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Now that we’ve laid out the convictions that ought to be settled long before men every begin to preach, we’re going to turn to the nuts and bolts of sermon prep. To do so, we need to look at the question that will vex, challenge and haunt every preacher: “What will I preach on?”

A lot of preachers answer this question by reaching on what I would call “popular” topics. They preach on social issues, politics, culture and so forth. These sort of sermons have become the rule in North America; they explore a theme rather than a biblical passage. There are several reasons for this:

1. It makes preaching appear more interesting and important in an age that has mostly lost interest in the pulpit.
2. It makes the sermon sound different from what happens in the “Bible class” that occurs prior to the start of public worship.

Before long, when we look at the act of preaching the sermon, I’ll have a good bit to say about #2, but for now, I have to move on.

Too often this sort of “pop” topical preaching reduces the sermon text to a peg on which the preacher gets to hang his line of thought, and the shape and thrust of the message reflect his notion of what is good for the people rather than letting the text determine what’s good for the people. This leads to a scenario where it seems that the preacher is now speaking for the Bible and not letting the Bible speak for itself through the preacher’s own words.

There is a way to preach topically that is more theological than it is “pop” preaching, and God willing, we’ll look at that in the next week. However, let me say in passing at this point that for the faithful preacher, topical sermons won’t be his primary diet. For the faithful minister, the question is more narrow that “What will I preach on?” For him the proper question is, “What portion of Scripture will I preach on?”

Lurking behind this are three questions (one of which I have no intention of answering, as the answer ought to be apparent). These three questions are:

1. Why choose a text at all?
2. What is a text?
3. How do I choose a text?

I have no intention of answering the first question at this point, so let’s jump right into the second one: what is a text?

Put simply, a text is just a portion of Scripture. That only raises another question, however, “How big (or small) does that portion have to be in order to be considered a ‘text’?”

The size can differ a good bit; in one of Paul’s letters it could be as small as a single phrase, or as large as an entire paragraph. In one of the Gospels, or in the Old Testament historical books, it may be several paragraphs. The book you’re preaching from has its own internal logic, and that will be a large factor in determining the size of the portion you preach from.

There is a danger in preaching from a portion that’s too small. I have read sermons by C.H. Spurgeon where his text is just one or two words, and (no disrespect to the Prince of Preachers) his outline doesn’t seem to flow naturally from the text. In other words, when I look at the text the sermon is derived from, I don’t understand how he got that sermon from that text.

My own habit is to preach from a larger portion rather than a smaller one; I have found that it is far too easy to engage in eisegesis rather than exegesis when dealing with a text that’s too short. For that reason, I tend to preach from a paragraph’s worth of text when I’m in the Epistles. Only once have I preached out of a single verse, and that was because the depth of the verse could bear the weight of an entire sermon.

If you are considering preaching from a text that is just a single phrase or verse, your listeners should be able to see clearly that this particular phrase or verse contains a cardinal truth of redemption: original sin, regeneration, the deity of Christ, sanctification, etc. Put simply, that single phrase or verse needs to so clearly propound that one great redemptive truth that no one can ask after the sermon has been preached, “How did he get that from that verse?”

A good example of the sort of text that would bear this sort of preaching is Ezekiel 18:20: “The soul who sins shall die.” These sort of texts should never be preached a-contextually! A good sermon on this text would show how it connects to Ezekiel’s previous line of reasoning, and also how it relates to what other parts of Scripture teach about sin and death.

So, now we’ve selected our text, and it’s not too long or too small. What next?

Do Jornal Nacional:
O Jornal Nacional obteve, com exclusividade, documentos importantes da operação de compra e venda do jato Cessna, que era usado pelo candidato do PSB à presidência, Eduardo Campos. O dinheiro que teria sido usado para pagar o avião em que morreu o candidato Eduardo Campos passa por escritórios em Brasília e São Paulo e por uma peixaria fantasma em uma favela do Recife. “Eu estou até desnorteado. Como é que eu tenho uma empresa sem eu saber?”, questiona um homem.

O Jornal Nacional teve acesso com exclusividade aos extratos da conta AF Andrade – empresa que, para a Anac, é a dona da aeronave. Mas a AF Andrade afirma que já tinha repassado a aeronave para outro empresário, que emprestou para a campanha de Campos. Os extratos que já foram entregues à Polícia Federal mostram o recebimento de 16 transferências, de seis empresas ou pessoas diferentes. Num total de R$ 1.710.297,03. Nos extratos, aparecem os números do CPF das pessoas físicas ou do CNPJ, das empresas que transferiram dinheiro para a AF Andrade. Com esses números, foi possível chegar aos donos das contas.

A empresa que fez a menor das transferências, de R$ 12.500, foi a Geovane Pescados. No endereço que consta no registro da peixaria encontramos Geovane, não a peixaria. “Acha, que se eu tivesse uma empresa de pescado, eu vivia numa situação dessa?”, diz Geovane. Outra empresa, a RM Construções, fez 11 transferências, em duas datas diferentes. Cinco no dia 1º de julho e mais seis no dia 30 de julho, somando R$ 290 mil.

O endereço da RM é uma casa no bairro de Imbiribeira, em Recife. Mas a empresa de Carlos Roberto Macedo não funciona mais lá. “Tinha um escritório. Às vezes, guardava o material do outro”, conta ele. Tentamos falar por telefone com Carlos, mas ele pareceu não acreditar quando explicamos o motivo da minha ligação.

Repórter: Você andou depositando dinheiro para comprar um avião?
Carlos: Tem certeza disso?

Já um depósito de quase R$ 160 mil saiu da conta da Câmara & Vasconcelos, empresa que tem como endereço uma sala vazia em um prédio e uma casa abandonada. Os dois lugares em Nazaré da Mata, distante 60 quilômetros do Recife. A maior transferência feita para a AF Andrade foi de R$ 727 mil, no dia 15 de maio, pela Leite Imobiliária, de Eduardo Freire Bezerra Leite. E completam a lista de transferências João Carlos Pessoa de Mello Filho, com R$ 195 mil, e Luiz Piauhylino de Mello Monteiro Filho, advogado com escritórios em Brasília, Recife e São Paulo, com uma transferência de R$ 325 mil.

Luiz Piauhylino de Mello Monteiro Filho disse que realizou, em junho, uma transferência bancária de R$ 325 mil e que esse valor é referente a um empréstimo firmado com o empresário João Carlos Lyra Pessoa de Mello Filho. O empresário João Carlos Lyra declarou que, para honrar compromissos com a empresa AF Andrade, fez vários empréstimos, com o objetivo de pagar parcelas atrasadas do financiamento do Cessna. A Leite Imobiliária confirmou que transferiu quase R$ 730 mil para a AF Andrade como um empréstimo a João Carlos Lyra.

Já o PSB declarou, nesta terça-feira (26), que o uso do avião foi autorizado pelos empresários João Carlos Lyra Pessoa de Mello Filho e Apolo Santana Vieira. E que o recibo eleitoral, com a contabilidade do uso do Cessna, seria emitido ao fim da campanha de Eduardo Campos. O PSB afirmou que o acidente, em que morreram assessores do candidato, criou dificuldades para o levantamento de todas informações.

Ai, ai… Vamos lá. Uma votação a meu ver casuística, que conduz à insegurança jurídica, vai livrar o Distrito Federal de ter como governador José Roberto Arruda (PR) — sim, senhores! Aquele da violação do painel do Senado e dos pacotes de dinheiro. Por cinco votos a um — o presidente do tribunal, Dias Toffoli, não votou —, os ministros entenderam que Arruda está com seus direitos políticos suspensos pela Lei da Ficha Limpa. Tiveram esse entendimento os ministros Henrique Neves, Admar Gonzaga, Laurita Vaz, Otávio Noronha e Luiz Fux. Só Gilmar Mendes, com quem concordo, discordou. Por quê? Arruda foi condenado em segunda instância por improbidade administrativa depois do registro de sua candidatura. O ministro argumentou, e me parece o correto, que é preciso estabelecer um marco temporal para definir a aplicação da lei, ou julgamentos podem ser apressados apenas para cassar candidatos.

E aí, leitor? Aplaudimos porque Arruda não vai ser governador — o que, obviamente, é bom — ou lamentamos o fato de que a decisão enseja insegurança jurídica, o que, obviamente, é ruim? Eu diria que é o caso de aplaudir e de lamentar ao mesmo tempo. Mas eu repudio o muro, sempre. Teria votado como Mendes porque acho que macular o fundamento legal é sempre pior. Sei que não é uma escolha fácil, mas a vida, às vezes, nos coloca diante desses dilemas.

Arruda está fora da disputa. A pior notícia que ele poderia receber chegou no dia em que o Ibope mostrou que sua vantagem havia aumentado. Segundo o instituto, se a eleição fosse hoje, teria 37% das intenções de voto — há um mês, eram 32%. O governador Agnelo Queiroz, do PT, oscilou de 17% para 16%, mesmo índice do senador Rodrigo Rollemberg, do PSB, que tinha 15%.

O homem que teve agora invalidada a candidatura venceria seus oponentes no segundo turno: 45% a 23% contra Agnelo e 39% a 30% contra Rollemberg. Na verdade, o grande ativo eleitoral às avessas do Distrito Federal é mesmo o atual governador, do PT. É contra ele que vota a esmagadora maioria dos eleitores do DF. Vejam que coisa: o senador do PSB tem apenas 16% do primeiro turno, mas venceria o petista no segundo com o dobro dos votos: 44% a 22%. Algo a estranhar? Não! Dizem que não votariam em Agnelo de jeito nenhum 43% dos entrevistados; sua gestão é considerada ruim ou péssima por 48%, e nada menos de 65% reprovam seu modo de governar.

Os petistas também vão amargando uma derrota importante no Senado: Reguffe, do PDT, lidera com 29% das intenções de voto. Geraldo Magela, do PT, tem apenas 16%. Que ironia, não? O PT, que foi o principal beneficiário da desgraça que colheu o então governador José Roberto Arruda, em 2009, vê agora o seu próprio governador ter uma rejeição maior do que a daquele que saiu do palácio para a cadeia.

If marriage is a sacrament, then the way in which practices that lead to marriage function as liturgies deserves attention.

“Before ‘I Do’,” a new study published by the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, offers evidence of the ways certain common individual and cultural pre-marital practices can shape the experience and quality of a marriage. The research involved more than one thousand unmarried Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four who were in a relationship when they entered the study between 2007 and 2008. Over the next five years, 418 of these individuals married, and data about these marriages were collected and analyzed. The research finds that past decisions and conduct in romantic relationships were linked to the odds that the marriages would be high quality. The study offers three major findings:

• Those who have had more romantic, sexual or cohabiting partners before marriage are less likely to report a high-quality marriage than those with “less complex” romantic histories. For example, men and women who had slept only with their future spouse before marriage report higher marital quality than those who had other sexual partners as well. In addition, having a child in a previous relationship is linked to lower marital quality for women (but not men).
  


• The intention (or lack thereof) with which the married individuals make transitions from one relationship milestone to another—by what the study terms “deciding” or “sliding”—is also linked to marriage quality. Those individuals who “slid” into relationship stages before marriage (including “hooking up,” cohabitation, and engagement) rather than “deciding” to do so with intentionality have lower quality marriages.
  


• The greater the number of guests at the wedding, and the more formal the wedding ceremony, the greater chance that the marriage is of higher quality, even after controlling for income and education.
  

Among the conclusions the authors propose from the study’s findings is this: “rituals and community matter.”

On the surface, one’s history of past relationships, the deliberation with which one makes decisions about relationship milestones, and the number of guests in attendance at one’s wedding appear to be widely divergent indicators of marital quality. Yet all of these factors, in one way or another, reflect practices that accumulate resonances and become ritualized ways of relating to and being with romantic (and potential marriage) partners. The practices that lead up to marriage reflect—and at the same time construct—social imaginaries about marriage. What we imagine to be true and good about romantic relationships—and the practices adopted as a result of those visions—affects the sense of one’s marriage quality.

