THE HILL notes this about Paul Manfort’s possible involvement…
…Investigators were reportedly concerned that the intelligence included communications that Manafort may have encouraged the Russians to help influence the 2016 election, though two unnamed sources familiar with the matter cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive.
Manafort has emerged as a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
Mueller’s team has taken a series of aggressive actions against Manafort in recent months. In July, for example, the FBI conducted an early-morning raid of Manafort’s Alexandria, Va., home. Mueller has also subpoenaed the former campaign chairman’s personal spokesman and former attorney…
Manafort is tied to Clinton comrades (APRIL 13th!!!)…. and CLINTON CASH makes it clear the connections of Russia and Hillary are damning. Manafort may be in trouble! Mark Levin said he may go to jail as well. If you are friends with Clinton friends… trouble soon follows.
I wanted to isolate sections of a larger post for both ease of referencing as well as updating and adding a point-or-two. This post deals with the 14th Amendment and peoples use of it to say gay men and women are considered a minority under its clause. I show that far from being “immutable,” there are many factors that play into being gay, and this “self-designation” is fluid. And often times people cease being gay. In contradistinction to someone ceasing being black.
Here is the text of Section I of the 14th Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
As we will see, this section used in application to the gay community is misused.
Homosexuality is often times due to trauma early in the person’s life. So, for instance, a woman I knew had met quite a few lesbians throughout her life as an ex hippie/druggy, who now loves Jesus. In her mobile-home park living experience she has become friends, acquaintances with and met quite a few lesbians over the years. She told me that most had been abused by some older man (often a family member) when they were young.
ENVIRONMENT
Similarly, the men I have known well-enough to intimate to me their early lives also have corroborated such encounters (one was a family member, the other not). Which brings me to a quote by a lesbian author I love:
“Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is,* instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS”
Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 99.
* By the age of 18 or 19 years, three quarters of American youth, regardless of their sexual orientation, have had sexual relations with another person. Gay males are more likely than heterosexual males to become sexually active at a younger age (12.7 vs. 15.7 years) and to have had multiple sexual partners. The ages at the time of the first sexual experience with another person are closer for lesbians and heterosexual females (15.4 vs. 16.2 years).
“It’s sad—though not surprising—that many celebrity lesbians like Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Melissa Etheridge, and others have publicly stated they were sexually abused as children.”
You see, much like this man who had a sex operation, lived as a woman for 8-years, and then was forced to deal with his early life after taking some courses to get a degree in counseling via U.C. Irvine, his gender problems came because of trauma at a young age (http://tinyurl.com/b5c9elj). To put a stamp of approval via society on a “choice” that is caused by anothers “choice” in making these relationships equal, is doing more harm to the individual that good (as Walt Heyer also points out in his book, mentioned in the link). Many have changed their sexual orientation from gay to hetero, as shown above. But if this is the case, then it is very UNLIKE ethnic origins (an ex-gay tells his story: http://tinyurl.com/anrvm64; a man raised by lesbians and who’s own early sexuality was in flux tells his story: http://youtu.be/MeNrPJ42Xoo).
…One study followed approximately 10,800 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 22 years old. Of the 16 year-old males who had exclusively SSA, 61% had opposite-sex attraction at age 17. For same-sex attracted females, 81% changed to opposite attraction in just one year.
The study also compared sexual attraction at ages 17 and 22, with similar results. For example, 75% of adolescent males with SSA at age 17 had opposite-sex attraction at age 22.
Dr. Neil Whitehead, a research scientist who worked for the New Zealand government for 24 years and the United Nations for another four years, analyzed this study. He notes that although a small percentage of heterosexual adolescents developed homosexuality, the vast majority transitioned in the opposite direction. Based on the data, 16 year-olds with SSA are “25 times more likely to change towards heterosexuality at the age of 17 than those with a heterosexual orientation are likely to change towards bi-sexuality or homosexuality.” That means that heterosexuality is 25 times more stable than homosexuality. It also seems to suggest that heterosexuality is more of a “default” orientation…
Dr. Michael Brown notes as well two well known gay “civil” rights leaders own stories in his book, Outlasting the Gay Revolution:
That’s why almost no one in the gay community bats an eyelash when they hear about Harvey Milk’s sexual history (yes, I’m talking about the slain political leader who has taken on iconic status in our culture). To be specific, according to acclaimed gay journalist Randy Shilts, at age eleven, Milk began attending performances of the New York Metropolitan Opera, where he met with “wandering hands” and soon was engaged in “brief trysts [with grown men] after the performances.” While still in junior high, he “dove headfirst into the newly discovered subculture,” and by fourteen, Milk was “leading an active homosexual life.” As he grew older, the pattern reversed itself to the point that, at age thirty-three, Milk hooked up with a sixteen-year-old named Jack McKinley, one of a number of younger men with whom he was intimate.
Has this tarnished his legacy? Not at all. Why? Because it is not that unusual.
Dr. Brown continues:
As gay journalist and radio host Michelangelo Signorile explained:
[W]e’ve been so focused in recent years on how we’re all the same [meaning as heterosexuals]—we want many of the same things in life, including a job, a home, a relationship—that we’ve obscured some real differences in how we’ve constructed our community and our relationships. Historically, gay men have engaged in inter-generational sexual encounters, brief romances and long-term relationships—among consenting adults—probably much more than straight people have.
And those “consenting adults” were often men in their teens. (The situation that Signorile was defending involved Hollywood screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, age thirty-nine, and British diving champion Tom Daley, age nineteen. Other gay leaders were critical of the relationship.) That’s why it was not surprising to hear that Terry Bean, one of the founders of the influential HRC—and a major player in Democratic politics and gay activism—was arrested on November 19, 2014, “on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. [Bean was 66 at the time.]… The arrest comes after a five-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom.”
As argued by conservative journalist and law professor Matt Barber, “The cases of Bean and [Larry] follow a long-established pattern as old as the ancient Greek bathhouse. It’s not just homosexual priestly predators on the prowl in the Catholic Church. From pedophile “LGBT” hero Harvey Milk, to high-profile “gay activists” like Duke University’s Frank Lombard and USC’s Walter Lee Williams, the homosexual lust for young flesh seems insatiable”
In support of this statement, which some would find extreme and unfair, Barber cited Harry Hay, the iconic pioneer of the gay rights movement, who (in)famously said,
“It seems to me that in the gay community the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association] are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.”
Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 151-152.
The harm of the recent movement to fully endorse gay-lifestyles harms children in a way never before in history. For example, in California if a young child starts to act out in a way that seems to the school counselor as signs of sexual abuse, the counselor now can be fired for asking questions of a young pre-teen boy about home life. In other words acting “gay” at such a young age more often than not means there is some sexual abuse happening to the child.
Another point made by myself in the past and reiterated by Dr. Brown is that often times the female daughters of lesbians end up being gay at a much higher rate that the general populace. One activist he mentions has three daughters, and they are all gay.
THE LOVING thing to do is to allow society to not make the private actions of individual illegal, but not to normalize these actions when there is another root cause, or a combination of root causes, other than genetics.
A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong. (Source)
For many this is a settled question. The “experts” have spoken. Change is not possible and ex-gays don’t exist. This is a bold assertion, though, since finding just one person who changed would falsify it.
First, note that a two-thousand-year-old report claimed this change actually happened. In 1 COR. 6:9-11, Paul says some of the Christians in Corinth had been homosexual (“Such were some of you…”), suggesting they no longer were.
Some might dismiss this account because they don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. This is irrelevant to my point, though. Paul’s epistle to Corinth, at the very least, is an ancient letter to a community of people in a city still existing in modern Greece. It testifies to the fact that some people left homosexuality behind.
Recent studies indicate the same thing. An article published in Psychological Reports in 2000 investigated 882 dissatisfied homosexuals. After pursuing some form of therapy, 34% of the participants reported shifting their orientation to an exclusively or almost exclusively heterosexual orientation. They experienced statistically significant reductions in “homosexual thoughts and fantasies” and improvements in their “psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual well-being.”26
One long-term study completed in 2007 by Drs. Jones and Yarhouse was recently published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.27 It’s been hailed as one of the most methodologically rigorous studies ever designed to investigate the possibility of change. The researchers followed 98 individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions for six to seven years. They found 15% of the participants reported “substantial reductions in homosexual attraction and subsequent conversion to heterosexual attractions and functioning.” The most surprising result, though, was that subjects classified as “truly gay”—the ones with the highest levels of homosexual attraction, fantasy, and behavior—reported the greatest amount of change.
