Thought For the Day

God's Justice Cannot Sleep Forever

Here is a thought for the day.

God who gave us life, gave us liberty.  Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis--a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God and that they are not to be violated but with his wrath?  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Thomas Jefferson, from a statement engraved inside the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. 

Mindless Sheep

You have been warned: The Thought Police are coming

By PETER HITCHENS 

The Mail on Sunday

Next week I shan't be speaking to students at the University of Portsmouth, because their union has banned me from doing so.

These weasels pretended they were 'postponing' the meeting, an oily, misleading formula that fooled a surprising number of people.

But the truth is that they stopped the event because they don't like my opinions. That proves they cannot be trusted with freedom of speech. They came up with one pretext for policing thought and imposing censorship this time. They are equally capable of coming up with another, whenever required.

In any case, why would I ever go back to such a place? They are absolutely not ashamed of what they did.

+3

The union at the University of Portsmouth have 'banned' Peter Hitchens from speaking there

As is usual, my attackers went to great lengths to be offended, digging deep into dusty archives to find things I have said that they could disapprove of.

It is not a great blow to me, personally. I don't ask for or get a fee. I have been spared two long, uncomfortable train journeys and a night in a budget hotel, when I could instead have been at home.

I do these things mainly because I'm asked and because I love debate, and because I suspect that many students have far too few chances to hear views that are different from the standard-issue conformist Leftism that is their normal diet. What upsets me about this ban is that it is a general menace to freedom of speech, thought and assembly.

You may say that the antics of a few self-important zealots at Portsmouth University don't count for much. But I've met similar problems in many places.  And the students who impose these bans will all too soon be the civil servants, MPs, lawyers, police officers, journalists and above all teachers of tomorrow.

We are breeding a generation of Thought Policemen. They have been taught what to think, not how to think. Disagreement makes them frightened and angry.

Freedom of speech and thought cannot survive if they are not defended and understood by such people. I can't just now see anything that can save us from becoming a censored, unfree country, short of a revolution in our disastrous school system, where conformist teachers drill conformist students in the catechisms of the Left.

As so often, all I can offer is a warning. This is what is coming. It begins like this, and it ends with arrests of dissidents at four in the morning, conducted by people who are quite sure that what they are doing is right.

Basic Human Liberties Under Threat in the UK

Confronting the Illiberality of Secular Humanism

During a recent debate in the UK, Fiona Bruce, MP exposed the erosion of human rights and religious liberty in the UK.  She makes a powerful appeal for religious liberty as one of the most basic of all human rights and liberties.  In the end, religious liberty is the liberty of conscience. 

Without liberty of conscience, tyranny beckons. 

Letter From America (About the Slow-Suicide of Liberalism)

Death Rattles

Campus protests against the ACLU are a sign that American 'liberalism' is being destroyed by the forces it unleashed and its own inherent contradictions.

Robert Tracinski
The Federalist


The far left, under the banner of Black Lives Matter, is protesting a campus speaker again. Who is it this time? Some neo-Nazi like Richard Spencer? An unscrupulous provocateur like Milo Yiannopoulos? Just a garden-variety scary conservative like Ben Shapiro? Nope, it’s the American Civil Liberties Union as represented by Claire Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia.

Students took to the stage just a few moments after Gastañaga began her remarks. At first, she attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting ‘Good, I like this,’ as they lined up and raised their signs. ‘I’m going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I’m going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience.’

It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, ‘ACLU, you protect Hitler, too.’ They also chanted, ‘the oppressed are not impressed,’ ‘shame, shame, shame, shame’… ‘blood on your hands,’ ‘the revolution will not uphold the Constitution,’ and, uh, ‘liberalism is white supremacy.’

The moderate left has spent the past few years running interference for Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and some of us have been warning them that the far left hates the liberals, too. They’re now finding that out up close and personal, and I hope it terrifies them.

This, along with similar incidents at other universities, is a sign of the final death of American “liberalism.” It is death by suicide, because liberalism is being destroyed by the forces it unleashed and by its own inherent contradictions.

