Arkansas Blog

Note: the link takes us to Brummett's column, not NYTMag.

"And they continue to stop well short of embracing Mr. Huckabee, no matter how many rave reviews his affable personality receives on the campaign trail. They shun him because they know he'll lose, and they would rather compromise principle than back a loser."

This, from Frank Rich today, says it all. This is the problem that Huckabee cannot overcome. This fact is why it is a waste of our time to spend more than 3 seconds talking about Huckster. We have much more important things to worry about than the chances of a loser. When your national tit is in the wringer it is best to spend your time wisely.

I urge everyone to read that comprehensive NYT Magazine article to which Max has linked. The final words, of Terry Fox of Wichita, are jarring:

But liberals, he said, should not start gloating. "Some might compare the religious right to a snake," he said. "We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time."

However I was very encouraged by the words of many other ministers who say their congregations want to go to work in their own communities fighting hunger, poverty and injustice.

I was struck by David Kirkpatrick's astute observation that abortion was an almost non-existent moral issue for Southern evangelicals until family (as in, the purported decline in family) became an issue.

This observation rings very true for me. I grew up in the Southern Baptist church in the 1950s and 1960s in central and Southern Arkansas and can't remember a single instance--as in, nary a mention--in which abortion was ever discussed in church or Sunday School, or by church folks. It was simply non-existent. As an elderly lady in central Arkansas once told me sister-in-law's mother when a woman disappeared from their hometown, "I reckon she's gone to New York to get one of those old ambosias."

We didn't even have a word for this moral quandary that was not on our radar screen.

The urgency with which abortion suddenly appeared as a burning moral concern of the Christian right matches the emergence of women as subjects and not objects of history, with the ability, for the first time in history, to control their reproductive lives apart from male domination.

This is not to belittle abortion as a moral concern. But it is to say that it's not really the bottom-line issue that conservative Christians are addressing when they attack access to abortion or gay rights. What they want is control--that old-time religion kind of control where the church could tell people what their place was, and how to stay in it. It's particularly important for that religious mentality to order and control the lives of women and of gay men, who are viewed as somehow partaking of the status of women.

I have never seen a cogent theological or biblical defense of anti-abortion policies in the religious right. To the extent that one exists, it is borrowed whole cloth from the Catholic teaching that life begins a conception--a teaching that does not have long-standing status in Catholic tradition, and which theologians continue to question, despite draconian measures on the part of the Vatican to stop that conversation.

Building an anti-abortion theology on a biblical basis is rather difficult, since the word never appears in the bible, and the understanding of human conception in the bible is pre-scientific.

When a religious movement ignores the status of human life following birth while focusing exclusively on its status in the womb--when it can argue that all abortion should be outlawed while not shouting in rage that there are children without access to healthcare--it begins to appear more as a noxious ideology than a salvific belief system originating in One who made love central to his entire view of human life.

"What they want is control--that old-time religion kind of control where the church could tell people what their place was, and how to stay in it."

Amen, so to speak, MuddlingThrough -- excellent analysis of the anti-abortion mindset that shows more concern for a few cells than for a six-year-old child. Especially frightening to me is that more of them and the politicians sucking up to them (Romney) are equating at least some forms of birth control with abortion.

And this is another issue, like divorce, in which the loudly and ostentatiously pious strongly oppose the availability of something until they or someone close to them wants one.

You're right, Vegan4Hilary. There's a movement in many right-wing religious circles in the U.S. today to equate contraception with abortion. In part, this is a carryover of the widespread adoption of the slogan "culture of death," a phrase coined by Pope John Paul II. There's an insinuation in many right-wing Catholic circles that 1) practicing birth control in any form leads eventually to laxity about abortion and 2) artificial contraception is killing, even when it's a prevention of conception rather than a post-conception thing like the morning-after pill.

I often look back to the op-ed piece Garry Wills published just after Bush's re-election. He said that the Enlightenment had ended.

This a dismal time for people who want to base ideology on the most mundane facts. The rhetoric of the religious right has blurred all kinds of scientific and rational distinctions: e.g., abortion = murder; contraception = abortion; or abortion = a Holocaust.

I've always understood murder to be the intentional, deliberate, planned taking of a human life. Is that how many people who have abortions understand what they are doing? I doubt it. If there's no absolute consensus on precisely when human life begins--either in science or theology--how can we conclude that those who have abortions are choosing to commit murder?

