I wonder what you think

At least four (Jenn, Eric M., Jeff, and Myself) of the contributors to the paxfellaship blog fall pretty neatly into a politically liberal categorization. As we have been the most vocal of the contributors, particularly Jeff, I would imagine that you come here expecting your daily dose of liberal agenda. That is more likely than not what you will continue to get. But I do want to point out that other members of our little brotherhood fall staunchly on the other side of the isle. So if you are reading this and happen to know us in the world existing outside of cyber-space, know that many of the opinions shared by us commie-pinko’s don’t necessarily represent the views of Jamey, Eric B. or Jake.

That was not exactly my point, though it was important nonetheless.

I want to know what you fine folks think of oil companies, specifically what you think of Big Oil: ExxonMobil, TotalFinaElf, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP. Do you see them as raping the world for fun and profit or are they working hard to provide for the energy needs of the world.

I happen to work for one of the Super-Major oil companies (not ExxonMobil, though they are going to be my example for much of this discussion). As such I am obviously biased in my assessment. But as I mentioned above I am also politically liberal. It has been a time honored tradition amongst the political left to label Big Oil as one of the major evil forces at work in the world. I don’t agree and I wonder if that hurts my leftist credibility.

I am of course writing this as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are posting record breaking profits for the third quarter. This happened while Americans were paying record breaking gas prices and preparing to freeze this winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes. So I am sure that at least some of you have some pretty strong opinions about this subject. I would also imagine that at least some of you who know me and care for me hate it that I work for who I do. I won’t try to dissuade you from your opinion.

Since I am really not trying to prove a point but rather just wanting to hear some voices, I am only going to offer one piece of anecdotal information. The one fact that I have to offer is simply this; Oil Companies are generally very very good to their employees. My dad worked for Shell. He basically started at the bottom with a two year associates degree as a welder. He retired this year with enough savings to not only live well but pay for mine, my brother’s, and my sister’s kids to go to college. I have only been with my company for a year but I have every reason to expect similar success as long as I continue to work hard.

My point is simply this; when ExxonMobil makes $9.8 billion in one quarter don’t simply think that Mr. ExxonMobil now has $9.8 billion dollars in his pocket and can now go buy a new Lamborghini Gallardo or possibly Italy. When ExxonMobil makes $9.8 billion in one quarter what that will ultimately mean is that around 70,000 XOM employees will have a really happy new year when they see their incentive bonus and their retirement savings.

I generally take every opportunity that I get to criticize Wal-Mart. I feel like they deserve the criticism because despite all of the money they make, a huge percentage of their employees are on Medi-Care. The same criticism cannot be leveled at Big Oil. Their employees are treated as their greatest asset. I believe this to be true across all of the Majors.

Of course not being “as bad as Wal-Mart” doesn’t necessarily qualify you for a Nobel Peace Prize. And oil companies deserve much of the criticism that gets leveled at them. They are “for profit” organizations and therefore do not act altruistically. The environmental consequences of a petroleum economy are dire to say the least. Part of the reason we all pay so much for gas is because oil companies haven’t felt it to be economically feasible to finally build an environmentally friendly refinery and have thus been stopped from building the old dirty refineries. Huge strides have been made by oil companies to “clean up their act.” More is needed. I am not trying to absolve anyone of anything here. I just wanted to share a little bit of my experience with big oil and to hear what you think.

Respondeat Superior

The Executive Branch is a big operation, and surely the Chief Executive cannot keep track of what everyone is doing, whom everyone is calling, how everyone is handling their business, even in the White House. Conventional wisdom surely holds that Karl Rove has latitude to act for and on behalf of the President in political matters, even without the President's immediate supervision.

May we reasonably believe, however, that Scooter Libby enjoys the same autonomy and authority in the Vice President's Office?

Perjury is a rotten way to go down. Why does this lesson need repeating every decade or so?

I was electrocuted once. It was horrible.