Free to Serve

Thy Will Be Done . . . On The Earth

The Kingdom of God is from above.  The Kingdom of God brings freedom.  It liberates mankind from sin and sin's enslavement.  The Kingdom of God manumits the slave and restores him to freedom.  But for the individual the achievement of freedom is both instantaneous and a protracted process of deliverance.

When a person believes upon the Lord Jesus Christ as his God and Saviour he is justified.  He is declared righteous in God's sight and presence;  all the guilt of all his sinfulness is removed.  It is transferred to Christ Himself who bore our guilt upon the cross.  But the perfect righteousness of the Man, Christ Jesus is imputed to each believer.  Thus, upon repenting and believing, every man is declared free from the guilt of sin.  He is declared just and sinless before God.

As the Shorter Catechism [Q.33] puts it:

Justification is an act of Gods free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

But sin's habits and corruptions remain.  For the rest of our lives upon earth, we daily fight against residual sin.  But sin's power has been broken.

Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

An Essential Heritage And Sacred Trust

Over recent months we have been gradually working through The English and Their History, by Robert Tombs.  [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.]  It is proving to be an excellent read.

While modern representative government, underpinned by the constitution of Great Britain, has taken centuries to develop, Tombs argues that from very early on the nation of England was synonymous with representative bodies meeting and advising the king.  It turns out that government via representatives of the people is not a novelty at all.

In the two hundred years following Alfred the Great (roughly 900 to 1100AD) a precursor to modern representative government was practised.  According to Tombs,

There was a regular system of participation in government.

The US Version of the Star Chamber

Washington’s Supreme Court Imposes Its Progressive Faith on a Christian Florist

The ruling in Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers should chill First Amendment advocates everywhere.

John French
National Review Online

[A few days ago, we published a piece on how the state in the UK is taking steps in the direction of persecuting those who speak to others about the Christian faith.  Persecution is taking a different form in the United States, but the end result is same.  In the US, some courts are overtly insisting upon submission to the state religion and are beginning to punish non-conformity.  Ed.]  

If you care about the Bill of Rights, the rights of conscience, or even the English language, there’s a chance that this morning you felt a disturbance in the Force — as if the Founders cried out in rage and were suddenly silenced. That disturbance was the Washington Supreme Court’s oppressive ruling in State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers, a case holding that a florist was bound by state law to use her artistic talents to design floral arrangements to celebrate what she viewed as an immoral event: a gay wedding.

The pretext for overriding the florist’s rights to free speech and religious liberty was Washington’s so-called “public accommodations law,” which required the owner, Barronelle Stutzman, to provide goods and services to customers “regardless” of their sexual orientation.

Let’s be clear, according to the plain language of the law and the undisputed facts of the case, Stutzman did nothing illegal. She had always consistently and joyfully served gay clients, including the man who ultimately decided to bring potentially ruinous legal claims against her. On each of those prior occasions, however, she was not using her artistic talents to help her clients celebrate an occasion she considered immoral.

In other words, she was not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

Self-Autonomy Means Tyranny Over Others

Christian Bakery Loses Appeal over ‘Gay Cake’ Discrimination Conviction

Donna Rachel Edmunds
Breitbart London

The Christian owners of Ashers Baking Company have lost their appeal to overturn a conviction which found them guilty of discrimination for refusing to make a cake bearing a slogan which promoted gay marriage.

The Court of Appeal in Belfast upheld the previous judgement, filed last year, which found that the company had discriminated against local gay rights activist Gareth Lee by failing to provide a cake bearing a picture of Bert and Ernie with the slogan “support gay marriage”. The initial judgement ordered them to pay £500 in compensation to Mr. Lee.

The owners, Daniel and Amy MacArthur, said that they were happy to serve Mr. Lee, but felt unable to make a cake endorsing a message they did not agree with. They, therefore, argued that they had not discriminated against Mr. Lee, but had merely declined to support his cause.

