3.4.2011 CURRENT THOT

quotables, worldmag, 3.12.11, p. 20

'he thinks you're fools'. the atlantic blogger andrew sullivan to 'all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected' after president obama submitted a budget bluprint to congress that failed to address the country's debt problems. 'either the u.s. will go into default because of obama's cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts'.

'as you watch the region, remember not to watch the demonstrators. watch the men with the guns'. analysis of 'revolution and the muslim world' by the global intelligence firm stratfor. 'the problem with revolutions is that the people who start them rarely finish them. the idealist democrats around alexander kerensky in russia were not the ones who finished the revolution. the thuggish bolsheviks did'.

'christians are like bed bugs, who hide under the guise of so-called missionary work, and drink the blood of the innocent vulnerable people, and bed bugs should be killed or else they will continue drinking blood'. unidentified speaker at a hindu nationalist event held last month in madhya pradesh, india, and attended by an estimated 2 million. volunteers distributed literature in the region calling on christians to convert to hinduism, and in some cases forcing them to sign declarations of their intent to do that.

the revival of localism, p. 40

newspaper editor gene roberts once noted, 'many important stories don't break. they seep, trickle and ooze. lets be sure we are covering the ooze'.

here's some ooze: local idiosyncrasy is in, uniformity is out. locavores emphasize foods grown nearby. microbreweries create locally crafted drinks. in politics, voters strike back against one-size-fits-all obamacare. in skyscrapers and ballparks, postmodernist structures with nooks and crannies have replaced boxy buildings and cookie-cutter stadiums.

breaking stories are easy to cover because they are action-oriented events at specific times and places. ooze is harder because it requires juxtaposing changes that initially may not seem related. here are 7:
1. baby boom generation (born 1946-64) pioneered divorce rates and 2-career couples. many among the baby bust..generation x (born late 60s and 70s) rebel against that.
2. many commercials seem less focused on achieving prominence in the world and more on the satisfactions of family and community.
3. the media movement 2 decades ago was toward more centralization, with usa today and networks riding high. now the hot area of interest is localism and hyper-localism, with new journalistic websites aimed at small geographic areas popping up and nationa media like aol, cnn and msnbc seeding neighborhood publications.
4. the average american drove less in 2010 than in 2000.
5. an american's 19th century ? upon first meeting another was often, 'who are your people?' the 20th century ? was 'what do you do?' the ? in the 21st..is 'where do you live?' many people put roots above shoots,choosing to live in a place rather than moving to advance a career.
6.an emphasis on local control of government, local production and consumption of goods, and local culture is popular among young christians. their favorite author is often..kentucky farmer, 76 year old wendell berry. berry praises reverence for God and life, the pleasures of good work, good food, and frugality. he says those joys are more likely to be found in healthy rural communities that value small farms and don't overdose on technology.
7. may christians used to coalesce politically through national organizations like the moral majority, the christian coalition and focus on the family, but some of them went out of business or lost steam. the big political story of 2010 was the growth of the decentralized tea party movement.

(heres a few gen xers) caleb stegall is 39 and has spent about 90% of his life within 20 miles of the place in northeastern kansas where he was born, a radius that includes the state capital and a state university...after graduating from law school stegall had job offers from all over the country. he and his wife 'thot really long and hard about going and there was a lot of attractiveness, no the least of which was the starting salary, but in the end we decided to stay or stay committed to our place. i took a job in topeka'. why? they had 2 sons at that time..and wanted a good place to raise kids, but also a good place to raise themselves: stegall says, 'we lose and leave behind a lot when we conceive of society as this great ladder to climb. our eyes are always on the next rung up and what is left behind never gets a backward glance. this has led to a tremendous amount of dispossession and displacement; spiritual angst, and also real world destruction and exploitation of different places and people. i didn't want to have any part of that, so we made the decision to stay.'

stegall has seen dislocation and disruption in the lives of kids he grew up with who headed to the bright lights: most 'have been very dissatisfied'. stegall himself became dissatisfied with his work in commercial litigation at a topeka law firm, where he represented 'large corporations suing each other most of the time'. he didn't want to be 'just a cog in this economic machine', so after a few years he returned to his rural county, hung out a shingle, and practiced law in a town of 900 people, 'using my tools to fix problems. that's gratifying and that's what it means to be part of the community'.
stegall recently did take a job a few miles down the road as chief counsel to new kansas governor sam brownback, who himself was coming home after 14 years as a u.s. senator. stegall has no washington plans, though: 'the powers of a centralized economy and state are so great that your chances of effecting change are much greater in a place where you actually wield some influence, as opposed to just being a small, small piece in the big machine'.

victoria cobb, 32, offers a similar comparison of washington versus state capitals. as a college student in richmond..she was excited about an internship in (washington) where power now resided: 'it's a glitzy thing: you think, 'wow, everything happens in d.c.'. but in the last semester of her senior year she worked for the family foundation of virginia, a state level affiliate of focus on the family and 'saw the tremendous difference between what happens in washington, d.c. and in richmond.'.

cobb is now president of the family foundation but still recalls that difference: 'in washington you trail a lobbyist to wait, to wait,, to wait, to get to an aide of an aide of an aide of a congressman. as an intern in richmond i'm walking in a state senator's office and we're talking about substantive issues. i leaned that if you're a person who really wants to make substantive change, you ought to start at the state and local level. there may be more that you can accomplish there'.