The study’s findings bear out James K. A. Smith’s insights about cultural liturgies outlined in his two books, Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom. Practices, Smith explains, form habits. Practices can be “thin” or “thick,” or, in other words, they can be routines we undertake, not as ends in themselves, but as means to some end (“thin”); or routines which, as ends in themselves, are infused with personal meaning and are thus tied to our identity (“thick”). Over time, Smith explains, thick, formative practices “embed desires in us for a particular version of the good life.” Thin habits can become thick practices, Smith says, when they reflect, or even cultivate, our larger commitments and thereby connect, even if only implicitly, to our vision of human flourishing. For example, the “thin practice” of hooking up becomes a “thick practice” when it comes to shape one’s identity and form one’s vision of how flourishing might be achieved. Thus, Smith argues, “no habit or practice is neutral,” for such actions cultivate our desires even as they serve as perceived means of fulfilling our desires for the good. Practices embody our ultimate beliefs, Smith explains, drawing upon the work of the twentieth century sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu, who says, “Practice has a logic which is not that of the logician—a logic that is performed directly in bodily gymnastics.”

This recognition that the power of ritual is made manifest in material forms illuminates how the bodily practices that underlie the behaviors in the study—premarital sex and cohabitation, deliberation over relationship decisions, and the gathering of supporters and witnesses in the marriage ceremony—shape marital quality. It makes sense that those who have a history of practices involving fewer lost commitments report higher quality marriages. Serial relationships and co-habitation transform commitment into trial runs. Drifting into stages of a relationship can become a ritualized way of living no less than the opposite, intentional approach. The correlation about the formality and size of the wedding is less intuitive, but the study’s authors surmise that these factors “may foster support for the new marriage from within a couple’s network of friends and family” or reflect the existence of already existing strong networks of support. “This is undoubtedly why all cultures have rituals that add force to major decisions about the pathway ahead,” the study states. “We tend to ritualize experiences that are important.”

And when our rituals are connected to matters of “ultimate concern,” as Smith puts it, they “constitute and function as liturgies.” Within a traditional understanding liturgy refers narrowly to the forms by which public worship is practiced. But in a secular age in which visions of human flourishing are no longer limited to religious belief, other practices—even those that are seemingly private but ultimately public—compete with those of worship in shaping the desires we follow in pursuit of the good. In reflecting visions of human flourishing, cultural liturgies take on religious resonance and function, Smith argues, as “pedagogies of ultimate desire.”

“Before ‘I Do’” makes clear that the practices one engages in before marriage influence the quality of the marriage. Since, as Mollie Hemingway points out in her report on the study, the vast majority of people desire to marry someday, the habits that surround courtship and marriage are inherently “thick practices” that embody our beliefs about human flourishing and construct our social imaginaries. For most people, marriage is an ultimate concern, which means premarital practices are cultural liturgies that constitute the shape of the marriage just as religious liturgies shape our worship.

Karen Swallow Prior is professor of English at Liberty University, Research Fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States.

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Richard of St. Victor, a 12th-century Scottish theologian, is not exactly a household name in 21st-century Christian circles. Truth to tell, I only know of him because of a curious conversation I once had with my friend, the late Richard John Neuhaus, who, as only he could, told me of a friendly discussion he’d had with Rabbi David Novak one summer about the Scotsman’s Trinitarian theology, which tried to establish by reason that God must be triune. (We talked about a lot of strange and wondrous things, up there on the cottage deck in the Ottawa Valley.)

To greatly simplify a complex argument, Richard of St. Victor proposed that perfect love (“God”) cannot remain in and by itself; it must direct itself to an equally perfect person (“God the Son”); and the mutual love between those two must have a third person as that to which their common love is directed (“God the Holy Spirit”). Or so the old New Catholic Encyclopedia sums up. Richard of St. Victor’s Trinitarian theology didn’t attract many followers, and in any case, it somewhat misses the point about the Holy Trinity—which most preachers also tend to do on Trinity Sunday. And that is that we “know” the Triune God, not through abstract argument, but through history.

The first Christians, pious Jews, were strict monotheists. That Christianity came to embrace the doctrine of the Holy Trinity—indeed, that it put that doctrine at the center of its creed, along with its other key doctrine, the Incarnation—is one of the great surprises of religious history. The two are linked. And that link is found, not in the abstract speculations of theologians, but in the historical experience of the Christian community.

As biblical scholar Gianfranco Ravasi puts it, the mystery of God’s triune inner life is inextricably linked to the love that communicates itself to the world “in a precise historical event, the saving mission of the only-begotten Son.” And this, Ravasi continues, is the theme of the nighttime conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the third chapter of John’s Gospel: Jesus does not offer this pious Israelite, who may also stand for all those who seek the truth about God with a sincere heart, a theological treatise; he offers him a description of what is happening, in history, in himself. A new dialogue between God and humanity has begun, for “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

So the next time you see some vaguely scruffy brother holding up a “John 3:16” sign at the Super Bowl or World Series, remember that he’s offering the world the answer to the speculations of Richard of St. Victor.

We know the Trinity, not because we have reasoned our way to it, but because we have been touched by the Trinity’s entry into history. The gift spoken of in John 3:16, Ravasi writes, encompasses not only that which the Father gives (his Son), but also that which the Son, the suffering servant, freely offers in giving himself up to death for the world’s salvation. And from that “giving” of the Father and Son comes the outpouring of the Spirit, by whose sevenfold gifts we can come to know, and we are empowered to proclaim, that Jesus, risen from the dead, is indeed Lord, and that through him we have what only God can give: the forgiveness of sins.

In strictest theological definition, the Trinity is a “mystery”: a truth which can never be fully comprehended by reason, but which can be known to be true in love. That is how the early Christian community came to know the triune nature of the Holy One, the God of Israel: the truth of God-in-himself was discerned in the Christian experience of the Trinitarian love that was poured into the world in the paschal mystery. That is how we can know, however dimly, the truth about God-in-himself today: through the love of God poured into our hearts sacramentally.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center. His previous articles can be found here.

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Na VEJA.com:
Representantes de Israel e grupos palestinos concordaram com uma proposta de cessar-fogo por tempo indeterminado, que pode significar o fim do conflito em curso na Faixa de Gaza. depois de cinquenta dias. O acordo deve reduzir, mas não acabar, com as restrições de circulação e comércio em Gaza, retomando em grande parte os termos do pacto de 2012, que acabou com um conflito de oito dias. Israel permitirá que materiais de construção e ajuda humanitária sejam enviados à região, de forma monitorada, para garantir que sejam utilizados apenas com objetivos civis. “Não estamos interessados em permitir que o Hamas reconstrua sua máquina militar”, disse um oficial israelense ao jornal The New York Times.

O Egito, intermediador das negociações, anunciou que a trégua teve início às 19 horas locais (13 horas em Brasília). A informação foi confirmada pelo presidente da Autoridade Palestina, Mahmoud Abbas. Minutos antes, no entanto, pelo menos quinze foguetes foram lançados de Gaza contra o território israelense e um ataque com morteiro matou um israelense em Eshkol e deixou outros seis feridos. Moradores relataram terem ouvido explosões na região de Tel Aviv e o grupo Hamas reivindicou a responsabilidade pelo lançamento de um foguete contra a área. Sirenes alertando sobre ataques continuaram a ser ouvidas no sul de Israel mesmo depois do início do cessar-fogo.

Segundo a imprensa israelense, o acordo de cessar-fogo não inclui nenhuma das demandas do grupo terrorista palestino, como a de construção de um porto e um aeroporto em Gaza, a libertação de prisioneiros ou a transferência de recursos para a região. Essas questões devem ser discutidas depois de um mês, se a trégua for respeitada. Também neste período, Israel vai insistir na desmilitarização da Faixa de Gaza. O ministro da Justiça, Tzipi Livni, disse que “nenhuma conquista política significativa foi garantida ao Hamas, que é uma organização terrorista que não aceita nossa existência”. Acrescentou que o fim da operação militar israelense deve fazer parte de um “acordo mais amplo com os que buscam a paz”, segundo informação do jornal Haaretz.

Para Israel, o fim das restrições de circulação na região significaria caminho livre para os terroristas terem acesso a armamentos do exterior. Durante o atual conflito, o Hamas havia colocado o fim do bloqueio como condição para respeitar um cessar-fogo. Porém, nos últimos dias, Israel intensificou os ataques a Gaza, derrubando arranha-céus com escritórios, apartamentos e lojas.

Hamas comemora “vitória”
Mesmo sem ter suas demandas atendidas, o Hamas aproveitou para fazer propaganda e falar em “vitória” sobre Israel. O negociador do grupo nas conversas intermediadas pelo Egito, Moussa Abu Marzouk, afirmou que o acordo “encarna a resistência de nosso povo e é uma vitória para a resistência”.

Um porta-voz em Gaza alegou que o Hamas impôs um “bloqueio aéreo” em Israel, em referência àsuspensão de voos para o aeroporto Ben Gurion anunciada por várias companhias aéreas internacionais durante dois dias no mês passado. Disse ainda que israelenses que moram perto de Gaza e tiveram de deixar suas casas só podem voltar porque o grupo terrorista permitiu. Assim que o cessar-fogo entrou em vigor, milhares de pessoas foram às ruas em Gaza em resposta a mensagens de texto enviadas pelo Hamas pedindo que a ‘vitória’ do grupo fosse celebrada.

Israel iniciou no dia 8 de julho uma operação para conter o lançamento de foguetes contra seu território. Desde então, mais de 2.100 pessoas foram mortas do lado palestino, a maioria civis. Do lado israelense, 64 soldados e cinco civis foram mortos, incluindo a vítima desta terça-feira.

O governo americano declarou seu apoio ao acordo. “Esperamos muito que esse cessar-fogo seja durável e sustentável e coloque um fim aos ataques de foguete e morteiros e ajude a alcançar um fim duradouro ao conflito em Gaza”, anunciou o secretário de Estado americano, John Kerry, em comunicado.

Lembram-se daquele tempo em que os mercados reagiam mal à possibidade de mudança no cenário eleitoral? Há muito tempo já, temos o contrário: eles reagem bem é quando surge a perspectiva de uma troca de guarda no governo.

Nesta terça, o país poderia estar sofrendo os efeitos de um mal chamado “TPP”, a Tensão Pré-Pesquisa. Existem, sim, apreensão e expectativa, como sempre, mas os augúrios do mercado são otimistas porque se avalia que o cenário eleitoral será contrário a Dilma Rousseff.

A aposta é que Marina aparecerá no Ibope tecnicamente empatada com a presidente, talvez ligeiramente atrás nos números — estamos falando de um intervalo entre 28% e 32%. Diz-se que o tucano Aécio Neves pode se conservar no patamar dos 20%. Aumenta o otimismo de quem lida com expectativas o boato de que Marina aparecerá à frente de Dilma no segundo turno.

Esse governo conseguiu uma espécie de unanimidade contrária dos agentes econômicos.

Se, antes, a possibilidade de ascensão de Aécio é que trazia certa euforia, agora, todos já se animam com Marina mesmo, por mais que ela possa ser considerada ainda uma incógnita.

Isso é curioso: mercados são, por natureza, conservadores. Por mais que não gostem de determinadas regras, lidam com elas: repudiam é a imprevisibilidade. No governo Dilma, deu-se um curioso fenômeno, talvez único no mundo: o imprevisível estaria na preservação do governo, de tal sorte que os agentes econômicos preferem uma Marina ou um Aécio, ainda que não saibam exatamente o que eles pretendem fazer se eleitos, a uma Dilma que já conhecem.

Parece que uma tragédia pode, sim, até ajudar a eleger Marina. Mas, independentemente de qualquer coisa, tem-se a impressão de que o governo padece de fadiga de material.

Marina Silva, candidata do PSB à Presidência, disse que o partido daria hoje uma explicação sobre o avião em que voavam, rotineiramente, Eduardo Campos e ela própria. Já está claro a esta altura: não haverá explicação nenhuma. Era caixa dois e pronto, já que os custos com a aeronave não aparecem na prestação de contas do partido ao Tribunal Superior Eleitoral. Eis aí a “nova política”. Marina, nesta segunda, já tinha dito palavras incompreensíveis a respeito. Ao anunciar que viria uma resposta nesta terça, afirmou:
“Queremos que sejam dadas as explicações de acordo com a materialidade dos fatos, e, para termos a materialidade dos fatos, é preciso que haja tempo necessário para que essas explicações tenham as devidas bases legais”.

