Mac Donald: Statistics Do Not Support The Claim Of ‘Systemic Police Racism’

By  Ryan Saavedra and published on the DailyWire.com on June 3, 2020 and can be found here.

An op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal by Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, pushed back on the notion that there is widespread systemic racism in American law enforcement.

Violent riots have broken out in major cities across the over the death of George Floyd last week, resulting in police officers being attacked, businesses destroyed, and widespread arson and looting.

Mac Donald notes that while Floyd’s ultimately fatal arrest was horrifying — video shows that a police officer knelt on the 46-year-old’s neck for over eight minutes while Floyd said he could not breathe — it is not “representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians.”

A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing, Mac Donald writes; rather, crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions. Mac Donald writes:

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.

The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

Mac Donald further highlights violence that was committed against blacks over the weekend in Chicago and notes that the reason that blacks die from homicide at a rate 8X higher than whites and Latinos combined is not because of the police, but because of crime.

Mac Donald also highlights studies by both the Justice Department under President Obama and the finding of an African-American Harvard economist:

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

Researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found similar results. “We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers,” the report found. “Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race. This suggests that increasing diversity among officers by itself is unlikely to reduce racial disparity in police shootings.”

Did you know?

A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

Many have tried, all have failed, to demonstrate that the police are “racist.”

DIVERSITY IS A BORE

Diversity has no plot. Or rather, it has half a plot, or one-fourth or one-fifth. I mean this in a literary sense. The elements of a diversity drama are bare and simple. In the beginning was the man, the white man, the straight white man, the Christian straight white man. And then there were many—women, blacks, browns, Hindus, Haitians, gays . . . it’s a storyline that is applied to our country, colleges, movies, and corporations, whether they fail or succeed in diversity.

That’s it, the story is set. Once we go from mono- to multi-, vanilla to thirty-nine flavors, nothing else follows or needs to follow. Diversity is an end in itself. Old plays had their opening, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement, but the diversity plot is a one-two, before and after. Our progressive leaders in business, media, education, and politics envision it in precisely this way.But of course, this is too abstract and unimaginative to serve as a satisfying plot. A novel needs more than that, and so does a national story, personal biography, social mores. Plot is the abstract arrangement of incidents, Aristotle said, but we need a little more individual flesh and blood than this demographic change admits. The struggle to get home, to pass through treacherous lands and return to family and possessions, as Odysseus does—that’s a plot. The discovery of a dead body and the steady detection of the killer, the escape from bondage in Exodus and Huckleberry Finn, the course of the Confederacy from the seizure of Mt. Sumter to the surrender at Appomattox, boy-gets-girl/boy-loses-girl/boy-gets-girl-back . . . those are plots.

They have a compelling termination: freedom, home, love, defeat, truth. Aristotle also said that good plots are teleological. They drive toward meaningful conclusions; they have an “air of design.” Someone is murdered? We want to know whodunit. And not only that, we want a reason. A bank robbery that goes wrong and leaves a customer dead is abominable and horrible, but it isn’t literarily interesting unless, for instance, it comes out that the victim knew the culprits. Now we may have a mystery; there is more to learn.

But the diversity plot ends with . . . diversity. When progressive educators talk about a more diverse campus and classroom, they mean just that, more non-white faces. When HR departments in Silicon Valley call for more diversity, they generally mean more women. When politicians and business leaders proclaim, “Diversity is our strength!,” the plan ends right there. Nobody has in mind anything specific that the accomplished diversity will subsequently bring about.

It is no wonder that whatever intellectual content “diversity” once had—back when Justice Powell in the Bakke case cited it as a legal rationale that would rescue affirmative action after quotas were outlawed—has dissipated. The result of diversity was always going to be disappointing. It was anti-climactic. It wouldn’t make a good movie. When Barack Obama was elected president, the nation celebrated the diversification of the White House. But a few months later, as he turned to the nuts and bolts of governing, the president’s skin color counted for less and less. Diversity gave way to judgments of ideology and competence, pro and con. Obama’s electoral triumph would make a good plot, but it would have to end with his inauguration. The only people extending the diversity story past that day were some of Obama’s progressive defenders, who cast his critics as bigots who couldn’t handle the diversity he represented.

This is the only way diversity evokes excitement: by its absence, by resistance to it. That’s what gets (some) people motivated. A story can be crafted from that situation, with villains (privileged individuals who suppress historically-disadvantaged groups) and heroes (leaders of the oppressed). The action features deeds of discrimination, then the victims fighting back, and finally the toppling of the ancien régime.

But this isn’t really a tale of diversity. It’s older and more universal, bad guys in power overcome by underdogs. If it were a diversity plot, it would continue after the fall of the kings and dramatize a now multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-national setting. We would have a happy rainbow of groups and peoples and customs—and the audience would fall asleep.

This is why diversity survives only as a bureaucratic initiative. It has no more revolutionary thrust; the thrill is gone. It resides in the mouth of the VP of Communications, not in the heart of the disenfranchised. It suits corporate America better than the barrio and the ghetto. When you hear it, a dulling effect sets in.

