Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Scars on Your Forearms

Posted on Tuesday, December 24, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

I have heard that this post was quoted this morning by @EWErikson on the Rush Limbaugh show, so I bumped it to the top so visitors could find the whole thing more easily. Welcome, all.

I once heard a story told of Ravi Zacharias, where he was being driven around a campus where he was to speak, and in the course of the tour they went by the art museum. This museum was designed as an attempt to match the same kind of nihilism that they would hang on the walls inside — doors that didn’t open, staircases that didn’t reach the top, columns that didn’t go all the way — I don’t know the particulars, but that kind of dada stuff. Zacharias made a comment that went right to the heart of matter when he said, “I’ll bet they didn’t do the foundation like that.”

Van Til once observed that unbelieving thought has to oscillate between rationalism and irrationalism, and the inconsistency that Zacharias pointed to is an example of that. In the political realm, they usually manage the oscillation frequency by being irrational when it comes to the demands of their own lusts (personal choice must rule), and rational when they demand that Christians play by “the rules” (we must live in community). In short, we are called upon to “rationally” support their forays into insanity. We believers earn the capital of cultural rationality, which they get to spend on their various benders.

Because we are all busy trying to live quiet and peaceable lives, as the apostle instructed us, this can go on for a while before everybody wakes up and says what the heck.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 31

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. —Hebrews 4:14–16

Devotional:
But since there is no one of the human race worthy to present himself to God, and to enter into his presence, our heavenly Father himself, to deliver us at once from shame and fear, which might justly depress all our minds, has given us his Son Jesus Christ our Lord to be our Advocate and Mediator with him; introduced by whom we may boldly approach him, confident, with such an intercessor, that nothing we ask in his name will be denied us, as nothing can be denied to him by his Father.

And to this must be referred all that we have hitherto advanced concerning faith; because, as the promise recommends Christ to us as the Mediator, so, unless our hope of success depend on him, it deprives itself of all the benefit of prayer. For as soon as we reflect on the terrible majesty of God, we cannot but be exceedingly afraid, and driven away from him by a consciousness of our unworthiness, till we discover Christ as the Mediator, who changes the throne of dreadful glory into a throne of grace; as the apostle also exhorts us to "come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." —Institutes, III, xx, xvii

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Leadership and Fake Imitations

Hortonian Politics

Political leadership in democracy is a tenuous business.  Obviously it rests upon votes--that is, having enough of them.  But before the votes comes something intangible.  Winning and maintaining popular support depends upon the perception that the political leader has integrity, is honest, and can be trusted.  Even opponents respect the political rival who has integrity.  When, however, integrity is lost there is little that can be done to restore it. Every legislative or policy direction becomes a hundred times more difficult to achieve. 

One of the reasons George Bush failed to unite the country was due to the widespread belief that he had stolen the election by a recount in Florida.  He was deemed duplicitous from the get-go.  President Obama is floundering now because a majority of people have decided that he is untrustworthy, deceitful, and a liar.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Warehouse Full of Guile

Posted on Saturday, December 21, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

[In this important piece Douglas Wilson addresses the issues of the religious foundations of secularism and how that religion is being enforced upon Western citizens.  The specific occasion is the brouhaha that has broken out over the entertainment company A&E trying to enforce its morality upon its staff and contractees--in this case the Duck Dynasty, Robertson family.  The secularists and the talking heads and the Commentariat generally think this is a jolly good thing.  Beliefs and views such as those held by the Robertson's are to be expunged from the public square.  And, the argument runs, A&E are perfectly entitled to insist that their contractees do and act as they require.  Except, bakers and photographers have been prosecuted for refusing their services to homosexuals pretending to marry.  The secularists hold to both positions.  What comes out in the wash is a startling declaration of how secularism wants to repress and oppress that which it utterly rejects--namely, the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. Ed.]

The contradictions of the secularist mindset have been exposed numerous times, but it is a rare opportunity when this happens while millions of people are staring at it.

Put another way, the rhetoric of tolerance and mutual respect as preached by these intoleristas is a sham, a farce, a lie, a trick, a subterfuge, a whopper — it turns out we have a lot of words for this activity — a fabrication, a deceit, a mendacity, an inaccuracy, and a warehouse full of guile.

They constantly practice their form of the bait and switch, and every once in a while they get caught. And every once in a great while, they get caught with half the country looking on. When this happens, their attempts to explain themselves usually attain to the level of “Uh, aliens kidnapped me. What year is it?”

After my first post on L’affaire Robertson, one of my commenters raised a point which I then passed on to my Twitter feed, to wit, “Why does A&E get to refuse to do business with someone based on their views on sex, but bakers and photographers can’t?” This got retweeted a bunch, and this is how I think the question came swimming into the ken of folks who usually don’t have to try to answer these things. But millions are looking at this tolerance face plant . . . let’s have a try.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 30

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. —Luke 2:20

Devotional:
"Glorifying and praising God." This is another circumstance which is fitted to be generally useful in confirming our faith. The shepherds knew with certainty that this was a work of God. Their zeal in glorifying and praising God is an implied reproof of our indolence, or rather of our ingratitude.

If the cradle of Christ had such an effect upon them as to make them rise from the stable and the manger to heaven, how much more powerful ought the death and resurrection of Christ to be in raising us to God?

Global Warming in Antarctica

Everything Fits

Ever since the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, philosophers of science have been aware of the influence of theoretical mental paradigms which guide and control scientific research.  Establishment paradigms probably have more dominance now than they ever did in earlier times because of the gatekeeping role of universities, the government funding of research, and the dominant role of science publishing houses.  Nonconformists tend to have a hard time of it, readily slandered as crackpots, ignoramuses, ante-diluvians etc. Science today has become very politicised, far more so than in Galileo's day. 

The vast majority of scientists remain ignorant of the role of theoretical and conceptual paradigms in restricting pure research, constraining funding, directing careers, and governing the interpretation of research data.  They naively think they are just dealing with the facts.  Below is a laughable illustration: the dominant official paradigm of anthropogenic global warming has produced an orthodoxy which requires all data to be re-interpreted in its image.  Take the inconvenient fact that Antarctic sea ice is growing.  Watch the contortions begin.

Annus Horribilus For Global Warming

Lawrence Solomon: For global warming believers, 2013 was the year from Hell

Lawrence Solomon 
December 19, 2013
Financial Post 

Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the cause of global warming

2013 has been a gloomy year for global warming enthusiasts. The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began. In the Arctic the news is also glum. Five years ago, Al Gore predicted that by 2013 “the entire North polar ice cap will be gone.” Didn’t happen. Instead, a deflated Gore saw the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Weather between the poles has also conspired to make the global warming believers look bad. In December, U.S. weather stations reported over 2000 record cold and snow days. Almost 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, twice as much as last year. The heavens even opened up in the Holy Land, where an awestruck citizenry saw 16 inches of snow fall in Jerusalem, almost three feet in its environs. Snow blanketed Cairo for the first time in more than 100 years.