Of course, it's always much easier when we just impose definitions from above, whether all of society buys them or not, and then coerce everyone to toe our own line. As something I was reading today (can't find the quote right now said), no one is to be feared more than those who believe they have the last word on truth....

If this group splinters into shreaded pulp and then be made into toilet paper couldn't be too soon for this country. They gave us 8 years of bush where torture is legitimized, people are spied on, a five year war with almost 4000 dead, just to name a few all in the name of their intolerance for any and everything under the sun. Hopefully they will rot in the hell they are always ranting about!

MuddlingThrough, I totally agree with Vegan4Hillary that you are right on target, and I second her Amen. Wish I could say it as well and as gentlemanly as you do.

I was once a wee bit frightened by by the anti abortion crowd, esp when they were killing doctors and nurses, and throwing bombs.
But did you notice MB's post from NYT? - -"Giuliani is the most popular candidate among evangelicals, apparently, pro-choice or no."

The Long Right Turn is over.

And let's not forget about, in addition to the 4.000 American lives, the untold thousands of lives lost, injured, and displaced. Some estimates say that Iraq has lost as many as a million people in this uncalled-for invasion.
God damn Bush.

And let's not forget what kind of judges and their radical federalist thoughtlessness which comes with those who will deny liberties in a faith based way..

Over several years time, I used to get in the face of the creeps who stormed womens clinics in LR.. I would take my camera and a pad with pen... snap their photo (in their face FLASH!) and demand, firmly but politely, to know their names and who they were with etc.. etc.. One time they broke in a clinic in broad daylight, raided trash cans and dug a hole outside, finally they held a mock funeral... not one federal marshal arrested any of them or even issued a citation for any number of crimes they committed.

The people who worked there were true heroes and so were the women who were willing to demand basic health care for themselves in spite of it all.... considering they probably had absolutely nowhere else to go.

And almost never did I see anyone standing up for the women in need... honestly, except for myself, not one person from the general public stood up to these folks over my many years of observation in LR.

Eventually the oppressors are always shown to be the weak indeed mentally ill souls... who cannot handle a world with never ending questions/uncertainty... which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact they don't even try... they would rather kill than face uncertainty and that is all the more reason these rights must be defended, imo.

I wish there would never be another abortion performed in the world. But I also wish there'd be no more wars or criminals crawling thru windows or raped women or mashed cats and dogs in the street. Life is messy, no one nor nothing gets out alive. I'm glad I was a combination of too ugly, smart and lucky and was never responsible for an unwanted pregnancy. Pats on my back.

I was born with the big desire to mind my own business. Who am I to tell someone else what to do? There is a little overblown ego involved with people who think they know the one true way to live. The Bible is full of horrible things like fathers having sex with their daughters and people losing their lives for the slightest infraction of the laws of God. Surely abortions were common in pre-Bible times.

Half the nuts wanting to stop legal abortions believe all this crap. The other half use the first half to raise piles of money and elect people who will continue to help them raise piles of money by beating the abortion drum 24-7. Our friends at Ark Fam being in the latter group. And like several on this thread have said...they've gone to the well once too often. Their dog isn't hunting like it used to. The pendulum is starting to swing back in the other direction. Hopefully I'll live to see swinging in California redwood hot tubs again. woo woo

I believe that 70% of the US population say they believe in God and the Bible because 70% of the US population is scared 100% of the time. They can't face life without a fairytale idea of some big protector looking out for them. They need something to forgive them when they embezzle at work, or sleep with their sister, or cheat on their taxes. They need to hear that they're never going to die and though they might get old or sick or both, they won't really die....they'll go up in the sky and meet all the dead people they loved and for 39 zillion years be at a big party and look and feel good and so on and so on.

Well....that's ducky and I'd sure like to have me some of that....but I didn't ever really believe that Superman could stop bullets with his bare hands or that Washington chopped down a cherry tree or that magic bullet in Dallas in '63 took a dozen turns and wound up on a cruise ship heading for the Bahamas. I wish I had telepathic thoughts and I wish my old x-ray glasses would have worked. But I am SOL on those things and no one by any name is preparing a table for you when you die. OK....maybe that could apply to the funeral director who will drain your blood and put cotton in your cheeks so you'll have a nice smile in the casket. Reality is a bitch!

