December 2020 Archives
Among many other benefits, Ross Douthat writes that raising a family helps you become more holy.
For the average sinner, though, for me and maybe for you, life with children establishes at least some of the preconditions for growing in holiness, even if there's always the risk of being redirected into tribal narcissism. If I didn't have kids there's a 5 percent chance that I'd be doing something more radical in pursuit of sainthood; there's a 95 percent chance that I'd just be a more persistent sinner, a more selfish person, because no squalling infant or tearful nine-year-old is there to force me to live for her and not myself.
I've definitely found this to be true. I'm a much better person than I used to be, significantly because of my family. (Not that I'm all that great, mind you.)
The Word of God falling from the lips of the apostle or minister enters into the heart of the hearer. The Holy Ghost impregnates the Word so that it brings forth the fruit of faith. In this manner every Christian pastor is a spiritual father who forms Christ in the hearts of his hearers.
An eternity ago, right after the election, Brian Riedl and Sean Trende made an important observation: the election polls were so far off that all public polling must be garbage.
I don't care *that much* on how horse race polls are off (except that perhaps it forced a misallocation of resources), but a skew in public opinion polling is potentially a big deal. https://t.co/PVFBWGyQwL
— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) November 6, 2020
Politicians rely on public polling for many of their decisions (right or wrong), and polls influence judges and bureaucrats also. If polls can't remotely predict the highest-profile election ever, why should we have any confidence that anything they say is accurate? This goes way beyond politics.
Scott Adams points out that it's absurd that America can't audit our elections because the companies that made the machines claim that letting us review the software would endanger their intellectual property. What kind of proprietary algorithms are required to perform addition, anyway? Who in government agreed to an arrangement like this?
Note: Most claims of election fraud are probably false or mistaken, but "trust us" isn't an acceptable security policy. Our elections must be above reproach.
If we can't audit our nation's vote-counting software because the company claims it is proprietary information, I'm totally cool with that. But obviously the election has to be thrown out in whole for that very reason. I see no room for compromise on this point.Who agreed to a no-audit deal with an election software company? Name ANYTHING you have ever heard that is dumber. Literally anything. You can't.
Will the Supreme Court give a free pass to an election that was non-transparent BY DESIGN? Accidental would be one thing, but non-auditable voting machines are not an accident.
Will the House?
Anyway, auditing an election shouldn't require source code -- there should be secure logs. But apparently there aren't secure, trusted logs.