It's Freedom, But Not as we Knew it, Jim

Speech Rights in the Maelstrom of Unbelief

Is free speech an important civil right? Sure is. Does this right derive from the Living God, or from human convention? In other words, when the state stops people from expressing a view or opinion is there a divine warrant for the law, or is it tyranny? Actually, it all depends. On what? On a cluster of considerations and cases.

Firstly, there is the general principle that human beings are made in the image of God and speech is an intrinsic part of that image bearing. If one were to conceive of the human race unfolding without sin--that is, the Fall having never occurred--there would be absolutely no restrictions on speech, for all speech would have been holy, just and good. When Adam named the creatures, he was able to do so perfectly. His speech was perfectly reflecting the very image of God Himself.

Secondly, since the Fall human speech has become terribly corrupted. Here is James's summary: "The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell." (James 3:6) Since the Fall, human speech has become the engine of evil and corruption.

Thirdly, the state has no general authority from God to restrain human speech, despite the fact that much of it is evil. The state is not a redeemer. The state cannot remove human sin. It cannot make people righteous. If the state, in an attempt to make all human speech more righteous, began to exercise unrestricted control over what people say, it would have warrant to go still further--to control the evil thoughts that express the evil words. These prerogatives belong to Christ alone, and have not been delegated to the state.

Fourthly, any authority the state has to interdict human speech must be restricted to those few occasions when speech is threatening the life and limb of others. Hence, Oliver Wendell Holmes famous illustration: free speech does not give one the right to stand up in a crowded theatre and yell, "Fire!" for the sheer mischief of it, leading to the death or potential death of fellow congregants crushed in the ensuing panic.

Fifthly, all public speech enciting people to break the law of God and turn upon fellow citizens, stripping them by force of their rights to their life, liberty, property, and lawful pursuit of happiness would be legitimately the domain of the state to restrict in some measure and prosecute. Speech which impedes peoples' lawful rights and activities is also a legitimate target for restriction: hence, public slander has been a form of speech which traditionally has been proscribed.

In the post-Christian West, free-speech rights which developed out of the Christian doctrines expressed above, are not unexpectedly eroding. Take away the foundations and the edifice crumbles. You cannot maintain the liberties produced by Christian beliefs about man, God, sin, evil, and governance upon non-Christian ground.

In the past few decades traditional free-speech rights have morphed in the post-Christian West. Focus has gone on what would constitute reasonable harm and damage to others. Speech can be restricted if it damages and harms other people. What constitutes harm? Well, emotional upset for one. Speech which makes people enraged and angry, for another. Speech which offends is now restricted.

In other words, free speech liberties and rights are rapidly disintegrating. Offence, in the end, is in the ear of the hearer. This fits with our modern "enlightened" views of the state. The government in Western Unbelief has become our great redeemer, to preserve us from evil and make us all good. No wonder the state will move aggressively to control our speech. Unbelief, having denied the Living God, stupidly looks for its deity in other places. Almost invariably its eye alights upon the perceived locus of supreme power--the state. The people demand that the state control speech. Is it not a legitimate function of deity? Too late we discover that all idol gods are base and cruel. Tyranny grows; liberty erodes.

A free speech case has recently hit the headlines in New Zealand. A protester burned the New Zealand flag during an Anzac Day celebration. The courts convicted her of "offensive behaviour". But no longer.

Valerie Morse was convicted of offensive behaviour after setting the flag alight in an anti-war protest in Victoria University's law school grounds, opposite the Cenotaph, during the 2007 Anzac Day dawn service. Her conviction was upheld by the High Court and Court of Appeal. But in a decision released yesterday, the Supreme Court said earlier rulings had mistaken the meaning of offensive behaviour in the Summary Offences Act.

So, the Supreme Court found something in the law which the lower courts overlooked. Firstly, let's consider the reasoning of the lower courts.

Wellington District Court judge Oke Blaikie found offensive behaviour to mean behaviour capable of wounding feelings or arousing real anger, resentment, disgust or outrage in the mind of a reasonable person. He considered a tendency to disrupt public order was not required.

This is nonsense--but an apt illustration of how free speech rights are being eroded in the West. Firstly, there is the abstraction of a "reasonable" person. A person considered reasonable is one whom society regards as such. One man's reason is another man's idiocy. If this mythical "reasonable" person takes offence or is made angry by the speech of another, then the speech rights of the offending person can be circumscribed and restricted. It will all come down to toleration of that speech which the state considers to be reasonable.

To illustrate: blasphemy against the Name and honour of God and His Messiah is deeply offensive to earnest Christians, causing real anger, resentment, disgust and outrage. But is this reaction reasonable? Does a Christian have good reason to be so offended? No--because New Zealand is a secular materialistic society, and as such, it does not regard such religious doctrines as worthy of reasonable people. Under such an approach, a reasonable person will be whomever the government (reflecting probably the majority of citizens) determines. Restricting speech because it offends others--even though they be deemed by the good pleasure of the state to be reasonable-- is a severe erosion of the historical liberties we have enjoyed.

So, did the Supreme Court revert to the more free, Christian position with respect to free speech? No. It came out with an equally pernicious doctrine.

But the Supreme Court thought otherwise, ruling unanimously that offensive behaviour must give rise to a "disturbance of public order". Because the district court proceeded on a wrong basis of law, the conviction was thrown out

This, we are told is a new precedent.

However, Auckland University law professor Bill Hodge said yesterday's decision appeared to set a new precedent, giving protesters more right to freedom of expression under the Bill of Rights. "You can now burn the New Zealand flag any time, anywhere you like, because I can't think of a time any more sensitive with the right people in the right place than Anzac morning in our nation's capital while the morning ceremony is ongoing.

Laying aside the emotive connotations of flag burning, Bill Hodge has missed the real point. The real revolutionary doctrine "discovered" by the Supreme Court is that speech can be restricted if it disturbs public order--for then it is proved to be offensive. This highlights just how far speech in New Zealand is now restricted. If we were to stand up and declare publicly that homosexuality is a gross sin and that unrepentant, unbelieving homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of God, one's speech could be legitimately proscribed provided people rioted in anger at our remarks.

As we have noted, since offensive is in the ear of the hearer, all that is required to stop speech is to generate a reactive public disturbance. In the old days, free speech liberties meant that the rioters would be indicted and punished for breach of the peace. Nowadays, it is the speaker who is indicted for breaching the peace. It becomes easy to shut opponents down if one is prepared to show how offended one is at their remarks by disturbing public order.

Rioting, chanting, offended Islamics can shut down all criticism of Muhammed and Allah and Islamic people. It all depends on whether they choose to take offence and express their anger in a breach of the peace. Unionists can shut down critics if they man the barricades in outrage. If they riot against offending strike-breakers, the government will now, by law, arrest the strikebreakers for offensive speech. How about the now widespread antics of anarchists smashing glass and people in the streets? If they can coherently identify what it is that offends them so, the government will move to take the offensive speech and speakers away.

In the final analysis, all it would take, it would seem, is an enraged person yelling, "Shut up, or I'll kill you" and the state will move rapidly to shut the provocative speaker down. Welcome to the wonderful world of non-Christian, secular free speech rights.

Fair Question

Statutory Rape an Exclusively Male Crime?

In New Zealand we have a 28 year old Facebook predator who has reportedly serially groomed teenagers for sex. So far the perp is free as a bird and the authorities appear to be turning a blind eye. Keeping Stock has a question:

This is one disturbed woman, in our always-humble opinion. But what disturbs us even more is the seeming lack of action by the Police so far.

Imagine this scenario: a 28-year-old MAN grooms teenage GIRLS via Facebook, and initiates sexual relationships. We have every expectation that the Police would act quick-smart to stop the behaviour, and if laws have been broken, to make an arrest. So what is the difference here?

Fair question. Are the NZ Police sexist in their application of statutory rape law in this country? Is there one law for males, and another for females?

There have been hints that the woman in question is mentally disturbed. The implication is that her alleged offending is therefore not to be taken seriously. One has hitherto held the opinion that it is the courts which make such determinations, not the police. But maybe times are changing.

Even worse, it appears a national women's magazine (Woman's Day) has done a celeb-adoration style story on this perp. Maybe they want to portray her as an archetypical twenty-first century feminist who has successfully mastered electronic social-networking. You know--serious socio-political analysis. The kind of pablum that has made Woman's Day a "must read" for every non-thinking woman.

Quip of the Day

"The SEALs killed Bin Laden and we got the 72 versions." 

A comment left on Patterico's Blog:

The Propaganda Begins

National School Testing A Lame Duck

Regular readers of our blog will know that we have remained sceptical of the New Zealand government's showcase reform--the introduction of national standards testing in reading, writing, and arithmetic in our primary schools. This is not because we are opposed to such testing in principle. Rather, it is because the imposition of national testing upon an unwilling state school system is unlikely to succeed. The government has been naive and simplistic in seeking to graft national testing on top of an intellectually bankrupt state education system.

Australia has such a national standards testing system--code named NAPLAN. It is based in part upon similar initiatives in the United States. Criticisms are now beginning to surface. A recent piece in the Sydney Morning Herald began with the headline: "NAPLAN-style testing has 'failed' US schools". Catch the drift.