In other words, when diversity emerges, interest in it slackens. Women’s Liberation in the 1960s sought to open academia and the professions to females. Their entry into the workplace made for a good plot (That Girl!, 9 to 5, Working Girl)—until women achieved parity with men. Then it got pedestrian. Females earn a whole lot more undergraduate and graduate degrees than men do, and have for many years. Medical schools are half men and half women, and so are law schools. But the parity doesn’t call out for drama. We have gender diversity in those spaces, and nobody seems to care.

Diversity is dull. It needs to fabricate an antagonist, an enemy, but the fabrications grow more strained every day. It can’t build a drama out of its own success, only its failure. In the old-fashioned domestic novel, resolution often came from marriage, which readers knew would lead to children and middle-age domesticity. There was a joyous result that readers imagined well beyond the last pages. (“Reader, I married him.”)

But diversity has no such projection. In twenty years, I hope that we will see the word and the concept as something like an old coin that has passed through too many fingers, its stamp so flattened and obscured that it is unrecognizable and has no value at all.

By Mark Bauerlein and published on February 21, 2021 in First Things and can be seen here.

Your Child Won’t Be a Pro Gymnast, So Why Are You Missing Church?

And if it did, I missed it. I didn’t get to play baseball. I didn’t get to sing. I didn’t get to go. Or, at least, I’d get there late or leave early. No questions asked. In general, at least in the buckle of the Bible Belt, the prevailing culture respected this. Though there is much about my religious background I’d rather forget, this is one of those important things that has stayed with me.

I’m not going to be the one that will condemn anyone for missing a Sunday here or there. Even in my current life as a professional Christian (i.e. one who is paid to be in church), I get to take an occasional mental health Sunday, though I will generally worship somewhere else on that day.

I respect the fact that church is extraordinarily difficult for many. There may be seasons when Sunday mornings are a non-negotiable for work. Don’t forget that there are plenty of churches offering services and Masses at other times over the weekend. It might not be convenient, it might be exhausting, but it’s certainly possible.

Seeing as how this is something we do every week, you can’t argue, as some might wish, that once or twice a month constitutes regular church attendance. Or attending whenever dance competition season winds down. Or when baseball season winds down. Or when the show closes. Or when out-of-town family leaves. What you’re teaching your kids is that you should go to church if no other important things are happening in your lives. In other words, you’re teaching them that church really isn’t that important.

(Oh, and as a fan myself, I’m here to tell you that baseball is not meant to be a year-round sport. Tommy John surgery at 16 is not normal. For the love, stop burning your kid’s poor arm out.)

Regular church attendance is being there practically every time health and weather permit. The church’s liturgy, regardless of popular opinion, isn’t merely one particular way in which a person of faith can worship or find strength. It isn’t supposed to be just another church ministry, a way in which we bait and switch outsiders into nominally aligning themselves with us for a time, before they too stop coming regularly.

No, friends. The worship gathering is central to the Christian life. Your children need to participate in worship more than they need all those other activities.Imperfect as each individual body is, the church is perfected by the work of Christ. It’s the only place in which you and your children can be fully nourished as gospel people. And if they have to go without some extracurriculars, even if they are otherwise valid pursuits, so be it. That’s a sacrifice God’s people are called to make.

The church is complicit in this, no doubt about it.

By refusing to catechize people on the importance of liturgy, we’ve de facto taught them the opposite lesson.

By creating a smorgasbord of “worship” options, we’ve made worship completely optional.

By making worship all pop music and no Word and Sacrament, we’ve taught them that they can get everything they think they need from a podcast and some jesusy records.But we parents ought to know better. It’s our duty to know better, even. If our kids don’t understand the discipline of weekly worship, that’s completely, unequivocally on us. If we don’t teach them the importance of liturgy, especially as it grows more into the counter culture, who will?

Look around you, parents. There’s nobody else.

By Jonathan Aigner and published on Patheos  on February 14, 2020 and can be found here.

NBI Seminar: Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements

I  recently had the great opportunity to lead (perhaps “teach”) a continuing legal education seminar hosted by the National Business Institute (a.k.a. NBI, see here).  The subject was “Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements” and I had opportunity to speak on four main topics in particular: Client Screenings & Case Strategy, Filings & Pleadings (with Sample Language), Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts, and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Although NBI published the materials, I retain the ownership of the portions I wrote, which I will post here in this blog. I have posted the aforesaid materials over the past few weeks a here are links to all of them:

• NBI Seminar: Alternative Dispute Resolution
• NBI Seminar: Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts
• NBI Seminar: Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements – Client Screenings & Case Strategy
• NBI Seminar: Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements – Filings & Pleadings (with Sample Language)

HISTORICAL IGNORANCE, MORAL ARROGANCE

My generation tends to think of itself as the first generation to be moral, tolerant, decent, and good. We abhor racism, sexism, nationalism, and homophobia, crimes we set at the center of past societies—all of them. We have avoided the bloody vices of slavery, torture, pillaging, religious fanaticism, and witch-burning. History, to us, is a record of moral inferiority.

