What role should the more experienced among us play? Should they rule from far above? Or might they perhaps work alongside and equip others for life and service.
In a vertical arrangement, power and position carry the risk that one person can take everything and everyone down. We've seen it in many attempts at such rule, whether it's national government or organizational leadership, the flaws of one can affect all.
We're given prophets and apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service. It's that equipping that's their goal, not rule and authority, of course.
Churches were dragged in under emperors and governments centuries ago. Rulers of nations merged themselves with rulers of churches and gave us the Crusades, the Inquisition, pursuit of empire, and other corruptions of intent. Despite deliberate separation, that framework of hierarchical governance persisted in much of the church.
That which remains of the living church ... equips all to serve well. The calling is not to sit and listen but to live and worship together and shine like a light on a hill, and we're changed by it all.
There must, perhaps, be authority for decisions, for law, to ensure freedom and justice, but in each case, the higher the hierarchy, the greater the risk. In business, in the marketplace, in organizations and administrations, the risk is there. Dictatorial rule can be the most destructive. Such are the reasons for checks and balances. Here's hoping it works.
“ ... never again will America allow any insured institution (to)operate without enough money ...”
President George W. Bush, following the savings and loan crash in 1989.
The savings and loan debacle in the 80's was 1/70 (one-seventieth) the size of the 2007-8 crash, both in terms of losses and the amount of fraud. In that smaller debacle, regulators made over 30,000 criminal referrals and produced over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice. Regulators worked with the FBI and the Justice Department to create a list of the top 100 — the 100 worst fraud schemes. They targeted roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals; virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history. In the '08 crash, by comparison, the Office of Thrift Supervision made zero criminal referrals. They were supposed to regulate Countrywide, Washington Mutual and IndyMac, among others, which collectively made hundreds of thousands of fraudulent mortgage loans. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is supposed to regulate the largest national banks, made zero criminal referrals. The Federal Reserve appears to have made zero criminal referrals. And the FDIC refused to answer the question.
Back in 1989, we established the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) as a United States federal agency under the Treasury Department to regulate banks and loan institutions. It replaced another federal agency that was faulted for its role in the savings and loan fraud crisis. The OTS was initially an aggressive regulator, but backed off in subsequent years. It is funded by the industry it regulates, interestingly; it evolved into an auto-approval mechanism for the industry, more a partner than regulator.
It only took about a decade of Wall Street sponsored Federal deregulation to produce the Great Recession. "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."
--Milton Friedman, American economist and Nobel Prize recipient
It turns out that the environmental impact is different, but not better. Land use, forest clearing for farming, competition for food uses, government subsidies and price spikes ... any benefit was lost in the cloud of dust along with the tradeoff between direct vs. indirect emissions. No improvements, but a visibly troublesome downside. Oh, well; it had seemed like a good idea. I hear even Al Gore has pulled the plug on this one.
The timing was really bad, by the way, for taking one sixth of the world's corn crop out of the food market. As the biofuel initiatives began, the 2007-8 market crash exaggerated the impact, and corn prices doubled. Production couldn't keep up, and folks who live primarily on maize meal (cornmeal) starved. They don't have alternatives; they don't even have grocery stores. Millions went hungry and hundreds of thousands died in the first year. (We were close enough to see some of the heartbreaking results.)
As is continually true, we'll perhaps need to adjust if we're going to minimize the damage and achieve the goal we were reaching for in the first place. Fortunately, there are alternatives to competition between food crops and fuel crops.
It's difficult to balance the issues, isn't it. Preserving a healthy world for our children vs. feeding mankind vs. preserving our lifestyle ... are we adequately clear on what 'values' we hold?
Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. (Ref.)
Good ideas come and go, but most don't materialize. How do ideas make the leap to where something good gets done? prax·is
ˈpraksəs/
noun
formal
- practice, as distinguished from theory
- doing, as opposed to talking
Praxis is the process that transforms an idea into action; i.e., working it through.
Praxis: It's not an easily used word, but the concept is great. Talk becomes action.
Ideas become industry.
Good ideas become great work.
When acted out, good ideas become help and change for one or perhaps many, but most inclinations to do something significant just evaporate in less time than it takes to read this page. Our great loss.
Next time a good idea pops up, get up and do something with it. (he said, talking to himself again)
Fifty years ago today, LIFE published Lennart Nilsson’s photo essay “Drama of Life Before Birth”. The issue sold out within days.
The images publicly revealed for the first time what a developing child looks like, and in the process raised pointed new questions about when life begins. All but one of the infants pictured were photographed outside the womb and had been removed—or aborted—“for a variety of medical reasons,” in a Stockholm hospital.
For fifty years, we've done our best to deny the humanity of the pre-born. We've refused to acknowledge the interdependency of mother and child, that two lives are entwined, and that there are difficult choices to make while considering both of them.
Rather than inquire of science or ethics, pro-choice activists insist that there is no child until birth; even moments before, it is just a fetus and not a child.