O que isso quer dizer? Nada! O PSB, então, está em busca de uma justificativa legal que consiste no seguinte: o CNPJ usado pelo comitê financeiro de Eduardo Campos era um — e a esse comitê vão tentar atribuir todas as irregularidades. Um novo foi criado para o comitê de Marina, e este, então, estaria limpo.

Caso prospere mesmo essa saída, a “nova política” de Marina já começa assentada numa fraude, que não é de tão fácil tradução para milhões de eleitores. Está tudo errado: parece que a inimputabilidade de que Lula gozou na política por muitos anos está mudando de Silva: de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva para Marina Silva. Ou por outra: mudam-se os Silvas, mas não a impunidade.

O PSB agora vem com a cascata de que caberá ao comitê antigo explicar por que o avião voava no caixa dois. Conta de quem conhece a área (ver post anterior) calcula o custo mensal do avião Cessna PR-AFA em US$ 200 mil mensais — algo em torno de R$ 460 mil. De onde vinha esse dinheiro? Pois é…

As explicações que se ensaiam beiram o patético. Um dirigente do PSB disse ao jornal O Globo: “Um acordo de boca pode ter ocorrido, e isso é absolutamente aceito juridicamente. O contrato também poderia estar no avião. Onde você guarda os documentos do carro? Trabalho com a ideia de um contrato de comodato oneroso”. É estupefaciente! O partido diz que o avião foi uma doação de empresários… É mesmo? De quais empresários?

A legislação eleitoral exige que a toda doação corresponda a emissão de um recibo, seja o benefício em dinheiro ou estimável em dinheiro. Tais recibos devem ser emitidos no ato do recebimento da doação, o que pode ser feito diretamente no Sistema de Prestação de Contas Eleitorais do TSE.

Afirmar que Marina Silva não era beneficiária de um avião cujos donos se desconhecem e cujo financiamento se dava no caixa dois vai além do cinismo: é uma fraude também moral, uma mentira.

Então ficamos assim: Marina Silva ainda nem foi eleita e já tentam esconder óbvias ilegalidades — que se transferem, sim, para a sua candidatura — com sofismas, cinismo e suposto e tosco legalismo, com a história de que “o CNPJ é outro”. Fosse assim, um partido poderia cometer uma penca de crimes até se tornar viável. Depois, bastaria eliminar a primeira equipe e substituí-la pela segunda.

A “nova política” de Marina, a seguir esse roteiro, é só a cara beatífica da velha mentira.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

That my mother hated Jews was clear, although why she hated them was one of those shameful mysteries I doubt she could have explained had I asked her. What I heard, growing up, sounded like jealousy and resentment. As a waitress in a catering hall, she would serve at Bar Mitzvah receptions and then come home seething about the amounts of money she imagined the young guest of honor had taken in.

Her resentment was palpable and ugly, and—as resentments do—it said much more about my mother than it did about any of the cracked-voice teens she smiled at through gritted teeth while serving dessert. Her own German-Irish family had shattered itself with drink, greedy bickering, and capricious marriages. Stalled on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and keenly aware of all she did not have or would never accomplish, I doubt it ever occurred to her that what she was really resenting was precisely what had gone missing from her life: a sense of identity, communal trust, and support. “Those Jews really stick together,” she would rant, never pausing to consider how the pogroms and ashes of not-distant history were the costly components of so strong a glue.

When my mother served Jews, she encountered doting parents, stable families of sober purpose, curious minds possessed of a singular identity, thirsting for education and determined to transcend the pain and deprivations of their past. All she could manage to see, however, was entitlement, privilege and grasping ambition, avarice and arrogant insularity.

Missing in all of that—or perhaps subconsciously feeding her hate—was the realization that rich or poor, educated or not, Jews would “stick together,” because a people that has repeatedly faced slavery and threats of genocide will tend toward insularity. They had honed their tools and weapons—in this case education and prudent economics—that they had found to be both valuable and portable. Had her interest in her Irish roots gone beyond a willful embrace of hell-raising stereotypes, she might have found a similar emphasis in that history—with stealthy hedge teachers subverting suppressive penal laws to educate, and working immigrants sharing their bounty to bring others out of poverty. I wonder if, had she been more aware of the tribulations and perseverance of her own people’s culture, she might have identified more charitably with the Jews.

Somehow I doubt it. “They stick together” is the complaint of those who feel both excluded and threatened, and it is a sedimentary sentiment; it sinks to one’s depths.

Though the specter of anti-Semiticism has diminished though not been made extinct, it distresses me how often Americans level complaints against each other in the same manner as my mother did against Jewish people.

The haves and have-nots are watching each other with distrust, each saying “they stick together” and the resentment mounts.

The African-American community and the cops are facing off, saying among themselves: “they close ranks; they stick together” and fear and distrust fulminate.

The political class and the hoi polloi are at a similar stand-off, with their roles as servants and masters utterly confused; between secularists and believers, the barricades are rising.

Truly, from class to class, community to community, no one seems capable of assuming good faith, or of reaching out to others in that assumption. There is a sense that only one more line need be crossed before everything falls apart. And if groups of all sorts aren’t able to stick together, how can we hope that America will have any sort of cohesion?

The “great experiment” that has been America is looking a bit rocky, perhaps because we barely know ourselves anymore. And what nation can be sustained without a sense of itself as a people? Churchill identified the British as “our island race.” The French have decreed that a percentage of popular music must reflect the Gallic language and culture. Just try to tell Italians to take down their Marian shrines because they might give offense. It would outrage their sense of themselves as a people.

At the extreme, the notion of a people becomes the Third Reich, or the Islamic State, but nearly anything taken to extremes becomes perverted and then destructive, be it patriotism, or cultural pride, or even faith.

But somewhere, between the weak dilution of a melting pot and a toxic concentration of singularity is the recipe by which e pluribus unum may yet thrive. That formula might, surprisingly, demand a regrouping of our culture-warring factions into cohesive communities that can “stick together” to responsibly serve the least among them; “stick together” to reform and charitably restore the worst amid them; “stick together” to praise and emulate and promote the most diligent and honorable in their number.

A community “sticking together” is a community with a measure of power that is born of cohesion. The community says: This is where we are; these are our strengths and our weaknesses; we have each other’s backs, and can therefore endow the former and address the latter.

In this way, a people come to know who they truly are or are called to be—as a legislative body, or a minority community, or a church, or a law enforcement unit, or a movement—and then, with that self-knowledge, they can consent to be part of a nation: a people-in-full.

Elizabeth Scalia is the author of Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols of Everyday Life and the managing editor of the Catholic Portal at Patheos.com, where she blogs as The Anchoress. Her previous articles can be found here.

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Today I’d like to look at the last conviction every minister ought to have settled in his own mind before ever beginning to preach. Once that is handled, starting tomorrow we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of sermon preparation.

So what is this final conviction? It’s what you believe about you and your people. What sort of relationship are you to bear to those people to whom you will preach?

Your first conviction must be that your are very similar to your hearers. You cannot imagine that you are any better than they are. In fact, you may well be “less than the least of all the saints” (Eph. 3:8). You are what you are by the grace of God, and the constant awareness that “I am no better than them” will produce humility, sympathy, watchfulness, and a willingness to hear constructive criticism.

The other side of the coin, however, is that that though the preacher is not by nature any better than his hearers, he has to be different from them. I’m not arguing for aloofness and detachment; nevertheless, much has been given to the preacher, and to whomever much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). The preacher is to be an example to his hearers and to set higher standards than the mean.

In the secular realm, Aristotle taught that the orator must establish a reputation with his hearers for discretion, probity and good-will towards them. How much more true is this in the realm of the sacred?

I can think of no better challenge than that laid down by R.L. Dabney in this regard:

Without a sacred weight of character, the most splendid rhetoric will win only a short-lived applause; with it the plainest scriptural instructions are eloquent to win souls. Eloquence may dazzle and please; holiness of life convinces… The pastor’s character speaks more loudly than his tongue. (Evangelical Eloquence [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1979], 261, 263.)

By holding this apparent paradox of similar but different, the preacher will “be an example to the believers, in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12), while staying humble, approachable and understanding.

Crossposted from Asia Times Online

The late Leo Strauss (1889-1973) was a thinker sufficiently nuanced to allow a wide range of interpretation of his views, and a teacher broad-ranging enough to influence students with divergent interests. I am honored to contribute occasionally to the Claremont Review of Books, associated with the so-called West Coast Straussians (although I am persona non grata among some East Coast Straussians). In fact, some of my best friends are Straussians.

As my friend Peter Berkowitz argues in a recent essay for RealClearPolitics, it is silly and not a little mendacious to portray the late emigre philosopher as an arachnidan spinner of right-wing plots. [1] My problem isn’t simply with Strauss, but with the ancients whom he admired. He taught that we have something fundamental to learn about statecraft from the ancient Greeks. This in my view is woefully wrong.

Greek philosophy, to be sure, remains one of the ornaments of human endeavor – as it applies to epistemology, ontology, aesthetics and logic, among other fields. Plato and Aristotle, though, came into adulthood just as the Greek city-states destroyed themselves through their own cupidity. What was left of Athens after the disastrous Peloponnesian War was ruined by Alexander of Macedon, who employed Aristotle as a tutor. I do not mean to deprecate the importance of the Greek polis as an exercise in democracy, but Aristotle was hardly its advocate.

“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim,” begins the Nichomachean Ethics. But Aristotle’s assertion that all men seek the good (or at least the good as they see it) is wrong on the face of it. Frequently men seek perversion, violence, and the destruction of themselves and all around them. That is typical of civilizations that have reached their best-used-by-date, and at some point has been true of every civilization west of the Indus during the past 2,500 years with the exception of Israel.

By the time the Romans walked in, all of Greece could not field two regiments of phalanx-men. The rational, logical Greeks chose not to have children and disappeared. They did so after Athens built an empire that looted its colonies to pay off the Athenian mob, relying on imperial exactions for half of its food supply. Athens was a slave society that preyed on its neighbors. What is the sum of Athenian wisdom after the war was lost? For Sophocles (in Oedipus at Colonnus) it was that the best of all possibilities is never to have been born (“But who has such luck? Not one in ten thousand!,” said Yankel to Moishe in the old Jewish joke). It was Sophocles more than Aristotle whom Hellas took to heart, and ensured that its next generations would not be born.

Not since the late Roman Empire has the problem of willful self-destruction been so relevant to contemporary events. The whole of the industrial world excepting Israel is failing to reproduce itself, and great swaths of Europe and East Asia face demographic ruin at the hundred-year horizon. The civilized world, moreover, confronts mass suicide cults in the Islamic world happy to destroy themselves if only they can take the hated West down with them. About the despair that enervates the childless West as well as the self-immolating Muslim radicals, “classical political rationalism” has nothing to say to us.

Kierkegaard called Socrates an “ironist,” that is, a thinker who can look backward to the errors that brought his society into its parlous state, but cannot look forward to a way out (see Socrates the destroyer, Asia Times Online, May 25, 2004.) That explains why Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes give us mutually-incompatible reports of Socrates’ views (Strauss attributed this instead to esoteric expression). For Socrates, “the whole substantial life of Greek culture had lost its validity,” Kierkegaard wrote. An ironist “is prophetic, but his position and situation are the reverse of the prophet’s. The prophet walks arm in arm with his age, and from this position he glimpses what is coming … The ironist, however, has stepped out of line with his age, has turned around and faced it. That which is coming is hidden from him, lies behind his back, but the actuality he so antagonistically confronts is what he must destroy; upon this he focuses his burning gaze.” Socrates, in short, was playing with his interlocutors.

Men do not always, or even typically, seek the good. Just as fatuous as the Cliff Notes classicism of the American neo-conservatives is the pop-Thomism of certain Catholic exponents of “natural law.” A young man knocking on the door of a whorehouse is still seeking God, wrote G K Chesterton. If all human endeavor seeks the Good, then it is only necessary to show people what the Good really is through “right reason” in order to put them on the right path. (My objection to “natural law” goes farther than that; nature herself is flawed and requires frequent correction, as I argued in Why ‘Intelligent Design’ subverts faith, Asia Times Online, October 23, 2012).

