Andre's Executive Order

I went to see President Obama speak last night at the University of Wisconsin campus. For the first time since I started blogging, I listened to what he was saying from the perspective of a critic. I tried to think divorce myself from the natural energy and power that his speaking evokes at least enough to focus on what he was saying and think about what he was asking for. First, let me describe the scene. My wife and I both went and took our 8 year old god-daughter with us to the rally. I had done as much research as I could in advance, and saw that 15,000 were likely to attend. Turns out nearly 27,000 showed up, filling the Library Mall where the event was held and overflowing onto the hills surrounding campus. The crowd was surprisingly supportive and protests were mostly absent or low key. I personally was expecting less of an involved crowd, but the tone of the gathering was very high energy. We arrived at about 3:30pm, which was when they started letting folks into the central ar...

I want to rip on Christians a bit. But understand, that like most of my rippings, the point is not to tear apart one of the world's most important religions or denigrate it's followers, but rather to examine what has become of this religion in the eyes of Americans. I want to discuss a division within the Christian faith and how it's affecting American's understanding of what it means to be a Christian. First, a note on the social conservatism overall. The current atmosphere in politics has conservatives feeling disenfranchised and in many ways betrayed by the Republican party. This has lead to the tea party movement. I've written before, and continue to believe, that the tea party is an internal revolution within the Republican party who just happens to share a common enemy in liberal politics. The new movement has tried to differentiate themselves from the GOP by becoming even more conservative – radically so. The reason for this isn't hard to grasp; Classical...

Let's talk for a little bit about fear. Fear is the single most important emotion in politics. It is important because nothing motivates action in people like fear. Anger and outrage are close, but they lack fear's staying power. Most people simply can't stay actively angry at something very long. They can dislike it after the anger has faded, or hold a grudge which means when opportunity to act against the source of their anger presents itself they'll take it, but the actual anger is as transient as flame; it rages hot then cools to smolder at best. Fear, on the other hand, is a aching, gnawing manifestation of uncertainty that reminds us over and over of the awful things that could or might be. It is not actual loss or change or evil or harm, it is the POSSIBILITY of these things looming on the horizon that generates fear. Fear is an emotion in advance of a fact, that piece of the puzzle that arouses us to be ready for whatever bad effect might be coming. In American ...