Who Do You Want In Your Fox Hole?

Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve With

In the biblical worldview, the state, a temporal institution, serves man, an eternal being. Thus, government is limited in power, scope, and purpose.

In the progressive mind this is reversed: man, a temporal being, serves the state, an eternal institution. Thus, government is unlimited in power, scope, and purpose. The state becomes, as it were, an object of worship.

Finally, theistic worldview strongly influences how each of these groups respond to news. As familiar as I am with the God-hating Left, I have found them breathtakingly vicious in this crisis. They have blamed Trump for the virus; they have blamed Christians; they have leveraged the crisis to advance sordid agendas; and they reject any good news while attacking anyone who speaks optimistically.

They even attacked Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow, who revamped his factory to produce much-needed face masks. Why? Because he thanked Trump and God at a White House briefing. Can you imagine having these people in your fox hole?

[Larry Taunton, God and Coronavirus]

Why the UN Has to Go

Global Statist Overreach

UN Expert: World Religions Should Defer to the Authority of UN Experts

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
C-Fam

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 6 (C-Fam) According to the UN’s special expert on freedom of religion, the fringe views of UN human rights bodies must take precedence over the mainstream beliefs of many leading world religions, when it comes to law and policy.

In his newly-launched annual report, Ahmad Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, wrote about the intersection of religion and gender equality.  He concluded that laws based in traditional morality, often religious in nature, should be repealed if they conflict with the opinions of human rights scholars and UN experts.

“States have an obligation to guarantee to everyone, including women, girls and LGBT+ people, an equal right to freedom of religion or belief,” he said, “including by creating an enabling environment where pluralist and progressive self-understandings can manifest.”

In order to enable these “self-understandings,” laws criminalizing abortion or various sexual behaviors would need to be overruled.

Shaheed noted that laws regarding abortion and homosexual behavior often arise from the application of religious teachings regarding the sanctity of life, the family, and sexual morality.

NZ's Labour Party To Embrace State-Controlled Speech

Little’s Hate Speech Laws Will Destroy This Government.

By Chris Trotter
The Daily Blog


Andrew Little has confirmed that the Coalition Government will announce changes to New Zealand’s free speech laws before the election. Clearly, Jacinda Ardern has not been able to persuade her Justice Minister that introducing “hate speech” laws is a sure-fire election loser. Or, perhaps the Prime Minister also believes that attacking freedom of speech is an election-winning strategy.

The timing of Little’s announcement is interesting. It points to a dramatic weakening in the position of Labour’s coalition partner, NZ First. For the first time since the Coalition’s formation in October 2017, Winston Peters finds himself and his party dependant on the good will and protection of the Prime Minister.

The Serious Fraud Office’s decision to launch an investigation into the NZ First Foundation has prompted multiple demands for Jacinda to stand Peters down for the duration. She has been called “weak” for refusing to discipline her Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister – and he is very aware of the political rewards that would flow to the Prime Minister if she decided to give in to his critics’ demands.

If she did give in, Peters knows that any threat to “pull the plug” on the Coalition in retaliation would be met with a cool “go on then”. Being seen to have forced a snap election over the SFO investigation would seal NZ First’s fate. The electorate would punish Peters and his party mercilessly. Jacinda and the Greens, on the other hand, could present themselves to the country as the principled and courageous defenders of “clean” politics. What would undoubtedly be suicide for Peters and NZ First could end up being the making of his erstwhile coalition partners.

All of which adds up to a radically changed power dynamic on the Beehive’s Ninth Floor. From here on out, what Jacinda and her “progressive” colleagues want, Jacinda and her “progressive” colleagues are going to get. Three weeks ago Peters would have shaken his head coldly at the very thought of introducing anti-hate speech legislation prior to the election. Today, he has bowed his head meekly and walked away. The Coalition’s “handbrake” has been released.

How to Destroy of Country

Face of the Day

The BDF Staff





Today’s face of the day is National MP Matt King who caused Green party and MSM heads to explode when he posted the following on his Facebook page:

[Some words ( not all ) of wisdom taken from NZCPR website.]

If I wanted New Zealand to fail … to suffer, not prosper; to despair, not dream.

I would start with energy.

I’d cut off much of New Zealand’s supply of cheap, abundant energy. I couldn’t take it by force. So, I’d make New Zealanders feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.

I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.

I would all-but-outlaw New Zealand’s abundant sources of oil, gas and coal – making it necessary to import it from overseas.

If I wanted New Zealand to fail …

I’d use our schools to teach one generation of children that our factories and cars and cows are causing runaway Global Warming, and I’d muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that their parents are to blame for killing the planet.

And when it’s cold outside, I’d call it Climate Change instead.

