Book Review: The Way of Sanchin Kata: The Application of Power

When I review a book on martial arts, I can't help but feel that there is a certain amount of cheekiness involved on my part. You see, it's pretty much a given that the author of the book I'm reviewing has skills considerably more advanced than my own (not much point in reading the book otherwise, right?), so it's hard to
escape the "Who-am-I-to-criticize?" feeling. Nevertheless, hoping that someone will get something out of my take on a given volume, I press on...

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I have long been interested in the kata sanchin. It's likely that only God knows for sure just how long it's been around. It exists in a variety of forms in various kung-fu systems (usually written in Roman letters as saam chien) and at least three different Okinawan versions come easily to mind: the Goju Ryu version, the Uechi Ryu version, and the Motobu Udun Ti version.

The versions differ noticeably from one another, and it doesn't help that the kata is often performed badly--terribly badly, so much so that even I, though I practice a system that does not include Sanchin in its curriculum, can recognize how bad the situation is.

Of this much I'm sure: you shouldn't look and sound as though you're about to cough up blood and entrails when you do Sanchin.

I picked up Kris Wilder's The Way of Sanchin Kata: The Application of Power because--even though the system I practice doesn't include it--I choose to practice Sanchin. To my mind, it seems important and useful, though I don't think I can quite subscribe to Hiroo Ito's opinion, given in the foreward, that:

The very basic kata in Okinawa-style karate is sanchin, and it has been understood historically that you master karate only if you master this kata.

After all, there are quite a number of Okinawan systems and subsystems that do not include Sanchin at all, and the skills of those practitioners certainly don't seem lacking to me. However, for various reasons, I decided that I would try to learn and practice the Uechi Ryu version of Sanchin, and though the instructional video I have isn't bad (It's Rod Mindlin's, if anyone is wondering), it was nevertheless clear to me that there were things about the kata that simply aren't adequately explored, and I needed extra instruction, preferably from someone not doing the coughing-up-blood-and-entrails version. Mr. Wilder's book appeared to provide some of the details I was trying to figure out.

I have not been altogether disappointed. Even though Mr. Wilder's book deals almost entirely with the Goju Ryu version of Sanchin--which, I would guess, is also pretty much the same as the Isshin Ryu version, since Shimabuku Tatsuo presumably imported the kata directly from Goju Ryu into Isshin Ryu--he carefully notes details of the movements that are clearly applicable to other versions of the kata and explores the whys and wherefores in considerable depth and his material has therefore helped me with my practice. Since Mr. Wilder says:

The goal of this book is to achieve a better understanding of sanchin kata through the mechanics, history, and applications of the kata.

I guess that means that his goal has been achieved, at least in my case.

The book starts out with a brief history of the kata. It is necessarily somewhat brief, for the simple fact of the matter is that the ultimate origins of the kata are lost in time. As Mr. Wilder says:

...the viewpoints between the versions of the history of sanchin kata are difficult to make clear. It is only possible to touch upon a handful of points on the timeline with reasonable assurance when looking at the history of sanchin kata. Finding the root, or the clear origin, of sanchin kata is as difficult as it was for the British and French in 1854 to find the headwaters of the Nile river.

This section, therefore, did not really offer anything new and startling, but rather recapped the well-known basic historical facts: that the kata is known to be at least several hundred years old, exists in more than one version, was an integral part of the martial arts systems taught by Kanryo Higashionna and Kanbun Uechi, and was altered somewhat further by Chojun Miyagi into what is now probably the most widely taught version, that of Goju Ryu.

After that, Mr. Wilder spends some time discussing the relationships between physical movements and mental processes, the way the hemispheres of the brain communicate with each other, the differences between various kinds of brain waves, and elements of training that affect all of these. Mr. Wilder's comment that

Moving in sanchin kata, because it is a walk and not a march, helps create better communication between the two sides of the brain.

reminded me somewhat of some of the things I have read about the Feldenkrais Method.

The next chapter is largely about how to measure one's movements--how close the fist should be to the body, etc.--and contains one particularly fascinating section asserting that the Fibonacci Ratio is quite noticeable throughout Sanchin kata.

...because this ratio is among the basic mathematical formulas upon which nature builds, it is important that we acknowledge this and work in harmony with nature, and not against it. Think of it this way; close your eyes and imagine you have everything you need to build a ten-foot-tall pyramid--the stone, the mortar, and a crane. In your mind, take a few seconds and build the pyramid.

Now look at it. The point is at the top, correct? Clearly, you cannot build an upside-down-pyramid and have it stand. It simply is not stable and tips over to seek a balance point. If you did build a pyramid upside-down, you would need supports to hold it in the upside-down position. Those supports, of course, would not be needed if you build the pyramid correctly to begin with. It follows then, that in sanchin kata, one should adhere to the ratio. Not to do so is the equivalent of building an upside-down pyramid.

And then a little later:

Sanchin kata teaches the fundamentals of karate that can then be extended over the entire syllabus of karate. This extension of this principal gives the practitioner the structural integrity of the basics throughout their martial arts techniques.

The next several chapters dwell mostly on the mechanics of the kata, building from the ground up, through the feet, then the legs, then the hips, and so on. Mr. Wilder goes into great detail as to which muscles should be doing what, which is very useful information. When he gets to the arms, he spends a little time talking about the mechanics of the punch, giving a good deal of extremely useful information which is, I flatly guarantee, given insufficient attention by far too many karate practitioners. Not that this is altogether their fault; the sort of detail that Mr. Wilder gives is simply difficult to communicate adequately to each member of a class of twenty or more students. Frankly, I got almost all the way up to black belt in Taekwon-do without being familiar with some of the details Mr. Wilder gives, and when I made the switch to Okinawan karate, my instructor had/is having to help me unlearn the bad habits I had acquired.

At one point, Mr. Wilder said something that arrested my attention. Referring to the way the punching hand rotates from palm up (at the side) to palm down (at impact), he says, emphasis mine:

Staying relaxed allows for quickness. During the first three quarters of the distance the punch covers, it is relaxed. Once the fist has passed the other fist, the rotation then begins. This exchange of fists takes place in the last quarter or so of extension toward the target.

The twisting of the fist at the last moment is important because it creates a snapping shock instead of a push punch. The twisting of the punch at the last third or so of the length the punch travels is in line with the Fibonacci Ratio in the form of a spiral. Again, this is a case of a movement that conforms to, and uses, nature instead of trying to force the body to comply with the will of the individual.

This interested me because for some time I have been dissatisfied with using the English word "punch" to describe what we are learning to do in our group. It has seemed to me that a "punch" is more of a hard push than what we do, which more closely resembles making a relaxed, whipping strike--creating a "snapping shock," in Mr. Wilder's words--with the knuckles, and I have grown to prefer the Japanese term tsuki.

In the remainder of the book, Mr. Wilder covers the "Iron Shirt" aspect of the kata, breathing, "rooting," the movements of the kata, testing the kata, and training implements.

I found it interesting that when discussing the "Iron Shirt" effect--which, according to him, allows the practitioner to take blows without injury--it seemed to me that he dwelt more on how to achieve this effect than on how it works, and I can only speculate that it has something to do with something Yang Jwing-Ming talked about in one of his books: that many pressure points can be "armored" by tensing the muscles around them. Knowing this, it becomes obvious that being able to control one's muscles immediately and completely in this regard could be useful, but I don't recall Mr. Wilder directly addressing the isue.

I had mixed feelings about the material in the breathing section. Although it was very clear and helped to explain why the breathing of the Goju Ryu practitioner sounds the way it does (and it can be, and is, frequently done incorrectly, so this material should be given close attention by Goju practitioners seeking a clear explanation of this breathing), it seemed to me that the breathing in the Goju version of the kata was the only sanchin breathing addressed, and one thing anyone looking into sanchin will immediately notice is that the breathing in the Uechi Ryu version is considerably different. It is also very difficult to find a clear explanation of how the Uechi Ryu breathing is done--it is usually described as simply "natural" and "hissing"--and I was hoping to find more about it in this book. On the other hand, the material in the book was so clear as regards the Goju version that I felt like I had picked up a tidbit or two that would at least be applicable to my practice.

I did enjoy the material on training implements, especially the makiwara. The makiwara, it seems to me, is unique. No other training device gives feedback to the practitioner in precisely the way it does. As Mr. Wilder says:

Striking pads, focus mitts, heavy bags, water bags, and other training aids are not direct replacements for the makiwara. The reason for this is the makiwara gives instant and direct feedback in the form of non-recoiled pressure. As a heavy bag moves away from your fist and swings back when struck, it takes time to sway from your strike and then return. The makiwara gives instant pressure--the harder you hit, the harder it gives pressure back toward you.

