The Last to Know

Why the Credit Rating Agency Downgrade on US Debt is So Significant

Standard and Poors, one of those lame rating agencies, has issued its first warning on the solvency of the US government. It has put government bonds on a negative credit watch. This means that the next credit rating is likely to be downward.

Ratings agencies are usually last to the party. They downgrade after the horse long ago left the stable and barn door is swinging in the wind. Global capital markets have signposted their assessment of US creditworthiness via the US currency. It has been sold down big time. Their disapproval is disguised somewhat, though, by US interest rates staying remarkably low. But this is largely due to the US Federal Reserve's quantitative easing--whereby it is busy buying all the debt issued by the US Government, with money created out of nothing. That programme is slated to end this June.

If it does (and it is a big "if") interest rates on US debt are likely to rise rapidly--above interest rates charged on the strongest US companies. The capital markets would be telling us that lending money to Procter and Gamble is safer than lending it to the US government. This is the message they sent several month ago, as Kevin Williamson explains, writing in National Review Online.

Enron Writ Large

By Kevin D. Williamson

Posted on April 18, 2011

Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt came as a shock. It shouldn’t have. Credit-rating agencies (CRAs) such as S&P are a government-chartered cartel, with constraints on competition and a customer base guaranteed by statute. They are the sleepy backwaters of the financial world — and they are always the last to know. As one investment strategist put it to me this morning: We’ve been watching this train go by for a while now, and this is the caboose.

The textbook example of this is the case of Enron. All of the credit-rating agencies had Enron rated like stacks of solid gold until a few weeks before Jeff Skillings’s financial underpants finally hit his ankles. But long before the CRAs woke up, the markets had driven Enron’s stock price down to almost nothing. The ratings agencies aren’t the opening act — they’re the fat lady sweating out the final aria in our national fiscal Götterdämmerung.

A little over a year ago, the markets already were telling us that the government’s story about how it is finally going to fix its finances is pure fiction. Yields on U.S. Treasury bonds went higher than those on a number of blue-chip corporate bonds, leading your obedient servant to remark:

Who has better credit than Uncle Sam? If you ask the bond market, that elite list includes Berkshire Hathaway, Procter & Gamble, Lowe’s, Johnson & Johnson, and a host of other blue-chip corporate borrowers. The U.S. government has the ability to levy taxes on the largest national economy in the world, a vast and fearsome revenue-collection apparatus, and more than two centuries of constitutional government under its belt. P&G has Tampax.

As in the case of Enron, the smart money gets gone long before credit downgrades start hitting the headlines. As noted in this column, PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund, got clear of U.S. Treasuries some time ago, following the lead of a number of hedge funds. The oil-exporting countries are dumping U.S. debt, too. Perhaps they know something we don’t?

Actually, they know something we do: Nothing about this is a secret. In the phrase adopted by Rep. Paul Ryan, what is coming is the most predictable economic crisis in our history: a nominal national debt of more than $14 trillion, a real national debt ten times that, and Barack Obama standing between the reformers and the needed reforms with a veto pen and excellent chances of being reelected in 2012. This isn’t sophisticated macroeconomic analysis; this is that anvil falling out of the sky onto the head of Wyle E. Coyote, and you don’t have to be a super-genius to figure out that it’s going to hurt like hell when it hits him. Even S&P gets that.

And that’s probably the reason this announcement hasn’t really sent big-time shock waves through the markets: It’s just confirming what everybody already knows: Washington’s finances are Enron writ large.

But unlike Enron, Washington has the power to tax, the power to print money, and an executive able to resist financial realities for a remarkably long period of time. Thus we have Obama administration officials lashing out at S&P today — as though it were the agency’s fault that Obama delivered an entirely implausible speech about deficit-control last week. Austan Goolsbee declared: “I don’t think that the S&P’s political judgment is right.” (What about their financial judgment?)

 Taking the prize for mealy-mouthed politics-speak is Treasury official Mary Miller, who said, “We believe S&P’s negative outlook underestimates the ability of America’s leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation.” Never mind the vacuousness of her claim and the banality of her language — “come together,” indeed — did she not watch the president’s speech last week? Because he made it pretty clear that coming together with fiscal reality is not on his agenda, never mind coming together with Republicans to do something about the entitlement bomb or even discretionary spending. Look for more kill-the-messenger rhetoric from the Obama administration as the meltdown heats up.

Here’s the thing to watch: Nobody really knows what interest rate the bond market is going to demand to finance U.S. debt in the future. Right now, the Fed is buying most of the bonds Treasury puts up for sale, and simply printing money to do that. This “quantitative easing” is scheduled to end this summer, at which point Washington will find out what it is really going to cost to finance its debt. In FY2010, we spent $164 billion just on interest payments on the debt — up 18 percent from the year before.

And that’s at historically low interest rates. If rates should go back up to their 1970s or 1980s levels, we could easily end up spending more on debt service than we spend today on big-ticket items like Medicare or national defense. That’s the hidden landmine on our national balance sheet: We don’t have to be worried only about the trillions of dollars in new debt that Obama proposed to load upon our backs, but also about what that proposal is going to do to the cost of paying interest on the debt we already have. We already know that we cannot afford the new debt that Obama would have us endure, but the real crisis will come when we find out that we cannot afford the debt we already have.

—  Kevin D. Williamson is a deputy managing editor of National Review and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, just published by Regnery. You can buy an autographed copy through National Review Online here.

The Rights and Wrongs of Church Establishment

Thieves Seeking Another Way

It is received wisdom that the conversion of the Roman Emperor, Constantine was a disaster for the Christian Church in the West. The evidence is pretty strong, and the argument based thereon, therefore, compelling. But the lessons drawn, more often than not, are shonky.

Rodney Stark summarises the argument:

In many ways, the conversion of Constantine was a catastrophe for Christianity. It would have been enough had he merely given Christianity the legal right to exist without persecution. But when he made Christianity "the most favoured recipient of the near-limitless resources of imperial favour", he undercut the authentic commitment of the clergy. Suddenly, a faith that had been meeting in homes and humble structures was hosued in magnificent public buildings; the new church of Saint Peter build by Constantine in Rome was modeled on the basilican form used for imperial throne halls. A clergy recruited from the people and modestly sustained by member contributions suddenly gained immense power, status, and wealth as part of the imperial civil service. Bishops "now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators." Consequently, in the words of Richard Fletcher, the "privileges and exemptions granted the Christian clergy precipitated a stampede into the priesthood."

As Christian offices became another form of imperial preferment, they were soon filled by the sons of the aristocracy. There no longer was an obligation that one be morally qualified, let alone that one be "called". Gaining a church position was mainly a matter of influence, of commerce, and eventually of heredity. Simony became rife: an extensive and very expensive traffic in religious offices developed, involving the sale not only of high offices such as bishoprics, but even of lowly parish placements. There soon arose great clerical families, whose sons followed their fathers, uncles and grandfathers into holy office, including the papacy. As a result, many dissolute, corrupt, lax, and insincere people gained high positions: Pope Benedict IX (1012-1055), the nephew of two previous popes, too office without even having been ordained as a priest and caused so ,many scandals by "whoring his way around Rome" that he was bribed to leave office.  (Rodney Stark, God's Battalions, p. 101f.)

The problem then lay not in the establishment of the Christian religion in the previously officially pagan Roman Empire, but in the ungodly form the establishment took. In effect, the state overtook the government and discipline of the Church, such that the Church became subordinate to the Imperium; ecclesiastical government and discipline withered. Once the Church lost its own spiritual discipline over its members and officers, coupled with the bestowal of imperial favour upon the Church, it rapidly fell under the control of the worldly and corrupt.

We could imagine what would happen to the now vigorous and burgeoning Church in China in similar circumstances. If the government of China were to "establish" the Church in China, it would become one more organ of state--just like thousands of companies, commercial enterprises, organisations, and bodies already are. Securing the favour of the government in such a system is the key to getting ahead. Therefore, if the Church were to be thus established by the state, according to the normal civil, economic, and cultural practice in China, the aspiring and ambitious would rapidly circle around the Church to gain position and station in it, seeing it as an opportunity for personal and familial advancement. The state would approve the appointment to office of those who had its favour.  Simony would emerge rapidly--as is the case elsewhere in China.  Within a generation the Church would have lost control over its own discipline, offices, members, and ministries.

This is pretty much what happened in the Roman Empire when the Church was "established" by Constantine. We believe Stark is right. The Church would have fared far better had Constantine simply recognised the Church as lawful, enjoying the protections of the law. If that had been the case, any greater social and civil recognition of the Church would then have required the growing Christianisation of the population at large. The Church would have become more recognised, revered, respected, and heeded only when and due to the fact that larger and larger proportions of society were its members, as genuine faithful believers.