2013 marks the 17^th year of no warming on the planet.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 27

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. —Luke 2:8

Devotional:
"And there were shepherds." It would have been to no purpose that Christ was born in Bethlehem, if it had not been made known to the world. But the method of doing so, which is described by Luke, appears to the view of men very unsuitable.

First, Christ is revealed to but a few witnesses, and that too amidst the darkness of night. Again, though God had, at his command, many honorable and distinguished witnesses, he passed by them, and chose shepherds, persons of humble rank, and of no account among men. Here the reason and wisdom of the flesh must prove to be foolishness; and we must acknowledge that "the foolishness of God" excels all the wisdom that exists, or appears to exist, in the world. But this too was a part of the "emptying of himself"; not that any part of Christ's glory should be taken away by it, but that it should lie in concealment for a time.

Who Can Say?

Accepting Slavery

One of the great classics of the mid-twentieth century is Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon [London: Jonathan Cape, 1940].  It is rarely read now--probably because the West thinks it has moved beyond the tyrannies of Naziism and Communism.  But the work remains as fresh and as powerful and as relevant as when first written.  If we need an explanation of why the grotesque monstrosity of the North Korean regime is able to command such mass loyalty, for example, Koestler provides it for us. 

Human beings are malleable creatures.  When men reject God, as Chesterton pointed out, they do not believe in nothing.  On the contrary, they come to believe in everything and anything.  Which is to say that anything can be framed as good and right--even the most extreme and monstrous of human tyrannies. 

Koestler's anti-hero is N. S. Rubashov, imprisoned, awaiting torture and execution.

Orwellian Dystopia Emerging in Post-Fascist Italy

The Rise of Homo-fascism

Posted on December 20, 2013 

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

 

If you thought Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty is being treated unfairly by A&E, then you have to get a load of what is happening in Italy with regards to media treatment of dissenting views on homosexuality.

The government has just issued a new set of guidelines for journalists on how to treat “LGBT” people. The guidelines, funded by the Council of Europe, dictate what terms and images must be used by the media and which cannot be used when treating LGBT subjects. Journalists who do not comply are threatened with legal and professional penalties.    Journalists are instructed not use negative sexual images from gay pride events and to refrain from employing terms like “natural family”, “traditional family” and “gay marriage”. The guidelines explain that those terms are discriminatory and that marriage and family alone will do.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 27

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. —Matthew 1:19

Devotional:
The reason why this mystery was not immediately made known to a greater number of persons appears to be this. It was proper that this inestimable treasure should remain concealed, and that the knowledge of it should be imparted to none but the children of God. Nor is it absurd to say, that the Lord intended, as he frequently does, to put the faith and obedience of his own people to the trial.

Most certainly, if any man shall maliciously refuse to believe and obey God in this matter, he will have abundant reason to be satisfied with the proofs by which this article of our faith is supported. For the same reason, the Lord permitted Mary to enter into the married state, that under the veil of marriage, till the full time for revealing it, the heavenly conception of the virgin might be concealed.

Meanwhile, the knowledge of it was withheld from unbelievers, as their ingratitude and malice deserved. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Drowning in Oil

Peak Oil, Where Art Thou?

The catastrophists have been warning for the past ten years of mankind approaching "peak oil"--that is, the time when oil consumption exceeds supply, leading to a drastic global shortage of energy.  Peak oil was supposed to have occurred around now.  Except . . . .

North America to Drown in Oil as Mexico Ends Monopoly

By Joe Carroll and Bradley Olson  
Dec 17, 2013 6:54 AM
Bloomberg News


The flood of North American crude oil is set to become a deluge as Mexico dismantles a 75-year-old barrier to foreign investment in its oil fields.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

L’affaire Robertson

Posted on Thursday, December 19, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

Unaccustomed as I am to writing about current events as they unfold, I can only suggest a few takeaway lessons from the l’affaire Robertson, as he might put it. As I have been able to reconstruct the events, A&E put Phil Robertson on hiatus from the reality show Duck Dynasty for making disparaging comments about homosexuality in GQ magazine. The memorable words of T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets come to mind — “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

This goes particularly for toney producers of reality shows, who are unaccustomed to having one of the swamp people emerge from the fens to inform them, denizens of a sophisticated and urbane cosmopolis as they are, that the human body was given just one sex organ and the poochute is not it. They got a little too much actual reality from one of their reality stars and so they went all Eliot on him.

Three lessons then. That should be sufficient, at least for the time being.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 22

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? —Luke 1:34

Devotional:
"How shall this be?" The holy virgin appears to confine the power of God within as narrow limits as Zacharias had done; for what is beyond the common order of nature, she concludes to be impossible. She reasons in this manner: I know not a man; how then can I believe that what you tell me will happen?

We ought not to give ourselves very much trouble to acquit her of all blame. She ought immediately to have risen by faith to the boundless power of God, which is not at all fettered to natural means, but sways the whole world. Instead of this, she stops at the ordinary way of generation. Still, it must be admitted that she does not hesitate or inquire in such a manner as to lower the power of God to the level of her senses; but is only carried away by a sudden impulse of astonishment to put this question.

That she readily embraced the promise may be concluded from this, that, though many things presented themselves on the opposite side, she has no doubt but on one point. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Deja Vu

History's Patterns

There is an eerie familiarity to what is playing out now in North Korea under the gentle beneficence of Kim Jong Un.  Kim has heard the divine call from himself to execute his former uncle and round up as many of his former relatives as he could find and either imprison them or execute them.

He shows all the symptoms of a tyro beating his chest, letting his country know who is boss.  This resonates with a time in Israel's history when the young Rehoboam succeeded his father, Solomon.  We take up the narrative in I Kings 12: 3ff:

The Meaning of Christmas

Echoes of Calvary

It pleases the Lord from time to time to remind us what true love, what great love looks like.  This Christmas season in New Zealand He has done just that--yet again.  Here is the story, as it appeared in Stuff:

Mother makes supreme sacrifice for son

HARRY PEARL

Last updated 05:00 21/12/2013

 

Jennifer Doolabh was never meant to fall pregnant for a third time.

She had a new partner, sure, but the doctors told her it was rare for someone in her situation. She had undergone nearly a year of chemotherapy and radiation after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012.  But around June, while enduring another bout of radiation treatment and preparing for hormone therapy, she was delivered the news.

"It was a shock," she says, at her home in Hamilton. "We just thought I couldn't get pregnant and they were just about to suppress my ovaries. I was about to go on other treatment as well." So instead she stopped treatment, in order to give her baby a better chance of survival.