We've got to start thinking again. We've got more communications than ever before in world history and know less. A giant noise has clouded our thinking. What we wish for has become more important than what is. Our happiness is a thing of the past since we all have developed several axes to grind at all times. How is it that back in our grandparent's time no one was educated, no one really knew much about current events and yet they visited and took care of each other and were happy in a world without gadgets? What's happened to us?

Huckabee is no more a uniter than Bush. He made it as Governor for 10 years because we settled and no brighter bulb ever presented themselves to be elected. Our inattention and laziness are to blame for Huckabee and Cheney-Bush.

We've got Lincoln and Pryor....how great is that? We've got Boozman (thanks for voting FOR Schip last week John) and how great is that? We're 48th and 49th, yet are home to the richest people in the world, the next to last President and the next President, but we get little ourselves. All that and I doubt any of us go to sleep at night 100% sure that anyone running for President this time from either party is a decent human being. Or that we can ever hold an honest election ever again.

We have to think harder and be fooled less. Oops, my nurse is here to put up my side rails. You all have an intelligent Monday!

Durangokid, thank you for your kind words. My mother thanks you from the great beyond, for affirming her efforts to turn her sons into something approaching gentlemen.

Elwood and Eureka, I really do hope that the right has had its last hurrah. Still, I have to admit, I worry. It may be what I do, but....

I read a frightening article on Alternet today about how much the government knows about what we read, what we say, what we think--through the disclosure of our online lives to government sources both by phone-and-internet providers and corporations tracking those lives. It seems to me that we have become almost paralyzed by fear of such widespread snooping.

The article talks about what could happen, if we return to era of intimidation and government espionage such as the early 20th-century busting of labor unions, the McCarthy witch hunts of the mid-century, or the federal spying on the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

I sometimes wonder, though, if we are not already back there. What kinds of things are government and corporate leaders leaking about us to hostile sources (e.g., top executives in our hiring places) already? I don't have a great deal of trust that, if information is being compiled on all of us that goes beyond lists of books we have checked out of libraries to intricate records of our google click trails, this information will be used exclusively for marketing purposes.

In my darker moments, I sometimes think we're only a hair's breadth from a fascist police state. We have some of the essential elements of that now: uncurbed executive power, widespread popular anomie, a hired militia that threatens to dwarf the enlisted one and which answers to no one except the uncurbed executive, the ability of the executive to monitor all of our comings and goings.

I have been reading Daniel Mendelsohn's THE LOST lately--his lifelong attempt to discover what happened to six family members who died in the Holocaust in the present-day Ukraine--and see many parallels between what happened in the Nazi era and what could happen now. One of the lessons the book underscores is how quickly it all happened, how quickly the borders shut down, how quickly Jews in Europe learned that neighbors with whom they have lived for centuries, thinking they were all one big family, could turn on them, kill them, appropriate their property.

I hope that we will become more vigilant. I hope we'll resist the destruction of the Constitution. I hope we will keep standing up for what is right even when we pay a price.

But I just don't know. The right wing has been very adroit about stacking the Supreme Court with judges who will do anything but resist the growing illicit claims of the Executive. I am hard-pressed to think of two more ideological and less professionally suited judges than Scalia and Thomas.

We have much work to do to repair the damage done by successive federal administrations that have pandered to the basest interest groups in our midst, including the "religious" "right."

Deathbyinches, it suddenly occurs to me that I got so wound up in expostulating in my last posting, I forgot to say that I agree with you very much: think harder, be fooled less. Which gives us all a lot of work to do, I think, informing ourselves and trying to be part of communities seeking wider awareness of issues that are all too often resolved in an unthinking, black-white way that insults intelligence and common sense.

MuddlingThrough - One of many ironies in these times is that now I who have been an optimist most of my life spend more time looking back hoping for a return of a bygone era with more reverence for the constitution and the rule of law among other things. Thanks to Mark Pryor we need to restore 800 years old Habeas Corpus for a start.. it's so ridiculous and appalling but true.. One suggestion if it fits into your schedule... Read Naomi Klein's - Shock Doctrine and join her at firedoglake.com on Nov 28th for an online book salon.. info posted on fdl front page now.