The only thing I didn't like about the book was a rather obvious lack of editing. Over and over again, I found sentences that were so poorly framed--often not even grammatically correct--that the information they were trying to convey was obscured. I don't blame Mr. Wilder for this. Taking care of that sort of thing is the job of the editor, and whoever it was did not do his job very well.

Overall, the book is informative and useful, and though I would still recommend that anyone trying to learn the kata on his own take advantage of one of the video treatments of the subject, there is no doubt that anyone already knowing the kata and trying to improve his knowledge and performance will find this book well worth purchasing.

Book Review: Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword

I suppose that some may wonder--rightly, I guess--why on earth I would read a book on the use of the traditional Japanese wooden practice sword, the bokken or bokuto. It is not as if I'm ever likely to come within shouting distance of the traditional Japanese sword arts, and one would think that there would be little relationship between its skills and those required in Okinawan karate, my particular interest. However, in my opinion, those thinking so are wrong. One need not delve very far into the somewhat nebulous history of the Okinawan combative arts to realize that Japanese swordsmanship has had substantial influence on Okinawan techniques and execution. Even before the Satsuma clan invaded Okinawa and Sokon Matsumura earned his menkyo (certificate indicating proficiency in the techniques of the ryu or permission to teach, possibly both, I suppose) in their Jigen-Ryu system of swordsmanship, it seems indisputable that Japanese sword techniques had a profound influence on the hereditary martial art of Okinawa's ruling Motobu clan, sometimes referred to as Motobu Udun Ti, and although one might question just how much influence the techniques of Motobu Udun Ti had on Okinawan technique prior to the last century, there is absolutely no doubt that Seikichi Uehara, the first non-family member to inherit that art, was part of at least one research group that also included such notables as Sian Toma and the remarkable Seiyu Oyata, who was primarily responsible for introducing close-quarter grappling techniques called tuite and pressure-point techniques called kyusho-jitsu to the Western world, and it seems likely, therefore, that Uehara--and Japanese swordsmanship--has had at least some influence in some quarters of the Okinawan karate world. And since, as mentioned, no less a luminary than Matsumura--probably the single most influential Okinawan karateka of the nineteenth century, bodyguard and instructor to the Okinawan king--was a skilled Jigen-Ryu swordsman, one is not entirely unjustified in surmising that his karate, too, was at least somewhat influenced by Japanese swordsmanship.

In our little practice group, the bokken occupies the place held in some systems by the chi-ishi and stone locks: auxiliary training equipment that develops a very particular type of power and movement peculiar to the needs of that system. It seems to me that we have certain elements of footwork in common with those of the Japanese swordsman, and the way we deliver a punch seems distinctly reminiscent of the way the sword is handled. Of course, there is a very distinct effect on one's physical fitness as well. As Mr. Lowry notes in the book (suburi, by the way, is practice with the bokken):

It is only fair to warn, though, that suburi is an extremely strenuous exercise.

Just the act of swinging the bokken up and down without any force is likely to bring on stiff and sore muscles. This author has conducted seminars on suburi training on occasion, with classes filled with strong karateka or judoka, all young men in their early 20s, black belt holders with the strength and conditioning of professional athletes. Even so, at the end of the session, they were all pitifully tired and sore. "It was like jumping rope," one of them said, "with a lead chain for a rope."

Suburi training involves quick footwork and light, fast body shifting, but it also demands strength and a focusing of physical power, cutting with the bokken in a solid, well-connected movement. Because of this duality, its exercises can be geared for emphasizing whatever specific activity one wishes. There are several movements requiring constant motion in different directions, and these can be performed lightly and smoothly a number of times to increase stamina. Other actions, like the basic cuts and strikes, are simpler, and a great deal of power may be applied in learning them, to develop strength.

Practice with the bokken, then, is a useful adjunct to our bare-handed training, and it was with this in mind that I picked up Dave Lowry's Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword. Mr. Lowry is singularly well suited for the task of writing such a book. He is probably the Western World's most well-known exponent of traditional Japanese swordsmanship--and by "traditional Japanese swordsmanship," I mean not the relatively modern discipline of kendo, but the older combative samurai arts, the koryu--and has cross-trained in other martial arts, including, if I am not mistaken, Judo, Aikido, and Japanese karate (Caveat: modern Japanese karate is distinctly different, in my opinion, from the original Okinawan article). The book has been out for about twenty years now, and as far as I know, has never gone out of print.

It is a simple book. If all you do is read the text, I suppose a fairly fast reader could get through it in an hour or two. Of course, since you will constantly be looking from the text to the pictures, and then--presumably--to your own posture, the reality is that it will take just as long to read as it takes you to develop the skills you seek. The first few sections--the introduction, "Origins of the Bokken," "Training with the Bokken," and "Selecting the Bokken and Equipment" are, as you might expect, largely devoted to background information and the sorts of things you need to know to get started. In the process, Mr. Lowry passes on some interesting information and stories from Japan's feudal background and a fair amount of personal opinion. The stories and the history are interesting, and Mr. Lowry's passion for the subject comes through in his opinions, for some of which I cannot personally find much enthusiasm. For instance, he seems much concerned with identifying with the old samurai, and I find that I cannot. I have enjoyed stories of their bravery and single-mindedness in combat, and I have great admiration for their battlefield arts and desire to add some small part of that treasure-trove of skills to my personal inventory. But I am not a samurai, and I find that I simply don't have their attitude. The things that I admire about them are also things that I find present and admirable in my own cultural background.

The rest of the book consists of instruction, given via text and photographs. First is kihon, or fundamentals; then uchi kata, or striking methods; then renraku waza, or combination techniques; and then kumitachi, or techniques with a partner. Instruction is given for details ranging from the proper way of gripping the weapon to proper stepping methods. Much of this information is interesting, and for the most part, it is clear and easy to follow, with only one caveat necessary: it sometimes seems--looking at the text--as though a photograph is missing. I don't know that this is so, but part of me wonders if it is not a fairly difficult thing to avoid in the creation of such books. The upshot is that sometimes you have to dig a little for useful information. For instance, when looking at the information on naname okuri ashi (oblique advancing step), one is left clueless as to how long the step taken is to be. Clueless, that is, for about ten pages, for when giving instruction on shomen uchi (cutting down, or the overhead cut), we find

This method of stepping is exactly like that of naname okuri ashi, except that the movement is straight to the front rather than at an angle.

together with a photograph illustrating the length of the step! This kind of thing occurs more than once throughout the book. The information does seem to be all there, but sometimes you have to flip a few pages to find it. It would probably be worthwhile to give the book a thorough reading from front to back before actually picking up a bokken and trying out some of the techniques.

I think it is likely that most people will probably not end up mastering all the material, as it simply may not be necessary to achieve their particular goals. For instance, I don't anticipate trying any of the kumitachi, or partner drills, anytime soon. I am mostly interested in the effects the handling of the weapon has on my management of my body's mass and momentum, the way my punches are thrown (I have made mention of the peculiar way punches, or tsuki, are thrown in our system more than once. I don't wish to go into the sort of detail that would amount to me giving instruction that I am in no way qualified to give, but I will just say here that those interested can, between the material in Kiyoshi Arakaki's excellent The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques and the material on pages 40-41 of this book, gain considerable insight. At least if you give it any serious thought.), together with some of the physical fitness benefits. For my purposes, gaining a grasp of some of the basics and practicing shihogiri (cutting in four directions) is probably sufficient.

Overall, I would recommend the book as a good start for anyone interested in gaining some of the benefits peculiar to practicing the art of the sword, and especially for those interested in some of the older Okinawan systems, or aikido.

Book Review: The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques

This is going to be a somewhat shorter book review than is usual for me ("Thankfully!" cry my handful of readers). What Can I say? Kiyoshi Arakaki's The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques is a short book.

Short, I say, but well worth the reading. It first attracted my attention when I flipped through it at a local bookstore. I saw in it what has to be the most interesting discussion of the Okinawan methods of delivering a punch I've ever seen in print. Only one other source has ever explained the mechanics of the punch to me in a similar way. That happens to be my RyuTe teacher, so Mr. Arakaki had my attention right away. This is not to say that What Mr. Arakaki has to say is identical to what I've been taught, but it is much more similar to what I've been taught in RyuTe than it is to the punching taught in any other system of karate I've seen.