But we take too much credit for the progress. A generation is good or evil according to its genuinely possible actions. No one gets extra marks for avoiding the sin of pillaging villages when he has no villages to pillage. No man deserves a cookie for forsaking religious fanaticism when he lacks the gumption necessary to muster up a religious belief. We have been patting ourselves on the back for resisting the urge to burn a witch; a witch-burning generation may as well pat itself on the back for avoiding the atom bomb.

This vilification of the past to aggrandize the present only obscures the past. We frown at the Middle Ages as a time in which Westerners used the military power of the state for the goals of the Church—as if crusaders were modern liberals who could not keep their religious beliefs in check. But the categories of church and state were meaningless to the sacramental kingdom of King Louis IX, in which the spiritual and secular orders intertwined and interpenetrated to achieve the common “business of peace and the faith,” as Andrew Jones puts it. We drop this more accurate understanding of history in order to draw a flattering comparison between our age and our forefathers’. In doing so, we transform them into a generation that faced the same temptations as our own—and thereby become “the good guys” of the two. We resist the temptations; they didn’t. Moral arrogance and historical ignorance reinforce one another. To ennoble ourselves, we make irrational barbarians out of our ancestors and ignore the complexities of their times.

This same logic is present in our shudder over the techniques of punishment applied by our forefathers. From stocks to dunkings to lashings and hangings, they showed themselves to be a savage, heartless people. But the high ground we assume as a result doesn’t hold—as if all humanity faced the same temptation to make a public spectacle of punishment, and we alone had the will to resist. In truth, we do nothing particularly praiseworthy by condemning the hangings that we could not bear to see when we never experience the temptation to do so.

The historical facts are complicated. The University of Cambridge historian Helen Mary Carrel argues that most medieval punishments were administered by small communities who took responsibility for their own criminals. Shaming punishments—like shaving the head of an adulteress or dunking a crooked merchant in the river—worked, and they worked because a person really could be ashamed to have broken the peace of an actual community of neighbors. Now, our whole system of punishment involves the removal of the criminal from the community that he wounded. If medieval France put its offenders in the stocks, at least the offender remained in community with the people he offended. He would be the object of scorn and ridicule, to be sure, but another possibility was opened to him as well. He could become the object of mercy and charity, his shame (if he accepted it) serving to end the disturbance of the actual community he had offended.

Modernity allows for no such resolution. It builds massive cities of criminals barred from the communities they have offended. Except in cases of fines and community service, restitution becomes a managerial affair, in which useless time is paid to the placeless state. Modern justice looks like modern hygiene—the immediate scrubbing away of dirt, the excising of bad people from the community, a banishment that reinforces our notion that the criminal is a different kind of being who must be made to live with his type.

People who compare our system of justice to the medieval one without taking into account the public nature of punishment and penance misunderstand the past. They cease to see the thirteenth century as a patchwork quilt of genuine communities responsible for administering justice and keeping the peace in various ways: shame, work, money, or even prayers and pilgrimages offered by criminals in order to restore a disrupted peace. Instead, they imagine our ancestors quite like themselves: people in an impersonal society that deals out punishments according to rational exchange. Within this model, our ancestors’ punishments don’t look particular and communal. They look horrible. The properly serene and calculating Lady Justice lost her mind and began to hang thieves in cages; to send counterfeiters on grueling hikes to distant cathedrals; to whip cheaters outside of the grocery store.

It is easy and flattering to detach ourselves from an unfathomable, bloody history and to consider ourselves as the peak of ethical progress. It is harder to question whether our horror over communal punishments is not that they are cruel, but that they keep the criminal in our community, making us responsible for him even as they make him responsible for us. The old ways could be cruel and intense, but they kept the criminal close to everyone else. The new ways are less bloody and humiliating, more rational and bureaucratic, but they put the miscreant at a distance. The one allowed for a common experience of penance and reunification; the other doesn’t.

The seclusion of the modern criminal from society complements my generation’s detachment from the past. Why bother to understand a time and place that we already know is benighted? The way out of this triumphalism is the way of humility. One expression of it is precisely the sense of ourselves as historical creatures. We are alive now and look back to the fathers until we take our place among the dead and become judged by future generations.

A person is good not by avoiding those evils he already finds horrible, but by avoiding those evils that he finds attractive and available. We must measure a person’s virtues by his circumstances, not our own. This is not to rationalize evil deeds, but to prevent cloistered virtue from becoming a standard of conduct. Each generation faces its peculiar demons with better or worse results. On this issue, historical pride is the characteristic trait of my peers. Historical knowledge is part of the cure.

By: Marc Barnes and published in First Things in December 2017 that can be found here.

NBI Seminar: Settlement Agreements

I  recently had the great opportunity to lead (perhaps “teach”) a continuing legal education seminar hosted by the National Business Institute (a.k.a. NBI, see here).  The subject was “Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements” and I had opportunity to speak on four main topics in particular: Client Screenings & Case Strategy, Filings & Pleadings (with Sample Language), Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts, and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Although NBI published the materials, I retain the ownership of the portions I wrote, which I will post here in this blog.

Copied below are the materials I wrote for the section entitled “Settlement Agreements.”

