A Peculiar Election

Keeping Oaths

This has been a peculiar election season.  For the first time in ages, the issue of public debt has been a foundation of the public debate.  Does this represent a paradigm change?  In this fixation over public debt, we are not alone.  Public debt and government spending will be one of the major, if not the major, issue of the upcoming US presidential elections in 2012.  We have seen polities in Europe shaken to their  very foundations over national indebtedness that is bringing government to its knees before our eyes.  Ratings agencies have overnight had an epiphany: countries can become bankrupt.  They have started downgrading national credit ratings.  Unheard of in the West of living memory.   

We wonder whether the epiphany has been sufficient.
  The debt problem this time around is not faced by some banana republic in South America.  This time it is a Western problem.  Which is to say, it is a problem of shared political ideology.  Fabian socialism is finally showing its cancerous canker. 

Markets are roiling, people are panicking--but the underlying realities are perfectly simple.  Socialism in the West has run out of other people's money as socialism always does; its next trick is to borrow in order to continue spending other people's money; the final denouement is national bankruptcy. 

We sense that most people in New Zealand believe this is a temporary problem.  Like most households, the typical voter thinks that with a bit of belt tightening, a pinch of sagacious management, and a dollop of good economic weather the ship of state will right itself and sail on into the sunrise.  In other words, it is not a crisis.  Which is fair enough.  We are not yet at the stage of Italy, Greece, and Portugal.  Not yet, although well on the way.  The archetypical New Zealander still wants socialism to be our practical ruling mantra--it's just that it has to be slowed down a bit. That's National's economic ideology in a nutshell.  

But eventually we will get to the state of being a Greece or Italy.  Why?  Because socialism and its demand rights-based liturgy of state spending to achieve egalitarian nirvana will be driven to spend more and more and more.  It is the only hope most of us have.  The beast of covetous demand and grievance-based envy is insatiable.  Today it is insulated houses; tomorrow it is a higher minimum wage; in a week's time it will be higher taxes. 

So, this election--with its concern about debt--is really a case of New Zealand taking time out for a cup of tea before socialist materialism drives us further on into self-destruction. In other words, our concern about debt levels is nothing more than a twinge of mild anxiety.  There is no conviction involved.   Everyone agrees that "a brighter future" means we can look forward to more government spending than ever before, and bigger and bigger government's sucking the life blood out of the economy, as soon as things become more "normal".  This is our "bright" or "better"  future.  Socialists (such as we all are now) can offer nothing else. 

Are we downcast?  Not at all.  It would be more of a consternation if New Zealand were sailing along in a socialist paradise.  We are an Unbelieving country, a people who hate and despise the Living God and His Christ.  There will be inevitable consequences as a result: crime, disease, family dissipation, unrest, riots, penury.  God has warned us.  Kiss the feet of the Son, lest He become angry.  We long ago stopped reverencing His Son, the Messianic King of the world.  The anger of God awaits. He wrath is rising.  

But the end game is always the Lord's.  He will bring us to peace, and plenty, and prosperity.  But it will be through the way of national repentance, faith, and the life of the Spirit.  We will likely not see it in our lifetimes--but it will most certainly come to pass.  Our duty, as Christians, is to play the parts and roles given to us by God in our times--with gratitude, joy, and filled with faith--not in man, nor in money, nor in anything that money can buy, but in the Lord Himself. 

He has sworn oaths, and He will keep them.