If It's Moving, Shoot It

. . . And When It Stops Moving, Deep-Six It

The present government of New Zealand is hidebound in 19th century ideology.  As such, it has a strong statist commitment to government schools.  It bears deep animus towards anything that is not owned and operated by the State.  

It's antipathy towards charter schools in New Zealand is plainly in sight.  It is shutting them all down.  Those that want to continue are being forced to become government schools. 

An outsider looking at this might well conclude that New Zealand charter schools must have been a complete, messy failure to have the government take such a draconian action.  Sadly, the outsider would be wrong.  There is now no doubt that the reason charter schools are being shut down is because they were hugely successful.  The statist Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins does not like competition.  It does not fit with his reactionary 19th century mindset. 

The previous government had ordered an independent review of the operations of New Zealand's charter schools.  The Martin Jenkins review has now been published.  The new statist regime is trying hard to deep six the report down at the bottom of the garden. Why?  Because the independent report proves that charter schools were adding huge value to their students and student families.  They were taking in students who were on the margin of dropping out of the system all together, facing a life is alienation and failure.  They were succeeding in turning lives around. 

Kiwiblog provides a summary of the Martin Jenkins review's findings:

Unlimited State Power

Secular Prayer Offers No Limit on State Power

Bruce Logan
Director of Maxim Institute
NZ Herald

Parliament's Speaker, Trevor Mallard, in a unilateral fit of secular hubris, got rid of the reference to Jesus and prays the parliamentary prayer in Maori. Secular hubris? What's that?

Although now in danger of slipping away, one of the great achievements of our political tradition is its grasp on freedom. After much trial and error, we managed to separate the role of priest from the role of king. It took a while to put into practice what Jesus had said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's."

For the Romans that was radical; the emperor was divine. There was no authority above the state. It didn't matter that many Romans might not have accepted the emperor's divinity, it was how it spun out in law.

The early Christians, refusing to accept the supreme authority of the divine emperor, were called "atheists", haters of mankind. It is not without irony that these hating and hateful atheists gave the West its insight into political freedom.

For most of my lifetime, the state was not absolute. There was an authority both the citizen and the government were expected to acknowledge. Certainly, the government could make laws, but even those laws were prescribed by a belief in an authority above the state.

Sometimes that division of powers is called separation of church and state. It is more than that. Secularists like Mr Mallard might find it unpalatable, but the limitation on state power is entirely the consequence of a belief in monotheism.

Hapless Hipkins at his Worst

NZ Herald Editorial Dices Hipkins Cloth Cap Socialism

Hipkins Offers no Good Reasons For Abolishing Charter Schools 

Editorial
NZ Herald

Charter schools do not seem to be a problem. We have not heard or read complaints from parents whose children attend them, or from those who inspect them, teach in them or have anything to do with them. They were not an issue in an election campaign. So why has Education Minister Chris Hipkins moved so quickly to abolish them?

He calls them "ideological" but his stated reason sounds more ideological. "The Government's strong view is that there is no place for them in the New Zealand education system," he said.

Why? They do not interfere with state schools, they get public money that would have to be spent to educate the pupils anyway. They provide the national curriculum but do in slightly different ways that, they say, help some children who were not succeeding in conventional schools.

Authorities Assault A Child--Statism At Work

PETITION TO NORWAY'S EMBASSIES IN EUROPE

Homeschooled Boy Kidnapped by Police in Norway





By Home School Legal Defense Association


What should have been a happy homecoming to Norway for Leif and Terese Kristiansen turned into a parent’s worst nightmare when the Barnevernet (Norway’s child welfare agency) brutally removed their son, Kai, after they started homeschooling.

The family had been living in Canada, where Terese and Kai are citizens. They returned recently to Norway in search of new opportunities. But at the local public school, 12-year-old Kai became the victim of merciless bullying. School officials did not resolve the situation.

To protect Kai from further trauma, his parents did the responsible and loving thing: they removed him from the public school and immediately began to homeschool him. By choosing to homeschool their son, the Kristiansens did what the state or public school would not do . . . keep Kai safe and provide him with a healthy learning environment.

The Grand Volte-Face

Suddenly It's Not the Gummint's Fault

The "new" New Zealand government is just a day or so old and already we are finding ourselves laughing at the coalition of losers.  (Actually, that's an apt phrase to represent the ersatz mob of cobblers now purporting to govern the country.)

Winston Peters has spoken in apocalyptic terms of the devastation under which our country allegedly labours.  He has presented himself as the Saviour.  He has tossed out a thousand policies (elsewhere known as whisky befuddled brainwaves) to prevent the alleged looming apocalypse.  He stood forth as the proud man with the mantle of "National Saviour".  He won seven percent of the vote in our recent general election.  Yes, you read that right. Just seven percent.

