Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Love Isn’t Sycophancy

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Think of your best friend. Chances are that the person who came to mind is somebody who has always been there for you through your struggles, and you have probably always tried to be there for him or her through theirs too. You each find strength in one another. Now imagine that this friend struggles with an addiction—maybe alcoholism, or compulsive gambling, or maybe a sex addiction. If that friend called you up and told you that they were going to go indulge their addiction—going out for a night at the bar, or to Vegas for a weekend of gambling, or to pick up a hooker or a one-night-stand—how would you respond?

If you love this friend, chances are that your response will be to try your damnedest to talk some sense into them. You might have to hurt their feelings, or raise your voice, or even threaten them . . . but you love them too much to let them go out unopposed and do something self-destructive. Your love for them does not require a blind affirmation of their every whim; no, at times love requires you to challenge people. Sometimes you have to offend them or hurt them because, if you don’t, they will end up hurting themselves. Real love sometimes has to be tough love . . . even if the person you love ends up getting mad at you and walking out of your life.

There have been times when I, and countless other Christians, have been accused of being unloving (or even of being ‘hateful’) because we are willing to challenge behaviors that we believe run counter to the long-term well-being of individuals and society. This accusation cuts us deep, because we know we are really doing the opposite. We know that love doesn’t mean unquestioning acceptance, constant affirmation, or bottomless approval. People who expect these things are narcissists; people who indulge them are sycophants. Neither are giving, or receiving, anything resembling love.

Let’s steer clear of the political third-rails of the day and consider something that most of us can agree is wrong: adultery. An adulterer can claim, with quite a lot of evidence to support his case, that he is just doing what comes naturally to him. His inborn instincts lead him to ‘spread his seed.’ Monogamy is rare in nature, after all. Who are you to tell him what he can and can’t do? Who are you to stand in the way of his happiness?

If we Christians really hated this adulterer, we would pat him on the back and say, sure, do whatever makes you happy. If we hated him, we’d help him along to his own demise and not lose a minute of sleep over it. But if we loved him like we’re supposed to, we would try to help him to see that what he’s doing is wrong. We would try to convince him to change his ways, to turn away from his sins like Saint Paul did on the road to Damascus (cf. Acts 9). Love calls us to sympathy and understanding; he, like all of us, has his cross to bear. But understanding that he faces strong temptations doesn’t mean we should endorse or support his decision to indulge them.

He might get really mad at us. He might sling insults and accuse us of being mean, or of trampling his freedom. And, sadly, sometimes he’ll be so caught-up in his own disordered desires that he’ll choose to turn his back on us so that he can cling to his sin instead. So be it. But the ones who tell him the truth—even at the risk of destroying the friendship or hurting his feelings—are the ones who really love him. The sycophants telling him what he wants to hear, on the other hand. . . .

Republican Party Officially Nominates Romney

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Mitt Romney (photo by Gage Skidmore)

The delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, have officially nominated former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) as the Republican Party candidate for President of the United States. He will stand in the November general election against incumbent president (and presumptive Democratic nominee) Barack Obama (D).

Romney has been the presumptive Republican nominee since securing a majority of pledged party convention delegates in May, following a contentious primary season. Today’s convention vote makes that nomination official. Romney is joined on the Republican ticket by his running-mate, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI 1st).

Before seeking the presidency, Romney served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007. He co-founded and served as chief executive officer (CEO) of Bain Capital, and also led the committee that organized the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He is the youngest son of former Governor George Romney (R-MI), who lost a bid for the Republican presidential nomination to Richard Nixon in 1968.

Romney is the first Mormon to receive a major-party nomination for the presidency and, if elected, would become the first Mormon president. Ryan is Catholic and, if elected, would be only the second Catholic vice president, following incumbent Vice President Joe Biden (D).

The Democratic Party is expected to formally nominate Obama and Biden for reelection at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Julian Assange and Misdirection (Updated)

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Back in December 2010, I wrote a piece defending Julian Assange and Wikileaks.org. I’m still no fan of Assange or his organization, but the fact remains that a media outlet can publish whatever information is delivered to it. The only real exception is when a legitimate government has prohibited the publication of certain information for its own national security reasons, but those laws only apply in the countries that passed them. A country cannot arbitrarily extend its laws to people in other countries.