The pro-life side has but few answers for the reality of an unintended or dangerous pregnancy and the burden of bearing that child.
How might the tragedy be averted? How might the unintended pregnancy be avoided in the larger social venue?
"In time, it’s going to be impossible to deny that abortion is violence against children. Future generations, as they look back, are not necessarily going to go easy on ours. Our bland acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. In fact, the kind of hatred that people now level at Nazis and slave-owners may well fall upon our era. Future generations can accurately say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They can say, “After all, they had sonograms.” They may consider this bloodshed to be a form of genocide. They might judge our generation to be monsters."~ Frederica Mathewes-Green
Explaining things like abortion to children is difficult, yet we know they must be equipped for life with the information they need.
Even more, adults need full information for objective decision making. If we can't face it, our children may harshly judge how we turned away from that responsibility. To turn away is to forfeit the moral high ground, of course.
This is the reality which many have yet to face:
2012 05-17 Dr. Anthony Levatino Statement
Transcript of Dr. Levatino’s testimony
"Chairman Franks and distinguished members of the subcommittee, my name is Anthony Levatino. I am a board-certified obstetrician gynecologist. I received my medical degree from Albany Medical College in Albany, NY in 1976 and completed my OB-GYN residency training at Albany Medical Center in 1980.
In my 33-year career, I have been privileged to practice obstetrics and gynecology in both private and university settings. From June 1993 until September 2000, I was associate professor of OB-GYN at the Albany Medical College serving at different times as both medical student director and residency program director. I have also dedicated many years to private practice and currently operate a solo gynecology practice in Las Cruces, NM. I appreciate your kind invitation to address issues related to the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R.1797).
During my residency training and during my first five years of private practice, I performed both first and second trimester abortions. During my residency in the late 1970s, second trimester abortions were typically performed using saline infusion or, occasionally, prostaglandin instillation techniques. These procedures were difficult, expensive and necessitated that patients go through labor to abort their pre-born children. By 1980, at the time I entered private practice first in Florida and then in upstate New York, those of us in the abortion industry were looking for a more efficient method of second trimester abortion.
The Suction D&E procedure offered clear advantages over older installation methods. The procedure was much quicker and never ran the risk of a live birth. Understand that my partner and I were not running an abortion clinic. We practiced general obstetrics and gynecology but abortion was definitely part of that practice. Relatively few gynecologists in upstate NY would perform such a procedure and we saw an opportunity to expand our abortion practice.
I performed first trimester suction D&C abortions in my office up to 10 weeks from last menstrual period and later procedures in an outpatient hospital setting. From 1981 through February 1985, I performed approximately 1200 abortions. Over 100 of them were second trimester Suction D&E procedures up to 24 weeks gestation.
Imagine if you can that you are a pro-choice obstetrician/gynecologist like I once was. Your patient today is 24 weeks pregnant. At twenty-four weeks from last menstrual period, her uterus is two finger-breadths above the umbilicus.
If you could see her baby, which is quite easy on an ultrasound, she would be as long as your hand plus a half from the top of her head to the bottom of her rump not counting the legs. Your patient has been feeling her baby kick for the last 2 months or more but now she is asleep on an operating room table and you are there to help her with her problem pregnancy.
The first task is remove the laminaria that had earlier been placed in the cervix to dilate it sufficiently to allow the procedure you are about to perform. With that accomplished, direct your attention to the surgical instruments arranged on a small table to your right. The first instrument you reach for is a 14-French suction catheter. It is clear plastic and about nine inches long. It has a bore through the center approximately ¾ of an inch in diameter.Picture yourself introducing this catheter through the cervix and instructing the circulating nurse to turn on the suction machine which is connected through clear plastic tubing to the catheter. What you will see is a pale yellow fluid that looks a lot like urine coming through the catheter into a glass bottle on the suction machine. This is the amniotic fluid that surrounded the baby to protect her.
With suction complete, look for your Sopher clamp. This instrument is about thirteen inches long and made of stainless steel. At the end are located jaws about 2 ½ inches long and about ¾ of an inch wide with rows of sharp ridges or teeth. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go. A second trimester D&E abortion is a blind procedure. The baby can be in any orientation or position inside the uterus. Picture yourself reaching in with the Sopher clamp and grasping anything you can.
At twenty-four weeks gestation, the uterus is thin and soft so be careful not to perforate or puncture the walls. Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard–really hard. You feel something let go and out pops a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs.
The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head. The head of a baby that age is about the size of a large plum and is now free floating inside the uterine cavity. You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the Sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush d own on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.
Congratulations! You have just successfully performed a second trimester Suction D&E abortion. You just affirmed her right to choose.
If you refuse to believe that this procedure inflicts severe pain on that unborn child, please think again."
________________________
Facing such things objectively and thoughtfully is difficult at best, yet we must. We cannot relegate decisions about our values to the party, the government, or the media.
The issue is the details of the practice, and it is separate from a discussion of women's rights.
The self-assigned label of 'pro-choice' includes approval of the practice in detail.