I later bought the book used via the internet (money is an issue in the Man of the West household) and found myself well-rewarded.

Mr. Arakaki is a native of Okinawa. He studied Matsubayashi Ryu, a sub-style of Shorin Ryu, under the famous Shoshin Nagamine (and it is interesting to note that Mr. Arakaki's description of the Okinawan punching method is decidedly different from Mr. Nagamine's, as described in his book. An example of information being deliberately hidden?) and then Kyokushinkai, which, if you don't already know, has most of its roots in Goju Ryu, so he's able to approach the subject of Okinawan karate from both of its major perspectives (for those who don't know, at the risk of oversimplification, Okinawan karate is divided by most into two major branches, Shuri-te and Naha-te, and a considerable number of styles within each of those branches).

A person picking up this book looking for information on vital point striking or grappling--what I would usually be looking for in a book on Okinawan karate "secrets"--might be disappointed. It contains nothing of that sort. Instead, this is a book about power, how to generate it, and how not to dissipate it. There are other topics covered, but I don't hesitate to say that this is far and away the major concern of the book.

I don't recall having read any book that has gone into quite as detailed an explanation, at least from a largely Western perspective, of how to generate real karate power. Mr. Arakaki explains his conceptions of both of the major methods of delivering an Okinawan punch, going into particular detail as to why the punch of Shuri-te is delivered as a whip-like strike rather than the noticeably more linear acceleration taught in most modern Japanese and Korean systems (think Shotokan and Taekwon-do), and gives an exercise to help you develop that whip-like power (the exercise does help, by the way). In the following, where Mr. Arakaki explains the whip-like strike in contrast to the "waist rotation method" of modern karate, for tsuki, think "punch":

...instead of simply moving a solid object (the fist) from point A to point B, you consciously increase the speed of the fist as you punch. On television and in movies you have seen a cowboy crack a whip, making a sound that helps him move cattle into an enclosure. Some cowboys even use these skills in rodeo competition. It is so natural for them that they can produce the crack without thinking. ...The tsuki of Shuri-te is like this whip. Think of your entire body--waist, arm, wrist, and fingers--as a whip delivering a tsuki that exceeds the speed of sound.

...In Shuri-te, the energy point is the center of the body. This body center, the waist, is like the wrist of a cowboy cracking his whip. From this point you produce energy and transfer the energy to your opponent. Using the waist rotation method, you treat your body like a hard object. However, if you think of the body as a rigid object, you lose fluidity and cannot transfer all your body's energy to your target. If you use waist rotation as the key to producing power, the result will be more like using a length of 2 x 4 rather than a whip. The weight and mass of the 2 x 4 would be powerful but would lack the speed and explosion of energy delivered by the whip.

...This whipping motion...is completely different from the tsuki of modern karate, where a tight fist travels from the waist to a target in as straight a line as possible.

...The tsuki of Shuri-te will always quiver because the whipping motion of the body creates energy and transfers energy completely. If a whip does not quiver, it is not a whip, it is a stick. If your body is like a stick, you destroy the speed of the tsuki...There should be no moment when you see a punch stop in the tsuki of Shuri-te. Contrast this with modern karate, which uses the action-reaction method of pulling back the left hand to the waist so as to send energy into the right hand punch, much like a set of mechanical pistons.

I'd give you more of this section, but it's one of those things where if you're going to experiment, I think you'd better go out and buy the book. I would certainly agree that the punching method he describes, as well as RyuTe's, which I would describe in very similar terms (I didn't include all of Mr. Arakaki's material on the subject here, if you're wondering) is "completely different from the tsuki of modern karate."

Mr. Arakaki's discussion of how to form the Okinawan fist is fascinating--this section alone, in my opinion, is more than worth the price of the book--and I couldn't help but note some similarities to how Dave Lowry described the relaxed grip of the skilled swordsman (I've mentioned before that it seems very likely that Okinawan karate was influenced by Japanese swordsmanship) in Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword. And of course, in RyuTe we certainly make use of the bokken as part of our training.

Just as interesting was his very lengthy discussion of how to manipulate your center of gravity, your "imaginary center of gravity," and those of your opponent in order to maximize power, and, perhaps most interesting of all, his positive identification of this sort of--shall we say--gravitational power as ki, which is so often, and so unnecessarily, described in mystical terms. Mr. Arakaki writes:

Try this with a friend. Face each other with hands at your sides. Bring your arms slightly forward, asking your partner to grab your wrists tightly. Without changing your arm level, lock your elbows close in to your body. Then just walk toward him. Amazing! You can lift up his body. Some people say this is due to ki (life-energy or vital force). If you move forward from this position and lift your arms a little, you can make your friend fly ten feet! This is called the aiki-age. People explain this as making the opponent fly because there is ki (vital energy). This is absolutely incorrect! As you can see from diagram 1, this is a situation where your arms control his actual center of gravity (CG) because you adjust his CG higher than his true CG and your CG, and, "Voila!" he loses his balance.

And in another place:

You can now understand that the so-called Universal Ki is gravity, and gravity is the key for the martial artist. Traditional Okinawan karate uses this principle for executing tsuki. Okinawan karate recognizes this balanced CG point and the gravitational energy that is created by putting your body weight downward to create tsuki which penetrate through the target.

And in another place:

The principle of the aiki-age is the same as in a fist that is using Newton's second law of motion. All Japanese martial arts are based on this principle.

And in yet another place, where he discusses the concept of ki in a more general way, he writes:

In today's martial arts world, everyone thinks ki can force an opponent down with no physical contact, or enable one to sense an opponent's thoughts. Ki is perceived as being a mystical power. Japanese martial arts view ki as a practical, even a philosophical concept, but not a mystical one. The Japanese language has many different words for different forms of ki. Kaki is the ki for the energy of combustion. Iyoki is the ki for the energy of vaporization. Aiki is the ki for the combined energies between you and your opponent. In old China, ki (or chi in Chinese) meant energy in general. Now ki is thought of in a more imprecise way. In today's martial arts world, we often use ki as a sales pitch, and little more. There has been no scientific observation, no attempt to analyze and understand this mysterious force. However, Japanese culture always took a more pragmatic view of this energy. After all, the concept of bu in budo includes systematic thinking. Traditional karate and Japanese swordsmanship never stressed the mysterious aspects of ki when they discussed it.

Moving on from discussions of ki, I was strongly interested in Mr. Arakaki's discussion of the Naihanchi Shodan (he calls it Naifanchi) kata (here is an expert performance of that kata, should you be interested),

which he flatly declares is Shuri-te's foundational kata, designed to teach the student how to use gravity power (among other things, some of which I've learned with some pain).

While learning Naifanchi, keep in mind that it is the zenith of the martial arts. Its meaning has been passed on only by oral tradition. It took thirty years for me to understand completely its technical concept.

I was also interested in some of the other exercises he recommends. One, wherein the student stands in a more or less natural stance and imagines holding a heavy ball between his hands, struck me immediately and forcefully as being identical to the famous tai chi ruler exercise, an exercise--chi kung--taught in the Chinese martial arts to develop ki. Mostly, they are exercises in learning to control your balance and mass--very similar, in some respects, to some that my own teacher has taught me.

Mr. Arakaki also discussed ki in some other ways, not all of which I would agree with, illustrating beautifully that ki is a word that can be translated in so many ways as to make it effectively meaningless.

As far as a downside to the book is concerned, I did find it curious in a book that dwells so heavily on the development of punching power that Mr. Arakaki did not discuss the use of the makiwara. No matter how you are throwing your punch, it seems to me, the makiwara is a useful feedback device if you want to develop real punching power. A hanging bag, while useful, just isn't the same. Perhaps Mr. Arakaki feels that the makiwara has been adequately covered elsewhere. (I should mention, for those with an interest in RyuTe, that my opinion is by no means universal. Taika Oyata has said that one should certainly be familiar with the makiwara, but at least one person has told me that he has also said that it is like lipstick on a woman--something used to impress other people. My own teacher has not used one for years, and he can certainly hit hard. Perhaps, in the end, it is just best for me to say that I find it useful.)

It also seemed to me that there may have been some language issues. Mr. Arakaki originally wrote the book in Japanese for the Japanese market, and I can't help but think that some parts of the book could be written a little more clearly--or at least, more clearly in the English translation. I do think that actually trying some of the exercises Mr. Arakaki suggests will clarify some of what he means.

