This should come as no surprise to anyone, but Christianity has been declining in the US (just as it has in Europe) over the past 10+ years, especially among younger Americans. People’s viewpoints differ on both the cause and effect of this. Many blame TV, changing morals, and kids’ parents for not taking them to church. I think these factors probably play into this. Personally, though, I have a different suspicion:

Remember when Christianity was normal?

Think about Christianity among kids today. Most kids are indifferent about religion, which isn’t unusual, but the ones that are into Christianity are really into Christianity. Remember WWJD? How about CTR? Let’s also not forget Bible camps, youth retreats… long story short, it’s very possible to be extremely nerdy about Christianity. Being nerdy is fun, don’t get me wrong - as a former band geek and as a current IT guy, I’m all about nerdy. However, nerdy isn’t popular. Being nerdy means being an outsider and means that what you do will frequently be met with disdain since you’re not following the herd. Consequently, a lot of things that indifferent students might not be entirely against are suddenly “verboten” because the “nerds” are doing them. I’m talking about RPGs, many computer games, certain TV shows… and probably Christianity.

Unfortunately, Christianity’s response to “our numbers are declining” is to further exclude Christianity from the mainstream and let the extremists hijack it for their own agendas. Suddenly, evolution is a problem, cervical cancer vaccines will lead to promiscuity, and there’s also the occasional crackpot that throws down the “dinosaur bones were planted by Satan” routine. Why would any normal kid (or person) want anything to do with a group of people that is even loosely affiliated with any of this?

If you take a look at Christianity’s decline, I’m willing to bet it pretty closely parallels the rise of the “Moral Majority” (Southern-style evangelical/political movement) - the instant the extremists started getting more of a voice is the instant a lot of marginal Christians started signing off and just declaring themselves Agnostic or Deistic. If Christianity plans on remaining a relevant part of American political and social life, it will need to take back its voice from the 700 Club and play up the fact that many Christians are quite moderate.

DISCLAIMER: I am an Atheist and am quite proud of that fact. I respect the rights of others to practice and believe whatever they want to believe on so long as they respect my right to do the same.

An article at the Christian Science Monitor points out that slightly over half of all Americans now receive income from government programs:

Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That’s up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President’s Reagan’s move to scale back the size of government.

Also courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (notably, this article about the AMT):

Graphic detailing tax spending per capita

The big item to note from that graphic is that, even if you trim out the “other” that might be defined as pork, we’re still running a deficit. Plus, the big item on that pie chart is none other than Social Security/Medicare. What this means is that shrinking government spending isn’t going to be as easy as telling politicians to spend less on entitlements and line items - if anybody is going to be serious about smaller government, it will mean cuts from existing social programs, and, as Baby Boomers grow older, those existing social programs will only take up more and more money.

So, what do we trim? Defense? It’s also a big money hog, and not the most efficient organization in the world. We currently spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, or, if you prefer, almost 804,000 times the defense spending of Sao Tome and Principe - this might be a bit overkill. That said, funding is a bit messy at the moment due to our current foreign policy engagements; consequently, cutting the defense budget at the moment is almost certainly out of the picture.

Unfortunately, what’s going to have to happen is people will either need to realize that we need to increase taxes, cut spending, or probably both.

It’s been a little busy as of late… around the world and around the Colborne household. I will point out that this last weekend was the first real weekend I’ve had in a month - I actually was able to stay home, not work, and actually get a little housecleaning done. This was a big deal, believe me.

So, let’s see here… what stories are being played out?

Don Imus was fired. Here’s why finding a replacement may be difficult (via WSJ). Also, I can’t possibly agree more with Jason Whitlock on this, and he says pretty much everything that I think needs to be said about this issue better than I most certainly can.