The first criticism: the tests narrow down the curriculum to focus upon literacy and numeracy. Now in many human activities focus upon essentials is regarded as a virtue. But not in modern education. The only essential is the pupil in the prevailing state approach of "child centred learning". The framing of tests as "narrowing down" the curriculum is consistent with post modern and neo-Marxist theoretical constructions of education, together with the prevailing pedagogical idea of allowing children to construct their own curriculum.

National testing is seen to be forcing children into a constrained, imprisoning, mental and social straitjacket. In fact, however, everybody really knows that the rest of the curriculum is worthless and inaccessible if the pupil cannot read, write, or figure. You don't even get on the board to begin to play without these vital pre-requisites. But without reframing education into a more traditional and historical context, and publicly rejecting modern pedagogical inanity, the government will lose the ideological war. In New Zealand, the government has given little indication that it even understands that an ideological war needs to be fought. It appears to have concluded that introducing national standards is a relatively minor tweak--an administrative, operational detail. Far from it. It cuts at the vitals of the dominant modern educational paradigm.

The second criticism in the SMH article is that national testing creates perverse incentives for teachers.

Schools and individual teachers have been judged and rewarded financially for improving student test scores and punished for poor ones. This led to many of the best teachers abandoning schools in the disadvantaged areas, with some teachers accused of teaching to the test and others of helping children cheat to improve results.

What? Have not the educational unions been assuring us, proclaiming loudly from the rooftops, that teachers are dedicated professionals, of exemplary character? Now we are finding that they are not--and this puts NAPLAN in jeopardy. There are now signs in the Australian education system that Aussie teachers are as unethical as their US counterparts.

In Australia, there are signs of teachers "teaching to" the NAPLAN tests, helping students cheat and decreasing student participation rates. While the basic skills literacy and numeracy tests were designed to help teachers identify children with learning difficulties needing assistance, they are now being used as a competitive measure of school performance on the federal government's My School website. Many parents use the scores as the basis for choosing a school.

Better then to scrub the whole thing, right? Nah. When a company--any company--puts incentives for staff in place, it risks creating perverse behaviours--ripping customers off, selling them things they don't really need or want, manipulation of the system, lying and false reporting--etc. Should incentives be tossed out? No--but gaming the system must become a discipline offence--a breach of contract, something that could result in termination. Teachers, principals and schools need to know that unethical behaviour and gaming of national tests will result in breaches of contract and terminations. That would go a long way to stomping out gaming.

Is the Ministry of Education in New Zealand ready for this? They give no sign. National testing for literacy and numeracy in state schools is not a minor tweak, an easily-facilitated-add on. It goes entirely against the grain of modern pedagogy and the state education system in this country. Without a root-and-branch reform it will never be allowed to take hold. Top-down reforms no longer work, because the vested interests, the ideological educrats, have far too strong a hold.

We believe that the only way to move forward is to introduce a national voucher system--which would have the effect of putting parents back in the driving seat as the clients of the system. Now, this would also mean that some children (of uncaring, irresponsible parents) will likely fail. But rest assured, parents would be far more demanding than Ministry of Education educrats. Each school would have, under a universal voucher system, to justify its existence and its achievements to a free-to-choose marketplace of parents, who would become the customers and clients of the system. Not only would some children fail, but some schools would inevitably fail--unless and until they pulled their socks up.

A national voucher system would help disenfranchise the teacher unions. But even such a radical gordian-knot reformation of the system cannot be allowed to stand alone: to succeed it must be supported by other reforms, such as abolishing teacher registration (by which the current establishment controls the supply of teachers and has far too much say in who enters the profession.)

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Need for a Sense of Smell

Money, Love, Desire - Wealth and the Christian
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, May 06, 2011

I recall one place where N.T. Wright said that the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher were "evil." As a good portion of the Western world is now in the process of running out of money, this set up an interesting train of thought.

Is it "evil" to be broke, to run out of money? Presumably not, because it was for the sake of such broke people that Wright was taking his stand against the likes of the Iron Lady. But that means it is not evil for a whole nation to wind up neck deep in the poverty bouillon. Right? With me so far?

Now if it is not a sin to be poor, how could it be a sin to anticipate that you are going to be poor? Or is it only a sin if you, like Thatcher, take steps to prevent it?

As the modern state continues on in a frenzy of spending (a practice bound to land on the less fortunate and defenseless eventually), it is perilously easy for tenderhearted Christians to advance the cause of economic illiteracy, and all in the name of Jesus. And even though it is part of their qualifications for high ecclesiastical office, such illiteracy is not limited to bishops.

But when we get to the level of "thou shalt nots" and "thus saith the Lords," we had better be sure we are correct. Otherwise, we will be like the printers of the early "wicked Bible," who accidentally left the "not" out of the seventh commandment. Yesterday, I saw one of those wicked Bibles on display at the Cambridge University Library. If such a mistake were to be made today with regard to the eighth commandment, there are too many church officials who would not call it wicked, but would rather hail the arrival of a more compassionate economic policy.

In contrast to this ganglion of self-deception, the Tea Party protests have done a great deal of good, at least thus far. We have seen streets filling up with citizens concerned about massive pillage, theft, dishonesty, and fraud. But some Christians may have stayed home because that kind of thing might ruin their testimony and all -- who knows where taking a stand against dishonesty might lead? Perhaps to denominational headquarters and mission agencies, and it is therefore best to let sleeping dogs lie.

It is interesting to me to note that association with Tea Party types, some of whom are libertarian pagans, is morally problematic for some Christians. A continued and much closer association with the statist pagans who mail out the entitlement checks presents no apparent problem at all. This is because the statist pagans have a big pile of swag that they dispense hither and yon, much of it to Christians whose sense for self-justifying rationalization is much better than their sense of smell.

Credibility Gaps

Economic Policy By the Numbers

The Economist has carried an interesting piece on the reliability of national economic data. It claims that the US "botoxes" its own data. If you take away the ministrations of the cosmetic data masseurs the situation in "these United States" appears much worse than the official statistics are letting on.

The Economist compares differences in the way Europe presents its official data statistics with the way those same measures are compiled in the United States. It turns out that these differences make the US appear much less saggy and wrinkly. The first comparison: public sector debt. Now this has become a focus in recent months. How much public government debt can a nation bear before it collapses in a screaming heap of public fury storming the barricades? We have seen such eructations of wrath in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and the UK. But not the US. Why? In part because the measurements of public debt in the US disguise the actual levels of public indebtedness.

Take public-sector debt. The definition used in Washington, DC, is “federal government debt held by the public”, which stood at 62% of GDP at the end of 2010. But if you instead use Europe’s preferred measure—general government gross debt, which also includes the borrowing of state and local governments and Treasury securities held by other government bodies, such as the Social Security Trust Fund—it jumps to 92% of GDP. That is on a par with Portugal’s level of public debt. Likewise, America’s budget deficit of 8.9% of GDP last year would have been 10.6% using Europe’s preferred measure.

Ninety-two percent of GDP. In other words the lenders to the US Treasury are actually living in cloud cookoo land. They have willed themselves to believe that things are just not that bad--and the official statistics provide a cover for those willing to be duped.

The second example is the way productivity is measured. The US prides itself on how much more productive its work force is--as compared to Europe. It would appear that the average US worker produces more goods and services than his European counterpart. Really? No--it's all botox.

Official figures also flatter America’s relative performance on productivity growth. The headline figures compiled by America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics are based on output per man-hour in the non-farm business sector. The European Central Bank tracks GDP per worker across the whole economy. By excluding the less efficient public sector, America’s productivity growth is bumped up.

Not so rosy, then.

The third area of data-augmentation is GDP growth--the measure of how much economic growth is occurring within an economy. It turns out that the American data suffers from a dose of irrationally exuberant cheerleading. Much in the initial GDP figures are estimations. They are always revised much (years) later when all the actual data comes in. It transpires more often than not that US economic growth figures are revised--downwards, once the actual data comes in. European statisticians appear to be far more conservative in their initial estimates, and have a track record of far fewer downward revisions.

A third cosmetic treatment is the way quarterly GDP figures are published. European press releases give the increase in GDP during the latest quarter—a rise of 0.9%, say. But Americans annualise quarterly growth, so an identical increase would be announced as a more impressive-sounding growth rate of 3.6%. Much more important, European economies’ initial estimates of GDP growth tend to be more cautious than those in America. Kevin Daly, an economist at Goldman Sachs, estimates that during the ten years to 2008, America’s quarterly GDP growth rate was, on average, revised down between the first and final published estimates by an annualised 0.5 percentage points. In contrast, GDP figures in the euro area were revised up by an average of 0.3 points. (Emphasis, ours)

Why is this important? Well, the media and the economic chattering classes always focus upon the initial (estimated) number, not the much later revised number--which is very old news indeed.

This matters because financial markets and the media focus heavily on the first estimate, but largely ignore revisions several years later.

The politicisation of numbers and data to reflect national pride? To support an incumbent government? To keep the lenders happy so that the party can go on? Probably all of the above. Let's party on while Rome conflagrates.

The dismal science and practice of macro-economics relies on national data statistics. When the data is fudged or manipulated, resulting in a more optimistic picture, we have something akin to the king debasing the nation's gold and silver coins to fund his ambitions. It was theft then. Is it any different now? Oh, wait. We forgot. The Federal Reserve is busy printing money (aka debasing the currency) in order to fund the US government's exponentially increasing debt. And its smoothing the passage of this debasement, in part, with shonky statistics.

