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Many years ago I had the privilege of delivering a lecture on the life and ministry of John Calvin in the unlikely context of the Interfaith Seminar of the Catholic Archdiocese of Trento in northern Italy. A lone Reformed voice speaking to a room filled with priests and monks at the historic epicenter of the Catholic Reformation, I may not have been the exact modern equivalent of Leonidas at Thermopylae but I enjoyed being heavily outnumbered nonetheless.

At the end of my lecture, every single question I was asked related to the burning of Michael Servetus by the Genevan authorities in 1553. The fact that Servetus was burned in Geneva was almost an accident of history. A hunted, notorious heretic, he might have perished at the hands of numerous others, Protestant and Catholic. But again and again those in the audience demanded to know how I could lecture dispassionately on the man who killed Servetus. Eventually, I pointed out that, when it comes to who burned whom in the sixteenth century, neither side in the Reformation emerged with much glory. It is always easier to blame the other side for the dark crimes of history while assuring ourselves that it would have been so much better if we had been in charge.

I was reminded of this when reading Casey Chalks recent article, The Autonomous Self Is a Coercive God, at Public Discourse. Chalk argues that conservatives need to be very careful about unconditionally embracing comedians Jim Breuer and Dave Chappelle. Though conservatives may appreciate the stands Breuer and Chappelle have taken against cancel culture and certain elements of woke orthodoxy, we must keep in mind that they are representatives of a libertarian notion of the autonomous self that is scarcely compatible with Christianity. Certainly I can affirm this central concern of Chalk's argument.

Yet I dissent from Chalks genealogy of modernity. He goes on to argue that this notion of the autonomous, emotivist self can be traced to Martin Luther. In part this is because Chalk depends upon Jacques Maritain's Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau for his reading of Luther. Luther is simply not the great apostle of subjectivism that Maritain claims he is. It may well be that subjectivism is where the Protestant Reformation led, but it was certainly neither Luthers intention nor his own stated position. The debate with Zwingli over the reality of Christs presence in the Eucharist is the most obvious example of his concern for objective truth detached from the individuals own beliefs, though one might also point to his notion of conscience as formed by the Word of God in the context of the Christian life, not as some principle of autonomous personal judgment. Whether Luthers positions on these issues proved stable in the long run is a matter for debate. The point is that he was wrestling with how to balance objective truth and personal commitment (an issue found throughout the New Testament). He was not arguing for human beings as isolated, atomized human beings.

This points to a deeper difficulty with Chalk's genealogy. In presenting Luther as the beginning of the problem, Chalk opts for the standard Catholic triumphalist opening: The Protestants are to blame. But Luther does not emerge from a vacuum. Philosophically, he is the heir of late medieval nominalism (a Catholic phenomenon). He achieves public prominence by asking for a debate about the sale of indulgences (a Catholic practice). Wondering about whether the sale of indulgences as exemplified by Tetzel represents the teaching of the Church seems wholly reasonable for a Catholic pastor concerned about the financial fleecing of his congregation. And the crisis of authority that Luther represents is not of his own making. The corruption of the papacy and the chaos of the fifteenth century shattered papal authority. Astute theologians might respond by saying that we are not Donatists, that the corruption of the men who lead the Church and even the corruption of the papal bureaucracy do not negate the truth of the gospel. That is true at a theoretical level. But in practice hypocrisy undermines credibility. It is not surprising that at the start of the sixteenth century there was a crisis of popular authority with regard to those who claimed to be Peters successors and Christs representatives on earth and yet who ostentatiously indulged the sins of the flesh. If Luther was wrestling with the question of religious authority, it is in large part because the religious authority of his day had so signally failed in its task. Perhaps modernity is the fault of a failed papacy and not a Saxon friar?

We can complicate the narrative of authority yet further. The advent of the printing press and the rise of cities and trade served to reconfigure social structures across Europe. Power, once tied to land, started shifting more toward capital. The marketplace rose in prominence, challenging old hierarchies. Increasing levels of literacy served to remake and energize self-consciousness. Even if, purely for the sake of argument, one were to allow that the thirteenth century represented a rather harmonious period in which church and state, and faith and reason, lived together in perfect harmony, that world depended upon a social framework that required material conditions that technology and trade simply swept away. There is no medieval solution to the problems of modernity.