Let’s turn this around a bit. Imagine that a Nigerian army officer is unhappy with his country’s military policies, and he decides to send me an email here on Off on a Tangent with a bunch of classified Nigerian military information. I have the right, as a U.S. based media outlet, to go ahead and publish that information. Perhaps its publication is a violation of Nigerian law, but I’m not Nigerian, I don’t live in Nigeria, and my web site isn’t hosted in Nigeria. Nigerian laws simply don’t apply to me. The Nigerian government’s only recourse in this case would be to find the rat in its army ranks and punish him in accordance with Nigerian law, which is binding on him (but not me). A good argument can be made that Off on a Tangent shouldn’t publish any country’s military secrets, but that is a moral argument, not a legal one.

So when it comes to Assange’s publication of U.S. military secrets on WikiLeaks, a Switzerland-based web site, it is quite clear that U.S. law does not apply. The servers are in Switzerland, and Assange himself is Australian and has never resided in the U.S. A strong moral argument can be made that Assange is putting lives at risk by publishing what he does on WikiLeaks, but it would appear that he committed no crime in publishing what he did. U.S. laws don’t apply to an Australian in Switzerland any more than Nigerian laws apply to, say, a Frenchman in Canada. The real criminal is the U.S. soldier who provided those secret documents to WikiLeaks, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who will likely stand trial for his crimes in September.

Assange, however, has been accused of sexual assault by two women in Sweden. The Swedish government has been trying to get their hands on him so a trial can proceed, but he has (inexplicably) been granted political asylum by the government of Ecuador, and he is now holed-up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, U.K. On Sunday, he made a speech from a balcony at the embassy in which he urged the United States to end its ‘witch hunt’ and condemned the imprisonment of Manning. I agree that the U.S. should end its WikiLeaks witch hunt . . . but Manning should indeed stand trial for his crimes, since he actually is bound by U.S. law and appears to have broken it. But what does any of this have to do with two Swedish women accusing Assange of sexual assault?

Assange is engaged in a campaign of misdirection. He’s standing on an Ecuadorian embassy balcony blathering about WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, but that has nothing to do with the actual reason he faces extradition to Sweden . . . sexual assault. Go to Sweden, Mr. Assange, and face the music.

Update, August 20, 2012, 11:50 a.m.: This article originally stated that Assange has been accused of sexual assualt by two Swiss women and faces extradition to Switzerland. This is incorrect. Assange has been accused by two Swedish women and faces extradition to Sweden. The article has been corrected. I apologize for the error.

Ed. Note, September 1, 2017: This article was published on August 19, 2012. On August 22, 2013, one of its subjects—Bradley Manning—announced that he would begin identifying as female under the name Chelsea Manning. The original names and pronouns have been left in place because they were appropriate at the time. Any future references to Manning will abide by the Tangent Style Guide guidance on names and gender pronouns.

Election Special Coverage on Home Page

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I’m continuing my ramp-up for the Off on a Tangent coverage of the 2012 presidential election, which will be quite a bit more comprehensive than it has been in previous years. In addition to the standalone election site, which will be the place to be for live blogging and election results on November 6, I’ve also just launched a new election home page widget. The new election widget replaces the three-column ‘features’ area that I launched with Website 23, which is exactly the kind of thing that I promised in the launch announcement.

The election widget contains an independent Off on a Tangent projection of where the presidential election stands today, a space for my official endorsements, and links to the last five political posts on the site. The independent projection will be updated periodically as we move toward the election in November. The formal Off on a Tangent endorsements will come out in mid-to-late September like usual.

I’m planning to continue making improvements as we move toward November, so please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see in the Off on a Tangent coverage of the 2012 presidential election.

The Silver Line and ‘Big Success’

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Here in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, one of the largest ongoing construction projects is the effort to extend MetroRail to Washington Dulles International Airport—the so-called ‘Silver Line.’ The project is decades overdue, and will eventually connect to a disintegrating rail system managed by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). The project itself is being managed by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) which, like WMATA, operates with virtually no oversight and has a history of botching projects and running them far over-budget.

The highlights of the Silver Line project so far include massive, unjustifiable, and continuing toll increases on the MWAA-operated Dulles Toll Road (ostensibly to pay for Silver Line construction), an inexplicable decision to run above-ground rails through the densely occupied Tysons Corner area where it would be worth the extra cost to go underground (since it would cause less traffic disruption and rebuilding), an equally inexplicable decision to dig a more expensive tunnel near the airport where it would not be worth the extra cost, a conflict with the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) over pier support safety, violations of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s right to work laws, and a long line of budget conflicts with the Town of Herndon, Loudoun County, and the Commonwealth.

When faced with all this madness, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (R)—notable for now being the only Republican in President Barack Obama’s (D) cabinet—described the Silver Line as being a model for big success and compared it to the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, and the interstate highway system.

Read more . . .

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.