There are lies, damned lies and macro-economic statistics. He who trusts them is foolish indeed.

Can They Be Making This Stuff Up?

The Most Adept Administration In Living Memory?

Maybe, who knows? But Michelle Malkin's blow-by-blow of the Obama Administration's pirouettes around the execution of Osama Bin Laden must make the White House the front-runner for "Best Ballerina of all Time".


The Fog of Fog
By Michelle Malkin
May 6, 2011

The official White House account of Osama bin Laden’s demise has seen more slapdash cosmetic surgery over the past week than your average “Real Housewives” reality-show star. President Obama’s allies attribute the bungled “narrative” (their word, not mine) to the “Fog of War.” But each passing day — and each new set of hapless revisions — shows that what really ails the administration is the Fog of Fog.

Errors happen. Miscommunications happen. Confusing the name of which of bin Laden’s myriad sons died (Hamza, not Khalid), for example, is no biggie.

But the hourly revamping of key details of Sunday’s raid suggests something far beyond the usual realm of situational uncertainty that accompanies any military operation. The Navy SEALs did their job spectacularly. The civilians tasked with letting the world know about the mission, however, have performed like amateur dinner theater actors in a tragi-comic production of “Rashomon-meets-The Blind Men and the Elephant-meets-Keystone Kops.”

Incapable of straightforward answers, Team Obama’s clarity-challenged civilians have led nauseated news-watchers through more twists and turns than San Francisco’s Lombard Street.

Take your Dramamine, and let’s review.

Take One: Bin Laden died in a bloody firefight.
On Sunday night, Obama dramatically told the world that “after a firefight,” our brave men in uniform “killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”
Embellishing the story the next morning, White House deputy national security adviser John Brennan said at his briefing that bin Laden “was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. … And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know. … It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight.”

Take Two: Bin Laden did not engage in a firefight.
The day after Brennan disclosed such vivid details, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney walked them back Michael Jackson-style. Bin Laden, he said in version 2.0, “was not armed.” Brennan had clearly implied that bin Laden “resisted” with arms. Carney amended the narrative by insisting that “resistance does not require a firearm.” How exactly bin Laden resisted, Carney would not say.

It’s been all downhill, uphill, K-turns and 180s ever since. Fasten your seatbelts:

Take Three: Bin Laden’s wife died after her feckless husband used her as a human shield.

Take Four: Bin Laden’s wife did not die, wasn’t used as a human shield and was only shot in the leg. Someone else’s wife was killed, somewhere else in the house.

Take Five: A transport helicopter experienced “mechanical failure” and was forced to make a hard landing during the mission.

Take Six: A top-secret helicopter clipped the bin Laden compound wall, crashed and was purposely exploded after the mission to prevent our enemies from learning more about it.

Take Seven: The bin Laden photos would be released to the world as proof positive of his death.

Take Eight: The bin Laden photos would not be released to the world because no one needs proof and it’s more important to avoid offending peaceful Muslims who supposedly don’t embrace bin Laden as a “true” Muslim in the first place.

Take Nine: Bin Laden’s compound was a lavish mansion.

Take Ten: Bin Laden’s compound was a glorified pigsty.

Take Eleven: Bin Laden’s compound had absolutely no television, phone or computer access.

Take Twelve: Bin Laden’s compound was stocked with hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs and computers galore.

Take Thirteen: Er, remember that statement about bin Laden being armed? And then not armed? Well, the new version is that he had an AK-47 “nearby.”

Take Fourteen: A gung-ho Obama spearheaded the “gutsy” mission.

Take Fifteen: A reluctant Obama dithered for 16 hours before being persuaded by CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Take Sixteen: Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and close advisers watched the raid unfold in real time — “minute by minute,” according to Carney — and a gripping insider photo was posted immediately by the White House on the Flickr picture-sharing website for all to see.

Take Seventeen: Er, they weren’t really watching real-time video “minute by minute” because there was at least nearly a half-hour that they “didn’t know just exactly what was going on,” Panetta clarified. Or rather, un-clarified.

Take Eighteen: Stalwart Obama’s order was to kill, not capture, bin Laden.

Take Nineteen: Sensitive Obama’s order was to kill (SET ITAL) or (END ITAL) capture — and that’s why the SEAL team gave him a chance to surrender, upon which he resisted with arms, or actually didn’t resist with arms, but sort of resisted without arms, except there was an AK-47 nearby, sort of, or maybe not, thus making it possible to assert that while Decisive Obama did tell the SEALs to kill bin Laden and should claim all credit for doing so, Progressive Obama can also be absolved by bleeding hearts because of the painstakingly concocted post facto possibility that bin Laden somehow threatened our military — telepathically or something — before being taken out.

Take Twenty: “We’ve been as forthcoming with facts as we can be,” said an irritated Carney on Wednesday.

And they wonder why Americans of all political stripes think they’re blowing smoke.

A Worth-While Spinoff

What Are We Doing Here, Again?

What on earth is Nato, the US, and minnows like Australia and New Zealand doing in Afghanistan? With the death--nay, execution--of Bin Laden maybe the question will now be faced honestly.

In George Orwell's 1884, the state is engaged in perpetual war--a war without purpose or meaning. Afghanistan is now the United States's longest war and is shaping up like Orwell's vision. We have documented over the years the stupidly inane "mission creep" from executing Bin Laden and bloodying the nose of the complicit Taliban to "nation building". This latter inanity is the liberal war of choice. It is a way where humanitarianism is the ultimate ethic and highest value. It makes the war feel good to naive idealists.

We know that a majority of American voters now oppose Obama's war in Afghanistan. We know that the war is not winnable in any military sense. We know that the Karzai regime is hopelessly corrupt. We know that centuries old tribalism is the most powerful driver of Afghani politics. We know that "nation building" is a self-congratulatory, fatuous farce. So, when will military, political, and common-sense reality hit home to Obama, the governing elites, NATO and everyone else supportive of this useless national self-indulgence?

Charles Krauthamer is a cheer-leader for the cause of American global military supremacy. He is a "making the world safe for democracy" kind of chap. He is reported to have reflected thusly on the execution of Bin Laden:

In the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, I found myself agreeing with Charles Krauthammer that this was a global game-changer for American greatness. It was a gutsy and courageous decision by President Obama, brilliantly executed by the Navy SEALs and all the intelligence and support behind them.

As Krauthammer put it, after the tough slogs in Iraq and Afghanistan, this amounts to the restoration of unquestioned U.S. military dominance. America has not slipped, nor has our military reach and power.

Puleeez. The author of this particular piece is Larry Kudlow--a self-professed "hawk" and "American exceptionalism" drum major. But now Kudlow is asking the question--the right question. Why is the US continuing in Afghanistan? What are we doing here, again?

Thus far, nearly 1,600 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Afghanistan. To me this is the most tragic part. Of course, I wholeheartedly support our troops. But is this blood really necessary? Are the projected future costs really necessary?

Again, I ask myself: All this to support Karzai? Isn’t this the sort of nation-building that the late William F. Buckley Jr. opposed? Are American national-security interests really tied up in Afghanistan? Is now not the time to contemplate a much more rapid troop withdrawal from Afghanistan?

He concludes with the following:

Going forward, what exactly is our real mission in Afghanistan? That’s the basis of my concern. Are we as Americans and conservatives really convinced that the continued mission is worth the lost blood and treasure? Is now not the time to leave?

What exactly are we doing in Afghanistan? And how do we get out of it?

When the Amerolotrous right wing start to ask such questions it is a good day.  Now if we can only get Sarah Palin to stop being a chippy cheerleader for this inane war we will be seeing real progress.  We have the hunch that if a Republican candidate for president were to make the case for immediate withdrawal strongly and rationally it would likely make him or her a clear front runner, and an almost certain shoe-in to the Oval Office in 2012. 

If withdrawal from Afghanistan were the only tangible outcome of the execution of Bin Laden that alone would be a great boon. 

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Hold Our Tummies and Laugh for a While

Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, May 01, 2011

Thus far, I have enjoyed the presence of Donald Trump on the political stage. The entertainment value is high. He started right in on the birther thing, and within weeks, sure enough, remember the art of the deal, out comes the long form of Obama's birth certificate. Huh. Wonder how that happened. My initial theory is that Obama responded as soon as he was challenged by someone who is right at his level.

Of course, now there is the racist charge associated with all this. I am frankly torn about that. One the one hand, some responsible parties might want to argue that frivolous charges of racism -- on the basis of jokes like the one above at the expense of Obama -- are debasing the currency of our public debate. But I would respond that the currency of public currency is debased already, and I don't think one more can hurt.

On the other hand, and this is the way I lean, charges of racism are so grotesquely inflated these days that perhaps we can all play along, trying to get the grotesque inflation to move into hyper-inflation, and to do this in a way that might hasten the crash. On the day that everything becomes racist, then nothing will be, and then we will all be free, and Dr. King's vision will finally be realized.

I mean, how is it racist to compare a foolish black guy to a foolish white guy? Ah, but the way things are calculated these days, it is.

Now if anybody thinks that the mere arrival of the long form birth certificate is going to shut up those who are conspiratorially minded, I would like to cite badbanana as an authoritative voice. "Nice try. If the U.S. government can blow up the World Trade Center, it can probably fake a 'long form' birth certificate."

