let me note that in the history of modern times there are 0 recorded miracles, but medical treatment of diabetic ketoacidosis has long history reliable treatment vectors. Parents, let me ask you, when the chips are down are you taking your sick darling to the hospital or the church? I should suggest if you choose the latter, it would be convenient whilst there to make funerary arrangements.

Note further that this is not an edge case:

• Heaven’s Gate Cult
• Jim Jones
• Massada

In any case, I found it a very interesting lecture and it’s certainly provided me questions over which to meditate. I hope that you do the same.