A recent cover of The Economist shows a cartoon depicting the Statue of Liberty, not standing high on her Ellis Island podium, but sitting on it, looking away from the viewer, a little like “The Thinker,” but more melancholy.  The story is about “Unhappy America” and how it got that way and what to do about it.  The short version of the story is: the housing market, the credit crisis, the war on terror, the price of gas, the rise of Asia, and so on and so forth.  But it’s not a pessimistic article.

America has got into funks before now. In the 1950s it went into a Sputnik-driven spin about Soviet power; in the 1970s there was Watergate, Vietnam and the oil shocks; in the late 1980s Japan seemed to be buying up America. Each time, the United States rebounded, because the country is good at fixing itself.

The main problem, so says The Economist, is how America looks at the rise of Asia.  They say not to worry.  First, China won’t be catching up to America any time soon.  And second, in a free market world, economic prosperity for one fair player means economic prosperity for all fair players.  This is what liberals don’t understand and what conservatives (at least when speaking of Asia) seem to have forgotten.

Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming largely because they have adopted America’s ideas. America should regard their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it.  Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a scapegoat for America’s self-made problems too often point the finger at the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies.

Sure, American jobs may be moving overseas, but that’s because those folks can do them more efficiently than we can (for lots of reasons), which means when we buy those very same products, they’ll be more affordable than they were before.  And that just frees up Americans to make new things, to sell new products, to be even more innovative than before.  Economics is not zero-sum.  Those with economic myopia believe that if John makes money, he must be stealing it from Sue.  Those with a healthy view of economics realize that if John makes money, then he’s got more money to buy Sue’s widgets.  And that’s better for everybody.  Including America.

“Sadly, compassionate conservatism is now dead as a political label,” writes Marvin Olasky in the latest WORLD. Marvin adds that the label is “dead among liberals because of the war in Iraq: They equate the term with hypocrisy. And it’s mostly dead among conservatives because of President Bush’s refusal to veto any domestic spending bills for six years: They equate the term with big government.” But as Marvin reports, the concept isn’t dead. It just may need a new name … like “social justice.”

Read his entire column on the concept here.

Vanity Fair wants to know, “What will liberal bloggers do if Obama wins?”  That is, Andrew Sullivan, Arianna Huffington, and DailyKos “face the peculiar prospect of actually agreeing with the president.”  Oh, and also a Democratic congress.  This piece compares the liberal bloggers to the upstart conservatives in the sixties and seventies.

[I]t took about 40 years, beginning with the Goldwater campaign in 1964, for the Right’s roots to be forged into planks and those planks reduced to wooden nickels.

In the resulting vacuum, another movement is already threatening to graduate from inspiring to oppressive: the Netroots putsch and its sounding board, the liberal blogosphere. Together, these forces bear a striking resemblance to the enemy. Just as Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush depended on developments in new media-direct-mail campaigning, talk radio, cable news-so the new wired Left, with its disheveled assortment of journalist-activists and activist-journalists, has mastered the Internet.

Of course, all this assumes Obama will win.  And the voting hasn’t happened yet.

Suzanne Braun Levine, former editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, writes in The Nation about how the most important news is often the least reported.  She says the most important news in her family is how her 15-year old won’t do his homework, and one of her friend’s most important news stories is his sick mother.

Much ‘real news’ is ostensibly about civic life, which sounds like it should reflect how families function within the community, but most of the stories are bloodless reports about buildings–the Board of Education, City Hall. Bloodless but, perhaps to attract the attention that gray stone doesn’t, brutally confrontational. E.J. Dionne pointed out in Why Americans Hate Politics that the way the media typically report politics–titanic struggles between irreconcilable forces and scandalous behavior by unworthy leaders–only polarizes the issues beyond recognition, and beyond resolution as well.