There has been a long strain of thought in the Church, based on the Constantine experience, that whenever the Church becomes socially recognised and respected, corruption and worldliness are fast followers. Whilst there are temptations due to riches, wealth and prosperity, the two do not necessarily follow. If the Church maintains its own discipline and biblical government, distinctly separate from the state, and will not tolerate interference by the state in its God-ordained affairs, then wider public influence and recognition and respect can only come about if growing numbers of the community are found within its doors.

To seek wider public influence for the Church is not at all inappropriate. It is the way that it is sought that makes all the difference. The biblical way--laid out by our Lord under the aegis of His New Covenant--is through the proclamation of the Gospel and the thorough inculcation of the teaching of our Lord into the lives, manners, and praxis of believers and their children under the terms of what we call the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Any other way, any shortcuts, amount to nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or thieves trying to get into the sheepfold by "another way".

Jo Nova At Large

I Used to Believe in Climate Change . . .

About Right . . .

Disclosure Better Than Nannying Protections Every Time

New Zealanders are a nation of gullible suckers. When it comes to matters of commerce they are far too trusting. We believe the most influential cause of this malaise is our ever-growing reliance upon government. Successive governments, at the insistence of the populace, have established codes, rules, regulation, protections ad nauseam for almost all commercial exchanges and contracts. We love our government to nanny us and cocoon us. In New Zealand, government is our idol god.

An unfortunate upshot is that we become far too trusting because we believe in the power and efficacy of government as our protector and provider. The casual "she'll be right" attitude betrays a carelessness burgeoned by a totally misplaced faith in the government's ability and power to take care of us. Most have never heard of the adage caveat emptor; those who have do not know what it means or regard it as obsolete or redundant.

Nine times out of ten the government's nannying intrusions perversely increase the risks. Take the matter of leaky homes--a financial disaster for thousands of New Zealanders. During the nineties and noughties, New Zealanders insouciantly bought leaky homes with reckless abandon. Basically they trusted the builders, and the certifying local councils, and the Building Code. The latter two were institutions of government nannying.

The government had allowed changes to the Building Code for a variety of reasons. Some of them arose from Greenist pressure groups who pushed successfully for the elimination of arsenic treated framing timber. A "green" alternative was mandated--which unfortunately rotted. Other changes were the result of building pressure groups pushing for more trendy fashions in housing, allowing rain to be driven up under eaves and gutters into walls. The great problem with governments is that nannying is shaped by vested interests pressuring politicians who, in turn, always have an eye upon electoral popularity.

Then there were the local body building inspections which allowed corners to be cut. More residential development means more taxation income to fund the ceaseless voracity of local body spending commitments and lusts.

The punters bought shonky houses without for a moment doubting the weather-tightness of their new houses. After all, they were the proud possessors of a local body certificate of fitness.

When it all turned to custard the officials and government agencies all denied any wrongdoing or responsibility. The builders had long gone, or were quickly going to escape liability. Because the calamity was dispersed throughout the country, rather than a focused location of destruction, government was not moved to do much about it.Yet the costs are estimated to be far greater than restoring quake smitten Christchurch. 

But the faith of our countrymen in the omni-competence of the state and its nannying is not easily shaken. As a result of the leaky homes disaster, a new layer of government protections, provisions, rules, and controls were promulgated.

Does the government have a role in such matters? Of course. But only as it touches the interests of justice. Breach of contract is a form of theft. The government has a duty to require that commercial obligations and responsibilities are met. But the obligations and responsibilities are those mutually agreed between the contracting parties, not those imposed by state nannying.

Were the government to restrict its policing and adjudication to contract enforcement one immediate outcome would be that New Zealanders would become a whole lot less gullible very quickly. Buyers would be far more prone to asking much harder questions and would get more substantial answers.

In recent days we may have seen a small step in a better direction--although you would not think so, given the media's squawking headlines. Under the heading "Home-owners protection plan axed", the NZ Herald documented an apparent decision (later denied) by the government to drop a compulsory builder's guarantee on homes.

Plans for a compulsory builders' guarantee for quality of work have been ditched from legislation drawn up after the multi-billion dollar leaky building scandal. The warranty was among new consumer support measures proposed in a review of the Building Act last year and expected to be considered by Parliament this year.

But there is no sign of it in the Building Amendment No 3 Bill, which is now before a parliamentary select committee.

The Master Builder's Federation has it right, we believe:

But the Registered Master Builders Federation is pushing an alternative to a mandatory guarantee. Federation chief executive Warwick Quinn said insurance companies in a compulsory scheme in New South Wales collapsed, resulting in the state government being forced to manage and underwrite it.

The federation said that instead of being forced to offer a guarantee, a builder should be required to disclose whether he had the financial backing to offer a guarantee, and on what terms and conditions. "This lets the consumer choose whether to take up a home warranty or not.

"Many home owners do not want a warranty because it is not a high-risk project and they are not interested in paying for it."

Mandatory disclosure is in principle a much better regime than mandated nannying protections. It is consistent with the buyer having a duty and responsibility to do his homework, and respects his rights to be a risk-taker.

The most unregulated market in New Zealand is the on-line TradeMe auction house. Yet quickly it has developed its own conventions for protecting the interests of both buyers and sellers. It illustrates how, when left to their own devices and resources, people quickly become savvy grown-ups. But when the state becomes nanny at our behest, we quickly revert to being children.

Yet Another Sign of the Kingdom Coming

The Grace of Adoption

This piece has been published on the website, Reformation21.

There was a Girl. Fifteen Years Old: An Adoption Story
Rev. Charlie Abbate, pastor of Cornerstone Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania.
"Well what's going to happen to her?" I asked. "You know what'll happen to her," my wife answered back. "Then we're going to host this girl." At that moment, my wife and I took a step in faith that resulted in us adopting a 15 year old girl from Russia. And the timing couldn't have been worse.

We had adopted before. After having three children "the old fashioned way", we prayerfully decided to adopt our youngest daughter, our little redheaded nine month old infant, from Russia. As a good friend and fellow adoptive father likes to say, "It's easy to pray when you're in the middle of an adoption, especially when you're in Russia."

But nothing else about it is really easy -- the process is anything but smooth, curveballs come at you from all directions and doubt surrounds you. Prayer is easy, though, because you need the comfort of the Father! Philippians 4:6-7 became my go-to verse time and again. In the end, we came home with our little Mary and life went on. Sharing the joys of childbirth with your wife is an amazing thing. Adopting a child is similar in that there's a new mouth to feed, a new personality in the mix and a heightened awareness of God's sovereign love. But it's also different. Adopting a child made me and Cheryl (my wife) - and others we know who've also adopted - keenly and piercingly aware of God's love in adopting us as his children.

We adopted Mary when life was simple. Cheryl and I had been married for thirteen years. I was an independent sales rep for a national direct sales company and was doing well. My schedule was flexible enough to allow for the traveling the adoption required. My income was sufficient to cover the significant costs. Thankfully, the major hurdles of international adoption were not too hard on us, and we had family close by to watch our other three children.

But this was different. Two years after adopting Mary, life wasn't so simple. We had sold our home and moved to the Philadelphia area so that I could study at Westminster Theological Seminary. God had made it clear to me that he was calling me to a life in the ministry and pursuing my Master of Divinity at Westminster was the first step. Seminary is a tough season of life: finances are stretched thin, there's never enough time to study, and the balancing of studies, family and work often feels like walking the tight rope over Niagara Falls. In the middle of all this, we got the phone call.

The voice on the other end was a friend of ours. She and her husband had adopted two children from Russia and were now involved in a hosting program specifically designed to bring older orphans to the U.S., in the hopes that the host family, or someone they knew, would adopt them. This friend had approached us a few weeks before asking if we would host one of the kids. We said no.

No! I was in seminary, I was still traveling in order to make money, we were barely paying our bills and the thought of hosting a child that we knew we couldn't even consider adopting seemed unfair, even cruel. No. We said no and we were OK with recognizing our own limitations. A week and a half later we got the second call. This time it was more specific, and more personal.

There was a girl. Fifteen years old. She had been to the U.S. the year before as part of this hosting program. A woman decided to adopt her. To make a long story short, this fifteen year old girl was all packed up and ready to go home to be with her new American mother when she was told the woman wasn't coming. The "why" doesn't really matter, does it? This girl was abandoned. Again. Both her parents died a few years earlier and now her new mother wasn't coming.