The problem with those who try to penetrate the secrets of the world's conspiracies is that they don't ever look on the surface. They haven't read Poe's purloined letter. They are the kind of people who used to worry about what rock songs said when played backwards, when the real problem is what they said frontwards.

Why, the question is posed, with furrowed brow, did Obama withhold that certificate for years, spending millions to keep it out of public view, when it was always within his power to release it (as he just did). Hmmm? Well, obviously he was throwing chum into the water, trying to attract serious Republican presidential candidates. And all he got was Donald Trump! He was shark fishing and came back with a really big tuna. I think we should all hold our tummies and laugh for a while.

Bonny Hone

The Syndrome of the Embarrassing Advocate

Poor old Hone Harawira. You have to have a certain sympathy for the politician who is so bedevilled by a sense of grievance that perpetual truculence is his mien. When one must always lash out at a world of perceived enmity one soon devolves to an extremist growling curmudgeon. Hone is rapidly getting to the stage where the only time he opens his mouth is to change feet.

First there was the re-run of calling his political nemesis a Nazi sympatico. It was a charge he had made years ago, but he has been foolish enough to repeat his folly in recent days. Don Brash a Nazi. Really? Really! Actually if you compare Brash to Harawira, the more Nazi-like is Harawira himself if his stated policies are anything to go by. Yes, we know that this would be an egregious exaggeration, but after all it was Hitler and Nazi ideology that presented Aryans as superior and better than everyone else, and Hone argues (wrongly) but vociferously that Maori are exceptional and have more rights than any other race in New Zealand. So, if Hone is really going to persist in the Nazi meme he may find the cap fits him more snugly than anyone else.

But he is on a roll.  He has now come out to call Bin Laden a great freedom fighter (that is, someone like himself). According to the NZ Herald:

Hone Harawira has described Osama bin Laden as "a man who fought for the rights, the land and the freedom of his people". In tributes on Maori-language television, the leader of the new Mana Party said the al-Qaeda founder should be "honoured" rather than "damned" in death according to Maori culture.

Apparently his right hand woman, radical Maori lawyer, Annette Sykes (who looks to be shaping up as a co-leader of Hone's Mana Party) has similar views. In an interview with Duncan Garner, the following interchange took place (H/T: Keeping Stock):

Duncan And what's Annette said about standing, Annette Sykes?

Hone Annette said she'd be happy to consider it and we'll probably hear her answer later on today at the party launch. . . . She'd make a great leader of this party. This isn't about me being the leader, this is about the kaupapa leading the party. This is about the people in this country recognising in this party a beacon in a time of desperate straits for a lot of Maori, Pacific Islanders and Pakeha.

Duncan Are you comfortable with someone like Annette Sykes being so involved, I mean remember what she said around the time of 9/11 where she laughed and effectively applauded and clapped when those planes went into the towers on 9/11? I mean are you comfortable being a party in parliament having someone like that there?

Hone I'm comfortable having alongside me one of the strongest Maori women I have ever met, one of the strongest women I have ever met, a person who's courageous in all that she's done, who has defended those that all other lawyers have walked away from, and who is fearless in her dealings with government, with Iwi leaders, and with all levels of society. I have great respect for Annette Sykes.

"Excuse me while I change feet." Hone is a gift for conservative New Zealand. He is a precious diamond to the (now) refocused Act Party. Every time Hone's growling, truculence leads him to enunciate his extreme racial views, and his neo-Marxist ideology, the number of committed voters for Don Brash must rise exponentially. And, because Hone is tribal Maori, tribalism will out. His own people will close ranks behind him and support him all the way.

Meanwhile Maori politics is fracturing into impotence, hopelessly divided between Hone, the Greens, Labour, and the Maori Party itself. A house divided against itself cannot stand. "Mainstream", non-tribal Maori must be embarrassed every time Hone growls--particularly because he asserts that he represents true, authentic Maori beliefs and culture. The way Hone tells it, he is true Maori--all the rest are Uncle Toms.

We are confident that Hone will attract great media attention. The right wing must be rubbing their hands with glee.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Do Your Soul Some Good

Culture and Politics - Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, May 02, 2011

I don't have an awful lot to say about the death of Osama bin Laden. He was a very bad man, and we should be glad that he is now in a place where no injustice will ever come. Unjust men can come there, as bin Laden just did, but no injustice ever will. The afterlife is a holy place. Hell is a holy place.

Just a few cautions for Christians as they talk about this. The fact that we are all sinners, and that we all deserve death and judgment, is quite true. But if we hasten to remind ourselves of this reality at moments like this, the effect is not to heighten our sense of awareness of sin, but rather to flatten it. A bizarre kind of moral equivalence takes over our thought processes, and we begin to think that God will have no work to do in the judgment whatever -- all He has to settle is that we are all sinners and we all died. But God will not judge us by the crateload. The Bible teaches plainly that the unconverted will be judged in accordance with their works, and the Scriptures say just as clearly that not all works are the same. Evil is something that can grow and mature. And when it does this, the judgment is greater. The judgment is so great, and the issues so momentous, that only God can do it. We should leave the judgment to Him, and when He judges the nations of men, that will truly be one of His greatest works. The only thing historically greater will be His accomplishments in the salvation of the nations of men.

I am writing this in Prague, as we having been spending some time in Eastern Europe, in countries that were formerly in the Soviet block. We just came from Poznan, Poland, where we were privileged to visit a post-commie shopping mall. It was a very nice mall, and the posters and ads had a bunch of the usual sins and follies that you would find in an upscale mall. But it was nothing like what used to happen here -- when a million Poles were taken off to Siberia, for example, and never heard from again. We were sitting with some of our friends, having a beer on the old town square, and were talking about families that were touched by this. I asked if, in a group this size, there would be stories about such families in every group. Oh, yes, was the answer. In our small group, one man's grandfather was taken. Another man, a Ukrainian, grew up in Siberia because his father was taken there. Another man said, yes, his wife's family lost loved ones. Compare all this to some chick with too much eye make up for a regular person, much less for someone on a fifteen foot tall poster.

Osama was a violent and evil man, and so we should thank God he is dead. He was killed by men who, by all accounts, were not exactly cub scouts themselves. But any kind of flattening, any kind of moral equalizing, any attempt to witness to a co-worker by talking about the death of bin Laden, and then pivoting to a discussion of your aunt who sometimes gets into the cooking sherry too much, will the effect of representing the Christian faith as morally clownish.

This is not my subject here, but please note that I am arguing for a sense of proportion here, and I am not arguing that the measuring stick is made in America. The ghouls who run the abortion industry, and their shills in the halls of Congress, kill more Americans every day than bin Laden did in his one major flame-out, and the Navy Seals aren't coming after them.

The judgment seat of God is the place where every necessary distinction is remembered, every nuance is in its place, every discrepancy noted, and every cup of cold water counted. Not to put too fine a point on it, the judgment seat is a place where God makes judgments. Too many Christians talk about it as though judgment day were simply a cosmic steamroller. Of course, we have not forgotten the basic division between those who are in Christ and those who are not, but that is not the time when God then fires up the steamroller. Moral distinctions matter. God makes them, and He is infinitely good.

So we know this situation is more complicated than what we hear on the news, for that is always the case. But recognize the limitation, and simply thank God for this one good thing. Thank God that Osama has come to justice, and while you are at it, thank God for the call made by President Obama. If you're as conservative as I am, it will probably do your soul some good.

No Special Rights, So . . .

One Law for All

We remain militantly critical of contemporary Maori ideology. We believe it excuses personal and family accountability by resorting to the fallacy of historical determinism: Maori, their leadership tells them, are victims of predatory exploitation by European or imperial powers; the significant cause of social and cultural and spiritual degradation amongst Maori stems from the unjust extortions of the Pakeha. We believe this ideology enslaves Maori and subjugates them more subtly and more potently than any European migration.

We believe this ideology is a neo-Marxist variant. Maori represent the exploited poor, the weak, from which the hegemonic Pakeha have extracted their pound of flesh. It makes many within Maoridom sunburnt strawberries: brown on the outside, red on the inside. We have smiled at Hone Harawira's call to arms: he wants to stand up now for poor and disadvantaged Maori, the working stiffs. He opposes exploitative Pakeha, but also (now) monied tribal interests. Maori neo-Marxism is undressing and exposing itself. This is a false Gospel and will betray those seduced by it to their destruction.

But, at the same time, we believe there are historical injustices wrought by our government which should be addressed. They should be addressed because it is just to do so. At a personal or communal level, our lives should not be made to depend upon the redress of past wrongs and grievances, whether real or imagined. Evil happens in our sinful world. The Christian call is to accept such without bitterness, seek to begin again under the wonderful aegis of Christ Himself, and arise to serve Him where we are, with what we have.

But there is an obligation to restitute, where possible, those who have suffered injustices at the hands of the state. (Restitution is not always possible, but if it can be done, it ought to be. The state must at all times be under law, and held to account by the law; if not, then we are governed not by law, but despots.)

In this regard, we were pleased (whilst saddened, and provoked) by historian Paul Moon's piece in the NZ Herald on the injustice being perpetuated against the Tuhoe people. (For the benefit of our overseas readers, the Tuhoe is a Maori tribe located on the South Eastern part of the North Island of New Zealand.) Here is a synopsis of Moon's account:

At the start of May last year, all the indications were that the Crown and Tuhoe were putting the finishing touches on a deal that would see Te Urewera National Park returned to Tuhoe, with enough caveats to ensure that access and other rights for the public would remain practically unchanged.