Thanks!

__________

V.         Settlement Agreements

            As with most forms of litigation, settlement is always an option as an alternative to going to a hearing.  Settlements, of course, often satisfy neither party, but they put the parties in control of their own destinies and avoid the risk of a hearing.

The typical property settlement agreement includes the following:

• dates of marriage and separation;
• the grounds for the divorce;
• jurisdiction;
• a statement pf the intention of the parties to settle;
• acknowledge or waiving disclosure of information;
• acknowledgment of representation (or lack thereof);
• that the agreement is to be incorporated into a decree (and not merged);
• acknowledgment to be separate and apart and to release one another of anything not mentioned on the agreement (including any responsibility to the other);
• division of assets and liabilities (what will and will not be divided, how, and when);
• is a QDRO necessary?
• provisions or waiver of alimony, alimony pendente lite;
• provisions regarding inheritance, health insurance, life insurance, retirement beneficiary;
• provisions for attorney’s fees;
• mutual cooperation (e.g.: executing documents);
• standard contract language (default/breach, integration, choice of law, etc);
• tax waiver;
• What about child custody, college tuition, child support, or provisions for adult children?

What If We Don’t Have to Choose Between Evolution and Adam and Eve?

How insights from genealogy can help change the terms of a contentious debate.

INTERVIEW BY REBECCA RANDALL on JANUARY 30, 2020 in Christianity Today and can be seen here.

Ever since Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, Christians have struggled to locate Adam and Eve within an evolutionary past. According to the traditional reading of the first chapters of Genesis, God created Adam and Eve directly and all human beings descended from that first couple. Yet many Christians have discarded this belief on the basis of evolutionary science, which holds that human beings, having descended from animals, first appeared on earth as a population rather than a single, divinely created pair.

S. Joshua Swamidass, a computational biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, wants to change the terms of this contentious debate. In his book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry, Swamidass affirms both evolution and the traditional reading of the Genesis creation account. Drawing on findings from his field of computational biology, he contends that the lineage of Adam and Eve should be traced using genealogy rather than genetics. Viewing the origins debate through a genealogical prism, Swamidass presents a scenario in which the special creation of Adam and Eve thousands of years ago happens on a parallel track with evolution.

The Genealogical Adam and Eve carries a wide range of endorsements from theologians, atheist biologists, and believing scientists from across the origins-debate spectrum. CT science editor Rebecca Randall interviewed Swamidass about how his ideas might open new avenues of conversation between science and theology.

What is your research background? How did you come to study the genealogy of Adam and Eve?

I was raised a young-Earth creationist, and I moved to understanding evolutionary science and seeing legitimacy to it. Now, I use artificial intelligence to explore science at the intersection of biology, chemistry, and medicine. As a computational biologist, one of the things I care about is understanding how what we’re learning from the human genome influences our understanding of human origins. Questions of ancestry and origins are one area of focus for me at Peaceful Science, the scholarly community I help lead.

Who is your audience? Who are you trying to reach: young-Earth creationists or evolutionary creationists?

There are three main audiences to whom I’m speaking. One audience is my secular colleagues in science. Most of them aren’t Christians, but they want to effectively engage the public, including the religious public.

The second is nontraditionalists, such as evolutionary creationists at organizations like BioLogos. I’m really trying to encourage them to take a more welcoming approach to traditional theology.

The last group is traditionalists: people who feel committed to a traditional interpretation of Scripture. I’m inviting them to engage with evolutionary science. I realize that many of them think that evolution is a myth. That’s okay. We can still recognize together that evolutionary science isn’t actually in conflict with their beliefs.

Your research is about genealogy, not genetics. Could you explain the difference for those who might interchange those terms? Why is this so key?

There’s been a lot of conflict about how science expresses its understanding of Adam and Eve. It has to do with misunderstanding the word ancestor. We can understand it in the genetic sense, meaning someone we get our DNA from. Or we can mean it in a genealogical sense, meaning someone whose lineage we descend from.

Genetics works in a very nonintuitive way. For example, my parents are both equally 100 percent my genealogical ancestors, and the same is true with my grandparents and great-grandparents. But my parents are each only one half of my genetic ancestry; my grandparents are one quarter; my great-grandparents are one eighth. Genetic ancestry just dilutes to the point where the majority of our genealogical ancestors pass on no DNA.

Why is that important? Scripture doesn’t tell us about genetic ancestry. It does, however, tell us about genealogical ancestry. Historically, we’ve believed that Adam and Eve are the ancestors of everyone. We can ask: Does this mean genetic ancestors or genealogical ancestors? Well, Scripture can’t possibly be talking about genetic ancestry. It has to be talking about genealogical ancestry.

That recognition really opens up an immense amount of space for theology. As Christians, we’ve had a lot of anxiety over what science is telling us about Adam and Eve. But these conflicts are based on what science says about our genetic ancestors. If we focus on genealogical ancestors instead, there might be far less conflict than we first imagined.

Can you outline what evolutionary science has suggested about Adam and Eve up until your research?