On Monday she'll finally give birth to her son Matthias - which means God's gift in Hebrew - just in time for Christmas, though she knows it could be the last one she will spend with him.  He'll be born six weeks early, but it's a wonder he will be born at all.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 25

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. —Luke 1:6

Devotional:
Although praise is bestowed on Zacharias and Elisabeth for the purpose of showing us that the lamp, whose light went before the Son of God, was taken not from an obscure house, but from an illustrious sanctuary, yet their example shows to us, at the same time, the rule of a devout and righteous life.

In ordering our life, therefore, our first study ought to be to approve ourselves to God; and we know that what he chiefly requires is a sincere heart and a pure conscience. Whoever neglects uprightness of heart, and regulates his outward life only by obedience to the law, neglects this order. For it ought to be remembered that the heart, and not the outward mask of works, is chiefly regarded by God, to whom we are commanded to look.

The Self-Excluded

For Whom Did Christ Come?

All Christians  profess that the season of Advent or Christmas is the remembrance and celebration of one of the pivotal events in all human history.  We do not use the expression lightly.  We mean this to be literally true, not mere rhetorical or hyperbolic flourish.  The Living God became flesh, took on human nature, and entered into history, to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). 

He did not come to save everyone.  He came to save only His people.  At first glance such a non-inclusive mission would naturally mean He had come to save the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The Gentiles would therefore be excluded.  As Christ's ministry transpired, however, things became a little less obvious and a little more profound.  It became clear that "His people" included the Gentiles, non-Jewish humanity.  He spoke of "another" flock, one not of "this fold" which He must bring and shepherd (John 10:16).  He did indeed come unto His own after the flesh, but His own people received Him not (John 1:14).  In the course of the rejection of Christ by many, if not the majority, of His people,  He turned to the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, to those outside the Covenant, the temple, the law, and the sacrifices. 

At the end of His earthly ministry in the flesh He was declaring that He had come to save the world and that He would draw all people to Himself.  (John 12: 27-50).  But this was foreshadowed at the very beginning of His ministry.  Right from the outset He had made it clear that there were certain Jewish people He had not come to save.  They were excluded.  They were self-excluded insofar as they had disqualified themselves.

Letter From Europe (About Estonia)

Citizens Fight Back: The case of Estonia

Posted on  December 18, 2013 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

The controversial “Lunacek-Report” was rubberstamped in yesterday’s session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties and will probably be voted in one of the Parliament’s plenary sessions in January. The support of Socialists, Communists, and Greens for this radical paper is not really surprising (after all these groups are known to have embraced same-sex “marriage”, homosexual adoption, etc. as part of their social agenda)  – but with regard to the Conservative and Christian Democrat members of the committee one is tempted to wonder whether they have really understood what they have raised their hands for. The experience with the Estrela-Report should have taught them to be more watchful.

Varro Vooglaid

On the same day, I had the occasion of meeting Mr. Varro Vooglaid from Estonia, who gave a talk on how civil society in his country managed to prevent the government from tabling a bill that would have introduced same-sex “marriage” in the small Baltic Republic. This happened earlier this year, but it received practically no media coverage outside Estonia.

Mr. Vooglaid’s talk was very encouraging, because it showed that even in a deeply secularized and predominantly agnostic society like Estonia (where two thirds of the population have no religion) there is actually no support for the homosexualist re-definition of marriage.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 24

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. —John 1:14

Devotional:
"And the Word was made flesh." The word flesh expresses the meaning of the Evangelist more forcibly than if he had said that he was made man. He intended to show to what a mean and despicable condition the Son of God, on our account, descended from the height of his heavenly glory.

When Scripture speaks of man contemptuously, it calls him flesh. Now, though there be ever so wide a distance between the spiritual glory of the Word of God and the abominable filth of our flesh, yet the Son of God stooped so low as to take upon himself that flesh, subject to so many miseries.

The Way the Kingdom Rolls

Remarkably Honest Speech

The Duck Dynasty is a very popular cable reality show in the US, starring an intergenerational family of "good ol' boys".  Recently the patriarch of the clan, Phil Robertson had the temerity to express his opinions on homosexuality.  It just so happens his opinions are grounded in the teaching of Scripture. 

GQ Magazine did a profile piece on Phil and his family.  Here is a snippet, to give flavour:

It’s easy to see the appeal. The Robertsons are immensely likable. They’re funny. They look cool. They’re “smarter than they look,” says sportswriter Mark Schlabach, who co-writes the family’s books. And they are remarkably honest both with one another and with the viewing audience: Phil’s old hell-raising, Si’s traumatic stint in Vietnam, the intervention that the family staged for Jep when he was boozing and doing drugs in college (Phil placed him under house arrest for three months)—all of it is out in the open. The more they reveal, the more people feel connected to them.

And then, of course, there is their faith, which plays no small role here. During the family’s initial negotiations about the show with A&E, Jase told me, “the three no-compromises were faith, betrayal of family members, and duck season.” That refusal to betray their faith or one another has been a staple of every media article about the Robertson family. It’s their elevator pitch, and it has made them into ideal Christian icons: beloved for staking out a bit of holy ground within the mostly secular, often downright sinful, pop culture of America.

During that interview, Phil happened to express in passing his views on homosexuality and sin.  Read on:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Huge White Snarl Flapping Behind You

Posted on Wednesday, December 18, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

This is not so much another “I told you so” but rather another “I tried to tell you so.”

The other day I related how, in my debate with Andrew Sullivan, I tried to show that after same-sex mirage had a foothold in our society, the next folks in line, using all the same arguments, would be the polygamists. And here we are, unlike other functions of modern government, way ahead of schedule.

But I also argued something else, even more “out there.” I said that, given the premises we are all being harangued into adopting, there would be no saying no to bi-sexual marriages. In that chain of letters LGBTQ, why are the B’s left out of this grand expansion of marriage rights? Must be the haters.

The response to this argument has usually been something like, “He clearly doesn’t know what a bisexual is. What a maroon.” Ah, but I do know, and I also know that if somebody wants marital expression for that sexual identity, this requires, at a minimum two other people, one of each sex. And because the extra spouses involved don’t have an obligation to have their third squeeze be the shared third somebody, the whole thing spirals into chaos. What begins as a menage a trois turns into a plain old menagerie.

And so the other day something happened in North Dakota, a little something that vindicates me entirely.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 23

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. —II Timothy 4:2

Devotional:
First of all, we are not to take up the Word of God for mere recreation, or listen to him merely when we have leisure. This is far from yielding to him that obedience which he desires. Everyone of us must strive to profit. And as God protests that morning and evening his arms are stretched out, not only to receive us, but also to call us afar off, and seeks nothing but to have us under his wings and to govern us, and peaceably to enjoy us; so on our part we must take pains to run to him when he calls us, and cut off all hindrances which might turn us aside.