Tuhoe would have what all the evidence shows rightfully belongs to it, and the rest of the country would not be adversely affected in any way in the process. The sort of settlement one would have expected the Crown and the public to welcome with open arms.

The deal was a long time coming. The Waitangi Tribunal has documented in excruciating detail how successive governments since the 19th century trampled over Tuhoe rights - appropriating their lands with disregard for the occupants and with contempt for any sense of natural justice.

In the roughly 18 months before last May, negotiations between various Government departments and the iwi looked promising. All that remained were the formalities confirming the transfer.

What happened? Considerations of justice got tossed out the window. Politics intruded.

Then, someone blinked. A rushed announcement was made by the Prime Minster that Tuhoe were not going to have the National Park returned to them after all. The iwi's clearly stunned negotiators were left wondering what had suddenly gone wrong with negotiations that had appeared to have been progressing so well. The excuse the Government used last May - and has stuck to since - was that the return of Te Urewera National Park might set a precedent for other Treaty settlements.

Putting aside the sui generis nature of Tuhoe's claim, the argument that doing something right in dealings with one iwi might mean having to do things right with other iwi, hardly seemed to be a good basis for the decision. The moral rectitude of returning Te Urewera National Park to Tuhoe ownership was completely airbrushed out of the political equation.

This hits the matter front and centre. Had the Crown acted unjustly  towards a Maori tribe? The evidence is compelling that it had. It would seem that duplicity and mendacity were the guiding principles of government actions towards Tuhoe over a long period of time. Was the government now saying that justice is a wax nose to be shaped at will by the whimsy of government as it genuflects to political considerations? Populism at its worst.

What has happened since, and where are things at now?

Yet, in spite of the enormous frustration of having the expected return of the land snatched away at the last minute, Tuhoe's response in the subsequent 12 months has been one of patience, restraint and dignity. Its negotiators have persisted with their calm, informed approach in dealings with the Crown, while all the time, the Crown's tactic has been one of delay.

No doubt the beguiling character of Te Urewera National Park has been a consideration for those who oppose returning the park to Tuhoe. Its long-lauded sublime characteristics have for more than a century left visitors to the area in awe of its staggering beauty.

To others, it is a drug-addled and gang-choked backwater - a dystopia in the middle of utopia. Either way, it is a part of the country where the links indigenous communities have with the land is strong, and where experiences since the 1860s have left an ingrained sense of grievance among many of the inhabitants.

We agree that the return of historical lands will not redeem Tuhoe. To the extent that tribal members believe that it would is a measure of their self-deception. But justice ought to be done, nonetheless.

It is becoming apparent that the forthcoming election will focus once again upon Maori and their place in this country. Some will be arguing forcefully (and we believe correctly) that there must be one law for all New Zealanders and that Maori are not in a special category. They do not have a special class of citizenship.

It would be a very salutary thing, we believe, if the advocates of "one law for all New Zealanders" would take up the case of Tuhoe, precisely because there must be one law for all in this country.

The Tangled Webs We Weave

Onwards and Upwards!

The borrower becomes the lender's slave, says the Scripture. This is true, both for individuals and corporate entities--including nations. A nation in debt is a nation enslaved. A government is debt is a government enslaved.

At first blush this sounds preposterous. If a government spends more than it takes in taxation, it raises money on the open market (usually overseas). It borrows to cover the short-fall. If there is any enslavement occurring here it is upon the future citizens who will have to stump up with the cash in taxes. The government, and the legislators and administrators that constitute it, get away scot free.

But the reality remains--a government in debt is a government which is enslaving its people to the state. More and more money is going to have to be exacted in taxes to pay back current borrowings and interest, and continue to fund ongoing operations. Since most government spending goes upon so-called entitlement programmes, the appetite for spending does not abate. It can only grow. The Oliver Twist syndrome kicks in. Dependence upon the State creates an insatiable demand for more support. Expenses always rise to meet "income", non? Nice-to-haves turn into necessities. The dependant electorate clamours for more with the regularity of a ticking clock. Ongoing operational (distribution costs) rise; more borrowing is required to fund the beast; interest payments compound; and the miracle of compound interest grinds the faces of future citizens into the dust.

Moreover, since governments inevitably end up raising finance offshore they subject the country to economic and market forces over which they have diminishing influence. They--and all their citizens-- become price takers. The currency is where this shows up most immediately. In the end an insolvent country will have its currency devalued, pushing up the price of borrowing and gutting the tradeable sectors of the economy. The circle becomes vicious.

Another facet of national slavery is that denial becomes endemic. Mendacity becomes part of national life. Right now, the United States is the most powerful illustrative example of the perils of national indebtedness, in general, but of the attendant mendacity, in particular. Mark Steyn removes the shroud, exposing the necrotic flesh beneath.

Discredited
The Fed’s policy is quantitatively accelerating American collapse.

The other day Paul O’Neill said that . . .

Oh, wait. I suppose I ought to explain who Paul O’Neill is. A decade ago, he was President Bush’s first Treasury secretary. I have no very clear memory of him except that he toured Africa with Bono and they were photographed in matching tribal dress looking like Colonel Qaddafi’s Mini-Me twins at a Tripoli sleepover. Other than the dress-up fun, I’ve no idea why they were in Africa, but you paid for it, so I’m sure there was a good reason.

Anyway, Secretary O’Neill popped up the other day on Bloomberg Television to compare debt-ceiling holdouts to jihadists. “The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling,” he said, “are our version of al-Qaeda terrorists. Really.”

Really?

Absolutely.

“They’re really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk.”

But hang on, generally speaking, when you hit your “debt ceiling,” your credit is at risk. If you’ve got a $10,000 credit card, and you run it up to the limit, but you need a couple more grand right now, pronto, because you outspend your earnings by 50 percent every month and you have no plans to change that anytime soon, well, the bank might increase the limit to $15,000, or $20,000. Or they might not. There is a question mark over your credit because there is a question mark over your credit worthiness: It is at risk.

Paul O’Neill seems to regard that attitude as unhelpful. So does Timothy Geithner, his successor at what is still laughingly known as the United States Treasury. Secretary Geithner says that even to be discussing the debt ceiling is “a ridiculous debate to have.”

Ridiculous?

Absolutely.

“I mean, the idea that the United States would take the risk that people would start to believe we won’t pay our bills,” continued Geithner, “is a ridiculous proposition, irresponsible, completely unacceptable.” The best way to convince people to believe we’ll pay our bills is to borrow up to our limit, and then increase the limit and borrow a whole bunch more. This would be the 75th increase in the debt ceiling in the last half-century. Let’s just get it done, and resume the party.

But if Geithner thinks that even discussing the question is “ridiculous,” then, as my colleague Jonah Goldberg put it, why have a debt limit at all? What’s the point?

Well, because it gives us more credibility with our creditors, right? Even if we set the debt ceiling way up in cloud-cuckoo land to a bazillion trillion gazillion dollars and 83 cents, even a debt limit entirely unmoored from reality still gives the impression we haven’t quite flown the coop.

Yes, but why does the U.S. government need to maintain credibility with its creditors when increasingly it’s buying its debt from itself? Every month there’s more and more U.S. Treasury debt and fewer and fewer people who want it. The Chinese are reducing their exposure. The investment behemoth Pimco, which manages the world’s largest mutual fund, recently dumped U.S. Treasuries entirely. To avoid the failure of U.S. bond auctions, or an increase in interest rates to make them more attractive to rational lenders, the U.S. government’s debt is bought by the U.S. government’s Federal Reserve.

I tried up above to come up with a real-world comparison for the debt ceiling — imagine you’ve got a credit-card limit of 10K, etc. — but it’s harder to do that with the Fed’s policy: Imagine your left hand issues an IOU to your right hand in return for an e-mail with a large number on it . . . oh, never mind, it’ll only make your head hurt. “Quantitative easing” is extremely quantitative if not terribly easing, so raising the debt ceiling would enable us to issue more debt for us to buy from ourselves. You can see why Secretary Geithner thinks that’s a no-brainer.

While Jonah Goldberg was asking why have a debt limit at all, Michael Kinsley took it to the next stage: “If the national debt doesn’t matter, why have taxes at all?” Particularly when you no longer have to “print” money, you can just quantitatively ease yourself into it. Once we raise the old debt ceiling, we’ll be pretty much at the point where the U.S. government is spending $4 trillion but only taking in $2 trillion: For every dollar we raise in taxes, we spend two. No surprise there: The “poorest” half of the population pay no federal income tax. They’re not exactly poor as the term would be understood in almost any other country, but in federal-revenue terms they’re dependents, so in order to fund government services for the wealthiest “poor” people on the planet we borrow money from a nation of subsistence peasants where pigs are such prized possessions they sleep in the house.

But, if you can spend $4 trillion of which $2 trillion is borrowed, why not borrow $3 trillion and make even more Americans dependent? Hell, why not borrow the whole lot? After all, the sums we’re borrowing right now — $188 million every hour of every day — are unprecedented. Wouldn’t it be easier if we just made them even more unprecedented? That way we could have a federal budget of $6 trillion, of which, say, $5 trillion is raised by issuing Treasury bonds for the Federal Reserve to buy. That would stimulate the economy by creating 17 jobs for any remaining Americans who still feel the need to leave the house every morning.