The WaPo's Sebatian Mallaby has an op ed criticizing all the "bush haters" - that would be me, I guess - for not understanding the threat Saddam Hussein posed to US interests.
(At my name)
<<<<<<<,

Clinton's rivals are contemplating history and deriving only a narrow lesson about Bush: Don't trust him when he confronts a Muslim country. But the larger, more durable lesson from Iraq is that wars can be caused by a lack of confrontation. The Iraq invasion happened partly because the world had lost the stomach to confront Saddam Hussein by other means. By 2002, the sanctions on Hussein's regime had been diluted, and there was pressure to weaken them further. Hussein was no longer "in his box," to use the language of the time: If you believed that a resurgent Saddam Hussein presented an intolerable threat, it was worth taking the risk of unseating him by force, sooner rather than later.

Based on this view of history, he claims, Hillary was right to vote for the AUMF against Iraq, and right to vote for the Lieberman/Kyl terror designation against Iran, while Edwards and Obama are wrong for not undertanding you need these interim steps to avoid war. The best way to avoid war is through "confrontation."

<<<<<<<<<<

Apparently, all the evidence that the Bush regime was already committed to invaded Iraq and toppling Saddam is irrelvant. None of the lies about links to 9/11 or WMD mattered, and the IAEA reports that Iraq had no such programs never happened.

Mr. Mallaby also argues that Bush already had all the authority he needs to attack Iran, even before the vote on Lieberman/Kyl.

It's started.

I find myself more and more in the same camp, Eureka: looking back at a bygone era when the Constitution counted for something, and at an era when LBJ could talk about reasoning together as the goal of political discourse. Reason flies out the window when you can't even talk--as in use the English language. I'm not sure the present occupant of the White House has more than a fourth-grader's passing acquaintance with said language. When I think that, in my lifetime, I have seen the White House occupied by JFK and Jimmy Carter--and now this--I want to weep.

I think you're right: it's started. We are down a road that is perilous, and it depends on us, the American people, to see that we don't continue down the road. And we bear some of the responsibility in Arkansas, when we elect so-called Democrats of the ilk of Pryor and Lincoln.

The Lincoln Administration and Arbitrary Arrests: A Reconsideration
Mark E. Neely, Jr. (click my name to read it)

"As most students of the Lincoln administration's racial policies agree, a historian must pay careful attention not only to what Lincoln said but also to what he actually did. The administration's statistical record on arbitrary arrests is persuasive testimony that Lincoln was not particularly embarrassed by the policy. No careful work on the numbers of civilians arrested by military authorities or for reasons of state has ever been done by a historian, and those historians who have attempted an estimate previously have been writing with the goal of defending Lincoln in mind. Even so, the lowest estimate is 13,535 arrests from February 15, 1862, to the end of the war.3 At least 866 others occurred from the beginning of the war until February 15, 1862. Therefore, at least 14,401 civilians were arrested by the Lincoln administration. If one takes the population of the North during the Civil War as 22.5 million (using the 1860 census and counting West Virginia but not Nevada), then one person out of every 1,563 in the North was arrested during the Civil War"

Modern people, myself included often run to Hitler and Nazi Germany to make comparisons to Cheney-Bush. In actuality, a closer mirror image is everyone's favorite President, Abe Lincoln. Another unfortunate downside to the Bush administration has been my accidental investigation into the Lincoln administration. What I have found is personally hurtful because it removes a lot of the luster from my heretofore favorite President. Makes me wonder if 100 years from now the school children of 2107 will consider Ronald Reagan the greatest President of the United States?

Both Lincoln and Reagan's public persona caused some kind of force-field to be erected around their actual deeds. Shielding them from the critical eye, allowing them to in effect, get away with murder. Is it possible we are unaware that Cheney-Bush has secretly arrested 1 in every 1500 Americans like Lincoln did in his time of crisis? If not now, is this our fate in the near future? Will Eureka and Cato suddenly disappear from the AT blog? Will we notice? Will we take the time and trouble to find out?

As in Lincoln's day the suspension of habeas corpus was the first shot fired over our heads. Immediately after that the Lincoln administration started rounding up the usual Southern suspects. Do we fully understand why the suspension of habeas corpus was one of the first things Cheney-Bush did after 9-11? Can Mark Pryor explain? Are we 100% sure that it is the real Mark Pryor representing us in the Senate? Is there a record of identifying Pryor birthmarks we could check?

Most of us on the left on this blog are keen researchers and dependers on facts...big picture lookers. But 5 years into the Iraq war for oil, I'd bet none of us are able to get the big picture about what is really going on....what our government is really up to. That is as unsettling to me as half a worm hanging out of my half eaten candy bar.