Speaking on their behalf during the case, John Larkin QC, Attorney General for Northern Ireland, said if the County Court ruling against Ashers was right, the laws used against the bakery fall foul of Northern Ireland’s constitutional law.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Love and Liberty

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

The theme we have been developing is that self-government is the ground of all other government. Men and women who cannot govern themselves will in fact be governed by others. The less government they have at home, in the heart, the more government from the outside will necessarily be imposed.

This liberty we are speaking of—at this individual level—is the liberty to do right, which is not the same thing as the liberty to do as you please. But we must be careful here.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About The Essence of Government)

The Most Important Branch of Government

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

The foundation of every form of free government—whether in the family, or in civil affairs, or in the government of the church—is self-government. If the people do not have self-control, then you may depend upon it that they will be controlled by outside forces.

It is easy to lament despotism when it pinches, when the taxes are due, when the regulations are onerous. When Pharaoh demands the bricks but supplies no straw, all the slaves lament their slavery. Whenever the bills come due, the whole world is libertarian.

So we need to place two teachings from Scripture side by side. The first is that liberty is the work of the Spirit of God. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). And the second passage is this: “But the fruit of the Spirit is . . . self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). One of the central instruments the Holy Spirit uses to bring about true liberty is by freeing the slaves of immorality from their immorality. He strikes off their chains. But the hymn writer knows what necessarily results from that. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

A generation of slaves to sin cannot be free.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Pride of Life in a Codpiece

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

As the bathroom wars continue to unfold, and as the advocates of totalitolerance continue to embrace the arts of coercion, as they continue to bombard us with ideas so fine they have to be mandatory, it has been natural for Christians to try to pivot.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be opposing same sex mirage. Perhaps we shouldn’t be opposing the rights of mentally disturbed men to pee with our daughters. I know, somebody suggests, let’s turn the discussion to matters of religious liberty. Surely there we might find some common ground there. Surely there we will be able to reach a compromise.Church State

There may be some short term tactical relief in such a move, and I am entirely in favor of it if and when it happens. Those who fight for such tactical relief are to be commended. But there is no long-term strategic success to be found in the fight for religious liberty. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but somebody has to. Here is the reason:

Religious liberty is itself a religious value.

Religions differ. They differ wildly. They differ fundamentally. Some religions value liberty for practitioners of other religions, and some religions don’t value liberty for practitioners of other religions. Some religions respect the authority of the individual to choose his own religion, and other religions don’t allow for conversions at all. If you want the fruit called religious liberty, you have to want the tree that this kind of fruit grows on.

This means that if we want maximum liberty for people who don’t believe in Jesus, then we will have to . . . believe in Jesus.

Sphere Sovereignty

The Bulwarks of Liberty

In order for civil freedom to flourish there has to be a widespread social consensus amongst the governed that the authority of governors is necessarily limited.  Democracy provides no such limitation.  In its brute form, democracy introduced the tyranny of the 51 percent.  The earliest democracies in Ancient Greece--in Athens--practised just such a democratic tyranny.  If more than 50 percent so voted, the victim could be exiled or executed at whim.  Justice had nothing to do with it.

The doctrine of political and government power being necessarily limited can only arise in human society when it is known and believed that God is the Judge of all men and human societies.  But this in itself, whilst necessary, is not sufficient.  It must also be known and believed that God has appointed a wide range of authorities within  the kingdoms of this world to serve Him and represent Him.  State power is always, thereby limited, because it "shares" power with a plurality of powers; the State is one such power, but only one.  There are many other divinely appointed powers.

In developing this truth, it was the Calvinistic Dutch theologians of the early twentieth century who introduced the concept of "sphere sovereignty".  God had established spheres of sovereignty in human society, each answerable to Him.  The Church, the civil state, the family, the individual soul, the market place, the school, the charitable/voluntary sector--each represented a God-ordained and protected sovereign sphere of social authority.  The state and the church may not intrude upon family life and family sovereignty--and so on.