Now I think about it, I seem to remember Secretary O’Neill and Bono were swanking around Uganda and Ethiopia in tribal garb as part of the Irish rocker’s campaign for African debt-forgiveness. Now there’s an idea. And, if it works for Africa, why not closer to home? After all, Bono supported the IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, and America is way more “heavily indebted” than Uganda will ever be.

Under the 2011 budget, every hour of every day the government of the United States spends a fifth of a billion dollars it doesn’t have.

Who does have it?

Er, the Federal Reserve?

A few years ago, I raised the ceiling on my own house. You can do that — up to a point. It depends on whether your foundation is solid and your framing is structurally sound. But, even if they are, you take it too high and the roof falls in. We’re structurally about as screwed up as you can get, and the foundation is badly cracked. But hey, let’s just jack the roof up a little higher one more time. What could go wrong?

At this stage, nothing does more damage to our “full faith and credit” than business as usual. If you’re going to bandy glib, witless al-Qaeda analogies, the conventional wisdom Paul O’Neill represents is the real suicide bomb here. Men like O’Neill and Geithner think they’re quantitatively easing American decline. They’re not. They’re quantitatively accelerating American collapse.

Onward and upward!

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2011 Mark Steyn.

Bad Ju Ju

Theistic Evolution is a Universal Acid

Syncretism is the mixing of (often contradictory) beliefs together. A little bit of this and that usually ends up with a mess of internal contradictions. When Christians try it, the outcome is always bad.

In the past couple of decades we have seen a determined effort by Christians to reconcile (or mix together) evolutionism and the Christian faith. The driver has been the same which provoked Immanuel Kant--the attempt both to save reason and make room for faith.

The human faculty of reason is a curious beast. Like all human attributes it can either be servant or master. When it becomes, or is made, master it is just another idolatry. When it is kept a mere servant of true faith it is a wonderful faculty. When it is made master, we call the resulting idolatry "rationalism"--the ultimacy of reason. A close, kissing cousin is "scientism" which asserts the ultimacy of the scientific method. The scientific method is a particular application of reason to the study of the material aspects of the creation.

Rationalism has asserted that all things that exist came into being by chance--by random changes and mutations. It has then constructed a cluster of scientific disciplines in an attempt to prove that this is the case. If rationalist science proves it to be true, then it must be so, since reason alone is the ground of all truth, non?.

But this idolatry has a dagger dicing up its vital organs. It is a variant of the Cretan paradox. If reason shows that all which exists came to pass via random changes then reason itself cannot be the ground of truth. Reason is an illusion with no ultimate truth value at all. The utterly and completely contradictory can exist because things like that happen in stochastically determined existence.

If reason and science "prove" that existence is irrational, irrationality cannot be the case. If irrationality is the case, it could never be proven rationally. Thus, the more evolutionists labour to prove by rational inquiry that mankind evolved via random genetic mutation, the more they thereby contradict the notion. In debates with evolutionists an apt question is to inquire what would disprove the notion. The more astute can trot out various scientific "conditions" which would allegedly disprove evolution, leading to a rejection of the hypothesis. But when you ask them, If reality is ultimately stochastic or random, why would "x" constitute a disproof of evolution? they are left with no reply.  Either that, or they don't understand what stochasticity is.  

Upon this sinking sand of irrational-rationalism modern Western Unbelief has built its Tower of Babel. The edifice is impressive. It controls the Academy, the media, the arts, the law courts. Some Christians have reasoned that, in order to gain respect and a hearing, the Christian faith must accommodate itself to evolution. It must make room for it in the house of God if people are to make room for God.

So, various theories of theistic evolution have been proposed. God created the world by means of evolutionary processes--that is, in the case of the creation of life, by means of random genetic mutations. But let's be clear what is happening here: such Christians are endeavouring to make the teachings of Scripture conform to, or agree with, the dictates of rationalism. But if the teachings of the Bible are to be subject to a higher authority of human reason, then one does not need the Bible at all, or God for that matter. If one would only believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus if it could be proved to one's own satisfaction, then why would one bother to become a Christian? A Christ whose work is subject to verification by man and his rationalising is not worth worshipping as the Lord of all. In fact, it would be entirely untruthful and wrong to do so.

Thus, in all forms of theories of  theistic evolution, the God of the Bible "disappears", as one writer describes:

According to many new theistic evolutionists, God chose to "create" the world by setting up an indirected process over which he had no specific control and about which he did not even have foreknowledge of its particular outcomes.  In a very real sense, God created a world that creates itself.  In the words of Anglican theistic evolutionist John Polkinghorne: "an evolutionary universe is theologically undestood as a creation allowed to make itself."

This view is hard to reconcile with traditional conceptions of God's foreknowledge and sovereignty, which becomes apparent when one reads the writings of leading theistic evolutionists.Former Vatican astronomer George Coyne claims that "not even God could know . . . with certainty" that "human life would come to be."  Biologist Kenneth Miller of Brown University, author of the popular book, Finding Darwin's God (used in many Christian colleges), flatly denies that God guided the evolutionary process to achieve any particular result--including the development of human beings.  Insisting that "[e]volution is a natural process, and natural processes are indirected," Miller asserts that "mankind's appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here . . . as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out."  John, G. West, "Nothing New Under the Sun", God and Evolution, ed. Jay Richards, p.41.

In all forms of theistic evolution the clear revelation and teachings of Scripture are set aside and replaced with human ratiocinations. It is the Bible which is adapted and conformed and made subject to man. The Bible, quite simply, ceases to be God's revelation. God, as revealed in Holy Scripture no longer exists.  Adopting rationalism in some spheres (e.g. the origins of mankind) does not make room for faith; on the contrary, it destroys true faith.

Both rationalism and the Christian faith are universal acids. They cannot be contained, but eat everything else away. But rationalism does not just eat everything else away--it consumes itself as well. Rationalism can only be built upon irrational ceaseless tossing seas. When chance is ultimate and randomness "governs" the world, no rationality remains.

When Christians vainly attempt to reconcile evolution and the Christian faith, they neither save reason nor make room for faith. The very opposite is the case. They destroy both true faith and its servant, reason.

Sunday Sermon

Easter Sunday, 2011: "A Rest Remains"

Douglas Wilson

Christ Church – Moscow, ID
Sermon #1614 – A.D. April 24, 2011



INTRODUCTION:
We are celebrating Easter, the day on which we commemorate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead. But not only did He rise, but all things were restored in Him, which is something we model, not only annually, but also on a weekly basis. We worship on the first day because we are privileged to have a weekly Easter, a weekly memorial of life from the dead. Eventually we may be able to shake the name Easter (a Germanic fertility goddess, for crying out loud), but in the meantime we can rejoice that the names of the baalim don’t mean much to us anymore (Hos. 2:17). Thursday is Thor’s Day, and who cares anymore? This is an endearing quirk of Englishspeaking peoples—everywhere else Christians have the good sense to speak of Pascha. During the transition, if someone objects that Easter used to be a pagan name, we can reply that this seems fitting—we used to be pagans. But now we are Christians, and Christ is risen.


Easter Sunday 2011 from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Christian Capitalism

Thankfulness to God

In his remarkable book, The Victory of Reason Rodney Stark documents the rise of nascent capitalism in Italy in the 13th century. This was not planned: it happened.

A pejorative distortion of free market economies is that they bring out the worst impulses in human beings--particularly greed and a disdain for fellow human being. "Get all you can; can all you get; poison the rest" is purported to be the motto of free-market enterprise. Ironically, the motto only becomes accurate in a private enterprise economy when it becomes "mixed": that is, free marketeering is combined with the monopolistic power of the state. Corrupt, venal merchants and business people always stand ready to support rules and regulations that would be an advantage to themselves and an impediment to their competitors, or at the very least would force the public to use their particular goods and services.

If one were a manufacturer of children's car seats, one's commercial success is far more assured if the government can be successfully persuaded to promulgate a regulation making them mandatory. Sadly, the modern "mixed" economic model frequently facilitates rapacious activity. Capitalism nurtured in a humanist womb all too often deserves its pejorative press.

Historically, capitalism nurtured in a Christian womb proved to be quite different in some respects.

It would be inappropriate to conclude discussion of the financial affairs of Italian capitalist firms [in the 13th century] without noting their commitment to charity. "Each time they drew up or revised a budget, a fund for the poor was created with some of the capital of the company. These funds were entered in the books in the name of 'our Good Lord God' as representing the poor, who in this way, were made partners in the company. When dividends were paid, a proportional part went to the poor."

In fact, when a company was liquidated the poor were always included among the creditors in proportion to their share of the capital. Most companies also maintained a petty cash box from which the apprentices were assigned to distribute money to any beggars who showed up asking for alms. All of this was in keeping with the frequent asides offering thanks to God made in the ledgers and account books of these companies.

Urban Legends

The Preachers' Edition

Preachers succumb to urban legends too. Possibly it is an occupational hazard since they have an appetite for illustrations and compelling stories to adorn biblical truth and make it memorable to their listeners. Sometimes it is a case of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

Trevin Wax has compiled the following list:

Those of us who are entrusted with the task of expositing the Scriptures in a local church must take care to verify our sources, illustrations, and stories. No matter how helpful an illustration may be, it is dishonoring to God if it is untrue. Here are a number of urban legends that get repeated in sermons. Some are more pervasive than others, even appearing in commentaries and scholarly works.