My book doesn’t exist to challenge the evolutionary science. The two starting points are: Humans share common ancestry with the great apes. It really looks like God created us through a providentially governed process of common descent. The second idea is: It seems like there’s no moment when our ancestors drop down to a single couple in the last few hundred thousand years.

People have taken those starting points and concluded, first, that the human population never gets down to a single couple; and second, that Adam and Eve, if they existed, must have shown common ancestry with the great apes.

I know it’s a subtle distinction, but what exactly do we mean by human? And what exactly do we mean by ancestor?

If we keep straight what the science is actually saying, the story of Genesis could be true as literally as you could imagine it, with Adam being created by dust and God breathing into his nostrils and Eve being created from his rib. But evolution is happening outside the Garden, and there are people out there who God created in a different way and who end up intermingling with Adam and Eve’s descendants. It’s not actually in conflict with evolutionary science.

In the book, you write on what it means to be human according to science and what it means to be human according to theology. What are some of the possible answers to these questions?

In science, there are a whole range of answers. In a recent book called Adam and the Genome, there’s a commitment to saying that humans must be Homo sapiens. But that’s not even the consensus position of science. Some scientists use the term Homo sapiens to refer to our species, or they expand the Homo genus to include other species like Neanderthals, too. Thinking about humans in that way might just hide the most important part of the conversation under a false sense of certainty. Scientists cannot agree on a precise definition of our species or our genus. As we look back into our past, our vision grows murky.

In theology, sometimes human beings are defined as those made in the image of God. But theologians and interpreters of Scripture can’t find exact agreement what that means either. There are three main views on what it means to bear God’s image: the substantive, which locates the image in our capacities, such as thinking and feeling; the relational, which locates the image in our relationships with one another and with God; and the vocational, which locates the image in our calling to rule over creation. But those simple categorizations hide a lot of complexity and disagreement. Theologians are just as unsettled on the meaning of the image of God as scientists are on the meaning of human.

In my book, I suggest that one valid definition, from the point of view of Scripture, is to define human beings as Adam, Eve, and their descendants. There might be biological humans, fully human, outside the Garden, but Scripture is bound to the story of Adam, Eve, and their lineage. It is not talking about others, even if they have the same degree of biological humanness as us.

This leaves open lots of questions about the meaning of the image of God, the essentials of humanness, and how we think about the possibility of people existing outside the Garden. This possibility has been the subject of conversation for centuries. Scripture suggests they exist, but it’s like they appear in the peripheral vision. It’s a grand invitation for theologians to wonder together about who they could have been.

That’s one of the grand conversations. Let’s have that conversation.

One of the stickier parts of studying this history and thinking about populations living alongside Adam and Eve is that you’re forced to confront objections of racism in our understanding of these humans. What lessons have you learned from wrestling with this personally?

One thing I’ve learned is it’s really common for people to bring race into questions about human origins, often to attack those with whom they disagree. We all inherit that legacy of racism. Origins is often approached from a very whitewashed perspective. It doesn’t really engage the concerns of people of color, who are often underrepresented in the conversations. What I found, as a dark Indian, is that these questions of origins are actually very closely tied to our concerns about our worth and dignity in the world.

This conversation doesn’t have to be so whitewashed. There’s a real value in going back to that history of racism, to uncover it and work through it. There is an opportunity to work through our understanding of justice, mercy, and inheritance in a way that connects with the concerns of African Americans, Indians like myself, and many other people that are so underrepresented in the conversation.

The important thing to emphasize is that the science of origins is solidly against the idea of a biologically distinct race. This is something that really needs to be said more often. We have a better understanding of how we are all connected in one family. Genealogical science makes that clear.

All of the science that supported racism by arguing that we’re all disconnected populations—some of us descending from Adam and Eve, some of us not; some of us with certain biological abilities, and some of us not—that all turns out to be untrue. Some Christians were skeptical of evolution because it appeared to challenge the historical doctrine of monogenesis—the idea that all human beings descended from Adam and Eve. And it turns out that the rival theory, polygenesis, really is false.

Could you define polygenesis?

Polygenesis was a false theory of origins that was often conscripted to provide support for racism. It’s the idea that the humans alive today are divided into biological groups that have been separated in the past and have distinct biological abilities, different theological roles, and varying levels of rights and dignity. That’s just totally false. One of the main reasons people historically rejected evolutionary science is that it seemed to be teaching polygenesis. In fact, for about a century, many scientists would have endorsed that theory. Then, starting in the 1970s, several different lines of evidence cropped up to demonstrate that polygenesis is complete nonsense.

In light of your work, what are some ways that different viewpoints on human origins can come together?

This book reshuffles the deck in many ways. It isn’t a single model for Adam and Eve. Rather, it’s a retelling of the science of origins in a way that makes space for lots of differences. There’s more space in science than we’ve been led to believe.

People from all sides of the conversation are reconfiguring where they stand. There’s an opportunity for a new way forward, to make space for people to come to a less oppositional and more conversational relationship with mainstream science. That’s what to look forward to right now.

One fun question: Personally, I enjoy uncovering family history. I’ve connected with different genetic relatives over the years. What do you think about the rise in popularity of DNA kits? For those interested in ancestry, what can we be thinking about as Christians?