The Case of the Dumb Council

The Watchdog is Barking This Time

Every so often the communitarian, soft-headed socialist mob that work for our daily news papers and electronic news media show that they "get it".  Economic reality--real world understanding--does not just bite, but sometimes the media shows that it understands what that reality is and how markets actually work.  To fight against market forces (which are the fruit of human nature in the final analysis) is to wage an unwinnable war.  It is to war against human nature.  It can only be won if human beings stop being human. 

Celia Wade-Brown is a greenist mayor of Wellington, the city of a million bureaucrats.  Wellington voters like Celia because she mirrors back to them their prejudices against economic markets and fundamental human nature.  Celia has talked the city council into putting up the minimum wage for all council workers to $18.50 an hour.  Why that amount?  Well, it seems like a nice number.  Celia, of course, has not a clue about the implications, ramifications, and downstream effects of this stupid council decision.  But when even the editorial writers in The Dominion show that they get it, the blame and shame upon the council increases by a large factor.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Some of That Magic Constitution Dust

Posted on Tuesday, December 17, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog


A number of months ago, I debated Andrew Sullivan on the subject of same sex marriage, and one of the points I sought to make was a point that he just couldn’t get his head around.

To review, the point was this: a society that doesn’t know what marriage is in situation x cannot suddenly and miraculously come up with an understanding of what marriage is for situation y. Once same-sex mirage is established, or even semi-established, you can count on it, said I — polygamists will start lining up, and they will ask for a judge to sprinkle some of that magic constitution dust on their lusts too.

At the time, Sullivan was most indignant with my idea that the trajectory of marriage law in this country was going to blow right past the arbitrary and capricious restriction of two people per marriage. And since that federal judge in Utah struck down their anti-polygamy law as placing an undue burden on the horniness of the men of Utah, as if they didn’t have enough troubles, I have been waiting by the phone for Andrew Sullivan to call. Given his behavior in the debate, I must assume that this is because he is busy rallying all his same-sex homies, mobilizing them to fight for traditional marriage. You know, the kind with two and only two persons in it. The kind of marriage that we haters insist on.

The judge didn’t legalize legal polygamy quite yet, but he did strike down the illegalization of informal polygamy, and that huge moving sidewalk taking us all into the marital madhouse has lurched into motion again — not that it ever really stopped. But now that it is obviously moving again, that means we can turn our corporate attention once more to the pressing duty of accusing people of hate crimes whenever somebody asks “is this sidewalk moving?”

Gives us something to do.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 21

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: —Acts 2:26

Devotional:
Joy of the soul, gladness of the tongue, and quietness of the whole body, result from sure hope and confidence. For unless men are quite past feeling they must be anxious and sorrowful, and, consequently, miserable and tormented, as long as they feel themselves destitute of the help of God.

But that sure trust which we repose in God not only delivers us from anxiety, but also replenishes our hearts with wonderful joy and gladness. This is the joy which Christ promised to his disciples should be full in them and which he testified could not be taken away from them. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Only Fools and Horses

Derision and Fury

The ancient Greeks, via Homer, believed that one ought not to excel too much in anything, lest one attract the jealous, vindictive attention of the gods.  Accordingly, heroes such as Odysseus lived a perilous existence.  The Living God is not thus.  He created man to be great, and good.  Psalm 8 declares:

O Lord, our Lord
How majestic is your name in all the earth! . . .
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him
And the son of man that you care for him.
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
And crowned him with glory and honour.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
You have put all things under his feet.

The truly great man, who is also good as the Bible defines it, and who does great deeds attracts the love, commendation, approval, and approbation of the Lord.  But the man who sets himself up as if he were God, or as if he were God's Messiah, risks attracting His despite and vengeance in this world, and eternal damnation in the world to come.  And a people complicit in such brazen rebellion and idolatry risk sharing in his fate.  King Herod provides an apt example:

Letter from the US (About Sharia Law in London)

Islamists Threaten British Shop Owners with 40 Lashes for Selling Alcohol

By Mary Chastain  

14 Dec 2013

Breitbart News

Whitechapel is on the outskirts of London, but it is an area where Muslims enforce Sharia law without any interference from British officials. On Saturday, they took it a step further and told shop owners in the area they will face 40 lashes if they continue to sell alcohol.

The protesters, including Anjem Choudary, the former leader of the Al-Muhajiroun group which was banned under terrorism laws, delivered warning letters to Muslim-owned businesses. “The shops are run by Muslims and they know they are selling alcohol and they know the sale and consumption of alcohol is completely prohibited,” he said. “We cannot live among the non-Muslims and see this evil take place.”

Mizanur Rahman, organiser of the protest, said it had urged business owners to stop selling alcohol in breach of Muslim laws. Mr Rahman said: “We want Sharia law to be enforced in Britain,” before adding that many of the Muslim owners had been “embarrassed and ashamed” when confronted about their alcohol sales, but had argued that it was an economic necessity.

In 2011, The Daily Mail did an exposé on these "Muslim patrols" and how the English government has not done anything to stop. Women are targeted if they do not wear a headscarf.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 20

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. —I Timothy 1:12, 13

Devotional:
Hereby both great and small are reminded of their duty. If we would exalt the grace of God, as is fitting, we have to confess what we are, and what would become of us if God did not help us. This is hard to do, seeing men seek nothing so much as to make themselves seem like something. Although they confess that they believe completely in God, yet they gladly obscure this knowledge, and will never come to a plain, free, and simple confession unless they are constrained to it.

This is especially the case when it concerns revealing our shame, and rebuking ourselves, that our sins may be manifest, and so humbling ourselves that we are utterly condemned unless the Lord of his infinite mercy draws us out of condemnation.

Besetting Sins

If I Cannot Have It, Nobody Can

Envy is a besetting sin of our age.  It is also the sin few people talk about, which may just be a clue as to how pervasive and enslaving it has become.  Envy is covetousness on steroids--its most egregious expression. 

Kevin Williamson describes envy thus:

Of the seven deadly sins, envy may not be the wickedest, but it is the most embarrassing. To be possessed by envy is to admit a humiliating personal inadequacy: We do not envy others those attainments that we think we too might achieve, but those we despair of ever possessing. Wrath, greed, pride, lust — all assume a certain self-possession. Sloth and gluttony are practically standard issue in times of plenty such as these. Wrath and pride are the sins of great (but not good) men. Envy is the affliction of the insignificant. It is the small man’s sin.

But when does covetousness elide into envy, its most extreme manifestation?