Clinicians and other scientists have reported successes for over a century. Jean-Martin Charcot, the “father of modern neurology,” described how “the homosexual became heterosexual” through his treatments back in 1882. Sigmund Freud reported change in sexual orientation using psychoanalysis in the 1920s. Researchers continued to report similar findings throughout the 20th century: Wilhelm Stekel in the 1930s, Frank Caprio and Albert Ellis in the 1950s, Russell Monroe and Edward Glover in the 1960s, Irving Bieber in the 1970s, Karolynn Siegel in the 1980s, and Houston Macintosh in the 1990s, to name just a few.
Given such convincing evidence, it’s not surprising a recent psychiatry textbook, Essential Psychopathology & Its Treatment, concluded that homosexual orientation can change and that therapy isn’t necessarily harmful:
While many mental health care providers and professional associations have expressed considerable skepticism that sexual orientation could be changed with psychotherapy and also assumed that therapeutic attempts at reorientation would produce harm, recent empirical evidence demonstrates that homosexual orientation can indeed be therapeutically changed in motivated clients, and that reorientation therapies do not produce emotional harm when attempted (e.g., Byrd & Nicolosi, 2002; Byrd et al., 2008; Shaeffer et al., 1999; Spitzer, 2003).28
Given this clinical data, thousands must have personally experienced this change. Each year, more people publicly declare they are no longer homosexual.
Dr. Nicholas Cummings, past President of the American Psychological Association (APA), was Chief of Mental Health at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco for 20 years. He personally worked with over 2,000 patients with same-sex attraction. His staff (six of whom were gay) saw an additional 16,000 homosexuals. Cummings estimates that hundreds of people under his care changed their sexual orientation. He also notes that approximately 7% of those 16,000 patients experienced some measurable change, many going on to marry and live heterosexual lives. 29
Cummings’s data can’t be dismissed. He’s been a lifelong champion of gay and lesbian rights and was the first leader, while President of the APA, to appoint the Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Issues.
Given this evidence, how can some still claim that sexual orientation change isn’t possible? They’d have to believe multiple and independent lines of evidence were all mistaken or fraudulent. They’d have to believe that over the last 100 years, hundreds of scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians who’ve treated homosexuals were mistaken or lied about their findings. Therapists who treat homosexuality today would also have to be fabricating their success stories. Religious and secular organizations providing counseling to homosexuals would have to be misrepresenting their results. Thousands of heterosexuals around the world who once lived as homosexuals must be faking. And every friend I know and person I’ve met over the years who has claimed to have changed has been lying to me and everyone around them. As Tiffany Barnhouse, a professor of psychiatry, has said, “The frequent claim by ‘gay’ activists that it is impossible for homosexuals to change their orientation…accuses scores of conscientious, responsible psychiatrists and psychologists of falsifying their data.”30
Does this mean change is easy? No. Is everyone successful? Not at all. Does success always entail total transformation? Rarely. Should we try to change people who don’t want to change? Of course not. But is it possible for some homosexuals to experience substantial and enduring change? Absolutely….
A page later he responds to critique of the idea that if a person even has feelings for the same sex… therapy has failed:
… Clinical psychologist Mark Yarhouse criticizes researchers who insist ex-gay men who still struggle with occasional temptations are not, in fact, changed. “Continued struggles with same-sex arousal may be expected residual effects from years of homosexual fantasy and behavior. Psychologists certainly refrain from decrying chemical-dependency programs because someone experiences cravings following treatment.”31
Allegedly, the Alcoholics Anonymous success rate is only 25%. Yet few would deny AA works for some people. My point: low success rates or relapses are not proof that therapy never works.
This next bit of info comes by way NARTH, in an audio posted the “genetic” aspect of this debate has been prevalent… so this is a rejoinder to it:
Identical Twin Studies Demonstrate Homosexuality is Not Genetic
Eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same conclusion: gays were not born that way. “At best genetics is a minor factor,” says Dr. Neil Whitehead, PhD. Whitehead worked for the New Zealand government as a scientific researcher for 24 years, then spent four years working for the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency. Most recently, he serves as a consultant to Japanese universities about the effects of radiation exposure. His PhD is in biochemistry and statistics.
Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay. “Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100%,” Dr. Whitehead notes. But the studies reveal something else. “If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.”
Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.”
Dr. Whitehead believes same-sex attraction (SSA) is caused by “non-shared factors,” things happening to one twin but not the other, or a personal response to an event by one of the twins and not the other. For example, one twin might have exposure to pornography or sexual abuse, but not the other. One twin may interpret and respond to their family or classroom environment differently than the other. “These individual and idiosyncratic responses to random events and to common environmental factors predominate,” he says.
The first very large, reliable study of identical twins was conducted in Australia in 1991, followed by a large U.S. study about 1997. Then Australia and the U.S. conducted more twin studies in 2000, followed by several studies in Scandinavia, according to Dr. Whitehead. “Twin registers are the foundation of modern twin studies. They are now very large, and exist in many countries. A gigantic European twin register with a projected 600,000 members is being organized, but one of the largest in use is in Australia, with more than 25,000 twins on the books.”
A significant twin study among adolescents shows an even weaker genetic correlation. In 2002 Bearman and Brueckner studied tens of thousands of adolescent students in the U.S. The same-sex attraction concordance between identical twins was only 7.7% for males and 5.3% for females—lower than the 11% and 14% in the Australian study by Bailey et al conducted in 2000.
In the identical twin studies, Dr. Whitehead has been struck by how fluid and changeable sexual identity can be. “Neutral academic surveys show there is substantial change. About half of the homosexual/bisexual population (in a non-therapeutic environment) moves towards heterosexuality over a lifetime. About 3% of the present heterosexual population once firmly believed themselves to be homosexual or bisexual. Sexual orientation is not set in concrete.”
And just to be absolutely clear, discrimination for the gay segment of society is nothing like other segments have experienced. In fact, the false impression the public has is amazing.
PERSECUTION?
Dr. Brown quotes Notre Dame professor Gerald Bradley as saying:
Gay Americans are afforded all their rights. They can vote, can have almost any job they are qualified for, live where ever they want to, travel unburdened, just like everyone else. Demographics show they are among the wealthiest and best educated people in the United States. No one wants to take anything away from them. But the question becomes, can a tiny sliver of our population change the definition of marriage not only for the 243,000,000 adult Americans alive today, but for all those who will come after us?
Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 144.
Many years ago the Wall Street Journal noted the same:
Average Household Income:
Homosexuals – $55,430
African Americans – $12,166
Percentage of College Graduates:
Homosexuals – 60%
African Americans – 5%
Holding Professional Positions:
Homosexuals – 49%
African Americans – 1%
Taken Overseas Vacations:
Homosexuals – 66%
African Americans – 1%
Ever Denied the Right to Vote:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Ever Faced Legal Segregation:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Ever Denied Access to Public Restrooms:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Ever Denied Access to Businesses and Restaurants:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Wall Street Journal, 7/18/91, B1
Not only is being gay not immutable, being “gay” isn’t harmful to one’s lifestyle… monetarily speaking. It seems to enhance it in fact.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that “category mistakes” were a key cause to metaphysical mistakes:
Finally, the fallacy that Aristotle calls form of expression exploits the kind of ambiguity made possible by what we have come to call category mistakes, in this case, fitting words to the wrong categories. Aristotle’s example is the word ‘flourishing’ which may appear to be a verb because of its ‘ing’ ending (as in ‘cutting’ or ‘running’) and so belongs to the category of actions, whereas it really belongs in the category of quality. Category confusion was, for Aristotle, the key cause of metaphysical mistakes. (ARISTOTLE 2.1.4)
THE POACHED EGG includes CARM well reasoned explanation of the issue:
Matt Slick over at CARM writes, “A category mistake is an error in logic in which one category of a thing is presented as belonging to another category. For example, to say “the rock is alive” assigns the category of life to an inanimate object. Another example would be to judge the beauty of a painting based on how much it weighs. This is a category error, since the category of beauty is not determined by the category of weight. So, for the atheist to work from inside his materialistic, non-transcendent worldview and require evidence for the non-material, transcendent God (which necessarily exists outside his perceived worldview) is a category mistake because it is asking for the material evidence of the non-material, the non-transcendent evidence of the transcendent. It is like asking to have a thought placed on a scale. It doesn’t work because they are different categories.”
Here are two challenges by an atheist troll which I take up (click to enlarge):
There is a fundamental distinction between the way that Christian apologists approach proving a negative, and the way that atheists approach proving a negative. The distinction is that Christian apologists give good reasons to accept that something doesn’t exist or isn’t true, whereas atheist apologists will commit a fallacy known as an argument from ignorance. The atheist will say “If you can’t prove to my satisfaction that God exists, then I am justified in not believing.” It is an argument from ignorance to say that “X” does not exist because it hasn’t been proven to my satisfaction. However, Christian apologists will say, “We have good reasons to not accept your claim.” and then will proceed to give those reasons.