ned ryan, 38, is another young leader with washington experience who does not approve of conservative groups' 'thinking they have to go to dc to beat dc. many become very bureaucratic, very much like what they came to change. i don't believe the answers to our problems are in dc'. ..he views his calling as a long-distance run: 10 tears ago he was answering correspondence in the bush white house, but now he heads american majority, which encourages people to run for school boards, county commissions and so forth with the goal of 'creating a groundswell from the bottom up'.

indiana's governor mitch daniels, p47..daniels' fervor is directed against a ballooning, centralized government, what he calls statism. 'our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric (control/treatment of obesity) surgery..you'd be amazed how much government you'll never miss'.

he describes federal government as necessarily incompetent: 'you simply can't make things work on that scale through central planning'.

but daniels is also a believer in limited government because of its compassionate effect on individuals: the dignity and fulfillment that comes with taking responsibility for oneself or for one's neighbor. he looks at europe, where many nations have transferred their resources to the state. he sees a withering commitment toward others - europeans use their high taxes to justify an unwillingness to make charitable donations.

you chancesof succeeding are higher where people are directly involved, acting from their hearts'..'when in doubt, do the duty nearest you', echoing..thomas carlyle.

among other things he has worked to develop oaks academy, a ministry of his downtown indianapolis church, tabernacle presbyterian. daniels loves to show visitors the fully restored large, rectangular, stained-glass windows. they have returned to their original place on either side of the main entrance leading to the school's grand front hall. their inscription is from john 8: 'ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free'.

'from 1895 to somewhere in the 1980s, thousands of young people came to school every day, to public school and passed between those familiar pieces of scripture and no one thot that was strange'. the school has taught him that high expectations, love and an environment infused with character and faith can overcome the handicaps often placed on disadvantaged youth.

is he interested in running for president? he is not obsessed with public life but he is testing how his views play on the national stage...daniels, when i asked whether he would spend the political capital necessary to nominate and confirm a conservative like antonin scalia to the high court, was adamant that he would saying 'strict construction' of both federal and state constitutions 'is as important as any issue i can think of. it runs far deeper than any one topic a court might deal with; the ? is whether the people rule or will be ruled by an unaccountable few'.

during daniels' time as white house budget director, president george w. bush nicknamed him 'the blade'. today daniels call the nation's debt the 'new red menace..he beleives the debt is a mortal threat to all americans..it is a problem he is not afraid to blame on his own generation. 'we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish'..it's been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us'.

daniels is willing to take on publicly many of politics' third rails: he supports raising the retirement age, ending social security checks to the wealthy and cutting defense spending . in testing the presidential waters, he wants to see if americans are ready for such medicine: 'people say we will never get the consensus together and that nobody can get elected arguing for these sorts of things. i'm not so sure, but somebody better find out'.

..daniels took officed after 8 years of unbalanced budgets with the state facing a $200 million deficit. by the end of his first term, indiana enjoyed a $1.3billion surplus and a triple-A bond rating. on his first day as governor he rescinded an executive order giving collective bargaining rights to state employees. today the number of state employees has fallen to 1982 levels.

he generated nearly $4 billion by privatizing the state's toll roads, he cut property taxes by an average or 30%and he created health savings accounts for thousands of low-income residents. now he is trying to cap off his governorship by implementing a statewide voucher system for school choice and by pushing for tax refunds when state reserves hit a certain level.

do conservatives have too much media influence? p50 yes, according to mark lloyd, chief diversity officer of the federal communications commission - and emphasizing a version of localism is the way to combat it.

lloyd, who co-wrote ..'the structural imbalance of political talk radio wants the fcc to reduce conservative influence in talk radio...his analysis shows that news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets provide programming that is 76% conservative..let's look at the politics of 3 other major media.
1. major television networks with news programming: abc, cbs, nbc, pbs, fox, cnn, msnbc, comedy central. one of them is mostly conservative.
2. most influential newspapers and magazines: new york times, wall street journal, losangeles tiems, time, newsweek. none of them is conservative in news coverage. (the journal has a conservative editorial page, so let's count it as half-conservative).
3. most read internet news sites, according to alexa: yahoo, bbc online, cnn interactive, new york times, huffington post. none of them is conservative. so let's see: in these 3 media, plus talk raio, conservatives have 12.5%, 10%, 0% and 76% influence. that averages 25%..

hmm. some folds probably do get all their information from talk radio and some eat all their meals at mcdonald's. but we don't require mcdonald's to changeits menu or pay fees to support local salad bars, because most of us believe that a. we sholdn'tpenalizemcdonald's for serving what people want, b. most people don't eatall their meals at mcdonld's and c. it's a free country. (isn't it?)

we used to have a suffocating sameness in mass media, so conservative talk radio, despite its excesses, is a breath of fresh airtime. if we do have a lack of political diversity in media, its because liberalism is still overrepresented, but that just means conservatives should compete more effectively..

manhattan bible church, p52..mbc, a congregation of about 400..in a neighborhood where 31% of residents live in poverty..houses 40 ministries..how can one congregation sustain so much activity? pastor bill devlin said he flattens the usual ecclesiastical bureaucracy to increase ministries and decrease complaining. when church members come to him with either a passion or a gripe, he tells them they're now in charge of meeting the need; ' i love being here because we're right in the middle of chaos'. devlin, who founded urban family council in philadelphia, sleeps on the floor of his office 3 days a week and commutes from pennsylavania the rest of the week. 'you've got to enter the chaos..i always saythat this is God's country here'.