Now he will be the de facto Prime Minister, our Machiavelli behind the throne as it were.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Shooters, the Tower of Babel, and Gun Control

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Whenever God is formally excluded from anything, we should always suspect a power play. The “exile” of God, the “death” of God, the “silence” of God, are always seen by the unbelieving heart of man as constituting some kind of a job opening. The primal temptation was “you shall be as God” (Gen. 3:5). In that case, it was in respect of knowing good and evil, but there are other offices of Deity that unbelieving man aspires to as well. In fact, unbelieving man eventually aspires to all of them.

“The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts . . . In the secret places doth he murder the innocent” (Ps. 10:4, 8).

We sometimes think that forgetting God means that we simply forget that He is the source of all law, that we forget that He is the foundation of all that is good. Forgetting this, we then slide into sinful behavior. It is true that this is how it frequently begins, but that is not how it ends. It ends with rebellious man wanting to become the source of all law.

While we do not yet know all the specific motives that drove Stephen Paddock into his particular form of moral insanity, we know the shape the insanity took. For the ten to fifteen minutes of active shooting, Stephen Paddock was a god of wrath, visiting destruction on the people below, just as he wished. He was above, high and lifted up, and they were below, walking around down there on the ground. He was not just famous for his Warholian fifteen minutes. For those fifteen minutes, he was a jitney-jehovah, coming in a day of visitation.

His choices were to be the final determination when it came to who would live and who would die. God was not within his thoughts, and so he determined to usher in his own version of judgment day.

Jabba The State Starving to Death

Rough Justice

The role of the modern State has developed into a wonder to behold.  It has been for some time our Nanny-in-Chief.  The evolution from Nanny into Jabba the State, however, has been relatively rapid.  The further it goes  the more grotesque and ineffective the State becomes.  A curse rests upon all those who are devotees and worshippers of Jabba--and their numbers are legion.

Evil integrates into the void.  It always does.  Not because of some static Natural Law, mind you.  It integrates into the void because evil is destructive, and when it matures it turns upon itself and destroys itself.  This self-immolation occurs because in the final analysis anything which rises up against the Creator of all cannot survive.  It will destroy itself.  It will be cast down.  The most just, fitting way of destroying evil is to ensure it destroys itself.

We see examples of this on every side.  Europe and the former Soviet Union have aborted themselves into a state of such population decline that it cannot now be rectified.  Both Europe and Russia cannot replace their own populations; the decline is irreversible.  The secularist societies they have sought to build are collapsing in upon themselves.  Think of Detroit--empty, vacant, and a shadow of its former self--as a symbol of what Europe and the former Soviet Union are  becoming.  The only way to prevent it is to open up the borders to mass immigration, in the hope that migrants will fill the population gaps.  Hence Chancellor Merkel's unwavering commitment to the course of open borders.  There is no other option available.  Eventually, then, Europe will become Islamic.  It will see this as a way of "salvation".  The very things in which Europe has glorified  have led to its destruction.  Jabba's curse comes to pass.

The curse of integrating into the void happens on a macro-scale.  But it also happens on a micro-scale.

Sinking Sands

What's the Beef With Milo?

We made an argument yesterday that once biblical teaching about marriage and family is rejected--as the West has done--all that is left is "everything goes".  We recognize that in making the "anything goes" claim we have jumped over a few valleys here and there.  While the logic of the argument is sound, the sociology of the argument is a bit more complicated. 

Since we do not currently live in a society which tolerates "anything goes", there are a number of sociological or political realities which determine right and wrong, lawfulness and illegality.  But our argument remains valid: if the Bible's definition of marriage and family is rejected, any other definition of marriage will turn upon the particular prevailing "flavour of the month".

With the acceptance of homosexual "marriage" and the rejection of the Bible's authority on the matter who gets married to whom, and on what terms and conditions, becomes a matter of the prevailing political winds at the time.

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.

The First Big Failure of Trumppence

First Strike Against Thousands of US Businesses

Incoming Fire From The Trump-Pence Administration

The Free Market Has Failed

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:00 am

The new official line of the incoming Trump-Pence administration is that the free market has failed, and we need their government-imposed solutions instead:

On Thursday, as he toured the factory floor here to take credit for saving roughly half of the 2,000 jobs Indiana stood to lose, Mr. Trump sent a message to other businesses as well that he intended to follow through on his pledges to impose stiff tariffs on imports from companies that move production overseas and ship their products back to the United States.

“This is the way it’s going to be,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The New York Times. “Corporate America is going to have to understand that we have to take care of our workers also.”

. . . .

“I don’t want them moving out of the country without consequences,” Mr. Trump said, even if that means angering the free-market-oriented Republicans he beat in the primaries but will have to work with on Capitol Hill.

“The free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing,” Mr. Pence added, as Mr. Trump interjected, “Every time, every time.”