Some of the terms Mr. Arakaki uses, such as "Imaginary Center of Gravity," seem to be unique to him, that is, I don't recall anyone else using them. It may be that that is the inevitable result of attempting to express what is usually couched in esoteric terms in clearer, more modern, more objective, more definitive terms, but it contributes to a strong impression left by Mr. Arakaki that he thinks he's one of only a handful of people to understand these concepts. While admitting readily that much of what he discusses never penetrated the confines of any of my old Taekwon-do classes (and I studied with people up to eighth-degree black belt, gang), my experience with RyuTe, and my reading, lead me to say that at least one association explains the mechanics of the punch very similarly to Mr. Arakaki. Likewise, I have read treatments of "gravity power" elsewhere, such as in Jonathan Maberry's Ultimate Jujutsu.

But these are relatively minor quibbles. Overall, the book is a gem, edifying and clarifying, and it is one of perhaps half a dozen books that I would say are essential reading for anyone pursuing excellence--or at least improvement--in karate. In my opinion, of course, you would do better to just go ahead and study RyuTe. But unfortunately, it's just not possible to find instruction in it everywhere, so if you're interested in taking your Taekwon-do or Shotokan or American Combat Karate a little deeper, this might be a good book for you.

Book Review: Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter

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Yes, this review was written in one draft. Don't kill me, okay?

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I have wanted to do a review of Rick Shenkman's Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter since Mrs. Man-of-the-West checked it out of the library for me. Held it out somewhat longer than I was supposed to, as a matter of fact, as I kept finding other things to do with my time, but was reluctant to let it go before I'd had my shot at reviewing it.

Prior to reading this book, I had never heard of Mr. Shenkman (this confession will probably give my occasional liberal reader the heebie-jeebies--it turns out he is pretty much a confirmed and fairly well known liberal), but the title intrigued me, as I have grown increasingly convinced that the American public, in general, is simply too much the victim of poor education and time pressure to have anything approaching a real clue as to what is going on politically. I would not, personally, use the term "stupid," as to me, that implies a deficiency of gray matter, and I do not think the problem with the American voter is that he is congenitally stupid, but that he--often through little or no fault of his own--has little in the way of critical thinking skills and less in the way of basic historical and philosophical knowledge.

I was that way myself (some would argue that I still am!). I emerged from one of the best government school systems in the state with a 3.8 GPA and absolutely not a clue that there were such books as The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers. I had not a clue as to the existence of Samuel Rutherford or John Locke or Thomas Reid, thinkers enormously important to anyone who would understand the Founding Fathers' approach to American governance and practical philosophy. I am still working to correct this situation, which I have found is shared by the overwhelming majority of government education's victims (even those who've gone on to get bachelor's degrees and higher) dating back to at least the forties, and is at the root of much of my hostility toward government education.

But I digress. While I found that I disagreed with Mr. Shenkman at almost every point as to what actually constitutes sound government policy, I also found that I had a great deal of agreement with him as regards his assessment of the American voter. He starts, in the "Author's Note," with (emphasis mine where present):

...I am convinced that it is too easy to blame our mess on Mr. Bush. And I do not believe that his replacement by a leader who is less partisan and more competent and sensitive to civil liberties will begin to remedy what ails us.

What went wrong, went wrong long before Mr. Bush's ascendancy. His flaws simply gave us the unwelcome opportunity of seeing what heretofore had remained largely invisible.

We have had enough books about Mr. Bush, and I, for one, frankly am tired of them. What we need now are books to help us understand us. What has happened did not happen as a result of a single leader's mistakes. We had a hand in it.

The cliche is that people get the government they deserve. If that's true, why did we deserve Mr. Bush?

I, of course, note that that question is already being asked, and will continue to be asked, about President Obama.

In the first chapter, "The Problem," Mr. Shenkman says:

Our problem is twofold. Not only are we often blind to the faults of the voters, owing to the myth of The People, but the voters themselves frequently base their opinions on myths. This is a terrible conundrum. Democracy is rooted in the assumption that we are creatures of reason. If instead, as seems likely, we human beings are hard-wired to mythologize events and our own history, we are left with the paradox that our confidence in democracy rests on a myth.

Of all our myths, I believe the myth of The People to be the most dangerous one confronting us at present. The evidence of the last few years that millions are grossly ignorant of the basic facts involving the most important issues we face has brought me to this sad conclusion.

I found myself nodding in agreement. I have repeatedly been stunned at massive and widespread ignorance concerning basic issues and people. I could give examples, but Mr. Shenkman gives them in the book, and so I will use his. But I will say that I can find no rational explanation in the last presidential election for the nominations of Senator Obama and Senator McCain, two candidates who each championed ideas and policies repugnant to enormous numbers of voters, save for widespread public ignorance of what these two actually think and have done.

I will quote Mr. Shenkman at some length from the chapter "Gross Ignorance." Again, emphasis is mine:

In the 1990s political scientists Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, reviewing thousands of questions from three groups of surveys over four decades, concluded that there was statistically little difference among the knowledge levels of the parents of the Silent Generation of the 1950s, the parents of the Baby Boomers of the 1960s, and American parents today.

[snip]

Some of the numbers are hard to fathom in a country where, for at least a century, all children have been required by law to attend grade school or be home-schooled. One would expect people, even those who do not closely follow the news, to be able to answer basic civics questions--but, in fact, only a small minority can. In 1950, at a time when the Democrats and Republicans were working out a bipartisan approach to foreign affairs, Americans were asked what a bipartisan foreign policy was. Only 26 percent could do so.

In 1952, just 27 percent of adults could name two branches of government. In 1955, when the Foreign Service was constantly in the news after Senator Joe McCarthy leveled charges that it was filled with communists, just 19 percent were able to explain what the Foreign Service was. The same year, just 35 percent were able to define the term Electoral College.

Skipping ahead a generation: in 1978 Americans were asked how many years a member of the House of Representatives served between elections. Just 30 percent correctly answered two years.

[snip]

In 1986 only 30 percent knew that Roe v. Wade was the Supreme Court decision that ruled abortion legal more than a decade earlier. In 1991 Americans were asked how long the term of a U.S. senator is. Just 25 percent correctly answered six years. How many senators are there? A poll a few years ago found that only 20 percent know that there are 100 senators, though the latter number has remained constant for the last half-century (and is easy to remember). Encouragingly, today the proportion of Americans who can correctly identify and name the three branches of government is up to 40 percent, but that number is still below a majority.

[snip]

...even Americans in the middle class who attend college exhibit profound ignorance. A report in 2007 published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute found that, on average, 14, 000 randomly selected college students at fifty schools around the country scored under 55 (out of 100) on a test that measured knowledge of basic American civics.

[snip]

An experience I had a decade or so ago, aboard a train heading from Paris to Amsterdam, suggests the dimensions of the problem. I had a conversation with a young American who had graduated from college and was now considering medical school. He had received good grades in school. He was articulate. And he was anything but poor, as was clear from the fact that he was spending the summer tooling around Europe. But when the subject involved history, he was stumped. When the conversation turned to Joseph Stalin, he had to ask who Stalin was. What else, I wondered, did he not know if he didn't know this?

I'm afraid I can't offer any encouraging words to Mr. Shenkman. I have had innumerable conversations very similar to that one, wherein I found that my conversational partner simply didn't know things that one shouldn't be allowed to escape from even a government school without knowing. As a matter of fact, I'd say it is the rule, rather than the exception, even among those who are very educated and competent in their professions. Over and over again, I find that most people have not read the Constitution, or have only read it once, years ago; they do not understand the separation of powers, or the constitutional roles of each branch; they do not understand the electoral college; they do not even know what the Tenth Amendment says, let alone what it means for government today.

Mr. Shenkman continues, asking a question that I have been asking more and more often:

The optimists point to surveys indicating that about half the country can describe some differences between the Republican and Democratic parties. But if they do not know the difference between liberals and conservatives, as surveys indicate, how can they possibly say in any meaningful way how the parties differ?

Over and over again, I have suggested that a large part of the problem on the "conservative" side of the political spectrum is that too many--probably the majority of them--putative "conservatives" are not actually conservative in their thinking; rather, they hold a series of fairly popular conservative positions (which is not an altogether bad thing) without an adequate understanding, if any, of the history and thinking underlying them.