The above is not intended as a piece of Protestant triumphalism. Rather, it is a call for more self-awareness regarding the matter of the problems of our present age. Did Luther cause modernity? Was it the failure of the medieval papacy? Or was it the printing press and the rise of capitalism? Until such time as we eschew the simplistic blame game and start to think more historically, we are unlikely to move beyond partisan point-scoring. More significantly, we will prove incapable of moving beyond pipe dreams and nostalgia to real solutions to our difficulties.

Carl Trueman is a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Blame It on Luther? | Carl R. Trueman - First Things

Maybe the Recall Dunleavy people saw the writing on the wall when they laid down their cannons this past summer and quit: Gov. Mike Dunleavy is, in fact, popular.

Dunleavy is the 16th most popular governor among the 50 states, according to Morning Consult, a survey firm that seasonally ranks the popularity of elected officials.

Dunleavy ranked higher than Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat who recently beat a recall attempt at the ballot box. Dunleavy also ranked higher than Gov. Brad Little, of Idaho, a Republican who is being challenged for governor by his own Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin in the May, 2022 primary.

At 57% approval rating, Dunleavy is just one point below South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in the survey.

The most popular governor in the survey was Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican serving in Vermont, who has a 79% approval.

Of the top 20 governors in the approval rankings, 15 are Republicans, while five are Democrats.

Dunleavy, who faced a recall campaign that started only three months after he took office, has seen his approval rating go up and down and up again. In the fourth quarter of 2019, Morning Consult had him at a dead even, with 42% approving, and 42% disapproving of him, and he was ranked 9 among all 50 governors for popularity. At that same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a 58% approval rating.

Morning Consult successfully predicted the free-fall of former Gov. Bill Walker in 2018. The polling firm named him the least popular governor running for re-election in 2018, with net approval of -26%. He ended up with just 2 percent of the vote 5,757 Alaskan voters to Dunleavys 51.4% or 145,631 votes.

Walker posted the largest net slide in approval of any governor in the fourth quarter, falling 19 points compared to the previous quarter, the survey firm reported.

In this final quarter of 2021, a reputable Alaska survey firm showed the same results as Morning Consult did for Dunleavy, who will face off against non-party candidate Walker, Democrat Les Gara, and Libertarian Joe Miller, who is set to announce his candidacy on Monday morning.

Republican DeSantis, although much lauded by conservatives around the country this year for his battle with President Joe Biden, has a 52% approval in his state, and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is at 50%.

The least popular governor in the country is Oregon Democrat Kate Brown, who has a 43% approval rating. That is up slightly from the fourth quarter of 2019, when 37% of Oregonians approved of her.

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Poll: Dunleavy ranks high in popularity, compared to all other governors - Must Read Alaska

Hostile suspicion of others, encompassing everything from the position of their mask to their stance on mandates, has marked this wretched pandemic from the start. Now, in perhaps the unkindest cut, suspicion is aimed at people with long Covidthe symptoms that may afflict as many as a third of those who survive a first hit of the virus. One theory is that Covid infection riles up the body's defenses and can leave the immune system in a frenzy, causing shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, and brain fog. In The Invisible Kingdom, her forthcoming book about chronic illness, Meghan O'Rourke reports that doctors often reject these symptoms as meaningless. When medical tests for these patients come up negative, Western medicine wants to say, You're fine, says Dayna McCarthy, a physician focused on long Covid.

This is not surprising. Skepticism about chronic conditions, including post-polio syndrome and fibromyalgia, is exceedingly commonand it nearly always alienates patients, deepens their suffering, and impedes treatment. Until researchers can find the biomarkers that might certify long Covid as a real disease, the best clinicians can do is listen to testimony and treat symptoms. But the project of addressing long Covid might also be served by a more rigorous epistemology of painthat is, a theory of how we come to believe or doubt the suffering of other people.

In her 1985 book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Elaine Scarry makes a profound assertion: To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt. Because the claim illuminates both pain and knowledge, and because women rarely attach their names to philosophical assertions, I'd like, belatedly, to dub this elegant proposition Scarry's axiom.

The axiom came to mind this fall for two reasons: I was trying to support a friend with long Covid, and I participated in a forum about how the media contends with racism. It was the second experience that illuminated the first and suggested Scarry's axiom as a way to understand the acute distrust that now pervades our pluralistic country.