But now, she was coming to America. Again. And this time, it was her last chance. She'd be here in June. In September, she'd turn sixteen years old. At sixteen, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) won't allow a person to be adopted. So what would happen to this girl if she comes here and doesn't find an adoptive family?

You can look up the statistics for yourself. Even if you don't, with little effort, your imagination will carry you to the dark and horrific circumstances that are the reality for a sixteen year old girl, with no family and no resources, on the streets of Russia. This is the story that my wife heard from our friend, which she then relayed to me. What could we do? We had to make a decision and we didn't have the luxury of time.

When decisions of significance must be made in our lives, how do we go about deciding which option is best? For example, when we buy a home, we study the finances, the home inspection, the school system - we look at the facts and make a decision. If you've ever invested in anything from a single stock to an equity position in a business, you do your due diligence. You don't make a decision until you have all the facts. The facts tell you what are the odds of success and, if you decide against the facts, well, then you are a fool. Even buying a car, or a laptop, isn't done without some level of investigation.

Kids are different, though. If you have children, do you remember when you decided to have your first child? I do. We had a great marriage, I had a decent job, we had a two-bedroom apartment, and we figured we had enough money to pay for food and clothing. Done. Let's have a baby! And everyone we knew said, "Horray!" And don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against that. Children are a blessing from God, no doubt! But when the sentence changes from "We're going to have a baby" to "We're going to adopt," things change. All of a sudden the qualifications of good marriage, sufficient income and a home aren't enough. All of sudden, we need to look at the facts.

When you choose to adopt, you don't get asked about baby names, you get questions like, "Who is this child you're thinking of adopting? What kind of medical information do you have? What do you know about the birth parents? What if this and what if that?". Every adoptive parent asks the same questions. And most people who know and love a couple who is thinking about adopting ask similar questions. These questions usually come out of a real love and legitimate concern for the couple and the family into which that new, adopted child will come. The same questions were asked of us when we adopted Mary. The answer to the questions, again and again, was faith.

We had faith in the God who loved us enough to adopt us, sins, scars, imperfections and all, into his holy family. We had faith that just as he knew each of our children before they were born, he knew that Mary was for us, even though she was conceived and born in a different country, by different birth parents. We had faith.

But Mary was an infant. We were now talking about adopting a teenager. We were talking about upsetting the birth order of our children by bringing in a new oldest child. Our social worker who worked with us when we adopted Mary told us we were crazy. Was this faith or stupidity? Were we about to commit, as one person told us, familial suicide?

So we prayed. As all Christians know, prayer is an amazing thing. We who are finite and frail have the ability to speak directly to the Creator of all things - this is a thought that amazes me! We prayed and prayed and asked everyone we knew to pray. The day we got the phone call about Ana, the girl who would become our oldest daughter, our hearts were open to the idea of adopting her.

Why? I don't know, except that God had given us such hearts. It was all of him, as all good things are. We even asked each other, why are we considering this? Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12 and other places in God's Word tell us of the spiritual gifting of the saints. As one body of Christ, we are made of many parts, each necessary and each different. Adoption seemed to be one way that we could serve the Lord.

But we are not alone. God has given so many others a heart that is sensitive to the needs of the orphans. Some satisfy that sensitivity by providing the finances necessary to make adoptions happen, some build orphanages, some give clothing, some pray without ceasing. We decided to take this teenage girl into our family.

In the same way that a minister's internal call to ministry must be confirmed by the external call and confirmation of the church, our internal desire to adopt Ana was confirmed by the body of believers around us. We were continually confirmed through unbelievable, "hand-of-God" financial support, often in stunning ways that can only be explained by the power of God. We were confirmed by friends who loved us, telling us that they agreed with our decision, even encouraging us to move ahead. We've since been confirmed by watching our other children embrace their new big sister, loving her, helping her learn English, and taking her in as one of us.

In my opinion, the doctrine of adoption is sorely under-taught in churches across our country. Reformed congregations usually have a good grasp of justification by faith. We get the Biblical truth that, in spite of our sin and rebellion against the holy and living God, God acted according the counsel of his own perfect will to provide a means by which we are saved through faith alone in the finished work of the Son, applied by the Spirit.

But we are adopted. Adopted by the Father! Adopted. Received into the number of and with a right to all the privileges of the sons of God, as the Confession puts it. We will never be turned away, never be forsaken, and never be abandoned. In other words, because of God's amazing grace, we will never face the prospect of what our oldest daughter faced and so many like her around the world face daily: abandonment. Orphaned. Left alone.

Rather, loved by God and called as his, we are secure in God's electing love. What a tremendous truth! What tremendous hope we find in the doctrine of adoption! And what a blessed opportunity, to live that truth and walk in that hope we have, by adopting children into our own families, children who would otherwise never see in real life what God has done for all of us as Christians.

Three years later, my wife and I sometimes think back to that initial conversation we had. We think about the life of one girl, whom God in his abundant grace, placed in our lives. We still don't know what the future holds, but we know that we have a daughter. Our other children have a big sister. We struggle with all the issues that every parent of a teenage girl struggles with. But we thank our God that he has allowed us to show forth the love he has for us, by allowing us to adopt children into our family.

What can you do? Pray for the orphans. Pray that God would continue to raise up couples who love Jesus and who walk in the blessedness of his salvation to adopt children. And, if that is not you, pray about supporting those in your church who are doing this. If you can't do that, pray for them! Love the children they adopt. I can tell you that six years after adopting Mary, and three years after adopting Ana, none of us would trade our family for another. We praise the Lord for his grace and the blessing of adoption - first into God's eternal family and then for permitting us the privilege of picturing this in our earthly family. There is no greater joy. Adopt.

Debasing the Nation's Coin

The New Normal

When a nation is run by demagogues--and political discourse consists of politicians trying to "out-demagogue" each other, things are at a pretty pass. The future does not look too good.

One of the worst thing about demagogues is that they take their audience for fools. By appealing to base instincts, beliefs, or interests they speak to manipulate the "great unwashed" into supporting them and providing political traction. But the most egregious aspect to the demagogue is that he or she is telling lies for sordid gain.  American politics is awash with demagoguery. Here are three egregious examples.

Firstly, three senators (Republicans McCain and Graham, and Independent Liebermann) have energetically pushed to see the US expand its military involvement in Libya. Fixated with a peculiar view of American grandness and exceptionalism, these three have been at the forefront of jawboning the President and the populace into America's Third War. Ghadafi just has to go!

But Andrew McCarthy reports in National Review Online:

John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham are the Senate’s most energetic proponents of sinking the nation ever deeper into the Libyan morass. In a joint interview on Fox last weekend, Senators McCain (R., Ariz.) and Lieberman (I., Conn.) were breathless in their rendering of the “freedom fighters” and the “Arab Spring” of spontaneous “democracy.” Friday they upped the ante with a Wall Street Journal op-ed, rehearsing yet again what an incorrigible thug Qaddafi is and how “we cannot allow [him] to consolidate his grip” on parts of Libya that he still controls.

For his part, Senator Graham (R., S.C.) told CNN Wednesday that he would like President Obama to designate Qaddafi an “unlawful enemy combatant” with an eye toward legitimizing the strongman’s assassination. He and Wolf Blitzer discussed whether the hit could be pulled off by the covert intelligence operatives President Obama has inserted in Libya. The next day, in his plaintive questioning of Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a Senate hearing, Senator Graham wondered why American air power could not just “drop a bomb on him, to end this thing.”

Now, these three might be granted the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are just honest men, albeit with perverse views. But it turns out that this same troika just eighteen months earlier were guests at Ghadafi's compound in which they slurped all over this same infamous dictator and miscreant.

It was only a short time ago, in mid-August 2009, that Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham, along with another transnational progressive moderate, Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), paid a visit to Qaddafi’s Tripoli compound. If they seem to have amnesia about it now, perhaps that’s because the main item on the agenda was their support for the Obama administration’s offer of military aid to the same thug the senators now want gone yesterday.

A government cable (leaked by Wikileaks) memorializes the excruciating details of meetings between the Senate delegation and Qaddafi, along with his son Mutassim, Libya’s “national security adviser.” We find McCain and Graham promising to use their influence to push along Libya’s requests for C-130 military aircraft, among other armaments, and civilian nuclear assistance. And there’s Lieberman gushing, “We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi.” That’s before he opined that Libya had become “an important ally in the war on terrorism,” and that “common enemies sometimes make better friends.” . . .

The McCain who was face-to-face with Qaddafi was very different from the McCain who today rails about Qaddafi. Back in the tent, none of his concern would dampen the cozy mood. The Arizonan swooned over “the many ways in which the United States and Libya can work together as partners.”