Mr. Shenkman continues to explore the problem in chapters titled, "Are the Voters Irrational?", "The Importance of Myths," "Giving Control to the People," "The Power of Television," Our Dumb Politics: The Big Picture," "Our Mindless Debate About 9/11," and "We Can't Even Talk About How Stupid We Are." Each has something worthwhile--which is not to say that I agree with everything Mr. Shenkman writes. Far from it; over and over again, I found that on issues, we differ. But on the underlying problem of widespread and profound voter ignorance (to say nothing of apathy)? On that, I found myself saying, over and over again, "Amen."

There are particularly pithy passages, like this one:

Studies show that the speeches of presidents today are pitched at the level of seventh graders; in the old days--a scant half-century ago or so--they talked at the twelfth grade level. Research also shows that young Americans generally know far less about politics than their counterparts did a generation or two ago, even though they spend more time in school. What meager knowledge Americans do have about candidates' positions on the issues is picked up from those inane TV spots that proliferate at election time like a biblical plague of annoying locusts.

And there is this somewhat surprising--and a bit back-handed--acknowledgment of Rush Limbaugh's audience's superior political knowledge:

You may be thinking to yourself that Rush's audience is mainly made up of "rednecks," and that, while they are a part of the broader public, they should not be considered representative. But who actually comprises Rush's audience of more than 20 million a week? According to a study conducted in 1996 by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, his listeners are better educated and "more knowledgeable about politics and social issues" than the average voter. There are two ways of looking at this. Either we must reconsider our assessment of Rush's show, conceding that it may be of a higher quality than we were prepared to admit. Or we may have to reach the unattractive conclusion that his audience is unrepresentative not because it is inferior in knowledge to the larger pool of American voters but because it is superior.

I can't help but note that either way, it amounts to a concession that probably, on average, the most informed voters in America listen to Rush Limbaugh--which can only be of cold comfort to most liberals.

One might ask, "If the American voter is so alarmingly ignorant of the facts, on what basis, then, does he make his voting decisions?" Mr. Shenkman's answer is mostly found in "Are the Voters Irrational?" Mr. Shenkman writes:

...they found that voters have invented a variety of methods to make up, in part, for their ignorance. Even inattentive voters glean much of what they need to know to cast a ballot intelligently through various "shortcuts." A voter, for example, may decide that he should vote for Candidate X because his local newspaper endorsed X and he generally agrees with the positions the paper takes. Or a voter may simply decide that he generally agrees with the Democrats and therefore votes for Democrats. Parties are like brands; people learn over time which to trust and not trust. Or a voter may follow the advice of a well-informed friend who shares his views.

There is more, of course, but I have to note that I found Mr. Shenkman's likening of a party to a "brand" somewhat sad, in that they should be like brands, but these days, I would have to conclude that both are guilty of misbranding. I do not think--heck, I know that many Democrats of sixty years ago had very little in common with the Democratic thinking of today, at least in general. I have had the unfortunate experience, for example, of listening to an elderly female relative wax on and on about various problems the country has, expressing what are now Republican positions--and yet she was a "yellow-dog" Democrat.

She was still, in her mind, voting for FDR, because, in her mind, he got us out of the Great Depression.

Likewise, it defies history and common sense to associate very many of John McCain's positions with historical republicanism or classical conservatism. The old brands no longer mean what they once did.

Just How Stupid Are We? is not a long book, but it is unfortunately somewhat depressing, as I frankly did not see much hope for the future in Mr. Shenkman's
proposed solutions to the problem, which I do not think I am being unfair in summarizing as better education and better media. I do not see much hope in those solutions, because to my mind, our educational system and our media princes and princesses share at least half the blame for the situation, if not more. I frankly do not think this situation is likely to be successfully addressed for some decades, if ever, because if we realize that literacy and knowledge levels were higher before widespread government education and compulsory attendance laws, we are hard-pressed to escape the conclusion that adding more is going to be very counterproductive--yet, to most people, the notion that the solution involves getting the government out of education altogether will seem so radical as to utterly preclude its consideration.

Overall, a very entertaining book that points out a very real problem in our politics. I recommend it despite my profound disagreements with the author as to policy specifics.

Book Review: Crunchy Cons

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Since writing this review, I have become more familiar with Russell Kirk, to whom reference is often made in Crunchy Cons, and I think it is advisable, for the sake of readers who will be approaching this review already possessing such familiarity, to note that when I made critical reference to traditionalism, I was by no means criticizing the value of tradition as I perceive Kirk to have thought of it: that is, an established body of practice, of ways of doing things, that reflect much practical experience with the nature of man and the recognition of immutable, especially Divine, truth. Rather, when referring critically to traditionalism, I had in mind the unnecessary investment of authority in etablished ways of doing things, even if those ways of doing things made no sense or were outright contradictory to Holy Writ. One might think of Jesus' observation that the Pharisees were substituting the traditions of men for the commands of God to get a good grasp of the sort of traditionalism of which I am critical.

With that small explanation, I think the remainder of my thinking in this review is largely unchanged since the original writing.

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The full subtitle wouldn't fit in Blogger's title box. The whole title and subtitle are: Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)

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Back in the days (pre-Marine Corps, of course!) when I sported hair down to my shoulders, a bandana 'round my head, and jeans with holes in the knees, I had a conversation with my father--a Republican of many decades' standing--wherein I said that, yes, I was quite conservative politically. This seemed to throw him a bit, and he asked how I reconciled my politics with my appearance.

All I could think was, "Reconcile? What's to reconcile? What do my politics have to do with the length of my hair?" Many years later, though I have come to think that long hair generally does look unkempt and unnatural on men, I still don't see that hair length has anything to do with whether a person is conservative or not. I've had similar experiences with a small host of issues, interests or attitudes I've had, things that drew strange looks or intimations that I couldn't possibly be as conservative as I maintain that I am. Sometimes people seemed to think that some interest or other of mine was incongruous with a generally conservative Christian worldview, as when one Emergent blogger seemed surprised at my considerable interest in martial arts. On other occasions, it's been my perusal of The Mother Earth News, or Organic Gardening. Some might think it odd, but I've gotten the "look" over homeschooling our children! Many times I've wondered whether it was that the person I was getting the "look" from didn't understand the subject or whether it was that he was confusing certain elements of our culture with conservatism or Christianity. Once I remarked to our pastor that we ought to change things in the church just for change's sake from time to time; otherwise, people tend to confuse what we've always done with what is scriptural--and they ain't necessarily the same!

For many years, things like this had me identifying myself as a political Independent rather than as a Republican. Republicans, I thought, too often embrace a "conservatism" that isn't so much conservative as it is a collection of attitudes--sometimes platitudes--wrapped up in a supply-side-economics, strong-national-defense box ( I suppose it would be wise to interject that I do, in fact, support supply-side economics and a strong national defense!), that they might readily jettison things that are really, eternally important as long as taxes, deficits, and spending were low. I thought that too many Republicans sported a "conservativism" that privately lamented the "takeover" of their party by "religious zealots" whilst publicly welcoming money and votes from those religious zealots in the most self-serving way imaginable. I thought that too many Republicans really don't understand the true religious and philosophical moorings of their political positions and are hence like children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. I thought that too many Republicans, even evangelical Republicans, are satisfied with merely political results and would be happy to have a country wherein homosexuality was outlawed in every state, but might not consider that just because homosexuality was illegal didn't mean that the people weren't still going straight to Hell. Republicans, I thought, might be fooled into accepting a country that looked moral instead of continuing to seek the salvation of souls. And they would all consider themselves "conservative" every step of the way.

Shoot, I still think that. I changed my registration to "Republican" only because it looks like the primaries are gonna be so cotton-pickin' critical for the foreseeable future. But I digress. I am apparently not the only conservative to experience "the look." Rod Dreher recounts part of his story:

A few summers ago, in the National Review offices on the east side of Manhattan, I told my editor that I was leaving work early so I could pick up my family's weekly delivery of fruits and vegetables from the neighborhood organic co-op to which we belonged.

"Ewww, that's so lefty," she said, and made the kind of face I'd have expected if I'd informed her I was headed off to hear Peter, Paul and Mary warble at a fund-raiser for cross-dressing El Salvadoran hemp farmers.

...

Now, it had never occurred to me, except in a jokey way, that eating organic vegetables was a political act, but my editor's snarky remark got me to thinking about other ways my family's lifestyle was countercultural, and why, though we were thoroughly conservative in our morals and our politics, we weren't a good fit on either the mainstream left or right.