The Conflict of Worldviews
Since science alone can not test the validity of worldviews, we must use other methods to test claims in which science itself cannot test. You might ask, how can we tell how a worldview is valid or invalid? The mark of something that is not true is inconsistency. What we must do is take all of the presuppositions of a worldview into account, and follow those presuppositions to their logical conclusions. If any of these presuppositions are shown to be internally inconsistent while following them to their ultimate conclusion, then that worldview is false.
In this case, since the atheist is arguing for The Flying Spaghetti Monster, we must take the properties of the Flying Spaghetti Monster into consideration when arguing against it.
The Problem for the Atheist
It should be recognized that when the atheist is arguing for a deity in order to refute any type of theism, including Christianity, that the atheist is forsaking their own worldview for in favor of another. The presuppositions of Pastafarianism are inconsistent with the presuppositions of atheism. Since the arguments and objections that atheism brings to the table in regards to Christianity are not sufficient, it is necessary for atheists to posit something as absurd as a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Since the presuppositions of Pastafarianism are inconsistent with atheism, when they adopt this worldview to try to challenge the Special Revelation of Christianity, they are actually forsaking their own belief that no gods exist. If the arguments that atheists used against Christianity were so consistent, there would be no need for them to mention the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It seems that the atheists have not realized that if could successfully prove the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, then atheism would be false. The Flying Spaghetti Monster undermines the entire atheist worldview.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
The Flying Spaghetti Monster concept was revealed to the public when an atheist named Bobby Henderson wrote a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education in regards to a decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes.(1) Intelligent Design proponents responded by saying that his letter unwittingly proved the ID movement’s point, because ID does not say or try to conclude who the designer is. Nevertheless, The Flying Spaghetti Monster became a popular objection to Christianity and all other forms of theism, even though that doesn’t appear to be what Bobby Henderson’s original intention was.
[….]
1. Pastafarianism only entertains relative moral values at best.
2. Pastafarians live as if objective moral values exist.
3. If a Pastafarian lives as if objective morals exist while claiming that morals are relative, then the pastafarian worldview is self-contradictory.
4. A self-contradictory worldview cannot be true.
Conclusion: Therefore, Pastafarianism is false. (A cosmological argument against flying spaghetti monster.)
So the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just a rip off of earlier thinking. But, here is the refutation of it:
Brian Garvey, a lecturer in the philosophy of mind and psychology at Lancaster University, has written an article (referenced here) exploring Russell’s famous celestial teapot. The article, Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist’s Teapot (PDF), appears in in the latest volume of Ars Disputandi, a philosophy of religion journal hosted by Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Here’s the abstract:
Atheists often admit that there is no positive evidence for atheism. Many argue that there is nonetheless a prima facie argument, which I will refer to as the ‘teapot argument’. They liken agnosticism to remaining neutral on the existence of a teapot in outer space. The present paper argues that this analogy fails, for the person who denies such a teapot can agree with the person who affirms it regarding every other feature of the world, which is not the case with the atheist vis-a-vis the theist. The atheist is committed to there being an alternative explanation of why the universe exists and is the way it is. Moreover, the analogy relies on assumptions about the prior plausibility of atheism. Hence, the teapot argument fails.
And a quote:
“There is, I want to argue, a significant difference between denying the existence of a teapot orbiting the sun, and denying the existence of God. When two people disagree over whether or not there is a teapot orbiting the sun, they are disagreeing over whether the world includes that particular item or not. For all that that particular disagreement implies, the two people agree about every other feature of the world: the tea-ist believes in a world that is exactly the same as the one the a-tea-ist believes in, with the single difference that it contains one item that the a-tea-ist’s world doesn’t contain. Since, as I have argued in the previous section, the only thing that could count as evidence for the teapot orbiting the sun is that someone has seen it, it is in one way analogous to a situation where one person says: ‘there’s a postbox at the end of the high street’ and the other person says ‘no there isn’t, go and have a look’, and the first person goes and looks and doesn’t see one. If that person is reasonable, that will be the end of the argument. The two situations are not quite analogous, however, in that no-one has gone and looked to see whether there is a teapot in outer space. But the situations are disanalogous in a second way too, and a way which helps to illuminate why, in the absence of evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that there is no such teapot. That is, that there is nothing manifestly far-fetched in the idea of there being a postbox at the end of the high street. In the absence of seeing one (leaving aside the possibility of more indirect evidence, such as seeing a map of where all the postboxes are at the GPO) one is hardly being unreasonable if one doesn’t come down on one side or the other. And this difference between the postbox and the teapot tells us something about why it is unreasonable to suspend judgement regarding the teapot, even though we have not only failed to see one, but failed to carry out anything remotely approaching an exhaustive search. Because of its manifest far-fetchedness, or what amounts to the same thing, because it’s reasonable in the absence of prior evidence on the specific hypothesis to estimate that it’s highly unlikely, we can say that, when it comes to teapots orbiting the sun, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. The atheist’s argument attempts to gain persuasiveness by ignoring this issue of prior plausibility. It is true that we cannot (at present) conclusively prove that there’s no teapot in outer space in the way that we could conclusively prove that there’s no postbox on the end of the street by going there and looking. But part of the reason why, despite not being able to do this, it is still reasonable to conclude that there isn’t, is that prior to any investigation the hypothesis is manifestly far-fetched. In the postbox case it is not, and thus we can see that absence of evidence, as far as rendering it reasonable to deny something’s existence goes, has different force depending on the case in hand. Unless the existence of God is taken to be also manifestly far-fetched, the argument to the effect that if we don’t suspend judgement regarding the teapot then we shouldn’t suspend it regarding God, doesn’t get off the ground.”
The “a-” in “atheism” must be understood as negation instead of absence, as “not” instead of “without”. Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods).
There is a subtle, but important difference between not believing in something and believing that something is not (does not exist). Atheism adopts the latter position in holding that God does not exist. Atheism is more than mere lack of belief, it is the denial of the existence of God. Mere lack of belief makes the atheist no different from a newborn baby or my Chevy. (Added to a bit — but from APOLOGETICS 315)
I didn’t realize that I was following in the footsteps of former Vanderbilt political science professor Carol Swain, who called the SPLC’s number in a post she wrote about it for the Huffington Post in September 2009. Professor Swain concluded the post: “Rather than monitoring hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become one.”
This could not stand. In today’s Wall Street Journal Professor Swain tells the rest of the story:
The SPLC’s retaliation was vicious and effective. On Oct. 17, 2009, my photo appeared on the front page of my local newspaper, the Tennessean, with the headline “ Carol Swain is an apologist for white supremacists.” That was a quote from Mark Potok, at the time the SPLC’s national spokesman. The context for Mr. Potok’s attack was a review I gave for a film titled “A Conversation About Race.” I endorsed it for classroom use because it offered a perspective on race rarely encountered on university campuses. Mr. Potok argued that the filmmaker was a bigot. I felt then and now that the perspective needed to be heard.
This negative article was featured on the front pages of several newspapers and it went viral, especially in black media outlets. The attacks did not subside until this newspaper’s website published a lengthy article titled “In Defense of Carol Swain.”
Being targeted by the SPLC has had a lasting impact on my life and career. Offers from other universities ended and speaking opportunities declined. Once you’ve been smeared in this way, mainstream news outlets are less likely to cite you as an expert of any kind.
Professor Swain knows she is in good company:
[T]oday I wear the SPLC’s mud as a badge of honor because I know I am in the company of many good men and women who have been similarly vilified for standing for righteousness and truth. Other SPLC targets have included Ben Carson (who eventually received an apology and retraction), Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali, terrorism expert Steve Emerson, political scientist Guenter Lewy (who successfully sued the SPLC), attorney Robert Muise, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, and Princeton professor Robert P. George. The SPLC has tagged Mr. George, a devout Catholic intellectual, as “anti-LGBT.”…..
And the video at the top of this update is from PART TWO. But the Wall Street Journal article is a “pay-to-play” article. I have found a decent excerpt at FOX NEWS. PART THREE is more of a biography and statement of amazement regarding Professor Swain:
….According to her Wikipedia entry, Swain grew up in a shack without running water. She and her eleven siblings shared two beds. She did not have shoes and thus missed school whenever it snowed. She did not attend high school, dropping out in ninth grade.
When her mother and abusive stepfather moved the family to Roanoke, Swain appealed to a judge to be transferred to a foster home. When her appeal was denied, she lived with her grandmother in a trailer park.
Intimately familiar with the south and with poverty, Swain also knows about the law, having earned a master’s degree from Yale Law School. This was the culmination of an education that begin with a GED, and was followed by an associate degree from Virginia Western Community College; a B.A. in criminal justice from Roanoke College; a master’s degree in political science from Virginia Tech; and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Swain went on to become a professor at leading universities and the author of several books. One was cited by Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor. Two dealt with the topic of white nationalism.
