What’s next, GOP?

An exciting era of American history has begun.  Bipartisanship (even post-partisanship) is on the front burner.  The President is trooping down to the Capitol today to listen to Republicans.

Competence is in; cronyism is out.  Effectiveness is in; ideology is out.  Diplomacy is in; war is, well, less.  A new wave of young people have energized government.  A new wave of non-white participation has democratized government.

But the most powerful in the GOP read their recent trouncing as a sign that they’re not conservative enough.  As the thoughtful conservative David Brooks writes in the NY Times:

Image via Wikipedia

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed. […]

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most prominent voices in the Traditionalist camp […]

Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the G.O.P.

The less we know, the better we think we are

Image by J Wynia via Flickr

While cruising Can’t See the Forest, I ran into this remarkable article:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is “‘an example of cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.'” They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average.”

Here’s a bit more:

clipped from en.wikipedia.org [I]n skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” […] [Dunning and Kruger] hypothesized […] Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill. Kruger and Dunning examined self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores, the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank, whereupon the competent group accurately estimated their rank, while the incompetent group still overestimated their own rank […] [P]articipants scoring … in the 12th percentile … on tests of humor, grammar, and logic … estimated themselves to be in the 62nd … Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence. A follow-up study suggests that grossly incompetent students improve both their skill level and their ability to estimate their class rank only after extensive tutoring in the skills they had previously lacked.

Boy oh boy; we have Pandora’s Box here.

Some make their case with “I think that … ;” others insist “I don’t think so, I know so“—often to the point of mocking uncertainty.  Yet the former often have the better argument; they don’t have to “know so.”

Think of places where certainty-covering-questionable-thinking crops up:

• politicians (“I know how to …”)
• web conversations (ever see a troll write “I wonder if  …?”)
• sermons ([blush] How much I once knew!)
• ratings-driven media personalities (Rush Limbaugh? Bill Maher?)

“Illusory superiority” looks like a pretty common commodity, eh?

Should such black and white arguments be yellow flags?

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Tags: humility, reasoning, reasonable, logic, thinking, thought, competence,, politics,, web+2.0,, knowledge,, argument,, trolls,, rants, Monte Asbury

Pentecost, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Cyclone Nargis (sermon for May 11, 2008)

Day of Pentecost
May 11, 2008

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23

Meet With Me; You Are the One; Light the Fire; Meet Us

Acts 2 [sermon follows]

A Sound Like a Strong Wind

1-4 When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force-no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

5-11There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene; Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes; Even Cretans and Arabs! “They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!”

12Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?” 13Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”

Peter Speaks Up

14-21That’s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven’t had time to get drunk-it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:

“In the Last Days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters; Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams. When the time comes, I’ll pour out my Spirit On those who serve me, men and women both, and they’ll prophesy. I’ll set wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, Blood and fire and billowing smoke, the sun turning black and the moon blood-red, Before the Day of the Lord arrives, the Day tremendous and marvelous; And whoever calls out for help to me, God, will be saved.”

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

What’s on my mind is how much God cares for the whole world, and how much I want my own heart to be that way. His story is always so “go-ey.” Here, the guests in the city understand – in their own language. See? God causes people to go communicate with other people.

This kept coming up this week. Human culture isn’t often that way.

A friend blogged about a Muslim boy who fell under the spell of some extremists, was going to be a suicide bomber, got caught, probably went to prison. My much-valued friend is an agnostic, and she saw the fault of religion in it—especially given the fact the the books of our faiths (my own included) seem to advocate violence sometimes. She ends:

Reality-based morality is the only way humanity is going to make it to a peaceful future. To see the oneness of our species shows the violence for what it is: brother killing brother, an abomination.

[At that sentence I saw a glimmer of familiarity in the eyes of my friends in church. They liked it!]

I found that moving. So I wrote back:

Senator Clinton, does lying have no limits?

Presidents lie, I guess: LBJ on the Gulf of Tonkin. Nixon on Watergate. Reagan denied involvement in Iran-Contra. Clinton “did not have sex with that woman” (lots of people pay good money to not have sex like that). GWB about … oh, forget it (some of my conservative friends still believe Bush’s statements were well-intentioned mistakes, to which I say, “Dear ones, you are not looking.”)

It comes hard to me to admit all this. I clung to hope that Bush was honest much longer than I should have. It still disappoints me (yes, I’m naive and stupid.)

But friends, Hillary did not mis-speak. In her prepared comments, starting in January, and even after being called on it, she repeated a fairy tale that cast herself as a hero, bravely landing under fire, running for cover. As the girl from the Tuzsla airport recently said, “It is an ugly thing for a politician to tell lies.” Hillary brushed it off as unimportant, just a blip, a result of lack of sleep. Since January. In prepared remarks.

Let me ask you, do you accidentally tell stories about yourself running from gunfire? Wouldn’t people doubt your competence if you did?

Check me out. Here are two reporters’ takes on it. See what you think.

Non-murderer to be executed for murder in Texas

Ending with a thought from the prophet Isaiah…

But first, my own story: I grew up respecting law and believing only unusually bad people got in serious trouble. It was easy, then, to support measures that were “tough on crime;” I assumed they’d nail people who earned it.

Then someone I know pulled some stupid teenage pranks. And narrowly escaped finishing childhood in prison.

A prosecutor’s surprising wrath, a court-appointed defender’s incompetence (or disinterest), and out-dated, politically-inspired laws took advantage of naive trust in the system, very nearly resulting in lifelong consequences for a teenager’s joke. A tipoff from a wise friend may have saved the day.

It changed my view of the judicial system forever. I’ll never fully trust a policeman again. And I’ll certainly not view the system—and anti-crime legislation—as that which gives people what they’ve got coming. Justice, in the case I witnessed, demanded protecting the kid from the system as much as it meant punishing the crime. We had to force the system to be just.

Now consider the story of Kenneth Foster (pictured at right):

clipped from www.democracynow.org Texas Court Denies Kenneth Foster Appeal The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has denied the final appeal of death row prisoner Kenneth Foster who is scheduled to be executed on August 30 Foster is scheduled to be executed under a controversial Texan law known as the law of parties. The law imposes the death penalty on anybody involved in a crime where a murder occurred. In Foster’s case he was driving a car 11 years ago with three passengers. One of the passengers left the car, got into an altercation and shot a man dead. At the time of the shooting, Kenneth Foster was 80 feet away in his car. Since Foster’s original trial, the other passengers have testified that Foster had no idea a shooting was going to take place. According to supporters of Foster, Texas is the only state where you can be factually innocent of murder and still be sent to death row.

This week’s Bible reading in Isaiah 1 tells of God being sick of religion and wanting religious people to get serious about the quality of their own behavior. But in contrast to the way I have often seen repentance, Isaiah insists it means not only quitting bad behavior, but actively working for good. And he tells what good looks like:

Work for justice.
Help the down-and-out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless. *

See a connection there?

I decided to go to a petition site in support of Kenneth Foster. It is no grand gesture; it may not help. But it looks like God asks more from me than sympathy. So it’s a start.

If you’re of a similar mind, you may read it and join me, here.

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*from Isaiah 1, The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
Related post: Readings for August 12 – Where your treasure is is where you’re heart will be
Tags: Kenneth+Foster, law+of+parties, Texas, death+sentence, execution, capital+punishment, crime, tough+on+crime, anti-crime+laws, Monte Asbury