Friday Reads: Much lesser angels edition

Good Morning!

Has most everyone lost their moral compass these days or is it just me that thinks this?  My other observation is that the folks that really think they have the most functional moral compasses are also the ones that seem the most lost on the path to the high road.  Here’s a group of links today that will make you shake your head.

I’ve always had a problem with the concept of homeschooling because of several issues.  First, children need to be around other children.  Second, no one adult can know everything and children need to learn to make good decisions. They can only do this when the see the limitations of the adults around them.  This feature in The American Prospect shows the horrifying lives of two children homeschooled under the guise of Conservative Christianity.  It appears more likely that their parents had some real issues.  It also introduces us to the new groups trying to help traumatized homeschooled young adults overcome the abuse they suffered at the hands of their parents. 

“I had never really lived in the real world. I didn’t understand how Americans thought. All my language was religious language. I didn’t know how to interact with people without trying to convert them. I had a lot of really discouraging experiences where I realized that you could leave fundamentalism, but at the end of the day fundamentalism was still inside of me.”

Nothing easily fills the void. Esther found pop culture vapid and alienating and atheism bleak, a common experience for former fundamentalists. But when she tried going to different evangelical churches, she suffered panic attacks; it was too familiar and seemed to confirm her greatest fear: “I truly believed that leaving my family was tantamount to leaving God.” Esther ultimately found a home in Catholicism, which to her was appealingly mysterious and impersonal, a more comfortable way to practice her faith. But she still struggles with the perplexing transition from her family to the mainstream.

The closest parallel to transitioning from strict fundamentalist families to mainstream society may be an immigrant experience: acclimating to a new country with inexplicable customs and an unfamiliar language. “Mainstream American culture is not my culture,” says Heather Doney, who co-founded Homeschooling’s Invisible Children with Coleman. Doney, who grew up in an impoverished Quiverfull family in New Orleans, felt for years that she was living “between worlds,” never sure if her words or behavior were appropriate for her old life or her new one. She didn’t understand what topics of discussion were considered off-limits or when staring at someone might be disconcerting. She couldn’t make small talk, wore “oddly mismatched clothes,” and was lost amid pop-culture references to the Muppets or The Breakfast Club. When public-school friends talked about oral sex, she thought they meant French-kissing.

Do you know the chemicals used in many state’s executions are actually banned by veterinarians for use on animals? They won’t use them to put down animals because they cause excruciating pain.

An injection of chemicals used to execute death row inmates can cause such excruciating pain that veterinarians are banned from using them to put down animals, according to one of the most thorough reviews ever undertaken of the administration of the death penalty.

The report, endorsed by a range of criminal justice experts, urges states have the death penalty to kill an inmate with a single chemical overdose, rather than the “three drug cocktail” used in a series of botched deaths, including Oklahoma’s disturbing execution of Clayton Lockett last week.

Lockett’s attempted execution, which took one hour and 44 minutes from the moment he was first restrained on the gurney, prompted outrageacross the world.

He was administered a drug cocktail in dosages never before tried in American executions, and complications arose after officials were unable to locate a suitable vein. Witnesses saw him writhing and groaning on the gurney, and it was a full 43 minutes after the drugs were administered before he died.

Even when people are trying to engage in purposeful acts of kindness, there are always those who can turn them into some thing small and mean.  I haven’t read Cal Thomas for decades, but it appears he hasn’t changed.   This is a letter from the United Methodist Women to Thomas on an op ed he wrote about a speech given by United Methodist Member Hillary Clinton.  

I was disappointed but not surprised by the commentary by Cal Thomas on May 3, titled, “Clinton’s ‘social gospel’ works for Democrats.”

It was apparent from his opening sentence that he was not going to be an objective reporter and write about what actually happened at Assembly 2014, but was to make it into a political speech.

United Methodist Women is the mission arm of the United Methodist Church with emphasis on helping poor women, children and youth.

We are a religious organization and not a political organization. We have members who are Democrats, Republicans and independents. We represent over 800,000 members worldwide.

Assembly is held every four years. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was invited to speak because she is a United Methodist and she believes in programs that we support. She was given the theme and the scripture on which to speak. Our theme, “Make it Happen,” and the Gospel Scripture came from Mark 6:30-44.

She talked about her faith and how it has made a difference in her life. She not only accepted our invitation, but she came at her own expense.

Thomas opened his commentary with comments about former vice presidents Al Gore and Walter Mondale, which had nothing to do with Assembly or what Clinton said. He even made a statement that, “Under the social gospel of Mrs. Clinton, does it follow the government should buy water skis for the needy?” Statements like that try to minimize helping those who are really in need.