There is an obvious disconnect when an African-American from the south rises from extreme poverty to glittering scholarly success, only to be branded an “apologist for white supremacists” by the Southern Poverty Law Center….
So what is the hub-bub about with the SPLC? One blogger calls it as they see it:
The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has quite a racket going on. Now, they don’t practice poverty law as their name suggests, but they do spread hate, and lots of it too. In the name of the almighty dollar, the SPLC will slander and defame anyone it chooses. Especially those with the temerity to oppose their extreme, leftwing ideological views.
[….]
The SPLC is a racket. Contrary to it’s name, the Southern Poverty Law Center does not practice poverty law, but instead serves a 2-fold purpose: 1) lining the pockets of Morris Dees, the SPLC’s staff, its directors, and various cronies; and 2) serve as attack dogs for the government and radical left (did I repeat myself?).
The Southern Poverty Law Center bills itself as a watchdog of hate groups. But is this just a cover for its true aims? Journalist and author Karl Zinsmeister explains.
Take note as well that many Black groups and individuals stand against the SPLC, as Godfather Politicspoints out:
A coalition of African-American pastors and pro-family Christian and Jewish leaders held a press conference outside the headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the SPLC’s smearing of pro-family groups that oppose homosexual activism as “hate groups.”
The SPLC has been co-opted by a Leftist, pro-homosexual, anti-Christian agenda. If you don’t agree with the SPLC leftist litmus test, then you are a de facto “hate group.” With its new definition of what constitutes a hate group, the SPLC has become a fund-raising machine. It’s no wonder that the organization is flush with cash. At the end of fiscal year 2010 SPLC’s endowment stood at $216.2 million. Ultimately, the tactic is to strike fear in middle-America so the checks keep rolling in. Most communities don’t see skinheads or even KKKers, so the SPLC needs a tangible enemy.
In other words, a money maker from its left leaning donors. Conservapedia points out the obvious, that by labeling Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul, and Judge Napolitano, as well as conservative Christian oragnizations that stand against same-sex marriage in with other hate groups, that this “proves that the SPLC is a left-wing political organization rather than one focused on racism and civil rights.” (I wish to point out that Conservapedia includes as normative some groups I would not have, like the John Birch Society, VDARE, and others.)
While I can understand and maybe support their position on the John Birch Society and Alex Jones… the main point still stands: This … further proves that the SPLC is a left-wing political organization rather than one focused on racism and civil rights.
The following half-hour / in-depth review of the SPLC is by the John Birch Society, which… for the record — I do not endorse nor recommend their [John birch Society’s] resources. However, this presentation is a decent excoriation of the “craziness” over at this liberal propaganda machine:
The problem with this whole venture by the left is that it destroys the institutions it touches. The SPLC at one point may have had honorable goals, but when leftism infects things, it destroys them. So the power behind the original ideas and goals of the SPLC are negated — rendered ineffective/powerless — by their newer political goals. As Dennis Prager points out in regards to whatever the Left touches:
Was the British Empire a good or bad thing for the world? To put it another way, is freedom a good or bad thing for the world? Historian and author H.W. Crocker III explains why we may want to rethink the British Empire’s bad rap.
It is looking like New Hampshire may need to be in the Trump column for the 2016 Presidential election.
….Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire by 2,736 votes out of 745,000 cast. Republican incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte lost her seat to Democrat Maggie Hassan by a mere 1,017 votes out of 739,140 cast.
[…..]
Wonder how Mr. Bissonnette will spin the news about those 5,526 out-of-state voters who never bothered to get New Hampshire driver’s licenses?….
Here are some portions of the LARGE and EXCELLENT article at THE ATLANTIC JOURNAL:
…In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.
Prominent liberals didn’t oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to America’s economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained America’s welfare state. And they were far more likely than liberals today are to acknowledge that, as Krugman put it, “immigration is an intensely painful topic … because it places basic principles in conflict.”
Today, little of that ambivalence remains. In 2008, the Democratic platform called undocumented immigrants “our neighbors.” But it also warned, “We cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked,” adding that “those who enter our country’s borders illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of the law.” By 2016, such language was gone. The party’s platform described America’s immigration system as a problem, but not illegal immigration itself. And it focused almost entirely on the forms of immigration enforcement that Democrats opposed. In its immigration section, the 2008 platform referred three times to people entering the country “illegally.” The immigration section of the 2016 platform didn’t use the word illegal, or any variation of it, at all.
“A decade or two ago,” says Jason Furman, a former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, “Democrats were divided on immigration. Now everyone agrees and is passionate and thinks very little about any potential downsides.” How did this come to be?
[….]
A larger explanation is political. Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country’s growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didn’t need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. “The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November,” Salon declared after Obama’s 2008 win. “If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”
[….]
Alongside pressure from pro-immigrant activists came pressure from corporate America, especially the Democrat-aligned tech industry, which uses the H-1B visa program to import workers. In 2010, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with the CEOs of companies including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Disney, and News Corporation, formed New American Economy to advocate for business-friendly immigration policies. Three years later, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates helped found FWD.us to promote a similar agenda.
This combination of Latino and corporate activism made it perilous for Democrats to discuss immigration’s costs, as Bernie Sanders learned the hard way. In July 2015, two months after officially announcing his candidacy for president, Sanders was interviewed by Ezra Klein, the editor in chief of Vox. Klein asked whether, in order to fight global poverty, the U.S. should consider “sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders.” Sanders reacted with horror. “That’s a Koch brothers proposal,” he scoffed. He went on to insist that “right-wing people in this country would love … an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country.”
Sanders came under immediate attack. Vox’s Dylan Matthews declared that his “fear of immigrant labor is ugly—and wrongheaded.” The president of FWD.us accused Sanders of “the sort of backward-looking thinking that progressives have rightly moved away from in the past years.” ThinkProgress published a blog post titled “Why Immigration Is the Hole in Bernie Sanders’ Progressive Agenda.” The senator, it argued, was supporting “the idea that immigrants coming to the U.S. are taking jobs and hurting the economy, a theory that has been proven incorrect.”
Sanders stopped emphasizing immigration’s costs. By January 2016, FWD.us’s policy director noted with satisfaction that he had “evolved on this issue.”
But has the claim that “immigrants coming to the U.S. are taking jobs” actually been proved “incorrect”? A decade ago, liberals weren’t so sure. In 2006, Krugman wrote that America was experiencing “large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages.”
It’s hard to imagine a prominent liberal columnist writing that sentence today. To the contrary, progressive commentators now routinely claim that there’s a near-consensus among economists on immigration’s benefits.
below are pieces posted 6-13-2014 but the original date posted was 2012 on FaceBook.
Also note the phone calls that also showed almost immediately that Benghazi was a well-orchestrated terrorist attack. All covered up to ensure reelection.
One of the best-known versions of this meme is the ridiculous screed at Huffington Post “13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush’s Watch Without a Peep from Fox News,” which has around 90K shares and likely well over a million views.
“May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al Qaeda terrorists storm the diplomatic compound, killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.”
REALITY: NINE AMERICAN DEFENSE CONTRACTORS KILLED.
After numerous State Department warnings, and Saudi Arabia investigating al Qaeda for a potential planned attack, three defense compounds were assaulted with car bombs and armed attackers. Nine defense contractors were killed.
Bush immediately called the attack part of the “war on terror,” and two of the attackers that survived the raid were killed by Saudi police forces. You know, just like Benghazi. (CNN)
6. HUFFPO: THIS WAS JUST LIKE BENGHAZI.
“July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.”
“September 17, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.”
REALITY: NONE WERE AMERICAN.
“Attackers used vehicle bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons to mount a coordinated assault on the U.S. Embassy here Wednesday, leaving 10 guards and civilians dead outside the main gate but failing to breach the walled compound. No Americans were killed.” (Washington Post); (CSM)
(Even if there was misreportage, no embassy officials were killed or missing, and those who were killed were done so in a matter of minutes.)
So of all the Americans killed, only one was a diplomat, and he was killed almost instantly. Nine others were defense contractors.
It is my belief that this “13 Benghazis” post was published with the intention of deceiving the public. It may have been an attempt at persuading Americans to dismiss further inquiry into how the Benghazi terror attack was handled and how it was reported to the public….