What a difference eighteen months can make. Demagogues all. Dishonest men.

Second example. Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury and Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve had both been guilty of egregious demagoguery over the threat of Congress not raising the debt ceiling. Both have emphatically stated that a financial "global Armageddon" will result.

Just a few days ago, for instance, the Treasury Secretary was fanning the flames of a financial meltdown, as noted by Bloomberg:

Default would cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover,” Geithner said. “For these reasons, default by the United States is unthinkable.

The Fed Chairman also tried to pour gasoline on the fire.

Here’s a passage from an article in the New York Times earlier this year:

Mr. Bernanke said the debt ceiling should not be used as a negotiating tactic, warning that even the possibility of the United States not being able to pay its creditors could create panic in the debt markets.

Sounds horrendous. But failure to raise the debt ceiling has no impact whatsoever on whether the US would default on paying interest on its borrowing. Bernanke and Geithner know this. It is pure, unadulterated demagoguery. 

But let’s set aside this first concern and focus on the second problem, which is whether Geithner and Bernanke are being honest. Simply stated, does a failure to raise the debt limit mean default? According to a wide range of expert opinion, the answer is no.

Donald Marron, head of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained what actually would happen in an article for CNN Money.

Our monthly bills average about $300 billion, while revenues are about $180 billion. If we hit the debt limit, the federal government would be able to pay only 60 cents of every dollar it should be paying. But even that does not mean that we will default on the public debt. Geithner would then choose which creditors to pay promptly and which to defer. …Geithner would undoubtedly keep making payments on the public debt, rolling over the outstanding principal and paying interest. Interest payments are relatively small, averaging about $20 billion per month, and paying them on time is essential to America’s enviable position in world capital markets.

And here is the analysis of Stan Collender, one of Washington’s elder statesman on budget issues (and definitely not a small-government conservative).

There is so much misinformation and grossly misleading talk about what will happen if the federal debt ceiling isn’t increased that, before any more unnecessary bloodcurdling language is used that increases everyone’s anxiety, it’s worth taking a few steps back from the edge. …if a standoff on raising the debt ceiling lasts for a significant amount of time, the alternatives to borrowing eventually may not be enough to provide the government with the cash it needs to meet its obligations. Even at that point, however, a default wouldn’t be automatic because payments to existing bondholders could be made the priority while payments to others could be delayed for months.

The Economist magazine also is nonplussed by the demagoguery coming from Washington.

Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, sent Congress a letter on January 6th describing in gory detail the “catastrophic economic consequences” such an event would entail. …Even with no increase in the ceiling, the Treasury can easily service its existing debt; it is free to roll over maturing issues, and tax revenue covers monthly interest payments by a large multiple. But in that case it would have to postpone paying something else: tax refunds, Medicare or Medicaid payments, civil-service salaries, or Social Security (pensions) cheques.

These men are simply corrupt.  They have failed in the most fundamental requirement of a public official: truth-telling.  Their efforts to use lies to fear-monger and manipulate the electorate toward their preferred political direction can only be described as despicable.  Note--it is not that these two officials honestly hold an erroneous view: they both know that what they are saying is not true. Cynical manipulation is always the demagogue's stock-in-trade.

Example number three: President Obama himself.  It is a sad, sad day when the President himself resorts to cheap demagogic tricks to "energize his political base".  And he is doing it over one of the most important issues of his generation: the fiscal crisis facing the United States.

Recently Obama, trying to regain pol-cred, gave a speech in which he endeavoured to show that he as President was now going to focus upon the deficit.  In fact he used the occasion to lionise central government planning and spending, and to lambast his Republican opponents' budget plan.

Remember, the pre-speech buzz suggested that President Obama was going to debut a new seriousness about America’s looming debt. We were led to expect, if not a full embrace of entitlement reform, at least an honest grapple with the scope of the problem. Instead, he stooped to full “Mediscare” scurrilousness. Under the Republican plan, Obama warned darkly, the elderly would have their Medicare withdrawn, to be replaced with “a voucher.” Kids with autism and other debilitating diseases would be told “to fend for themselves.” Obama basically accused Republicans of sponsoring death panels. And “50 million Americans would have to lose their health care in order for us to reduce the deficit.”

The president didn’t identify those 50 million  — except to suggest to his college audience that it might be “someone’s grandmother” — but he may have been referring to the “uninsured” who would be covered by Obamacare. If so, that’s a figure that’s been through more changes than Hillary Clinton’s hairstyle. In July 2009, the president said there were “47 million uninsured Americans.” The following month, he used the figure of 46 million. And in September, he and his administration began to speak of “30 million” uninsured. Is the president now boosting the estimate to 50? None of the numbers, incidentally, was correct. But that wouldn’t trouble someone bent not on leading but on misleading.

When leaders, governors, and politicians engage in spurious falsehoods, lies, slurs, and misrepresentations to appeal to the baser instincts of the electorate in an endeavour to garner support they not only lose credibility.  They also show they are morally unfit for office.

The Commandment is clear: "Thou shalt not bear false witness".  No nation can long survive that tolerates such evil behaviour in its leaders. 

NZ Post and Kiwibank

Chained Naked to a Horse-and-Buggy

Sometimes you can see things coming down the pike. You just know what is going to turn out. Most folk knew way ahead of time that the horse-and-buggy transport system was going to become extinct. This, despite the horse-and-buggy preservation society's sterling work, despite the emotional speeches in Parliament evoking the nobility of the horse and the debt Western civilization owed to it, and despite the Government investing in a horse-and-buggy transport company called Cobb and Co, appealing to nostalgia and national pride.

At the time there were bitter mutterings at the economic sabotage being wrought by automobile companies. People were purchasing motor vehicles that were manufactured in faraway places like the UK and the US and the money was going overseas. Strict import licensing rationed how many cars were allowed to come into the country, so as to restrain the sabotage to respectable levels. All that overseas exchange being lost. If only we weren't so stupid as to give up on the horse-and-buggy.

Yet most people could see the outcome a mile off. The horse-and-buggy was going to go the way of the dodo--and in the end it was only Greenpeace that was left protesting the environmental devastation that was coming from the internal combustion engine. The Auckland Star reported how they stripped naked and chained themselves to the last buggies in the country, shutting down Broadway for a time. At least until the police--far less tolerant of socio-political antics in those days--unchained the naked miscreants, harnessed them to the buggies, and whipped them away down the Great South Road. They were never seen again.

Well, it is all so clear now. The horse-and-buggy was a goner. Sometimes economic innovation and market forces do that. Well, actually they do it all the time. But that does not stop modern day Canutes striving mightily against the tides of economics and history. Just today, for example, we have been treated to another gasp of another long, lingering death. Yet everyone knows the death is inevitable, being just a matter of time.  But everyone is too polite to say so. 

The New Zealand Post is close to commencing the palliative care stage. Like the horse-and-buggy companies, its revenues face a long, slow, lingering decline. It is inevitable. It is irreversible. As the decline hastens, it is also inevitable that our politicians, cheered on by postal workers and society's nostalgics, will in a few short years vote taxpayer's money to subsidize the business. We will be told in sonorous tones about how NZ Post is not just an icon--no, it is a vital national and strategic resource to be kept alive at all costs, even though life support is horrendously expensive.

But we will all know the real story. It is only a matter of time, and how much taxpayer's money will be flushed down the sewer as our nation goes through the futile motions of preserving obsolescence.

E-mail, electronic communication, and efficient market-driven courier companies have coalesced into an unstoppable economic force to make mail services obsolete. Ergo, NZ Post's revenues are steadily declining. This in the front page of The Herald:

A number of New Zealand Post workers are set to lose their jobs as the company looks to cut costs by closing outlets. NZ Post chief executive Brian Roche would not say how many shops would close down, but said it was likely to be fewer than 20.

The move was sparked by falling mail volumes as more people used the internet. "Our mail volumes have been declining for 4 to 5 per cent a year," Roche told Radio New Zealand. "We have to address that problem, if we have got less volume and the same level of fixed costs the two don't go well together."

For a while there, NZ Post thought it had a winner. Exploiting the largesse of economic nationalists-cum-politicians it was made the owner of a nationalised bank, Kiwibank. Since banking was a growth industry, and since NZ Post already had a nation-wide branch network, hey presto politician-cum-business gurus decided that could disworsify NZ Post into banking, thereby securing NZ Post's future. It seemed to work for a while--but now, once again, economic reality is emerging from beneath the fizz and pop. Kiwibank took all the cardigan-brigade's accounts--loss making accounts--from their competitors; then they discovered that they had grown so fast, and their margins were so bad, they needed more capital. The government, by this time, restrained by its own huge, ballooning deficits, declined the generous invitation to stump up with more borrowed money. Poor Kiwibank was forced to borrow offshore--thereby once again disguising for a time its high cost base and poor margins. But no longer.