At the forum, a socialist and a libertarian each lodged complaints. The socialist charged that the media's focus on racism leaves out a more significant battlethe never-ending class struggle. The libertarian argued that the media's focus on race fails to understand the individual, with his or her pressing fear of death and aspirations to art, money, and transcendence. The libertarian then took shots at easily offended undergraduates who put emotion before reason and are forever getting offended and needing safety, which he said were postures incompatible with education.

This familiar debate ground on. As far as I can tell, no one on any sideand I disagreed with both the socialist and the libertarianever budged. But perhaps that's because we kept missing a truth in front of our faces: that we were all dismissing as somehow less than real the pain of others while elevating our own, and that of our confreres, as hard fact.

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Why Is It So Hard to Believe In Other Peoples Pain? - WIRED

Judith Collins, leader of New Zealands opposition National party, has been toppled after months of poor polling and a shock move to strip a political rival of his portfolios.

MPs voted to end Collins leadership at a crisis caucus meeting on Thursday. The meeting was prompted after Collins demoted Simon Bridges, a former party leader and one of her rivals. Late on Wednesday night, she stripped Bridges of all of his portfolios, citing an inappropriate comment made by Bridges in 2017 in front of a female colleague where Bridges says he discussed old wives tales about how he and his wife might produce a female child. Collins described the comment as serious misconduct.

Collins confirmed her resignation via social media. Its been a privilege to take over the leadership of [the National party] during the worst of times and to do so for 16 months. It has taken huge stamina and resolve, & has been particularly difficult because of a variety of factors, she said in a statement. MP Dr Shane Reti will take the helm of the party as interim leader, with a replacement to be chosen next week.

While the conflict with Bridges sparked Thursdays vote, Collins leadership has been troubled for some time, and the last few months have brought a series of disastrous leadership polls. Known as the Crusher for both her tough style of politics and for her responsibility for a historic policy which saw the cars of boy racers physically crushed, Collins struggled to win over New Zealand voters.

Support for the Jacinda Ardern-led Labour party has been dropping over several months, as the country grapples with a Covid outbreak but Collins failed to capitalise on that, with many votes instead redistributing to the libertarian Act party. While support for Labour has slipped in recent months to around 41-47%, support for National has languished at 21-28%. In a 1 News Colmar Brunton poll released in November, Judith Collins was sitting at just 5% in the preferred prime minister stakes, compared to Arderns 39%.

The difficulty for the party has been a lack of viable alternatives: no other National MPs surpassed Collins popularity, and Simon Bridges was sitting at just 1% in that poll. Nationals stiffest competition has come from its right flank: David Seymour, leader of the right-wing libertarian party, typically a small player in New Zealands parliament, was at 11%. Chris Luxon, a former chief executive of Air New Zealand, will be in the mix as a possible Collins replacement, polling at 4%. But he has spent only one year as an MP and has not yet built a high public profile. Another possible candidate is Whangaparoa MP Mark Mitchell.

On Thursday afternoon, Bridges expanded on the nature of his comments. He said they had occurred at a function where a group were discussing their wives and children. I have two boys and I wanted a girl and I engaged in some old wives tales about that and how to have a girl, he said. He would not expand further on the phrasing he used.

MP Jacqui Dean was present for the remark, and subsequently complained to leadership. Bridges apologised.

I entirely accept and am regretful of that day because I acknowledge that some of what I said was clearly inappropriate, Bridges said. He said he had reiterated the apology, and would not rule out a run for the leadership on Tuesday.

In a statement, Dean said, About five years ago, Simon Bridges made remarks that upset me at the time. They were not about me, but they were inappropriate and not something I wanted to hear, she said.

At the time there was an apology, but subsequently it has continued to play on my mind and with the recent reviews that have occurred in parliament the feelings have been brought back up.

What matters to me is that all of us have a clear understanding of what behaviour we should expect in a modern workplace environment.

Simon and I have spoken a number of times over the past few hours and he has reiterated his apology.

Collins said in her statement: I knew when I was confided in by a female colleague regarding her allegation of serious misconduct against a senior colleague, that I would likely lose the leadership by taking the matter so seriously. If I hadnt, then I felt that I wouldnt deserve the role.