I wanted to update this post (5-2013) just a bit with a challenge along similar veins by Bob Beckel on the Five, and Dana Perino’s response to his muddled thinking (the short exchange is HERE if you wish):
Bob Woodward compares to Watergate:
(Original 2012 post)
Back to the older response to an acquaintance:
Media Matters, a Soros funded org, has infected liberal blogs with what they feel is a good argument or response to both Democrats and Republicans wanting to know what the failure was in Benghazi, Libya and how 4-Americans can die when they requested help a month prior. Here is a cut-n-paste of it as it was presented to me on FaceBook:
2002 U.S. consulate-Karachi,Pakistan-Attacked-10 killed,51 injured 2004 U.S. Embassy bombed-Uzbekistan-2 killed,9 injured 2004 Gunmen storm U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia-8 killed 2006 Armed men attack U.S. Embassy in Syria-1 killed,several injured 2007 Grenade launched into U.S. Embassy in Athens 2008 Bombings at U.S. Embassy in Yemen-10 killed 2012 U.S. Annex in Benghazi, Libya attacked-4 killed. Republicans outraged and suddenly concerned with the safety and security of American’s abroad. Now they demand investigations.
Years of discussing religion and politics has taught me to check out what is presented, so I at least (I do have a life) looked into the first two examples… and a patter emerged.
Here are a couple of my responses to the above via my FaceBook.
The first is this:
Suicide Bomber for your 2002 example (Karachi), not a long, preplanned attack that more boots on the ground (that was both requested and called for earlier than the attack) could have prevented. IF in the 2002 Karachi, Pakistan attack they requested because they saw pre-planning on the terrorists part with additional intelligence an attack was eminent and they requested better fortified positions to stop vehicles (suicide attacks) from coming in [and these requests were denied], then I would be interested. Plus, NOT A SINGLE U.S. person died in the attack. All Pakistani. PLUS, even if U.S. personnel have died in an attack similar to Benghazi… they were most likely Marines protecting sovereign U.S. soil. The expectation of an ambassador is to be protected, not to fight. So your “well aware of the risks” argument is another conflated comparison.
You are creating straw-men arguments through conflation and non-sequiturs, and then comparing the two as if the same. Sloppy thinking Ross. No idea of the requested help a month before and during the attack. Dumb.
Here is the second example examined:
Your 2004 example of the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia-8 killed
(BBC — 2004) …A Saudi security source told Reuters news agency that heavy security had prevented the attackers from getting into the Jeddah consulate by car…. All Americans who were at the consulate are reported to be safe…. Correspondents say security around the consulate has been extremely tight since a series of bombings by Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia began in 2003, mainly targeting buildings that house foreigners. They add that the attack must have been very well planned, given the security measures…. The embassy and the mission in Dhahran had been closed as a precaution following the Jeddah attack…. (BBC)
So, a synopsis of your 2004 example:
★ Many Defenses Due To Intel Because of Previous Attacks; ★ No Americans Died; ★ Other Sites Temporarily Closed Due To This Attack.
Libya:
★ No Defenses Even Though Previous Attacks On This Site and Intel and Requests; ★ Security was Decreased; ★ Not Closed Temporarily Even Though Attacked, Intel Was Coming In, And 9/11 Date.
APPLES AND ORANGES ~ Compare to Benghazi:
The U.S. mission in Benghazi, at an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the Sept. 11 attack, drafted a contingency plan to suspend operations as security deteriorated — and in the near-term, recommended that consulate operations be moved to the CIA annex about a mile away, according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.
The State Department’s senior representative at the consulate told those at the Aug. 15 meeting that the security situation was “trending negatively” and reported “this daily pattern of violence would be the ‘new normal’ for the foreseeable future, particularly given the minimal capabilities” of the Libyan security forces.
With no apparent reason to believe conditions would improve, the cable notified the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the “Emergency Action Committee” was updating “Post’s tripwires in light of the deteriorating security situation … to include a ‘suspension of operations’ section.”
The term “tripwire” refers to lines in the sand which, if crossed, cover personnel levels, security measures, and in this case, the extreme step of suspending operations.
The cable marked “SECRET” also said, of the possibility of moving the consulate operations: “Mission personnel could co-locate to the Annex (CIA outpost) if the security environment degraded suddenly. … (There was agreement) to formal weekly meetings to discuss the security environment. … In the longer term, we believe formal collocation with the (Annex) will greatly improve our security situation.” The warnings reflected a grave concern among officials on the ground that the Libyan militia charged with protecting the consulate had been compromised, perhaps even infiltrated by extremists.
Summarizing the Aug. 15 meeting, the cable sent the following day reported that “certain sectors of the 17 February Brigade were very hesitant to share information with the Americans, but as the largest brigade they acted as a buffer for the Mission against some of the more anti-American, Islamist militias in town.” The brigade was charged with protecting the consulate.
Moving the consulate operations to the CIA annex might not have ultimately saved the four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the Sept. 11 strike. The annex ended up coming under fire and was the site where two of the four Americans were killed.
But the concerns in the cable — which also warned Washington that the consulate could not be protected in the event of a “coordinated attack” and that “approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps” were known to operate within Benghazi — are further evidence that the U.S. mission in eastern Libya repeatedly warned Washington that they were a target.
The reference in the cable to the February 17 Brigade was significant.
This week, new documents recovered from the Benghazi compound by Foreign Policy magazine further support the classified cable’s prescient warning that the Libyan militia was compromised. In the early morning hours of Sept. 11, the consulate staff believed they were under surveillance. A document found by the magazine stated “this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore … this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission.”
This reporting is consistent with an online post from Sean Smith, an avid gamer, shortly before the consulate was overrun by terrorists and Smith was killed. As reported by Wired magazine shortly after the attack, Smith wrote: “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.”
Days after the attack, an intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News: “One thing for sure is that the 17 Brigade was nowhere to be found and the Americans were left on their own in the assault.” On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being very bad, the intelligence source said the consulate security was “A 10 — total security failure. Benghazi was known to be a major area for extremist activities. Militias’ loyalty is easily bought and sold. Deals with militia leaders are worth nothing.”
The cable also shows the consulate staff and CIA leadership in Benghazi agreed to work hand-in-glove, which included reviewing “emergency action plans” and addressing areas of collaboration. ….
Also, there is more info about what the annex was capable of:
Sources who have debriefed the team that was at the CIA annex the night of the attack in Benghazi say that the CIA operators from the Global Response Staff, or GRS, were equipped with Mark 48 machine guns and had two types of laser capability. Each weapon had both a “passive” as well as a “visible” laser that could be used against the Libyan attackers.
The presence of laser capability on the roof of the CIA annex confirms what Fox News sources that night in Benghazi originally said, which is that they had laser capability and for 5 hours and 15 minutes were wondering where the usual overhead air support was, especially since, according to this source, they radioed from the annex beginning as early as midnight asking for it.
The presence of lasers raises more questions about why air support was not sent to Benghazi even protectively once it became clear that the fighting had followed the CIA rescue team back to the annex.
U.S. military officials say they “thought the fighting was over” after the team left the consulate and that there was a lull in the fighting.
Fox News has learned the guns were fitted with PEQ-15 lasers. The “passive” laser is not visible to the naked eye but can help team members identify hostile forces when the shooter is wearing NODS, or Night Observation Device attached to their helmet. The visible laser system places a red dot on the attacker and warns the attacker not to shoot, encouraging them to flee the scene. U.S. troops often use the visible laser to scare children or other civilians who find themselves in the middle of combat activity. When civilians see the laser they often back off in order not to be shot.
The GRS team that was present at the CIA annex provided security for the CIA station, as they do around the world. They are highly trained in countersurveillance, close target reconnaissance and in depth reconnaissance. Enemy fighters have learned in Afghanistan and Iraq to use their cell phones to follow or intercept these “passive” lasers without having night vision or NODS.
The Annex team also had Ground Laser Designators, or GLD. This kind of laser equipment emits code and signal when there is overhead air support, unmanned aerial surveillance, drones or Spectre gunships, for instance.
A source present the night of the attack says that the GRS team that was defending the annex asked where the air support was at midnight. Former SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed 5 hours and 15 minutes later.
….That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.
These basic cultural precepts reigned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially when backed up by almost universal endorsement. Adherence was a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.
Did everyone abide by those precepts? Of course not. There are always rebels — and hypocrites, those who publicly endorse the norms but transgress them. But as the saying goes, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. Even the deviants rarely disavowed or openly disparaged the prevailing expectations.
Was everything perfect during the period of bourgeois cultural hegemony? Of course not. There was racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism. However, steady improvements for women and minorities were underway even when bourgeois norms reigned. Banishing discrimination and expanding opportunity does not require the demise of bourgeois culture. Quite the opposite: The loss of bourgeois habits seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged groups. That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the need for two parents. A strong pro-marriage norm might have blunted this effect. Instead, the number of single parents grew astronomically, producing children more prone to academic failure, addiction, idleness, crime, and poverty.