I was not reared with any great major league baseball allegiance, but I became a Cubs fan relatively late in life. I root for the Cubs, yet I still do not pine like those sad hearts that came before me and through whom I adopted my vicarious loyalty. My fondest baseball moment was watching Randy Johnson pitch to Sammy Sosa on a sparkling day at Wrigley with Kile and Elrod. I don't even remember who won, because the magic of the place and the memory is so thick. As a Vanderbilt fan, though, I know that magic and moral victories start to wear thin after a few seasons.

I wonder, then, how do real Cubs fan handle this White Sox business? Is it possible to pull for the South Siders and share a little civic good will? Does potentially playing the Cardinals make it better or worse on your tortured souls? Can you pull for the White Sox for a little Windy City pride, or do your Big Shoulders just sag under more manifestations of curse?

The Ministry of Litigation

Almost every Christian student who considers law school is confronted with a peculiar question: Is it possible to be a Christian lawyer? This question arises primarily from a bad reputation promoted mostly by popular fiction and a misunderstanding of the reality of practicing law, that lawyers will do or say anything to win on behalf of their clients. Particularly troubling to many is an apparent mercenary willingness for attorneys to sell their services to paying clients, even if the attorneys themselves do not believe in the clients’ cause and even if the client is facially wrong or unrighteous.

Even in law school, believing law students confront their siblings who aspire to litigation with the same question: How can a Christian be a litigator? This concern arises from the apparent conflict between a Christian pursuit of peace, reconciliation, cheek turning and general humility and the role of advocates in an adversarial system. How can you fight and brawl and litigate in a spirit consistent with Jesus?

As a litigator, engaged in heated conflicts, the temptation is great to descend into personal acrimony and resentment. Feelings run high with extreme stakes for the litigants, their futures and fortunes. Courts are our arenas of conflict and confrontation and battles of adverse interests.

Here, though is the grace of the Rule of Law. Above our constitutional system, republican democracy and economic freedom, the greatest civic tool to realizing visions of justice and peace is the Rule of Law. Without it, if Alpha and Beta were fighting over the intestate assignment of Blackacre, Alpha and Beta would fight to the death or visit vindictive pain on the others’ loved ones for the right by power to occupy the controversial plot. So it is in so many societies now and historically. Without the Rule of Law, Alpha and Beta also could be subject to the whims of King who lops off both their heads, because Blackacre might be a nice place for King’s stables.

With the Rule of Law, however, when two candidates for Chief Executive find themselves embroiled in an electoral controversy, the loser and his followers do not take to the streets in gory bloodletting and insurgency. The candidates instead yield to the decision of neutral arbiters, Courts appointed by the representatives of the governed, who themselves are subject to the Law. The Rule of Law normatively abhors caprice, and the subjects can lodge their grievances with Courts for resolution, not a duel at daybreak at twenty paces. Without the Rule of Law, people who love a young mother who is in a “persistent vegetative state” might feel compelled to kill all who attempted to remove her life support, even out of mercy. In the highest example of the Rule of Law, parents submit to the death of their child because of judicial determination of standards established by the peoples’ representatives. Even in their mourning, they do not seek revenge, an eye for an eye, but they strive to amend the law, to replace representatives, to appeal judgment. What a gift to all of society is that willing submission to the Rule of Law!

This is the litigators’ ministry, to advocate, even zealously, in an adversarial environment, governed by procedures and judges and the written law to give effect to the Rule of Law. Zealous advocacy with a loving heart and motivation for peace is a tall order, but the Christian litigator must exercise the discipline. Without honest, ethical, respectful and excellent litigators confronting others in Court, the system would evaporate and degrade into unjust chaos. Inherently necessary for the Rule of Law is trust in the system and submission by all to its outcomes, even in loss. Without submission to the outcome, the governed would not submit their disputes to Court but to vigilante and vindictive feuds. The Rule of Law only survives effectively when the advocates have a mind for peace and resolution.

Abuse exists to threaten the system in all jurisdictions, but there the Christian attorney bears a greater burden to confront those abuses, for the sake of their clients, yes, but also for the sake of the Rule of Law and the sake of a civilization who relies on it.