That incident--one of seemingly innumerable vignettes drawn both from Mr. Dreher's life and the lives of other "crunchy conservatives"--led to a piece in the National Review titled "Crunchy Cons", which led in turn to Mr. Dreher being contacted by quite a host of people from around the country, people who identified themselves as conservatives, usually voted Republican, and yet who sported lifestyles and attitudes often associated with--well, not with allegedly conservative Republicans, I guess.

Crunchy Cons is simultaneously an exploration of the opinions and attitudes of such conservatives and a beginning attempt to state what "crunchy cons" believe. That is a fairly arduous task, and in my opinion, Mr. Dreher succeeds only partially. He succeeds in the places where he drives home the point that real conservatism has less to do with material prosperity or certain cultural norms than with spiritual fidelity and thinking based on eternal, immutable principles; he fails in the places--and there are more than a few--where, it seems to me, he does not quite appreciate the full implications of what he has said or where he has confused or conflated traditionalism with conservatism. At times, he brilliantly articulates and expounds the principle that man does not live by bread--material prosperity--alone, and that a conservatism that is not more concerned with what is good and what is right than with what is economically efficient is not real conservatism at all.

Too many of us today, in our freedom and prosperity, have become alienated from the virtues that made that prosperity possible and sustainable over the generations. Crunchy conservatism draws on the religious, philosophical, and literary heritage of conservative thought and practice to cobble together a practical, commonsense, and fruitful way to live amid the empty consumerist prosperity of what Henry Miller called "the air-conditioned nightmare."

At other times, he manages to articulate in no uncertain terms parts of what one might term essential elements of "crunchy con" thinking. As I mentioned in a previous post, the book is a gold mine of quotes, many of them remarkably insightful. It would be easy to just go chapter by chapter through the book as he touches on "consumerism," "food," "home," "education," "the environment," and "religion," just pulling out quotes. I enjoyed much of the material, and found that I was frequently inspired to seek out material by some of the authors he mentions (in particular, you hear the name "Russell Kirk" about a bajillion times in the first few chapters). Some of the material Mr. Dreher covered was familiar to me--I was familiar with many of the issues covered in the chapter on food, for example, and obviously we share an interest in homeschooling--and some was not.

That chapter on food will be an eye-opener for some people, both for the information about how food--meat, specifically--is raised (one is almost tempted to say that "manufactured" would be a better word) and for one observation which I found particularly interesting: that many large corporations actually have a vested interest in keeping an onerous regulatory environment, in that the burden of coping with excessive regulation can freeze out smaller competitors. Mr. Dreher explains:

Slow Food...(has) its chapters worldwide work to help farmers and small producers navigate the regulatory maze that puts the little guy at a significant disadvantage to big agribusiness.

This is a big deal. Distrust of big government is in the DNA of contemporary conservatives, and to see how state and federal regulatory bureaucracies put the hurt on small farmers, all to the advantage of big business, should be enough to send grassroots right-wingers to the barricades.

Several years ago, in covering this story for National Review,, I talked to Jenny Drake, a former state health inspector turned organic livestock farmer. Drake, a feisty conservative, wanted to raise her chickens and beef cattle without using hormones and antibiotics, which are ubiquitous in factory farming. Those healthy chickens of hers were a problem, though. The state of Tennessee, where she and her husband live and farm, refuses to let any chicken be sold there unless the USDA inspects the processing facilities. Alas, there are no custom-kill processing plants for chickens in the entire American Southeast. Drake told me that to build a small processing facility to meet federal guidelines would cost her about $150,000.

"The Americans with Disabilities Act, for example, means a small producer has to put in restrooms that are handicapped-accessible," she told me then. "I'd have to build an office for the inspector. That office has to have its own phone line. I'd have to put in a paved parking lot. We have to meet the same physical standards as a Tyson's"--the industrial chicken megaproducer--"and we just can't do it."

I also spoke at the time to Joel Salatin, an evangelical Christian crunchy con who runs Polyface Farm in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Salatin is well known on the international small-scale sustainable farming circuit. He's had similar problems battling idiotic regulations (e.g., the government wanted him to build changing-room lockers for his employees, even though he has no employees on his family-run farm).

"A lot of [this] is being done under the guise of protecting the general welfare and guaranteeing clean food," he told me. "But what it really does is protect big agribusiness from rural independent competition."

Put simply, it does this by writing health regulations that only relatively large companies can afford to abide by. Economist Edward Hudgins told me that it's often the case that big companies willingly absorb the cost of extra regulation because those rules "have the effect of killing off the competition."

Here, as elsewhere throughout the book, Mr. Dreher forcefully makes the point that the rich and powerful are not necessarily free-market conservatives. It can be a capital mistake to assume that corporate America is on the side of the free marketeer. True, they often present themselves as though they are, but the prudent citizen will be on the lookout.

******************

In terms of negatives, there are many places throughout the book where I found myself thinking, "Yes, but...", places where I understood the point that Mr. Dreher was trying to make but nevertheless thought that he had gotten a definition wrong, or misplaced an emphasis, failed to understand how a conservative principle is applied to a given situation, or--and this was frequent, in my opinion--confused traditionalism with conservatism. It is in dealing with these places that doing the review is hardest, for I could spend hours and hours quoting Mr. Dreher's text and responding to it. I don't want to do that. It would take too long, be boring, and would, I fear, lead the reader to believe that I disagree with the larger point of Mr. Dreher's book. Instead, I will confine myself to just one example, one that typifies the sort of errors to which I most vehemently object in Mr. Dreher's book. It is found in the very first chapter.

One day, I got a shock when I picked up my copy of the Dallas Morning News. There on the front page was a story about the Kimbers, a family we knew from our Catholic homeschool group. They're as conservative, hardworking, and traditional a family as you could hope to find. Greg Kimber ran the family's small moving business, and when Joan wasn't busy homeschooling their kids, she helped out. The recession in the early part of this decade hit north Texas hard, and the Kimbers' business began to suffer. They had to put their kids into the state's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provided supplemental medical and dental insurance for the children of the working poor. State cutbacks in CHIP, led by the Republican legislature, forced the Kimbers to choose between filling their children's teeth or their bellies. The News account told their story.

I was poleaxed by the news. The Kimbers are proud people, and hadn't let any of us know what they were going through. My wife called Joan and offered to help financially, but Joan kindly said no, that they were going to find ways to handle it themselves. She was going to go to work. The kids would be entering public school (given the rather modest neighborhood the Kimbers live in, the school was not, shall we say, an altogether pleasant place to send your kids). In the meantime, I wrote a scathing column in the News, ripping the GOP legislature for the CHIP cuts, which yanked the rug out from under this traditional Republican family. I got in touch with my inner Russell Kirk, and thundered that in case the Republicans didn't realize it, the family is the institution most necessary to conserve. Their willingness to see families like the Kimbers suffer rather than raise taxes even the
tiniest bit (Texas has no state income tax) showed where their values really were.

Well. Little did I know that I was a socialist and the Kimbers were welfare layabouts, until some of my fellow Texas Republicans pointed that out in a fusillade of stinging e-mails. I expected people to disagree with me, but I was not prepared for the contempt, the unshirted spite, that conservatives rained down on my head. I felt like my friend Mike, the guy who had his very existence as a conservative questioned because he spoke from conservative principle against a developer's plan. It was appalling to me, but quite instructive, to learn that for quite a few of my fellow Republicans, almost nothing matters more than keeping taxes low. If the economic structure we live under threatens the traditional family, well, too dadgum bad. You get the idea that for lots of these folks, "traditional family values" means nothing more than "keep the queers from getting hitched."

I was surprised at Mr. Dreher's surprise. I understand his concern about his friends and the traditional family unit. I share it. But it seems to me that here, he had entirely misdiagnosed the situation and its appropriate remedy--possibly out of the immediateness of his emotional upset--and quite unjustifiably dumped all over his fellow conservatives. To complain of their response seems almost shocking. To explain more fully, let me remind you: the Kimbers were experiencing hardships because of the recession and could not afford the dental care they desired for their children. Recessions are caused largely by excessive government, overtaxation, and poor governmental fiscal policy. Governmental involvement drives up the cost of medical and dental care for everyone. Conservatives, therefore, would prescribe less taxation and spending, not out of cheapness or ill-will, but as the only appropriate remedy! The national experience since the implementation of the Great Society programs is not, to say the least, that governmental aid strengthens families, but rather, that it destroys them. Many would argue that at least two generations of black families have been lost to this very sort of thing.To turn around and lambaste conservatives for refusing to make the problem--the underlying problem, not the immediate problem--worse seems almost incomprehensible.