Where God commands the family to live and act in a certain way, the State cannot prevent or outlaw the family thus acting.  To the extent that it does, the State is rebelling against God Himself.

In an organic society, the spheres of social action are always brushing up against each other, and interacting.  There is always tension between the respective rights of each sovereign sphere.  Each free society will work out its own particular dynamic tension between the spheres.  One free nation will differ from another at the margins.   But a free society cannot remain free without constitutionally enshrining the sovereignty of each respective sphere.  There is a separation of church and state; of state and family; of church and family--and so forth, while together they all make up the organic whole of society.

Without such truths and doctrines, power tends to aggregate towards the State.  Absolutism is the eventual consequence.

The "Problem" of Free Speech

Offensive Camper Vans

Matters of public decency are always problematic.  On the one hand, free speech advocates rush to defend public speech (signs, displays, words) that generally support their own views.  Thus, grossly offensive "art" in galleries and museums ridiculing Christian doctrines or people are riotously celebrated.  But when the "cause" is contrary to hedonistic or libertine principles, it quickly becomes another matter.

We have seen just such a case in New Zealand--the Wicked Campers affair.  Wicked Campers rent out cheap and nasty camper vans for tourists to hire and beetle around the country.  Their vans are always recognizable: garishly painted, with crude and offensive slogans--usually demeaning women.  A few female politicians have harrumphed and trumpeted their ire at Wicked Campers.  Not a few Christians are likely asking Cabinet Ministers Paula Bennett, Louise Upston, Amy Adams, and Maggie Barry  the odd rhetorical question like, How does it feel now?

Ironically, many of Wicked Campers clients are female tourists.

When Democracy Becomes an Idol

Malcontent And Envy Inimical to Democratic Liberties

With the rise of Donald Trump and the prospect that a conman could become the Republican candidate for the President of the United States, a familiar quotation has once again begun circulating in the United States.  

The quotation has been unreliably attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) who was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.  The quotation runs:

 A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

Tytler may have written the above, or not.  But in any event, the observation is worth considering.

Firstly, the contention that democracies cannot and do not survive.

The Tyranny of Man

Assimilating to the Borg

On this blog we frequently decry both the beliefs and the practices of statism.  The threat of the creeping, growing power of the state is not idle.  It is real.  There are many reasons why the power of the state will always tend towards emergent tyranny.  To prevent this happening takes particular actions and structures: the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, a constitution limiting the powers of the state and preserving the liberties of citizens, and so forth.  Above all it takes a deep, abiding belief in liberty throughout society.

The Christian faith provides a strong, principled framework to keep the state and its powers under control.  Firstly, Christ alone is ultimate; therefore the state is a servant--a mere servant, one might say--and its serves its Master, the Lord, to whom it and its agents will answer.  Secondly, our Lord has many other appointed servants beside the state, whose authority and responsibilities are also devolved from the Lord of glory.  These subordinate authorities are spread throughout human society.  His law is the fundamental law for all such authorities.  Limits are set on what is lawful, and what is not.  For example, the dominion and authority of parents over children is comprehensive, but not absolute.  No man or government is permitted to disregard the lawful, Christ appointed authority of parents.

Secular humanism provides no such principled framework to limit the ever-creeping powers of the state.  Rather, secular humanism ends up worshipping power and the state.  Because it does not recognise nor fear God, there is no higher authority than the humanist state which can, therefore, expropriate all property, cast into prison, and even take life. Who or what (in the end) can say to the humanist state, "What doest thou?"

As the West turns away from the Lord and His Christ, the illicit powers and oppression of the state grow by the day.  Below, blogger Patterico illustrates this relentless rapacity with just one prosaic example.

Not Part of the Hip Group

Unlikely Servants

Kim Davis, who has resisted the tyrant's attentions, is an unlikely servant of God.  But the Lord has both declared, and demonstrated, that it is always His pleasure to call as His servants those who are despised in the world.  In God's Kingdom, only repentant sinners may stand. 