The late night Wednesday drama has brought rumblings of discontent within the party to the fore. Collins announcement of his demotion blindsided many National MPs, with a number complaining about how the situation had been handled. It came at a moment when the government is under increasing pressure for its Covid response and prominent National supporters expressed irritation at the party once again becoming embroiled in internal politics rather than focusing on its policy platform.

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New Zealand opposition leader Judith Collins ousted after move to demote rival backfires - The Guardian

SACRAMENTO As someone who tries to evaluate specific public policies based on their merits and adherence to my long-held libertarian philosophy, Ive been increasingly dispirited by the crazypartisanshipthat has consumed our political debates. These days, were supposed to simply pick a team and cheer as it runs up the score on the other team.

Dont you know thatpolitics is binary? conservative friends would ask whenever I criticized some misbegotten Trump administration policy (e.g., tariffs). In their view, Republicans always are better on balance than the Democrats, so I need to join their side and fight even when they promote idiocy. Topartisans, its always about winning the next election.

When I call balls and strikes those Supreme Court justice nominations are great, but trying to steal an election endangers our democracy Im apparently a sellout. Even though I routinely criticize Californias Democratic politicians, Im thrilled on the rare instances that they advance sensible ideas such as when Gavin Newsom signed a package of long-overduepolice reforms.

The end goal is good public policy, and it shouldnt matter who champions it. But when we view politics as a grudge match, we lose our leverage to change the way that our allies operate. Perhaps holding both Republicans and Democrats accountable for routinely violating their statedprinciplesmight push them to reconsider the positions they take. Well, hope springs eternal.

Writing about Democratic responses to the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse in the Kenosha, Wis., shootings and a police shooting in the city, The Bulwarks Charlie Sykescomplainedabout The tyranny of ideological narratives. Thats a crucial observation. Indeed, both sides jump to tribe-based conclusions about specific events and their hot takes always are so banal and predictable.

Yet when everything is hardened ideologically, we lose the ability to make nuanced distinctions. We can never evenagree on the basic factsof any given situation (even if its caught on video) and end up advancing morally dubious and even clownish positions.

This self-imposed ideological tyranny leads politicians to spend their time posturing rather than governing. They mainly try to energize their base. They eschew reasonable ideas but seek only to heighten the partisan anger. Few politicians do this more consistently than the populist Republican Sen.Josh Hawley of Missouri.

During a speech to a conservative group this month, Hawley depicted a decline in masculinity as one of the nations foremost problems. I want to focus tonight on the deconstruction of men, not because men are more important, but because I believe the attack on men has been the tip of the spear of the Lefts broader attack on America. And because this attack on men is already far advanced, hesaid.

The populist right has long had a weird, almost adolescent view of manliness. Men are half the population and some of them always have struggled with something, so its goofy to depict us as the targets of some orchestrated attack. The politics ofvictimization, whether it comes from conservatives or liberals, has become so tiresome.

Theres a legitimate argument that, say, a rapidly changing economy, a government-run educational system that sees college (rather than trades) as the one-size-fits-all approach and the spread of government-assistanceprograms, has led many men into a life of idleness, substance abuse and despair. That pox has devastated some poor and working-class communities.

But instead of addressing a cultural/economic problem thats been analyzed for decades, Hawley is using it to bludgeon his opponents and accuse them of attacking half the population. He takes a serious societalconundrumand turns it into a political battle cry rather than a search for practical solutions.

Of course, leftists arent looking for solutions to any problem beyond their go-to answer of increasing governmentspending. When that spending leads to an easily predictable and painful bout of inflation, they stick to their usual ideological narratives. First, they told us there is no real inflation, then they cast blame on everything other than their own policies.

Now, with oil prices up 59 percent, meat and poultry prices up 12 percent and overall inflation up 6.3 percent, they cant ignore reality. They tell us that inflation actually isnt such a bad thing. Its the predictable product of the economys rapid recovery, and its cost have been offset, to a large degree, by robust wage growth and government policies,arguedMSNBC columnist James Surowiecki.

We obviously cant address an inflation crisis if were arguing that the erosion of Americans savings and their inability to buyhomesand cars actually isnt that big of a deal. But thats what happens when politics becomes totally binary. The inflation is OK crowd would no doubt make the opposite argument if the GOP team were in power.

Theres not much we can do other than commit ourselves to viewing the world more as arefereeand less like a cheerleader.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

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Manliness, inflation and the scourge of partisan idiocy - San Bernardino County Sun