Does this not bear on every profession, every agent in the marketplace? II Corinthians 5 charges us to take up Christ’s ministry of reconciliation. We are His ambassadors in His mission to reconcile the world to Himself. All who bear His name, must seek peace and reconciliation, not domination and conquest. We must love others, even our enemies, as we love ourselves, and we should love none greater than our Lord. The Christian’s job is not to win. We are not called to seek victory against our foes. We are not called to bend society and public policy to our wills. We are called foremost to give glory and honor to God, to do good works so that those who see them may praise our Father in Heaven. The Lord says, stand firm, keep quiet, I will fight for you so you do not need to fight for yourselves. We are called to love, to seek peace, to liberate the oppressed, to feed the poor, to reconcile and to be reconciled, to do the good works that He has prepared in advance for us to do. If we are successful in this, by God, the hearts of the people, even the secular people, will turn toward God and His will for us. As hearts turn in response to love and peace and justice and good, public policy, politics and litigation will reflect it.

Then we will have won.

Lessons in Liberalism

I was being a little facetious to say that there are no good, strict constructionist judges out there, and I certainly do not think that GWB conducted a good search. I think he "looked into her eyes," "saw into her soul," and decided she would be his pick. That's how Bush governs, by instinct, not by wonk.

With that explanation, however, I do believe that the rigors of reality, on the court and in government, necessarily "liberalize" otherwise theoretical convservatives. As JA notes in his post, this conservative president has delivered an astonishing array of liberal actions. I don't blame him, though. Acknowledging history and endless examples, as we progress as a nation we increasingly face issues and problems of incredible scope and complexity. Against these problems, in the current state of our life, the federal government is the only entity or organization with the capacity to address them well. (Oh, how I wish the Church lived up to its calling to aid the poor and weak as we should. As it stands we do not and cannot in any way comparable to our civic government.) FEMA has blown post-Katrina response, but these states (MY states by the way) are incompetent to do any more. I'm a realist, and reality demands the "liberalizing" of government and judges. The GOP is a party of ideas, but the ideas don't translate to actual government and judicial decisions. "Conservatism" has not been successfully realized by those that promote it, because real government and rigorous courts can't apply the ideas justly or well.

Like a good lawyer and adequate teacher, let me define my terms. I use "conservative" as it commonly refers to the idea that the national government should be "small," strictly limited in scope and jurisdiction, that the states should be the preeminent government and that governing authority should be decentralized and only as involved as is necessary to provide basic services. I do not mean, for now, the contemporary ideas of conservatism affecting personal morality and sex. I use "liberal" as the competing idea that government is capable of great good and should be empowered increasingly to address and affect many more aspects of life and society, that governmental power should be centralized and that the national government should be preeminent over the states.

My favorite president, at the moment, is Theodore Roosevelt. TR was McKinley's Republican VP but became president shortly when McKinley was assassinated. TR was "re-elected" overwhelmingly and declined to run again (for the moment) despite a near assurance that he would be re-elected. TR came to office with the support of corporate America, the robber barons, no less, who sought to preserve exceptionally limited government so that they could continue to manipulate and dominate the free market. TR became more and more troubled by the inherent abuse and immoral effect of unchecked corporate activity, and his policies reflected it. Eventually, he was the great "trust buster," greatly expanded federal power, imposed national parks on the states (and against the wishes of his base), and became a pure progressive. TR was a remarkable optimist and hoped that the federal government could effect singular good in the nation and that the nation could effect singular good throughout the world. He was a "nation builder" and aggressive in American and federal assertions. FDR learned his lessons and led the nation out of depression and through the cataclysm of World War II.

TR's example reflects the slow course of American history, away from vehement colonial/states rights and power under the Articles of Confederation to ever-increasing, inevitably expanding federal government to work greater good than anyone else can.

(These are continuing thoughts from my previous posts on the Separation of Kingdom and State, Part I and Part II. I have long sought critical comments on these posts and have not received them. Is my truth just irrefutable?)

High Courtisan

Harriet Miers?

Could the conservative bench be so thin that they exhausted the varsity team with John Roberts? Is being a good judge so intellectually demanding that contemporary conservatism can't take the heat of critical analysis?

Go Mustangs. (I bet she opposes the death penalty. . .)