Campbell Brown tells the truth

Robert Earl Keene sings a song called, "Little Things." From his vantage point of beleaguered spouse, he quips to his beloved that, "it's the little things that piss me off."

At the end of the day, those truly are the things that drive me from ambivalent spectators to impassioned activists. In most of life, the great big huge happenings don't come that often or catch us that much off guard. It's the little, day to day happenings that make people crazy.

Case in point. Here's a link to a video of Campbell Brown talking about Obama and his broken promise to accept public campaign funds. It's well known, well documented, and undeniable that Obama is hands down winning the cash war in this election cycle. He's broken all kinds of fund raising records. So what's the big deal?

Campbell does a great job of spelling out the issues. Check out the video. Obama claims he did it because the system is broken. Regardless, it's the system that honorable John McCain has stuck to, even when it's cost him.

So here's the real rub. It's not about campaign finance and what probably is a broken system. It's about integrity. Lewinsky-gate wasn't (primarily) about Slick Willy getting his in the Oval Office. It was about the reality that a man who would lie to his wife about something like this, would lie to the American people. It's not about sex or money, it's about integrity and honor.

I wonder what else a man who lied about something as important as funding a campaign would lie about? Is there a chance that he'd lie about his fiscal policy? I wonder if he would ever lie about any of his associations, about his plans for the war, about the depth of his liberalism?

He might not, but nothing has indicated he wouldn't.

The fact that he lied when it served him to do so indicates that he would do it again under the same circumstances. How much of Obama's ever shrinking lead in the polls is attributed to an absolute saturation of the airwaves with his propaganda? If he wins this election, you could easily make the point that he bought the election with questionable campaign donations. So with broken promises and untraceable donations, he is somehow fit to lead this nation to a better and more reputable place in the global community? I don't get it. It seems to me that the best thing dirty money can get you is a bad name.

See the Campbell Brown piece here... http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/28/campbell.brown.obama/index.html

P.S. Kudos to CNN for putting this out there. Perhaps the Clinton News Network is under reform! Keep tellin' it like it is Campbell!

Part 2: Remember Phoenix - finding hope in a potential democratic landslide

So my last post was cathartic. It was good to ruminate over where I've come and see how the circle seems to have closed, only the person I am is not the person I was, and for that I'm grateful.

After I finished writing though, I sensed that tightness in my gut again. It's that sense that sneaks in every four years about mid-September. Because I believe that political figures cast a long shadow over the land and have great power to do great good (or conversely, great harm) I begin to fret and even fear over numbers that are sure to rain down late into the evening on November 4.

One side is predicting a landslide on the order of Ronald Reagan's trouncing of Walter Mondale in 1984. With an unprecedented cash advantage (which, incidentally Barack Obama promised not to use in the name of fairness) Barack Obama is making his presence felt in places no democratic candidate has gone before. The Democratic nominee would have you believe places like West Virginia and Indiana are in play once again.

On the other side, you have the Republican party calling foul and bias against the media, and assuring those who care that the race isn't over. In my mind's eye I imagine John McCain on November 5 hoisting a newspaper that says "Obama Defeats McCain" while the ticker tape fills the celebratory Republican air.

I don't know what to make of the polls, and my position is that it's probably not as bad as they say, but it still might not be close enough to matter. So what's a resuscitated conservative with a head and a heart in the game supposed to do in dicey political times like these?

Well, first of all, I can't overstate my belief that God alone is my provider, and if the tax burden became 99%, I have been promised that God would provide for my needs. So I cling to that and try to let that inform my position as much as possible.

I do believe, however, that even in the case of a total Democratic trouncing (they gain the White House and a super-majority in both houses of congress) my hope isn't gone. I believe there will be irreversible or nearly irreversible changes and decisions made (Supreme Court justices, new entitlements, etc), but I believe that out of the ashes a new conservative movement will rise.

I think the Republican party has been conflicted since about 1990. In the exceedingly long shadow of Ronald Reagan, the first President Bush let the hearts of the people slip away amid indecisiveness in Iraq. The Clinton years stand in stark contrast to the moral and economical rise of the Reagan years.

However, it's in the corners of those Clinton years that I find my basis for hope. During the years of Clinton's presidency, Newt Gingrich authored and introduced the Contract With America which was a true conservative movement. It wasn't perfect at all. (I think its tragic flaw was its close alignment with Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition). Again, I don't believe government will ever be perfect. The reason the Contract with America was a great thing was that it intended 2 things 1) Balance the Budget and 2) limit government. Those are great things.

The reality as I see it is that even if McCain should win, he isn't the future of the Republican Party. Truth be know, I think the future of the party is in people like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, and Michelle Bachmann. Now, you'll likely never see any glowing reports or talk about any of these. I expect a revival of the "Fairness Doctrine" which will for all intents and purposes completely silence the last vestiges of conservative media. The airwaves will be left to people like Keith Slobberman, Chris "Igor" Matthews, and Andrea "someone wake up my face" Mitchell. So what you'll begin to see is a grassroots revival of conservatism completely under the radar. You think the polls are lopsided this election cycle...