Letter From Australia (About the United States)

World-class Fakery on Show

TIM BLAIR
The Daily Telegraph
December 16, 2013 12:00AM

 A RIDICULOUS and under-qualified faker took to the stage last week during Nelson Mandela's memorial service. And next to Barack Obama was some guy who hasn't quite mastered sign language. 
 
Thamsanqa Jantjie's erratic performance has drawn international ridicule, but all he really did was turn the failed president's words into a disappointing jumble of incomprehensible nonsense. As is now apparent, Obama is quite capable of achieving this by himself.

Many Australians were puzzled by American resistance to Obama's universal healthcare plan, back when it was first proposed in 2008. They couldn't understand why the US would not embrace an Australian-style system of health coverage.  One reason is that the system in the US was proposed by Obama and his hopeless administration. If you thought Labor's attempts in Australia to install home insulation and run grocery price websites were lame, they have nothing on Obama's bid to reshape the massive US health sector.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 19

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. —Colossians 3:16

Devotional:
Now let us fall down before the face of our good God, with confession of our faults, praying him to pluck us out of the vain confidence of our fleshly mind, and that we may serve him in such sort that we may be wholly given to him. And seeing it has pleased him to be so gracious to us as to give us his Word for our rule, let us be content to be ordered by it and to be instructed there more and more, and let it be always our goal to be fully built up in him; and in the meantime we may make him offerings and sacrifices both of our souls and bodies.

And let us be consecrated and dedicated to him in such a way that he may dwell in us as in his true temples and that he may reign there, and that his image may shine there; to the end that we may at length be partakers of his immortal glory which he has prepared for us. And let us pray that he may be thus gracious, not unto us only, but to all people and nations of the world. —Sermons

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Misleading Unhelpful Poverty Propaganda

Charity is Mandatory

The chattering classes were all agog and aghast for a couple of days earlier this month over child poverty in New Zealand.  Such a problem is worthy of attention and concern.  Unfortunately the protagonists are once again proving to be dishonest traders and so have devalued their cause in a silly attempt to shock and (in marketing speak) achieve cut through to the common mind.  They have grossly exaggerated child poverty in New Zealand. 

A few years ago, the cause d'jour was violence against women (by men).  We were painted as a terribly violent society, since research "showed" that one in four women had suffered abuse.  But common sense is a tenacious beast.  Folk (both men and women) started to think, "Well, I know lots of women--and I am very sure that one in four of them have not suffered abuse at the hands of men.  Where did that figure come from?  Well, in a specious, dishonest attempt to gain attention and traction, the cause-protagonists decided to define abuse so broadly that abuse itself became an inflated, devalued concept.  The end result: people dismissed it and stopped listening.  Those who continued to quote the mantra ("one in four women in this country has suffered abuse") were increasingly seen as coming from the lunatic fringe. 

Now similar folly is being perpetrated by the child abuse industry.  Sadly, the cause is worthy; the issues are genuine.  The propagandists, however, are dishonest brokers.

Letter From Europe (About Hate Crimes)

EU: The Lunacek-Report, and homosexual/feminist hate crimes

Posted on  December 13, 2013 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

After the defeat of the Estrela Report, the time has come to turn our attention to the next attempt of radical and extremist groups in the European Parliament to embellish their agenda, and provide it with the appearance of legitimation, by the use of human rights vocabulary.

This new attempt comes in the guise of another “initiative report” (i.e. a motion for a resolution on matters falling outside the European Parliament’s competences and will therefore not be legally binding), this time authored by Ulrike Lunacek, an openly lesbian politician from Austria, who also is the co-chair of the European Parliament’s gay and lesbian caucus. No wonder, therefore, that the draft takes a rather peculiar approach towards human rights, which strongly reminds of similar attempts of manipulating human rights through absurd re-interpretations, such as the so-called “Yogyakarta Principles”.

The political strategy underlying this approach, which can be described as the systematic “queering” of human rights, is a dialectic masterpiece.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 18

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. —Isaiah 42:4

Devotional:
"He shall not faint, nor be discouraged." I remember that there were in a populous city two preachers, one of whom boldly and loudly reproved vices, while the other endeavored to gain the favor of the people by flatteries. This fawning preacher, who was expounding the Prophet Jeremiah, lighted on a passage full of the mildest consolation, and having found, as he imagined, a fit opportunity, began to declaim against those harsh and severe reprovers who are accustomed to terrify men by thunderbolts of words.

But on the following day, when the Prophet changed his subject and sharply rebuked wicked men with his peculiar vehemence of style, the wretched flatterer was constrained to encounter bitter scorn by retracting the words which were fresh in the recollection of all his hearers. Thus the temporary favor which he had gained speedily vanished, when he revealed his own disposition and made himself abhorred by the good and the bad. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Rapid Collapse

Gone By Lunchtime

It is coming rapidly.  Opponents of the legal recognition of homosexual "marriage" have argued that it has opened the door to any form of cohabitation being recognised and protected by the state.  Proponents of homosexual "marriage" to date have scoffed.  That has never been their intention (they protest) and anyone suggesting that state sanctioned polygamy will follow in the train of homosexual marriage is either an ignorant emotive alarmist, or deceitful and misleading in their argumentation. 

Believe me, says the homosexual, we want only this--that the state recognise the genuineness of our "love" and want that to be recognised and protected by allowing us to enter into marriage.  We reject and oppose this privilege and honour being given to anyone else, they say.  Maybe.  Let's grant for the sake of argument that the Louisa Walls of this world are genuine honest brokers when they argue this way.  But the principles upon which they have built their case apply equally to any form of willing cohabitation.  Thus, a federal judge in the United States has recently ruled that of course the arguments for homosexual "marriage" must apply equally to other forms of human co-habitation.

This from Ken Klukowski:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Purpose Driven Book Review

Posted on Thursday, December 12, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

I won’t go into it now, but as a result of a series of odd events, I decided that at some point I needed to read a book by Rick Warren. I had picked up a copy of his Purpose Driven Life at a used bookstore, and despite the fact that California evangelical megachurch land is not my home territory, I decided to venture in.

And, I have to say, I was really surprised at how good it was. This thing has had monster sales in the evangelical world — and here my bigotries come out to play, like a box full of three-week-old puppies let loose in the garage — and as everyone knows, monster book sales in the evangelical world mean that the object that is selling briskly must be a eighteen-wheeled shipment of shinola.

Well, not this book.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 17

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

Bhttp://www.opc.org/devotional.htmly John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
That the saying of Jesus might he fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die. —John 18:32

Devotional:
"That the word of Jesus might be fulfilled." The Evangelist adds that it was necessary that this should be done, in order that the prediction which Christ had uttered might be fulfilled, "The Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles" (Matt. 20:19).