1. The “eye of the needle” refers to a gate outside Jerusalem.
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God,” says Jesus in Mark 10:25. Maybe you’ve heard of the gate in Jerusalem called the “eye of the needle.” The camel could pass through it only after stooping down and having all its baggage taken off.
The illustration is used in many sermons as an example of coming to God on our knees and without our baggage. The only problem is… there is no evidence for such a gate. The story has been around since the 15th century, but there isn’t a shred of evidence to support it.

2. The high priest tied a rope around his ankle so that others could drag him out of the Holy of Holies in case God struck him dead.
Various versions of this claim have been repeated by pastors, but it is a legend. It started in the Middle Ages and keeps getting repeated. There is no evidence for the claim in the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, the Pseudepigrapha, the Talmud, Mishna or any other source. Furthermore, the thickness of the veil (three feet) would have precluded the possibility of a priest being dragged out anyway.

3. Scribes took baths, discarded their pens, washed their hands, etc. every time they wrote the name of God.
As a way of getting across the reverence of the Jewish and Christian scribes toward God, preachers like to describe the honor given to God’s name. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that scribes did these sorts of rituals every time they came across the name of God.

4. There was this saying among the sages: “May you be covered in your rabbi’s dust.”
This is one of the most pervasive and fast-spreading stories to flood the church in recent years. The idea is that as you walked behind your rabbi, he would kick up dust and you would become caked in it and so following your rabbi closely came to symbolize your commitment and zeal. Joel Willitts explains: ^[2]

This is powerful stuff isn’t it? Well the only problem is that it just isn’t true… The context in which it is given in Mishnah Aboth 1:4 is expressly not what is assumed by those who promulgate this idea.

5. Voltaire’s house is now owned by a Bible-printing publisher.
Voltaire was famous for saying, “One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker.” There is a myth out there that within 50 years of Voltaire’s death, his house was owned by a Bible society that used his own printing press to make Bibles. Sounds like a great story, but it’s not true. Regardless, Voltaire’s prediction of the demise of the Bible was vastly overstated.

6. Gehenna was a burning trash dump outside Jerusalem.
I’ve used this illustration many times. But there isn’tevidence to support this idea. Still, because it seems like a reasonable explanation for the origin of the Hinnom Valley as “hell,” commentators and preachers have accepted it. It’s possible that the verdict may still be out on this one, but not if Todd Bolen is right ^[3]:

“The explanation for the ‘fire of Gehenna’ lies not in a burning trash dump, but in the burning of sacrificed children. Already in Old Testament times, the Valley of Hinnom was associated with the destiny of the wicked.  That the valley was just outside the city of Jerusalem made it an appropriate symbol for those excluded from divine blessing.”


7. NASA scientists have discovered a “missing day” which corresponds to the Joshua account of the sun standing still.
Please don’t repeat this myth. There has been no “missing day” discovered, and the legend has been circulating longer than NASA has been in existence, with different scientists playing the part.
What are some other urban legends we should avoid as pastors?

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Article printed from Kingdom People: http://trevinwax.com
URL to article: http://trevinwax.com/2011/04/27/urban-legends-the-preachers-edition/
URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://trevinwax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/truth.jpg

[2] Joel Willitts explains:: http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2010/02/rabbis-dust-is-fairy-dust.html

[3] Todd Bolen is right: http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2011/04/myth-of-burning-garbage-dump-of-gehenna.html

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

Osama Bin Laden Deceased

It Is Appointed Unto Man Once to Die, But After This . . .

Osama Bin Laden has passed from the sight of mortal men. He will need now to plead his case before the Judge of the heavens and the earth. 

We are not among those who believe this man to be uniquely evil, as if we all do not share in his evil, sin, and guilt. He could no doubt be cast as a sincere man who, given his principles and precepts, laid down his life for what he believed to be true and right. Sadly, many will mourn his passing as a hero.

Bin Laden, like all of us, was and is a sinful, wicked rebel against the Living God. Throughout his life he disbelieved the Son of God; therefore, the wrath of God abides upon him (John 3:36). But there are degrees of punishment in Hell. We believe the blood of the people he murdered will continue to cry out from the ground and will be heard by the Lord Jesus Christ, the Judge of all the earth.

At another level, when we consider Bin Laden, we find ourself intoning, "There, but for the grace of my Lord, go I."

Profligate Blessings

Living in Interesting Times

One consequence of post-modern education systems is that its "graduates" have very little mental furniture with which to assess realistically the benefits and blessings of economic growth and wealth creation. They tend to be taken for granted. It is not until you live amongst people who have no access to electricity, for example, that the penny drops. Those fortunate enough to have a classical education in history and economics have a much better grasp of these truths.

Things which we never stop to think about because they are now "self-evident" have made profound differences in living standards and the material quality of human life. They have been very influential in causing explosions of economic growth and human welfare. Take the clock. Lewis Mumford claimed "the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the industrial age" because it allowed for co-ordinated human activity. It facilitated precision in manufacturing processes. Try imagining what scientific research processes would be like if they lacked the ability to measure time. And do not get us started on diet, cuisine and cooking.

One such invention which made "all the difference" was the changeover from Roman numerals to Hindu-Arabic numeric symbols. During the 13th century in Italy, one Leonardo Fibonacci laid the foundation for modern mathematics. But according to Rodney Stark, he had an even larger impact upon economic development, growth, and business.

Also known as Leonardo of Pisa, he [Leonardo Fibonacci] was one of the greatest number theorists in the history of mathematics. But he had even greater impact on early capitalism. When his Liber Abaci (Book of the Abacus) appeared in 1202, it made Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concept of zero available for the first time outside the circle of professional mathematicians. It was seized upon eagerly all across northern Italy as it provided new, efficient techniques for multiplication and division, tasks that are extraordinarily complicated when using Roman numerals--even addition and subtraction were daunting chores for Romans. . . . Fibonacci did not simply present arithmetic in abstract form, but carefully made it accessible and relevant by applying basic arithmetic techniques to primary business concerns, such as computing profit margins and interest, converting weights and measures, dividing profits or costs among partners, and the like. ( Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, p. 108)

This huge leap forward enabled financially efficient business enterprises to develop. Larger and larger--even transnational firms--could (and did) emerge. Abacus schools, teaching the manipulation of numbers and the skills of dividing and multiplying, sprang up all over Europe within a short space of time.

Today we don't even think of such things. We take them for granted. Without them the abundant wealth, wonder, and promiscuous profligate richness of the creation would be locked up to us. Just one more thing to thank God for. The first Christendom was an amazing and beneficent realm. Just imagine what the second Christendom (maybe in China or India or South East Asia) will produce.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Worldview Fist Pumping

Goo-Mongers - Postmodernism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 11:04 am

After my previous post on Pearcey and the pomos, one correspondent wrote to me, asking me to respond to this review of Pearcey's book by Alissa Wilkinson.

Now in the review, Wilkinson has a laudable "credit where credit is due" pattern that I appreciated very much. But at the end of the day, she was unsettled by Pearcey's book.

"This is precisely what made me so uncomfortable as I read the book: the feeling that in so emphatically stating the truth, Pearcey was leaving little room for thoughtful disagreement or the knowledge that those who hold different views are often incredibly intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful people who care about the world and desire to lead significant lives. They are not simply misled away from a Christian worldview by secular ideas. They are not stupid, or insufficient. And I am not more intelligent or worthy than they are because of the way I look at the world.

Instead, for many in the "secular" world, the church has simply failed to show them a picture of a good life, a good society, that they see as worth their time. While Pearcey mentions this, she spends too much time on pointing out wrong ideas and too little time observing that the church's embodiment of the Bible's teachings has been insufficient."

In short, the problem is Pearcey's militance. And when you are a militant leader, and you are in a culture war groove, you often get simplistic and reductionistic militance from some of the followers. This is quite true, and you can get a good bit of it from high schoolers with two weeks of worldview seminar instruction under their belts. Yeah, that's a problem, but it is minor one. More on that in a minute.

So two quick reponses then. The first deals with the second objection above. This is that Pearcey's whole book is predicated on the assumption that the church has serious problems. She is writing the book to address those problems. But the reason this kind of humility doesn't resonate with Wilkinson is that Pearcey's criticism of the church is coming from the opposite direction. Wilkinson, and other soft worldview engagers, want us to tell the world they have a point, wants us to meet them halfway, wants us to have a conversation. Pearcey is criticizing the church from the Bible side, from the God side, and Wilkinson wants her to criticize the church from the other side, from the vantage of the values of secularism. Here's a sample batch. "Why is it that gays feel so unwelcome in conservative churches? Why won't your pastor preach on racial reconciliation on the nearest Sunday to MLK day? Why are conservative Christians so focused on abortion all the time?" The issue is not the presence of criticism, but the direction from which it comes.

Now the tone problem. Say you teach worldview thinking to teenagers (which you should do), and you teach it from a basis grounded in God's revealed absolutes (which you must do), you are going to get bloviating apologists for a time, who will mock what they don't fully understand. That's right. That will happen. But if it is true that we wrestle against principalities and powers, and if it is true that we are in a fight against wickedness in high places, and if it is true that we are engaged in a campaign to bring every thought captive to Christ, we are not going to be slowed down (not even a little bit) by this. Young Demetrius of Ephesus, who got caught up in Paul's soaring rhetoric about spiritual warfare, and told his mom on the way home that the "devil was going down," is going to have to grow into some more wisdom. So let's let him, and let's not tone down the book of Ephesians, because that won't really help. Sophomores will always be sophomoric, which I suppose is their right.

