Hugh Hewitt interviews Paul Campos.
Campos is a law professor in Colorado and a sometime columnist for the Rocky Mountain News.
Hewitt is a law professor, A-list blogger, and nationally syndicated radio host.
Campos took a swipe at Hewitt in a recent column.
What was that Mark Twain said about not picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel? Hewitt invited Campos on his show. The Marines have a saying: If you find yourself in a fair fight, you have not adequately prepared.
Hewitt was prepared.
Campos got his posterior anatomy handed to him on a silver platter, and didn't even realize it. He was expertly sliced, diced, julienned and pureed. This interview - if you can call a public vivisection an interview - should be required reading in cross-ex classes.
As professor Glenn says, RTWT.
UPDATE: Welcome, Hewitt readers! If you liked this, you might like some of the rest of the stuff here. Please go to the effort of leaving a comment - it gets lonely out here on the long tail.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
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3 comments:
Hewitt regularly engages in reasoned debate with folks of all stripes. His regular guests include folks from the left side of the spectrum. Campos' columns are not attempts at reasoned debate. As Hewitt showed, they tend toward ad-hominem attacks with little or no basis in fact or reason. Hewitt hoist him on his own petard.
Writers are influential in some circles and not in others. Nouwen is very popular among religious liberals. But as a Catholic priest, his views are simply not going to have much currency in Evangelical circles. Few evangelicals have read John Paul's hugely influential encyclicals, so why should they be expected to be familiar with the work of a Dutch priest who struggled with homosexuality?
tim, you're too smart to be erecting straw-men.
Your references to Nouwen are, as timC pointed out, non-sequitur. So I've never heard of him. So shoot me.
I did NOT call him gay or liberal. I said he was popular in the liberal wing of the church. I get that from the reference that he's considered influential in mainline Protestant denominations. Most of the mainline bodies are liberal both politically and theologically.
As far as his sexual orientation goes, we all have issues. I believe I discussed this in a reply to one of your previous comments. I personally don't make a big deal out of it - desires are different than actions, though the Catholic teaching of my youth said otherwise. What I SAID was, if evangelicals - and I mean the folks in the pews like me, not seminary graduates such as yourself - have not read John Paul, why would they have read Nouwen?
Context, indeed.
Tim, read carefully. I did not "marginalize Nouwen as a minor writer/thinker." I pointed out that as a Catholic writer, it was unlikely that many in-the-pew Evangelicals would have heard of him. That's a very different argument.
I'm familiar with a fair number of evangelical thinkers, such as Stott, Shaeffer, Graham, Lewis, Packer - and John Piper was my pastor. But I've never heard of Nouwen and suspect that few members of the churches I've attended have either.
You bringing up Rush is another straw-man. I don't listen to his show, never have. I think I've heard an hour of it once, on a road trip. He seemed rather full of himself IMO.
You have a valid point about the alliance between the political conservatives and religious conservatives. Many years ago I wrote an essay outlining why Christianity and right-wing politics didn't mix well. Political conservativism stresses individual effort. Christianity is about receiving unearned grace. The first disciples lived in a commune, for crying out loud.
But.
I don't want a theocracy, at least not until Christ Himself returns. And at the ballot box, I have to decide which party is going to be more likely to govern in a manner that I agree with. The Left - which controls the Democratic party today - is clearly in favor of abortion and euthanasia, surrender to terrorists, the banning of all public expressions of faith, and the redefinition of the institutions of marriage and family. Oh, yeah, they also want peace, social justice, environmentla protection (at the cost of national security) and universal health care. Great and noble ideas, but at what cost? The failure to take seriously the threat posed by radical Islam is fundamental.
For all its many faults, the GOP stands much closer to my values. I may hold my nose when I pull the lever, but it's better to hold my nose than cut it off.
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