If men naturally sought the good, then they all could be persuaded that Western-style liberal democracy and free markets were desirable, because they lead to good results. That happens to be what I consider good, but other people would rather kill everyone around them as well as themselves rather than accept this. I do not think it advisable to send American soldiers to occupy their countries to teach them differently. Strauss knew that a substrate of irrationality lies at the foundation of human society, because he spent a lifetime engaging the 20th-century philosopher who expounded irrational self-destruction as an existential choice: Martin Heidegger.

When Heidegger speaks of “non-Being” in the ontological sense, he conceals (or rather discloses) a sly nod to Goethe’s Mephistopheles: boredom, an objectless anxiety and alienation from life, gives us an intimation of “non-Being,” Heidegger said. He might have mentioned rage, perversion, horror and violence. Heidegger followed the logical conclusion of his thinking into membership in the Nazi Party. (See Now for something about nothing, Asia Times Online, July 24, 2012). I do not mean to attribute too much authority to Heidegger; as Michael Wyschogrod showed in his classic study of the two philosophers, he borrowed his best material from Kierkegaard. Nor did Heidegger discover intimations of non-Being in the pre-Socratics; Fernando de Rojas’ citation of Heraclitus in the introduction to La Celestina(1499) long preceded him. Still, Heidegger gave us the modern formulation of the problem in its standard form.

Strauss had studied with Heidegger at Freiburg and understood the issues as an initiate. But he relegated the Heidegger problem for the most part to a few asides. A whole scholarly literature about Strauss and Heidegger has arisen from the fact that Strauss was obtuse about the issue. He did not believe that rationality was enough, which is why thought religion a desirable, perhaps even necessary illusion for the masses (as opposed to philosophers).

One cannot blame Strauss for the insistence of some of his prominent disciples that political rationalism can be transplanted from the West to non-Western cultures. Strauss might be blameless, but I would like to hear Straussians who oppose this conceit explain why (in their view) it is not Straussian.

The self-destructiveness of great nations and cultures is the decisive problem of our time; about this Strauss has little to teach us. In fact, no set of generalizations will yield much of a result in this sort of inquiry (although I have offered a set of aphorisms on the subject). One has to learn the language, read the literature, learn the history, and get the jokes. These are the sort of things one learns not in the classroom but at 3 am over a fourth bottle of wine.

The most important things are beyond the reach of philosophy. More important than and prior to democracy, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued in his 2007 book The Home We Build Together is the concept that human beings have inherent rights which no king or parliament can violate. This we inherit from the Hebrews, not the Greeks:

The concept of the moral limits of power is more important to freedom than is democracy. For democracy contains within it a fatal danger. Tocqueville gave it a name: the ‘tyranny of the majority.’ A majority can oppress a minority. The only defense against this is to establish the moral limits of power … Biblical politics is limited politics – the political of liberal democracies, not of the Greek city state.

Leo Strauss, contemplating the madness of the Nazi mob, taught virtue and moderation, and looked backwards to the ancients as a counterweight to the passions of the moderns. There is nothing malicious in this, but there is also nothing right about it. Men are immoderate. The country that most attracts me is Israel, whose people are impassioned, boisterous, loud, risk-friendly, unruly, rude, and altogether wonderful. They also have three children per female, uniquely in the industrial world.

Moderation is overrated. Passion is to Kierkegaard the primary stuff of ontology. It is the starting-point of human existence. In Jewish thought, the “evil impulse” (ha-yetzer ha-rah) – ambition, sexuality, competitiveness – is indispensable to life. “If not for the evil impulse, no one would build a house, marry, have children, nor engage in trade,” wrote the rabbis of the Talmud. In one Talmudic homily the rabbis capture and imprison the yetzer ha-rah, and observe the next day that not a chicken in Israel had laid an egg. Suppress the passions, like the Greeks after Aristotle, and you get a country populated mainly by statues.

Let the Straussians sort out Strauss; truth told, I never found his work compelling, and studied it only because one cannot make sense of the contemporary conservative movement without it. Some of Strauss’ most celebrated assertions have not survived the withering critique of scholarship. Moshe Halbertal’s superb study Concealment and Revelation (Princeton 2007) makes short work of Strauss’ argument about esoteric writing, for example. Perhaps, like Kierkegaard’s Socrates, Strauss was playing with his students, acting as ironist rather than prophet, as a few critics have suggested.

Strauss’ strengths and weaknesses, though, are of secondary importance. What makes his influence so baleful are not errors of analysis or emphasis, but rather the insidious way in which “classical political rationalism” (Thomas Pangle’s phrase, not Strauss’s) supports a wholly irrational impulse, namely American narcissism. Forgetting our origin – the impassioned radical Protestantism that motivated the American Revolution – we Americans tend to assume that if only everyone did things the way we do, the world would be a wonderful place. Exporting democracy is perhaps the most fatuous conceit in the long, sad history of American policy failures. By no means is Leo Strauss to blame for this. But our narcissism explains a good deal of his enduring popularity. We like rationalism because we flatter ourselves that we are masters of our fate, and our use of reason enables us to control our destiny.

Quite the contrary: America made it by the skin of her teeth, by the grace of God. We nearly dissolved in the Civil War, and no-one but a president with the character of a Hebrew prophet could have extricated us from disaster. We aren’t that smart, and we aren’t that good. We are only the best there is – a depressing thought indeed.

Notes:
1. Leo Strauss’ Political Philosophy: Reviled But Redeemed, RealClearPolitics, August 16, 2014.

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. He is Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and the Wax Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It’s Not the End of the World – It’s Just the End of You, also appeared that fall, from Van Praag Press. 

O PSB promete para hoje uma “explicação” para a história do avião que servia à campanha do partido, no qual Marina Silva também viajou muitas vezes. Vamos pôr um pouco de objetividade nessa história.

1: Marina fazia parte da chapa registrada no TSE: era vice de Eduardo Campos. A coligação tem, perante a Justiça Eleitoral, a mesma responsabilidade que teria um partido político — responsabilidade esta compartilhada pelos candidatos, Marina inclusive: como vice antes, como titular agora.

2: Há o dever legal de declarar todas as despesas realizadas. Como esquecer que o simples pagamento, não declarado, a gráficas que imprimiram santinhos resultou na perda de mandato  de pessoas eleitas e já diplomadas? O Ministério Público Eleitoral denuncia, o processo pode demorar, mas a punição vem. Estamos falando de migalhas diante dos gastos de um jatinho de última geração.

3: Avião sempre deixa rastro, a cada decolagem e pouso, como provou o famoso “Morcego Negro”, de PC Farias (quem ainda se lembra daqueles tempos ingênuos?). A aeronave é abastecida com emissão, suponho (ou não?) de notas fiscais. Nesse caso, saiu com CPF ou CNPJ de quem?

4: A cada pouso e decolagem, deve haver registro do tempo em que o avião devidamente identificado ficou em terra, da hora em que pousou e depois decolou. A aeronave tem prefixo, identificação, e tudo fica vinculado a essa identificação. O serviço costuma ser pago. Quem pagou, ou para quem foi faturado?

5: Quando a aeronave está em terra, para que seja liberada para voo, é preciso informar o destino à torre de comando do aeroporto e os nomes dos passageiros a bordo. A torre autoriza o plano de voo. Tudo fica registrado. De quantos voos participou Marina, por exemplo?

6: É obvio que, no caso desse avião e suas despesas (combustível, hangares, pilotos), há uma enorme confusão a ser acertada com a Justiça Eleitoral. E não vai ser fácil. Marina é responsável porque era da coligação e compunha a chapa registrada no TSE. Ela está aí e tem de explicar de forma convincente, o que, sinceramente, duvido que vá conseguir.

7: A atual chapa do PSB só existe porque substitui a primeira, devidamente registrada, da qual Marina fazia parte. E, reitere-se, ela foi usuária do avião.

8: Pertencesse o avião ao próprio Eduardo Campos, fosse alugado, fosse emprestado, tudo tem de ser informado à Justiça Eleitoral, apontando a origem dos recursos empregados. Talvez essa demora do PSB se deva à necessidade de construir uma história que, começando pelo fim, tem de inventar um começo. Acreditem: sempre sobrará uma lacuna.

9: Marina, que se comporta às vezes como a corregedora-geral do mundo, tem o dever legal e moral de dar explicações. Vai que seja eleita e tenha depois o seu mandato cassado por crime eleitoral.

Hoje é um dia cheio. E como! A Band realiza o primeiro debate entre os presidenciáveis. O Jornal Nacional divulgará os números da pesquisa Ibope. Se o que se cochicha por aí se cumprir, Marina Silva, da Rede, mas aboletada no PSB, deve aparecer em segundo lugar, mais próxima da petista Dilma Rousseff do que jamais esteve, com a possibilidade de estar à frente no segundo turno, fora da margem de erro. Só isso? Não! O PSB também promete para hoje uma explicação para o grande mistério da chamada “nova política” que Marina encarna: afinal de contas, de quem era aquele avião que se espatifou no chão, matou Eduardo Campos e outros seis e pode ter aberto para a ex-senadora petista a possibilidade de se eleger mesmo não tendo um partido?

O governo petista está de tal sorte desgastado que o mercado, nesta segunda, reagiu com euforia ao simples boato de que Marina pode vencer Dilma nas urnas. É o que já vinha acontecendo quando essa possibilidade apontava para Aécio. Ainda que a líder da Rede esteja mais para incógnita do que para resposta, conta o fato de que ela, afinal, não é… Dilma. De resto, os cardeais da papisa, como Maria Alice Setubal e Eduardo Giannetti, já deixaram claro que o setor financeiro não tem o que temer. Uma promessa de independência do Banco Central já rende adesões… “Mas e a história de que Marina defende o Decreto 8.243 e quer criar os tais conselhos populares?” Convenham: não é uma causa que sensibilize tanto assim os mercados, né? Se democracia lhes fosse uma condição inegociável, cairiam fora da China… Sigamos.

Como vão se comportar Dilma Rousseff e Aécio Neves? Comenta-se que ambos tendem a evitar o embate direto com Marina. Será mesmo que é uma boa saída? A ser assim, a tendência, então, é que se dê o confronto entre os nomes do PT e do PSDB, que é tudo o que quer a candidata do PSB, que se apresenta como uma suposta terceira via, insistindo na tecla de que o país já está cansado daquele velho confronto.

Reconheça-se, no entanto, que Marina chega ao debate ainda ungida por certa esfera de santidade. O embate com ela pode render desgaste, sim, tanto a Aécio como a Dilma, a menos que consigam evidenciar o que podem considerar seu despreparo, suas eventuais contradições ou sei lá o quê.

Vamos ver: os números do Ibope serão divulgados antes do debate. Os três já os conhecerão. Se a distância que separa Marina de Aécio for muito grande, não resta ao tucano, acho eu, outra saída que não questionar firmemente a oponente que pode lhe tomar o segundo lugar. Se houver evidências na pesquisa de que Dilma caminha para uma derrota no segundo turno, preservar a candidata do PSB também não será uma atitude prudente da petista.

O que eu acho que tem de ser feito? Olhem aqui: esse embate eleitoral se tornou de tal sorte contaminado por mitologias e misticismos que, se me fosse dado sugerir alguma coisa, recomendaria nada além da clareza absoluta. Os três principais candidatos que estarão no debate já propuseram — e realizaram — coisas para o Brasil. Os três fariam um bem ao país se forçassem o debate para que os outros dois pudessem ser confrontados com suas palavras e com suas obras.

Texto publicado originalmente às 5h20

Não me peçam para aderir a ondas de opinião com base no que pensam este ou aquele, especialmente gente que detesto ou execro. Imaginem se justamente pessoas que desprezo iriam determinar os rumos das minhas escolhas. Seria um contrassenso. Alguém me viu aqui a tratar delinquentes que saíam quebrando tudo por aí como aliados objetivos só porque a popularidade de Dilma caía? Quem passou a mão na cabeça deles foi Gilberto Carvalho, não eu. Dá-se o mesmo agora com a “onda Marina”, que pode, reconheço, virar tsunami e devastar nosso futuro: “Ah, entre a Dilma e a Marina, tudo contra o statu quo…”. Não é assim que eu penso. Não é assim que eu opero. O voto nulo, numa democracia, é um direito. Se necessário, eu o usarei.