In what amounts to a delicious irony, Dr Michael Cullen--former Labour Party deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, now Chairman of NZ Post--long a champion of Kiwibank, is having to clean up the mess he largely created. Now "we spent it all" Cullen is having to cut, cut, cut.

NZ Post chairman Michael Cullen last month told a parliamentary commerce committee difficult trading conditions and a flat economy continued to negatively affect business. "One of the issues is that Kiwibank has been staffed and organised on the assumption of very strong growth," Cullen told the committee.

"At any particular point in time it's staffing is reflecting the anticipated needs for the growth of the next phase rather than it's current service delivery profile. As a consequence its actual cost ratio is actually quite high by banking standards. "This period of slow growth, which is going to be inevitable for Kiwibank over the next year or two, is probably an opportunity to address more firmly that issue of cost reduction within Kiwibank itself."

"Organised on the assumption of very strong growth"?  Just like you ran our national accounts, Michael. You thought you could spend, spend, spend to infinity, on just such an assumption of permanent economic growth. "A cost ratio quite high by banking standards"? You mean your competitors are leaner, meaner, and more efficient than the government bank--despite repatriating all those profits back to Australia, Michael?

Our prediction remains. NZ Post will continue to decline, eventually to the point of inevitable shuttering the shop. It is a horse-and-buggy service. Its subsidiary, Kiwibank will end up being sold off as a lemon to the private sector.

And that, as they say, will be that.

The moral of the story: never let the state get anywhere near a commercial business. For politicians capital is always cheap and virtually inexhaustible (being extorted via the taxation system from the citizens). State owned and operated businesses are inevitably overcapitalised, inefficient, and pathologically bent towards a high cost base. That's what happens when capital is free and inexhaustible. Until it is not--and of course it never really is. It only appears that way for a decade or so.

Some will object that New Zealand's "state owned enterprise" model refutes this sweeping judgment. It does not. It merely provides yet another example of its truth. The SOE model appears to work for a time because the government relinquishes the responsibilities and privileges of ownership, requiring that the companies run as stand-alone commercial businesses with independent boards and management.

But in the end this, too, breaks down. Governments cannot resist appointing their commercially inept mates to SOE boards as a sinecure for favours rendered. Moreover, when taxpayer's money dries up no government wants to pony up capital for reinvestment in the businesses. Rather, government tries to strip out the maximum in dividends and payments from their tame corporations. When it finally dawns on politicians that, were they to continue in this vein, the businesses will be run into the ground they then decide that selling them off is the better route. And that's where we are right now.

The moral remains valid: never let the state get anywhere near a commercial business. If any politician were even to moot the idea, harness him naked to a horse and buggy and whip him down the Great South Road.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Blinded With Science

Atheism and Apologetics - Evolution
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Karl W. Giberson is vice president of The BioLogos Foundation, and has recently written a provocative piece on how Jesus would believe in evolution, and "so should you." This is because Jesus claimed to be the Truth, and since evolution is true, darn it, our acceptance of whatever He "would have held" would seem to follow. Giberson gets out there on the skinny branches, and he gets to swinging. Christians have long been committed to "preserving, expanding and sharing truth," and this necessitates them accepting the truth of evolution.

"'What would Jesus believe about origins?" And the answer? Jesus would believe evolution, of course. He cares for the Truth."

But alas, many Christians continue to maintain, in the face of this compelling feat of imagination, that Jesus didn't believe in evolution at all. He believed in a literal Adam and Eve, as evidenced by his treatment of their son, Abel, as an historical figure (Matt. 23:35), the first righteous person to be murdered for the faith.

But Giberson isn't having any.

"But when it comes to the truth of evolution, many Christians feel compelled to look the other way. They hold on to a particular interpretation of an ancient story in Genesis that they have fashioned into a modern account of origins - a story that began as an oral tradition for a wandering tribe of Jews thousands of years ago."

That's us! Holding on to a particular interpretation of an ancient story, one that began as a oral tradition of a wandering tribe. Oh, and they were Jews. Don't leave that out.

"While Genesis contains wonderful insights into the relationship between God and the creation, it simply does not contain scientific ideas about the origin of the universe, the age of the earth or the development of life."

As grateful as we are for the acknowledgement that Genesis contains "wonderful insights" into the relationship of God and the creation, we should not be overly grateful. For he does not specify what any of these "wonderful insights" might be, and one gets the feeling that any one of these wonderful insights will be thrown overboard the instant the assured results of modern scholarship require it, or if holding to one of these wonderful insights will get us laughed at in a faculty meeting, whichever comes first.

And of course, we do not maintain that the Bible contains "scientific ideas" about the origin of the universe, the age of the earth, or the development of life. We simply maintain that it contains some true statements about these things. And because they are true statements, then it must be possible to harmonize them with any true scientific constructions about origins that are fashioned later.

If I were to say that Tommy Jones was born in 2003 in the state of Wyoming, and I solemnly affirm that this statement is true, I am advancing no scientific hypothesis, and using no scientific jargon. But to the extent that I believe it to be true, I am bound to reject any theories, however decked out they may be in the latest lingo of the scientific journals, that maintain as the consensus of "all real scientists" that Wyoming never existed, and that Tommy Jones was therefore a fragment of sky-god thunder myth.

Whenever people appeal glibly to Galileo's "two books," it usually becomes obvious that they don't believe one of them.

"We now know that the human race began millions of years ago in Africa - not thousands of years ago in the Middle East, as the story in Genesis suggests."

Translated, this means that Giberson believes the account in Genesis to be wrong.

But to his credit, when Giberson steps out, he does so in a fashion that is high, wide, and handsome. The truths of evolution "are not 'opinions' that can be set aside if you don’t like them." "Anyone who values truth must take these ideas seriously, for they have been established as true beyond any reasonable doubt." The truth of evolution is "a 'sacred fact' that Christians must embrace in the name of truth. And they should embrace this truth with enthusiasm, for this is the world that God created."

But the reverence he shows for the sacred world of Science is not extended to those poor saps and cornpones who were the original recipients of God's revelation. For the Bible is "that ancient book." The inspired message was given to "ancient and uncomprehending scribes," and to say that God gave the shiny scientific truth to them "is to distort the biblical message beyond recognition." Of course, Giberson doesn't say why it would be bad to distort the biblical message beyond recognition, being, as it is, the ham-handed work of ancient and uncomprehending scribes.

A Medieval Weapon of Mass Destruction

The Peasant's Weapon of Choice

Rodney Stark, commenting upon the weaponry of the Crusaders:

But no armor, not even a plate-armor suit, was very effective against the invention that made the crusaders to lethal in battle--the crossbow. Although it was widely used by the crusaders, remarkably little has been written about the crossbow because it was thought to be quite shameful, even sinful, to use it. In 1139 the Second Lateran Council prohibited its use (except against infidels) "under penalty of anathema, as a weapon hateful to God and to Christians," and this ban was subsequently confirmed by Pope Innocent III. However, European armies ignored the Church and made widespread use of the crossbow until it was made obsolete by firearms. Thus, for example, the Knights Templar garrison at the castle of Saphet in northern Galilee in about 1260 consisted of fifty knights and three hundred crossbowmen.

The "moral" objections to the crossbow had to do with social class, as this revolutionary weapon allowed untrained peasants to be lethal enemies of the trained soldiery. It took many years of training to become a knight, and the same was true for archers. Indeed, it took years for archers to build the arm strength needed to draw a longbow, let alone to perfect their accuracy. But just about anyone could become proficient with a crossbow in less than a week. Worse yet, even a beginner could be considerably more accurate than a highly skilled longbow archer at ranges up to sixty-five to seventy yards. . . .

The projectiles fired by crossbows were called bolts because they were much shorter and heavier than the arrows fired by regular bows. While this reduced the range of crossbows, it greatly increased their impact at shorter ranges. The fact that so little training was required meant that huge numbers of crossbowmen could be assembled quickly; the Genoese several times fielded as many as twenty thousand for a single battle. Stark, God's Battalions, p.72f

We think Stark is probably right.  Even to this day the crossbow remains underrated.  In the Anglo-Saxon world this may be due in part to childhood stories of Robin Hood and the celebration of the English longbow. 

