November 2004

Since Election Day when President Bush won a second term bringing in on his coattails an even larger Republican majority for both houses, the big boys inside the Beltway have been squealing like stuck pigs. Despite my ambivalence toward some aspects of our President's first term accomplishments and second term agenda, I find these squeals a great encouragement.

Years back a dear friend who had served in the Army as an artillery officer described how artillery was used to gather information about an enemy's positions. A map of enemy territory was broken down into a grid of squares and shells were fired into each square until one of them provoked a response. The technique, as I recall, was called "reconnaissance by artillery."

Judging by the response of old guard DC politicos and the media, President Bush seems to be hitting with every shell. And of all the responses I've heard and read, one in particular strikes me as most curious--namely, the liberals calling for their own blue states to secede from the Union.

Listening to post-election commentary on National Public Radio the other day, I heard a Los Angeles commentator propose this division and then list all the reasons he and his fellow liberals would come out the better for it...

The one piece of software which has changed my use of the computer more than any other in the past 5 years is a little desktop search utility called X1.

I've seen reviews in computer magazines that give it middling marks for ignorant reasons. One reviewer recently rated several competing search utilities more highly because they have Outlook toolbars-- completely missing the point that unlike the utilities he preferred, X1 not only indexes Outlook, but EVERYTHING ELSE AS WELL in the computer it's installed on.

Having used every desktop search engine available, I tell you without reservation that X1 excels where others limp along. I have over a gigabyte of backed-up Outlook PST files. They're all automatically indexed by X1. All my PDF files, all my text files, all my old sermons... Probably 15 further GB of text are all immediately searchable and accessible through X1.

Want to see an impressive example of male leadership in action? Take a look at this video of President Bush pulling his Secret Service agent through the blockading Chilean police at the entrance to Friday night's APEC dinner.

The president seems to have been aware of some form of prior tension between the security services--his return to the door came too quickly for it to have been otherwise. Yet, in the midst of a charged atmosphere, his patient insistence on his guard being allowed through was most impressive. He simply stood at the back of the arguing clot in the doorway and, reaching over their shoulders, pulled on his agent's arm until it became clear to the Chileans that this president wasn't going in without his agent.

Immediately upon the agent's release President Bush returned to his host with a warm smile after a very slight dismissive shake of his head as he left the doorway. You can see video of the incident here.

President Bush's self-control and graceful extrication of his agent from the midst of a tense situation were striking. So it was shocking to read this description of the incident by Dana Bash on CNN:

According to a videotape of the incident, Bush turned around and saw that one of his Secret Service agents was being forcefully restrained from entering by Chilean security guards.

The president dove into the crowd, where people were arguing and pushing one another, and pulled the agent through the door of center.

After the successful rescue, Bush turned around, cocked his head proudly at his maneuver and began to greet his hosts.

The president "dove" into the crowd?! He "cocked his head proudly at his maneuver"?!

This reporter saw nothing more of the event than you can see yourself on the MSN video. She was watching the same APEC video feed available to the whole world, yet she characterizes it as a presidential mosh-pit-lunge followed by a schoolboy smirk. Someone should fire this woman. This is not reporting. This is a woman who thinks that because her mother gave her a confusingly androgynous name she can comment authoritatively on the world of male conflict. She's so confused by her name that she can't see quiet masculinity in action without shrilly screaming "Abuse! Pride! Arrogance."

Would that this woman's mother had named her Betsy... Perhaps then she would be less inclined to make asinine assumptions about how men are behaving in the midst of conflict.

Since Kerry's defeat, we've all heard intellectuals say (or imply) that midwesterners are too stupid to understand Kerry's sophisticated arguments--that nuance is lost on farm girls and boys and that Bush's evangelical chest-thumping triumphalism is the opiate of the masses.

My friend, Nathan Carter, wrote to direct my attention to a piece titled, "Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual" by Mark Bauerlein. Published in the academy's house organ, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the article does a good job debunking this post-election conceit.

Which in turn reminds me of Chesterton's observation:

The truth is that the modern world has had a mental breakdown; much more than a moral breakdown. Things are being settled by mere associations because there is a reluctance to settle them by arguments. Nearly all the talk about what is advanced and what is antiquated has become a sort of giggling excitement about fashions.

(From his essay, "Obstinate Orthodoxy," in The Thing.)

(This piece was written several years ago and published in a much-truncated form in CTi's profession journal, Leadership. Here's the larger piece with its politically incorrect portions intact. It addresses the critical problem of the tendency of pastors to abandon the men of their congregation, instead being content to accomplish everything through compliant women. -Tim Bayly)

One of the year's high holidays in towns across America is opening day of deer season. Like all holidays, preparations begin long before the actual day arrives. In September hunting paraphernalia appears on the shelves of the local True Value: rifles, shells, scent, and jumpsuits and caps in brilliant hunter's orange. The big day is usually a Saturday in November.

A young farmer warned me my first year in ministry: "Might not be too many men here next week, but don't take it personal. We'll all be out looking for our buck." Sure enough, there weren't many men in church that next week.

The women of the church kept the doors open that Sunday--along with the few men who never took to the sport or were too old to climb fences or beat bushes. Deer hunting is a male ritual; despite the occasional female hunter, it's largely the men who are gone.

The absence of men during deer season may be troubling, but it's usually just one Sunday out of the year. Far worse is the chronic absence of men from many of our churches. The United Methodist General Board of Discipleship reports that in the 1950's the membership of the Methodist Church was 53 percent female but 47 percent male. Today...