Just a side note of this: I think one of the major mistakes McCain made during this election was focusing on his ability to "reach across the aisle." You never hear Nanci Pelosi or Harry Reid talking about wanting to reach across the aisle. They talk about wanting to remove the aisle altogether. They don't want to work with Republicans, they want to eradicate them. Please hear me well, talking politically, I don't believe we are dealing with a centrist government. Every "moderate" conservative that McCain was supposed to bring into the fold has gone the other way (see Colin Powell). So stop doing that.

Next: Part 3: Love the One You're With - shrinking the political divide by being who you are.

Part 1: The Season I Find Myself In - back again for the first time

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven..."

Ecclesiastes 3, The Byrds

Things cycle. Fall becomes winter which turns to spring which inevitably rolls into Summer and soon enough we're back into Fall again. To rage against that machine is, as the writer of Ecclesiastes would say... meaningless.

We prepare for and even look forward to the changing seasons. My wife loves the beach, so summer always looms hopefully on the horizon. I would rather peel my own skin than sweat, so my heart skips when fall cools and darkens the evening skies.

But the other cycles of life I accept less willingly. For instance, I am extremely energetic (generally) between 7:00 and 11:00 A.M. After lunch I tend to wax philosophical and generally fail to be good use to anyone. Still, I ignore the cycles and fail to plan my schedule accordingly.

I'm finding myself in another cycle of sorts. Before I went to college, my ambition was to study political science, go to law school and throw my hat into the political arena. I was angry, belligerent, and had it all figured out (I was 18 at the time, and every 18 year old knows everything). In college I realized that there were, in fact, things I didn't know. I met people who were very different from me, and still very intelligent and good hearted. I wrestled with issues of systemic evil... poverty, illness, even the environment. I responded in typical fashion, by totally rejecting everything I previously believed. I identified "the right" from where I come with all of my own closed mindedness, so in light of all the ways I had been wrong, surely the problem was with the ideology, not with me.

Fast forward 15 years to today. I still wrestle with questions about systemic evils. But now my perspective has changed. I work at a place that touches the poor every single day. I am part of a place that meets social evil where it lives, and addresses it head on. That's impacted my political perspective because I see the success that comes when average, ordinary, normal people like me get our hands dirty. I meet people that "the government" never could. Not only that, but I don't just hand out money, but I hear and offer hope & solutions for their real needs...

Relationships

Purpose

Hope

Government can't provide those things. On paper, socialism and government welfare type programs work. In real life, they fail miserably because the people who administer the programs (run the government) will fail and fall just like the rest of us (incidentally, that's why I'm still frustrated over the recent "Bail Out package" and think it creates more problems than it solves).

So the cycle has swung back to the right for me. The difference between me then and now is that I see those on the left differently. I believe leaders on the left genuinely want to answer the same questions I do (poverty, greed, etc). I don't think all of them (although some of them probably) are evil hearted people who want to wreck the country. The difference I think is simply in our methodology. I want to empower every person to make a difference and think the government ruins what it touches... so by all means leave the people alone!

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's an insignificant difference. I think it's a major, game changing, generation impacting difference. I believe that taxing entrepreneurship (raising taxes on even big business) will stifle creativity and punish the American Spirit (who do you think puts the most money into the economy? The rich. It may sound unfair, but it's reality. The best thing for America is for EVERYONE to work hard and become rich). I believe "spreading the wealth around" is just about the worst idea I've ever heard, and I believe that it only fosters the entitlement mentality rampant in the welfare class. The answer isn't to give them something that they haven't earned, the answer is to give them hope that they were created for something larger and teach them that they can earn and participate.

What I can offer that government never can, is a hand up. I can stand beside someone and talk with them, and refuse to leave them when the manifest ignorance or intolerance or just plain laziness. The government can give money, but that only fosters dependence. The American dream isn't that we would forever be suckling at the teat of big government. The American dream is that we would be able to first be independent, then interdependent.

My hope for the right isn't that I believe conservative politics is the answer. I believe Christ is the answer. I believe that God working through His Church is the answer, because the Church has the ability to meet needs at every level... sustenance AND significance, life AND liberty, hope now AND a future tomorrow. When the government takes it upon itself to "meet needs" the people will stop turning to the Church, because government asks nothing of them.

Part 2 to come: Remember Phoenix - finding hope in a potential democratic landslide

I <3 H.D.T.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation..."

Back when I considered myself a philosophy honk, and even today I guess, I loved Thoreau's straight to the point, no holds barred, bone penetrating analysis on the lives of most men. I was in college at the time, and as most people at that phase in life, I knew everything... except myself. I remember even then having this quiet rage, this quiet but powerfully bubbling drive for something that wasn't yet. More frustrating still was the awareness that the intensity of desire didn't equate to an intensity of forward motion. I had vague dreams, ambiguous desires, and sharp if undefined hungers for things that seemed important.