Here at WMB, we often write in very polarizing ways, but we also try to show more nuance where much of the news doesn’t or can’t.  Levine continues:

A handful of journalists are beginning to rewire the newsgathering process. One is Jeannine Guttman, editor of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald. When she realized that her paper was covering news only if it was ‘novel, unusual, or counterintuitive,’ she changed the ground rules. She began assigning reports from what she called ‘third places’–the supermarket, the playground, the coffee shop–where people hang out and talk about things. Then she required that political stories include citizens among the ‘active players,’ along with lobbyists, lawmakers, spin doctors, pollsters, experts, and analysts. And she required that stories about controversial issues include quotes from people who are undecided or ambivalent as well as those who firmly support one side or the other.

Read the article to find out what kind of stories she’s talking about and how it might change the news and the way we read the news.

As you may know, Obama recently announced that, if elected, he would revive Bush “faith-based” initiative, supporting religious organizations in their community work and involvement.  This was done surreptitiously (or not so much) to invite Christian voters from the right.  One problem with Obama’s faith-based revivification plan is that faith-based organizations would be forbidden to hire employees who do not have faith.  We might call it the Faith-or-Not-Faith-Based Initiative.  Lew Daly at Boston Review explains that this one weakness will ensure Obama’s plan would be as ineffectual as Bush’s.

By restricting religious hiring rights, Obama’s faith-based initiative attacks the very thing it claims to be supporting. That is, it attacks communities. The Supreme Court’s greatest advocate for the poor, Justice William Brennan, explained this better than anyone in his separate opinion in Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos (1987), the case that established the constitutionality of faith-based hiring rights […] For government to restrict the criteria and discretion that religious communities use to define and maintain their identities threatens the very existence of religion, as Justice Brennan (correctly) understood it.

It’s nice to be reminded that the Supreme Court believes such things, and bad to be reminded that a presidential candidate doesn’t.

Leah Daughtry is on a mission, and part of that mission is preaching barefoot.

[She] slipped off her stiletto-heel shoes at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn, stepped from a pastor’s chair to the pulpit and shouted, “I am on the rise!” She wore a long black tunic with gold buttons that ran from her high collar almost to the carpet. Her graying hair was shorn tight to her dark brown scalp. She always preaches in bare feet in order to “de-self,” she had told me, and to let God’s spirit and words rush through her unimpeded. “I am on the rise!” she erupted again.

The other part of that mission is being chief of staff to Howard Dean and chief executive of the Democratic convention next month.  So the Times wants to know, “Can Leah Daughtry bring faith to the Democratic party?”  I wonder, too.  The answer may be in statements like these, from Daughtry’s own mouth:

The right of self-determination is the concern. If I do all the right things, I will live a full and abundant life - this should be true. But it’s not. Something’s wrong with the equation. Americans may not call this liberation theology, but they have the sense that things aren’t fair.

I’ll agree with Daughtry that things aren’t fair and that something’s wrong with the equation.  What’s wrong is sin.  Not oppression of one class or race over another.  It’s oppression of ourselves by our very own selves.  What Daughtry is talking about - well, that’s faith, but it ain’t Biblical.  That’s faith in man, not God.  Faith that “if I do all the right things, I will live a full and abundant life” is to make the self divine.  Perhaps this is what most people think Christianity is, I don’t know.  But life is unfair.  It will always be unfair.

The lessons of Biblical faith would suggest that 1) nobody can do all the right things, and 2) having a full and abundant life comes from acknowledging #1, along with accepting on faith that God is who he says he is and that he has done and will do what he’s said he’s done and will do.  Oh, and the fact that “full” and “abundant” can only mean a life of full and abundant love and service.  Race might still be a problem in America, and in the world, and in human history, but it’s only a corollary to the Bigger Problem of sin and rebellion.  Can Leah Daughtry bring faith to the Democratic party?  Faith in something, but not God.  But perhaps that will be enough to give Obama a victory.

First Things Blog links to an article by Judge Robert Bork titled “Individual Liberty and the Constitution.” 