Keep in mind, if you go back a few thousand years, we all share the same family. As Christians, we know that our origins are important. But we also know that what we inherit is more than our DNA. As Christians we should be thinking more broadly about ancestry and specifically about our inheritance. What is it that we inherit—biologically, culturally, physically, societally? When we look at the question through these different lenses, we come upon a wealth of different understandings of things like original sin, justice, and race. We enter into a grand dialogue in theology that’s far richer than any DNA test would be.

NBI Seminar: Alternative Dispute Resolution

I  recently had the great opportunity to lead (perhaps “teach”) a continuing legal education seminar hosted by the National Business Institute (a.k.a. NBI, see here).  The subject was “Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements” and I had opportunity to speak on four main topics in particular: Client Screenings & Case Strategy, Filings & Pleadings (with Sample Language), Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts, and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Although NBI published the materials, I retain the ownership of the portions I wrote, which I will post here in this blog.

Copied below are the materials I wrote for the section entitled “Alternative Dispute Resolution.”

Thanks!

__________

Alternative Dispute Resolution

            There are three main alternatives to litigation to resolve a divorce matter: negotiation, mediation, and arbitration.

• Negotiation:

            Resolving property division in a divorce nearly always begins with negotiation.  As with most cases in any area of the law, negotiation involves weighing the odds of success or failure at a hearing (or weighing the chances of one proportion of property division over another) against the costs (financial, time, and/or emotional) of litigation.  Negotiation often keeps the parties reasonably amicable.

• Mediation:

            Mediation is an attractive alternative as it is often cheaper than litigation.  Mediation potentially also moves the case along faster.  As with negotiation, mediation can help preserve some amicability between the parties.  Private mediation is permitted and there is a provision for counties to authorize mediation in the Pennsylvania code (23 Pa.C.S.A. Section 3901(a)), but it may not be ordered in cases where there has been domestic violence within the preceding twenty-four (24) months.  Mediation is informal compared to its alternatives (arbitration and litigation), but it allows each party to feel that s/he has been heard and “have their day in court,” but in a more relaxed setting.  The mediator does not make legal decisions or make legal determinations.  His role is to simply guide the conversation between the parties to a resolution.

• Arbitration:

            Arbitration is more formal than mediation, but not quite litigation.  Typically, the parties must work together to select a neutral arbitrator who will decide the case.  The agreement/contract with the arbitrator typically contains the specific issues to be heard and decided by the arbitrator.  The arbitrators are commonly retired judges.  Arbitration is typically binding and unappealable (absent bias and/or clear misapplication of the law).  Arbitration can be costly, but if the case is contentious, it may prove to be cheaper than litigation.  Support and alimony can also be issues heard by the arbitrator.

Leftist Values Are Causing Young Americans to Be Miserable

By Dennis Prager and published on January 28, 2020 in The Daily Signal and can be seen here.

It seems that Americans may have been happier, and certainly less lonely, during the Great Depression and World War II than today. (Photo: Vichai Phububphapan/Getty Images)

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU.

I began part one of “Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?” with data showing the apparently unprecedentedly high rate of unhappiness among young people in America (and elsewhere, but I am focusing on America).

The rates of suicide, self-injury, depression, mass shootings, and loneliness (at all ages) are higher than ever recorded.

It seems that Americans may have been happier, and certainly less lonely, during the Great Depression and World War II than today, even with today’s unprecedentedly high levels of health, longevity, education, and material well-being.

There is, of course, no single explanation, and I listed a number of possible explanations:

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Increased use of illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse, and less human interaction because of constant cellphone use are two widely offered, valid explanations. Less valid explanations include competition, grades anxiety, capitalism, and income inequality. And then there are young people’s fears that because of global warming, they have a bleak, and perhaps no, future.

But I do believe that a loss of values and meaning are the two greatest sources of unhappiness.

Among the values lost are those of communal associations. As the great foreign observer of early American life Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831, Americans’ unique strength derived largely from their participation in innumerable nongovernmental associations—professional, social, civil, political, artistic, philanthropic, and, of course, religious.

But these have all dwindled as government has become ever larger. Whereas Americans got together and formed bonds of friendship through nongovernmental associations, through what organizations will Americans form friendships today?

In a video presentation at its 2012 national convention, the Democratic Party offered its answer: “Government’s the only thing that we all belong to,” the narrator said.

Then there are traditional middle-class values, like getting married first and then having children.

Today, a greater percentage of Americans are born to unwed mothers than ever before, and fewer people are marrying than ever before. There are, for the first time in our history, more single Americans than married Americans.

While it is certainly possible to feel lonely in a marriage, people are far more likely to feel lonely without a spouse, and increasingly without children, than with a spouse and children.

And now we come to the biggest problem of all: the lack of meaning.

Aside from food, the greatest human need is meaning. I owe this insight to Viktor Frankl and his classic work “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which I first read in high school and which influenced me more than any book other than the Bible.

Karl Marx saw man as primarily motivated by economics; Sigmund Freud saw man as primarily driven by the sexual drive; Charles Darwin, or at least his followers, sees us as primarily driven by biology.

