Bush in Africa: Unexpected Encomiums
Mon 25 Feb 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
President Bush has not exactly been above the fold of the front pages of most American newspapers these days, let alone on prime-time TV news. Understandably, with one of the most interesting presidential election cycles in decades well under way, attention has been focused on whoever is considered most likely to be Bush’s successor as the tenant of Washington’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in just eleven months. Many people—especially Democrats, who smell blood and victory in November 2008—wish that the President would just go away. His popularity is quite low, with poll numbers regularly in the 30s. Past months have even had him rated in California within two points of President Richard Nixon after Watergate, and Reuters last October pegged him at 24 percent. (At the same time, however, Gallup had him in the 30s).
But the President doesn’t have to go away until noon on January 20, 2009, and as President Nixon once famously remarked, even three weeks is a long, long time in American politics. Every president holds onto the possibility of a turnaround in popularity. In fact, the President for the past week has been in one continent of the world where he is decidedly popular: Africa. During a five-day tour of five countries—Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia—Bush was welcomed by ecstatic crowds and told by one African leader, “You have been a good friend of our country, and of Africa.”
A Respectful Approach to Leadership Development
Thu 21 Feb 2008 by Fred Harburg
Designed for Life by Arthur F. Miller. Life (n) Media, LLC, 2007, 328pp., $25.
With the precision of a surgeon and the tenacity of a trial lawyer, befitting his origins, Arthur Miller builds the case for a unifying theory of persons in his provocative book, Designed for Life. This book provides a wake-up call to all who are involved in any human resource job and, more importantly, to leaders who make daily decisions regarding the hiring, placement, and career moves of people. Miller’s reverence for the dignity of each human life and for the Creator of the miraculous panoply of gifts and talents resident in humankind provides a stirring call to arms for leveraging diversity in the most profound sense of the word.
The prevailing wisdom with respect to selection in most organizations is the fundamentally flawed idea that people can be molded and “developed” by an organization to be whatever the organization needs them to be. This position represents extreme organizational hubris, defies practical observation of the nature of human beings, and is enormously disrespectful of the uniquely valuable people who make up an organization’s workforce.
The Pursuit of Science in a Christian Context
Thu 14 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by Randy Isaac
Modeling Dialogue Rather than Warfare
Physicist Randy Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation, argues that the prevailing public view of the relationship between science and faith as a conflict is sadly incomplete. He offers another model of dialogue and integration based on the experience of his colleagues.
Political Democracy at Its Most Interesting
Thu 14 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Can anyone recall a presidential election in the U.S. more interesting than the current one? I can’t. In the more than four decades since I moved to the U.S. (initially not being qualified to vote), I’ve encountered everything from apathy to zealotry, with cynicism and despair in good measure in between. But I never can recall the degree of excitement that has been elicited among voters, especially by Barack Obama.
When I was in graduate school in the late 1960s, I was taken aback by the dismay of most college undergraduates in 1968 that Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, was running against Richard Nixon. Nixon? Many young people in the 1960s would rather gag than pronounce that word. American intellectuals since that time have developed a cottage industry of running down the quality of American politicians. But they have no case to make in 2008.
Perhaps, a Flicker of Light
Wed 13 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by Al Sikes
Reflections on the 2008 U.S. Primaries
Al Sikes, chairman of The Trinity Forum, reflects on the light glimmering through the elections fog.
The Rise of Political Hatred
Mon 04 Feb 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
An article in the Wall Street Journal last November by Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, had a disturbing observation. After he had carefully explained to a group of politically liberal academics whom he was hosting for dinner that he was dismayed by the vitriolic hatred expressed in attacks upon President Bush, he was harangued by several of the guests. According to Berkowitz, one guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, “What’s irrational about hating George W. Bush?”
What Do Evangelicals Do with Power?
Fri 01 Feb 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David W. Miller
Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, by D. Michael Lindsay, Oxford University Press (2007).
Some books have the good fortune of being well timed and well written. Faith in the Halls of Power is one of those books. For those familiar with or maybe even a part of the American evangelical world, little in this book will surprise you, though its depth and breadth will impress you. For those who are not familiar with or a part of the American evangelical world, you might find the contents both jarring and comforting.
It is jarring, because Lindsay documents well the deep and successful engagement by evangelicals in the elite leadership ranks of virtually all strategically important spheres of modern society, including politics, the academy, the corporate world, and the arts. It is comforting, because most of the evangelicals Lindsay describes belie the negative stereotypical image of evangelicals held by many progressives, liberals, mainliners, and secularists. Lindsay’s evangelicals are not the narrow-minded, judgmental, backward, bellicose voices sometimes caricatured by today’s cultural elites. Rather, they are smart, savvy, and worldly, participating in and quietly trying to change the system from within, not withdrawing from the world or merely casting stones from the sidelines.
Eyeless in Gaza
Thu 24 Jan 2008 by David Aikman
In case you didn’t know it, “Eyeless in Gaza” is the name of a British, post-punk New Wave musical duo who chose the name of their band from the novel by the same name by British writer Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s novel, which has nothing to do with the Middle East, was first published in 1936. Its title is borrowed from a line in Milton’s poem, Samson Agonistes, portraying the fate of the Biblical character Samson, who finally achieves revenge on the Philistines by pulling down the temple of Dagon with the last remains of his strength, and killing, in his dying act, more Philistines than he slew when he was a strong young man.
But less than two months after the much-publicized one-day conference in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted by President Bush to re-launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, “eyeless in Gaza” might well be an appropriate subhead—to use journalistic jargon—for anyone associated with negotiations over the future of Gaza and of Israeli-Palestinian relations as a whole.
Justice and Civility in the Immigration Debates
Fri 18 Jan 2008 • Responses: 3 • by Luder Whitlock
Meanness adds no value to the decision-making process. It often wounds those targeted by it and such wounds can quickly metastasize into lasting hostility and alienation.
America is a nation of immigrants. Our schools, offices, and neighborhoods now host many ethnic groups with some school districts having more than fifty language groups. My own ancestry, rooted in multiple Northern European countries, bears testimony as well.
Given that, why has immigration become such a hot political issue recently? In some senses it is not new; the previous century saw several immigration flare-ups. Today terrorism, triggering a concern for national security, is undoubtedly a factor, as are the millions of Hispanics who have entered the country illegally and continue to flood across our southwestern border.
A Church in China
Wed 16 Jan 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman
Independent, But Not Underground
“Sauna City” is a commercial building in the Asian Games district of Beijing that is only a few years old but already is beginning to look distinctly shabby. The main entrance to the building has a sign over it, “Night Club,” and there are advertisements for various kinds of bath-house activity; it doesn’t look like the most salubrious location in the Chinese capital. But as a visitor approaches the right-hand-side front entrance, his attention is captured by a most unexpected sound wafting down from somewhere above: Christian hymn singing.
