Okay, I'll say one thing.

The Monomakhos crowd aren't exactly a bunch of Nate Silvers. They predicted the wrong guy.

Speaking of which, I am quite glad the Unskewedpolls.com guy has commented on why he was wrong and seems to be taking it quite well. There are two ways to go when you get something wrong: the bad way (there are several of these, actually) and the good way (admitting how and why you were wrong and learning from it), and he chose the good way. Karl Rove never chooses the good way.

Axios, congratulations to the new Metropolitan

I am, of course, no longer in the OCA, but I still wish them well. Axios!

Maybe this will stop the constant parade of hits my web-log gets for information about Metropolitan Jonah. Life moves on, there are other things to google for.

In the interest of equal opportunity...

I noted earlier that you are allowed to dislike the GOP. I should also note, in the interest of equal opportunity, you are allowed to dislike the Democrats. But the audience I was aiming at typically has to deal with universal approbation for the GOP and universal contempt for the Democrats, and therefore do not need to be reminded of this. Some precious few of you might be in the opposite situation, particularly if you're in an urban environment, so I give you permission to dissent as well. You're also given permission to dislike them both or like them both.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not going to make a secret of the fact that I am probably considered, by most American metrics, very liberal. I try to keep things on this web-log fairly balanced because I think, besides a few issues where Christians must agree on the ends attained (if not the means), this is all a matter of pragmatics and opinion and should not be a stumbling block. I saw recently on a message board somebody scandalized by the "extremely liberal" views of a moderate conservative. The person scandalized said he would be unsure about further investigations into Orthodoxy if such extreme views were common. I think the scandalous guy voiced some banal criticisms of Romney and a couple things mildly okay with unions, nothing about abortion or whatever, but that was enough. This is absurd and I don't want it to happen. It's irrelevant to the faith.

But, really, while abortion, war, capital punishment, and the like might rather obviously have implications to what side of the political divide you fall on (but not so obviously for the latter two that I would not expect good faith disagreement), other things should be relatively orthogonal. I do not see why a religious Christian must obviously be on one side or the other of immigration policy, gun control, voter ID laws, marginal tax rates, health care reform, etc. And some of those should be orthogonal to the others in the bucket - I don't see why beliefs about marginal tax rates should be tied to beliefs about voter ID laws, but they are.

But this is a long way of saying that, rest assured, I hold all the political views a Christian must hold in good faith and have a rather healthy distaste for the Democrats if you think that's a sine qua non, too. And I'll keep it at that to prevent people from stumbling.

EDIT: I am also not at all interested in debating, in case anybody wants to upbraid me for lack of ideological purity. I always enjoy interesting conversations, the more interesting ones should take place in e-mail, though I might respond slowly.

Political musing

A bunch of people are hypothesizing that the "billionaires backing Karl Rove" must be furious because they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the election and got almost nothing for their efforts, since Obama not only took a plurality, but an outright majority of the popular vote, and the GOP lost ground in both the House and Senate. They posit that the many millions were singularly ineffective, doing effectively nothing in the elections.

But what if they're wrong - that the spending was just as effective as expected and that to achieve even these inadequate results for the Republican Party requires massive support from billionaire donors. That the moment for the Tea Party is over because popular support is even less than previously thought.

Okay, that's enough about politics.

I give you permission to dislike some things.

Sometimes Orthodox converts don't realize that they are quite free to dislike several things on the following list. Seriously, this is all just Protestant baggage.

• Touchstone Magazine and the like. Fr Patrick Henry Reardon is certainly a nice fellow and all that, but he is by no means the end-all-be-all of Orthodoxy, or normal Orthodoxy, or even typical American convert Orthodoxy. I'd include First Things in there, unfortunately, as they have certainly declined a bit in quality.
• Ancient Faith Radio. In fact, not only are you free to dislike AFR, I recommend that you only listen to specific, individual programs that you might find interesting. I do not recommend listening to it in general or in the background.
• The GOP. There have been 2000 years of Christian history and the vast majority of Christians in the world right now are outside the US, so you don't have to pretend that the ideal of political life, God's own will for the organization of man, is contained in the immutable party planks of the GOP.
• Random Athonite elders. There are a lot to choose from, if somebody spouts some pious claptrap from some geronta, I don't think you have to agree. If they're saying something everybody else says, yes, you might have to like it.
• Homeschooling. This can be good if the parents are well-educated, but, you know, I mean, it can not be good, and good education is good. You're allowed to dislike it.

Of course, feel free to ignore me. I believe in global warming, math, evolution, and vaccination. I do look down on you if you don't.

EDIT: Another one: traditional feminine gender roles, wearing skirts all the time, etc. I don't look down on you if you subscribe to this or to anything else on the list above. But a lot of people didn't get the memo that they are perfectly free to dissent from this notion.

Anyway, please believe in anthropogenic climate change and work both personally and politically to reduce your carbon emissions.

A quick review of a cheap tea.

I've taken to drinking tea because I sometimes have an urge to drink something during the day besides water and the other options cost real money. e.g., coffee is $2/cup, pop is also costly. I'm a graduate student, I can't do that. Anyway, I've been drinking a cheap tea that I would rate as wholly adequate. I can't speak for all their offerings, I've tried their English Breakfast as well. Anyway, I'm not much of an Earl Grey guy, but I figured I'd try it and if it was going to be only okay, Earl Grey is at least robust to okay-ness. At $13/pound, it's certainly acceptable.

Anyway, if you have other suggestions, I'm open to them.