Imbecis dizem por aí: “Claro! Reinaldo é simpático ao PSDB!”. Sou? Perguntem aos tucanos para ver se eles acham isso. Mas vamos ao que mais interessa: hoje é dia 26. Já se passaram 13 dias desde o acidente que matou Eduardo Campos e outras seis pessoas. Até agora, o PSB não conseguiu dizer a quem pertencia o jatinho. Pior: tanto Marina Silva como Beto Albuquerque, candidato a vice, tiram ares de ofendidos e ainda tentam cutucar a Polícia Federal, cobrando dela um esclarecimento. Até parece que havia alguma conspiração possível, cuja investigação coubesse à PF. De resto, tivesse havido, a única beneficiária seria Marina, não é? Ou terei perdido alguma coisa? Adiante.

Nesta segunda, a candidata do PSB à Presidência falou a respeito. Foi a primeira vez que resolveu pedir para a procissão parar o andor para que ela se dirigisse aos fiéis. E se saiu com estas palavras, prestem bem atenção:
“Queremos que sejam dadas as explicações de acordo com a materialidade dos fatos, e, para termos a materialidade dos fatos, é preciso que haja tempo necessário para que essas explicações tenham as devidas bases legais”.

Você não tem culpa nenhuma se não entendeu patavina. Eu também não entendi nada. Marina não entendeu nada. Beto Albuquerque não entendeu nada. Os demais leitores não entenderam nada. Os outros jornalistas não entenderam nada. E é fácil explicar por que é assim: Marina não falou para ser entendida. A isso se chama técnica do despiste. Ela já é dona, no mais das vezes, de uma retórica incompreensível porque faz questão de deixar claro que não habita este mundo em que mortais arrastam suas vidas terrenas. Ela desfila sua figura e seu olhar etéreos como quem se comunica com dimensões que nos escapam, daí falar uma língua que quase sempre sugere, mas nunca explica.

Desta feita, ela exagerou. Vamos quebrar em pedaços o que ela disse: “Queremos que sejam dadas as explicações de acordo com a materialidade dos fatos”. Como? Que sejam dadas por quem? Eu não voei naquele avião. Você não voou naquele avião. Ela sim! Quem é o agente da passiva de sua sintaxe? Marina quer que as explicações sejam dadas por quem? Aí a candidata diz que é preciso tempo para que as “explicações tenham as devidas bases legais”. Como assim? Com um pouco de severidade, é possível inferir que está a nos dizer: “Olhem aqui: nós estamos tentando arrumar alguma desculpa legal para dar; quem sabe a gente consiga até amanhã”.

Dilma resolveu tirar uma casquinha na entrevista coletiva concedida nesta segunda quando indagada sobre o avião: “Eu não estou acompanhando isso, porque, você vai me desculpar, mas não é objeto do meu profundo interesse. Agora, acredito que nós, que somos candidatos, inexoravelmente temos de dar explicação de tudo. (…) Candidato a qualquer cargo eletivo, principalmente a presidente da República, está sujeito a ser perguntado sobre qualquer questão e deve responder, se puder, né?”.

Dilma sabe bem do que fala porque deixou e deixa de responder a muita coisa. Querem um exemplo: até agora, a pergunta que lhe dirigiu William Bonner no “Jornal Nacional” segue sem resposta. Ele quis saber se o PT não fez mal em tratar corruptos condenados como heróis do povo brasileiro. A candidata Dilma afirmou, então, que, como presidente, não se pronunciava sobre julgamento do Supremo. Ora: era uma questão dirigida à candidata, não à presidente, e dizia respeito ao PT, não ao Supremo. Como diria a petista, candidatos devem responder a qualquer questão — se puderem… Ela, por exemplo, não pôde.

Mas volto a Marina. Hoje, dia 26, 13 dias depois do acidente, vamos ver a desculpa que o PSB arrumou para a fábula do avião sem dono…

Encerro
Para encerrar: não me peçam para brincar daquela historinha de que “o inimigo do meu inimigo é meu amigo…”. Isso é ruim até como exercício de guerra, como não cansa de provar a realidade. De resto, em política, existem adversários, não inimigos a serem destruídos. Mais: não faço política — e, portanto, nessa área, nem adversários eu tenho. No máximo, há ideias e valores que não me servem. E é sobre eles que falo.

Marina não terá o meu voto enquanto falar uma língua que, segundo entendo, avilta a razão e enquanto defender propostas que violam os fundamentos da democracia representativa. E ponto.

Texto publicado originalmente às 4h33

After the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Hobby Lobby decision in late-June, the Boston Globe printed an editorial under a regretful header: “Supreme Court loses its way in vague contraceptive decision.”

“Loses its way”? It’s a telling locution. There is a right way for the Court, you see, and in their solemn perceptiveness the editors know what it is. The jurists in the majority didn’t infer and cogitate their way to an opinion. They strayed from the way, presumably, the path of justice.

There is nothing unusual about that condescension, of course. You hear it all the time in liberal outlets like the Globe. In fact, the editorial has another example, a reduction which defenders of religious liberty face America constantly. It isn’t a wild, loud expression. No, it pops up so briefly and casually that average readers curious about the news of the day probably didn’t notice:

the ruling holds the potential to create great mischief by keeping alive the flawed legal notion that companies can pick and choose which laws to follow so long as they cite a religious justification.

The wording pictures a cynical scene, as if a human resources vice-president surveyed existing laws and regulations, slapped his forehead, and told the board, “Hey, we can get out of this one—all we need are some religious beliefs that they violate.” This isn’t a description of religious believers; it’s a caricature.

This deflation of principled devotion into a strategic tool for advantage isn’t a mistake. Marx mastered the technique long ago, asserting that the reigning ideas are merely means for the powerful to maintain their power. In today’s liberal conversations it has become a convention. The ACLU web site, for instance, has a page devoted to “Using Religion to Discriminate.” Whether it’s “business owners refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception” or “pharmacies turning away women seeking to fill birth control prescriptions,” the ACLU sees a single tactic at play: “While the situations may differ, one thing remains the same: religion is being used as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others.” The idea seems to be that certain people want to inflict pain, and they find religion a handy justification for doing so.

False and bilious, the charge is also effective. The full power of the rhetorical trick lies in its personal thrust. When people employ it, they don’t argue questions of faith and doctrine or law. Instead, they change the subject. “What does this faith say?” gives way to “How is it used?” Believers are disarmed. In turning fidelity into a mode of cunning, they force the faithful to reply, “I’m not trying to do anything else—I really believe this, and I can’t disobey my church.”

But the accusers have a follow-up. “Really?” they repeat. “Or is it just a way to hurt people you don’t like?” We have abandoned the critical point about whether the law infringes on religious liberty and replaced it with another issue, the sincerity of the believer. The law isn’t on trial anymore—the believer is, placed in the humiliating position of having to prove that he means what he says, that his motives are spiritual, not malicious. It’s an exasperating position. How do you prove your sincerity to a cynic?

I heard an example of this phenomenon on an NPR show that week while driving through Massachusetts. Four people discussed the Hobby Lobby decision, one of them a vigorous defender of the company, one a surly critic. As the conversation flowed, the critic heard enough of the Hobby Lobby family’s religion and blurted that he didn’t accept their “deeply-held” faith at all. If they were so religious, he charged, then why do they buy goods from companies located in countries that suppress human rights and religious freedom? Up until then, the defender had spoken persuasively for the company, but here he faltered. It may be, he responded, that trade tends to open closed societies, and besides, he knows the family and their sincerity is unquestionable. Not a bad answer, but it didn’t dispel the allegation. We ended with a he-said/he-said exchange.

That sounds like a stalemate, but in truth it is a triumph for the skeptic. Typically, when we enter in an arena of competing and unresolvable claims, the small-l liberal solution is to allow each his belief but prevent him from imposing it on others. Sincerity is one of those fugitive conditions that you can go back and forth trying to establish forever. Once we weigh a claim by the depth of a person’s faith, the truth of the matter shrinks into a personal affair, my beliefs and your beliefs, all evaluated not as true or false, right or wrong, but whether genuinely, earnestly, sincerely espoused. The turn levels strongly held beliefs, religious ones and non-religious ones, so long as they are honestly believed and share space with others.

This is the point Hadley Arkes makes in “Recasting Religious Freedom” (First Things, June/July). The debate has continued in Public Discourse, with Robert T. Miller and Arkes arguing over the value of conscience and the role of judges (here and here and here), Arkes maintaining that conscience arguments provide, at best, exemptions for religious believers from obeying immoral laws, Miller stating that conscience arguments are valuable because “judges are not good at determining moral and religious truths.”

That legal disagreement shall surely evolve as curbs on religious liberty press forward. The argument here applies more to forensics in the public square, the kinds of verbal jockeying you find in the op-ed pages and on the news shows. Specifically, we see the conversion of faith from conviction to tactic, which sets sincerity ahead of the True and the Good. Their integrity questioned, believers naturally jump to profess the authenticity of their faith. In doing so, even when they succeed, they lose. The goal of the skeptic to discredit the believer is only an intermediary one. The final goal is to situate religious principles among a plurality of commitments, practices, and feelings. In that swirling, putatively democratic marketplace, religious principles have no greater authority than any others.

Mark Bauerlein is senior editor of First Things.

Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter. 

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week, I briefly explained the recent improvements in count_distinct, a custom alternative to COUNT(DISTINCT) aggregate. I presented some basic performance comparison illustrating that count_distinct is in most cases significantly faster than the native COUNT(DISTINCT) aggregate. However, performance was not the initial goal of the changes, and the improvement in this respect is not that big (a few percent, maybe, which is negligible when compared to ~3x speedup against COUNT(DISTINCT)). The main issue was excessive memory consumption, and I promised to present the improvements. So here we go!

If I had to show you a single chart illustrating the improvements, it'd be this one. It compares the amount of memory necessary to aggregate the large tables from the previous post (100M rows). Remember, the lower the values the better, and red is the new implementation:

While the old implementation used 1.5GB - 2GB in most cases, the new implementation needs just ~600MB. I don't want to brag, but that's a pretty significant improvement (also you could also say I messed up the initial implementation and now I merely fixed it).

So, why did the hash table suck so much?

Clearly, the original count_distinct implementation was quite bad when dealing with memory, and there are two or three reasons why. If you're writing extensions in C, this might give you a few hints for improvements.

Simple hash table implementation

First, I have used a very simple hash table implementation, resulting in some unnecessary overhead for each value - you need the buckets, a pointer to the next item in the same bucket, etc. This could be lowered a bit by using a more elaborate hash table implementation (e.g. open addressing, but either the gains were not as significant as I expected, or the resulting implementation was more complex than I wished for, or slower.

After a lot of experiments, I switched to this simple array-based structure:

typedef struct element_set_t {

    uint32 item_size; /* length of the value (depends on the actual data type) */
    uint32 nsorted;   /* number of items in the sorted part (distinct) */
    uint32 nall;      /* number of all items (unsorted part may contain duplicates) */
    uint32 nbytes;    /* number of bytes in the data array */

    /* aggregation memory context (reference, so we don't need to do lookups repeatedly) */
    MemoryContext aggctx;

    /* elements */
    char * data;      /* nsorted items first, then (nall - nsorted) unsorted items */

} element_set_t;

And this resulted in pretty much zero per-item overhead. Yes, the array will be always a bit larger than necessary, but on average the overhead is going to be much lower than with any hash table implementation.

Because if for each 32-bit item you have to keep a 64-bit pointer to the next item, it's a pretty significant overhead. The hash table I was using was not really this dumb (it was using batches of items, ...), but you get the idea.

Allocating tiny pieces of memory

Second, I was using palloc to allocate very small pieces of memory (just a few bytes a time). That however results in significant hidden overhead, because each palloc prepends the allocated piece with a ~16B header. So calling palloc(50) actually means you'll get 66 bytes of memory - 16B header, followed by the 50B you requested.

This header contains information associating the allocated piece with a MemoryContext, which is a concept used by PostgreSQL to simplify memory management. I'm not going to explain the details of how MemoryContext works (read the comments in palloc.h), but if you had to deal with a complex C codebase, you probably know how tedious and error-prone memory management can be. Tracking every little piece of memory as it is passed from function to function is no fun, and the MemoryContext concept makes this much easier, and the palloc overhead is a price for that.

But there are ways to lower the costs - the most obvious one is allocating larger pieces of memory. You'll still get the 16B header, but the overhead will be much lower (i.e. 16B when allocating a 50B piece is ~30%, for 500B it's only ~3%). And that's exactly what the array-based implementation does. It simply allocates a single array as a whole, not a tiny piece of memory for each separate item.