Furthermore, Mr. Dreher doesn't seem to have fully appreciated that his apparent proposed solution--higher taxes for the sake of the Medicaid program--amounted to requiring everybody else to sacrifice their property and liberty (liberty to dispose of their property as they see fit, instead of as the government, in this case in the person of Mr. Dreher, sees fit) to subsidize the Kimbers' chosen lifestyle. Let me hasten to point out that I don't disapprove of their lifestyle. Far from it! I am a homeschooling father myself. However, I don't think it would be right to tax those who do not share that distinction for the sake of making it easier for me to homeschool. 'Course, I also don't think that it's right that I be taxed so other parents can abdicate their responsibility for their kids' education to the government. The situation can quickly grow complicated. But you get the point: it's hard to call taxing other people so you can indulge your chosen lifestyle a conservative position. Government is divinely ordained by God as His minister for justice, not wealth redistribution, or the plundering of one citizen to benefit another.

This is the sort of thing I found throughout the book. Mr. Dreher will beautifully articulate an important point--that too many people are focused principally on filling increasingly large, cookie-cutter McMansions with an ever-increasing collection of vapid, useless toys and ignoring the really important things in life, and calling encouraging such spendthrift habits conservative, when it is anything but, for example--and then undermine it somehow. It might be via a mis-drawn application of principles, a mis-identification of the principles involved in a particular example, or possibly through failing to appreciate that someone else might find the very thing he finds problematic a hallmark of conservative success. For example, Mr. Dreher spends a whole chapter decrying what he calls consumerism, which he seems to identify as the encouragement of pointless, wasteful spending habits that I mentioned earlier. But other people identify consumerism as

...the best and fairest way to bring goods and services to a large number of people at prices they can afford.

One can't help but get the feeling from a number of Mr. Dreher's passages that something makes him uncomfortable about the free market's effect of making abundance affordable to the masses. I rather doubt he'd articulate it that way, possibly he might even deny it, but it is an inescapable feeling nonetheless. I got the feeling, particularly in the chapter on the environment, that Mr. Dreher had given insufficient consideration to other possible ways of seeing the same set of circumstances. I found myself thinking of Victor Davis Hanson saying, in Mexifornia: A State of Becoming:

To go from trying to stay alive while crossing the border, to enjoying the bounty of Kmart and Burger King, to joining the Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club is a complex task requiring more than a single generation...What happens when all that assiduous effort to recycle trash, block power-plant construction and try to ban internal combustion engines butts up against the real needs of millions of the desperate who first want the warmth of four walls, a flush toilet and basic appliances?

As much sympathy as I have for many of Mr. Dreher's concerns, I have a hard time seeing that his answers (where provided; sometimes he is just raising the questions) will actually go very far toward dealing with those concerns.

Still, despite such caveats, the book's overall point is well-taken and much overdue: real conservatism is less about low taxes and material abundance than it is about first principles, specifically principles rooted in the fact that

...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...

Real conservatism's economic successes, which are so frequently held up as the end goal of conservatism, are actually the by-product of the consistent application of those first principles, the outgrowth of, as I wrote elsewhere of capitalism,

...liberty, the freedom of men and women to work and to determine what to do with the fruits of their labor themselves, the freedom not to have their assets plundered, the freedom to crawl up out of poverty without having to have the good fortune of being born into a privileged class or to lick the hands of those above them.

a liberty which is the recognition of man's God-endowed rights. Attempts to conflate real conservatism with a materialistic lifestyle, or reduce it to merely the maintenance of a low-tax environment, or confuse it with special privileges for big business, or the acceptance of cultural norms which are not clearly necessitated by first principles are not merely misguided, they are actively harmful and much resented by those whom Mr. Dreher has labeled "crunchy cons." So, while disagreeing vehemently with some of Mr. Dreher's specifics and recommending that you read thoughtfully and discerningly, I still recommend the book. It appears to be the opening salvo in a needed discussion.

Book Review: The Mystery of Capital

It was probably a couple of years ago--word, how time flies!--that a particularly well-known radio talk-show host recommended Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital on his show. I don't recall where, but I heard of the book from at least one other source in the same general time frame, and eventually, I got 'round to borrowing it from the library. I have since purchased a copy for my personal library and I am confident that I will refer to it with some frequency in the coming years.

The book is subtitled "Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else"--which may seem a rather dismal assessment at first glance, but when you think about it, where, except in the West, and those countries in the East, such as Japan, that have made a deliberate effort to mimic certain aspects of the West, has capitalism been a roaring success? De Soto notes that capitalism's failure to thrive outside the West is often put down to flaws in non-Western peoples. As a matter of fact, it was De Soto's discussion of this in the first chapter that served as the first of several "light-bulb" moments. Emphasis, where present, is mine:

When these remedies fail, Westerners all too often respond not by questioning the adequacy of the remedies but by blamingThird World peoples for their lack of entrepreneurial spirit or market orientation. If they have failed to prosper despite all the excellent advice, it is because something is the matter with them: They missed the Protestant Reformation, or they are crippled by the disabling legacy of colonial Europe, or their IQ's are too low. But the suggestion that it is culture that explains the success of such diverse places as Japan, Switzerland, and California, and culture again that explains the relative poverty of such diverse places as China, Estonia, and Baja California, is worse than inhumane; it is unconvincing. The disparity of wealth between the West and the rest of the world is far too great to be explained by culture alone. Most people want the fruits of capital--so much so that many, from the children of Sanchez to Kruschev's son, are flocking to Western nations.

...But if people in countries making the transition to capitalism are not pitiful beggars, are not helplessly trapped in obsolete ways, and are not the uncritical prisoners of dysfunctional cultures, what is it that prevents capitalism from delivering to them the same wealth it has delivered to the West? Why does capitalism thrive only in the West, as if enclosed in a bell jar?

Nor is capitalism's failure in non-Western countries due to lack of assets and resources. De Soto notes, still in the first chapter:

...I will also show...that most of the poor already possess the assets they need to make a success of capitalism. Even in the poorest countries, the poor save. The value of savings among the poor is, in fact, immense--forty times all the foreign aid received throughout the world since 1945. In Egypt, for instance, the wealth that the poor have accumulated is worth fifty-five times as much as the sum of all direct foreign investment ever recorded there, including the Suez Canal and the Aswan Dam. In Haiti, the poorest nation in Latin America, the total assets of the poor are more than one hundred fifty times greater than all the foreign investment received since Haiti's independence from France in 1804. If the United States were to hike its foreign-aid budget to the level recommended by the United Nations--0.7 percent of national income--it would take the richest country on earth more than 150 years to transfer to the world's poor resources equal to those they already possess.

It is important to note that De Soto is not pulling these figures out of thin air; he and his team spent several years researching them, and traveling much of the world to verify them. Indeed, due to the poor property documentation discussed extensively in the book, extensive travel and personal, on-the-ground investigation were essential to gaining the knowledge they sought.

Read De Soto's last paragraph again. It was fascinating to me. All that money--yet the people in those countries have not a fraction of the material comforts and provision we have in this country. Why? De Soto answers:

...but they hold these resources in defective forms: houses built on land whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded, unincorporated businesses with undefined liability, industries located where financiers and investors cannot see them. Because the rights to these possessions are not adequately documented, these assets cannot readily be turned into capital, cannot be traded outside of narrow local circles where people know and trust each other, cannot be used as collateral for a loan, and cannot be used as a share against an investment.

In the West, by contrast, every parcel of land, every building, every piece of equipment, or store of inventories is represented in a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy. Thanks to this representational process, assets can lead an invisible, parallel life alongside their material existence. They can be used as collateral for credit. The single most important source of funds for new businesses in the United States is a mortgage on the entrepreneur's house. These assets can also provide a link to the owner's credit history, an accountable address for the collection of debts and taxes, the basis for the creation of reliable and universal public utilities, and a foundation for the creation of securities (like mortgage-backed bonds) that can then be rediscounted and sold in secondary markets. By this process the West injects life into assets and makes them generate capital.

Third World and former communist nations do not have this representational process.