As Mr. Neely says above, listen to their words, but do not fail to look at their actions. At present we have the actions of the Republicans, not good, but a clear pattern that we can understand well enough to be frightened by. But look at the actions or inactions of the Democrats. They're giving off lots of words that do not fit with their actions. They continually give Cheney-Bush what they want. They're not going to fund the war until they fund the war. They are against warrant-less wire taping until they vote to let Cheney-Bush do it some more. They vote to condemn MoveOn. org and praise General Betrayus, yet when Rush calls some of our troops phony soldiers, our Democrats in Congress , 41 of them write Rush a letter of rebuke which he turns around and sells on eBay for 2 million dollars.

We're in trouble! Probably more trouble than we know and it's not coming from the sand people of the Middle East, it's coming from our own people in Washington, DC. The real war is going on within the USA. How soon before the administration's posse comes for us in the night? As MuddlingThrough and his book points out....how quickly it all can happen. There is a tipping point in all things. The minute they CAN round us up and dispose of us is probably the minute they WILL. Our future depends on being smarter than we've been in a long time. Think hard....vote carefully and don't be lazy about life.

Eureka, I forgot to thank you for pointing us to the Naomi Klein online dialogue. I'll certainly be there, if I can get myself organized to remember the date. I find her argument that America is right on the doorstep of fascism scarily accurate.

Just one tiny example of what we have come to tolerate with this administration: I recently flew to Minneapolis and out of there several days later. Nice city, nice folks, nice state, but one that has been creeping quite a bit closer to the right in recent elections. Not a small town you drive through all over the state today is without an anti-abortion sign on its outskirts, though it would be hard for anyone to convince me that abortion is a huge social problem in those little farming communities.

On my flight out of Minneapolis, as I got to the security screening area, I made the mistake of putting my shoes, wallet, watch, etc., in a red bin rather than a gray one. I made the mistake because red was the only color in the stack as I approached.

Got hollered at, along with several others, for using the red: silly us, for taking the bins right in front of us, when no gray ones were to be had.

Then, as the bin problem was getting sorted out, I stepped through the monitoring device while the man on the other side was both turned towards me and making some observation from the side of his mouth to a co-worker. In a flash, he whipped around, put his hand out to shove me, and shouted, "Back!"

I dutifully went back and then paced through at his directive. Did I say a word about his uncouth behavior? Not on your life. I knew better, though I couldn't shield my eyes, which did flash. He saw the flash and then mumbled insincerely, "Have a nice day."

Point of story? We live in a fear of these governmental watchdogs that is not far from the fear that I imagine those in overtly fascist states have had of their own "protectors." When I ask German friends how Germany could succumb to the Nazis--and I know full well that many Germans truly were "good Germans"--they tell me it is almost impossible to imagine the climate of fear a small group of "protectors" who claimed to be thwarting an international Zionist terrorist plot could induce in the entire populace.

We are actively afraid of those who have been put into place to guard us against those who make us afraid! And we are afraid with good reason. Just yesterday on another flight, I witnessed a man being taken off the plane for an outburst of temper that was admittedly juvenile and unreasonable, but that, in a pre-9/11 world, probably would not have warranted his eviction from the flight. We know the consequences if we open our mouth.

Deathbyinches, you are absolutely right: as all this goes on, we have only the haziest picture of all that is involved, of all the facts. As Vietnam took place, we saw, right on our t.v. screens as we ate our supper, the caskets draped in flags. Today, we have--and we tacitly accept--a government and media that "protect" us from the knowledge of who is being killed (or tortured), why they are being killed, and how their deaths affect their family members.

Muddling T - So many alarming points one can notice all around if they are willing to actually acknowledge what is happening...but the fear you mentioned along with denial are awfully powerful... Another thing that worries me is how many young people now believe this is the accepted norm in America. Guilty of being a terrrrist until you are searched and or publicly humiliated at the policemans whim... It's all so pre holocaust. At least an awful lot of people demonstrated all around the country this weekend... knowing this, does a patriotic soul some good. .. General Strike Nov. 6th

DBI - I received a powerful letter from Congressman John Hall (D-NY) yesterday. It's a full description of his trip to Iraq last week.. well worth a read, possibly even a billiken post (hint hint).. Anyway, it's a bit to long to just post in a comment so I thought I would send it to Max and ask him to forward it to you if he has the time.