Memory context internals

And the third reason is really about memory context internals. The truth is memory contexts don't internally work with pieces of arbitrary size. They work with sizes that are powers of 2. So if you do palloc(10), the implementation really does palloc(16) because 16 is the nearest power of 2. Similarly for higher values - palloc(1100) allocates the same amount of memory as palloc(2048), and so on.

So how to use this for your benefit? Well, only request sizes that are powers of two, matching the memory context internals perfectly. Because that minimizes the amount of memory you can't actually use. And again, this is exactly what the new implementation does.

Memory consumption comparison

So, let's see the memory consumption of the new (sorted array) implementation, compared to the old (hash table) one. I'll use the same datasets and queries as in the previous post. The consumed memory was measured placing a call to MemoryContextStats to an appropriate place in code, so it includes everything including palloc overhead, overhead of the structures, unused space in the array and of course overhead of the HashAggregate itself (dynahash, palloc, ...).

The hash-table and sorted-array denote the old and new implementation, respectively. I've omitted the native aggregation, because that always leads to a GroupAggregate plan, keeping a single group in memory (making the memory consumption mostly irrelevant). The cases with the largest number of groups are omitted for the same reason (see "Aggregates vs. sort" in the previous post for explanation).

The data column tracks how much actual data needs to be kept in memory (groups x items per group x 4B).

Small dataset (100k rows)

Medium dataset (10M rows)

Large dataset (100M rows)

Summary

It's immediately clear that the new implementation uses only a fraction of memory (usually 10-25%) of the hash table implementation. So either the old implementation was really bad, or reducing the overhead redution really helped a lot. Most likely it's a combination of both.

The most important "lessons learned" for me is that sometimes we concentrate too much on optimizing the current approach (implementation based on a hash table), while it'd actually be better to re-evaluate the assumptions and try a completely different approach. Because hash tables are great for lookups, but maybe it's not the best tool when you need to remove duplicate values from a set.

It's also clear that the new implementation still uses about ~2x the amount of memory required by the data itself. I believe that's pretty much the minimum achievable overhead while still keeping the performance. First, the doubling the array size pretty much means ~50% overhead on average (right before doubling it's 0%, right after doubling it's 100%, thus 50% on average). Also, there's additional overhead outside this extension - the Hash Aggregate needs to keep it's own hash table and some other stuff, etc.

There are certainly ways to improve Hash Aggregate in general - for example in the discussion below the previous post, Noah Misch asked if it was possible to limit the memory consumption by spilling the groups to disk. It's certainly possible, but not from the extension, because it only sees isolated groups - it's pretty much impossible to make good decisions about when to spill to disk, what to spill, etc. This needs to be done at the Hash Aggregate level, and by coincidence this it currently discussed at pgsql-hackers. It's a quite complex change and there's a lot of work to be done on that (so don't hold your breath).

As we saw last time, we must have certain settled convictions before we ever step in the pulpit. We looked specifically at our convictions about our God and about ourselves. This time I’d like to take a look at the necessary convictions about our Bible.

This is especially necessary given that the Bible is what the minister of the Word has been called to proclaim, and with out settled convictions here, all might well be lost. We recognize that God, out of nothing but His mercy, has spoken and continues to speak to all of humanity through his works of creation and providence. And while this “general” revelation makes God’s goodness, wisdom and power known, it is not sufficient to show lost sinners the way of salvation. For this reason, in a further display of His mercy, God made a “special” revelation of this necessary knowledge. It is this special revelation about which the preacher must have certain clear convictions.

First, we must believe that God, by a mighty work of the Holy Spirit, has infallibly secured an accurate and permanent written record of His special revelation. This work of the Holy Spirit, commonly called inspiration, secures an infallibility that extends to every word of Scripture. In other words, we must have a settled conviction about the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture.

Second, especially in a day when Scripture is being questioned and undermined at every turn and when every man, woman, and even child regards their own opinion as the final authority, it is essential that the preacher be completely convinced of Scripture’s ultimate and final authority. The preacher must not only understand, but communicate that the words he preaches are not his own but God’s, and as such they are not optional, but are binding upon all.

Third, the preacher must be convinced that the Word of God is God’s all-sufficient and only sufficient method of saving sinners and sanctifying the saints (cf. Hebrews 4:12-13). The Westminster Confession of Faith summarizes this nicely when it says:

The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. (WCF 1.6)

Finally, the preacher must be convinced that while there are difficult passages of Scripture, it can be interpreted using the ordinary means God has provided. Again, the Westminster Confession of Faith puts this quite succinctly:

Those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. (WCF 1.7)

There is a balance that needs to be struck here. On the one hand, God has made enough of His word so clear that only blind and willful disbelief will not understand. On the other hand, God has made enough of his Word so deep that even the most faithful minister must depend on divine enlightenment rather than his own intellect.

Having seen the convictions we ought to have regarding our God, our Bible, and ourselves, tomorrow I’d like to take a look at the last necessary conviction we ought to have settled long before we begin to preach: namely, our convictions about our hearers.

Jamais votaria em Marina Silva. Já expus aqui alguns dos meus motivos. E também na minha coluna de sexta na Folha. Vou avançar. Desde que me ocupo da política, como jornalista, meu esforço é para tirá-la do terreno da mitologia e trazê-la para o da razão — inclusive o da razão prática. “Poderia votar em Dilma contra Marina, Reinaldo?” Também é impossível. Os petistas me incluíram numa lista negra de jornalistas. Eles querem a minha cabeça e, se pudessem, pediriam a meus patrões que me botassem na rua. Desconfio até que já tenham pedido — não sei. Mas não levaram. Não sou suicida. Não me ofereço àqueles que se pretendem meus feitores. Mas, reitero, nem tudo o que não é PT me serve — e Marina não me serve. Mais: acho que alguns de seus ditos “conselheiros” estão perdendo o juízo e querendo se comportar como os Catões da República. Já chego lá.

Os cardeais da papisa
Marina Silva não é candidata a presidente da República, mas a papisa de uma seita herética — e suas heresias são praticadas contra a democracia representativa. Ela não concede entrevistas. Seus cardeais falam por ela. À Folha, quem garantiu a independência do Banco Central foi Maria Alice Setubal. Já expliquei e insisto: se o sócio de um grande banco viesse a fazer tal promessa como porta-voz do tucano Aécio Neves ou da petista Dilma Rousseff, nós, da imprensa, não perdoaríamos o deslize. Como se trata de Marina, parece evidência de sabedoria. Tenham paciência! Banqueiros não podem fazer política? Podem e devem. Mas convém não misturar carne com leite nessas coisas. E ponto.

Na Folha desta segunda, mais um cardeal do “marinismo”, Eduardo Giannetti, fala em nome de Marina. Também ele acena para os mercados com a independência do Banco Central, mas o centro de sua entrevista é outro: quer a conciliação política “dos bons”, entendem? Marina, diz ele, pretende governar com o apoio de Lula e de FHC. Ninguém lhe perguntou — e não sei se vão perguntar — por que não se fez antes se é tão fácil. A rigor, em todos os conflitos do mundo, dos mais amenos aos mais sangrentos, sempre se poderia fazer esta indagação: “Por que não, então, juntar os opostos, juntar os litigantes?”.

Giannetti teve uma ideia que poderia, enfim, ter evitado todas as guerras, até a de Troia, como num poema de Mário Faustino: “Estava lá Aquiles, que abraçava/ Enfim Heitor, secreto personagem/ Do sonho que na tenda o torturava”. No seu mundo, como no do poema, Saul não briga com Davi, os seteiros não matam Sebastião, e o “Deus crucificado” beija uma segunda vez o enforcado (Judas). Pode ser literatura. Pode ser religião. Uma coisa é certa: política não é.

Há mais: Giannetti resolveu, em sua entrevista, todas as dificuldades e só ficou com as facilidades. Imaginar que PT e PSDB possam estar juntos num governo implica ignorar, logo de cara, o fato de que esses partidos têm vocações e fundamentos que são inconciliáveis. Se o ideário, hoje, dos tucanos é um tanto nebuloso aqui e ali — especialmente na área de valores —, os do PT são muito claros. Ora, ora, ora… Então Marina Silva, a Puríssima, não aceita nem mesmo subir no palanque com Geraldo Alckmin ou com Beto Richa — acordos feitos por Eduardo Campos —, mas aquele que se candidata a ser seu orientador intelectual (já que diz não querer cargo caso ela se eleja) sonha com um governo que possa unir… Aquiles e Heitor. Giannetti é uma pessoa lida, que tem experiência com as palavras. Uma tolice dita por ele parece de qualidade superior à dita por um petista tosco qualquer. Mas é apenas isto: uma tolice dita com charme.

O PMDB
E o homem vai adiante. O sonho de Giannetti — que não me parece muito distante, mutatis mutandis, de todos aqueles que sonharam com um Rei Filósofo, com um Déspota Filósofo… — é juntar os bons de um lado para isolar os maus de outro. Ele pega carona na fácil demonização do PMDB. Dá a entender que essa é a força que tem de ficar do outro lado da trincheira. Marina, então, seria eleita pelo PSB, com o apoio de FHC e Lula e outras almas superiores do Congresso, uma conspiração dos éticos se formaria e pronto! Tudo estaria resolvido. Tão fácil que a gente lamenta que tantos estúpidos não tenham pensado nisso antes, né?

É mesmo? Será que o PMDB, ao longo da história, tem sido só um problema? Então vamos ver. Marina Silva apoia o Decreto 8.243, aquele que nem é exatamente de Dilma, mas de Gilberto Carvalho. No horizonte da turma que defende esse lixo autoritário, está, inclusive, o controle da imprensa, sim, senhores!, por conselhos populares. Marina não vê mal nenhum nisso porque, afinal, já deixou claro, não dá bola para partidos ou para instâncias formais de representação. O PMDB pode não ser exatamente um convento de freiras dos pés descalços, mas lembro que o partido, em seu congresso, apoiou uma das mais claras e fortes resoluções contra qualquer forma de censura à imprensa. Sugerir que o PMDB atrapalha a democracia ou a torna ingovernável é mais do que um erro; é uma mentira.

O avião
Hoje é dia 25 de agosto. Eduardo Campos morreu no dia 13. Até agora, ninguém sabe a quem pertence o avião. Marina, que voou muitas vezes naquele jatinho e que herda, pois, os instrumentos aos quais recorreu o PSB para fazer campanha, se nega a falar do assunto, como se ele não lhe dissesse respeito. Diz, sim!

Quem se pronunciou foi Beto Albuquerque, candidato a vice. Curiosamente, cobra explicações da Polícia Federal. Como? Aquele que era um dos homens mais próximos do presidenciável morto está exigindo respostas em vez de dá-las? O PSB, vejam vocês, inventou o avião sem dono.

Marina, a mais ética entre os éticos, não aceita doação, no caixa um — o oficial e registrado — de empresas disso e daquilo, mas faz ares de santa da floresta quando se questiona a quem pertencia um jatinho que custava alguns milhões. É essa a “nova política” de que tanto se fala? Vamos ver o que vem por aí: candidaturas e mandatos já foram cassados por muito menos. Que se apure tudo, mas há um cheiro fortíssimo de caixa dois na campanha, não é mesmo?

Messianismo
Marina carrega nas tintas de uma espécie de messianismo pós-moderno, assim, meio holístico-maluco-beleza. A VEJA desta semana a traz na capa. A reportagem, qualquer um pode constatar, não lhe é nada hostil. A figura desenhada nas páginas chega a ser simpática. Um trecho, no entanto, chamou especialmente a minha atenção.

No dia 18, 30 membros da Rede se reuniram em São Paulo para discutir a morte de Campos. Debate político? Claro que não! Isso é coisa superada. Era um papo de outra natureza. Depois de cada um dizer o que sentia, eles se dividiram em trios para escrever palavras para confortar… Marina!!! É, gente… Na Rede — que Giannetti quer ver no governo com o apoio de Lula e FHC —, não existem vitoriosos e derrotados quando se debate uma ideia. Há um troço chamado “consenso progressivo”. A exemplo do Cassino do Chacrinha, a reunião “só acaba quando termina” — e todos ganham. Em maio, para definir os dois porta-vozes da Rede, eles ficaram reunidos por 18 horas. Tinha de ser um homem e uma mulher para contemplar as diferenças de gênero… Tenham paciência!