In chapter two, De Soto continues:

Imagine a country where nobody can identify who owns what, addresses cannot be easily verified, people cannot be made to pay their debts, resources cannot conveniently be turned into money, ownership cannot be divided into shares, descriptions of assets are not standardized and cannot be easily compared, and the rules that govern property vary from neighborhood to neighborhood or even from street to street. You have just put yourself into the life of a developing country or former communist nation; more precisely, you have imagined life for 80 percent of its population, which is marked off as sharply from its Westernized elite as black and white South Africans were once separated by apartheid.

I had never considered the problem in quite this way before. Maybe you haven't, either. As De Soto explains, the "representational process" that so greatly enhances Western concepts of property grew up around us gradually. We tend not to notice its importance to us and how the lack of it in other countries inhibits their success because it is part of our environment. It simply tends not to occur to us. But as soon as De Soto started outlining the problem, I thought, Of course. It only makes sense. These people have money--at least some--but no capital! How on earth could we expect capitalism to work for them?

Of particular interest is chapter five, The Missing Lessons of U.S. History. De Soto "camps out" in the United States for a while, describing how at various points the United States resembled Third World and former communist countries in the way it dealt with formal property concepts.

Also very interesting are chapters four and six, which deal with how to change the situation in Third World and former communist countries so that capitalism--which is, really, pretty much the only game in town, the only economic system capable of generating wealth for a great many people--can succeed there. De Soto is not drawing upon abstractions at this point: he is a significant advisor to the Peruvian government and his ideas are already bearing much fruit there.

While I can't totally dismiss the role that culture plays in economics--I can't help but think that culture has to underly respect for the "representational process"--there is no denying that De Soto has hit on something. Capitalism will not thrive around the world until the "representational process", until "formal property", is available to rich and poor alike everywhere, and I do not think truly effective foreign policy can be made without taking De Soto's concepts into account.

I recommend this book highly; it will greatly enhance your understanding of the problems the world's poor face, and how we can effectively help.

Also, I couldn't help but note how foundational formal property concepts are to successful capitalism, and how we damage those concepts--as in the infamous Kelo decision--at great risk to our continued prosperity and ability to help others.

Book Review: By His Grace and For His Glory

Sometimes it seems that Calvinism, and Calvinists, are in such disrepute in the Southern Baptist Convention--some might say in the larger Evangelical world--that one might reasonably conclude that Calvinism was some sort of New Age cult being surreptitiously foisted off on Southern Baptists by evil men of the worst sort. From the time I was brought to Christ under the preaching of a man who said--at considerable volume--that five-point Calvinism was a "doctrine of the devil" until recently, when a Southern Baptist seminary president tried to prune all the Calvinist professors from his faculty, it has been made abundantly clear that much of the Convention views Calvinism with the same sort of disdain with which one might regard an unsightly pimple on a hog's rear.

Indeed, Calvinism is in such disrepute in some quarters of the Convention that one might wholly despair of finding any Baptist church teaching it in any given city or town. It would not, for example, be a surprise to me to find that if a small town had only two or three Baptist churches, they were all opposed to Calvinism. Of course, it is also true that it would not surprise me to find that most of the members of such hypothetical churches had never heard of Calvinism or the TULIP acronym in the first place.

Has it always been this way? Have Baptists always--speaking generally--rejected the doctrines of grace? In By His Grace and for His Glory: A Historical, Theological, and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life, Dr. Thomas J. Nettles sets out to prove his thesis

...that Calvinism, popularly called the Doctrines of Grace, prevailed in the most influential and enduring arenas of Baptist denominational life until the end of the second decade of the twentieth century.

It is a substantial work--somewhat over four hundred pages. The introduction alone runs on for forty pages. Nor is it easy going. By that, I do not mean that it is incomprehensible or understandable only by theological professionals. I mean only that it is not a book you can skim. Your full attention is required, but if you are willing to give it, you will find yourself thoroughly rewarded.

"Landmark" Baptist historians will take issue with some of Dr. Nettles' history, for he dates Baptist history as beginning with Smyth and Helwys in the early seventeenth century, as do most historians--and as do I. I promise, I will get around to dealing with The Trail of Blood stuff eventually, but for now, whether you agree with Nettles' starting point or not, you can at least evaluate his argument as it dates back to the seventeenth century, certainly preceding the birth of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Smyth and Helwys were not themselves Calvinists, but by 1644, Calvinistic--or Particular--Baptists were numerous enough to produce the First London Confession. It is a solidly Calvinist document, stating specifically in one part, emphasis mine,

...and touching his creature man God had in Christ before the foundation of the world according to the good pleasure of his will foreordained some men to eternal life through Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of his grace leaving the rest in their sin to their just condemnation to the praise of his justice.

And in another part,

...faith is ordinarily begot by the preaching of the gospel or word of Christ without respect to any power or capacity in the creature but it is wholly passive being dead in sins and trespasses, doth believe, and is converted by no less power, than that which raised Christ from the dead.

Amid much other solidly Calvinistic thought.

Some few years later, Baptists produced the Second London Confession, which closely followed the famously Calvinistic Westminster Confession of Faith, at least in matters touching on predestination and salvation. From there, Nettles
traces Calvinism in Baptist life through the life, teaching, and ministry of Benjamin Keach, John Bunyan, John Gill, and Andrew Fuller, all Englishmen, and all influential throughout the Baptist world of the time--including the North American continent.

I found the section on Dr. Gill particularly interesting. Gill is often accused of being a hyper-Calvinist, but Nettles defends him from the charge, and I think he is successful.

I did find it somewhat disappointing that Dr. Nettles dealt so little with C.H. Spurgeon, the "Prince of Preachers" and one of the best-known Calvinists in Baptist history. However, since Dr. Nettles' focus is principally on the Southern Baptist Convention, I suppose it is understandable that he chose not to dwell on Spurgeon.

In North America, Nettles proves that such Baptist luminaries as Isaac Backus, John Leland, Luther Rice, the famous missionary Adoniram Judson, Francis Wayland, and David Benedict all supported and taught Calvinist doctrine. Then, dealing specifically with the birth of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, he shows that W.B. Johnson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention (hereafter "SBC") from 1845-1851 was a bold Calvinist; so was R.B.C. Howell, SBC president from 1851-1859; so also was Richard Fuller, SBC president from 1859-1863. Nettles shows--at some length--that J.L. Dagg was a staunch Calvinist, and I found out something at that point: the SBC has made use of catechisms.

In 1879...the SBC passed a resolution asking John L. Dagg to write a catechism for the instruction of children and servants. This action stands as firm testimony to the confidence Southern Baptists had in the theological position of Dagg, in that they were willing to submit the religious impressions of their children to his hands.

Why do we not, in the modern SBC, use catechisms? They are obviously not a strictly Catholic or Lutheran device, and I wonder if some of the theological ignorance rampant throughout our convention might not be remedied through their use.

Then there was P.H. Mell, a friend of Dagg's and president of the SBC some fourteen times, and also a firm Calvinist.

Moving on from there, we find that

The first seminary in Southern Baptist life rested on a Calvinistic foundation. In fact, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in the eyes of its founders, constituted a bulwark against the gradual encroachments of the Arminian fox into the Southern Baptist vineyard. The seminary's four faculty members, Boyce, Broadus, Manly, Jr., and Williams, as well as its most ardent promoter, Basil Manly, Sr., shared a common and aggressive commitment to the Doctrines of Grace.

Many other Southern Baptist notables are examined, and the slow, thorough decline of Calvinist thought in the SBC outlined and explained, and possibly linked to the treatment of the new (in the 1920s) Cooperative Program as being more important than the doctrine underlying it.

There is no doubt after reading the first section that Dr. Nettles has proved that a thoroughly Calvinistic history undergirds the SBC; the second section of the book sets out to expound the doctrines of grace, with a view to proving their worth and that the SBC ought to return to them. Unconditional Election, Depravity and Effectual Calling, Limited Atonement, Perseverance of the Saints, and the Doctrine of Assurance are all thoroughly explained and dealt with from a historic SBC perspective.

The last two chapters of the book deal with Liberty of Conscience and World Missions and Bold Evangelism--the last of particular interest because of Nettles' exploration of the weaknesses of modern, man-centered evangelistic techniques and approaches.

No doubt many of my readers will find their eyes glazing over at the very thought of pursuing what they consider to be theological obscurities for the length of 428 pages. But for those interested in the subject, particularly those Southern Baptists with questions and concerns about their history and theological heritage, you really cannot do better than this book. I'd go so far as to say that you cannot properly understand SBC history and theology without this book. Since I originally wrote this review, Dr. Nettles has produced a revised version.