I think of one of those panoramic views of the D-Day invasion, with hundreds of amphibious landing craft from the left frame of a very wide picture extending over to the right frame, and smoke coming off the beach already. And then, we notice the little conversation coming out of one of the craft. "Sarge! Williams here says that we're going to go in there and kick Jerry's butt, and I am not sure I appreciate his tone."

What is the problem with boasting apologists? They underestimate the danger and potency of the enemy. And what is the problem with those who want to speak in the way Wilkinson urges above? It is exactly the same problem -- underestimating the nature of the conflict, and the danger and potency of the enemy.

When you go from the trash-talking infantryman in the landing craft to Eisenhower in his war room, you are not moving from one who is combative to one who is less combative. No, you are moving from one who is combative with limited information to one who is even more combative because he has a lot more information. Eisenhower isn't up there worrying about the many German soldiers who "simply want to live significant lives."

To think this way is to surrender beforehand. And this is why pomo apologetics, or pomo-style apologetics, is never going to get us anywhere. Preparing to lose is just that -- preparing to lose.

Sideshows

The House of Windsor and Decks of Cards

Political theorists of the Reformation argued that there was nothing intrinsically evil about the regimen of kings. Unlike the radical Thomas Paine, who argued vociferously in his incendiary pamphlet The Rights of Man that monarchs had been responsible for just about every tyranny every conceived, the faithful knew better. The Reformers understood that the Church had subsisted under a variety of forms of civil government: autocracies, monarchies, tribalism, and imperial domains. They also believed that the Church's form of government was to be republican--government by elders, approved by the people and ordained by God. This divine form of government was revealed in Holy Scripture.

The application of the ecclesiastical pattern of government to civil government was appropriate, but was not mandatory. What mattered was whether the civil government was firstly a government of law, and secondly whether the law reflected the law of God Himself. This was the thrust of Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex. Take the matter of marriage. It mattered little whether marriage and family law was promulgated by a king or a council; what really mattered was whether marital law reflected the teachings of the Bible on the matter.

The marriage of Cate and William Wales has stirred up the debate over the monarchy again--and whether New Zealand should become a republic. We note that royalist sentiment is stronger here now than when Charles and Diana were defaming the House of Windsor. The same is reportedly true in Australia.

To us the issue is insignificant--a distraction, even. New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world with a unicameral parliamentary system. Laws can get promulgated relatively easily here. There are few formal divisions of power, and checks and balances. The most effective restraint we have upon tyrannical and arbitrary power is the smallness of the country. The machinations of political masters are easily exposed and their cloaks threadbare. Politicians in New Zealand are relatively naked. The monarchy is not an effective check and balance upon other branches or organs of government.

Even if it were, it would matter little. Both the UK and New Zealand long ago adopted Western Unbelief as the established religion. Secularism with its attendant humanism is dominant. Regardless of the form of government--republican or constitutional monarchy--the laws of our land conform relentlessly to this higher creed. The hearts of our rulers and the hearts of our people reject God and approbate Man. Whilst the law remains a minor potentate, it is subject to the regimen of Unbelievers writing the law to satiate their lusts and desires.

The constitutional forms of civil government at this point are a small matter.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Let Us Depart Hence

Postmodernism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, April 25, 2011

In Saving Leonardo, Nancy Pearcey writes very helpfully about the fact/value distinction that modern secularism depends upon. In doing this, she is taking one of Francis Schaeffer's basic illustrations and pushing it into the corners.

One particularly helpful observation she made is that postmodernism, despite all the posturing, keeps this quintessential modern dichotomy intact. Postmodernism applied to both fact and value would be nihilism, pure and simple. We haven't heard from many of these guys because they all shot themselves.

But postmodernism that applies itself to the values side only is just playing intellectual dress-ups. You can talk as though all knowledge is situated knowledge, based on nothing more than tribal customs . . . until a bright sophomore raises his hand and asks if Darwin is just a tribal legend.

Well, he is or he isn't. Right? If he is, then let us depart hence. If he isn't, then it would seem that there is some knowledge that is not time-bound and situated. And that is the point when the embarrassed professor concerned will retreat to some version of the fact/value distinction. "Well, that's not something that we would ordinarily call 'knowledge' . . . it is more like a fact." Heh.

Rotten Fruit

It's Deja-Vu All Over Again

When President Obama was first elected we expected that the US would suffer through another Jimmy Carteresque presidency. It would be so bad that Obama would end up being a one-term president. Now, we are not in the prophecy business--but it does seem a likely outcome.

The reasons and causes are manifold and complex. Moreover, there are very clear differences between Carter and Obama as personalities. Carter wanted to run his slide rule over the minute footnotes of thousand page government reports. He was so detailed it was difficult getting a decision. Obama does not sweat the small stuff. He is clearly not a detail person. He is big-picture. However, neither approach results in firm, decisive leadership that makes sense.

Another key difference is that Carter was a much more overt and fervent Christian. After all, he taught a Bible class faithfully all the time he was in Washington--every Sunday when he was available. (We make no comment upon the content of his teaching.) Obama appears to be a secular "Christian". Contact with Christians and churches is for political ends, not a conviction born of personal faith in Christ. But both share a deeply held progressivist ideology--which has a long tradition in the United States. Both share a belief in the building of the Kingdom of God upon earth--but their view of the Kingdom is essentially secular. Both believe the US is a God-appointed avatar of this Kingdom. The Kingdom is identified with the Left's social agenda of satisfying all "demand" rights and using redistributive taxation to achieve it world wide. It is a false Gospel.

In international affairs, both share a deep desire for human peace, brotherhood, internationalism, and working to achieve global harmony. Carter believed that our Lord's Sermon on the Mount was a guide to how the US ought to conduct international relationships. Treating opponents with gentleness, turning the other cheek would gently steer the enemies of the US into adopting an ethic of the universal brotherhood of man. As one analyst put it, Carter's filter on international relations was the Sermon on the Mount. It ought to have been the Ten Commandments.

Obama is very much on the same page. He appears to believe the role of the US is to be an avatar of world peace via internationalism--all peoples working together in the name of Man for the common good. This is Obama's version of American exceptionalism--very much in the vein of Woodrow Wilson. Rather than imposing American political doctrines militarily upon other nations, making the world "safe for democracy", he would adopt a national policy of humility and lowliness (hence the apologies, the bowing), thereby winning the hearts and minds of other peoples to US humanitarianism.

Naive, simplistic idealism thus seems to be common between Carter and Obama. In international relations, the outcome and results are the same. Dithering, inconsistency, confusion, mistakes, doubt, indecision. At least that is the way it appears--and we believe that in this case the appearance is the reality.

We believe the only biblically defensible position for a Christian nation to take with respect to other nations is to mind one's own business. The cost of this view--a cost deeply offensive to the modern liberal mind--is that evils which abound in other nations such as murders, torturing, oppression, and wars evoke only one legitimate response: that is, no response, apart from (maybe) rebuke and exhortation.

As soon as a nation goes beyond that, endless inconsistencies abound. More so if you happen to be a super-power. So Obama encouraged the popular uprising in Egypt, intervened militarily in Libya, yet ignores popular uprisings in Yemen, Algeria and Syria. No-one can understand the inconsistency--neither the Left nor the Right. No-one can explain it. The upshot is that the President appears as bumbling and confused. The US electorate is appalled. To a people who pride themselves on "can do" and pragmatic effectiveness a President who seems incompetent is culturally offensive and disgusting. It is an insult to national pride.

The visceral reaction against Carter and Obama appears very similar. We believe it is due to the common appearance of incompetence and bumbling.

Older readers will recall that a weeping sore during Carter's one term presidency was Iran's holding American embassy staff as hostages. It went on for months and months (444 days in all). Unable to do anything decisive, Carter ended up appearing weak and vacillating. When finally he did approve a special forces military strike to free the hostages, it failed through mechanical breakdown. It was a symbol of his presidency--an enduring historical epitaph.

For Obama, Libya and Afghanistan and Syria and Iran all have the same smell. The American electorate does not suffer incompetence gladly. It is offensive. It is embarrassing. It is shameful.

Ironically, the electorate prefers its presidents to be decisively wrong in foreign affairs, than haltingly right. That is why independent voters will tolerate Republican jingoism and sabre rattling more readily than Democratic cerebral vacillation. Both are wrong.

God grants civil powers authority over their own people, not over other nations. Minding one's own business is a great virtue in international relations. Being non-aligned is a Christian position. As far as possible, live at peace with all nations. But be vigorous in defence of the lives of one's citizens when necessary.

The belief that America has a divine destiny to lead the world to a higher place is not just hubris. It is offensively idolatrous. It claims a calling not given by the Almighty. For the past one hundred years in the US, this perversion has taken two extreme forms: the jingoism of Bush and McCain and the Neo-Cons requiring that America police the world, defending all citizens, making the world "safe for democracy". The second is the effete internationalism of Wilson, Carter, and Obama, dying the death of a thousand contradictions and inconsistencies.

Both branches of the tree share the same root; the fruit equally rotten and poisonous.