Conheço gente que já frequentou esse círculo de iniciados. A coisa parece ser mesmo do balacobaco. Marina é o Pablo Capilé da floresta, e sua Rede lembra, em muitos aspectos, o tal grupo Fora do Eixo. As pessoas lhe dedicam um silêncio reverente e estão certas de que ela mantém mesmo certa comunicação com entes que não estão exatamente entre nós.

Estou fora
Não caio nessa, sob pretexto nenhum — nem mesmo “para tirar o PT de lá”. Na democracia, voto útil é voto inútil. Se Deus me submetesse à provação — espero que não aconteça — de ter de escolher entre Dilma e Marina, escolheria gloriosamente “nenhuma”! Se a turma do coquetel Molotov estava sem candidata e agora encontrou a sua, eu, que sou um partidário da democracia representativa e das instituições democráticas, deixarei claro, nessa hipótese, que estarei sem candidato no segundo turno. Mas torço e até rezo para que o Brasil seja poupado.

De resto, vou insistir numa questão: Marina Silva é governo no Acre há 16 anos. Seu marido deixou um cargo no secretariado de Tião Viana na semana passada. Mas a sua turma está lá, aboletada na gestão petista. Digam-me cá: quando Viana, seu aliado, começou a despachar haitianos para São Paulo, de uma maneira indigna, escandalosa, Marina disse exatamente o quê, além de nada? Qualquer bagre teria merecido dela mais atenção! Pareceu-me uma reação muito pouco caridosa a sua.

E não tenho como esquecer o fato de que, há menos de dois anos, Marina estava lutando por um Código Florestal que iria reduzir a área plantada no país. Como alternativa para seu desatino, ela tirava das dobras de seus numerosos xales certo “ganho de produtividade” que compensaria a perda. Propunha isso, com o desassombro e a retórica caudalosa de sempre, como se o Brasil não tivesse hoje uma agricultura e uma pecuária entre as mais produtivas do mundo. Do mesmo modo, incentivou a crítica verdolengo-obscurantista a Belo Monte, num país que enfrenta escassez de energia.

Marina Silva? Não! Muito obrigado! Não quero! “Ah, mas ela pode ser eleita e fazer um grande governo…” É, tudo pode acontecer. Não tenho bola de cristal. Quando voto, levo em conta o passado dos candidatos, suas utopias, suas prefigurações, sua visão de mundo, o apreço que têm pela democracia, a factibilidade de suas propostas.

Se eu tivesse alguma dúvida — já não tinha —, ela teria se dissipado com a entrevista concedida por Giannetti nesta segunda: Marina quer governar com o apoio de FHC e Lula… Então tá! É até possível que os dois, por elegância ou sei lá o quê, venham a dizer que, se isso acontecer, tudo bem. Ocorre que o Brasil não é um país comandado por aqueles líderes de clãs do Afeganistão. O Brasil sofreu um bocado para ter uma democracia gerida por partidos e por instituições. Ainda não chegou a hora de sermos um Brasilstão, governado por uma santa rodeada de conselheiros de fino trato. Isso nada tem a ver com democracia. Isso é só mais um delírio de intelectuais, ainda e sempre os mais suscetíveis às tentações autoritárias.

Os idiotas que acham que sou antipetista a ponto de votar até num sapo se o PT estiver do outro lado nunca entenderam direito o que penso. Em dilemas que são de natureza moral, não havendo o ótimo, a obrigação é escolher o caminho menos danoso. Na democracia, felizmente, temos a possibilidade de recusar o ruim e o pior.

De todo modo, espero que a onda passe e que o destino do país não seja definido pelo cadáver de alguém que não havia se explicado o suficiente em vida. É isso.

#prontofalei

Texto publicado originalmente às 4h30

It pains me to admit it, but I see nothing new in the tragic events in Ferguson, nothing new in the protests, which often blended into festivals of destruction, nothing new in the extensive coverage and the calls for our nation to confront racism. It’s an old script, often replayed.

Policeman Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown may have been unwarranted and even criminal. A thorough investigation is needed to see that justice is done. Whatever the outcome of that investigation, we should not turn our eyes from the fact the killing of a black teenager is a daily occurrence in America. They are six times more likely to be killed than young white men. “Young black man dies in gunfire. Mother mourns.” A journalist on the city beat writes these words again and again and again.

Those deaths sometimes trigger protests. Here in New York a black man, Eric Garner, was killed when a policeman put him into a chokehold, leading to a series of protests. But they’re rarely as explosive as those in Ferguson. And even when they are they rarely end up changing much. Perhaps that’s because we’ve all—black and white—decided to accept the fact that the culture of poor blacks is violent, dangerous, and dysfunctional. The best we can do is keep the violence under control with aggressive policing and incarceration.

Which brings us to the second regular feature in this familiar script: the confrontation between the young black male and law enforcement. This also happens everyday throughout America. The police focus on what they perceive to be sources of disorder. And in cities and towns with large black populations, those sources include the young black male. So he’s often in the crosshairs of law enforcement. A white teenager gets out of line and he’s given a relatively gentle swat, or even a pass. A young black? He’s identified as a more serious threat. He’s treated both more carefully and more aggressively.

Thus the mistrust of law enforcement in the black community, something very much on display, not just in Ferguson, but across the country. As head of the Department of Justice, Eric Holder is our chief law enforcer. But as a black man he feels that distrust, because he too has been in the target of the “special attention” police give to young black men. I don’t know of any black friends who haven’t. Many have been pulled over for what they call DWBs, driving while black.

We can formulate policies against racial profiling and exhort police to exercise special sensitivity. We can do a better job training and staffing police forces in places like Ferguson where demographics have changed. But I don’t see any way around the fact that young black males attract the particular concern of law enforcement. And, sadly, that particular concern inevitably leads to the kinds of deadly encounters that enflamed Ferguson and the familiar script.

A population that gets “special attention” from people carrying guns, even people carefully trained scrupulously to uphold the law and guard the rights of all citizens, will end up being shot by them more often than others. That includes being unnecessarily killed by police.

Let me put it a slightly different way. There are bad policemen who take perverse pleasure in hurting others. There are lazy precinct captains who don’t adequately control their men. There are scared policemen who might shoot too soon. There are poorly trained policemen who use bad judgment. There are drunk and high policemen. These realities—all of which good policies can limit, but none eliminate—increase the likelihood that police will do bad things, including kill innocent people. And it’s the law of probability that the segment of the population of “special concern” for law enforcement—young black men—will suffer those wrongs to a disproportionate degree.

Which is again why Ferguson taught us nothing new and why the outcome of investigations into the circumstances of the shooting of Michael Brown, though of utmost importance for the cause of justice, won’t make a difference for our overall views of race, violence, and policing.

We already knew that the police force of a small town is unlikely to be adequately trained to deal with the migration of urban crime outward to poor suburbs. We already knew that predominantly white police forces can’t reliably impose order in poor black communities. We already knew that the young black male gets “special attention” from law enforcement. And although we’re not allowed to say so too blatantly (and perhaps for good reasons), we know that this attention is largely justified.

How do we stop repeating the script? How do we put an end to the fatal encounters, the outrage, and then protests bleeding into the looting and rioting that do a great deal to confirm law enforcement’s focus on the young black male? Juan Williams sees the answer quite clearly. It involves breaking down the reasons why the young black male is the American face of disorder, violence, aggression, and lawlessness.

This requires speaking frankly about marriage and family, the dignity of work, and the nobility of faith. It requires diligent and responsible policing to create space for a civic goodwill and trust in poor black communities, something that’s already there, often in powerful ways, but which can be overwhelmed by crime and violence. It requires confronting the miserable fact that our entertainment industry markets the hyper-sexualized, violent, and foul-mouthed young black male as a trickster to stimulate the transgressive fantasies of white Americans.

I think the script can be changed. It’s already changing. Juan Williams, Eric Holder—and the President of the United States—represent a different trajectory, one followed by many young black males today. Immigration from Africa and the Caribean is fundamentally reshaping what it means to be “African-American.” The time may come—and I hope soon—when the young black male no longer attracts the “special attention” of those committed to upholding our laws.

R. R. Reno is editor of First Things. He is the general editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and author of the volume on Genesis. His previous articles can be found here.

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This article was originally presented as the commencement address at The Geneva School, Winter Park, Florida, on May 23, 2014.

A few years ago I learned a new word. I wonder if you know it—ecotone? An ecotone is where two ecospheres come together—where they meet and merge into one another. The Mississippi River flowing into the Gulf of Mexico—that is an ecotone. Or imagine flying over the plains out West, and then you look up and there are the Rocky Mountains. Where the plains meet the mountains, where the current meets the tide—that is an ecotone. An ecotone is always a place that is fragile, unstable, shifting, fluid, risky, filled with danger and yet, at the same time, it is a place that is incredibly fertile, where new life is spawned and new hopes are born.

If I can extrapolate from geography to history, I want to say that you, graduates, are living in a great ecotone yourselves—the third great ecotonic moment in the history of Christian civilization. The first one took place in a.d. 410 with the fall of Rome. Nobody ever thought Rome would fall. Roma Aeterna (“eternal Rome”) was inscribed on her coins, and yet in 410 a barbarian chieftain—we would call him a terrorist today—named Alaric sacked Rome. Alaric and his army invaded Rome, destroyed the city, burned the temples, and left it in devastation. This event marked the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The second great historic ecotone took place about a thousand years later and involved the fall of another great city—Constantinople. The year was 1453. The Ottoman Turks, led by Sultan Mehmed II, destroyed and sacked Constantinople, inaugurating a conflict between Christianity and Islam that continues to our present moment.

We are now living in the third great ecotone. It is symbolized by the fall of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. I know that most of you were only five or six years old when that happened. If any of you have a memory of it, it is likely a vague memory, but you have heard a lot about it. It marks the transition from modernity to postmodernity.

What is postmodernity? It is an era that defies definition and yet has distinctive traits—the privileging of pleasure over identity, and the downplaying of rational truth claims supported by logical argument. Postmodernism discounts any overarching metanarrative in favor of local, privatized stories. It is a world marked by the visual, the emotional, the immediate, the dramatic, the disconnected, and the disengaged. This is your world! It is the age of Twitter and twerking, of selfies and MTV. This is your world!

As my friend Chuck Colson asked in a book published several years before he died, “How now shall we live?” I think we get some guidance if we look back to that first great ecotonic transition, the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the medieval era, especially to the figure of Aurelius Augustine—St. Augustine.

First of all, he was not born a saint. His father Patricius was a pagan, and his mother Monica was a Christian. He went off to study in Carthage, the great metropolitan center of North Africa. There he excelled in the field of rhetoric. Rhetoric, in Augustine’s day, was a combination of what we would call today law, politics, theater, and media—all aimed at the ability to persuade with eloquence and power.

At the same time, he was drawn away by his own desires and self-absorption. He says in the Confessions, “I traveled very far from you, and you did not stop me. I was tossed about and spilt, scattered and boiled dry in my fornications. And you were silent” (II. i (I)). Augustine was interested in three things—there are only three things in life to which people with no ultimate purpose give themselves—money, sex, and power; or gold, glands, and glory. Those were the three things to which Augustine gave himself. But then he came across a line in a now lost treatise of Cicero called Hortensius. That one line said something like this, “Riches, gold, fame are not the telos of life” (III. iv (VII)). That sentence turned his life around.

Did you ever see Jean Anouilh’s play about Thomas à Becket? He was an archbishop of Canterbury in the Middle Ages. But he was really a political figure more than a religious one. He worked as a crony in the court of King Henry II of England. There comes a point in the play when Becket stands on the stage, disrobed of all of his official regalia, and looks out into the darkness of the theater and says, “Oh God, there must be more!” Augustine realized this too and it set him on a restless journey through many philosophies, superstitions, and religious worldviews. At last, sitting in a garden, he opened the Bible to Paul’s letter to the Romans (13:11-14) and read, “It is high time for you to awake out of sleep. Your salvation is nearer than you suppose.” In a flood of tears, he realized that the quest of his life for meaning and purpose had led to naught. It was a moment of surrender and new life in Jesus Christ.