This cultural script began to break down in the late 1960s. A combination of factors — prosperity, the Pill, the expansion of higher education, and the doubts surrounding the Vietnam War — encouraged an antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish-fulfillment ideal — sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll — that was unworthy of, and unworkable for, a mature, prosperous adult society. This era saw the beginnings of an identity politics that inverted the color-blind aspirations of civil rights leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into an obsession with race, ethnicity, gender, and now sexual preference.
And those adults with influence over the culture, for a variety of reasons, abandoned their role as advocates for respectability, civility, and adult values. As a consequence, the counterculture made great headway, particularly among the chattering classes — academics, writers, artists, actors, and journalists — who relished liberation from conventional constraints and turned condemning America and reviewing its crimes into a class marker of virtue and sophistication.
All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans. If the bourgeois cultural script — which the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach — cannot be widely reinstated, things are likely to get worse for us all.
See also the interview at the NEW YORK MAGAZINE’S wonderful piece. JONATHAN HAIDT also has a fine piece defending the freedom of thought in such a piece… and those that wish to censor anything that disagrees with Leftism. Here is a snippet of it:
….The letter includes a call to action:
This is the time for members of the University of Pennsylvania community who claim to fight systemic inequality to speak up, especially those anthropologists and scholars who claim an understanding of culture and who recognize culture talk’s deleterious potential as a vehicle for racism and sexism… We call for the denunciation, not of racism as some abstract concept “out there” — in Charlottesville, in America, by the poor uneducated white or by an individual racist ideologue — but for a denunciation of racism at the University of Pennsylvania. In particular we must denounce faculty members that are complicit in and uphold white supremacy, normalizing it as if it were just another viable opinion in our educational tenures at the University. We call for the University of Pennsylvania administration — Penn President Gutmann and the deans of each school — as well as faculty to directly confront Wax and Alexander’s op-ed as racist and white supremacist discourse and to push for an investigation into Wax’s advocacy for white supremacy.
This call to denounce Wax was answered by 33 of her colleagues at the law school—nearly half the faculty—who signed and published an Open Letter to the University of Pennsylvania Community. In it, the law professors affirmed Wax’s right to express her opinions, but said:
We write to condemn recent statements our colleague Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at Penn Law School, has made in popular media pieces. In an op-ed published recently at Philly.com, Wax and a coauthor wrote that “All cultures are not equal,” going on to claim that various social problems would be “significantly reduce[d]” if “the academics, media, and Hollywood” would stop the “preening pretense of defending the downtrodden,” because that would lead to “restoring the hegemony of the bourgeois culture.” In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian about the op-ed, Wax was quoted as saying that “Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans,” because, in the phrasing of the DP article’s author, “Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior.” … [they then affirm Wax’s right to express her opinions, then say:] We categorically reject Wax’s claims.
Those are the basic facts.
I think it is important for the academic community to reflect on this case. In the wake of Charlottesville, all of us on campus might encounter passions among our students beyond even what we saw in the previous academic year, a year in which violence and the justification of violence became more common on campus. This year, we are likely to find many more professors accused of “white supremacy.” Professors and administrators may face many more campaigns designed to get them to sign open letters and collectively denounce colleagues. It is important, therefore, that we think about this case carefully and draw the right lessons. When and why should professors come together to denounce and condemn other professors? Of course we are always free to dispute each other; Wax’s colleagues could certainly have written essays or a collective essay debating her claims and pointing out flaws in her reasoning, but when is it morally and professionally appropriate to issue a collective public condemnation of a colleague?
I think such collective actions are only appropriate when colleagues have clearly and flagrantly violated their professional duties. I mean things like data fabrication or taking bribes to produce dishonest academic papers desired by a trade association. I would include writing a racist and hate-filled diatribe in that list, but is that what Wax did? She wrote an essay on the importance of culture for poverty-related outcomes, and the Penn students asserted, in their open letter, that such “culture talk” has “deleterious potential as a vehicle for racism and sexism.” The students are certainly correct that claims by a professor about the value of bourgeois culture could be misused by racists to say that one race is inherently superior to another. But does that make any discussion of cultural differences taboo? Does that make Wax a white supremacist for saying that culture matters for poverty-related outcomes, that not all cultures are equally good for escaping poverty, and that the 1950s American “bourgeois cultural script” was particularly good for that purpose? No…….
NATIONAL REVIEW gets into the weeds as well, via, Heather Mac Donald. Why? Because of the uproar from such an article. Someone stepped out of line and needs to be corrected… sent to re-education camps!
Were you planning to instruct your child about the value of hard work and civility? Not so fast! According to a current uproar at the University of Pennsylvania, advocacy of such bourgeois virtues is “hate speech.” The controversy, sparked by an op-ed written by two law professors, illustrates the rapidly shrinking boundaries of acceptable thought on college campuses and the use of racial victimology to police those boundaries.
On August 9, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax and University of San Diego law professor Larry Alexander published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a revival of the bourgeois values that characterized mid-century American life, including child-rearing within marriage, hard work, self-discipline on and off the job, and respect for authority. The late 1960s took aim at the bourgeois ethic, they say, encouraging an “antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish-fulfillment ideal [of] sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll that was unworthy of, and unworkable for, a mature, prosperous adult society.”
Today, the consequences of that cultural revolution are all around us: lagging education levels, the lowest male work-force participation rate since the Great Depression, opioid abuse, and high illegitimacy rates. Wax and Alexander catalogue the self-defeating behaviors that leave too many Americans idle, addicted, or in prison: “the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.”
[…..]
The fuse was lit. The rules of the game were the following: Ignore what Wax and Alexander had actually said; avoid providing any counterevidence; and play the race card to the hilt as a substitute for engaging with their arguments.
First out of the gate was the Penn graduate students’ union, GET-UP. On August 11, a day after the Daily Pennsylvanian article, GET-UP issued a “Statement about Wax Op-Ed,” condemning the “presence of toxic racist, sexist, homophobic attitudes on campus.” The “superiority of one race over others is not an academic debate we have in the 21st century,” GET-UP wrote. “It is racism masquerading as science.”
But the Wax-Alexander op-ed and the Wax interview said nothing about racial superiority (much less about sex or homosexuality). It argued for a set of behavioral norms that are available to all peoples but that had found their strongest expression over the course of a particular culture. As the Daily Pennsylvanian itself acknowledged, Wax had emphasized to them that she was not implying the superiority of whites. “Bourgeois values aren’t just for white people,” she had said. “The irony is: Bourgeois values can help minorities get ahead.”
Finally, of course, comes the demand for booty and bureaucracy: a “formal, centralized Diversity & Inclusion office with staff that are charged directly with . . . providing resources for students experiencing marginalized [sic] or discrimination at Penn.” Never mind that Penn has been cranking out “Action Plans for Faculty Diversity and Excellence,” “Faculty Inclusion Reports,” “Gender Equity Reports,” and “Minority Equity Progress Reports” for two decades…..
From BIBLE STUDY TOOLS, a quick “5 Essential Lessons You Need to Know from the Book of Ruth”
…1) God is concerned about all people regardless of race, nationality, or status.
Ruth was not a Jew. She was a Moabite. Even though many discriminated against her, God loved her just the same. God does not discriminate, and He loves all people just the same.
2) Men and women are both equally important to God.
God cares about men and women all the same. We are all one in His eyes. While most false religions that have been constructed over the centuries often elevate men and dishonor women, Christianity is the one religion that consistently honors men and women at the same level. There is no difference in His eyes.
3) There is no such thing as an unimportant person in God’s eyes.
At a surface level, few saw Ruth as an important person. She was from Moab, which was a nation that originated from an incestuous encounter between Lot and one of his daughters (see >Genesis 19:30–36). She was a poor widow. She was living in a foreign land away from her birth family.
But God saw her as important and His plan for her life culminated in her becoming a part of the lineage of Jesus (as the grandmother to King David). God’s plan typically involves using people who are considered to be underdogs or unimportant or unimpressive from man’s perspective. His strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
4) God uses “little” things to accomplish great plans.
What an amazing plan God had for a series of “little” things that all added up to important pieces in God’s big plan. God intended for Ruth to be a part of the story of the lineage of Jesus. So, He pulled together events such as the famine, Naomi’s relocation to Moab, their return to Bethlehem, Boaz’ bloodline, and many other events just to ensure that Ruth could be a part of His plan. And God does that same thing in our lives today!
5) God has a Redeemer in place who can rescue us from the devastation of our own sin.
God has a Redeemer for our lives, too, and His name is Jesus. Boaz was a type (prophetic symbol) of Christ and His redemptive work in our lives today. You see, we are all desolate as a result of our sinful natures. We are empty, just as Naomi was empty and devastated after she had lost everything and returned to Judah. Our sin has rendered us empty and desolate spiritually.