Once again these observations underscore the need for military doctrines and tactics constantly to evolve and adapt to technology.  When this does not happen, disaster is around the corner.  Witness how the machine gun made serried rows of infantry obsolete in World War I.  Another lesson is never to underestimate low tech advances put in the hands of infantry en masse.  Imagine the devastation represented by infantry brigades equipped with high powered, long range hunting rifles, each with telescopic laser sights.  Suddenly every man is a sniper, with a modicum of training. 

So, if New Zealand cannot afford modern weaponry, why not take this route, deployed via a universal military subscription of at least two years?  If a sniper behind every tree worried Hitler's generals when they were contemplating invading Switzerland, how much more would New Zealand's defensive capability be enhanced if every adult in the country could drop an enemy combatant at a thousand metres with consistent deadly accuracy, particularly when an enemy would face very long supply lines if an invasion of the country were attempted. 

This would represent a far stronger defensive capability than we have now.  Any invader would likely find the cost of proceeding not worth any gain.  The country would be much safer--much safer than our piddling around the globe participating in Obama's wars of choice in the vain hope that it obligates "others" to come to save us were New Zealand to be attacked. 

Economic Fallacies

John Hawkins interviews Thomas Sowell on some prevailing economic carnards. 

Thomas Sowell has just released Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition . I read the first edition, thought it was outstanding, and would highly recommend it. I was also pleased to have the opportunity to interview Thomas Sowell about the Second Edition of the book. What follows is the slightly edited transcript of our conversation. Enjoy!

A lot of people say that income has stagnated for most Americans over the last 40 years. Talk about that a little bit; is that true?

No, it’s not true. It shows what you can do by playing games with statistics. It’s not true that income stagnated. People who argue that way almost invariably cite the household statistics or family income statistics when in fact the income per person, even in real terms eliminating inflation, has been rising very substantially over the years.

The problem is that households and families are getting smaller and smaller so that today if there is a family where, for example, there are two people working and in the past there were three people working, now the two people are making what the three people used to make. Then they say, “Well, you see, income has stagnated.”  No, income has gone up by 50 percent.

We also hear a lot about income inequality these days. There is a wide disparity between the rich in this country and everyone else and that’s presented as evidence the system is not fair, that it’s bad for the poor and the middle class, and that we need to tax the rich a lot more. True?

No. One of the sad things that happens is that people look at numbers and they translate the numbers into a concept that has no relationship to those numbers.

Being rich and being poor are thought of as classes of people who endure over time. In reality the great income inequality is between people of different ages. People in their 50′s make a lot more money than people in their 20′s. But that’s not a class because anyone who lives a normal lifetime is going to be in his 20′s at some point and in his 50′s at a later point. I see all this stuff about wealth even moreso than income and, yes, most people under the age of 15 don’t really have any wealth and there are millions of them, but that is not a class issue. That’s an age situation and most of the people who have no income and are under 15 are being supported by other people. So there are all kinds of numbers that are seized upon to be forced into some kind of a pattern, a pattern that bears no relationship to reality.

Now, poverty is commonly believed to be a root cause of crime and even terrorism. How much truth is there to that?

Close to zero. In fact, if you look at say, the 1950′s, people were a lot poorer in 1950 than they are today. The crime rate was a lot lower. The crime rate was lower even during The Great Depression than it was in some later times. So there is a correlation, but what little correlation there is has to be looked at in terms of the correlation is not causation. Many of the same characteristics that lead people to remain poor are also characteristics that promote crime by the same people. Even there, when you find a correlation, you have to find out which way the direction of causation goes. Most people who talk this way just automatically assume that people commit crimes because they’re poor.

Related question to what you just said there — If someone asked for a basic formula of what you need to do in life to avoid being poor, what would you tell him?

Finish high school and get married. The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it’s not being black; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people.

For a lot of Americans, the debate about the budget and what it means for them personally down the road is very abstract. Could you talk about the real world consequences for the average American if the government continues to overspend? 

Oh, there are a lot of consequences. The most obvious one is that you’re going to get taxed and unfortunately we’ve created a situation where a large number of the people are exempt from taxation and think none of this affects them. One of the biggest taxes is a hidden tax and I’m not referring just to sales taxes or things like that, but to inflation. They may not be taxed, but the company who produces their electricity will be taxed and their electric bills will go up. So technically it’s true they will not be taxed, but it’s playing with words when they end up having to pay money for electricity that is greater than what they would have had to pay had there been no tax put on the utility companies.

I left out inflation which is a huge tax on everybody. To give you some ideas of inflation; as of 1998, a $100 bill would not buy as much as a $20 bill would buy in the 1960′s. So every dollar that’s in your wallet or in your bank or wherever you keep your money is going to be worth less than it was before because the government is printing more dollar bills and spending it. So there are all kinds of ways in which they can transfer wealth from the public to the government without changing the tax rate.

Now many people blame the economic issues in Africa, India, Pakistan, the Middle East on colonization by Western nations and stinginess on the same part by those nations. In other words if the West were willing to pony up enough money at this point, the economic problems of those countries would be solved. How fair do you think that analysis is?

I think it’s remote from any reality and what reinforces that is that the people who say these kinds of things never back it up with any hard data. The hard data shows the opposite of what they’re saying. You can look at the case of those countries which finally opened up to the rest of the world and allowed foreign investors in and foreign businesses in, the two biggest examples in recent times, India and China. People by the millions have risen out of poverty in China and in India after they began to open up their markets to Western investments.

None of this is mysterious. When people come in to build phones or other devices in China, the people who set up those business in China make money, but the people in China also make money. The reason is because there is a net increase in the wealth produced by the country. I’m always amazed at how little interest people on the Left have in what does and does not increase the actual production of wealth. They are hypnotized by the notion of redistribution of wealth without any concern about how is the wealth produced in the first place. You can’t redistribute it until it’s produced and if your methods cause less to be produced, people are going to be poorer.

The Myth of the Dark Ages, Part II

Rational Exuberance

OK, so the Dark Ages in Medieval Europe did not actually exist. It was a mythical concoction to further a broader ideological cause--to wit, that the Christian faith represents superstitious ignorance. It was a myth to promulgate the religious cause of Unbelief.

But the question is begged--was there any causal connection between the Christianising of Europe from the fourth century AD onwards and the economic and technological progress of Europe at the same time? Rodney Stark argues that there is a causal connection. The Christian faith provided the cultural, intellectual, and social climate that indirectly produced the economic advancement of Europe.

There were, he argues, a number of Christian doctrines which indirectly resulted in technological, scientific, and economic advances. The first turns upon the doctrine of man. Christian doctrine professes the fundamental equality of all men (males, females, and children). All are equally created in God's image. But equally, and more immediately relevant, the Kingdom of Christ--the realm established by the Saviour of the world--equally redeems male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, "our people" and barbarians, adult and child. All are saved by Christ and made part of His body, the Church. This indirectly meant the death blow to slavery and the oppression of others.

We say indirectly. This is important. The Kingdom of God reconstructs society from the inside out; it does not first tear it down to begin all over again. In fact, our Lord explicitly forbids any revolutionary attempt to "make things right" by force, or instantaneous actions. This is the point of the Parable of the Tares. The uprooting of the tares--getting things cleaned up by apocalyptic action--will damage the wheat. (Matthew 13: 24-30) Rather the Kingdom of God acts like leaven. The truth of the Gospel insinuates itself gradually into human life and society, transforming it from the inside out.

The Christian faith, then, established the fundamental equality of all human beings before God. What God has created and accepted, let not man despise is the upshot. It also established the concept of the "self". We say, "established" since, of course this was profoundly revealed in the the Word's Older Testament--witnessed so powerfully in the Psalms, for example--but in Christ these things were unequivocally established for the entire world.

In political theory this meant that Christianity led theorists to focus upon individuals as much as they focused upon the state or the corporation. Stark writes:

Even the Greek philosophers had no concept quite equivalent to our notion of the "person". Thus, when Plato was writing the Republic, his focus was on the polis, on the city, not on its citizens--indeed, he even denounced private property. In contrast, it is the individual citizen who was the focus of Christian political thought, and this, in turn, explicitly shaped the views of later European political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke. This was, quite literally, revolutionary stuff, for the Christian stress on individualism is "an eccentricity among cultures." Freedom is another concept that simply doesn't exist in many, perhaps most, human cultures--thee isn't even a word fro freedom in most non-European languages." Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, p.23f

One of the upshots was a growing cultural conviction that to be and do what he ought before both God and man. This establishes a vital pre-condition for economic, intellectual, and technological advances.