I chased things that seemed like they might scratch the itch... I traveled around the country, I took Solomon's quest for meaning in Ecclesiastes (everything under the sun) and arrived at pretty much the same conclusion he did (vanity, vanity). For all my motion, desire, and soul heat, I was pretty much where I had been before. Mostly I was raging against the machine that was me. All that was left was Thoreau's penetrating analysis of my life... quiet desperation.

I wish I could say that since I started following Christ it had all changed. I wish I could say that now my desperation is fully satiated if constantly renewed. I wish I could say my life was a loud and constant roar of intention and purpose, fueled and driven by the fullness of the Godhead's passion.

But that's not how it goes, it would seem.

My desperation today is aimed in a different direction. It's admittedly made up of some of the same basic fabric, and it's often no less quiet and hot. I still hunger for significance, if today I realize I need to follow a different path. I still long to make a living with words and ideas, although the tone and subject of those words is different. Even more disturbingly, as I am now in my 30's, I have to admit that my quiet desperation still doesn't often enough manifest itself in the kinds of actions that would allow me to possibly realize some of the meat of those quiet desperation's (*Note: I also am now in constant realization that many of the drives I have may not be worth pursuing. Significance as I define it may be no more in the works for me than a polka-dotted hair do*)

But Thoreau left another nugget in Walden. "I went to the woods to live deliberately."

Thoreau spent significant time in the woods. Alone. Quiet. Intentionally seeking out the things that would fill in and fill out the purpose he felt pushed toward. The beauty and the drama of that statement compels me. I don't think Thoreau had it all right. I don't think his equation would lead him to the place where he ultimately wanted to be. But he put himself in the best position to discover that for himself.

I'm convinced that moving beyond a life of quiet desperation comes in living deliberately. I woke up this morning and had a choice. I could either mindlessly drift with Jackson's movie on TV (The Little Mermaid... he loves Sebastian the Jamaican crab) or I could turn my mind to try and understand my responses yesterday, the things God seemed to be whispering to me, and the things God was doing in the world around me. I can wake up tomorrow and jump into the day and deal with whatever comes or I can spend time nurturing those Holy Discontent things and setting a course of action. My action will probably often be misdirected and way off track... but it will have been deliberate, and it will allow me to learn, pray, and recalibrate.

God save me from a life of quiet desperation. God keep me from dousing the flames that would heat the boiler of passion you placed in me. God, rescue me from the drift of life where every moment appears about as insignificant as the last. Most of all, God deliver me from futility, so that I might realize even a piece of the holy, latent potential in the world around.

Sick bellies and Holy moments

Friday night, Jack threw up. Then he threw up again.

It didn't seem wise to keep the little belly-geyser around the 6 day old baby. No need to infect a newborn. So I went to my parents until the whole thing blew over. My hope was that in the morning he would wake up and be fine and I'd be home by evening (24 hours past his last "episode").

But he threw up yesterday morning again. All day I nursed him back, small sips of liquid for 4 hours, followed by slightly larger sips for 4 hours, still no food though. He seemed to feel better all day and went to bed at night, sleeping sweetly in the guest bed at my parents house.

This morning he threw up again. Dangit.

So I'm 36 hours away from my wife and new born daughter, and I miss them both terribly. Right now Jack is asleep on the couch behind me, and I'm praying the crackers and Gatorade I've been working into him stay down. I'm praying that he feels better, that he gets back to being his same old self. I'm praying that I get to go back home, hug & kiss my wife, and hold my baby.

It's in the midst of all this that I made a decision yesterday morning...

For we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him...

Romans 8:28

For I know the plans I have for you... plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11

I decided that I was going to believe that this wasn't a cosmic blip or a disappearance of the God's providence. I decided I was going to respond as if this very situation (missing my family, hurting for my beautiful sick little man, being away from home at such a vulnerable time, not being able to support my recently de-pregnanted wife) WAS the providence of God. God wasn't waiting until everyone was healthy to bless me, he wanted to bless me right now, in spite of it. In fact, I think he wanted me to see the illness and separation as a blessing.

It's a tough to fully latch on to the mindset that whatever seemingly negative situation I'm in isn't something that I have to "get through" any more than the good situations are. God is present, real, and unchanged in both of them. His hands aren't bound in the "bad times" and somehow unleashed in the "good times." The sick moments aren't moments where Satan is winning. Satan doesn't get to win. God wins.

He always wins.

So James' challenge to, "Consider it pure joy, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything," resonates only when I remember, or believe, that He's not gone. He's here. He's working. His intentions for me are exactly the same as they were the other day when Jack was running around like a crazy man (and I was praying that he would calm down. Now that he's calm, I just want him to be more active! I'm so fickle).

So I'm grateful for this time. I learned how to find God in the fabric of a potentially frustrating and bothersome situation. I had a chance to see that perseverance is precious, and faith is worth more than gold. I had a chance to hold my otherwise squirmy and dodgy son close to me. I kissed his head and wiped his tears and as steadily as I could, I reassured him that it would all be OK. "Daddy's here Jack, you don't have to worry."

And as those words fall into his sickly-eager little ear, they fall into mine and they allow me to speak with a confidence and a hope that I think I understand in a different way than I did before.