We can speak about St. Augustine because of that event. But being a Christian, or even a saint, does not make life automatically easier. When Alaric and his army were sacking Rome, Augustine was living as a bishop in North Africa. During this time, he began to write his best-known treatise, The City of God, in response to a question asked by those who were fleeing Rome, “How now shall we live in this kind of crumbling world?”

Augustine urged the Christians of his day to avoid two extremes, two alternatives to which they and we are tempted to subscribe in our own crumbling world. One extreme is utopianism: the mistake of thinking that we as human beings, in our own power and by our own skill, can solve the problems in our world and in our society and thereby bring about the kingdom of God on earth. This was the basic error of both Marxism and nineteenth-century liberalism. It is the utopian dream that perfection is in our grasp—and the fantasy of thinking we can make it on our own. Instead, Augustine offered a complex moral map that creates space for loyalty, love, and care in this fragile world. Jean Bethke Elshtain called this “a chastened form of civic virtue.” God has put you in this world—this tottering world—and you are to love it as Jesus loved it, be engaged in it as he would have you be, and exercise a chastened form of civic virtue.

There is another extreme—and maybe for your generation it is the more urgent temptation: It is the lure of cynicism. We become jaded about our world, about ourselves, and about God. It creeps up on us as we withdraw into our own self-contained circle of contentment. It can happen in a pious holy huddle as well as at a secular skeptics club. Ultimately cynicism will destroy your soul. Avoid it, flee from it!

How can we avoid the misplaced hope of utopianism on the one hand, and contemptuous cynicism on the other? I think we can learn a lesson from two other figures in Christian history. One is St. Francis of Assisi, a remarkable Christian of the Middle Ages. One day as he was riding back into his hometown, he saw a leper by the side of the road. He reached out to embrace this despised man and extended to him the hand of comfort. The leper reached up and grabbed Francis and gave him a kiss. It was the kiss of peace. Francis said that while embracing this filthy, diseased outcast he was overcome by a dual sensation—on the one hand an overwhelming sense of sweetness and wellbeing and on the other hand nausea.

You are going to live your life, graduates, on the thin line between sweetness and nausea. To the extent your faith is all sweetness—being a happy, clappy Christian, for whom everything is coming up roses—you will really have nothing more than shallow sentimentality. It will not see you through the dark nights or lonely hours. On the other hand, if all you experience is nauseating disgust—and there is much in our world today to provoke this response—then you will never be able to reach out in Jesus’ name and say a healing word or give a hopeful response.

The other person I want to mention is C.S. Lewis. On October 22, 1939, he preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Less than two months earlier Hitler had invaded Poland, and Britain was about to face the horrible onslaught of the Nazi attack known as the Battle of Britain. This is what C.S. Lewis told the assembled students:

It may seem odd for us to carry on classes, to go about our academic routine in the midst of a great war. What is the use of beginning when there is so little chance of finishing? How can we study Latin, geography, algebra in a time like this? Aren’t we just fiddling while Rome burns?

This impending war has taught us some important things. Life is short. The world is fragile. All of us are vulnerable, but we are here because this is our calling. Our lives are rooted not only in time, but also in eternity, and the life of learning, humbly offered to God, is its own reward. It is one of the appointed approaches to the divine reality and the divine beauty, which we shall hereafter enjoy in heaven, and which we are called to display even now amidst the brokenness all around us.

Graduates, this is your calling too. Amidst the brokenness all around us, and sometimes even within us, we are summoned today to be faithful to God’s calling. We are to be steadfast, persevering in discipleship so as to bear witness to the beauty, the light, and the divine reality that we shall forever enjoy in heaven. We are called to do this in a culture that seems, at times, just like Augustine’s—a fragile world beset by dangers we cannot predict. You will not do this perfectly—you will fail, as all human beings do—but reach out and claim the promise of God’s forgiveness. Reach out and accept the gift of a new beginning, the stewardship of starting all over again.

As Augustine thought about the world, the culture, and the civic institutions, like an old man tottering and about ready to die, he said:

Are you surprised that the world is losing its grip? That the world is grown old? Don’t hold onto the old man, the world; don’t refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you: “The world is passing away; the world is losing its grip; the world is short of breath. Don’t fear, your youth shall be renewed as an eagle.”

Remember that, class of 2014. Now go out and crash in the gates of hell!

Timothy George is founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and the general editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture. 

Na VEJA.com:
A artilharia ucraniana destruiu parte “significativa” de uma coluna de blindados russos que atravessou a fronteira da Ucrânia durante a noite de quinta-feira, disse o presidente Petro Poroshenko ao primeiro-ministro britânico, David Cameron, nesta sexta-feira, de acordo com o site da Presidência do país. Paralelamente, um porta-voz militar ucraniano disse que as forças do país monitoraram a coluna russa de blindados assim que ela entrou em solo ucraniano. “Ações apropriadas foram tomadas e parte dela [a coluna de blindados] não existe mais”, disse o porta-voz militar Andriy Lysenko a jornalistas.

A Rússia oficialmente nega que alguns dos seus veículos militares tenham cruzado a fronteira e entrado em território ucraniano. A informação sobre a violação de fronteira foi divulgada inicialmente pelo jornal britânico The Guardian, que apontou que 23 veículos blindados de transporte de tropas haviam atravessado a fronteira. Posteriormente, a Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte (Otan) apontou a presença dos veículos.

O secretário-geral da Otan, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, disse nesta sexta-feira que a aliança observou uma “incursão” russa em território ucraniano. Durante visita a Copenhague, Rasmussen disse aos jornalistas que “na noite passada vimos uma incursão para a Ucrânia”. Segundo o The Guardian, os veículos militares faziam a escolta de um comboio formado por mais de 200 caminhões que transportavam ajuda humanitária para a população do leste da Ucrânia. Ainda de acordo com o jornal, os caminhões pararam inicialmente a menos de 20 quilômetros da fronteira, ainda em território russo, e apenas os blindados prosseguiram, usando um buraco na cerca de arame farpado.

Na avaliação do The Guardian, os blindados provavelmente não faziam parte de alguma ponta-de-lança de uma invasão maciça – uma iniciativa desse tipo prevê uma movimentação bem mais intensa –, mas uma coisa é certa: a operação respalda as acusações da Ucrânia de que os militares russos agem livremente no território vizinho para apoiar os rebeldes pró-Rússia, que travam há meses combates com as tropas do governo ucraniano.

Já o comboio humanitário voltou a prosseguir na manhã desta quinta-feira, entrando na Ucrânia por um posto de fronteira na região de Dontesk. No momento, os caminhões estão sendo inspecionados por guardas de fronteira ucranianos. Com a inspeção, Kiev pretende evitar que o comboio seja usado para transportar armas para os rebeldes.

Tudo aquilo de que o Brasil não precisava está em curso. Que coisa! Sou religioso, mas não místico. Não acredito em conjunção de fatores ditados por alguma força ou ente que nos empurrem para certo destino. Mas, às vezes, quase cedo à tentação. Logo, felizmente, passa. O misticismo é sempre uma forma de trapaça: ou as pessoas estão se enganando ou estão enganando os outros. Bem depressa, sou convocado pela razão.

Marina Silva ainda não é a candidata à Presidência da República da frente integrada pelo PSB. Mas, parece-me inescapável, será. Percebo todos os aspectos deletérios de sua figura pública conjugados nestes dois dias. E com que incrível saliência para o momento! Mais do que nunca, vemos sobressair a figura da ungida, daquela que parece ter sido enviada com uma missão que os mortais ainda ignoram, da eleita para trazer uma mensagem do além. O terreno onde se dissolvera o corpo de Eduardo Campos ainda fumegava, e ficamos sabendo, momento depois do acidente, que Marina deixara de embarcar no voo por alguma razão misteriosa. Seus adoradores costumam exaltar não seus dotes de visionária, mas as suas certezas de intuitiva. Que medo!

Hoje, sabemos ainda mais. Ela está realmente consternada — e por que não estaria? — e teria passado a noite em claro, em vigília, embora não em companhia da família, com quem ainda não havia conseguido falar. Por que Marina não chegou nem mesmo a ressonar, o que certamente fizeram os familiares de Campos, moídos pela dor e pela exaustão? Porque, supõe-se, ela mantinha um diálogo com um ente que só se manifesta aos escolhidos. Até Caetano Veloso vem a público expor a sua dor e nos recomendar: entreguemo-nos aos desígnios de Marina.

O país vive um momento delicado. Hoje, só as incertezas se adensam. Não precisamos de mais indefinições. No terreno nada místico, da “carnadura concreta” das coisas, como diria o poeta João Cabral de Melo Neto, somos informados de que Marina vai impor algumas condições para ser candidata. Uma delas é ter um vice de sua confiança. Dadas as circunstâncias e as diferenças de ideário entre ela e o PSB, o normal seria que acontecesse o contrário. Mas o ser político cuja reputação se avoluma quanto mais repudia a política sabe, sim, travar uma dura disputa no solo, embora pareça vinda do céu. Ou é como ela quer, ou não é de jeito nenhum!

Vou além: considerando que Marina Silva não é do PSB e que tem, é evidente, a chance de se eleger, o mais prudente seria que se comprometesse a permanecer no PSB os quatro próximos anos se eleita. Afinal, vai para uma campanha eleitoral sem que a esmagadora maioria dos eleitores saiba que está prestes a migrar para outro partido, cujo ideário é ainda desconhecido. Para quem diz prezar uma “nova política”, lamentando os vícios da “velha”, seria uma atitude bastante decorosa, não é mesmo?

Desde a redemocratização, o país passa por um dos momentos mais delicados de sua história. Infelizmente, percebo amplos setores da sociedade, inclusive da imprensa, tocados por certo “desejo de mudança”, ainda sem conteúdo. E isso, acreditem, por si, não é bom. O momento pede que Marina ofereça algumas certezas, não que cobre certezas de seus pares, o que só reforça o caráter olímpico de sua personalidade. Até porque esse distanciamento em relação aos mortais pode ser tudo, menos compatível com a democracia.

Fiquemos atentos!

As I followed along with the 9.4 release of Postgres I had a few posts of things that I was excited about, some things that missed, and a bit of a wrap-up. I thought this year (year in the sense of PG releases) I’d jump the gun and lay out areas I’d love to see addressed in PostgreSQL 9.5. And here it goes:

Upsert

Merge/Upsert/Insert or Update whatever you want to call it this is still a huge wart that it doesn’t exist. There’s been a few implementations show up on mailing lists, and to the best of my understanding there’s been debate on if it’s performant enough or that some people would prefer another implementation or I don’t know what other excuse. The short is this really needs to happen, until that time you can always implement it with a CTE which can have a race condition.

Foreign Data Wrappers

There’s so much opportunity here, and this has easily been my favorite feature of the past 2-3 years in Postgres. Really any improvement is good here, but a hit list of a few valuable things:

• Pushdown of conditions
• Ability to accept a DSN to a utility function to create foreign user and tables.
• Better security around creds of foreign tables
• More out of the box FDWs

Stats/Analytics

Today there’s madlib for machine learning, and 9.4 got support for ordered set aggregates, but even still Postgres needs to keep moving forward here. PL-R and PL-Python can help a good bit as well, but having more out of the box functions for stats can continue to keep it at the front of the pack for a database that’s not only safe for your data, but powerful to do analysis with.

Multi-master

This is definitely more of a dream than not. Full multi-master replication would be amazing, and it’s getting closer to possible. The sad truth is even once it lands it will probably require a year of maturing, so even more reason for it to hopefully hit in 9.5

Logical Replication

The foundation made it in for 9.4 which is huge. This means we’ll probably see a good working out of the box logical replication in 9.5. For those less familiar this means the replication is SQL based vs. the binary WAL stream. This means things like using replication to upgrade across versions is possible. So not quite 0 downtime, but ~ a minute or two to upgrade versions. Even of large DBs.

An official GUI

Alright this one is probably a pipe dream. And to kick it off, no pgAdmin doesn’t cut it. A good end user tool for connecting/querying would be huge. Fortunately the ecosystem is improving here with JackDB (web based) and PG Commander (mac app), but these still aren’t discoverable enough for most users.

What do you want?

So there’s my wishlist, what’s yours for 9.5? Let me know – @craigkerstiens.