A second major leavening influence was the Christian idea of progress. Human civilisation was moving toward a glorious end, when not only would all nations become Christian, but the entire creation itself would be freed from groaning under the consequences of Adam's sin. Augustine, for example, joyfully and exuberantly celebrated the glories of the creation which God had appointed man to discover, exploit, enhance, and enjoy.

Augustine celebrated not only theological progress, but earthly, material progress as well. Writing early in the fifth century, he exclaimed: "has not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention, so that this vigour of mind . . . betokens an inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such arts.

What wonderful--one might say stupefying--advances has human industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation!" He went on to admire the "skill [that] has been attained in measures and numbers! With what sagacity have the movements and connections of the stars been discovered!" And all of this was due to the "unspeakable boon" that God conferred upon his creation--a "rational nature." Ibid, p.9f

This world was a wonderful garden in which man could romp around, enjoy, and think God's thoughts after Him. And every time he did, he enjoyed greater blessings and felicity. The boon was palpable and tangible.

Lastly, but certainly not least, the Christian faith brought the law of God to Europe.  This law established the importance of family, of familial relations, so that the individual self was always integrated into familial structures.  It also established the importance of church and public worship.  Society, therefore, had orders and structures for the blessing of man, the individual.  It also established the state--and the functions and limits of the state.  Absolutist doctrines, such as the Divine Right of Kings were heretical aberrations and could never survive in a Christian culture.  And it established the rights and protections of property.  Finally, it established the fundamental importance of truth telling in all of life.

The Law of God provided the necessary conditions for intellectual progress and economic and technological advance. 

Europe would not have been without its Christian foundations and infrastructure. 

Re-Capping the Insanity

Out of Step With the Real World

New Zealand is now officially stagflating--arguably the worst of all possible economic scenarios. Not that you would know, since there is a deafening silence on the matter from the commentariate and officials. Stagflation is the desperate condition of an economy which is paralyzed by stagnant economic growth, on the one hand, and galloping inflation, on the other."Whatever you do, don't use the S-word!"

There is only one way out that we know of--ruthlessly cut the dead wood off the tree, let the sap bleed, and wait for fresh, non-blighted shoots to emerge. But that rarely happens because anodyne solutions are always more acceptable to the voters and government always have their eye on the next election and their prospects for holding on to power.

One cut that is needed, and needed badly is to dismantle New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme. it represents the "crock of all crocks", which in our Alice-in-Wonderland-World is saying something. It is an ideological tax which achieves no good whatsoever, but inflicts much economic harm.

Australia is now considering just such a tax (defined as a government imposed cost impost upon citizens and their property). Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor of The Australian recaps the inanity and madness of Julia Gillard's proposals. His eviscerating arguments apply equally to New Zealand's folly.

It's madness to sacrifice ourselves for nothing

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor
From: The Australian
April 09, 2011

EVERY so often Australians accuse themselves of being out of step. The implication is that we should "catch up with the world". Sometimes this has been a useful spur to reform, sometimes it has been nonsense.

But the Gillard government is attempting to put Australia off-side with the practice of virtually the entire world. And it is doing so by pursuing a puritan ideological obsession that virtually no one else in the world is doing.

I refer, of course, to the proposed carbon tax. If the carbon tax goes ahead, to be replaced in due course by an emissions trading scheme with a fixed carbon emissions target, Australia will have among the most extreme climate-change policies in the world.

Gillard has shown herself to be a highly reactive politician. And it is characteristic of her that she overreacts. The ETS was unpopular before the last election, so she urged Kevin Rudd to dump it. After the election, Labor was worried about hemorrhaging votes on its left to the Greens, so every Labor right-winger who had ever bruised a ballot became a champion of gay marriage. And Gillard embraced the carbon tax.

Lately Gillard has been under pressure, not least from the Labor Right, for being too close to the Greens - so she's embraced the Bible, a newly minted life-long love of America and social conservatism.

The problem with these wild overreactions is twofold. After a time they lose their credibility. And in the meantime we're stuck with the carbon tax.

Let's have a simple rundown of what the rest of the world is doing. In Europe there has indeed been an ETS for some years. But more than 95 per cent of the carbon permits in its first years were given out for free. The scheme had little effect on reducing greenhouse emissions. It was widely regarded as a joke, although European officials who come to Australia are inevitably interviewed reverentially by uninformed ABC personalities who never hold them to account for this.

Europe says it is going to fix its ETS. But even so, the vast majority of Europe's export industries will qualify for free or highly discounted carbon permits.

Some heavy manufacturing has left Europe and gone to China. But as Graeme Kraehe of Bluestone Steel pointed out, carbon emissions attributable to European imports have risen massively. So any carbon reductions from European manufacturing have been more than matched by carbon increases from non-European manufacturers now supplying Europe's population. Out of this, there is little or no net carbon reduction for the planet.

What about China?

China is the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for nearly a quarter of the world's new carbon. The Gillard government's Greg Combet uses a Jesuitical form of words, which is a first cousin to rank fraud, when he talks about China. He recently spoke of an "implicit carbon price" in "certain sectors" of the Chinese economy. Gillard herself frequently talks of China decommissioning coal-fired power stations.

Let's be quite clear. China is engaged in a massive, yes massive, increase in carbon emissions. As Gary Banks from the Productivity Commission has made clear, the implicit carbon price exists only in Combet's dreams. China does not impose a carbon price across its economy. Banks has concluded that you simply cannot work out an economy-wide implicit carbon price from the carbon-reduction measures for economies that do not impose direct carbon prices.

But despite the Gillard government's propaganda, and its many slyly misleading convolutions, Beijing has never, ever promised to cut its carbon emissions. It is indeed decommissioning old coal-fired power stations and replacing them with new coal-fired power stations. These will be more efficient than the old. So China can claim it's reducing its carbon intensity, that is, the amount of carbon per unit of output. But overall it plans huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

Its Copenhagen offer, on some estimates, would have seen its carbon emissions grow by 500 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020.

Take the steel industry. In the past decade, China's steel industry has more than quadrupled in size. That means it is producing one billion tonnes of extra carbon per year from that industry alone.

One can only conclude that the Gillard government is deliberately attempting to mislead the Australian people about what is happening in China.

China faces huge environmental and pollution problems, of which carbon is a part. And undoubtedly it is trying to produce goods more cleanly. But if you ever hear a government minister, or an interviewer, claim China is reducing emissions, or has a price on carbon, you know they are talking through their hat.

In the US, the administration of Barack Obama has definitively abandoned any support for an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax. Such policies face overwhelming congressional opposition, from the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

Again Combet misleads gullible ABC interviewers by trying to claim the US's few state-based emission reduction schemes are somehow comparable to what he is planning to do to the Australian economy. In fact the state-based schemes in the US are in the process of atrophy. They are very shallow schemes, covering small portions of their economy, with low carbon prices.

The Gillard government's proposed carbon tax is meant to cover the whole of the Australian economy, with a few sectors exempt. There is hardly a country in the world that has done anything like that. Certainly the state-based systems in the US are not remotely equivalent.

In our own region, the contrast between what the Gillard government is planning to do, and what our neighbours are actually doing, is even more stark. Before the giant earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northern shores and created the continuing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the Japanese had already decided to postpone any legislation for an emissions trading scheme. The early design of the Japanese scheme that has been postponed looked as though it would be a replica of the ineffective European scheme, with most carbon permits initially issued for free.

After the tsunami, economic reconstruction will be the key. Japan will need to replace the nuclear-generated power it has lost, and probably find some other source for the nuclear power it was planning. That inevitably means a lot more carbon emissions. Japan won't hurt its economy with an ETS or a new tax.

Something like this may well affect Germany too, if, as seems likely, its nuclear power industry is scaled back. Some European nations have carbon taxes as well as the ETS, although others, such as France, have abandoned carbon taxes altogether.

South Korea had planned to start a carbon reduction scheme in 2013, although there seem to be endless delays and not much more than half the economy was to be covered. Again it seems the early permits were to be issued mostly for free. It is extremely unlikely South Korea will disadvantage itself compared with its northeast Asian neighbours.

India, which accounts for about 5 per cent of global emissions and rising, has no plans for an ETS or an economy-wide carbon price. Its voluntary offers to reduce carbon intensity - like China, India has never offered to decrease carbon emissions - according to some analysts, involve an overall 350 per cent increase of carbon emissions on 1990 levels by 2020.

Canada did sign up to the now defunct Kyoto Protocol, but never went anywhere near meeting its targets (whereas Australia, having not signed up, did meet its targets). I mistakenly wrote recently that Canada has an ETS. It does not. Nor does it have a carbon tax.