On removal of Habeas Corpus, I thought Lincoln only revoked it when actual battles were near DC court houses (real safety for those working in the courts was in question).. We revoked it for a short time in parts of Hawaii after Pearl Harbor and I believe in the Philippines at some point in time.. Clearly this time it was not necessary, except perhaps for a few days after 9-11 in NY or DC..which we did not do to the best of my knowledge.. No courts were inoperable or under great danger from war during any of the last few years. Congress didn't even vote to remove Habeas Corpus until Oct. or Nov. 2006... 5 years after 9-11-01.. Congress removed Habeas Corpus this time around to cover the P and VP's arse for torture and other war crimes committed over the years...and now continue unabated.

Habeas was revoked this time around without real danger for functioning courts... all the wrong most alarming reasons imaginable... And congress, especially our Senator Pryor, is an active willing participant.. But he's a D so it must be okay. /s

Eureka, you say, "...[T]he fear you mentioned along with denial are awfully powerful... Another thing that worries me is how many young people now believe this is the accepted norm in America."

I think you could not be more on target. Working in academic settings in recent years, this is a constant concern I've heard college students vocalize. They are actively afraid of the ability of government to monitor their lives and their internet use--and with good reason, I think.

I've come to think that this is part of what explains what sometimes appears to be a bafflingly high level of apathy in a generation that is also perhaps the most activist and engaged of all generations. There's simply a fear of the boundaries that seem more visible to these young folks than to previous generations.

I also try to imagine what it would be like to grow up in the American school system following the Reagan era--or in the proliferating private and home schools. Some of the home-schooled young folks I encounter, in particular, are amazingly uneducated, at the same time that they have all the basics of readin', writin', and cipherin'.

But their minds are narrow to a frightful degree. Their information base is tiny. They have learned not to think, many of these young folks, but to parrot and to defend ideological positions held hard and fast.

Not a savory formula for a healthy pluralistic society or a healthy democracy. And not that our schools in general are doing a much better job, particularly in educating students to engage in critical thinking and to expand the heart as well as the mind....

The frightening thing about the above is, it takes only a generation to slip into unforeseen barbarism.

What it takes centuries to build, can be demolished in a day.

"Some of the home-schooled young folks I encounter, in particular, are amazingly uneducated, at the same time that they have all the basics of readin', writin', and cipherin'." --- MuddlingThrough

Since I work for myself, I have a lot of flexibility in my schedule and go to the LR Athletic Club to work out at many different times during what would be considered normal school hours. It never fails that kids ranging in age from elementary to high school students are there swimming, shooting hoops, playing tennis or racquet ball, working out with weights, whatever. When I ask where they go to school, it's always, "Oh, we're home schooling." Maybe it's unfair to say it, but I think you're right, MuddlingThrough; many of these kids can't be getting much more than reading, writing, and deciphering.

Durangokid, thanks for confirming my probably too sweeping generalization.

I should probably qualify what I say by noting that almost all the home-schooled grads with whom I've interacted come from family backgrounds in which religion seems to motivate the parents' choice to home-school.

And for some reason, it seems that high on the list of concerns of parents I've met who are home-schooling their children for religious reasons is the desire to protect their children against the infiltration of ideas they consider antithetical to their belief system.

Problem is, it seems to me, in a pluralistic society, these home-schooled grads will have to begin rubbing shoulders with many different kinds of folks, once they graduate. And the ones I know personally are doing so without many critical-thinking tools to assist them. They were indoctrinated, rather than taught to think for themselves. They were steered away from "dangerous" literature and "dangerous" ideas, and spoon-fed the truth.

It will be interesting to see what some of these young folks' lives are like, down the road. Some I know were also deprived of television and computers, and now have years of catching up to do, especially when it comes to use of online tools of research and communication.

I won't say I'm against home-schooling on principle, but I do think that there need to be more stringent tests to assure that home-schooled children gain the equivalent of their peers in more than the mechanics of learning. It's possible to read at a high skill level, to do high-level math, and (or so it seems to me) still to lack some essential tools of critical thinking that a good liberal education needs to impart along with those basics.

Do-it-yourself Christianity: Independent congregations are slowly chipping away at the "trusted brands" as the Christian faith becomes more like Wikipedia and less like Encyclopedia Britannica. Click on my name.