Referring to how activist judges have enshrined in constitutional law their particular policy preferences, [Bork] argues that “the aristocracy that the anti-Federalists feared has been created and empowered in large part by the very Bill of Rights they demanded as a bulwark against aristocracy.”

Conservatives talk a lot about the politicization of the Supreme Court, but Bork is one of the few voices who speaks with experience and wisdom on the issue.  Even with a more moderate court now than in years past, this is still an issue that deserves attention.

Yesterday, we posted on Right Wing, Wrong Bird by Dr. Joel Hunter, where he ponders the difference between being a Christian versus being Christ-like in politics.  Here’s a little more from him, via Relevant Magazine, where he offers six steps for Christ-like political engagement:

1. “Get Away from Confrontational Demonstration-to Think” (For me, this often happens in the presence of other believers, rather than pagans.  If you hang out with nothing but other believers all the time, you can stop thinking about your shared ideas, without knowing you’ve stopped thinking.  Spending time around a few decent pagans can keep you honest.)
2. “Overlook a Narrow Religious Perspective” - ” A true test of Christianity in politics is this: Are a great variety of people benefited by our political stance, even people who are not of our faith? We are following the footsteps of Christ when we work hard to assist others, even when their political stance is different from our own, and when we talk in terms that communicate to everyone.”
3. “Observe Deep Principles Rather than Shallow Politics” - “The great benefit Christians should bring to the American political process is one of depth. Those who see the world in more than one dimension, who think in terms of ages longer than this life, are valuable voices.”
4. “Decide from Prayer and Scriptural Principles” - “Whether God leads all praying Christians to vote the same is not the point. Living all of life like Jesus is the point.”
5. “Act!” - “God will call some people to unique service in government. He has done that historically with kings such as David, vice pharaohs such as Joseph, judges such as Samson and Deborah, queens such as Esther, and prophets such as Nathan. But how many Davids or Josephs or Nathans does God need?”
6. “Cooperate with Others and Encourage Understanding” - “Cooperation and tolerance are not twins: Cooperation ennobles while tolerance is likely to corrupt. Cooperation is active; tolerance is passive. Cooperation is neither afraid of nor destroyed by conflict. Many of us have failed to distinguish between the two.”

Of course, with a little tweaking, these are good principles for any reasonable person to follow in politics, not just believers. 

Here’s an excerpt from Right Wing, Wrong Bird by Dr. Joel Hunter, where he wonders “if being a Christian in politics and being Christlike in politics is the same [sic].”

There are probably many Christian approaches to politics. From the political involvement of most Christians, I would assume that their strategy is identical to non-Christian groups. We Christians tend to focus on an issue or candidate, evaluate that person with our value system, accumulate a power base in reaction, and do what we can for or against. That is how politics works, and that seems to be how Christian politics works.

Good, solid assessment. 

A Christian approach to politics may show those in opposition just how wrong their opposition is. The Christlike approach to politics respectfully acknowledges the points at which they are right.

A Christian approach could tell everyone how to vote; the Christlike approach directs the attention of the voters to underlying values.

A Christian approach could give us certainty; the Christlike approach gives us a biblical perspective.

What do you think?

Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons, and Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food, have a nice discussion here about conservatism, agribusiness, the “Slow Food” movement, global “hunger,” the real cost of food, and the family dinner:

Look at what food marketing does to the family dinner. The American food industry spends $32 billion a year marketing 17,000 new products to us. They are trying very hard to undermine parents’ roles as gatekeepers of the family diet […] Food marketers work very hard to get us to eat 24/7, and if you look at the images on television, you see families too hurried to cook a meal. They’re so busy that all they can do is grab a cereal bar on the way out the door. All of this emphasis on snack food has the effect of eroding the crucial institution of families sitting down together. One of the great blind spots in American conservatism is not appreciating the role of consumer capitalism in eroding values such as the family dinner.

It’s a long discussion, and one more to add in your “Why to Garden” file.