partisanship
I’m a deconstructing American
Lately I’ve been feeling the same emotions I felt when I deconstructed my evangelical faith.
Voting is important. It isn’t sacred.
Casting your ballot means voicing a preference—not a moral conviction or deep, spiritual alignment.
Politics, the pulpit, and my pastoral calling
It’s not easy to avoid the perception of a political motive.
How can we make our political polarization less destructive?
Ezra Klein suggests structural changes. Darrell West suggests talking to each other.
Is there a way beyond hyperpartisanship?
“We have remade our nation before and we can do it again.”
Imprinted on idols
Like goslings, we tend to attach ourselves to the wrong things—like political parties.
The way out of partisan gerrymandering
Beyond the current Supreme Court case, there are deeper problems—and possible solutions.
Do Americans care about privacy?
A new WaPo/Pew poll finds that 56 percent of Americans thing it’s acceptable for the National Security Agency to secretly access millions of Americans’ phone records. Sixty-two percent favor investigating terrorist threats “even if that intrudes on personal privacy.”
Do people just not give a damn about privacy anymore, what with their dreams of reality-TV celebrity and their willingness to function as a Facebook or Google product?
Courage to compromise
Richard Lugar symbolizes something great but fragile about the American system of government: it relies on partisanship tempered by wisdom.
How did this political climate come to be?
Per usual, Ross Douthat is in this post occasionally wise but often infuriating:
It’s useful to think of Obama’s stimulus bill and Walker’s budget repair bill as mirror image exercises in legislative shock and awe, and the Tea Party and the Wisconsin labor protests as mirror images of backlash.
No, that really isn't useful at all.