And indeed if we wish to read with advantage the history of Christ's death, the chief point is to consider the eternal purpose of God. The Son of God is placed before the tribunal of a mortal man. If we suppose that this is done by the caprice of men, and do not raise our eyes to God, our faith must necessarily be confounded and put to shame.

It's Not Fair

Economic Ignorance and Moral Turpitude

In his book, Fairness and Freedom, David Fischer makes some observations which represent a touchstone for truth and error in economics.  Fischer has written a historical comparison of New Zealand and the United States.  The latter nation has focused over time upon political and social freedom (from government rules, regulations, and controls) whilst New Zealand has been shaped by notions of fairness (which implies egalitarian distribution at least of opportunity, if not actual goods). 

We will endeavour to critique Fischer's book in a future post, but for the moment consider this partly insightful, yet misguided quotation:

Letter From Europe (About a Defeat of Radicals)

European Parliament dismisses Estrela-Report: A Resounding Defeat for the Abortion and Homosexual Lobbies

Posted on | December 10, 2013 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. 

Turtle Bay and Beyond

10 December is World Human Rights Day. It is a beautiful coincident that on this day the European Parliament has rejected the so-called Estrela-Report.  One might say that today’s vote was not important, given that the controversial draft, if adopted, would not have had any legal effect anyway, given that the issues it dealt with clearly fell outside the EU’s competence. But that would mean to grossly misunderstand and underestimate the importance of what has happened today, even if it is only a symbolic victory.

Prior to the vote that took place this morning two groups of MEPs had tabled two different alternative motions. The first, which went into much detail to rebut the absurd and preposterous claims about “human rights” in Mrs. Estrela’s draft report, was rejected, but a second one, which briefly and clearly states that the EU has no competence to impose on its Member States any of the measures called for by Mrs. Estrela, was adopted by 334 against 327 votes, with 35 abstentions. This meant that it was not anymore necessary to vote on Mrs. Estrela’s controversial draft, as it had been implicitly rejected through the adoption of the alternative motion. . . .

And the official press release by the EPP (European People’s Party) group drily states the following:

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 16

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. —Zechariah 13:2

Devotional:
We may deduce that the Word of God not only shows the way to us, but also uncovers the delusions of Satan; for hardly one in a hundred follows what is right, unless he is reminded of what he ought to avoid. It is then not enough to declare that there is but one true God, and that we ought to put our trust in Christ, unless another thing be added, that is, that we warn men of those intrigues by which Satan has from the beginning deceived miserable mortals.

Sunset Industries

Commercial Reality

Back in the day, New Zealand used to make cars.  We kid you not.  In fact, when Milton Friedman visited New Zealand around 40 years ago he was aghast that we had an automobile manufacturing industry.  It existed and was nurtured by government subsidies and grants--all in the name of creating employment.  Of course NZ Autos Incorporated has long since gone the way of the dodo.  Now punters import swanky second-hand (near new) cars from Japan at a fraction of the price.

The thing about government subsidies to start and maintain industries is that they are proof positive from the outset that the industry in question is not economic from the get-go.  In order to continue, it will need perpetual injections of government money.  Before you can say "Mitsubishi", pouring more money down the crankcase becomes a political necessity because, well, all those jobs are at stake.

We have seen a modern version of the same parable recently with the NZ film industry--stimulated by government interventions over the last twenty years.

Letter From America (About Ignorant, Desperate Politicians)

Spare Us

Forbidding cell phones and other electronic devices on aircraft has been a major irritant to air travellers.  Now commercial aviation is on the cusp of removing those restrictions.  Ah.  Not so fast.  Some overreaching, nannying ignorant politicians in the United States are opposing the nullification of the no-cell phone regulations, originally put in place for reasons of safety. 

Since technology has now moved on to where cell phone use does not pose any risk to commercial aircraft, on what grounds might the cancellation of such regulations be opposed?  We are glad you asked.  Something momentous to be sure.  This from The Hill:

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 14

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
... they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God. —Isaiah 35:2b

Devotional:
"They shall see the glory of Jehovah." Till men learn to know God, they are barren and destitute of everything good; and consequently the beginning of our fertility is to be quickened by the presence of God, which cannot be without the inward perception of faith.

The Prophet undoubtedly intended to raise our minds higher, that we may contemplate the abundance and copiousness of heavenly benefits; for men might be satisfied with bread and wine and other things of the same kind, and yet not acknowledge God to be the Author of them, or cease to be wretched; and indeed men are often blinded and rendered more fierce by enjoying abundance.

But when God makes himself visible to us, by causing us to behold his glory and beauty, we not only possess his blessings, but have the true enjoyment of them for salvation. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Keeping Business Honest

Rotten Eggs

It is a truism that in the heart of every merchant lurks a craven monopolist.  Given the merest chance monopolist conspiracies will arise in the throat like nauseous bile to hobble competitors and corrupt the market.  We believe strongly that civil courts must be open, accessible, and vigilant to break up such conspiracies--whether upon the unsuspecting customer, or competitors, or upon regulators.  The civil courts need to be vigilant to prosecute with alacrity all forms of fraud, deception, theft, and false weights and measures.  The civil courts must be accessible to plaintiffs and inexpensive. 

Unfortunately, due to the ceaseless flood towards centralised government, none of this is the case.  Civil courts have long since languished into a very weak and expensive and anaemic relation of justice, whilst central government rules and regulations flood websites and exhaust printing presses.  Which suits the monopolists just fine.  They have sufficient funds, industry associates, and cabals of fellow merchants to massage and morph regulations to suit their own interests.  The consumer consequently becomes a well gnawed carcass.

The egg industry in New Zealand is certainly oligopolistic in structure if not virtually monopolistic. 

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

In a Pig’s Eye

Posted on Thursday, December 5, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

The president’s Twitter account recently sent out this small dribbly contribution to the oceans of illiteracy that already exist out there. What’s another half pint?

Here’s how to improve our economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs: #RaiseTheWage. http://OFA.BO/tXMYUq  pic.twitter.com/UDTcTSaqZJ

So here’s the comeback, and I must say that it is hard to type and snort at the same time.

So why don’t we just raise the minimum wage to a hundred dollars an hour and make everybody well off? Or, while we are in this compassion groove, why don’t we make it a hundred dollars a minute and make everybody fabulously wealthy? To reply that employers don’t have that kind of money to spare is to betray a churlish spirit, and is frankly unworthy of you. Why should we allow a detail like “not having the money” stand between us and the right thing to do?

But be a man. Run the thought experiment anyway.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 13

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts: I will go also. Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. —Zechariah 8:21, 22

Devotional:
Faith then only produces its legitimate fruit when zeal is kindled, so that everyone strives to increase the kingdom of God, and to gather the straying, that the Church may be filled. For when anyone consults his own private benefit and has no care for others, he first betrays most clearly his own inhumanity, and where there is no love the Spirit of God does not rule. Besides, true godliness brings with it a concern for the glory of God.