But Frankl was right.

As regards economics, poor people who have meaning can be happy, but wealthy people who lack meaning cannot be.

As regards sex, people who do not have a sexual life (such as priests, who keep their vow of chastity; many widowed and divorced older people; and others) but have meaning can be happy. Sexually active people who do not have meaning cannot be.

As regards biology, there is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Every creature except the human being does fine without meaning.

And nothing has given Americans—or any other people, for that matter—as much meaning as religion. But since World War II, God and religion have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

The result?

More than a third of Americans born after 1980 affiliate with no religion. This is unprecedented in American history; until this generation, the vast majority of Americans have been religious.

Maybe, just maybe, the death of religion—the greatest provider of meaning, while certainly not the only—is the single biggest factor in the increasing sadness and loneliness among Americans (and so many others).

A 2016 study published in the American Medical Association JAMA Psychiatry journal found that American women who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide. Common sense suggests the same is true of men.

The bottom line: The reason so many young people are depressed, unhappy, and angry is the left has told them that God and Judeo-Christian religions are nonsense; their country is largely evil; their past is deplorable; and their future is hopeless.

That seems to be a major reason, if not the reason, for so much unhappiness: not capitalism, not inequality, not patriarchy, sexism, racism, homophobia, or xenophobia but rather having no religion, no God, no spouse, no community, no country to believe in, and, ultimately, no meaning. That explains much of the unprecedented unhappiness.

And it explains the widespread adoption of that secular substitute for traditional religion: leftism. But unlike Judaism and Christianity, leftism does not bring its adherents happiness.

NBI Seminar: Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts

I  recently had the great opportunity to lead (perhaps “teach”) a continuing legal education seminar hosted by the National Business Institute (a.k.a. NBI, see here).  The subject was “Divorce Procedure & Settlement Agreements” and I had opportunity to speak on four main topics in particular: Client Screenings & Case Strategy, Filings & Pleadings (with Sample Language), Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts, and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Although NBI published the materials, I retain the ownership of the portions I wrote, which I will post here in this blog.

Copied below are the materials I wrote for the section entitled “Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts.”

Thanks!

__________

Discovery, Lay Witnesses & Experts

• Basics

            Discovery is an important part of virtually every divorce.  There are a variety of ways to secure the information necessary to adequately navigate the client through the property division process.  First and foremost, having the client secure and furnish the lawyer all of the documentation and information he has in his possession is the easiest and presumably fastest way to obtain it.  If the client does not know what all is owed/owned by the parties, or cannot secure information and/or documentation, and/or is simply uncertain, it may be a good idea to conduct formal discovery.  How complex or intense or comprehensive the discovery process will be depends on the client’s resources to sustain the discovery process, and the complexity of the particular case.  More often than not the parties have a good idea of who s/he owns and/or owes and what the spouse has as well, so the discovery can be fairly focused.

            A first step for an attorney to take after a client hires him for a divorce is to create some sort of list, spreadsheet, or chart of all the known assets or liabilities of the marriage that is easily sortable, readable, and modifiable, so that one can have a clear picture of the marital finances as information becomes available.  When creating the spreadsheet, be sure to distinguish between premarital / separate property, joint (or comingled) property, marital property, post-marital property, and/or anything covered by a pre/post nuptial agreement.  It is important to remember that just because one’s client’s name (or the spouse’s name) does not appear on a particular asset, does not mean that party does not have a marital interest or claim on that property in divorce.  It is also wise to instruct one’s client to gather all documents in his/her possession as soon as possible before the opposing spouse takes them and/or disposes of them.

            Discovery in the context of divorce is not substantially different, in terms of procedure and forms, from discovery in most other forms of typical civil litigation.  Typical discovery requests consist of interrogatories, requests for production of documents, and admissions.  It is worth noting that while discovery is generally permitted in divorce, it requires leave of court in other areas of family law (e.g. custody, support, etc).

            For those unfamiliar, interrogatories are merely a list of questions to the other party asking for various information regarding the marriage and the property held by it.  Requests for Production of Documents is pretty self-explanatory: it is merely a list of requests for particular documents regarding the marriage and the property held by it.  Requests for Admissions are little unusual in divorce cases, but they are sometimes used.  A Request for Admission sets forth a statement of purported fact, and requests the responding party to admit it, or deny it with specificity. Under Pa.R.C.P. 4014 admissions that go without a substantive response within thirty (30) days of service are supposed to be deemed admitted, so there is some pressure to respond to them, however court decisions under this Rule have removed most of its teeth, which has resulted in the hard thirty (30) day deadline having very little bite.

            Responses to all discovery requests are, of course due within thirty (30) days per the Rules of Civil Procedure.  If no responses are forthcoming after thirty (30) days, then one must remind the opposing party/attorney in good faith that the responses are due.  If, after a reasonable time, the responses are still not forthcoming, then a motion to compel discovery (and for sanctions if appropriate, see P.R.C.P. No. 4019) may be necessary.  Like any other form of civil discovery requests, the responding party can always object to a particular request as being overbroad or burdensome or some other objection, which can be resolved by a judge.

