joelashaffer

Sentiments and Soapboxes: Dave Ramsey, America's Housing Crisis and the Applying the Golden Rule joelashaffer.substack.com/p/dave-ramsey-…

@TW8170 @EWErickson Slippery Slope Logical Fallacy.

@EWErickson Where will you draw the line? Will you seal clap when a black queer woman plays Jesus in the remake of the Passion of the Christ? How is Nolan’s Odyssey different than the 1619 Project. The truth is the truth & these falsities downplay the miracle that is our western civilization

My wife and kids and I will go to church tomorrow to hear John Piper preach for our church’s 200th anniversary. My kids read the Bible, hate commies, know who Milton Friedman is and why Calvin Coolidge is the best President. But anon here declares we’re enemies of the West because we liked the Odyssey. These people really do need to touch some grass.

Always Something There To Remind Me, @joelashaffer open.substack.com/pub/joelashaff… For a grieving family, you can’t just turn that feeling off. In our eyes, the world is permanently stamped with Jalen’s presence, & there is no escaping the reminders. They are both a blessing & a curse

Tu quoque, the genetic fallacy, ad hominem, poisoning the well. X is a veritable treasure trove of logical fallacies.

My Broken Business of Lament, by @joelashaffer open.substack.com/pub/joelashaff… Since Jalen’s death on June 13th, my family and I have been swimming in a messy, heavy landscape of grief. This essay is an honest window into that internal battlefield.

@ThWKidd @joelrainey If it's a strawman, explain where and why he's wrong. When all I see are insults from those who disagree, it leads me to think most Christian Nationalists don't know how to think critically.

@joelrainey When you post a strawman expect fire.

Man. I forgot how touchy and thin-skinned people can be in this app! 😀

@JarranSainsbury Significant reach with the Anons and Bots 🤣🤣🤣🤣

The hubris of William is what makes him easy to make fun of. He pretty regularly has to remind people how important he actually is. And nothing says importance like having to go around telling people on the internet that you’re important.

@Smolderingpile @dandarling

@dandarling You're not being paranoid when they're really out to get you.

Pet peeve: Online folks who handwring that "we've lost the Republic" or "It's the end of democracy" every time a court case or policy fight or election is lost. Give me a break. This country endured a civil war. Our grandparents fought the Nazis and Communists and won. Let's have more faith in the country. Thankfully, this is an online phenomenon among people who cash in on cynicism for clicks. Rank-and-file normal people are busy living their lives and don't think the sky is falling.

@Pastor_Ken_CBC @megbasham Not in this conversation. It's much easier to commit logical fallacies, especially on X, where critical thinking goes out the window. It's all about creating rage to somehow motivate the pseudo-conservative base.

@megbasham Is there a method for determining when someone like Justice Barrett is motivated by the "progressive gaze" rather than say, her analysis of the law, facts, and Constitution, other than a sort of box score on whether decisions went the way we wanted?

To quote Rigney to Rigney, I believe the reason this happens is what he calls “the progressive gaze.” Democrats appoint who they want without reference to the feelings of conservatives. But conservatives feel that their appointees must pass some respectability test that is set by progressive academia and the beltway establishment. So we try to choose people who we believe they will not find offensive rather than people we can be confident will rule correctly. And trying to appeal to the respectability standards set by a largely progressive establishment is going to continually result in the outcome we saw today. The answer is—you have to break free of the desire for respectability that comes from the progressive gaze. You have to be willing for them to call you names and sneer at you and turn their noses up at you and not care because you know you are doing the right thing for the country your children will inherit. You have to love your country and your children more than you care about appearing respectable in their eyes.

@megbasham @AndrewTWalker @DennyBurk Megan, Andrew is helping you with some critical thinking. You often undermine your positions with logical fallacies.

@AndrewTWalker @DennyBurk Sorry, Andrew, as a woman I’m going to say it is obvious that every woman who has ever been on the court has been a disaster. So I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to say don’t put any more women on the court.