It is no wonder then that the Prophet, when describing true and real conversion, says that each would be solicitous about his brethren, so as to stimulate one another, and also that the hearts of all would be so kindled with zeal for God that they would hasten together to celebrate his glory.

We must observe that the Prophet in speaking of God's worship sets prayer in the first rank, for prayer to God is the chief part, the main thing, in religion. It is indeed immediately added, "and to seek Jehovah." He explains the particular by the general; and in the next verse he inverts the order, beginning with the general.

However the meaning continues the same, for God seeks nothing else but that we should be teachable and obedient,

Ante-Diluvians All

Blast From the Past

John Minto is a serial, professional protester.  We have often wondered whether there is any consistent ideology at work when John shows up to protest his current cause d'jour.  He has had no real job, no career, nor profession.  He would probably describe himself as a "voluntary worker", since he apparently has lived off the tax payer's dime for much of his life--either directly or indirectly. 

But when the causes you espouse are BIG and really, really important all that counts for nothing.  The cause justifies the narcissistic indolence.  But we would be amiss to think that Minto has no ideology at all.  Some would mistakenly think him to be a committed anti-racist, having been at the forefront of protests against apartheid.  In other words, they see Minto as a human rights ideologue, committed to fundamental human civil rights, regardless of ethnicity or colour.  Maybe.  But Minto has not been well known for positive affirmation. 

One would have thought that, after protesting and campaigning against apartheid in South Africa, there would have been a note of triumphalistic celebration in his later career.  Not so.  It appears that he was deeply disappointed in Mandela and the subsequent course of non-racist South Africa.

Letter from the UK (About Chicken)

Water Worth Its Weight In Gold

The article below documents a rip-off practice in the UK.  We do not doubt that pretty much the same occurs in New Zealand.  When you next buy that oh-so-cheap chicken in the supermarket and find it to be superbly moist upon roasting, reflect on the origin of the moisture.  The same goes for most bacon.  Try frying it in the pan, and you have to evaporate the copious volumes of water coming out of the meat first, before you can brown and crisp the meat.  A sure sign that water has been injected into the meat. And think about that juicy chicken from the fast food restaurant--the juice is most likely just heated water. 

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 11

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment. —Luke 23:55, 56

Devotional:
Consider what was the courage and constancy of women at the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; when the apostles had forsaken him, how they continued by him with marvellous constancy, and how a woman was the messenger to announce to the apostles his resurrection, which the latter could neither believe nor comprehend.

If he then so honored women, and endowed them with so much courage, think you ,that he has less power now, or that his purposes are changed? How many thousands of women have there been who have spared neither their blood nor their lives to maintain the name of Jesus Christ and announce his reign! Has not God caused their martyrdom to fructify? Has their faith not obtained the glory of the world as well as that of the martyrs?

Obamian Tolerable Religion

Acceptable in Private But Overruled Everywhere Else

The company Hobby Lobby in the US is owned by Christians.  They have self-consciously and deliberately sought to run their business subject to biblical commands, principles and teaching.  This has many implications (see the article below).  One implication is in the health insurance the company provides for staff.  The company's policy excludes coverage for abortifacient drugs and procedures, while covering other contraceptive medical interventions.

The US Federal Government is prosecuting (that is, persecuting) the company for breaching the religious freedom rights of staff, for attempting to force its particular religion upon others, and for being in violation of the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare).  It would be hard to think of a clearer, more egregious examples of  the secular state deciding what kind of Christian religion it will tolerate and of the secularist doctrine of religious liberty.  The only tolerable Christian is one who never seeks to live before and obey God in the public square (unless he happens to espouse causes approbated by the secular state).  The only good Christian is the one who, to all intents and purposes, is a dead one.

Climate Ostriches

Global-warming ‘Proof’ is Evaporating

By Michael Fumento

December 5, 2013
New York Post

The 2013 hurricane season just ended as one of the five quietest years since 1960. But don’t expect anyone who pointed to last year’s hurricanes as “proof” of the need to act against global warming to apologize; the warmists don’t work that way.

Warmist claims of a severe increase in hurricane activity go back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. The cover of Al Gore’s 2009 book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” even features a satellite image of the globe with four major hurricanes superimposed.  Yet the evidence to the contrary was there all along. Back in 2005 I and others reviewed the entire hurricane record, which goes back over a century, and found no increase of any kind. Yes, we sometimes get bad storms — but no more frequently now than in the past. The advocates simply ignored that evidence — then repeated their false claims after Hurricane Sandy last year.

And the media play along. For example, it somehow wasn’t front-page news that committed believers in man-made global warming recently admitted there’s been no surface global warming for well over a decade and maybe none for decades more. Nor did we see warmists conceding that their explanation is essentially a confession that the previous warming may not have been man-made at all.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 11

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
But thou, 0 man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. —I Timothy 6:11

Devotional:
Why are we Christians? Why are we baptized? Why do we call upon God? Is it only to live in this world and to have our pleasures and delights? No, no, but to climb up higher, and to know that we must drive to the kingdom of heaven, knowing that our inheritance is in heaven, whereunto we must run, and pass through this world, not delaying in it at all.

Considering that our condition is such that we have no certain and abiding dwelling place here, but we must go higher, and God calls us daily to come to him; if we be given to covetousness, shall we be excused, I ask you?

If we remain still entangled in these worldly things after God has showed us the brittleness and shortness of our life, are we not worse than mad?

Pseudo-Hagiography

Already Playing Tricks Upon the Dead

Over recent days the world's Commentariat has been agog over the passing of Nelson Mandela.  We are witnessing hagiography in the making before our very eyes.  We wonder whether he will be proclaimed Messiah in the next week or so. 

There are many things to admire in Mendela's life and career.  There are other things to reject and despise.  Fairness and balance requires that we keep both in perspective.  The adulatory ululations have covered over the bad, making him already a quasi-mythical figure.  We find ourselves reflecting on the contrast when Scripture celebrates great men.  Always, in the case of  Scripture, it is a matter of warts and all.  Their sins, failings, mistakes are up front and centre, along with how they repented of evil, turned to the Light, and became faithful to the Lord.  Think David, Moses, Saul/Paul.  This, we suggest, is the model of honest, real hagiography.  The sad thing, in Mandela's case, is that all the evidence suggests that Mandela was repentant over his youthful wrongs, but those have been studiously ignored in the Commentariat's ululating.  By ignoring the obvious--being too polite and politically correct to talk about it--Mandela's actual remarkable achievements are undermined, being disembodied from humanity and history. 