Russia, because of the collapse of the old Soviet-era industries, fell well below its 1990 level emissions. But Russia's economic development plans involve massive carbon emission increases from here onwards.

The countries that compete with us to sell resources to China, such as Indonesia and Chile, are doing close to nothing to inconvenience their economies on this score. The notable thing about the Indonesian press and political debate is that climate change never figures at all.

Part of the corruption of the European ETS was that it involved buying carbon credits from Third World countries by sponsoring anti-greenhouse schemes there. But these were mostly ineffective, if not outright rorts.

It is a nonsense to describe the imposition of a carbon tax as an economic "reform" for Australia. If the proponents of the tax were honest, they would acknowledge that it is completely implausible that a massive cost imposition on the Australian economy will benefit the Australian economy. Instead, Australians are being asked to engage in a massive act of altruism - although the benefits of that altruism are doubtful, even for the global environment, given that high-carbon activities will simply shift to other countries.

Australians, like most people in the world, want to do something to help the environment, and to reduce carbon emissions. But it must be at a reasonable cost.

Many national governments have engaged in extravagant rhetoric about climate change. All are hopeful that new and better technologies will emerge. But you can't wish these into existence. Funds for research are one of the most obvious ways to attempt to make things better.

There are some reasonable things Australia can do that would reduce emissions. But if we impose an economy-wide tax and reduce emissions by the absurd amount the government claims, we will be imposing a giant cost on the economy, with absolutely unpredictable economic consequences. And we will also, incidentally, be wholly out of step with the rest of the world.

The Myth of the "Dark Ages"

Tricks the Dead Have Played Upon the Living

Rodney Stark has written extensively on the myth of a Dark Ages in Europe. Whilst his explosion of the myth should be of interest to all historians of the West, it is of particular interest to Christians because of the widespread hypothesis that the Dark Ages existed due to the influence of Christianity in Europe, which  ignorance and superstition throughout the Continent. The sub-thesis is that since Christianity is a religion of superstition and ignorance were it to become culturally dominant again, a new Dark Ages would descend upon the land.

This hypothesis and its sub-theses were advanced successfully by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. Voltaire, of course, had observed that "history is a trick the living play upon the dead"; he was in no doubt that "meaningful" history existed only as a useful tool to illustrate selectively his preferred narrative of the times. In his day, the preferred narrative was to assert that human reason was sovereign over superstition, and that the Christian religion was primarily a superstition that held the unenlightened in thrall. Thus, Enlightenment propagandists glorified the ages of Greece and Rome and denigrated the age of Christian ascendency in the West.

Voltaire (1694-1778) claimed that after Rome fell, "barbarism, superstition, [and] ignorance covered the face of the world." According to Rousseau (1712-1778), "Europe had relapsed into the barbarism of the earliest ages. The people in this part of the world . . . lived some centuries ago in a condition worse than ignorance." Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) also pronounced this era as the "triumph of barbarism and religion".
Rodney Stark, God's Battalions, p.65

For three centuries this has been the received wisdom of the matter in the West. Most twentieth century historians simply accepted this narrative, or "trick played upon the dead" as true. Like the narrative of evolutionism, one had to espouse it in order to be respected in the academy. Here, for example, is Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress, writing in 1983, claiming that the Dark Ages began before the fall of Rome--sometime around the emergence of the Christian gospel. As it grew and expanded, so did a pervasive ignorance.

"Christianity conquered the Roman Empire and most of Europe. Then we observe a Europe-wide phenomenon of scholarly amnesia, which afflicted the continent from A.D. 300 to at least 1300." This occurred because "the leaders of orthodox Christendom built a grand barrier against the progress of knowledge." And in the words of the distinguished historian William Manchester (1922-2004), this was an era "of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness . . . . The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension." Ibid, p.66

Now the myth of the Dark Ages has been exploded in the mind of the academy--at least for the present.

This has become so well known that rejection of the "Dark Ages" as an unfounded myth is now reported in the respected dictionaries and encyclopedias that only a few years previously had accepted and promulgated the same myth. Thus, while earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had identified the five or six centuries after the fall of Rome as the "Dark Ages", the fifteenth edition, published in 1981, dismissed that as an "unacceptable" term because it incorrectly claims this to have been "a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity." Ibid, p. 66

To be sure, ignorance and barbarity existed and captured centres of influence and power at times--even as it does in our own age. (We believe that subsequent ages will look back at our own in horror at the ignorance and barbarity, for example, represented in glorifying the murder of children as a woman's human right. That is about as ignorant and barbaric as one can get.) But always in Medieval Europe the conflict between a Christian-based reasonableness versus ignorance and superstition was going on. Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose is a classic presentation of this conflict and struggle in the later Middle Ages.

Stark summarises some of the magnificent technological and scientific advances during this period:

-The invention of the collar and harness for horses and oxen that enabled the drawing of very heavy wagons, with substantial increases in speed.

-The invention (eighth century) of iron horseshoes that protected the feet of horses but greatly improved their traction in difficult conditions.

-The development of a harness that allowed horses and oxen to be harnessed in seried pairs, rather than abreast (tenth century). In the ninth century the swivel axel was developed that made large transport carts much more manoeuvrable. These transportation advances all served to make Roman roads ineffective, inadequate and obsolete: they had to be picked apart and new roads laid. (The Enlightenment narrative interpreted this breaking down of Roman roads to be an evidence of Dark Age barbarism!)  

-Food production rose dramatically due to the invention of the horse drawn furrow plough, with adjustable cutting and plowing depths, complete with retractable wheels facilitating easy transportation. This enabled a farming revolution in the heavy soils of mid and northern Europe.

-The exploitation of hydraulic energy. Someone in the Middle Ages invented water powered mills; the technology spread rapidly all over Europe. The Domesday Book (1086) reported that there were at least 5,624 water powered mills operating in England--about one for every 54 families. In the thirteenth century it was recorded that along the Seine, in one section about a mile long, there were 78 mills operating--an average of one mill for every seventy feet of river. In the same century, hydraulic powered sawmills were operating--often being driven by water chutes cascading down from purpose built dams. But not just sawmills: hydraulic power was used for turning lathes, griding knives and swords, fulling (pounding) cloth, hammering metal and drawing wire, and pulping rags to make paper.

And on the subject of paper,

Jean Gimpel noted that paper, "which was manufactured by hand and foot for a thousand years or so following its invention by the Chinese and adoption by the Arabs, was manufactured mechanically as soon as it reached medieval Europe in the thirteenth century. . . . Paper had travelled around the world, but no culture or civilization on its route had tried to mechanize its manufacture" until medieval Europeans did so. Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, p.39.

-Wind energy was quickly exploited as well. Windpower was harnessed to mill, grind, and to pump water. Large areas of what are now Belgium and the Netherlands were under sea during Roman times. Advanced medieval technology pumped the water off and began to farm the land.

By late in the twelfth century, Europe was becoming so crowded with windmills that owners began to file lawsuits against one another for blocking their wind. Ibid, p.40.

-One of the most spectacular technological inventions which hugely increased human knowledge and productivity was the eyeglass. They were invented around 1284 in northern Italy and had a dramatic effect upon productivity--something we take for granted today.

Without glasses, large numbers of medieval craft workers were washed up at forty. With glasses, not only could most of these people continue but because of their experience, their most productive years still lay ahead. Not only that but many tasks are greatly facilitated by use of magnifiers, even by persons with fine eyesight. These tasks were often beyond ancient craftspeople. No wonder glasses spread with amazing speed. Within a century after their invention, the mass production of eyeglasses occupied plants in both Florence and Venice, turning out tens of thousands of eyeglasses a year. Ibid, p.44.

-Finally, we could not fail to mention the dependable, mechanical clock--another thirteenth century invention.

Sometime during the thirteenth century, someone somewhere in Europe invented a dependable mechanical clock. Soon, Europe was the only society where people really knew what time it was. As Lewis Mumford remarked, "the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the industrial age," because it made possible precise scheduling and coordination of activities. . . . Like eyeglasses, for centuries mechanical clocks existed only in the West. Ibid, p. 44.

Dark Ages, anyone? Not in medieval Christendom, that's for sure. Yet, to this day, the myth is taught as beyond dispute in most classrooms and pop-history programmes in the West. Voltaire was only half right. History can be not just a trick the living play upon the dead; it can also be a trick the dead play upon the living. Why have the generations descending from the Enlightenment been so gullible in this regard? We believe it has been due to the emergent animus against the Lord Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.

As they say, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.