            Of course, one need not always send the opposing party the discovery requests.  Each party also has the right to issue subpoenas for documentation from third parties if the opposing party refuses and/or cannot furnish the requested documentation.  Of course, a subpoena is typically for documentation that is not in the name of the client.  Sometimes it may be more effective to send the opposing party a set of authorizations to sign along with the discovery requests.  The authorizations can be for various banks or financial institutions (for example) giving the opposing party and/or his attorney permission to go to those banks or institutions directly to secure the desired documentation.

            Finally, depositions are also a possible way to conduct discovery.  A deposition is simply like an interview that is under oath and held before a stenographer.  The attorney who requests the deposition may ask the person being deposed (e.g.: the opposing spouse) a variety of probing questions in order to gather information and data.  A spouse is an obvious target for a deposition, but tax preparers, financial planners, and co-workers, among others, can also be good candidates for deposition.

• What to request

            The things one can request in discovery may seem overwhelming at first as the possible options seem almost listless.  It may seem obvious, but documents one should request should generally involve or reflect the assets, income, debts, and/or liabilities of the parties.  Below are some suggested items about which one may issue a discovery request:

• Bank accounts (individually, jointly, or with a third party);
  • this may include cancelled checks;
  • savings, checking, CDs, money market accounts, etc;
  • this helps with tracing money expenditures;
    1. This may give a lead to investigate accounts the other party has refused to disclose;
  • Paypal?

• Real estate (individually, jointly, or with a third party);
  • mortgages and liens on the real estate;
  • Dates of acquisition;
  • Names on the deed(s);

• Businesses (e.g.: a landscaping business, or law firm, or pizza shop);
  • This opens up a whole subset of discovery about the assets, liabilities, income, debts, of the business(es);

• Cars, boats, and other large items;
  • Outstanding notes/loans for the same;
  • Approximate current value;
  • Dates of acquisition;
  • Names on the title(s);

• Jewelry, art, collections, memorabilia, and any other personal property of any significant value;

• Stocks, bonds, investments for the most recent five (5) years;

• Pensions, 401(k)s, IRAs, retirement funds, annuities, defined pension plans, etc;

• Tax returns for the most recent five (5) years.  These will include crucial information regarding:
  • income from all employment;
  • capital gains;
  • interest;
  • dividends;
  • investment distributions (e.g.: IRAs);
  • unemployment compensation, social security, etc;
  • W-2s and 1099s;
  • Refunds (sometimes a party overpays taxes in order to receive an artificially large refund);
  • Deductions (this may provide a lead to undisclosed assets);

• Pay checks / stubs;

• This is related to the “Businesses” noted above.  If someone is self-employed, there is always a chance that what is being reported on a tax return regarding business income is not precisely accurate.  As a result, discovery into some of the inner workings of a business may be illustrative.  For example, if a spouse runs a pizza shop, then perhaps discovery into cash register receipts, supply purchases, payroll, and/or business purchases may be helpful to discern what the actual business income is;

• Any documentation of loans a party may have, especially the application for the loan which likely has financial disclosures on it.  This will enable the attorney to compare and contrast the financial disclosures on the loan application with what the party claims;

• Copies of any and all bills, utilities, expenses, paid;

• Gifts;

• Law suits, and other legal claims;

• Social media;
  1. This may reveal other relationships, employment, money expenditures, activities, locations, etc.
  1. Try to keep social media posts to a minimum;
  1. Looking at the public parts of someone’s social media accounts is fair game;
  1. Do not send a friend request (or something similar) to the opposing party, which would allow one to see otherwise private material;
  1. Access?  This is balanced by probative value.

• Text messages, emails, electronically stored data (do not forget cellphones, ipads, etc, if relevant).

            When it comes to social media, a client should be advised to be sensible and temperate.  Avoid online fights, insults, openly discussing the divorce, or mistakenly posting something that could be “incriminating.”

            Authentication of social media and text messages for use at a hearing is a new area of the law, so tread carefully.  Simply having the right telephone number or user name on the text or post will not be sufficient in and of itself to authenticate the text or post as there is no way to confidently discern who sent it or posted it.  It seems the Court will evaluate texts and social media posts on a case-by-case basis by taking a holistic view of the post/text with full consideration circumstantial evidence that could link the text/post to a certain person.

            Finally, witnesses – both lay and expert – are often called upon to testify at a deposition or hearing.  Lay witnesses can testify to what s/he has seen or heard regarding what the parties have done, spent money on, and/or said about their finances.  For example, an employee of the spouse’s pizza shop may be able to testify as to how much business it does, where the money is kept, and/or how its finances are managed.             Sometimes expert witnesses are required to discern or illuminate a couple’s financial picture.  For example, a forensic accountant may be needed to piece together the disparate financial documents and evidences to form a coherent financial picture.  Perhaps a tax preparer, or realtor, or accountant may be needed to shed light on a disputed economic issue.  Of course, in the twenty-first century, it may also be necessary to have some sort of technology/computer expert to discern whether electronic information was deleted to altered.