Mandela's struggle against apartheid led him to advocate violent overthrow of the government and the system.

Turning to the Dark Side

Amnesty International is now “Abortion International”

Posted on | December 7, 2013 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

10th December is the day on which, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It is therefore commemorated as the “World Human Rights Day”. In the days and weeks preceding it, you will frequently meet information stands run by “Amnesty International” (AI), where you can buy candles or similar gimmicks with the organization’s logo (a lit candle with barbed wire around it), or you will be approached by activists asking you for donations. Some of these activists might be idealists who do this in their free time, whereas others are students or low-wage employees who do this for a small salary.

My advice to you is: do not buy their candles, do not give them one cent. Instead, if you are not in a hurry, tell them – politely but clearly – why you think that “Amnesty International” is not worthy of support.
The reason why Amnesty International should not be supported is that it no longer is the organization it used to be.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 10

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope; —I Timothy 1:1

Devotional:
"God our Savior and Jesus Christ our hope." True it is that this word Savior is often ascribed to the Son of God, because it is he who has fulfilled and perfected whatever was requisite to our salvation.

He shed his blood, to the end that we should be washed and made clean from our filth and loathsomeness; he abolished the curse that was upon us; he delivered us and set us at liberty from the slavery of death; he utterly put sin to flight. We see then that we must seek our salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ and that with good reason he is called our Savior.

But still it is not without good cause that Paul gives God the Father this title; and why? Let us see whence Jesus Christ came to us. He was sent us from God his Father, for so the Scripture witnesses; God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, delivering him to death for us (John 3: 16, I John 4:9).

Therefore, whenever we see our salvation in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, we must come to the very head and fountain from which he came to us, that is to say, from this love which God had for mankind.

New Model Colonies

Nineteenth Century Changes to Colonisation

In his book Fairness and Freedom, historian David Fischer provides some interesting insights into the world-view in Great Britain which shaped the colonisation of New Zealand in the nineteenth century.  He notes that the New Zealand experience was different from what occurred in the British imperialist and colonial experience up until that time. 

The Colonial Office was run by Sir James Stephen for much of the first half of the nineteenth century.  He took a particular interest in New Zealand.

Stephen summarized his purposes [for New Zealand] in a single sentence: "The two Cardinal points to be kept in view in establishing a regular colony in New Zealand are, first, the protection of the aborigines, and secondly the introduction among the colonists of the principle of self-government, to the utmost extent in which that principle can be reconciled with allegiance to the crown."

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Conceit on Stilts

Posted on Wednesday, December 4, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

Yesterday the president showed defiance on the Obamacare question, although, it must be said, it was an anemic kind of defiance. He said, in a calm and listless sort of way, that Obamacare would not be repealed “as long as [he was] president.” In this, he has, yet again, mistaken the actual position of affairs. The debate is no longer whether the law will be repealed. Rather, we are all wondering how deep the crater is going to be, and how thick the column of smoke will be afterwards.

I keep thinking of another great victory, that time when Napoleon invaded Russia, captured Moscow, and lived in posh surroundings for a considerable number of weeks. What a victory that was! Those were the times!

But let us extend this metaphor a bit, and come up with something to represent health care realities, economic realities, and web site construction realities. Let’s call that cluster of realities something like “Russian winter,” and let us also pretend that the president is (for some reason having to do with the machinations of the Koch brothers) unable to produce an adequate supply line for hundreds of thousands of troops merely by signing an executive order. And we may envision the defeated and humiliated Republicans as pursuing Cossacks, picking off stragglers, and not acting very defeated at all.

Thanks to Mike Lee and Ted Cruz the opposition to Obamacare is now in a position to stand back and do nothing by way of repealing Obamacare.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 09

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. —Isaiah 53:10

Devotional:
And furthermore, each one of us ought to apply this to himself and not doubt that, although we may trail our wings and be still held captive under sin, God will nevertheless deliver us from our captivity, and will perfect what he has begun in us and correct what is still at fault. And how?

We must come to our Lord Jesus Christ; for it is he who puts his hand to the work since the charge of it has been committed to him and he has received this office from God his Father. So let us be satisfied that because he is ordained the minister of our salvation, there will be nothing lacking or unaccomplished by this means, seeing it is thus determined.

Keeping Business Honest

Industry Groups and Associations Represent Conspiracies

It may come as a surprise to some to learn that business owners and capital investors are evil people--not in any specific or particular sense (as Marxists believe) but in the general sense of universal human depravity shared by all human beings, born and unborn.  This general truth is at the core of the Christian faith, being explicitly declared in Holy Writ, (Romans 5:12-14) and professed in its creeds and confessions (for example, ". . . all mankind descending from him [Adam] by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression."  [Shorter Catechism, Question 16].

Business owners and capital investors share, along with all men, the blight of universal human depravity.  Therefore, it is a reasonable expectation that given half a chance they will take any opportunity to advance their own position, wealth, and well-being at the expense of  fellow men.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Dear XYZ

Posted on Monday, December 2, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

An open letter to black Reformed rappers, in light of the recent dust-up.

Dear XYZ,

I hope you don’t mind receiving a letter like this, coming, as it does, out of the left field bleachers. To begin with a confession of the perfectly obvious, I am not naturally part of that demographic that buys, listens to, or is otherwise conversant in, the work you do. You might say it is not my cup of T. At the same time, I do follow cultural trends widely, and sometimes deeply, and have been aware of your active presence in the Reformed world for some years now. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

So I want to ask you to think of this letter as the work of an appreciative and affectionate and somewhat distant Dutch uncle . . . although I am not Dutch. I believe you have been called to a very important task, and I want to urge you to honor God in that work. The reason for this letter is that I believe that the importance of your labor is such that it is going to generate a great deal of trouble for you, and I believe that I do know something about handling that, whether we are talking about causes or consequences.

As I observe the work you do, I wanted you to know that there are three things that I am very thankful for, and which I would urge you to guard and protect. There are also four things to be wary of, four traps, four snares.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

December 07

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. —Job 32:8

Devotional:
If it is God that gives special understanding to men to understand the things that pertain to this fleeting life, what is to be said of the Gospel and of true religion? Have we these by nature? Can we purchase them by our own labor? Alas, we must fall far short.

If a man should be a good schoolmaster to teach children, or a good lawyer or physician, or a good merchant in a city or a good laborer in the country; it is the Spirit of God that accomplishes all these things. One man needs to be sharp-witted in one thing more than in another; as sometimes mechanical arts require greater skill than merchandising.

Now then, when we come to the doctrine of the Gospel, there is a wisdom which surmounts all of man's understanding, and is wonderful even to the angels. The very secrets of heaven are contained in the Gospel, for it concerns the knowledge of God in the person of his Son.