A big shooting at Virginia Tech - expect this to be on the news for a while. Here is a pretty good site detailing everything that’s going on over there. Also, don’t be surprised if you start seeing the usual “we must ban guns” talk, along with the “imagine if everyone was armed” talk. In fact, you can get a fair amount of both, between the blog posting and the comments, here. Also, Wikipedia is maintaining an entry on the shootings here.

A good friend of mine has started a blog called Arab Linguist. Check out the article about Turkish toilets.

Well I’ll be - courtesy of Mickey Kaus at Slate, a wonderful article about Iran’s goals at Real Clear Politics:

Since Day One of the planned operation to snatch British sailors from Iraqi waters, the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) “War Kitchen” in Tehran had already drawn multiple recipes for the following weeks and potentially months to come. Indeed the regime, reacting to rising pressures from sectors of its own population and from the American-British-led coalition, engineered an “escalating” incident. The main scenario, as projected inside the minds of the Iranian “Jihadi-cooks,” is based on one request from the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime: waste time, as much time as possible. To the mullahs and their men in power, it is crucial to win the race between rising internal pressure inspired by the political changes in the region and pressure against the Iranian-led “axis” in the region, directed at the U.S. and the U.K. initiatives in Iraq. In short, Tehran’s regime wants to crumble its enemies before they crumble it.

“Catching” a British Navy unit off the shores of Iraq — regardless of the GPS positioning of the unit — is the opening play. In ten days, Tehran has already scored one success: The UN is discussing what to do about the 15 British sailors instead of how to shut down the 15 nuclear centers in Iran. The debate has been deflected and is now in the hands of the Iranian cooks. The opening play is followed by the dramatization of the “incident.” First, the regime begins showing the captives and swings media attention between details (”were they in Iranian waters?”) and outcomes (”will they be tried?”) of the phony case. Another psychological victory is scored: The international press follows the Iranian maestro’s gesticulations. As usual with the Western mainstream media, the story’s details become the devil, and their readers are denied the big picture.

Read the full thing - it’s worth it. Kaus argues that Iran blinked - the British got their soldiers back, they didn’t have to apologize, and that was that. On the other hand, Iran got to keep the soldiers for an exceptionally long time. The only question now is how long will the UK and US stay on guard out there and flex some muscle through carrier diplomacy?

Before I launch into today’s post, I’ll be one of the many to point out that Iran pledged to release the British hostages today. It’s good news in that the hostages will come back, of course, though I do find it very interesting that Iran is calling it a “gift”. I’m about 100% certain that we will be seeing much more of this in the future. The only question will become whether Iran continues to kidnap British sailors or if they dare to kidnap American troops, and if they do the latter, what will happen?

Today’s post is inspired about an article on Alternet, titled Will Vermont Secede from the Union?:

The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State.

Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans’ fundamental freedoms.

Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.

Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.

Vermont isn’t the only strain with strong(er than usual, anyways) anti-federalist leanings; Nevada has a tradition over the past 30 years or so of being the genesis of various movements fighting against increased Federal rule, including the Sagebrush Rebellion and the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade. There’s also a fair amount of resistance in Nevada to the Yucca Mountain Project, which will almost certainly bring a cask a week through the second-largest metropolitan area in Nevada (that’s code for “Reno”).

The problem here, of course, is the broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. However, the Supreme Court is the one responsible for this broad interpretation and has only recently begun to rescind some of its farther reaching verdicts, which means that, in order to revive state’s rights, some discipline will need to be held in the other two branches of government. This is actually good because, from where I’m sitting, the Legislative and Executive branches shouldn’t be pushing the envelope as far as the Judicial branch will allow anyways.

So, what would I like to see in support of state’s rights?

1. The removal of clauses to funding of federal projects that are only peripherally related to the project at hand (think tying federal highway funding to legal drinking ages and BACs, for example).
2. Removing unfunded mandates.
3. Removing the BLM and handing the land held by the BLM to the states. If land needs to be protected, then it either needs to be a National Park or it can be managed by the states.

I could come up with more, and I probably will, but I think this is a decent start.