What “free market” is that, Mr. Pence?

Tall Poppy Syndrome Has Its Uses

Some Benefits of Being a Small Nation

New Zealand is a fortunate country--relatively speaking.  It is fortunate through no merit of its own. Rather, it benefits from being a small isolated country (geographically) and by being underpopulated.  We are aware that these two features are often at the top of a list of our nation's alleged disadvantages.  However, we beg to differ.

In effect what these two features provide is a control by citizens over central government that is unlike most other countries in the world.  New Zealand resembles a village, when compared to other countries.  Our current, long-serving Prime Minister, John Key is accessible, as are all members of Parliament.  If regulations and laws upset the electorate, politicians tend to hear about it pretty quickly.

Contrast this with much larger countries.

Miles to Go

Secular Winds . . . and Whirlwinds

New Zealand is a proudly secular country.  In this it is not alone: most Western countries either share the vanguard with us, or are fast followers in the drive to work out the secularist mantra: "Man is the master of all things, and nothing human is foreign to me". 

The seedlings of secularism began in the Enlightenment, but have since grown into mighty trees. There are no chainsaws in sight.  The forest is now in full bloom, and the fruits of secularism are ripening.  But some are starting to complain that the taste of the fruit is a bit off.

Once we were able to see the blue sky.  Once we could see the sparkling lights of the Milky Way.  Now there is just the close, fetid air of Fangorn.  The secularist state has become our father, our mother, our nursery, our sustainer and provider, our Great White Hope.  The state has become our grand insurance policy, and, as Neddie Seagoon once observed, insurance is the White Man's Burden.

What does the secularist regime actually look like, metaphors aside?

Stark Choices Up Ahead

Christ or Caesar

One of the meta-narratives swirling around in the current US presidential election--indeed, in almost all US federal elections--is cynicism towards the state.  Donald Trump's selection as the Republican Party's nominee was essentially a protest vote reflecting disgust and antipathy towards "Washington" and the fetid swamp of Congress, as Sarah Palin once put it.  

This electoral revolt can easily morph into a worldview where the svelte set come to think that right wing protest is performed by rustic rubes who are fundamentally ignorant, and don't know how to spell.  The corollary is that those who stand with and believe in government uber-competence are the intellectual, educated, smart set.

It is possible, however, that this cynicism towards the state will not fade away.  It is possible that it will grow.  Angelo Codevilla explains why this may well turn out to be the case:

The Ground Hog Day Of Present Discontent

Unholy Triads

Angelo Codevilla sets forth the secular materialist Confession of Faith:  modern life in the West is

based upon the proposition, self-evident to many, that omnicompetent government as the executor of modern science can be the agent of unprecedented wealth, justice, and happiness.  We err at our peril if by focusing on the bloody show of totalitarian regimes, we imagine that they were wholly extraneous to the great trends of our time or to what is happening among us.  [Angelo Codevilla, The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family and Civility (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p.5.]

One cannot help notice how  the policy directions of the modern secular state claim to be "science based".  This tells us not much about science per se, but the general belief that the government becomes more competent to deliver perfection upon earth when it is guided and justified by "science".  The disciplines of science have become equivalent to a sacred text, above and beyond ordinary centres of authority, by which society will be guided and led to health, wealth, and happiness.

And science has delivered what has been asked of it.

The Fruits of Believing The State is as God

No Surprises There

We have oft stated in this blog that statism is the prevailing religion throughout the West.  Each and every problem can be solved by the State--acting, reacting, ruling, punishing, pushing, directing, funding, defunding, taxing--always taxing.  Mark Twain was right: there are only two certain things in a statist world: death and taxes.

One prosaic example will suffice.  New Zealander's diets are pretty bad in some quarters.  We are now learning that, contrary to decades of bad science and advice, the real dietary problem is sugar, not fat.  We are facing an obesity epidemic that has a long road of multiplying diseases that will play out over generations.  For example, in New Zealand we are now seeing young children develop Type II diabetes--which is entirely diet caused.  This is not a hereditary condition, but a result of the amount of sugar the children ingest as part of their daily diet.  The list of ailments and diseases which flow from having diabetes is as long as can be imagined, with more coming to light as the epidemic worsens.  But, let's repeat.  This is an epidemic plague that is inextricably lifestyle related.

What has been our response?

Rampant Intolerance in Academia

Unbelief Does Not Like Competition

An op-ed piece appeared recently in the NY Times declaiming the overwhelming prejudice against conservative academics that bubbles away in the ivory towers of the United States.  Nicholas Kristof reveals the extent of the problem.

A Confession of Liberal Intolerance

Nicholas Kristof
New York Times

We progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.  O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical.  “Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.  

The extent of the prejudice does not surprise us in the slightest.