But Jesus is willing to redeem us. He wants to rescue us from the penalty of our sin. And all we have to do to be rescued is to call on Him in faith and ask Him to save us (Romans 10:13). My hope is that you are one of His redeemed. If you are not, my hope is that you will call on Him right now and ask Him to save you once and for all from the consequences of your sins!…
EVERY WOMAN IN THE BIBLE
RUTH AND NAOMI’S ROLE IN SCRIPTURE
Ruth was a Moabitess who married an Israelite. Her husband’s family had left Judah during a famine and migrated to Moab. There all the men of the family died, leaving three women alone and helpless: Naomi, the mother-in-law, and Ruth and Orpah, her daughters-in-law. The women were helpless for a simple reason. Property was owned by men, not by women. With no men left in the family, the women lacked any means of support.
Only one course of action seemed open to Naomi. She would return to Judah and seek aid from her relatives. Naomi urged her daughters-in-law to return to their fathers’ households, where they would be supported until they could remarry. Orpah followed Naomi’s advice, but Ruth insisted on staying with her mother-in-law. The loyalty and support she offered Naomi proved to be the turning point in her own life.
EXPLORING RUTH’S RELATIONSHIPS
The Book of Ruth is a rich source of insights into healthy interpersonal relationships. It reminds us that even during the dark days of the judges, godly men and women could and did live blessed and happy lives.
Naomi and Ruth’s relationship with God (Ruth 1:9–17). Ruth’s relationship with God began the way that most relationships with Him do. Ruth came to know and value someone who knew Him well. For Ruth, that person was Naomi.
Naomi spoke easily about God because He was real to her. We see this in the blessing she gave her two daughters-in-law after Naomi had decided to return to Judah: “The Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband” (Ruth 1:9). Naomi clearly loved her daughters-in-law and loved God. In loving she became the bridge over which Ruth passed to faith.
When Naomi urged the two young women to go home and find new husbands, Orpah turned back. However, Ruth refused to return home. She truly loved her mother-in-law and would not desert her.
The biblical text clearly shows that Ruth realized that this decision called for a faith-commitment to Naomi’s God. When Naomi continued to urge Ruth to return home, Ruth expressed her commitment in unmistakable terms.
“For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me” (Ruth 1:16-17).
The order in which Ruth expressed her commitment is significant. In Old Testament times Israel alone had a covenant relationship with God. Ruth, aware of this relationship, pledged that “your people shall be my people,” fully aware that in committing herself to God’s covenant community she was also committing herself to Israel’s God.
Ruth’s decision to stay with Naomi was also her commitment to God. Ruth had chosen “the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge” (Ruth 2:12).
Ruth’s relationship with Naomi. The first chapter of Ruth makes it clear that Ruth deeply loved and appreciated her mother-in-law. That love was expressed in a loyalty that surpassed all other ties. Rather than return to her father’s home, and stay in her own country, Ruth chose to accompany Namoi into an uncertain future in a strange land.
To see how Ruth’s commitment to her mother-in-law continued to work itself out is fascinating. For Ruth, Judah was a strange land, with unfamiliar customs. But in Naomi Ruth had a mentor, and she wisely followed her advice. The two women had returned at harvest time. Old Testament Law provided that the poor and landless could gather food in fields owned by others. That law said, “When you reap the harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands” (Deut. 24:19). Naomi sent Ruth out to gather grain that the harvesters missed, a process called gleaning.
Gleaning was hard work, but for the poor each kernel of grain was precious. And Ruth “continued from morning” until late in the day gathering food for Naomi and herself.
Later, after Ruth’s modesty and virtue had won the admiration of one of Naomi’s relatives, Naomi explained to Ruth the law of the redeeming relative. When a man died childless a near relative could marry his widow. The first son produced by the couple would be given the name of the dead husband and inherit his estate. Hearing of the admiration of such a relative for Ruth, Naomi urged Ruth to approach the man and ask him to take on the redeeming relative’s responsibility.
Ruth allowed herself to be guided by her mother-in-law in the selection of a potential husband. Although Naomi’s choice was neither young nor especially handsome, Ruth realized that he was a man of quality, and she followed her mother-in-law’s advice.
In every way Ruth showed herself to be loyal, hard-working, sensible, and responsive to Naomi’s advice. Clearly Ruth had a deep respect for Naomi, as well as a real love for her mother-in-law.
Ruth’s relationship with Boaz. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of a woman’s reputation. Long before Boaz met Ruth or knew her by sight, he had heard good things about her.
In the small farming community it was impossible to keep secrets. Everyone knew that Naomi had come back from Moab and that she was accompanied by her daugher-in-law, Ruth. They knew of Ruth’s choice to commit herself to Naomi’s people and their God, and they had formed definite opinions about her character. When Boaz first met her he was able to say,
It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before (Ruth 2:11).
Well aware of her good qualities, Boaz treated her favorably. He invited her to eat with his harvesters, told her to glean with his own servants, and instructed the young men not to molest her. That this instruction was necessary reminds us of how dangerous life could be for a woman alone in the era of the judges. Boaz even instructed his harvesters to be sure to leave handfuls of grain for Ruth to collect.
When Naomi learned of what had happened and realized that Boaz was a near relative of hers, she felt that God was opening a door for Ruth. She instructed Ruth to continue to work in Boaz’s fields through the barley and wheat harvests. When the several weeks of the harvests had passed, Naomi took Ruth aside and explained her concern for Ruth’s future security.
As a near relative, Boaz was qualified not only to marry Ruth but also to reclaim the lands of Naomi’s husband. So Naomi told Ruth how to approach Boaz.
During the harvest season workers often slept outside in the fields. Naomi told Ruth to go at night to the place where Boaz was sleeping and lie down at his feet. Some have taken this as an attempted seduction. However, the position Ruth took was symbolic and a request that Boaz take her under his protection as a wife. Boaz clearly understood the symbolism and promised to do as she requested, “for all the people of my town know that you are a virtuous woman” (Ruth 3:11).
Before Boaz could marry Ruth he had to obtain the permission of a man who was an even nearer relative of Naomi. When Boaz explained that to redeem the fields of Naomi’s dead husband the man would also have to marry Ruth, the man declined. He already had grown sons. If he should father more than one son with Ruth, he would have to provide for them from the estate he intended to reserve for his first family. With this claim disposed of, Boaz married Ruth.
The marriage was blessed with a son, and that son became the grandfather of King David and an ancestor of Jesus Christ.
RUTH: A CLOSE-UP
Ruth is one of Scripture’s most attractive women. She was a woman with a marvelous capacity for love and loyalty. While Ruth was decisive and ready to risk an uncertain future out of loyalty to Naomi, she was far from headstrong. She was wise enough to follow Naomi’s advice, ready and willing to work to support the two of them. Ruth quickly established a good reputation in her adopted homeland and won the approval of all who knew her. Her reputation rather than her physical attributes first won the admiration of Boaz, who responded by treating her graciously. The relationship that grew between them was founded solidly on the mutual appreciation of each for the good and gracious qualities of the other.
While Ruth truly is a love story, it is far from those romantic novels that emphasize passion and physical attributes. Ruth’s and Boaz’s love grew out of their commitment to values far more significant than mere good looks.
NAOMI: A CLOSE-UP
Naomi’s name, “pleasantness,” is suggestive. She cared for her daughters-in-law and earned their love and loyalty. Even Orpah, who chose to remain in Moab, wept when she left Naomi to return home. We can sense in Naomi an especially generous spirit. Although alone, she urged her daughters-in-law to think of their own future rather than Naomi’s welfare. Back in Judah, Naomi felt a deep responsibility to Ruth and determined to “seek security” for her, “that it may be well with” you (Ruth 3:1).
We should hardly be surprised that Naomi was such a powerful influence in Ruth’s life. People who truly and selflessly love others have a tendency to draw those others to them and through them to the Lord.
RUTH AND NAOMI: EXAMPLES FOR TODAY
Naomi is a wonderful example of how to evangelize. She didn’t try to talk Ruth to faith. Instead she loved Ruth and lived a life that Ruth recognized was worth emulating. Ruth wanted the peace, character, and loving-kindness she saw displayed in her mother-in-law’s life.
Naomi shows us how to be a gracious in-law. We don’t know whether Naomi had counseled her sons against marrying out of their faith. We do know that she loved both her daughters-in-law enough to put their welfare above her own. Eventually she even loved Ruth to faith in God.
Many parents hesitate to offer advice to adult children. While we cannot force our will on them, we can share our thoughts and our wisdom with those willing to listen. When advice is given lovingly and with respect for our children’s independence, it will often be welcomed.