The purpose of my response is to let people know that Assembly is more than about one speaker.

What was Clinton’s supposed political and socialist remarks?

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s faith in God was shaped by her grandmother’s hymns and the bedtime prayers from her gruff Navy father, the former secretary of state told thousands of Methodist women Saturday.

Clinton said she struggled as a young woman between her father’s insistence on self-reliance and her mother’s concern for compassion. She reconciled those in the Biblical story of Jesus instructing his disciples to feed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish.

“The disciples come to Jesus and suggest they send away the people to find food to fend for themselves. But Jesus said, ‘No. You feed them,'” Clinton said. “He was teaching a lesson about the responsibility we all share.”

It was a personal speech from a woman considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president. And while the speech mostly steered clear of politics, she made the case on moral grounds for increasing the minimum wage and equalizing pay for men and women — two issues that have polarized Congress in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections.

Yes, feeding hungry people is like giving them free water skis.

So, here”s a book that is frightening and honest at the same time. It’s called “The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success” and that isn’t tongue-in-cheek.  Here’s what author Andy McNab has to say.

I’m also involved in business both in the UK and the U.S., particularly start-up ventures. I’ve gone from enemy lines to movie lines and from battle plans to business plans and I’ve never given a single thought to the possibility of messing up.

And I have always been up for stuff, whether it’s being number one through the door on a hostage rescue; going undercover in Derry with a South London accent; or, these days, talking to the board members of a company that’s going bankrupt because they don’t know their backsides from their elbows. Whatever the situation, I’ve always thought, ‘I’ll get away with it’ and I always have.

This is just one quality of the ‘good psychopath’ and I’m telling you all this because, with the help of my psychologist friend Dr Kevin Dutton, I want to show you how to make the most of your own inner psychopath. Don’t panic. We’re not trying to turn you into Hannibal Lecter, just to identify some simple psychopathic strategies for getting the most out of life.

DR KEVIN DUTTON SAYS: Whenever most of us hear the word ‘psychopath’, images of infamous serial killers flash across our minds. But psychologists use the term to refer to a much wider group of individuals who have a distinct cluster of personality traits.

As you might expect, reduced empathy for others and lack of conscience are among them. But they also include ruthlessness, fearlessness, impulsivity, self-confidence, focus and coolness under pressure.

I’m going to leave this book review to Boston Boomer because I still have my mouth wide open.

Ever heard what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?  Can we actually give billionaires who are trying to buy our elections a taste of their own
medicine?

On May 1, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig launched Mayday PAC: a crowdfunded Super PAC with the sole mission of forcing Congress to get money out of politics. The response so far has been overwhelming: They’ve raised over a half-million dollars in the first week alone.

Will an anti-Super PAC Super PAC work?

The structure of the plan is interesting in that it’s a staged approach explained on the Mayone website. The first two “test” stages happen this year, with the first goal being to raise $1 million by the end of May, at which point Lessig will get someone (who almost certainly is already lined up) to donate another $1 million. Then they launch stage 2 for June, which is an attempt to do the same, but at $5 million (with a further matching $5 million). If both of those work out, the SuperPAC will then have $12 million, which it will use in 5 races for the mid-term elections this year. And, with that in place, the goal will be to launch a much biggercrowdfunding effort for 2016. Many people seemed to misunderstand the original plan, thinking that this $12 million part was the moonshot. It’s not. It’s a test flight.

So, being told that your frame of reference might not be grounded in everyday experience is the new way to shut up the elites.  That’s if you believe Raneesh Ponnuru who has never been very grounded in reality from anything I’ve read from him.

What he actually said isn’t that hard to fathom, because he announced his target in his very first sentence: the use of the phrase “check your privilege” to “strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them.”

It’s perfectly reasonable to ask someone to consider whether their arguments or observations reflect the biases of privilege. Perhaps an upper-middle-class white man’s claim about the hardships of poverty or the prevalence of racial discrimination reflects a lack of experience of those things, for example. But all of us need to ask ourselves whether our views are skewed, regardless of how privileged we are, because there are many possible sources of bias. Fortgang is quite right to complain that being obsessively on the lookout for white male heterosexual bias can obscure more than it reveals, in part by ignoring how much heterosexual white men can differ.

In any case, Fortgang didn’t complain about being asked to reflect on the incompleteness of his worldview. He complained about the dismissal of opinions based on who was uttering them.

It’s so sad.  No one considers the voice of authority any more.  I’m so glad to Raneesh took the time to mansplain mansplaining to us, aren’t you? So, I know it’s been a bit strange today, but what’s on your reading and blogging list today?