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”  [I Corinthians 1: 26-31]

In God's Kingdom, we don't spend our time judging those whom God has called to be His servants (not ours).  In God's Kingdom we have no interest in whether someone is hip or cool in the eyes of the world.

Kim Davis is an unlikely servant of the King.  That's why we find ourselves in merry mirth over the dyspepsia she has provoked in the bellies of many.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Duty to Interpose

By Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog


One of the things we must absolutely learn how to do better than we do is distinguish things that differ, especially things that look similar but which differ radically. We must learn to say, as Dorothy Sayers once famously said, distinguo. I distinguish.

There is a profound difference between the doctrine of interposition/lesser magistrates on the one hand and the doctrine of liberty of conscience on the other. There are places where they overlap, but there are also instances where they have nothing to do with each other. When a magistrate decides to interpose, he is doing it as a matter of conscience. But he is not exercising his liberty — he is discharging a duty.

Yea, He commandeth no obedience.

A citizen has the right to be left alone in any number of areas. We ought not to tell him what days on which he must mow his lawn, we ought not require him to photograph homosexual unions, we ought not to tell him that the Department of Agriculture requires him to floss daily.  Even if he is mistaken, and his conscience along with him, we should still let him close his shop in honor of the coming of the Great Pumpkin. What he does with his time, his money, his business is, in fact, his business.

Cyber Bullying Laws--Satisfying No-one

Wanting It Both Ways

Choices, choices.  Too much choice.  One of our local bloggers, writing at Kiwiblog has blessed us all with his insight into the disputation over the recent NZ legislation restricting online communications.  The intent of the law is to proscribe cyber bullying.

David Farrar writes:

The Act stated digital communications “should not denigrate an individual by reason of his or her colour, race, ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.”

You can’t choose your colour.
You can’t choose your race.
You can’t choose your ethnic or national origin.
You can’t choose your gender.
You can’t choose your sexual orientation.
You can’t chose whether to be disabled.
But you do choose your religion.
Religion seems the odd one out to me.

The argument Farrar is running rests on the proposition that one should not be ridiculed nor mocked nor otherwise denigrated for matters over which one has no choice or control.  But if you choose to do or be someone, then the law should permit denigrating free speech over your choices.

We are not sure that the "Farrar principle" can withstand critical scrutiny.  But even so, his list has unfounded, contradictory, and tendentious assertions.  Let's have a look at some of them.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The 5 Smooth Stones of Theocratic Libertarianism

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Things in our public life together are gummed up enough that I believe we can openly call for radical reform. Whether we do or not, I think we are going to get the same treatment. We might as well respond with something that might actually help. Whatever the case, we will not be able to trim or pirouette our way out of this mess. As an insightful sailor on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor might have said, as the third wave of Japanese bombers flew over, “The time for nuance is passed.”

A few posts ago I mentioned the five smooth stones of theocratic libertarianism. This was in the context of an illustration using David and Goliath, and as with David, I think most of our problems would probably  be addressed in principle with just the first one.

At any rate, here are the basic features of theocratic libertarianism. Here are my five smooth stones.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The After Deck of the Pirate Ship

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Whenever I write on things like liberty and taxes, it is easy for some to try to stuff me into the wrong box. And upon my making this objection, some might expect me to go on to say that I hate labels. But actually I love labels, which are the precondition of all honest discourse. Con artists hate labels.

But the label should be accurate. I am no anarchist, and I actually am in favor of both liberty and taxes. I’m against parodies of either, and because these parodies are currently dominating the landscape, they are the problem which must be addressed.

The parody of liberty is found in the libertarian image of the fornicating pot smoker – but you can get high and get laid in a 6′ x 8′ prison cell. There is one who defiantly cries out that he wants more liberty – so that he can enslave himself ever more tightly in chains he has forged himself. But no tyrant has ever been successfully resisted by cluster of lotus eaters, however big the cluster might be. Virtuous people cannot be kept as slaves, and an effete and self indulgent people are made for slavery. It is their native habitat.