Naomi is a glorious reminder of how God can make one of the least likely to be remembered into someone who will never be forgotten. When we feel insignificant we can remember how God used a starving widow to win a woman to faith who became an ancestress of Jesus Christ.
Ruth reminds us that character does count. Good men are more concerned about finding a godly spouse than a sexy one!
Sue Poorman Richards and Larry Richards, Every Woman in the Bible (Nashville, TN: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 105–107.
BAKER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BIBLE
Ruth (Person). Moabitess and the widow of Mahlon, the son of Naomi and Elimelech, who were Ephrathites from Bethlehem living in Moab because of a severe famine in Judah. Upon the death of Elimelech and Naomi’s two sons, Naomi returned to Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law Ruth during the time of the barley harvest (Ru 1:4–22). While gleaning in the barley fields of Boaz, Ruth found favor in his eyes (2:2–22). She later married Boaz, when he, serving as nearest kin to the childless Naomi, purchased Naomi’s estate to keep it within the family (4:5–13). Ruth is mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ as the mother of Obed and the great-grandmother of David (Mt 1:5).
RUTH, BOOK OF
Author and Data. The author of the book is unknown. The question of authorship has particular connection with the date of writing, and a few clues provide at least an “educated guess.” The book must have been written sometime after the beginning of David’s reign. The reference of 4:18–22, which pertains to the historical significance of Ruth as David’s great-grandmother, bears this out. Since foreign marriages were not approved in the Book of Ruth, it scarcely could have been written during the period in which Solomon began his policy of foreign marriages. Also, David’s close friendship with Moab might have prompted someone in his kingdom to write the book, thus presenting objective rationale for David’s actions (see 1 Sm 22:3–5). Consequently the author may have been someone close to David, possibly Samuel, Nathan, or Abiathar.
This view is not without its critics, however. Some scholars consider the opening statement, “in the days when the judges ruled,” to demonstrate the late composition of the book. However, such a phrase need not refer to an extensive period. In today’s world one might use a similar phrase in reference to conditions at the beginning of the 20th century. The dates of the judges probably comprise a period of about 300 years, beginning with the judgeship of Othniel and concluding with that of Samson, though Samuel also served as a judge. If the genealogical information is complete in 4:18–22, the events took place during the life of David’s great-grandfather and mark the birth of his grandfather. Allowing a 35-year generation span, the events would have taken place somewhere about the turn of the 11th century bc, or about 100 years before David’s birth.
Purpose. The book’s purpose is closely related to its date of composition. Assuming an early date, that is, one close to David’s lifetime, its principal thrust must be the authentication of the Davidic line. The book may be considered as a justification for including the godly Moabitess in the nation of Israel.
Content
Introduction (1:1–5). Driven by famine, Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, cross the Jordan to stay for a period of time in Moab where there was sufficient provision. The two sons, after marrying Moabite women, die, and their father dies as well. Naomi is left a widow with two foreign daughters-in-law.
Return to Bethlehem (1:6–22). Hearing reports from Bethlehem that the famine had ended, Naomi makes preparations to return. Both of her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, accompany her for at least a portion of the journey. Probably thinking of the problems which might be encountered by them as foreigners in Judah, Naomi strongly urges the girls to stay in their own land. Both of the young widows refuse, but Naomi presents the facts. First, she is not pregnant, so the chance of a younger brother fulfilling the levirate responsibility is not imminent. Second, she has no prospects of remarriage and consequently no prospect of further children. Then, she also notes that even if the first two conditions were met immediately, the possibility of their waiting was impossible. Orpah is persuaded and kisses her mother-in-law good-bye.
But Ruth “clung to her” (neb). The verb, having the connotation of being glued to something, is the same verb used of marriage (Gn 2:24). Ruth demonstrates her serious intentions by making five commitments. In essence, Ruth renounces her former life in order to gain a life which she considers of greater value. At this point, she is contrasted with Naomi, who had encouraged both of them to return to Moab and its gods (1:15). But Ruth decides to follow the God of Israel and his laws. Ruth’s appeal to the God of Israel was more than equal to Naomi’s pleas, and the two of them return together.
Their arrival in Bethlehem is traumatic for Naomi. Having left Bethlehem with a husband and two sons, she returns empty. She tells her friends to call her “Mara” (bitter). But she has returned at a propitious time, the beginning of the harvest season.
Reaping in the Fields of Boaz (2:1–23). The first verse of the chapter provides the setting for the narrative which follows, introducing Boaz, a wealthy relative of Elimelech.
Ruth volunteers to glean the fields, to follow the reapers and pick up the insignificant amounts left behind. Gleaners were also permitted to harvest the grain in the corners of the fields, a provision for the poor contained in Yahweh’s Law (Lv 19:9,10).
She happens to come to the field of Boaz. As he visits this field, he notices Ruth, inquires about her, and learns her identity. His overseer reports that she has industriously worked the fields from early morning until that time. Boaz, attracted to her because of her loyalty and concern for Naomi, graciously makes additional provision for her. She is given a favored position in reaping, directly behind the main body of reapers. Further, she is to receive water which has been drawn for her by the young men—an unorthodox arrangement.
Ruth, falling before Boaz in a gesture of great humility and respect, asks why as a foreigner she should be accorded such favor. Boaz gives two reasons, her kindness to her mother-in-law, and her spiritual insight which led her to seek after Israel’s God, “under whose wings you have come to take refuge” (neb).
She is also given a place at the reapers’ table and, upon Boaz’s orders, returns to the fields—this time to reap from the unharvested grain. At the end of the day she returns home to Naomi and tells her of the day’s events. Naomi informs Ruth that Boaz has the right of redemption. Ruth returns to his fields until the end of the harvest season.
Relying upon the Kinsman (3:1–18). Naomi advises Ruth with regard to approaching Boaz as a goel, or kinsman-redeemer.
The plan suggested by Naomi seems peculiar, yet some thoughts may give a certain colouring to it. (1) Naomi seems to have believed that Boaz was the nearest kinsman, being ignorant of the yet nearer one (v 12). Consequently, according to Israelite law (Dt 25:5ff.), it would be the duty of Boaz to marry Ruth to raise up seed to the dead. (2) The general tone of Naomi’s character is clearly shown in this book to be that of a God-fearing woman, so that it is certain that, however curious in its external form, there can be nothing counselled here which really is repugnant to God’s law, or shocking to a virtuous man such as Boaz, otherwise Naomi would simply have been most completely frustrating her own purpose. (3) Her knowledge by long intimacy of Ruth’s character, and doubtless also of that of Boaz by report, would enable her to feel sure that no ill effects could accrue (Sinker, Ellicott’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Ruth, p 283).
His response to Ruth’s actions demonstrates his gentlemanly concerns for her. He explains the situation of not being the nearest kinsman, but promises that he will take care of the necessary procedures the next day. Protecting her reputation, Boaz sends her home before daylight. Naomi, wise in these matters, succinctly predicts of Boaz, “He will not rest until he has settled the matter today” (neb).
Redeeming the Inheritance (4:1–21). Boaz goes to the place of business, the city gate. The city gate area comprised the forum of the city where the public affairs of the city were discussed. Boaz indicates that he wishes to discuss a matter of business with the nearer kinsman. Ten of the city elders act as witnesses. Beginning with the property matter, Boaz inquires whether this nearer kinsman is willing to acquire the property for Naomi, including the traditional stipulation, “On the day when you acquire the field from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabitess, the dead man’s wife” (neb). The nearer kinsman is unwilling because to marry Ruth would inevitably cost him some financial loss, since he would have to divide his own property with any son of his born to Ruth. Thus he relinquishes his rights by the custom of taking off his shoe. Significantly the shoe was symbolic of the land rights which belonged to the inheritance. So Boaz takes the part of the kinsman-redeemer.
The marriage of Boaz and Ruth produces a son who, under Israel’s laws, is reckoned as Naomi’s child and heir.
Teaching. The Book of Ruth traces the lineage of David to the Messiah. The completion of that line is in Matthew 1 and finds its focus in Jesus.
A second teaching is the beauty of God’s grace. A foreigner, even a Moabitess, can be linked with Israel’s blessing.
Theologically, the concept of kinsman-redeemer as a type of Messiah is clearly evident. He must be a blood relative, have the ability to purchase, be willing to buy the inheritance, and be willing to marry the widow of the deceased kinsman.
And finally, the love which Ruth shows becomes a pattern of devotion, a woman of whom it was said to Naomi, “your daughter-in-law who loves you is better to you than seven sons.”
Bibliography. A.E. Cundall and L. Morris, Judges and Ruth; G. Gerleman, Ruth; R.M. Halo, The Theology of the Book of Ruth; A.R.S. Kennedy, The Book of Ruth; C. Lattey, The Book of Ruth.
Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Ruth (Person),” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 1871–1873.