Disagree with Justice Barrett's jurisprudence all you want—that's your prerogative. But discrediting her reasoning by appeal to her sex or her status as an adoptive mother—as some on the populist right now do—is a category error. It's also textbook Bulverism, C.S. Lewis's name for the trick of explaining why someone is wrong without first showing that they are wrong: "you only think that because you're a woman." A legal argument is sound or unsound on its own terms. The sex of the one making it has no bearing on whether it tracks with the truth—the intellect's apprehension of reality is not indexed by sex. And the human intellect, male or female, is equally capable of apprehending truth. Truth corresponds to human nature's fittedness to reality as such, not truth qua sex. That sex carries real teleological weight for vocation and embodiment is true and beside the point here. The adoptive-mother line is worse because it isn't even about her reasoning. It infers bias from biography. A judge's conclusions stand or fall on the law's construction (for good or for ill), not on the shape of her family. Attack the argument, or concede you don't have one. I'm no expert on the Constitution and immigration. Justice Barrett could be wrong—if so, make that argument on the basis of text and history—not sex. Doing so on the basis of sex denies the ontological and epistemological equality of the sexes as made in God's image.

As a young man, I was warned about the progressive tendency toward “revisionist history.” It was a legitimate warning. And now we’ve got the sitting Republican VP re-writing the Watergate scandal as a “deep state conspiracy” narrative. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff.

@charlesmurray Jack Kemp

Don't know the answer to this one, but the greatest potential candidate who didn't run is Mitch Daniels by a mile. He would have been a transformative president.

Vances comment is a tragic indictment of his administration. Amazing to me that’s not obvious to him.

@joelashaffer open.substack.com/pub/joelashaff… An account of a wonderful Father's Day present from Jalen that I didn't expect, even though it was the saddest Father's Day I had ever experienced.

The most masculine men in the world are not the guys preening about it online. They are the ordinary dads who took their families to church after working all week to provide. They are the dads who get up early to read their Bibles and point their kids, however imperfectly, toward Christ.

youtube.com/watch?v=Rj1K49… This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy. Special thanks to John Bickle, on behalf of Jalen's Wheaton Football Thunder brothers, for putting this together.

@405Fan @RunItBackFDTV OKC was not winning in the 1st quarter. It was tied 16-16 and Haliburton had 9 of the 16 pts they scored. 3-4 from 3pt range. He was on fire.

@RunItBackFDTV Haliburton missed part of 1 game. JDub missed essentially 6 games. Plus okc was winning when Haliburton went out. That's a tired, lazy take.

"I hope OKC keeps Chet." - Michelle Beadle "So does Wemby... fully healthy, this could've looked different." - Chandler Parsons "Thunder only won last year because Tyrese Haliburton got hurt." - MB "Spurs are a replica of OKC." - CP "With a special person." - MB 😂 @MichelleDBeadle | @boogiecousins | @ChandlerParsons | @TeamLou23

I’ve never pastored a church. Couldn’t pay me a jillion dollars to. Never been ordained. Have no desire to. The only paid staff position I’ve ever held in a church was as an aerobics teacher in our church gym. But how in heaven’s name a woman discussing a sermon on a podcast could be objectionable to some is beyond me and what I believe to be beyond scripture. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, good. Stay sane. If you do, I’ve lived a long time and this has been my observation: Extremism, whether in conservatism or liberalism, whether in politics or religion, is never satisfied. It will always inch a little bit further. It’s a constant test of the purists.

Here is my attempt to explain the Pro-Life Movement from a 30,000-foot view and bring some clarity to it. Hopefully, the taxonomy I created doesn't oversimplify each voice. Being Pro-Life May Not Mean What You Think It Means, by @joelashaffer open.substack.com/pub/joelashaff…

"To illustrate what this looks like in practice, I’ve included a look at the “Why” behind my methods, the deeply personal story of my song I Surrender, the finished song of "I Surrender" and the scriptural lyrics that anchor it all." open.substack.com/pub/joelashaff…